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Gerry - we're in the lounge. Think of it as a conversation... you can't read my body language and I cannot read yours. It was not my intention to single you out in any way. If you took it that way, my apologies.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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And I was simply taking up the points you brought up ... based on experience.
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it.
― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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With respect to declining cognitive ability, I think it happens to everyone with age. But if we keep exercising our brain, learning and applying new techniques and technologies, it can grately slow down this decline.
I know that there are times when my memory about general things have faded a bit. But with respect to software technology it is all there. I have spent the last 5 years learning and working with Azure technologies with no issue. And at the same time if I had to, I could go back and write assembler code for DOS (no laughing, I actually had a significant DOS app to work on a few years ago).
Use it or lose it...
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It's mainly more difficult to want to work. Ah, the exuberance of youth, the "really, more of this BS?" of experience.
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Older developers have the experience to demand more money. Cheapskate employers want the work done as cheaply as possible. Younger people are much more willing to do the work for a lot less money. It's really not much more complicated than that.
Myself, I'm 48, and work with a 63- and a 57-year old. Over the last few years we've also hired people in their mid-20s and 30s. I wouldn't trade working with these older people for anything in the world...whereas the younger ones don't last long because they can't deliver.
As far as I'm concerned, there's also a work ethics problem with the younger ones--and as much as I hate to generalize, they're all proving me wrong. We all work remotely, and all make ourselves available to everybody else throughout the core hours (chat through IM, voice calls, etc). At least us older guys do. The younger guys can go without a response for hours at a time.
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you speak wisely. I have lived this. Youngster (not being disrespectful) came to me with a critical issue, deadlines, etc. It was Friday 4pm. I said, "hey, meet me in the lab tomorrow at 7am..."
He gave me *that* look  or  "but tomorrow is Saturday, I don't work weekends...." immediately me, the old fossil realized it wasn't that much of an emergency.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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As a South African and someone who has been coding for 40 years, I don't believe it is a local market problem nor is it only with regards to developers.
Price may be an issue, but you get what you pay for. It is not about skill level.
There is a perception that old people only know old stuff. A good techie can and will adapt to new technologies, or they wouldn't still be in the industry.
I believe one of the main reasons is that youngsters are naive and are easier to mold into a culture and adapt to a management style. Us old dogs don't like being taught new tricks.
Nothing succeeds like a budgie without teeth.
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Wizard of Sleeves wrote: Us old dogs don't like being taught new tricks. bullshit
FTFY 
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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I can only speak from personal experience. I'm 64 yrs old and have switched jobs 4 times in the last 6 years, the first time because I worked at the previous job for almost 10 years and thought a change might do me good, then two times because I didn't like the company culture and the last time was because of the covid pandemic. My last job was really pleasant and I was heartbroken when they had to let me go due to the circumstances but I landed my current job within 2 weeks after applying and I'm equally happy here.
Being open to constantly learning new skills and technology is key to staying relevant, obviously, and frankly it's what has kept me going all these years. I would have died off slowly in a job where I'd have to do the same thing over and over for years on end.
So yeah, if you're willing to learn new skills on a regular basis, and keep up with current tech, you can get employed even at an advanced age, at least that's the current employment situation in the Netherlands where I live.
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In my country (Sweden) it is mostly the sme but for some years I have seen more posts for senior developers. Of courde most employers want someone with 30 years experience and is 25 years old though  .
Most companies does not value experience high enough and especially understanding the business domain which in mnay cases is just as imprtant as understanding how to code. Companies also overestimate their own processes and ability to form new developers. But development is more a craft/art than an industrial process.
I think who you are is more important than your age. Old developers might be bad because they have always been bad and never improved. And other older developers might be adapt to new technology and being able to change just as easily than a young developer.
And some younger developers think just because they have learned to solve problems a specific way using some pattern(s) that it is the only way to solve ANY problem and produce over-designed code complicating an easy problems just because they want to follow some rigid rule.
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I spent so many years learning my tricks. I want to see a newbie make the AJAX pages I make and make them always work.
I want to see a newbie that knows about the patterns to use to make an app maintainable. I work with a guy who is a better coder than I am but his code isn't designed to be maintainable. What is more valuable to a company since the largest cost of code is its maintenance? Heck, you can't even debug much of it let alone figure out what the error messages really mean. When there's an error, my code reports it, its location, the faulty data and who to blame for it.
I'm older but I just spent an enormous amount of time getting my AWS Architect cert, changing to git, and upgrading to .Net Core ... and we just got a manager that thinks Python is an enterprise language and that .Net only works on Azure.
Nah, I think experience is a valuable thing because it works.
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Absolutely.
I am tired of the cold. When is summer coming? Wear your mask!
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I'm 60 and can retire from my current spot as a team lead/developer. I've sent a lot of job applications out, had a fair amount of remote interviews, but no job offers even though I'm more than qualified for most of those positions. I think there's a bias against hiring guys my age. I'm pretty much reconciled to the fact I'll be working at Costco post retirement, which is fine.
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Part of that might be that your close to the normal retirement age of 65. But a company could hire you as a mentor to pass on your knowledge.
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I think you nailed it on the head. Another aspect (I am 65) is that new fads in code development like agile and DevOps tend to be something programmers used to thinking find hard to accept whole cloth and hiring managers (or teams) my be leary of being questioned.
