The ageism in our industry needs to change
Posted by SadSongsMakeMeGlad@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 403 comments
I’ll be 50 this year, and have been working as a software engineer professionally for twenty years. My current role is technically director, but our company is so small that I’m still involved in frontline architectural and coding work, while also leading small teams.
At the risk of sounding arrogant, my ability to implement software has never been stronger. With the hard-won experience I’ve accrued over the years, I’m quickly able to break down business problems into software solutions that are maintainable and scale. I’m better able to recognize how new technology can be leveraged to solve existing problems. I can also spot technology non-starters. Again, mostly based on experience.
And yet, at my age, the industry in general seems to be done with me. I’m speaking in broad terms, because I know it’s not like that everywhere. But it is like that at many places. Anyone who’s worked in this field for long enough has probably seen it first hand. I know I have.
It really bugs me, and not only because I’m facing it personally. It seems backwards and short-sighted.
The reason this is on my mind is because I just completed the first season of The Pitt, an incredible medical show about working in a modern ER. And what you see right away in that environment is that experience is valued above everything else. To the benefit of everyone, from the staff to the patients.
I wish our industry could learn from this. Medicine has been around much longer than software, and what we do is not nearly the same level as those heroes working in the ER, but I can’t help but wonder how much more we could achieve if we could have that mindset.
It seems at this point in my career, I should be more in demand than ever, because of all the reasons I mentioned. But this is the age where people with my experience start to struggle to even find work. And that seems wrong, and wrong-headed.
What do you think?
leneuromancer@reddit
The problem really is that you probably what to be [rightly] compensated for all that wisdom and experience
ninetofivedev@reddit
As a fellow old person… i get it.
There really isn’t much I add compared to the SWE with 10-15 YoE,
And I have enough peers who refuse to keep up with technology / stuck in their ways.
Add the fact that we get kind cynical in our old age and not as friendly.
Not sure if it’s ageism or just a tendency to be less desirable as an older guy.
khuskii@reddit
The not as friendly is the big one, and the lack of wanting to mentor/teach is huge. The best, most experienced engineers I’ve ever worked with definitely went out of their way to foster an extremely collaborative team, making sure that any new tech was explained and willing to pivot to better, modern tech. They worked fast, code reviewed often, and paired/mobbed religiously.
Compared to older devs I’ve worked with, they didn’t silo themselves off as grouchy know-it-alls that want to argue that they know best, and bitch about making sure we continue bolstering legacy code with established patterns that just further enmeshed and ktlo the crusty software. I don’t try to profile, but every code dinosaur I’ve met was definitely on the older side, very male, and not fun to work with.
pduck820@reddit
The problem right now in the year 2026 is that the "better" tech is overwhelmingly viewed as AI...
Except, AI is often slower than me doing it myself, especially when you consider the back and forth making it do something productive without blowing a hole in anything.
But, I'm viewed as old, set in my ways, etc. Even though I'm consistently a few months ahead of teams who need to consume my work.
There's no good answer for my issue, at least until the AI bubble bursts.
fexonig@reddit
i’m gonna get downvoted for this but fuck it.
in 2024, when AI coding tools were very immature, you had a good point. but if, in 2026, you are not able to see significant productivity gains using AI, you *are* set in your ways.
you may be right that it’s slower for you to use AI than for you to do it yourself. but the kid using AI can do it faster than you. and that’s what the business cares about.
remy_porter@reddit
I work on a team that pushed a bunch of vibe coded stuff out. And they brought me in, in part, to undo the mess that created. I've gotten some mild benefits out of LLMs for refactoring, but they require a lot of guidance and the thinking time is often so slow that it's faster for me to execute the steps while using the LLM to just keep track of all the bits what need changed.
LLMs are, in my experience, very good at pushing out features, and absolutely terrible at writing code.
fexonig@reddit
there are lots of teams out there producing slop sure.
but there were teams doing that before AI too. junior engineers are gonna write slop bc they don’t know any better. good technical leadership is how we prevent slop.
you are technical leadership now, like it or not. you weren’t given a team of junior engineers before because they were too expensive. Claude is way cheaper and way faster.
if you told your boss that you didn’t give your junior engineer any work bc he requires too much guidance and it’s easier to make changes yourself than explain it to him then i think your boss’s obvious conclusion would be that you don’t have the communication skills to effectively delegate tasks.
and that wasn’t a problem before. because engineers didn’t have to delegate tasks. but now the engineers who are good at delegating tasks to AI can move way faster than you can
Cyrrus1234@reddit
We don‘t know how cheap or not claude really is. With the current pricing there are for sure benefits to be gained.
But I‘m gonna be honest, if they drop the subscription model like github copilot and instead charge you their API prices instead, the use cases will drop tremendously.
fexonig@reddit
Claude is already on a usage based model. copilot was changing to be more like claude, they weren’t doing their own thing.
and fundamentally, Claude needs to increase in price by several orders of magnitude before it stops being viable for software engineering. if having a claude membership allows my business to hire just one less engineer, well then Anthropic can charge 6 figures for Claude and i will happily pay it.
engineers are expensive dude
fsk@reddit
It is priced on usage, but it is currently heavily subsidized by investor money. Some sources say that the estimated compute cost per token is 10x what they are currently charging. That means they would need to 10x prices just to break even. Since they also need to turn a profit and pay for their expenses other than computer, that means the real price is 20x or more than the current price.
fexonig@reddit
claude is 20 dollars a month for standard usage. 20x that is $4800/yr.
there are a lot of people who will stop using AI if it 20x in price. software engineers are not those people.
fsk@reddit
Enterprise users aren't on the $20/month plan.
fexonig@reddit
yea that doesn’t work out.
if american software engineers are the only people on the planet to use AI.
that is a patently absurd thing to say
fsk@reddit
They enterprise version pays more in total. I said nothing about cost per token.
You're also assuming that OpenAI and Claude can get 100% market share, there aren't "good enough" open source competitors. If an offshore employee is earning $10k/year, is his employer really going to spend $20k/year for him to use AI? It's going to be very hard for them to turn a profit.
fexonig@reddit
it’s more in total but then split over multiple engineers so your point doesn’t make any sense. obviously it costs more to get 10 people claude than it costs to get 1 person claude
i don’t give a shit about anthropic or open ai. those companies might get killed and i won’t shed a tear. AI is here to stay tho, and you seem to agree.
fsk@reddit
I agree that AI will be around in some form, but I'm skeptical if the current versions are more efficient than manual coding, for complex tasks, not simple stuff like GUI. For gamedev, I see posts of "Look at my vibe coded game!" and it's obvious slop. When I start seeing vibe coded games that look polished and sell well, I'll start taking it seriously.
Cyrrus1234@reddit
Yes you have usage limits. But they are vastly below in cost what other harnesses like open code have to pay.
If you believe that the current prices will stay, we simply disagree. This is the most subsidized technology in the history of humanity.
AI is maybe cheaper than a FAANG engineer. But prices are also competing with europe, india and so on. I‘m not so sure the real prices, especially when spinning up multiple agents, are actually cheaper.
Nice_Manufacturer339@reddit
“Most subsidized” you really need a source on that. All AI companies are currently supply constrained, and unable to meet demand. I work at a FAANG, and every one of our thousands of engineers has a blank check to use unlimited tokens from several providers. And we still get rate limited because anthropic and OpenAI cannot meet demand.
It’s a bold take if you don’t think compute (which has gotten cheaper dramatically nonstop since 1960s) is going to suddenly get more expensive than it is now, or that equivalent models for today’s capabilities won’t run more cheaply in the future.
I believe 1) models will continue to get more efficient as they have 2) gpus will get cheaper as they have been. This is reasonable assumptions to make about nearly any software/hardware in computing. If models continue to get more efficient and gpus continue to get cheaper, why would costs rise?
Where is this subsidization coming from? China and google and others are literally open sourcing models and even so, the demand to run these models on gpus is so high the entire world is gpu-constrained right now.
fexonig@reddit
do you have a source on “most subsidized technology in the history of technology”? because that sounds like total nonsense, on the level of “data centers are water guzzlers.”
today, you can have a Google Gemma agent almost as good as the top of the line tools running on a local GPU for under $1000.
no matter what business decisions anthropic makes in the future, that will literally always be an option.
and like, cost of inference has only gone down over time. no reason to assume that won’t continue.
openai is in dire financial straits these days. anthropic is not, and i don’t see reason to think they will be besides wishcasting.
max123246@reddit
Inference costs are not the total cost. You have to remember the model had to be trained and each of these companies is paying potentially millions for the best in class engineers to work on each model. Given the development cost of LLMs, there's no way they're making their money back before competitors release the next big one.
Nvidia's nemotron director said it out loud, training models is insanely expensive
fexonig@reddit
training costs are only a factor for new models. the existing models have already been trained, those costs don’t need to be accounted for.
and that’s why i bring up local models. sure maybe Claude Mythic will be prohibitively expensive. you can run Google Gemma literally forever for the cost of your fridge. you can’t be charged for training, the model runs on your computer.
Klsvd@reddit
A junior is much better then LLM, because juniors learn their errors. Juniors require less and less guidance after every week. Finally a junior becames middle/senior. But llm is eternal junior, it learn nothing. Llm needs guidance as bunch of juniors, but this bunch is new every day.
fexonig@reddit
i think the idea that juniors will evolve to middle/senior is aspirational. these days job hopping is kinda the norm. you can’t really rely on building someone up for more than a few years
but your claude has a memory.md file that it keeps of the important things that it learns from you. saving your guidance to be applied later
remy_porter@reddit
My job is not to ship features. It's to create a framework which can be sustained through the lifetime of our product, which is hopefully quite long.
The issue is not that junior engineers shipped slop, it's that LLMs can ship slop at scale. It creates huge piles of technical debt. And it's very bad at paying down technical debt- it's substantially worse at many refactoring tasks than traditional refactoring tools (slower and more expensive). It does permit some refactoring that would otherwise be very hard, and it's not too shabby at finding points that benefit from refactoring. Getting it to plan out how to break up a megaclass into modular components, it's pretty good at. Actually letting it run out and do that without strict supervision? Terrible.
fexonig@reddit
your job is to do both. your product will only have a long lifetime if it has enough features to attract enough customers to pay your salary.
Juniors can ship slop at scale too, given enough time. LLMs just work faster. juniors are bad at refactoring and paying back tech debt too. LLMs just work faster.
the LLM is just a junior engineer that works way, way faster. this can *only* be a bad thing if you arent providing good tech leadership.
you aren’t supposed to let it fuck off without supervision.
literally all of your complaints apply equally to junior engineers. figuring out which tasks can be delegated and how to communicate what you want effectively is a hard skill.
but in 2026, unlike 2021, it’s a critical skill for software engineers
remy_porter@reddit
Someday, maybe. Not right now it isn't. Right now we need a framework that supports new features. The code, as it stands, can't easily incorporate new features, no matter who or what is doing the work.
Not particularly, they do not. They're rather slow in my experience. They can produce a lot of output, but so little of it is actually usable that the net speed is pretty slow.
It absolutely is nothing like a junior engineer. A junior engineer has limitations, but a junior engineer has a relationship with the team and the company. An LLM is just a code generation tool. And more important: it's a technical debt generation tool. The worst feature of LLMs is that they can generate a lot of output. They're "fast" at that. But so little of it is actually usable.
fexonig@reddit
if LLMs work slow in your experience, *you are stuck in your ways*!
you complain that your company is forcing you to use AI, but the alternative is that in a few years they fire you for not being able to deliver.
it’s past the point where there is debate about whether LLMs are useful for producing good software. they are.
this is the job now. get used to it or get replaced
remy_porter@reddit
Like, it frequently is literally slow. I can give it instructions, go off and do the same instructions myself, and be done faster.
fexonig@reddit
it doesn’t matter if the LLM is slower than you would be. (that has literally never happened to me, and i’m skeptical that it is happening to you, but even if it is, that doesn’t matter.)
because while the LLM is working on one task, *you* are free to work on another.
and once again, your complaints apply to juniors as well. Junior engineers also write bad code bc they don’t know any better. they have also been “trained” on whatever code is out there in the wild. that’s why we do code review. and have linters and code style guides etc.
try writing up a code style guide and giving it to Claude. you will see improvements in the code quality it produces.
remy_porter@reddit
No I'm not. Because while it's painfully slow, it's going to need me to review its work. I am 100% not jumping to an interrupt based workflow where I break my flow to check on what the LLM has done in the past twenty minutes.
My issues are not style! It's fundamental conceptual approaches to how to structure code. As I said initially: it's fine to deliver features, but it's not creating a framework for describing your problem domain in a domain specific language. It's terrible at making code that ends up being an abstract DSL for describing your problem and solution.
fexonig@reddit
ok dude, i don’t know what your job is. maybe you really are working on something so specific that there really is no value for ai, idk.
my point is that if AI can’t help you in your work, a Junior Developer wouldn’t be able to help you either. and if a Junior could help you, then you are failing to utilize the AI effectively.
in 99.9% of cases, adding a junior dev will increase productivity in the long run. ai is the same way.
WhenSummerIsGone@reddit
juniors learn, making the time you spend with them an investment.
fexonig@reddit
ai agents learn too, just differently.
WhenSummerIsGone@reddit
they don't learn from experience. You have to create curated docs #or them.
fexonig@reddit
you should be providing docs for your new hires if you want to onboard them efficiently
also, no you don’t. claude will save important things to its memory autonomously. it teaches itself.
