You're too old. This gets back to the basic 'ageism' issue in tech, which is real and alive for many, and discounted as non-existent by others (usually much younger folks!)
Most of the 'older' tech folks I know take a while to get new jobs - took a friend of mine more than 9 months. This has nothing to do with actual skills/abilities, it's (at best, being charitable here) perception of skills/abilities.
Yea, I'm sure ageism is part of it. But something definitely seems different nowadays (from both the interviewer and interviewee side of the desk), compared to 1999 or even 2005-2006. The focus these days seems to be "Find out ways to disqualify the candidate" and "Haze the chump", rather than "Find a good reason to hire him/her and then do it! We have a product to make!"
Yes, it is different - the economy is in the dumpster.
Official reports herald 1-2% GDP growth rate, but if you realize the inflation is more like 5-6% rather than the official 2% , the economy has, in reality been contracting.
This is not discounted as non-existent by anyone. Ageism is a very clear and apparent problem to anyone. As a millennial, i know a lot of people who are clearly "ageists" but almost all of them have been gen x and my millennial peers are very aware of these things. I'm not saying millenials aren't to blame as well, but anecdotally the problem seems to stem from the generation above me and the generation below those who are feeling the ageism
Any time ageism comes up on HN, someone trots out "the people who are complaining about being victims of ageism just haven't been keeping their skills up to date; keep learning new things and you will be fine." It generally goes unchallenged. I would consider that to be discounting ageism as nonexistent.
I don't know if I have ever experienced actual ageism. Here's what I've found, though:
- If you want somebody who will work 14-hour days, well, that eliminates most people over 40.
- If you want to pay appropriate to someone who's 25, well, that eliminates most people over 40.
- If your company is a pit, if your management is insane, if your coworkers are psychopaths, well, most people over 40 have seem that enough times to not go there.
I've seen companies advertising for "senior software engineer". They want 5-7 years of experience. I've got 30. They don't want to pay for 30. Is that ageism? Or am I just too expensive? Or does my experience exceed the hiring manager's ability to correctly value?
I'm not saying that ageism doesn't exist. But I am saying that there are some reasons other than ageism that older software engineers find it harder to get hired.
The marginal return to experience is minimal after a decade or so, particularly when it comes to the average software job. If you have decades of experience, you need to be in a higher leverage position (either consulting or management) to get appropriate pay for the position.
This doesn't make tech ageist. My local grocery store also doesn't pay the senior cashiers any more than the high school ones.
If all you need is someone with a few years' experience, the younger candidates are probably going to be willing to work longer hours, for less money, than the older candidates.
In other words, why pay a 20+ year veteran a lot of money to do Rails programming when a recent college grad knows enough to do a decent job, and can be paid an entry-level salary? Not every engineer on a team needs to be senior.
I suspect this is also good career advice: if you don't want to compete with entry-level programmers for jobs, specialize in an area where more experience makes you a more desirable job candidate.
Mind that the parent poster didn't claim that experience was not valuable in web applications; just that there were diminished returns.
Embedded systems programming is far more architecture and device specific than web applications are, thankfully. Embedded systems programming requires a much large body of knowledge: chipsets and their features, device-specific options, the behavior of the RTOS (if there is one), esoteric configurations in the cross-compiler or build tool, ability to interactively debug (read the instruction set, use the interface (JTAG, etc), cope with interrupts), ability to thrive with extreme resource limits, and write comprehensive tests with a nearly-exhaustive test plan; since a final release can't be rolled back once customers have purchased it.
This isn't because of some inherent superiority or prestige of embedded systems programming (salaries are lower across the board compared to backend applications programmers), it's just plain more complicated.
A 20-year senior backend programmer should really have progressed to an architect or principal engineer role at that point in her career. An embedded systems developer with 20 years of experience is more typical because of its inherent complexity.
He didn't say it wasn't valuable. He said it might not be more valuable than 5 years' experience, presumably because technologies change so quickly in web programming. I don't agree with that, but he certainly wasn't being ageist.
One or two gen-xers or millennials saying such things per ageism comment on HN might count as discounting ageism as nonexistent but only by those people specifically.
