You know how it works: The tech industry is for the young. Imagine a Google employee and you picture someone well under 40-years-old, probably in their mid-20s. It’s not a myth, but the dark secret of the tech industry is that your services are no longer welcome — regardless of how well you code — after you reach a certain age.
While little can be done to fight this perception in the industry, as a culture we can do more to train engineers.
Engineers out of college are enthusiastic. They’re eager to join an energetic, fast-paced, and growing industry. They work hard, long hours, they’re thrilled to be a part of it. No one in that position thinks that they’re going to get older and their services become less desired.
Some kids burn out. That happens a lot. Others keep plowing away, completely unaware that their age is making them less and less desirable. Eventually, they get the pink slip. Worse: They can’t find new work at any company due to their age. While this discrimination is illegal, the high tech companies get away with it in various, sneaky ways.
The article recommends that aged tech workers — which means people over 40 — can still find value in their work. Consulting, entrepreneurship, and other options are always available. I write books and do training. That’s because I’m wise enough to know that no matter how excited I’d be to join a tech company, regardless of my skills, my application wouldn’t percolate to the top of the pile.
I have to chime in on this since I live in Silicon Valley and have lived here for a year and a half. This article is a bunch of bull. No startup is turning away people because of age, in fact startups are desperate to find tech-cofounders. The fact is that if you are a good at Ruby on Rails programmer, you are guaranteed a job here even if you are 102 years old, blind and on life support. This country is still bringing in foreign tech workers just to do RoR, the whole myth of there being a tech slowdown is a lie. Steve Jobs marketing style has had a profound impact on how the industry is run from the smallest startup to the biggest multi-billion dollar tech corporations. Notice I say marketing…no one pays attention to the actual technical innovations that Steve Jobs did, they rather build products on the “look-at-me-everything-I-do-is-so-beautiful” elitist form over function type product design. The most obvious example of this is Microsoft’s hamfigured attempt to compete with the MacBook Air with their rediculous Surface Pro and making windows 8 a touchscreen interface to go along with it.
Comment by BradC — February 24, 2015 @ 12:27 pm
Good points, BradC.
I’d love some insight on to the number of new hires you see over the age of 40. I agree that programmers are needed, but my contemporaries agree wholeheartedly with the article.
Comment by admin — February 24, 2015 @ 1:09 pm
The whole startup culture here in SV is a joke in itself. Everyone and their mother has an idea for a startup and are either looking for VC funding (which they will never get) or are trying to find programmers to implement their idea so they can get it off the ground on their own. So basically this is what props up the myth that you have to be young, you have so many kids coming here, like 5 guys living in a studio apartment, trying to pursue the dream of getting their startup off the ground, most of them will have some non-tech degree and are trying to do everything on a shoestring budget. The serious startups that do get funding are usually made by guys who do have an IT background and can make things happen on their own. Once they get funding they will hire programmers who are qualified regardless of age.
Comment by BradC — February 24, 2015 @ 1:36 pm
Speaking of which, I have a brilliant billion dollar app I’m thinking of. I’ve you’ll do all the coding and work and raise the money, I might pay you something for it. 🙂
Comment by admin — February 24, 2015 @ 3:19 pm
If you ask any web programmer in Silicon Valley theyll tell you they are inundated with just such offers of doing work for free in exchange for stock ownership of a startup. Thats not to say theyre arent smart people here who are doing pioneering work on new internet based business models, but for the most part the people you meet and startup events are bums.
Comment by BradC — February 24, 2015 @ 4:50 pm