WhenSummerIsGone@reddit
there's ai other than claude...
fexonig@reddit
if you are using inferior tools and getting inferior results that’s your fault, not the tool’s
remy_porter@reddit
The juniors on my team are mostly algorithm specialists. They're really good at that, but they're not software engineers. I can't do most of the work they can do, honestly. But I am a software engineer. I'm the one who works to make sure we have expressive high-level ways to compose those algorithms, to deploy the software (instead of deploying by SSHing into field devices and git pull/build on device, which yes, is a real thing real teams do).
I guess that's the thing: I haven't worked on a team with true juniors in… over a decade. Last team was a bunch of academics. Team before was just two developers.
PulseReaction@reddit
Tbh, the bubble is close to popping (datacenters delayed, openai missing targets, github copilot charging by tokens) so at this point might be better to just wait lmao
fexonig@reddit
i will bet you any amount of money that there is no bubble and ai is here to stay.
openai sucks and is hopefully gonna fail. but openai doesn’t own LLMs. anthropic is doing fine. and those are just the two biggest players
copilot is moving to the same kind of usage model that claude / chatgpt are already on
data centers don’t need to be built in the US
PulseReaction@reddit
it is definitely here to stay, I don't deny that, but the business model right now doesn't make sense. It's definitely going to increase in price after the bubble pops (and I don't think openai survives either)
fexonig@reddit
yea i think there will definitely be changes that i can’t predict in the financislization, but, like, claude could be 100x in price and it will still be financially viable for software engineering. its just that powerful
CapitanJenkins@reddit
You are living in such a bubble if you really believe what you just said in this comment
fexonig@reddit
if my company can hire 9 engineers using claude instead of 10 engineers - that means Claude can cost a $100,000 dollars a year and i will still save money using it.
engineers are super expensive dude
CapitanJenkins@reddit
You do know America is by far not the only country in the world, right? And outside of the US, $100,000 is a ton of money, so it would just be cheaper to outsource
fexonig@reddit
ok but i’m talking about the economics for american companies. in america, at least, AI is here to stay.
and claude isn’t 1000 a year today, that was hyperbole. claude x 100 is only 12,000 dollars a year. that’s cost effective in a lot more places than america.
and remember, this is based off the totally unfounded ideas that 1. claude will somehow 100x in price (it won’t) and 2. using claude will only ever save you a single engineer (it’s better than that)
PulseReaction@reddit
I would never pay 1000 usd for Claude, let alone 10000. Same for my company - we have some 15 engineers, and 3k usd/mo does make sense, but 30k doesn't; with that money we can hire 3 more very good engineers. If it cost 100x, we'd scale usage down 100x, and only use it for very hard debugging.
engineered_academic@reddit
My CTO didn't like that I pointed out that if his claims that AI allows our company to move against 10-20x our size, that means a company of 2 people can compete with us.
tehfrod@reddit
Probably because he knows that the relationship isn't linear like this. This is "nine women can have a baby in one month" rationalization.
whatssenguntoagoblin@reddit
Your CTO had the wrong perspective to your claim. Their rebuttal should’ve been that you can now compete with companies 10-20x your size.
max123246@reddit
Also completely incorrect. 10x should be immediately obvious. Anthropic and OpenAi should be eating entire industries with new competing products every 6 months
Singularity-42@reddit
You are aware that they crashed certain stock market sectors several times this year already right?
I know, not the same thing at all but it's worth pointing out.
max123246@reddit
That's definitely fair. But the fact they aren't announcing competing products is telling. It's more just AI hype feeding into future stock expectations which impacts the price today
Hope that isn't a cop-out. I do think stock prices will mainly show whether AI was transformative in 5-10 years when it has time to realize these expectations. But I mostly meant to focus on the 10x claim. Even a 20-30% improvement is incredibly substantial and can shock stock prices. But 20-30% is not 10x.
fexonig@reddit
devs aren’t the whole company anywhere. you need product guys who know the market, sales people with connections with customers etc.
sure, anthropic could hire those people for some industry and attempt a takeover, but why would they try to learn to pan for gold when they’re already making a fortune selling shovels?
i think they are making the right business decision to focus on their ai products lol
max123246@reddit
Because OpenAi is in deep debt? They need a huge market share, which they don't have
fexonig@reddit
if openai signals that they need to diversify in order to keep afloat, i think investment will dry up quickly
max123246@reddit
Not if their claims that AI makes them 10-20x productive are true. Because they don't need to signal, they can ship products that are a no brainer to switch to. That's been my argument, it can't possibly be 10x more productive because their AI companies could way more money using the tool than selling it
fexonig@reddit
even if the dev team is able to move at 10x speed, that doesn’t matter if they build a product that no one will use.
building a product that people will actually use requires expertise from people that aren’t devs
Singularity-42@reddit
With bigger teams that theoretical multiplier goes down very quickly.
Very good Solo dev could probably achieve biggest multiplier (maybe even 10x for someone very good), but then inter-human friction slows it down somewhat. A small team of 2-3 people could be ideal though, to brainstorm ideas, etc.
dbxp@reddit
People aren't fungible. The team of two are cofounders who know the domain and product inside out and work with it day to day. The larger company is not full of this type of person and may actually have less of them as jobs get split between more roles and there's more management. The smaller team can essentially apply the idea of 2 pizza teams to the entire business.
dbxp@reddit
I imagine that might be the direction things go. You'll still have that core team of people who really know what their doing but they won't need to scale up, bringing in outsiders and thinking about management structures.
pizza_the_mutt@reddit
My brother is in his 50s and has rearchitected how his team develops software from the ground up. Agents are doing almost everything. His team has only deleted one prod database so far. So I guess the jury is still out, but your point is valid that if you aren't dramatically changing how you work your falling behind (or at least perceived to be falling behind).
As for me, I'm a PM, and my issue as an aging guy is that I never broke into the more senior ranks at my FAANG job. So despite a decade of great pay and high levels of impact I'm not seen to have reached the seniority expected of somebody of my age.
fexonig@reddit
you’re agent can only delete your prod database if you’re stupid
access control silly.
pizza_the_mutt@reddit
You have to break a few eggs to make a chicken... or something.
1StationaryWanderer@reddit
Yeah my company used cursor about 2 years ago. I hated it. I produced crap and would routinely wipe out things I didn't commit yet. That code was unrelated but it decided to undo it anyway. Now I have use Claude to dig into some obscure bug for 10 minutes and it finds a fix. It's love/hate relationship for me. Digging into code and figuring things out is a strong skill me for. That skill is pretty much useless now. I have so many meetings that I do like how I can fire something off at the start of it and guide it very few minutes until something that's useable.
fexonig@reddit
i feel like claude has basically given everyone access to a team of junior engineers that move at 100x speed, and that means that every engineer is now a tech lead.
being a very good tech lead is a very different skill from being a very good coder and that can make seasoned great coders frustrated by AI, because they are being asked to use skills they haven’t cultivated.
but companies don’t need good coders anymore, unfortunately. you will never be cheaper than the ai
sharpcoder29@reddit
Claude still chokes on a lot of hard and medium problems. It's really good on stuff that it was trained on, and awful at stuff it wasn't.
ninetofivedev@reddit
I’ve typically been able to bend it to my will. It might take some effort, but haven’t really ran into anything yet where it just hasn’t been table to figure it out with me spelling it out.
SplendidPunkinButter@reddit
I can bend it to my will too. But there’s a point where just doing it yourself is more efficient than wasting time, tokens, and carbon emissions trying to bend Claude to your will.
ninetofivedev@reddit
There is 1000 things I do every day that could be done more efficiently.
My company makes 1000\^n decisions every day that could be done more efficiently.
If your company is trying to optimize efficiency, then it will focus on the efficient solution.
But most of the time we’re not all that worried about efficiency. We want process and structure and familiarity.
That extends to AI usage. Could I just do it myself? Sure. But now it goes through my guardrails, it’s built into my workflow, and I don’t have to change my method for when it does do it more efficiently than I do.
max123246@reddit
There's enough studies that show that AI usage degrades your skills. If you can do it yourself and do it faster, it's even more important you do since it retains your skills so that you are still good at judging the output quality of AI
ninetofivedev@reddit
Enough studies? Buddy, this is new tech. That’s not how studies work.
SplendidPunkinButter@reddit
Junior developers write shitty code though. There is nothing I hate more than seeing a 500+ line PR from a junior developer.
fexonig@reddit
yea junior engineers write shitty code i agree.
they also deliver features for the business, the thing we do that justifies our salaries.
before AI, if you told your boss “i won’t approve PRs from juniors bc they’re idiots; i will handle every ticket myself and take 10x the time” you would be fired.
it’s your job, as the senior engineer, to set and enforce code quality standards for the juniors and get them up to speed on producing reviewable code
so it is with AI.
whatssenguntoagoblin@reddit
That skill is still useful to snuff out when Claude is lying to you. The tech is miles above where it was a few years ago. But it still does lie constantly.
That said no idea how long it’ll will continue to and to what extent but I feel this skill will surface in other ways we don’t experience as the tech evolves.
SplendidPunkinButter@reddit
It always will, because real world complexity is unpredictable, and because it hallucinates by design. And also because it’s not profitable as-is, which means they will enshittify it.
juliebeezkneez@reddit
I guess that's the only thing that matters, speed /s
fexonig@reddit
delivering products is the only thing that matters to the people who pay your salary
juliebeezkneez@reddit
Nothing else matters to delivery than, speed /s
fexonig@reddit
necessary but not sufficient. nobody gives a shit that you could build the greatest most bug free, scalable architecture in 5 years if the company ran out of money in 2
dbxp@reddit
I agree with your standard web api or react, it does very much vary by tech stack though
TriviaBadger@reddit
I’m 53 and I used to be the second most effective engineer on my team, behind a 43 year old who is an incredible coder and all around great guy.
I’ve embraced AI and he has been stubborn about it. I think in the last year or so I’ve surpassed him. I’m getting more done at least, by some margin. He may still be more valuable overall in some regards.
If he’d start picking up the tools and letting them help him, there’d be no question here, he’d still be more effective. Age is a number, being open to new things is pretty important I believe.
writesCommentsHigh@reddit
The AI hate on /r/experienceddevs is heavy. The technological revolution we are experiencing is rather new to us. The things we’ve been building have changed the way so many others do their jobs.
What most fail to realize is we still require the same
Knowledge and skill to build good and maintainable software. The pencil has just evolved.
fsm_follower@reddit
I also feel like as tool usage has come around even if AIs ability to code is slower than me I can create skills or runbooks for it around common but fuzzy problems. I can then call out to that skill next time and it’s going to be able to troubleshoot something on its own etc. while I’m doing something harder or that just requires human eyes. Then when it’s done I get a ping and have what I need. It can run in parallel to me so it being a bit slower is acceptable.
throwaway1847384728@reddit
Everyone and everything is slower than an expert doing it themselves. The problem is that it doesn’t scale, organizations can’t hire 5,000 senior developers.
Even before AI, the job of an experienced developer was to mentor developers, build an organization culture and shared set of standards, and only manually intervene in the most critical portions.
pduck820@reddit
I've never worked at a large corp where you can sit back and only touch code when things go haywire lol... My company is small in a relatively niche software market with no plans to scale unless we try for a different vertical way outside our sphere of knowledge, which I don't see happening. We have 9 devs spread across android, ios, and backend teams (most dedicated, with one guy who does a tiny bit of ios but focuses on android).
Given the size of the teams (on the backend side, there's me and one other guy who's classified as high-junior/low-mid), there's not a situation where you're not doing development work as well. I bounce between sysadmin, devops, architecture, bug fixes, feature development, code review, talking to other teams, talking to the other dev on my team, pulling whatever crazy set of data the PM decides he wants this week, etc.
tehfrod@reddit
I agree. I've also never worked at a large corp where you can sit back and only touch code when something goes haywire, and I've been at a FAANG for over a decade now.
You have no idea what you are talking about outside your niche.
coworker@reddit
To put it bluntly then, you really don't know what you're talking about.
bstaruk@reddit
20 YOE here. Their experience mirrors mine.
If you're going to "put it bluntly" without elaborating at all, all you're really doing is making a clown out of yourself.
Singularity-42@reddit
When exactly is the bubble bursting?
FakeBonaparte@reddit
Sounds like a skill issue to me - I’ve read through your complaints in this thread and all of them are readily addressable if you have intellectual curiosity and the willingness to adapt.
khuskii@reddit
So unfortunately, we don’t know what the landscape is going to look like when/if the bubble bursts. The idea that AI is slower than you manually coding is definitely a sign of your age/stubbornness in the industry. If you don’t know how to work/identify the right agents for your use case it is hard to trust you as a senior dev.
Additionally, not being able to prompt the agents clearly or codify skills and rules makes me hesitate that you know how to effectively work with less experienced devs, because from what I’ve seen personally devs who struggle with AI have had a correlation with their inability to break down concepts to others (anecdotal, I know)
I don’t like this landscape at all. I think the idea that AI is cheaper than just investing in devs is false, and going to bite these companies in the ass. But as someone in a FAANG adjacent company, this has been my daily experience.
