Is it Possible to Age Yourself Out of a Job?

An anonymous reader asks: "I'm a programmer with more than twelve years of experience. In all that time, I've never been a 'senior' developer. I'm competent and I work hard, but I don't think I am quite a senior developer in terms of technical or people skills. More and more I feel that I'm aging myself out a job. By this time, employers expect someone with my experience to have advanced some, and they may not be willing to even talk to me now, thinking that my pay requirements have grown while I have not. Even if I did get hired someplace new, my peers would likely be much younger than me. What do you do when you have an applicant like that? Are my fears legitimate?"

As a Hiring Manager... Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to say it, but yes. When reviewing a resume, I look for things like growth & ambition. At 12 years experience, I've seen very good architects. If one wasn't even Senior, I'd wonder why that is. Lack of ability? Lack of desire? Clock puncher?

In most cases, I'll never know or have the chance to ask the candidate. Instead, I'll just move to the next 99 resumes in the stack.

I know this isn't what you want to hear, but hopefully honesty will help.

Options

[SupplyMission]

I can't speak from experience about your situation, but I think you might have a number of very good options.

• Make it known that you are interested in being a senior developer. If you want to climb the ladder in your company, you need to make your interests known to the people who can give you promotions. This might mean spending more time with the bosses and some (or lots of) ass kissing. Ask for mentoring. Depending on the culture at your company, you might be surprised to find someone more than happy to take you under their wing. Especially if you are a familiar face, because of the long time you have been employed, people might be glad to see you step up and get promoted. Get out of your cube and explore your options in this area. Make it a point to take a stroll around the building a few times each month, and just say "hi" to people. Don't pass up opportunities to make idle chit chat once in a while with people you barely know.
• Rebrand yourself. There are plenty of colleges where you can take courses in project management training. Your long experience may confer on you credibility and respect that a younger person does not have yet. The leap to project management will be a significant career change and will take some hard work, but dedication it is not impossible.
• Take training courses. Regardless of how useful some training courses are, they look good on your resume. If you make it a goal this year to take, for example four or five training courses in something relevant to your specific field, your chances of getting employed will be much higher. People who have been in a field for a long time and actively stay abreast of new developments command respect.

There are probably unlimited more things we could think about. You shouldn't underestimate your 12 years of experience, especially if you are a hard worker, and have a reputation of getting things done.

One last thing, I get the feeling from reading your question that you might have the problem where you keep your head down and work hard, and as a result people forget who you are, and then forget you are even there. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, pardon the cliche. As I pointed out above, it is in your best interest to maintain some level of connection to people around you and above you in your company. The more they see you and talk to you, the more they feel they know you, and the more likely you are to be presented with opportunities for advancement.

25 years and going strong

[mpechner]

I've been a software engineer for 25 years. No issues. There is no expectation that you should move to management at some point. The main expectation is that you are able to keep up with technology as it changes. I've moved from COBOL to C to Java to perl to php. I've used more scripting languages than I can remember. You have to keep moving forward. You never stop reading. Provide mentoring to less experienced engineers. Never hide what you know. It is not good being the curmudgeon that keeps his knowledge to himself. You become a teacher. Understand where projects you have participated in have succeeded or failed. Bring that experience to that table. Most of us have seen more product the never made it to market than have made it. Your experience in knowing why projects succeed is something import you bring to the table. Plus you are the senior guy you get more opportunities to take lead on the cool projects. So I would not worry. I am seeing more people with some gray and missing hair. So as long as you produce, people will continue to hire you.

At our shop

[Travoltus]

I spent a lot of time early on walking through HR and sitting in on interview processes and their aftermaths to let HR understand beyond any uncertain terms where I stand as their manager and what I expect out of them.

I have a simple rule that I demand they abide be. Pay is proportional to proven skill level. Age can kiss my ass. A 14 year old coder of the newest and greatest Firefox or a middle aged old hand, or someone who's been in my organization for x years and who has been lukewarm and suddenly caught on fire, it's all the same. When the light comes on it must shine on a hill and not be stuffed under a rug.

What age do programmers peak?

[akuzi]

A related and somewhat provocative question that it hardly every asked is whether programmers 'peak' and are less effective after a certain age or not.

I know it's widely believed that mathematicians have already peak by their late 20s or early 30s.

I am now in my mid-30s, and i believe that my memory and ability to hold a lot of things in my mind at once has deteriorated quite a bit in the last 10-15 years. I have a lot of experience that makes up for it of course, but i think at some point i suspect i'm going to become less productive as a programmer (it may have already happened).

I don't want to contribute to ageism because i know that there are a lot of great programmers in their 40s, 50s and beyond - i just think it's an interesting question. Anyone have any opinions?

(I remember hearing that Steve Wozniak thinks that for him the magic age was around 40)

 

Re:Their reason for hiring someone younger might n

[TooMuchToDo]

Here here my friend. I'm 24, and have been doing IT for 6 years. I made my hobby my job, and in search of a new hobby I began taking flying lessons. I hope one day to make it my new career. Then IT will be more fun again =)

develop yourself

[morie]

You say you lack the technical and social skills to get to senior level. Develop either one or both.

Specialise:
Get some focused, advanced specialist trianing in a subect that interests you and is commercially interesting. Invest some money in doing this.

Develop your social skills:
There are courses in social skills, customer handeling, consultancy skills etc. Get a good training and develop what you already have further. You are asking for the opinion of others here, why not expand that communication urge to fields where it can be beneficial to you personally or, even better, professionally.