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interviewed two decades ago with a company. The PM was a twit and the lead consultant was a pompous twit that could spout acronyms but didn't do anything. I solved a development issue the team was having in 30 seconds. Still didn't get the job. Pretty sure the twit figured out what I thought of him.
One thing you have to realize. I rarely come across people who can actually hire people smarter than them. And it's getting worse.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Pretty much exactly what I ran into. It wasn't my attitude or what my face told him I thought of him as I was eager and excited to get the job, but you cannot alter opinions of the inferior.
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welcome to the other side of the hill.
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One of the things I find a bit troubling is when you see a posting for a senior developer with 3-5 years in the core technology requirement.
My own experience working with such developers (generally) is that is about the time to kick off the training wheels. (Some exceptions apply, but not many)
So if 5 years of experience makes you a senior dev, what about us with 20, 30 or even 40 years of professional experience? Where do we fit in?
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Because of the growth rate of software jobs, the average first-level manager is about 30. A person with that little experience cannot understand the value of experience because he doesn't have any. What he does understand is that the resume of a person with 30 years of experience doesn't look like the resumes of his best workers, who are also around 30. He may decide your experience is irrelevant. But you demand for more pay is extremely relevant. Being as old as his dad may also be a negative.
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I just retired!!!
My last position I was filling 2 roles, sometimes 3. (Scrum Master / Mainframe/ .Net programmer) Why? well, I volunteered ....Silly I know but it allowed me to remain current and employed for the last couple of years. Besides it was fun learning something new.
Years ago, I worked as a contractor for a company supporting a major player in the mainframe market. We had to rewrite some assembler routines. I was getting through it slowly. One of the senior senior people (70) came over to see how I was doing. We started talking about it, he sat down and started coding assembler. The code flowed from his fingers as easily as watching water flow downhill. He finished in 2 hours what would have taken me 6 hours to complete. I remember talking to him about it, his only comment was "takes a bit of practice". He spent some time helping me to improve my assembler language coding skills.
That is one of the reasons why you should have senior people hanging around.
Cegarman
document code? If it's not intuitive, you're in the wrong field
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I have been working in various aspects of IT since 1966 after taking a programming course in college. Along with copious math & engineering classes, I took a programming class each semester and continued to work doing programming (I had to work my way through college, being the oldest of seven children & family no wealthy). Las year in school I got an off campus job doing programming for the company I eventually went to work for after graduation.
I had intended to get into control systems work after graduating with a BSEE. Things being what they were in the US in 1970 when I left college, I ended up taking a job with a small company working in the electric power & steam power control field.
Moved around a bit & ended up working for a company that was making aircraft simulators. Learned a whole lot about building device drivers, OS internals, etc. Job eventually moved me to Norfolk/VA Beach VA.
During the 1980's I gradually moved away from pure programming. And worked out of town & traveled a lot. had a house to pay for.
Fast forward to the nineties, back in VA, not much market for software developers in this area. Got into networking with DOS/NetWare & gradually networking token ring, ArcNet, Ethernet. Moved between jobs a lot businesses seemed to hire for a project & let you go. I also got involved with WIndows programming & eventually Windows NT. I eventually picked up some skills in working with wireless bar code devices.
In 1997, landed at my present job working at a shipbuilder. First assignment, more barcode devices, and wireless (pre Wi-Fi), but also did all work on the architecting the system, building servers, installing databases, installing application software, and interfacing to SAP & mainframe. This naturally led to system engineering (in the IT space).
Today, I am putting together High Performance clusters for this company. The first one I put together involved actually building out the facilities to turn a large room into a datacenter. This involves being a technical lead and being able to have a conversation with people with many different skills and get them working as a team to pull these things together in a working system.
So this is a long winded preface to a couple of observations.
Be able to communicate, both verbally & in writing. I worked a number of proposals where you have time limits, page limits, etc. You have to get your information to the customer in a way that they can understand and still stay within the limits.
Being flexible; doing what you have to to stay employed, hopefully something you like, or at least something that will broaden your experience.
Having a broad background. In my case having the BSEE helped immensely since I worked for engineering companies.
I haven't found getting a job too difficult being older (I passed 50 many years ago).
But one thing I find is that you have to actively pursue continuing to update your skills. Employers pay lip service to that, but don't seem to provide the older worker with training to keep them up to date. Let's face it, you are going to be there as long as the younger guy will, so why invest in someone that will be gone in a few years. I have spent a ton of my own money on HW & SW so that I could stay up to date as much as possible.
The other thing I see is that as an older worker doesn't get assigned to the new cool technologies when projects are assigned; the younger folks do. You have to be aggressive about going after those projects.
Last comment, I in my 70's and had planned on working until I am 80-ish. COVID has handed me an opportunity; my employer has decided to completely overhaul the way the IT organization operates & I am working from home permanently, leaving me without the 45 minute commute each way (on a good day).
Wine is for drinking. Take the cards you are dealt & make the best of them.
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I landed a new job last year at the age of 59. The new role has required me to learn a new system and programming language, and skill up on Python. I'm in the UK.
My trick was to ditch the agencies, and target employers directly.
Exception that proves the rule? Maybe.
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I hardly ever see job postings for junior and mid-level; almost always senior.
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When i got 50, it was not easy to find a job. I got hired by a consulting company. They said me they don't care about age because they have a pool of customers that represent a lot of different programming languages even cobol. I am now 65, sick and taking care of my wife who is sickier but i am working for many years on a project that will end in a year. This project will show what an old guy like me can do with experience.
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