Yodiddlyyo@reddit
Exactly. I've been using AI tools daily for work since last summer. Without fail, everyone who has been against AI ir thought it slowed them down has either not actually given it a real try and were converts once they did, or were not very good engineers to begin with, and weren't able to grok "delegate your tasks" thinking.
whatssenguntoagoblin@reddit
I’m very curious how companies are going to react once Claude changes their pricing models. We’re getting it for dirt cheap right now.
pduck820@reddit
I counter your "hard to trust you as a senior dev" with my comment "I am (and by extension, my team) a few months ahead of the other teams in my company needing to consume my work."
The reality is that APIs, backend logic, etc I wrote this past fall are finally now, in Spring of 2026, being coded against by our mobile client devs, while I'm already working on what they have on their Fall and Winter 2026 roadmap.
Given your statements, I have to assume you rely on AI.
If you don't know how to write the code and instead have to rely on AI, it is hard to trust you as a senior dev. ;)
Additionally, not being able to write the code yourself clearly makes me hesitate that you know how to effectively work with less experienced devs. Again, ;)
khuskii@reddit
And I have to assume you are defensive and coping if you assume that I don’t know how to code without AI, or that I don’t also work on future roadmaps (that’s literally your job description??)
pduck820@reddit
I mean... you did it to me first?
StrangeFilmNegatives@reddit
This is outdated. Please if you haven't try Claude Code (get a Pro or Max 5x subscription). Ask the chat version of Claude "Please make me a prompt for Claude Code. I want to make a [DESKTOP APP, WEB PAGE APP, SOFTWARE BACKBONE ETC] in [SOFTWARE LANGUAGE HERE], utilising [TECH STACK, LIBRARY HERE]. The UI will look like [REFERENCE APP, REFERENCE IMAGE, SKETCH/VISIO DRAWING, DISCRIPTION OF UI]. "
Once that prompt is complete have a read through the typically MD file it has made and ensure the prompt follows roughly what you want. Then setup the Desktop App with your Github account linked to it and stick that text or give the text file to Claude Code on the Desktop App and have it set to Default Claude (Their cloud setup) and use a setup Git Repo from Github, then select model Opus 4.7. Answer any questions it has for socratic questioning and away you go.
ConspicuousPineapple@reddit
The bursting of that bubble will only be on the financial markets. Don't expect the workplace utilization of AI to suddenly regress.
steampowrd@reddit
“Very male”?
RainbowSovietPagan@reddit
He means that woman tend not to exhibit the behaviors described.
Used-Assistance-9548@reddit
Very male :) , im on a small team and jeez some good engineers but lots of chewing glass on pedantics
maraschino_cherry@reddit
Your last sentence — “older side, very male” — is interesting to me as a younger, female, more junior developer. I have had “grouchy” mentors who are still able to mentor successfully, and I do enjoy trying to understand where more experienced people are coming from when they’re expressing impatience/frustration with junior developers.
I don’t think technical pivoting is always necessary — experience will inherently mean “experience with older methodologies” — and it’s helpful to see what older coworkers value intellectually, as it’s a different perspective than how I grew up. I don’t know what I’m entirely trying to get at here — just that your comment made me think about my experience with older coworkers, I guess.
khuskii@reddit
Yeah I guess very male is going to be inherent to the male dominated industry, especially when talking about experienced devs. I think you have a great attitude at learning, and encourage you to continue doing that. God knows I took time to approach it that way when I was a junior.
I’ve noticed other junior devs also balk at approaching cranky guys, and tbh as someone who’s been in the industry for 10ish years it doesn’t take much just to be kind and empathetic. My job as a mentor/senior dev is to make sure the whole team succeeds and learns. As far as “experienced with older methodologies” these should be default to experience, but also be able to defend them properly against newer tech. A lot of older devs are overly defensive to adopting newer styles, or identifying opportunities to experiment.
maraschino_cherry@reddit
Thank you for explaining how you feel as a mentor! I think I still don’t have a lot of context from where people are coming from, so I err on the side of “assume best intent,” which works in emotional ways but doesn’t always translate to workplace dynamics as much as I’d like.
To be fair — I do generally balk at approaching senior devs. It’s been helpful to have a manager who encourages me to reach out (sort of a cushion for the quicker dismissiveness). I think it may just be more of a company thing where you need at least one person who a junior can get comfy with to lessen the perceived rejection of senior coworkers.
LousyGardener@reddit
> Not sure if it’s ageism or just a tendency to be less desirable as an older guy
Everything you wrote is agism. We this, we that. Speak for yourself
caffeinated_wizard@reddit
I think it’s both but ageism can mean a lot of different things.
More experienced employees value things differently and smell bullshit further away. And you likely have a better frame of reference to compare things. Talent management doesn’t like that. Recruiter for my job proudly talked about the bonus. Dangling money when they can change the rules any time doesn’t mean anything to me. Equity means nothing if you are laid off before you can vest or the company isn’t worth anything. Unlimited PTO means nothing if nobody at your company takes more than 4 weeks off per year.
Time off, health benefits and work-life balance are more important to me today. I would trade a good chunk of total comp in exchange of 8 weeks off per year. Meanwhile younger devs want different things and have a lot more fucks left in the tank.
oVtcovOgwUP0j5sMQx2F@reddit
i didn't enjoy upvoting this 😂
7HawksAnd@reddit
I mean that assumption is the discrimination
it200219@reddit
and hard to prove given how much red tape and other BS in hiring process
7HawksAnd@reddit
No arguments
robogame_dev@reddit
20 years of experience is usually more expensive to hire than 2 years of experience - why would it be discriminatory to assume the person with the better resume expects better comp?
03263@reddit
They literally ask on many jobs what your expected pay range is. Recruiters ask this too. I just give back whatever they posted as offering or check glassdoor
pythosynthesis@reddit
The best answer is "market rate", which you should have done a bit of research on before hand. So glassdoor or their own posting is fine.
stingraycharles@reddit
This is not about the difference between 20 and 2 years, this is about the difference between 10 and 30 years. Companies hire 30 year old devs all the time, but 50 is problematic. Arguably, the difference in compensation between a 30 year old and 50 year old dev is much smaller.
drcforbin@reddit
That it exactly.
valleyman86@reddit
I’m not 50 but I stopped adding my college to my resume or at least the years I went. Makes it too easy to know my age. I’m also not 25.
I reduced the titles I have at previous companies as well. Instead of saying I was principal I say senior/staff.
Honestly this alone helped get more initial interviews alone.
CorrectPeanut5@reddit
You'll see that in certain segments. COBOL/Mainframe stuff. BUT, I also know a lot of those folks got shat on in the 2000s and 2010s. Basically scene as someone who's just keeping the lights on. You'll replace it with modern stuff any day.
Of course it's 15-20 years later and most companies who have key mainframe footprints, still have key mainframe footprints.
The other side of this, in the US, is we're overpaid compared to our European and Asian counterparts. But the reason we are is corporations went out of control with guest worker and offshoring programs. They lost generations of college grads and now have to pay the iron price for talent.
Whoz_Yerdaddi@reddit
I watched a Fortune 100 pull people out of retirements for $600 an hour to work on their mainframes. I'm guessing that Java and legacy. Net will be the same in 10 years.
Tacos314@reddit
I have never seen COBOL/Mainframe pay wail, all the jobs seem pay the same or a little less then any other backend business operations developer.
zoddrick@reddit
I've seen contracts for maintaining cobol systems over $200 an hour.
CorrectPeanut5@reddit
Speaking from someone that contracts and works with COBOL contractors daily, it pays very well. There just aren't many anymore.
I could see an FTE getting trapped in COL raises never leaving an employer since the 90s. Then again, I know Java and .Net folks that have fallen into that trap and are well under market.
Tacos314@reddit
Weird. Maybe contractors get paid better, Every FTE position I see pays just okay, everyone I have talked to says the same thing. Maybe it's the area.
Tacoma3691215@reddit
👍
Izacus@reddit
You're literally demonstrating ageism here.
Pleasant-Cellist-927@reddit
You are aware that people can clearly define and break down the root cause of a problem with a little bit of sarcasm thrown in and not actually hold that belief themselves, right?
Linaran@reddit
Our industry is very strange in this regard. First expertise itself isn't really respected. People at my company care for expertise only to tell them how long is something going to take. Nothing else.
Second, I'm 8 years at my company. People who just joined who are in my team are compensated better because the salaries are bigger now and my YoY raise couldn't keep up.
I'm not 50, I'm much younger but even now I feel like I'm treated as a dinosaur. Especially with LLMs, they feel like a younger person can do miracles with them because I'm too tainted with the old way of coding.
Concerns I raise about people not reading what they're generating is treated as an annoyance.
So I'd say it's not as simple as ageism, it's far more complex. It's how expertise is treated in general.
rimeofgoodomen@reddit
I'd like to share something regarding your concern about not reading AI generated code.
I recently shipped a service which was written with AI from head to toe other than a few proprietary yaml configs. I had mixed feelings about it because 1. I "committed" something that's not really written by me and 2. I was anxious about debugging it when it fails.
But then, I was fighting another argument in my head - about embracing this new phase of shipping code. In that regard, my focus shifted from writing code to building an airtight test suite which would be used to keep the LLM generated code in check. Essentially treating it as a junior engineer, new on the team with amazing coding skills.
SmartassRemarks@reddit
Agree. Further, I think expertise isn’t valued because expertise is “let’s take a minute and think through this before making a rash decision that’ll come back to bite us.” What “leaders” want nowadays is the fastest action possible, consequences be damned.
SadSongsMakeMeGlad@reddit (OP)
I like the way you frame that, and I agree.
properchewns@reddit
This is also why people reinvent the same CS concepts every other year in a new language, over and over and over again
I’ve been lucky to work at startups where this wasn’t the case, and I only got into this as a profession when I was approaching 40, a bit over a decade ago. But I’ve definitely seen a lot of it
Always enjoyed the storyline in Silicon Valley about this theme
pizza_the_mutt@reddit
There was a junior engineer on LinkedIn saying that instead of prompting an AI to write code we should write requirements in a formal language precise enough to be unambiguous and the AI can implement code to that spec. Dude had no idea he had reinvented an entire research area in CS.
rimeofgoodomen@reddit
I have been tinkering with a similar thought that the junior engineer had. I take a great deal of time to write the prompt and sometimes revisit it, chisel it just so that there's no ambiguity. From whatever little I could grasp about Formal Methods after googling it for exactly 5 minutes, I think it has been there for quite some time now. I wonder why it has not picked up off late with the advent of AI and prompt engineering.
pizza_the_mutt@reddit
I also believe there is potential here, but we have to abandon the requirement that the spec be 100% complete and precise. The promise of LLMs is that our inputs can be ambiguous and it can make reasonable interpretations. If it makes an interpretation that is wrong we can nudge it in the right direction.
The key improvement over the current LLM product development model, I think, is that we move from a "conversation" to a spec, in the form of a PRD. PRDs are not specs in the Formal Methods sense, but they are specs, and are very useful as an enduring central authority on everything that the product is. This is superior to an ephemeral conversation where the code itself is the only artifact that persists.
Tntn13@reddit
What was that called again? And didn’t that initiative result in many of the advancements towards many of the high level languages we have today?
I feel like I recall python dropping some people touting it as a vital step towards programming with more natural language but my brain is clogged up atm lol.
pizza_the_mutt@reddit
I think the area might be Formal Methods? I only covered it briefly in undergrad. The one takeaway that remains in my brain is that writing an airtight spec is harder than just writing the code.
x-jhp-x@reddit
I remember being stunned when a very sr. engineer told me 10/15/20 years ago that, "yah, we had a few entire conferences about agile development and methodology in the 50s/60s. It is very much not a new or modern development pattern."
... and he was right!
pizza_the_mutt@reddit
I've seen serious debates about whether AI research existed before 10 years ago. I guess my undergrad AI class in 1996 was some kind of phantasm.
I also enjoyed the recent resurgence in VR, which was the 3rd iteration I've personally witnessed. And I thought this might be the one that took off.
x-jhp-x@reddit
I love it! Vint Cerf was memeing about, "vaporware from the Neural Network Corporation" back in 1991! https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1217
nemeci@reddit
Yeah, neural networks and machine learning was a good read in the early 00's for me. Books weren't recent and the networks in the books weren't very deep tops 8 layers if I'm not mistaken.
Now the AI is the hype word to repackage all this forgetting that the meaning of word AI of old was the AGI of today.
wrex1816@reddit
I guess I'm old too then. Very little seems new. The stuff I did as a junior went outdated, came back repackaged, went out of date again and came back yet again now under shiney new anime named concepts.
But God forbid you suggested one of those concepts while they were in the "being cycled out" phase or you'd be called a senile old heretic, only for it all to be popular again in a month.
WhenSummerIsGone@reddit
e. g., server side rendering is just repackaged cgi scripting
properchewns@reddit
Maybe it’s time to unearth my old O’Reilly Perl books Obfuscated code might be the next bandwagon
hugolini@reddit
Honestly, start a software company and do better than the young guys. Coding agents, LLMs actually benefit the experienced devs much more, we can potentially apply it in much smarter, better ways. The code crunch, long hours isn't a moat the young devs can use anymore.
SadSongsMakeMeGlad@reddit (OP)
I have been seriously considering it for the first time in my career.
rimeofgoodomen@reddit
Yeah, sometimes I feel AI will bring about the change you (and I) want about giving experienced engineers thier due in this industry.