Get some management skills:
If it interests you in the least, get some business degree, a MBA or some form of management training. It may not be what you want to do now, but it provides an option to be of value to a company later and keep a job.

Bottom line:
Invest in yourself. Don't be scared of investing some money in this, but choose quality and choose education in a direction you feel confident will provide you options. Be cautious of things you like now and think are fun: They may not add extra skills. Also be cautious with things you do actively dislike: it may take a lot of effort to master something like that and you would have te grow to like it if you want to be succesfull in it.

Good luck from a chemical engineer/project manager/sales representative/marketeer/manager. Yes, I chose the diversify option :-)

Re:As a Hiring Manager... Yes

[Aladrin]

"For instance, I have absolutely no ambitions to become a manager."

I feel exactly the same way. And yet, in every technical position I've ever been in, I was 'managing' in a very short time. I was always still responsible for programming/repairing/whatever, but as soon as they realized I wasn't an idiot, it was my job to overseeing one or more other people. Training 'the new guy' is one thing, and I'm okay with that. But it usually ends up that I'm responsible for making sure his projects are coming along, or the projects of some outsourced company, or ... Bleh.

When ITT's career counseling was trying to prep me for interviews, I told them that I didn't want to ever be management. They thought I was crazy and told me to NEVER say that in an interview. I finally made it clear to them that I refused to lie in an interview and they gave up.

I don't feel any need to quit my current job, but they are growing fast and talking about hiring more in-house programmers already. The IT department will soon be big enough that -someone- has to be a 'manager' and the other non-new guy obviously doesn't want it, either.

Was being a contractor the only way you found to assure that you weren't stuck managing?

Re:What age do programmers peak?

[thogard]

I think as people age, they pick up more complex projects and maybe they get to a point where they get over loaded. To be a good programmer, you must be able to cope with complex problems and as people age, they are involved with more and more projects. Right now I've got a few complex but unrelated work projects, several for my own consulting company. Then there are other complex problems like home and retirement financing, managing home and family projects and hobbies. Even simple stuff like keeping track of all the stuff is getting to be a complex problem. This week I started sorting out the tool boxes. I've got at tools spread out in at least 9 different locations so just keeping track of all that is an extra complexity when doing a simple project. I didn't have that problem a decade ago.

Years ago when I was turning out far more code per day than I now do per month, I could concentrate on one project and the other issues weren't nearly as complicated. For example long term finical security then would mean attempting to get enough cash to cover rent and the bills. Now it involves things like global currency rates and picking stocks that aren't going to repeat the dot bomb nonsense. After my new years purge of my todo list, its now down to just 5 pages.

Re:You're probably fine

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the key difference is whether you have twelve years' experience, or one year's experience 12 times...

Re:Their reason for hiring someone younger might n

[Overzeetop]

The main reason why family is considered a liability in IT is because IT is an industry where sweatshop labour is considered the holy grail.

You clearly have never worked at an architecture, marketing, or any other firm that is driven by the need to have brain-hours to make money. They all flog their people to be caffine-overdosing, red-eyed drones. It's everywhere. The only way to get to the top is to stand on top of others. The only way to stay at the top is to keep the others down. There are exceptions of course - but they usually rely on graft or extortion (ex: AutoDesk - great working environment because they can extort $1000/seat out of all of their customers every year. Don't like maintenance? Every three years the format changes to be incompatible with previous releases, and the upgrade charge is *suprise* the same price as 3 years of maintenance!).

learn COBOL

[NewWorldDan]

Seriously. Nearly every programmer I know over the age of 40 works in a mainframe shop maintaining legacy COBOL programs. These programs never go away - ever. People try to rewrite them, but I've never seen a COBOL conversion actually succeed. COBOL guys, unless grossly incompetent, are untouchable. They all seem to be labeled a Sr. Engineer regardless of what they actually do or what their skill level is.

Re:learn

[Forge]

Get certified as a project manager (PMP if I remember correctly). Also consider doing an MBA. You see as a veteran programmer the young geeks WILL look up to you. Even if you are not a great programmer.

That means with the additional training I recommend you will be able to apply for management level jobs leading a programing team and the guys will have much less of a problem with you than any other boss. Especially if you sit down and hack out a few bits of code yourself once in a while.

I'm 63 and programming

[pauljw]

Number one: I love what I do. Number two: My phone rings. I actually turn down offers due to commitments. Started out back in the Middle Ages on mainframes and moved on to AS400's (love those beasts). Since I learned C early on in a Nix system, within a couple of years of when Linus put it out there on the Net, I set up a Linux box at home because I liked Nix so much. Eventually a company I worked for put a Linux box in front of their AS400 where the website was hosted in order to place a 'sacrificial' machine out in front with a lot of scripting on it. Suddenly my Nix skills got to be in demand there. Lately almost all I do is LAMP based web sites and web apps + Linux admin. Somebody here mentioned that you become the guy everybody goes to in order to ask, "How do I..." That happens on a lot for me.

Keep on keepin' on. Get new languages as you need them. Be flexible. Number one, above, probably has an awful lot to do with it.

When I started using the Internet there was almost nothing out there but Nix or Mainframe command lines. If you couldn't handle those you were SOL. I started reading /. very early on when it and the web were new. Still read it almost every day. Good going, Taco.