People know it's a problem. Whether or not they actually do anything about it is a different story. Like any "ism."
lets start by removing the labels of gen x and millennial. It's degrading. I personally try to not take age (or gender, race, clothing choice(please can we stop with wearing suits and ties to interviews, it's dumb), or anything other than skills and culture fit) into account when interviewing people. But I can say that looking out over the people at the company I am at, it's mostly young people. Is that ageism? probably some but also, guess who costs more? old people. That's why older folks have a harder time getting hired. I also suspect that due to the glut of young kids coming into the market they will feel similar pains at trying to get hired just due to sheer numbers, and of course jerks who don't want those kids on their lawn.
It is also easy to forget that more and more people are becoming programmers each year. The necessary result of this is that when you look at the average tech company, there will be fewer older programmers.
"Uncle" Bob Martin once gave a talk where he asked for a show of hands of "How many of you have been programming for 5 years? 10 years? 15? 20?". The results in his audience roughly correlated to his thesis, that the number of programmers has roughly doubled every 5 years since programming was a thing.
Are there fewer older programmers at a given company because of ageism? I'm sure that's part of it. But don't forget that there are far, far fewer programmers with 20 years of experience than with 5 years of experience.
It would depend on the kind of experience and the quality of insight. Time served doesn't correlate to quality.
Programming is actually a very permissive industry. There are corporate environments in which you can be barely competent and still keep your job - if not gain promotions.
Depends on whether they cost the same. If the experience costs more, does it bring enough value to the position I'm hiring for to be worth the cost?
That's the key to getting a job with 20 years of experience. You need to be able to convince the hiring manager that you're worth the extra money in that job. (And then the hiring manager needs people above him that will let him spend the extra money.)
There's nothing stopping you from not wearing a suit to an interview. I never have, and I don't believe it's hurt me one iota.
The only candidates I see regularly wearing suits to interview are executives and college junior/seniors. I'm hiring you to code, not model. I couldn't care less what you're wearing as long as it's clean and reasonably respectable.
If you're suggesting based on your workplace that young people are more likely to find jobs overall, you are incorrect.
"On average between 1989 and 2007, the unemployment rate of workers under age 25 was 2.2 times as high as the overall unemployment rate. [...] In March 2015, the overall unemployment rate was 5.5 percent, and the unemployment rate of workers under age 25, at 12.3 percent, was 2.2 times as high."
He didn't say anyone is ageist against millenials. He just said millenials are not the ones who are ageist. I think this is probably still not true, but it's the claim.
At my place, we have plenty of older folks(40-50s), but a lot of the older guys suffer from either NIH syndrome or do-not-want-to-innovate syndrome or barely surviving-syndrome. Some of them are in management and also just don't get it. This definitely biases myself against older folks if I ever have to interview, but usually interviewees can barely pass a phone screen anyway regardless of age.
It's frightening since I'd imagine that these things I implement now may be irrelevant 10-20 years from now and would imagine myself butting heads with the next gen of kids as an older guy.
I guess we will have to see if ageism becomes irrelevant as time goes on and the current generation of 20s kids that become the hiring managers 20 years from now lose their bias as they age. I'm hopeful as tech has had a lot of growth and the current 20-30s technologists value the older folks.
Well, at my place I'm the "older" guy wanting to innovate :) I don't think either NIH or not wanting to innovate is an age thing. It's a mindset. Plenty of young people have that as well. Plenty of older innovators.
There are a couple of older innovators in management positions as well. The guys who really want to innovate and make a difference have gone to other places unfortunately. I guess we are merely left with older guys who are comfortable.
Being in "regulated" finance makes for a lot of guys who have golden handcuffs. Great salary and benefits and no strong desire to ruffle the bureaucratic obligations placed on them. A very common theme is, "Hey can you work on this X feature? Would be really useful." "That sounds like a great idea! But sorry, I can't unless there is a billing code dictated by the business for that idea"
Most of the 'older' tech folks I know take a while to get new jobs - took a friend of mine more than 9 months. This has nothing to do with actual skills/abilities, it's (at best, being charitable here) perception of skills/abilities.