YahenP@reddit
Oh yes. It's a great way to learn firsthand that problems with ageism and employment during a crisis are greatly exaggerated and, in fact, not all that significant.
St33lbutcher@reddit
You can just start a software company?
Dangerous_Bus_6699@reddit
Yeah. It's like declaring bankruptcy. You go outside and yell it to the world.
sebesbal@reddit
As an SWE close to 50, I’m also more open to coding agents, because I know that if AI doesn’t take my job, I’ll be screwed anyway because of ageism.
the_ju66ernaut@reddit
That's a funny way of looking at it and also super accurate. If it wasn't for AI, we would still have to worry about ageism. F
Soft-Stress-4827@reddit
Yeah why doesnt some entrepreneur hire a bunch of 50 year olds for 125k/yr and clean house
Tired__Dev@reddit
This is what I'm doing. However given the size of the project I'm building, I started in Dec, it's not that easy while still having a job. I'm doing roughly 30 hours a week in this thing and I'm feeling tired.
snakebitin22@reddit
Honestly, this is an idea that I have been kicking around in my head as well. The one thing that has deterred me from developing my own software has been time.
AI agents would significantly cut down the grind factor for sure.
fsk@reddit
As long as there's a plentiful supply of H1bs and offshore workers, there's no reason to hire someone "old", even if they still are a good worker. When you mass import workers, it's the marginal workers who get left on the sidelines. That's someone who is "too old", with the "wrong experience", or "wrong education".
You can't address the ageism problem without also cutting back on H1b visas and offshoring.
I'm afraid the only solution is to try and start your own business, but that's extremely hard and you wind up spending a lot of time on things other than coding.
rroth@reddit
At the risk of coming across as a contrarian, I disagree on one key point. I don't think experience is especially important. Experience can be an important asset, but experience on its own is ethereal. Sitting in a chair, staring at code, attending meetings. You can do those things repeatedly, consistently, even "excel" at those tasks for years, gaining plenty of "experience." Yet still if you fail to acknowledge important paradigm shifts in industry, your ability to accurately self-assess is gone. Thus experience is worthless in this case. Experience is worth only what you can provide to the current project.
SadSongsMakeMeGlad@reddit (OP)
I hear what you're saying, and agree to a point. But experience isn't so one-dimensional. In fact, it rarely is. You apply what you've learned over a career generally to new problems (which are often composed of patterns you've seen before).
DancingSouls@reddit
meh idk
i hate seeing how slow older ppl are in typing, learning, navigating, context switching, etc
if youre 50 and still an engineer, then what are you doing lol be a manager/director or smth by that point
taotau@reddit
You strike me as a joyous person to work with. I'm sure you'll be a great manager to work for when you are older /s
DancingSouls@reddit
i like how u didnt deny it though 😂
FerengiAreBetter@reddit
I want reverse ageism in IT where we hire people who have seen some bad shit not some kids who have built interesting projects but nothing like a war room where someone deleted production db.
it200219@reddit
Yes, 100%
Idea-Aggressive@reddit
Is ageism a problem? I find it way more alarming that for the past two decades, I never had a teammate who's of african descend. That is not normal!
Beginning-Comedian-2@reddit
Can you give specific examples?
I'm not disagreeing with you, just want to know if there are specfic things affecting you or is it an internal feeling.
ettdizzle@reddit
Ageism for me started at about 35. I have seen it in the following way. I apply for a senior or staff engineer role, go through a few rounds of interviews, and then get the feedback: "Actually, we're looking for someone more junior."
I think the problem is that after you have been through the ringer so many times, you have either a gravitas or grizzled weariness that communicates, "I know how to get this done better and faster than you can imagine." The late 20s and early 30s people who are in leadership positions view this as either undermining or a threat to their authority.
They prefer the attitude, "I will run through a wall for you," which most people abandon by age 32.
bluetista1988@reddit
Employer to the marketplace: "Give me the most senior engineer you have"
Me, shows up at > 35
Employer: "No, that's too senior"
arthoer@reddit
Me thinks... At the rate things are going; we will all be a bunch of 70 year olds with made up titles. Only a few young ones will trickle in as the industry gatekeep itself. Agism is real, but it will be void.
Or the real "seniors" will end up in the same boat as juniors are now; being forced to start up their own businesses. Imagine what a group of 60 year olds can do.
What do you think?
The Pitt is a great show, but not a proper reflection to our industry. Their "juniors" trickle in and deviate to different roles matching their skillset. Also there is a clear definition between the role of nurse, guards, doctors, etc. We don't have this. It's autodidacts, engineers and developers all trying to do the same thing, yet it's all different every year and every project. In that regard, the Pitt is less chaotic from an intellectual point of view haha.
YahenP@reddit
> Imagine what a group of 60 year olds can do.
imagined it. Such a group of people is literally incapable of anything. 60 year old engineers who lost their jobs are literally failures on every level. But they have experience. They understand that they have no chance in the software development business. That's why there are no companies where 60 year old engineers get together and do something.
arthoer@reddit
So what is your prospect when you reach your 50s/ 60s or even 70s?
YahenP@reddit
I've surpassed the first figure you suggested and am approaching the second. For now, I'm still managing to work in my field. But I understand that this will end sooner or later. My plan is to hold on as long as the situation allows, and then... then, if my health allows, I'll combine work as a courier and a store handyman. If my health fails, well... I have no plan.
arthoer@reddit
I was as skeptical about our working future as you, but I am slowly seeing things more positive I guess. There are only 5 million developers in the US and 5 million in Europe, which is something like 1,5% of the "western" population. As people getting less and less children and the entry to our sector is becoming harder; that would equate to more work for us. Maybe we end up on mount Parnassus as some greybeard oracles. Or we get worked to death. Regarding to ll models, the hype will go and we will be left with a much needed tool. Especially because we're getting old and slow haha
YahenP@reddit
The fewer young people there are, the more the economy collapses. Who will use the programs we write and who will visit the websites we build if there are no more young people? A consumer economy needs consumers first and foremost. Pensioners aren't very good consumers.
arthoer@reddit
Fair enough.
tehfrod@reddit
Did you speak out about it when you were 25? 30? 35?
Robodobdob@reddit
I’ve just hit 52 with 30 years experience in IT and SWE and I’ve never felt more vulnerable. I never used to worry about redundancy because I was younger but now, I fear I will be too old to rehire.
YahenP@reddit
That's right. That's right. When we're laid off, those lucky enough not to completely ruin their backs will go work for Uber. The rest will have to compete for space in Amazon warehouses and similar companies.
YahenP@reddit
Let's be honest. We haven't contributed anything for a long time that our younger colleagues couldn't do faster, or better, and certainly cheaper. Our experience doesn't really bring any profit to the business. Knowing in advance how a project will end is more of a disadvantage than a plus. Those who don't have that knowledge are much more motivated to give their all. As for productivity, well... it's a complete disaster. It's much more profitable for the business to hire two young, hardy engineers of 3-5 years instead of one of us. Together, they'll bring in 3-4 times more money. Plus, they generate ideas.
And don't compare our work to that of doctors. We're more like pharmacists in a drugstore.
DisjointedHuntsville@reddit
From my experience in the industry, old hands tend to be sidelined so you’re not competing with non technical “management” for leadership of the company.
It used to be true in banking and financials a couple of decades ago (still is), but you could escape to “technology” companies back then such as Oracle or Microsoft (yeah, those were the days)
Since internet tech took over, velocity beats everything else (at least on the surface). Which means, the only place you see senior engineers are places where engineering is a VERIFIABLE SKILL. Research, complex systems etc.
I wish there was more attention to the many brilliant minds corporate America loses because the traditional manager class does not want to let go of power.
nfigo@reddit
You might like to read "checklist manifesto." It's about a heart surgeon who studied how industries outside of medicine (like construction and flight) shifted away from relying on rockstars and toward repeatable process.
I agree with what you said, though. Most people don't value expertise because it's rare. They've never seen it. Even when they do see it, they would rather not pay for it.
xitenik@reddit
Its all about social power and in groyp preference. You're in between two larger generations, with the older one on their way out. If most people are in a younger age range then the prevailing values will favor them, just like when boomers were in their 50s the relatively smaller cohort of new grads were considered too inexperienced to hold any power.
Repulsive-Hurry8172@reddit
In real engineering (civil, mechanical, electrical etc), experience is also highly valued. The problem solving is still there, but the contrast between real and software engineering is interesting.
kreiger@reddit
The problem is that young people work harder for cheaper, and are less likely to say no.
lost12487@reddit
I've seen so many startups kneecap themselves with this mentality. Like, you could have just forked out the cash for the old head and pushed a quality product to market 6 months to a year later than you did and still have a solid business printing cash for you, but you decided to hire 4 people for peanuts that gave you exactly what you told them to give you instead of what you actually needed, and now the whole thing has blown up.
Forsaken-Promise-269@reddit
I mean the industry is youth obsessed
YC is full of kids hustling themselves into founders - youth is the biggest asset to VCs
The recent Delve startup ceo whose company turned out to be mostly a scam compliance mill was in his 20s (MIT dropouts) - really you want a kid to run SOC2 and HIPAA compliance for other companies? Its just ridiculous
https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/22/delve-accused-of-misleading-customers-with-fake-compliance/
https://open.substack.com/pub/deepdelver/p/delve-fake-compliance-as-a-service?r=2604jg&utm_medium=ios
pizza_the_mutt@reddit
I've seen both Meta and Google grab super-star younglings and put them in charge of giant orgs. It doesn't work. You can't jump from a 10 person startup to a 1000 person org and have any idea how to run things. These kids can be great, but they need to be in the right role.
SadSongsMakeMeGlad@reddit (OP)
I remember seeing that about Delve. At this stage, I am so soured on that Silicon Valley venture capital world. It seems to draw in the worst people in tech. And yes, all those delusional twenty year olds, who think they’re genius disrupters.
nachohk@reddit
Friend, you seem to be under the misconception that the purpose of a startup is financial success. Don't you know that the purpose of a startup is to glaze the founders' ego and make them feel important? Maybe if grandpa could do what the fuck he's told to without making the CEO look like an ignorant layperson, he could have gotten hired.
Firm_Bit@reddit
6 months to a year later is an eternity in some industries. It’s not that black and white.
lost12487@reddit
I don't necessarily disagree, but if your product is made or broken by 6 months it's a massive gamble. In that instance, hire more than one old head or hire the old head + a handful of less experienced people to do the dirty work. When you're fronting millions to get something to market faster than 10 other groups trying to get the same thing to market I don't really understand why you'd go into that risk immediately cutting corners.
Firm_Bit@reddit
There are tons of companies that try to do it “right” from the get go. There’s a reason so few ever make it.
inhplease@reddit
OP—this is the answer right here.
Small to medium-sized companies prefer younger engineers because they are easier to deal with, work longer hours, accept lower salaries (this is a big one), and they are much easier to find and hire.
Senior engineers, by contrast, are seen as a hassle unless absolutely necessary, in which case many companies will consider outside consultants first.
njmh@reddit
I’ve always thought that as I got older I would need to get into consulting/work for consultancies. The last 15-20 years I’ve been working alongside fellow 25-40 year olds. The grey(er) beards I’ve worked with have generally been contractors or freelancers.
I just turned 40, so I guess it’s time to pivot.
inhplease@reddit
As someone older than you, I can tell you that I regret not going for Faang early and retiring. I know of others who cashed out from startup acquisitions but those situations are more rare. Also, VP of Engineering roles demand much higher salaries than SWE tracks, unless you are exceptional.
darkkite@reddit
I have enough blood on my hands but I had lunch with an old coworker who went to nvidia and he's is loving life
thejazzophone@reddit
Once someone gets to age 50 in this industry it feels like they're either lazy and counting days until retirement or they're the best fucking dev in the building. It's like the saying of there's nothing more dangerous than a old soldier.
wise_young_man@reddit
Work smarter > work harder
Tired__Dev@reddit
Also people really do not speak about deprecated skillsets as much as they should in this industry. There's a very dark reality of up-skilling in this industry that young junior/mid level developers are able to do because they usually don't have families.
It's not an easy industry to be in.
robogame_dev@reddit
Being a lifelong learner is a must - if we had to spend 20% of our time upskilling before, now it feels like that needs to be 50+%
Whoz_Yerdaddi@reddit
I dedicate at least one hour each day to upskilling. A software generation used to be 2 years now it's one quarter.
Tired__Dev@reddit
I'm with you but starting over in new domains has fried me. Just getting into companies with bad communication, undocumented/non "clean code" codebases, politics, acquisitions, and so much more has completely depleted me.
SolarNachoes@reddit
Within the past year the entire way we develop code has changed (AI). And that has impacted every step of the process.
PickWorth8802@reddit
Don’t think many of you have worked with Gen Z much..
this_is_a_long_nickn@reddit
NlactntzfdXzopcletzy@reddit
I'd have agreed with this up until recently
With AI, it's like literally all resistance to scam and gullibility is gone, there's no greater thought or planning around anything
Every idea is a good, no one questions anything, people can't even leverage their own AI projects beyond one single step
They'll be "smart" enough to have the AI write tests for itself, and then will not have any other testing anywhere, not for the centralized AI repos, nothing.
Anyone having objections or thoughts that aren't perfectly aligned with this are seen as difficult or not team players, etc.
New people slot into this perfectly, because they are either aligned or afraid to rock the boat.
newbietofx@reddit
Ai bring speed and chaos. I see seniors getting hired soon to fix scalability and security.
Paesano2000@reddit
Absolutely. Family is one of the most important things in life and as we age we aren’t willing to throw that away just to work longer hours and look good to some business that is willing to discard us at any moment.
FinsOfADolph@reddit
Younger workers have been forced to take fewer protections and work harder since at least 2010. If they aren't sought after and they have to pay student loans, they're forced to work more for less.
It'd be great if veteran saw newcomers as people to work with instead of just competition.
OK_x86@reddit
Longer hours? Sure. But harder is debatable. All the new hires at my company spend a lot of time on their phones, chatting by the water cooler and having lunches together.
I am usually closing off tickets much faster and with fewer defects than they do, I document my code properly, I write a comprehensive suite of tests, I spend a lot of time in meetings coordinating with other teams and I spend a lot of my time mentoring them, reviewing their code and debugging with them when things go wrong.
That is not to say they can't do that. It's just that with experience you get much better at doing things quickly and we'll.
Is that worth my salary? I'd like to think so. But I am biased.
SpiritedEclair@reddit
Give me old engineers, and I tell you, we can save the money we'd spend on mid and juniors by virtue of not wasting days on building shit.
brainhack3r@reddit
And are unaware of their rights and are willing to let them be trampled on.
valence_engineer@reddit
They will also actually study up on whatever the stupid interview trend of the decade is and play the game to get a job.
aeroverra@reddit
This 100% for me it’s never that your number is high it’s something else that tends to come along with that number but not exclusive to it.
chipstastegood@reddit
You’re implying that younger people are more productive. Isn’t that by itself an example of ageism
Pleasant-Cellist-927@reddit
Work harder =/= more productive
A senior can get more work done at a faster rate due to experience, but a junior is much easier to manipulate and pressure into doing early starts and late finishes, so it doesn't really matter if the senior is 2x quicker if the junior can be guilt tripped into working 80 hour weeks.
As for all the peripherals like writing maintainable, secure or architecturally sound code, we already know management don't give a fuck about that.
codewario@reddit
I think this is a tongue in cheek reply. It is ageism, and it’s also what prospective employers probably waffle about in their head, even though they’re not supposed to.
ButWhatIfPotato@reddit
True, but that's never a replacement for actual experience on what works and what doesn't. Sure it makes someone in management look like a genius ruthless corporate power player when they hire someone to do a senior job for a receptionist's salary but then everybody does a suprised pikatchu face when the guy who's too inexperienced to say no cannot make facebook 2.o in 3 months.
backyard3@reddit
All the older folks who are also at very senior levels seem to be well respected and wanted from what I've seen.
alienangel2@reddit
This is my experience too, but it's because they are not trying to do what OP describes as front-line work. OP's title even reflects what the industry expects someone with 20-30 years of experience to be: a Director. Or a Distinguished Engineer or a VP etc.
It's not that the industry is done with people at his age, it's that the industry generally expects them to have moved onto a role where they can apply their hard-won judgment on bigger problems, with a broader impact. But if OP has stuck at this small company the whole time, they probably don't actually have the extra skills needed to do that role at a larger company.
arthoer@reddit
We can't all be a director you know... In contrary, everyone I know who "made" it to director or cto hate it and gate it. It's perfectly fine to be a senior developer or engineer at 70. Same as a doctor, architect, bricklayer, prostitute. It's a craft. Nothing more and nothing less.
Corendiel@reddit
I kinda I see the opposite. Junior dev have a hard time getting jobs. AI is making it worse. Remote work too. Nobody wants to train juniors now or have even an office to seat next to them. The average age at my previous company was way more in favor for seniors like 50+ something. Mainframe developers are still around and I'm sure other niche existe. I d be curious to have actual numbers of age distribution in IT professions versus overall job market. Ageism is a thing but I don't think IT or Developers have it worse than other line of work.
Bangoga@reddit
This really is my fear end of day. My current job isn't exactly insane pay to make me retire by 50, but I also know the ageism will make career prospects tougher
Agent7619@reddit
My company (F500) is great in this respect. If I had to guess, the average developer age is north of 40-45. Heck, on my team alone I work with three people with 20-30 years of continuous employment at the company (plus myself at 25 years.)
fucklockjaw@reddit
Man good for you this is exactly what I want.
I made it into a healthcare company where quite a few people I work with have 5+ years and even that to me sounds great.
Layoff after layoff has kept me around the 1.5 to 2 years at each company in my 7 years (and no I wasn't jumping ship).
Here's to hoping you get to retire at this company (if that's what you want) and wish me the same!
rohandm@reddit
Looks like we work for same company.
Agent7619@reddit
Headquartered in a neutral European country?
scurp_durp@reddit
Yall hiring?
ThaDon@reddit
I think it used to be this way. Every company had a few grey beards that knew the systems inside and out and could debug an issue in their sleep.
kevin074@reddit
Adding on cheaper labor point,
The biggest problem is whether the service (making software) exactly needs the experience. That in turn is determined by how long is the expected software to live.
If most projects are gonna be forgotten, discarded, or rewritten every 5 years ish then experience doesn’t mean much, as most mistakes can be dealt with one way or another.
bang_ding_ow@reddit
Refreshed this thread to get new replies and saw it's been removed...
Damn, this sub really sucks sometimes. Why remove a thread that got 312 responses??
jcradio@reddit
I think in the right environment that does exist. However, in environments where too many business degrees or non-technical people run things we are often commoditized or micromanaged to death.
I've always valued experienced people on the team, and developing the next generation of team members.
da8BitKid@reddit
This argument would've been stronger if you put it forward in your 20s or 30s. Now that you're 50, even though there is truth in it, it sounds a bit self-serving. Still everyone will get there at some point
SadSongsMakeMeGlad@reddit (OP)
Issues related to ageism should be brought up by people in their 20s and 30s? Am I hearing that correctly?
GreenBlueStar@reddit
Oh that's rich. Your generation is exactly what started the ageism in the first place. You guys messed up big time.
SadSongsMakeMeGlad@reddit (OP)
You might be thinking of the Boomer generation, guys like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates who created the PC revolution from their garages. But that’s an interesting point. Ideally you build an environment that both fosters new ideas while valuing what experience brings to the table.
Hog_enthusiast@reddit
Medicine is pretty different than software. You might have 30 YOE but you probably have the same amount of experience with say, Kubernetes as someone with 15 YOE. Someone can also learn basically all there is to know about a specific technology in a few years if they are motivated. The same isn’t true with medicine.
I agree that no one should be stereotyped due to age, but age also objectively does have an effect on a person’s ability to learn, their memory, and their general mental acuity. For a 50 year old obviously that isn’t an issue, but I do think Ageism is pretty different than something like Racism where the difference is just a social construct. It’s also funny how Ageism only matter when it’s done one way. No one cares if a 27 year old is passed over in favor of a 37 year old. I think it makes some sense to discriminate based on age past a certain point. Like for instance, not having geriatric people running the country.
SadSongsMakeMeGlad@reddit (OP)
As another person responded, the issue may not be ageism exactly, but more like expertise-ism. Also, the difference between years of experience with a technology, like Kubernetes, as much as it is the experience in working with technology to build things. It’s a higher level of abstraction, that isn’t as easy to define as ABC.
landmark_86@reddit
I just turned 40, have about 14 yoe, and I’ve thought about this a lot. I don’t feel like this is a career I’ll be able to retire with. Almost feels like I have to keep climbing the corporate ladder just for job security. But I honestly like where I’m at as a senior dev.
I3adAss@reddit
I'm curious to hear more senior engineer in their 50s and 60s at start-ups. Do they even exist?
TranquilDev@reddit
I’m almost the same age but I don’t really understand your post. My supervisor who is also about our age and recently left the company found work within a month of leaving.
I’ve randomly tossed out resumes over the last 6 months and haven’t gotten one interview. I know the industry is probably saturated right now and I’m in no hurry so I’ve been picky.
Did I overlook some concrete evidence in your post or is this just how you feel?
Whoz_Yerdaddi@reddit
It's the junior Engineers that are having problems finding jobs right now not the seniors because of AI.
dryiceboy@reddit
Want to know how the world works? Follow the money.
There’s a threshold of “good enough” for production and the amount of money orgs are willing to pay for expensive wisdom.
forbiddenknowledg3@reddit
Its a tough one. Personally I see tech as light years ahead of medical, law, finance, etc. because we're constantly embracing change (at our own detriment). Yes some older people keep up or even lead this, but many do not.
ribenakifragostafylo@reddit
I've seen it an it scares me.
dungeonHack@reddit
My strategy, as someone who's currently 44, is to focus almost entirely on the social side of solving problems. It's easy enough to deal with the technical side, especially with a talented group, but social problems are always the hardest problem domain.
So far, this has worked flawlessly.
SadSongsMakeMeGlad@reddit (OP)
I have seen that if you are someone who has both technical and people skills, that makes you a valuable team asset.
obelix_dogmatix@reddit
I hear where you are coming from, and have to say - ageism exists across most industries. A 50 year old working under 30 year olds is frowned upon for whatever reason. I have seen it in marketing with my wife’s colleagues. I have seen it in finance too.
Having said that, it is surprising to me that you at the director level don’t have options. The ageism I have come across is more so for 50 year olds who are still at Senior or below.
guiltys33ker@reddit
I don't know if it's ageism then. I've worked with several people in their mid 40s who have been in mid-level positions and I realized that some of them had been "stuck" at mid level for 10+ years because of general underperformance.
Some of the worst things I saw - working effectively half days, being reluctant to accept responsibility, publicly complaining about everyone's incompetence, insisting that work assignments (including technical specs and individual bug reports) be explicitly assigned to them by their tech lead via a 1-1 meeting or call, not email or IM because they were too busy to check them.
So yeah, there's obviously no issue for a 50 year old to be reporting to a 30 year old, but at least some of them are in that position because they just aren't very strong team members and that's going to create a bad stereotype.
obelix_dogmatix@reddit
Yes, that is true. I also know a lot of people who are just happy where they are, and that is not appreciated enough in our industry at least. If someone just wants to be a senior engineer all their life, that’s usually not a possibility. There are many people who don’t want the added responsibilities that come with certain promotions and it is dumb that we get rid of such people. You can’t have everyone in the team dreaming of becoming a fellow someday. That imo doesn’t make for the best teams. Having less ambition is okay.
WeiGuy@reddit
I don't think the reason is obscure. You'd have to really dislike managing people to the point where you willingly give up money (salary) for it. That's kinda sus people will rightfully ask the question why is someone half their age more competent than them (regardless if that's true or not)
floofsnsnoots@reddit
Good luck with that.
ConspicuousPineapple@reddit
Unfortunately you're the exception. Most old devs I've met are behind as far as tech knowledge and best practices go. Of course plenty are still up to date but it's no wonder why many companies won't take that risk, especially given the inflated salary of ultra senior devs.
snakebitin22@reddit
Exactly what tech knowledge and best practices are they behind on? Genuinely curious.
I do a lot of interviews myself and I too see rampant issues with candidates actual skills not matching with what is advertised on their resumes. But, it does not seem to correlate to any specific age group…. If anything, the more experienced candidates tend to grasp the deeper, more complex and foundational concepts better than the younger candidates who cannot possibly have 20+ years of experience simply because they are under the age of 30.
I mean things like best practices, although at high levels can be shared across the industry, do tend to vary in the minutiae from org to org. I tend to grant some leeway on things like this because they’re things that can be learned.
Bottom line is. Do they understand the core function of the role? Are they capable of performing the role at the level it requires?
Age or any other human characteristic that is beyond their control does not matter.
ConspicuousPineapple@reddit
I mean, yeah. They are. But they're also asking for the highest salaries you're able to give and most of them aren't actually performing at that superstar level. Why go for them instead of a top-end 10y senior? You're unlikely to lose out by going that way. I'd even argue that you'll be able to find an outright better candidate that way (for the same money), simply because of the discrepancy in salary curves.
Truth is, at some point experience gets you diminishing returns on actual ability and productivity, but the pay expectations still rise. It's not a surprise why these profiles aren't sought after.
The only exception is incredibly specialized expertise where you are the state of the art of your field. Bar that, this kind of long experience only gets properly valued in managerial positions where soft skills reign supreme.
snakebitin22@reddit
How long have you been doing this, man? Again, just curious.
You’re making decent points here. Yes, on a day to day basis, the 50+ year old engineer will perform about the same as the 10 YoE senior. That is 100% accurate. Yes, on the balance sheet that *seems* very enticing.
What you are missing is the bigger picture, and this is by no fault of your own, aside from your own lack of time on the planet.
A 20+ YoE engineer doesn’t work day to day at the same level as the 10 YoE senior because that is all they are capable of. They do that because that is all that is necessary to complete what is required to complete the work. Anything more is a waste of time and energy.
Your higher years of experience engineers bring literal decades of experience and knowledge that others on the team do not have, simply because they do not have enough time on the planet to understand or even know about it. A lot of them understand why the systems got to the state they’re currently in and can be your best asset to figuring out the best path to reducing your technical debt. They are also invaluable in the clutch when it comes to incidents.
To be forthright, it really seems to me like you are of the belief that older workers are not worth the expense.
I am of the belief that type of mindset is “your loss”.
ConspicuousPineapple@reddit
That's my point though. Employers mostly don't need all these extra years of experience. Why pay for it? You sometimes see job postings for 10y+ engineers, when do you ever see one for 20y+? At this point the employers willing to go for these profiles simply decide on a case-by-case basis depending on how convincing the interviews were, not the specifics of the position waiting to be filled.
I'm closing in on 15 years of experience. Yes, personally, I'm substantially better than I was 5 years ago. But, let's say (random numbers) I'm in the top 30% of devs, skills-wise. Give my salary to a 10y senior instead and you'll probably be able to get a top 20% or 15% guy. Odds are he'll be better than me.
Of course that only makes sense in a world where all candidates are available to all employers. In the real market there's still plenty of room for me and guys older still. But, the older you get, the wider the age range of your competition gets, and the cheaper they are compared to you.
And yeah again I'm not dismissing the actual benefits of having veterans on board. Hell, I vouch by these specific skills you mention. But these are pretty damn hard to sell and not even needed if other vets are already there. And, again, at some point you're really blurring the value of one year of experience. People progress at different speeds and there's not much differentiating a 20y dev from a 25y one. The very best 25y guy will probably still be noticeably better but that guy is already employed and out of your price range. The averages will be pretty close together, the salaries less so.
I'm saying they're a riskier investment, and yeah in plenty of cases not worth the expense. It's not like a 10y senior hasn't seen some shit on their own. If you have enough of them on your side, their cumulative experiences can, and do, make up for the individual gaps. Maybe you'll even hire a single extra-senior 25y guy, as a treat. You can't afford a lot of them so you're gonna want your money's worth. Expectations rise steadily with experience and most engineers can't match them down the stretch. I'm also saying that you don't learn that much more in 25 years compared to 20 or 15, or even 10.
What I do know is that a huge amount of devs are, or become, lazy and lag behind innovations and generally can't keep up with the breakneck speed of progress in that field of work. It requires some of your own time and a lot just can't or won't spend it, understandably. The impact of that is somewhat noticeable in less experienced engineers, but it compounds year after year. The variance in state-of-the-art knowledge is so much higher in vets compared to young seniors.
Of course it's only my anecdotal experience, but I don't think we've handed out more than one or two offers to 20+y veterans among the dozens I've seen go through the rounds. Not because we don't like old guys, but because we compare them to the other candidates and not only do we expect them to perform better, a lot of them actually perform worse. And these expectations aren't just about salary. You also ask yourself, "what good were these 10 additional years for you if you only managed to reach this level?" It might not be super rational to reject somebody for this reason but it does give a somewhat negative look. Just like you wouldn't hire a senior that performs at junior level, even if they're only asking for a junior salary.
snakebitin22@reddit
Again, all fair points, and all things that I too consider with a group of candidates in front of me.
And….maybe your recruiters are really good at their jobs and maybe you’re far enough along in the hiring loop that you don’t see the issues with candidates who just don’t line up with what they’re selling on their resumes.
But, I’m just not seeing a situation where there’s gobs of equally qualified candidates competing for senior roles in the domain where I’m interviewing. I guess I’m more in the situation of beggars can’t be choosers due to the nature of our project.
ConspicuousPineapple@reddit
Yeah as I said the specific market you're in changes things a lot. Let's say your need is "generic full stack dev but very experienced", then the only cursors that matter are how attractive the company itself (and its specific industry) is, and how much you're paying.
Pay 20%+ above market rates and you'll have a lot of random seniors applying. From my experience in these situations, the most experienced ones aren't, on average, the most impressive ones.
There's also a bit of selection bias: you only reach that amount of experience as a dev if you're either unwilling or unable to move on to "higher level" roles, further from pure technical considerations and closer to management.
Whether a candidate is the former or the latter is far from obvious at first but changes things a lot when you start to inquire about soft skills.
Individual-Shame6481@reddit
Best practices don't change mate. They have been stable since like 15 years ago already.
ConspicuousPineapple@reddit
No they haven't.
Individual-Shame6481@reddit
Tell me 2 best practices that have changed in the last 15 years. I'll absolutely wait as I'm extremely interested in your answer.
matthkamis@reddit
Ok but certain things are timeless, frameworks and tech stack can easily be learned
ConspicuousPineapple@reddit
I don't deny that, and I'm not saying it's right that companies behave this way. I'm saying I'm not surprised.
I've interviewed a bunch of very senior devs (as a dev myself) and for the salaries they're asking, you bet the expectations are through the roof. Very few come close.
gringo_escobar@reddit
You just proved OP's point
joshbranchaud@reddit
What are specific things you’re seeing that make you feel like the industry doesn’t want you?
hopfield@reddit
Most of your knowledge is available to anyone with a $20 ChatGPT subscription. It’s not fair, but that’s how it is.
SadSongsMakeMeGlad@reddit (OP)
Anyone who is an experienced dev should know that’s not the case. I say this as someone who uses the latest agentic AI tools on a daily basis.
hopfield@reddit
What’s a specific example of knowledge you have that ChatGPT doesn’t have?
Looz-Ashae@reddit
It has always been the case: it's all in the books and on the internet. But you have to know what to search for. So does anyone have knowledge what to ask for that $20 subscription?
keelanstuart@reddit
It's almost like the culture of techno elitism we created in our youths was a mistake...
SingleAttitude8@reddit
I think it's starting to change, especially for senior developers: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/s/O2Yjbf1AB5
Although still a long way behind its peak.
Early_Rooster7579@reddit
For every experienced and wisened person I’ve encountered in the field theres 10 more who spent 20 years writing ancient php and jquery with basically zero growth in the last decade.
Many are woefully out of date with modern frameworks, utilizing AI or the latest best practices. It’s made me a bit scarred over the years fighting greybeards who refuse to adapt or stop asking why this cant just be vanilla js or cold fusion
dooyd@reddit
That’s what sucks about this industry. Other industries such as law and medical field you can work way past retirement.
Who the fuck cares if they know the same old language, they deserve a roof over their heads and food on the table
gjionergqwebrlkbjg@reddit
Good luck being a doctor without following advancements in medicine, or a lawyer without keeping up with legislation. There is nothing unique about learning in software engineering.
dooyd@reddit
I never said that you don’t need to keep up with advancements in medicine, it certainly doesn’t change at the same pace as software engineering.
And if you went through med school and residency then you’re more than capable to keep up with it
03263@reddit
How is the pace any different?
dooyd@reddit
You’re actually saving people and learning interesting shit rather than chasing the next framework or geeking over dumb syntax
03263@reddit
I would call those fads equivalent to new medications they get doctors to push and send them branded swag. It's not really anything you need to know or follow, easy enough to pick up if needed. Though I bet doctors don't get asked if they have 3+ years experience prescribing ozempic.
Early_Rooster7579@reddit
Theres nothing stopping people from staying up to date. Its why its important to switch roles every so often
gefahr@reddit
I was about to agree with you, but they're probably right about the vanilla JS. ColdFusion never, but PHP sure.
Robodobdob@reddit
ColdFusion was doing components and compositional UI before the people who made React were probably conceived.
gefahr@reddit
Yeah but how else will I signal that I'm old enough to remember the CF vs ASP vs PHP wars?
Early_Rooster7579@reddit
They’re 100% not right about the vanilla js. Very people are still working on applications simple enough to benefit from vanilla js
Robodobdob@reddit
I guarantee, in 10-20 years time, you’ll be a “greybeard” shaking your head at being disregarded.
When you’ve done this job long enough you’ve lived through all the patterns and cycles and you know how they all end.
Greybeards can be cynical because they’re the Cassandra in your organisation - speaking truths but never being listened to.
Early_Rooster7579@reddit
I’m nearing 40 so I’m not really new to this. Many people my age and above just stagnated in a comfy role and never improved. Then try to flex years of xp like its relevant in their casr
djslakor@reddit
You could be replaced with a Claude prompt.
Neat_Strawberry_2491@reddit
So much young talent gets wasted because they reinvent the wheel for everything
max_compressor@reddit
Reinventing the wheel is a waste for overall progress. But to be honest, reinventing certain wheels have been great learning opportunities for younger engineers myself included. So a salute to those companies for subsidizing learning at the cost of their business.
valence_engineer@reddit
And this is why older devs don't get hired. No one in management gives a shit if you reinvent the wheel. All they care is if whatever their team does helps them get promoted, get a bonus or get a bigger team. The team doing some amazing project that gets two of them promoted is perfect BS for the manager to throw around. The senior engineer telling people half of their work is pointless is the opposite.
Neat_Strawberry_2491@reddit
Not really my experience, but my field tends to have engineers in management roles. What I tend to see is juniors and even mid level (still very young) come in with dunning krueger-like delusions that their failure to perform is due to some inadequacy with the tech stack, legacy code etc. Some have fair criticism, no question. But I think being a good engineer means being able to demonstrate convincingly why your proposed solution is more effective. Usually though, it's more of a junior imagining if a 10-15 year old legacy environment was suddenly greenfield, this or that framework would be better. Yeah buddy, no shit, but we have customers and they need things now. Takes experience to know what to tackle, and when. These days, younger talent tends to leave before they can dig in. I get it though, the money has been crazy for the past few years, I don't blame them
drahgon@reddit
I think software development culture. Many companies don't value quality software and thus the experience and knowledge of experienced coders doesn't hold the weight it does in other industries. Basically companies are willing to ship garbage. I also think that this is rubbed off a lot on Juniors. As a junior all I wanted to do was learn and soak everything up from older developers but now juniors act like complete no-it alls. I'm sure AI is part of the problem but I also feel like languages like node.js which have removed a lot of low level complexity from coding has made everyone feel like God's. I've seen people with 3 years of experience with senior developer titles.
kristenbelltoesucker@reddit
can confirm from the other side, as a junior. when i joined, i had a lead dev who was a great mentor, but he unfortunately left a few months in. since he left, the orders from above are just maximize velocity/code delivery, everything else is a second priority. would’ve been really nice to be able to have someone with a few YOE pre-AI, to understand how to navigate this new way of working in software. at this point, my plan is to manage as best i can while relying on claude, and just wait for stuff to break in Prod as my ‘learning experience’ 😅
DuffyBravo@reddit
100%. Ageism is crazy in the tech field. However I (VP of engineering in a small Org) just got back into some coding for “special” projects and have been kicking ass. I am still leading the Org but have created some key apps to help our operations team. I am finding my experience (30+ years) is a very competitive advantage when I am using Claude to help me stand up these applications. If for some reason this job goes south I am pretty sure I could market myself as an AI engineer for the foreseeable future!
MisterFatt@reddit
Most people your age aren’t doing hands on coding
SadSongsMakeMeGlad@reddit (OP)
This is exactly the mentality that I think needs to change. Management and engineering skills are an entirely different focus.
SarmackaOpowiesc@reddit
The best engineers I've ever had the pleasure of working with in my 20 year career were well past 50.
MisterFatt@reddit
That’s great. Were they Directors expecting to be treated as ICs?
SarmackaOpowiesc@reddit
They were senior engineer ICs. No management responsibilities
MisterFatt@reddit
Unlike OP
SquiffSquiff@reddit
So what do you say to a 50+ year old senior IC? We wouldn't (in polite circles) make a distinction based on sex, sexual orientation, religion, race etc. Why do you consider age to be different?
MisterFatt@reddit
Not much, if they were in an IC role previously, I’d have IC role expectations
SYNDK8D@reddit
You can’t really compare the software field to the medical field… One saves lives while the other is sitting at a desk with headphones on drinking an absurd amount of caffeine at the expense of our gut. You also can’t base it off of what you see on television. The median age of an SE is 30 while the median age of a doctor is 54. You can’t enter the medical field after a 3 month bootcamp like you can in software.
Direct_Gas_3623@reddit
Should have went to management
SadSongsMakeMeGlad@reddit (OP)
This is exactly the mentality I think needs to change. Management is an entirely different skillset.
ValhirFirstThunder@reddit
The upvotes for this post clearly shows the demographics here. Wow. From my personal experience, the real ageism is what happens to younger employees and not really older ones. Too many times I've seen a company slow down on revenue growth and they will ask their senior leaders what to do, Product and Engineering leaders. And in some businesses, that makes sense. But if your main audience is millennials and Gen Z, you really should be leaning more into them then the biases of senior leadership no matter how much research they have done
Specifically to engineering, I've seen older SWEs do things like
And there is a lot more but I'm not sure how receptive this sub is to that. Now that isn't to say all older SWEs do this or that they should be stereotyped instead of being assessed on an individual level. I've also had SWEs that were very open minded and did not die on hill for their dogmas.
But this is WHY I always side eye when an older dev complains about age-ism in the industry. It's not that it isn't true, but the people complaining about it are older and refuse to recognize the age-ism that affects younger devs. Or over-embellish their own expertise while not giving recognition to their weaknesses
ChineseAstroturfing@reddit
In a hospital setting high quality work is paramount. It makes sense to have a hierarchy like that, that rewards wisdom and knowledge.
In the software industry, with few exceptions, high quality work doesn’t matter whatsoever.
I worked a stint at a place that did value quality. It was awesome, but it was a rare exception.
Since moving on, any time I try to talk about perf, reliability, architecture, security, etc. I’m met with blank stares. Neither the team or the management have any interest in software engineering. They just want to grind out passable code that solves the problem at hand as quickly as possible. If anything, I’m just a detriment to the team because I hold up them up worried about stupid things like security or performance.
That’s why there’s ageism. It’s expected that by now you’ve clued in to that and moved on to just herding code monkeys in a management position. For the vast majority of companies there’s simply zero interest in developing high quality software. They’re McDonalds and you’re a 5 star chef.
pailhead011@reddit
Isn’t this about balance and circumstance? I too, try to aim for quality and competence. But I also spent my career exclusively in startups. What good is perfect code if the company folds?
I try to be mindful of quality but also of the burn rate.
ChineseAstroturfing@reddit
That kind of strategic balance is one of the many reasons you would want a grey beard.
But the reality is nobody cares.
Like I said. Most companies are McDonald’s, at best maybe Olive Garden. A chef is a detriment to their business. They need a bunch of burger flippers.
DesperateAdvantage76@reddit
This is why I've been saving over half my income every year. Between agism and AI/outsourcing and fierce competition for jobs, I don't have much confidence in the future.
pvgt@reddit
"do you have the horses for that?"
Unions or we're just shouting in the void
fallingfruit@reddit
I don't think you're right other than SV tech bro startup culture, which is gross anyways. You will find many older, excellent devs at top companies.
Ok_Cartographer_6086@reddit
I'm 50 - 30 yoe - but I stayed on the IC route and mastered my craft of deep domain knowledge and at a fortune 50 global tech firm the only negative feedback I received was "don't assume people know what you know"
For me, this can go one of two ways - i'm the highest paid person in the room, all it takes is an HR person with a spreadsheet putting together layoffs and I'd be out - they don't care about what I can do.
On the other end, with the advent of AI, Spec Driven development and agentic workloads I'm seeing something radical: My experience, combined with these tools is frighteningly powerful. Since I know what needs to be done, how to build the prompts and set the patterns I really feel like I'm the most valuable asset because Ai can't bring wisdom yet and it's the younger, less experienced people getting phased out.
For what it's worth at this point I have enough FU money to operate in a position of Fuck You.
Translating that into this new reality makes you godlike. My company just made a major shift in tech stack direction and everyone's in a panic - I could care less, I wield my wisdom and these new tools like I'm ringing a bell and nobody can do what I do right now.
Push back on Ai at any stage in your career right now and yes, especially old dogs like us, will be out.
Rare-Improvement6171@reddit
Probably depends on where you work. Big tech is toxic as hell and seems to just abuse young people who want prestige. But I work in government (US), and 4/7 devs on my team are over 60, and are respected highly by other departments they work with.
notWithoutMyCabbages@reddit
As a 47 year old woman with almost 25 yoe ... I never feel like I'm undervalued because of my age (or gender) at my current job, but reading this thread definitely makes me feel like I have been right to stay here and not go looking for greener pastures.
Quick-Benjamin@reddit
46 year old here. For what its worth this thread has felt like reading about a parallel universe.
I've never been more in demand. I'm the oldest dev in my current company and I'm well respected. My age has never felt like a limiting factor. If anything it's been an advantage.
I'm in the UK so I guess there could be cultural differences at play
bighappy1970@reddit
55, -30 YOE - I don’t fully agree. I interview lots of developers with >20 YOE and most of them cannot code let alone wrap their head around DORA metrics of usage AI.
There is a significant amount of folks who have 2 years experience 10 times over rather than 20 years of keeping up with modern technology and practices.
Reasonable-Pianist44@reddit
I've seen many above 50 with completely outdated skill sets and no willingness to learn anything, also complaining in every opportunity about language quirks. Companies are aware of all of this.
There was a senior engineering manager that was let go in my previous company in his 60s. He was well decorated as an engineer and has written some books but at work he just existing there in every meeting. He had zero energy and probably thought his years of experience will carry him through.
It's been 8 months and he's still unemployed. He has children and mortgage and with such an employment gap his life must have been ruined. I want to help but I don't know how..
I am in my late 30s and I am tired of endlessly grinding in the evenings about the next thing in tech. I fear I may become like them in a few years.
Legatomaster@reddit
I will be 54 this year, 15 YOE. I will be laid off at some point in the next 2-5 years and i know it. I assume this will be my last job as a dev.
33ff00@reddit
My manager is about your age and the smartest software developer I ever met in my life.
jnwatson@reddit
I'm a year younger. In previous jobs, I was wondering how long I could hold this up. I try to stay in shape, got some minor plastic surgery, got a "cool kids" haircut, so at least some colleagues might not guess I'm pushing 50.
Joining Google was a breath of fresh air. We have *a lot* of folks in their 50s and 60s here at all levels. I (dare I say it) even see colleagues retire at close to a normal retirement age. Experience seems to be valued here.
Reasonable-Pianist44@reddit
Medicine is "gatekept". Software engineering always have influx from English Literature/Physics/Maths willing to take lower.
hurley_chisholm@reddit
The commenter you were replying to got booted, but for others not familiar with what Reasonable-Pianist is talking about:
In the US, the number of available residencies are set by Congress and the cap is tied to number of medical schools. This was advocated for by the American Medical Association back in the mid 1900s to preserve the “quality” of healthcare, the high prestige of being a medical doctor, and the even higher salaries.
So yep, it is being gatekept.
Reasonable-Pianist44@reddit
This is everywhere not only in the US.
In the country that I was born (EU) you need a final exam grade average of 98%+ to enter a medical university just out of high school.
Tell me now that if they lowered that to 95% to double the amount of candidates, the quality would drop so much that you will start losing lives. Rich kids already "game" the system by using private tutors and retake high school exams for the next 1-2 years if needed.
hurley_chisholm@reddit
Thanks for sharing. I’m can only speak confidently about how the US works as that is where I’m from!
Nearing_retirement@reddit
Honestly hope my kids go into medicine or some field protected by law
Individual-Shame6481@reddit
"gatekept" lmfao
7+ years to be a Physician. That's not "gatekeeping". That's working your ass to get into it.
PlayfulRemote9@reddit
It’s well known in medical field that getting an MD is gate kept by AMA to keep num of doctors artificially low — or do you think anyone with a 3.0 gpa is incapable of getting MD?
Individual-Shame6481@reddit
Yes, not everyone is capable. No matter the gpa. That's a fact.
PlayfulRemote9@reddit
That is very clearly not what I asked. Do you think ANYONE with a 3.0 is incapable of becoming a doctor?
Obviously not everyone is capable, the question wasn’t that and it makes me think you’re being disingenuous
Individual-Shame6481@reddit
Medicine is not just gpa. Is a ton of other things. Yes, it doesn't matter if you have such gpa. Correct.
Smok3dSalmon@reddit
Company politics is the opposite of ageism. It’s the mechanism that old, washed up employees use to maintain control, power, and churn and burn young workers.
So if you’re blaming ageism, you might want to be critical of your peers who don’t see you as a bar of soap that they can use and discard like trash.
wrex1816@reddit
I don't have good advice, I'm here just to say, I'm a few years behind you but definitely feeling the same. All of my experience and lessons learned over the years now apparently boil down to "That's not how we do it anymore old man" or "Ugh, you just don't get it!" and some younger folks seem to take pleasure in saying it as obnoxiously as possible .
I'm a bit off retirement yet, so I still need my livelihood but honestly I'm getting more and more over it as the weeks and months go by. When I entered the profession, it felt like an engineering profession still maturing and that seemed exciting for the future. Now it just feels like a meme of itself. Everyone circlejerking the same bad advice and wanting all their information in tik tok form rather than academic or peer reviewed studies. We are engineers yet, everyone acts on " feelings" rather that, you know... Proofs or evidence.
It's gone to garbage. But hey, I'm writing this on Reddit so I'm sure I'll be downvoted by the exact kind of engineers turning the profession into a meme.
Separate-Internal-43@reddit
You're literally at a director level position. You're being respected enough to be put in charge of an entire division of your company. I guess you want to be the director at a larger company? If you're so great you should probably be able to *make* your company that larger company.
skidmark_zuckerberg@reddit
My last team consisted of quite a few developers who were 40-55. This was a small to mid size company. Previous jobs was the same. Honestly I’ve always experienced a healthy mix of young and older, it’s made me question the ageism thing quite a bit. Maybe it’s just not that big of a deal outside of major tech companies and early stage startups.
But I always appreciated the older devs at any of my jobs. They know so much and there’s always lot to learn from them. Even just life advice has been top tier, and some of the older devs in my early career really shaped how I think about work and my life outside of it.
BoBoBearDev@reddit
I will be blunt here. Most people overestimated their values. Just because you have years of experiences doesn't make you better, it just makes you more entitled or power hungry.
Most people get promoted through seniority, not because they deserve it. They gain reputations and domains knowledge for one single company, but that's all they are good for. Once they apply for other companies, those knowledge doesn't apply.
There are many types of employees, I will not describe the good ones, because during hiring process, we are trying to avoid the bad ones. Those seniors often exhibit these negative traits.
1) old geezer stuck in the past and acting like they know better when they are not. They do have certain quality to it, but they are often overzealous and don't work well with others.
2) ass kisser who are incompetent and trying to establish close relationships with another developer, so they will have 3rd wheel instead of just doing their job properly.
And those two red flag groups dominated the older applications. The good one are kept employed and the employer would try to keep them around and they also stay in the company.
The younger applicants obviously has those as well, but there are plenty of good applicants with higher learning potentials.
It is like dating, you try to date in 50s, most of them have some form of red flags. Like those TikTok ladies in their 40s getting frustrated that men don't kiss their ass anymore, well, if they don't have red flags, they are already married. It is not the face or body, it is personality.
AmbitiousSolution394@reddit
In medicine, object of study has never changed, studies that were conducted 50 years ago, could still be relevant.
While in "computers", everything drastically changes every 5-10 years.
SquiffSquiff@reddit
This is an extremely naive take. Two examples of change in medicine (and I'm not even a doctor) from recent years:
- RNA vaccines like Moderna. All previous vaccines relied on pushing a small quantity of a pathogen into the patient. RNA vaccines have no pathogens, they are essentially 'vaccines as code'. The patients own cells follow these instructions to create the targets used to train their own immune system
- Robotic treatments, not just for microsurgeries but for radiotherapy. With technologies like cyberknife, rather than old school 3-axis radiotherapy where the patient is literally strapped down with a cage over their face (for head treatments) and everything gets at least a 30% dose, it's possible to beam from a huge number of angles and even to track the patient's breathing without pinning them down
gjionergqwebrlkbjg@reddit
Not to mention there's a ton of new things we learn about disease, medication, lifestyle choices and whatnot.
Somebody who hasn't learned anything new in medicine since they left the college is basically a liability.
rodw@reddit
Not "everything". Not by a long shot.
ViejoConBoina@reddit
Things haven’t changed much in a long time in software development, there is just a ton of marketing about pretending it is that way because hype and buzzwords are the way to lure investment in.
Helkafen1@reddit
Old farts recognize a lot of "modern" stuff as recycled ideas from decades ago. Software practices, organizational practices, programming language design etc.
defmacro-jam@reddit
Only at the surface level. Not much has truly changed in decades.
Individual-Shame6481@reddit
More like 6 months, lol
chikamakaleyley@reddit
this is... something you're facing at your current place of work?
Expert-Complex-5618@reddit
Millennials are very ageist
Minimum-Reward3264@reddit
Why are you bring this up only when you are 50. You claim to be smart and well educated. So what were you doing last 25 years. That’s what’s wrong with Tech.
sleepsalot1@reddit
In embedded software I don’t see this as much.
duna_or_bust@reddit
I saw the writing on the wall a long time ago and took this as motivation to take retirement planning (FIRE) seriously. I hope to be financially independent well before I'm unemployable. I think other devs should do the same.
alohashalom@reddit
how does this era of ever increasing prices add to the risk
duna_or_bust@reddit
Read up on FIRE (financial independence, retire early) to learn about how it factors that in. It uses historical/projected inflation adjusted returns of various asset classes to provide a high confidence of being able to avoid running out of money despite inflation. For example, it is often said that the S&P 500 has an annual average inflation adjusted total return of something like 7%.
gefahr@reddit
I'd say you're never unemployable if you're still good. If you're 50 and commanding a $300k salary, you need to be ~3x+ as good as someone who commands 150. Which is very doable.
awitod@reddit
The productivity gap between very experienced people with AI tools compared to younger, less experienced people is massive and growing.
This is why it is very hard for folks to get started and have the opportunity to get the experience they need.
That is a big problem for us all.
However, and not to be ageist in the other direction, people hiring based on age hoping they can get more bang for the buck are foolish
clarinetist001@reddit
I think this is a greater problem than ageism.
I think tech, R&D, and people who decide they want to model themselves off those, in general, have an over-fascination with the new.
Back when I was faculty (left in 2021), I had several students ask me, "Why should I learn Java or C over something more modern like R or Python?"
stonk_analyst@reddit
And why should they?
Just asking for a friend
Forsaken-Promise-269@reddit
I agree- I’m 51 and have been working in AI startups and founded them, there is room at the csuite and top for older people but not in standard dev and tech leadership, its usually viewed as a liability esp in startup world
We have years of valuable experience to bring but its viewed as being outdated
Frequent_Bag9260@reddit
Hiring managers are the problem.
They hire young because they’re ageist and they made the hiring process leetcode based.
ballsohaahd@reddit
The people in the industry who are ‘done with you’ are the same age as you lmao. It’s your age peers in leadership responsible for it
yost28@reddit
I’m on the younger side and don’t get it. Most graybeards have been a pleasure to work with. For an industry based on implementing patterns over and over we should prioritize experience a lot more.
mnemonikerific@reddit
just about your comment about medicine. Medicinal research is freely available, but doctors lag behind the science by almost a decade - for eg 99% docs have not caught onto long Covid and the havoc it’s creating … . And then we have GPs, and with no intent to belittle what they do about - 80% of their load is approximately similar with varying dosages.
In contrast, the life of every good programmer and QA beyond two years of experience is like an emergency room specialist - every day presents something new, which was unforeseen and needs to dig from the guts …
not only do we have to worry about coding. now We also have to worry about how to respond to non-coders who will arbitrarily challenge architecture decisions on the basis of AI tools.
If you use Python, they will ask why not Rust. If you use rust, they will ask why not golang.
We don’t expect an ophthalmologist to be a good obgyn do we, And yet, when you’re a senior coder, you are expected to know everything about your projects and everything about everything that’s going on in the whole industry-wide stack……
And then people get disappointed if you don’t know some arcane react native concept because you were focusing on python for the last six months… And that’s where the ageism starts because they think the person is fading.
2cars1rik@reddit
Experience should absolutely not be “valued above everything else”.
I know far too many older engineers that think far too highly of their opinions, while being:
- unable to justify them from first principles in the context of business needs of the company
- less capable of identifying and executing large/vague scoped initiatives than some juniors
- unwilling to or incapable of entertaining emergent concepts, technologies, tools, or methodologies
Meanwhile, I have coworkers that are a couple years out of college delivering incredible impact without the tedious and pointless rigidity.
YoE is a terrible criteria for valuing engineers, and I would stay far away from any company that used it in lieu of a well-defined leveling chart.
dooyd@reddit
You’re getting downvoted but I agree. It’s messed up that we are kicking the elderly to the curb, if anything we should be helping them out more
snakebitin22@reddit
Oh you poor baby. You must be a very young pup. 50 is not old, hon.
Us older folks….you might think we need your help, but I can promise you that whatever mistakes you think we’re about to make, we have probably already made it back when we we your age, and we probably already solved it before you even knew it existed.
Try to relax and pay attention.
Kooky_Garbage9881@reddit
“The elderly” lmao, we’re talking middle age here
Cute_Activity7527@reddit
Men in my family live up to 60, so for many its „Elderly”.
SarmackaOpowiesc@reddit
And the men in my family are climbing 14ers in their 80s.
If you take care of yourself - many 50 year olds can run laps around 20 year olds.
Cute_Activity7527@reddit
Nah, genetic predisposition for cardic arrest wont suddenly disappear coz you ear healthy and exercise. My grandpa was Military Veteran and still genes got him.
ConfidentReality9024@reddit
Some moving goal posts there. 50 is definitely not middle aged.
RandyHoward@reddit
Standard retirement age in the US is 67. That's 17 years away from 50. Assuming you start your career around 22, a career is 45 years long. 17 years from the end of a career is more than a third of your entire career. I wouldn't call that close.
dooyd@reddit
Men in my family have died around 60, so what do you call 50 relative to that?
SarmackaOpowiesc@reddit
50 is right in the middle of average life span. Doubly so for office workers.
Void-kun@reddit
This is the ageism OP was talking about.
Others in the industry looking at a 50 year old and considering them elderly.
You're right it is condescending.
gefahr@reddit
Fortunately for OP (and me), no one in a serious decision making role thinks of 50 as elderly, lol.
OrganizationStill135@reddit
Ouch. “the elderly”? He’s 50, not 90 with a zimmer frame!!
Farva85@reddit
I’m like 8 years from my second SSA bend, and I’m really thinking about doing something else once I get there.
paddockson@reddit
Im yet to see, even though im 32 years old iv worked with developers much older than me upwards of mid 60s and they all seem very happy
QuantityInfinite8820@reddit
It’s not about age. Right now the industry is pushing out everyone who either has a big salary, or is _seen_ as someone with means to get such big salary elsewhere, even if they were to accept an offer to much less. And the layoffs? They always start cutting from the highest earners, thinking whoever is left at the company will „figure it out”.
Unfortunately, I’ve also been dealing with age discrimination a lot even though I am much younger than you…
hammertime84@reddit
Ability and willingness to work tons of unpaid OT and agree to insane on-call expectations is more valuable to emplayers than experience. Health issues and family obligations make older employees less able and willing to do that on average.
The only way to change this is to change labor laws to prevent the abuse employers are relying on.
EducationalTackle819@reddit
I’m with you partially. You are advocating to swap the ageism around against young people. I think age should be irrelevant. Well, mostly. I think once you hit 5-10 yoe, the difference in skill and output mostly depends on other things. Like, how much are they keeping up with new technologies? Do they work on problems outside of work? Do they enjoy software engineering? How many different projects have they worked on? How many languages, frameworks are they familiar with?
You only gain so much experience doing the same thing over and over again at a job. The answer to the above questions says a lot more about you as a developer
TheTacoInquisition@reddit
Part of the issue is junior engineers getting made senior after a couple of years. The ceiling can be reached in under 10 years, so why care about those who have more experience? They either demand more money, work life balance or both, but on paper does the same job.
The medical career paths have a LOT more time in each level, with some never moving up as they're good at what they do and get compensated for it. The medical industry is FULL of egos, but I really so think SWE is worse. Those without a senior+ title after 5 years would be looked down on as incompetent, even though at least half the seniors I've met are less competent that a motivated junior. I'm hoping we start to mature as a community and learn that titles are BS and if we want to progress, we should put more stock into experience earned competencies, and less into what someone's last job title was.
dbell@reddit
You’re like a 30 year old stripper. Yeah, some dudes will probably throw you some dollar bills or take a lap dance, but those fresh faced 20 year olds are going to have an easier time of it.
Factory__Lad@reddit
As a dev definitely into extra time, I sympathise.
But this is just another aspect of how software development just isn’t a mature industry, and maybe never will be. Companies could possibly change this, but sadly they don’t have enough incentive to. It’s just easier (for them) to spin up the revolving door.
bgeeky@reddit
Ironically the advent of llm coding is going to extend your effectiveness for at least another 3-5 years right now. The reality is that coding has always been a competitive sport and most people slow down as they gain wisdom and then get replaced by younger “athletes”.
Ticondrius42@reddit
46 yrs old here. Engineer, programmer, more... No jobs. Companies want us to quit because: They see 1 programmer @ $180k when they could have 4 programmers @ $45k each We are masters of the old magic...C/C++, ASM, Java, etc. They need to be able to say they do Go, Objective C, C#, and other newer languages.
We resist AI and vibe coding. Young people dont because it takes what they feel is still hard and makes it super easy, so for $45k/yr and maybe another $1k/no for Claude Code tokens, the company has what they think is our equivellant times four for a little over the same cost.
arancini_ball@reddit
I'm surprised by your take. Most engineering leadership skews older. The junior folks are young, but that's always been the case.
Individual-Shame6481@reddit
You are thinking too much. It's all about costs. Too expensive? Goodbye. It's simple.
codescapes@reddit
I think this is the biggest problem tbh. I have never observed ageism against older employees in my major multinational employer. If anything it's the opposite - under 35 is kinda 'young' and you aren't likely to lead or manage much.
People in their 40s / 50s run the show.
AnarchisticPunk@reddit
Okay boomer (/s)
Honestly the treatment of senior engineers (outside management) has me seriously doubting my long-term future. Especially in fast moving fields like frontend. The only grey beards I have seen have been at hardware companies doing embedded or low-level C work where Linux kernel experience was prioritized.
I've been at several startups were the oldest employee was 40.
However, some of this reputation is earned. In medicine, the way you treat some conditions has not materially changed in 100 years. Suturing is suturing. There is nuance there but also an older field that has experienced less net change than software.
At several of my first jobs I saw some of the most awful Perl code being used with little regard for CI or testing. Infrastructure as Code was largely ignored as "fad" and cloud infrastructure was "untrusted". I had to write copious proposals to even have a shot at getting my software projects approved. Then I moved to a startup and saw us ship more in week that that previous team had done in a month.
gefahr@reddit
I think this is a useful analogy. Software is nascent compared to medicine. We're still in the "putting leeches on people" and "gloves? who needs gloves?" phase.
slash8@reddit
Also because startups are inherently riskier. And older people tend to value less risk.
spdfg1@reddit
I think it probably depends on the type of company. I’m in my mid 50s and found myself searching for a job for the first time in 20 years. The smaller, think they are cool, startupy companies were hard to make traction with and wanted me to jump through leetcode hoops. But the big companies, think fortune 500, banks, healthcare, telecom, these companies actually valued experience and moving legacy systems through technology shifts. Something we have done a couple times already. They want someone with a little grey hair when there are millions of customers and critical systems on the line.
chasectid@reddit
I feel adaptability is at the forefront of what we do. While you’re exactly the right kind of fit any large org would love to have (especially at a Senior Director or VP level), I sadly see that for every engineer like you—who has continued excelling in an IC role while adapting to new tools and frameworks—there are five more who rest on their laurels. They never dive into the thick of it and have largely stayed as people managers for most of their careers.
I definitely don’t endorse ageism, but I get why people can be skeptical in hiring decisions. At your level, track records speak louder than coding ability, and we sadly lose out on excellent engineers in pursuit of yet another middle-management paper pusher.
mattk1017@reddit
Yeah it’s pretty crazy. I’m 28 with 5 YoE, and just Thursday my company laid off all three senior backend engineers and the Director of Engineering. All but one of the four were 40 years old or more
hibikir_40k@reddit
I am also around your age, but I also can tell that my ability to work and concentrate is lower than it was: I am not the developer I was 15 years ago.
That said, LLMs have really helped, as the parts that would spend a lot of my energy are mostly gone, and the parts where the experience is helping thus become where I spend most of my time. Experience turns things that used to be tough processing into the realm of intuition, so I can make sure the tooling wastes little time, because I have 70% of the interesting parts of a problem cached in my head. My performance advantage over juniors just increased just because of all of those shortcuts have LLM speed of implementation underneath, while the juniors don't see the landmines that are coming.
Many companies might not have figured this out yet, but people who are very senior, or the most talented mid career devs, have never been a better deal.
Mundane-Charge-1900@reddit
I'm late 40s and have been writing software for money since I was 16. So I know what you mean. I've seen a lot in my time.
I doubt it's because the industry hasn't been around very long. People have been paid to write software since at least the 1940s. If management hasn't learned how this works by now, they're not going to suddenly figure it out. This makes me think it's not a knowledge issue but something else more fundamental.
I think a lot of it has to do with how the industry has grown so strongly for so long. Both in terms of the demand for software engineers, but how universities have continued to produce higher numbers of engineers every year as well. Big companies especially optimize their hiring pipelines toward early career because they need to hire a lot of people, that's where the most candidates are, and that's where candidates are the most fungible.
More experienced people tend to find their jobs through their network instead. Fit is more particular, in terms of the work and environment, whereas most juniors are pretty open to taking any job where the compensation is right.
Medicine is completely different. The AMA tightly controls the number of doctors produced each year. Demand for medical care is only increasing while the number of doctors largely has not. That results in high demand for doctors, especially specialists who need years of training before they can even practice on their own.
Plus, you add on the massive cost of getting a medical degree, where most doctors graduate with huge debt that they will spend decades paying off. Many want and have to work until an older age because they have invested so much time and money into it anyways.
uniquesnowflake8@reddit
There’s a lot that I’ve gained but also some things I’ve lost with time. I don’t think it’s a black and white issue at all (it’s gray, ha!)
randbytes@reddit
it is a cycle, technical director, it is a cycle. ageism has been going on for the past couple of decades atleast. You were probably on the other side a while ago. Soon those guys will be on your side.
Interesting_Debate57@reddit
That's what senior/staff positions are for.
honestduane@reddit
It's not that you are older it's that people like us know enough to be a competitive threat if we would just get off our ass and start learning business and stop thinking of it as the bad thing, And yet that's exactly what they're scared of us doing.
OrganizationStill135@reddit
This is not just a tech industry issue my friend. And for what it’s worth, experience is valued if you happen to be the one who wasn’t cut. Your experience will be valued elsewhere, so suggest you start setting up your consultancy ready for when you need it. We’re not the first go through this, and won’t be the last.
Kooky_Garbage9881@reddit
In what way have you experienced that the industry is done with you? Have you been looking for a job?
p0st_master@reddit
This is true. I blame the emphasis on cheap foreign labor. If someone is willing to work 10 hours a day and weekends it brings the wage down 25%+ effectively. Managers know this and know older workers aren’t willing to take this pay cut. Young people without kids or responsibilities will still do this. I don’t think it has anything to do with experience so much as middle Managers who don’t understand code want people on the clock as much as possible. Until we can address this issue without people saying it’s nationalistic or racist I don’t see it changing.
StickyDeltaStrike@reddit
You are probably right but you won’t change the world.
Also you are a lot more expensive than younger devs and sometimes management have difficulty seeing the value.
lerun@reddit
Preach brother gray beard. Wisdom is a thing in our line of work also, and why it is so easily discarded by management confound me also.
But guess we are to expensive to keep?
PartyFeisty2929@reddit
Three cheers for this guy! Hip hip!