Thank you for this article it was very well written.
I would like to get your input on some questions that I have had for a while and since you are a hiring manager your input on this would be highly valued.
At what age do you stop considering candidates for employment? More precisely at what age does the resume get buried on the bottom of the stack?
Would you, and have you ever considered a "Senior" (someone over 50) for a junior development role?
Which is more important to you personally when it comes to hiring a developer, experience or social fit. I understand both are desirable but if you had to choose?
Please do not take this as an attack, this is only an attempt to gain insights on what "Senior" (people over 50) developers such as my self should do to land that developer position.
Charlie,
Are you trying to bait the author? Why would you even ask, "At what age do you stop considering candidates for employment?" That's like asking, "How old do you have to be before I will consider hiring you for a software position?" Come on. You're giving us senior software engineers (over 50) a bad name.
I don't take the author's meaning of "Senior" to be "Senior Citizen", but it appears as if you are ("Senior" someone over 50). Any software developer, regardless of calendar age, needs to have skill to be considered "Senior" as I understand it to mean. Senior has nothing to do with age or the number of years of software development experience. Any software engineer that has been doing the same thing, year after year, for 20 years, has only one year of experience in my book.
However, any software engineer that has been taking online courses, experimenting, building, sharing with others (blogging, meetups, tech lunches), is worth their weight in gold. They have something that can't be bought - a passion for the craft of being called a professional.
Are you trying to bait the author? Why would you even ask, "At what age do you stop considering candidates for employment?" That's like asking, "How old do you have to be before I will consider hiring you for a software position?" Come on. You're giving us senior software engineers (over 50) a bad name.
No just asking the tough questions. After being "ghosted" by countless recruiters and hiring managers once they find out my age, yes I feel this is a very relevant question and one that needs to be raised.
Senior has nothing to do with age or the number of years of software development experience.
What does "Senior' mean then?
Any software engineer that has been doing the same thing, year after year, for 20 years, has only one year of experience in my book
I disagree I would call them an "expert" on the subject.
However, any software engineer that has been taking online courses, experimenting, building, sharing with others (blogging, meetups, tech lunches), is worth their weight in gold. They have something that can't be bought - a passion for the craft of being called a professional.
Yea I use to believe that until I started looking for a job. After 4 years of job searching I do not agree with this statement.
To be clear I'm not looking for any special treatment just because I'm old.
All I want is a fair shot, and from my experience that doesn't seem to be the case.
Food for thought, will there be a place for you in the IT industry when you hit 50 years old?
Yup, there will be a place for me in the IT industry when I hit 50... How do I know that? I'm already 50+ and I've got a great Software Engineering job. Sorry you feel you haven't been given a fair shot, but I would challenge you to look inward and ask yourself what you could be doing to improve how you communicate the skills you have to recruiters. Can you write blog posts about the skills you have? Can you show a portfolio of projects that you have developed? Have you contributed to open source projects? Have you presented at a Meetup? Have you presented things about software topics at previous software gigs? Have you mentored others? If you can't do at least a couple of these things, regardless of your age, you're going to find it hard to find a job in this industry and I'm trying to challenge your mindset rather than pointing the finger at the recruiters.
Yup, there will be a place for me in the IT industry when I hit 50... How do I know that? I'm already 50+ and I've got a great Software Engineering job.
This is good to know, at least there is still hope :)
Sorry you feel you haven't been given a fair shot, but I would challenge you to look inward and ask yourself what you could be doing to improve how you communicate the skills you have to recruiters. Can you write blog posts about the skills you have? Can you show a portfolio of projects that you have developed? Have you contributed to open source projects? Have you presented at a Meetup? Have you presented things about software topics at previous software gigs? Have you mentored others?
Yes I have done all this and more. My sons business website is up on Heroku, my blog is up on Gatsby Cloud, my resume is up on AWS, maintained several packages in Debian and was an uploading developer for Ubuntu. I even moved to Seattle from Texas to be "more appealing to potential employers".
After a 4 year journey that's not over yet, I have looked inwards many times wondering whats wrong with me, what am I doing wrong, why can't I do this, what can I do better. I appreciate your advise and it's good advise that others should follow, but so far it has not yielded any results for me. But who knows maybe one day :)
Ageism is an issue in the software industry, at least from what I saw by reading experiences of older software engineers - that's why they moved to consultant roles, management or opened their own companies.
Thanks Charlie! It's an interesting question for sure. I hear about "ageism" in the workforce and especially in the software engineering field where you typically see twenty-something year olds in hoodies depicted.
I can only speak from my own experience, but I've hired people of all age ranges so far. The most important thing is whether or not the candidate has the right skill set for the position and if they can get the job done, so we should focus on that.
This is again just my own hunch, but I hope that ageism will begin to disappear from the workplace now that the nature of work has changed. It seems like it used to be that people worked for the same company for 30 years and then retired with a nice pension. Now people job hop much more frequently. It's common to see software engineers switch jobs every few years (that's been my work history so far!).
So with a much shorter expected time at each company, there's really not a disadvantage to hiring older employees. If we hypothetically had a 20 year old candidate and a 50 year old candidate with somehow exactly equal job skills and experience, what difference does age make? I wouldn't expect either person to still be with the company when they retire, so age would become irrelevant. This idea of hiring young people with potential who will be at the company for a long time and provide a good return on investment is hopefully an outdated one.
(We need to have this whole discussion of course keeping in mind that age is a protected class when interviewing, and it's illegal to discriminate against someone based on their age. What we're really trying to combat here are implicit biases that may be more subtle.)
Anyway, I hope this helps. My main takeaway would be to focus on having the right skillset and continuously learning, and the rest should take care of itself.
Thank you Tyler for your response it is very much appreciated.
I can only speak from my own experience, but I've hired people of all age ranges so far.
Yes and that's a good thing, but have you hired anyone over 50 years of age for a junior developers position? I could be wrong but I would venture to say that the answer is "no".
The most important thing is whether or not the candidate has the right skill set for the position and if they can get the job done, so we should focus on that.
Okay let focus on that. Let's discuss just one of my projects. It's a DIY security camera system that utilize's imagenode, imagehub, imagemzq, opencv, tensorflowlite and mongodb. Backend is written in python, and the frontend is written in flutter/dart with plans of using rsyslog, logstash, elasticsearch and kibana for a dashboard to monitor it. Skills aren't the problem age (or more precisely "social fit") is.
This is again just my own hunch, but I hope that ageism will begin to disappear from the workplace now that the nature of work has changed. It seems like it used to be that people worked for the same company for 30 years and then retired with a nice pension. Now people job hop much more frequently. It's common to see software engineers switch jobs every few years (that's been my work history so far!).
I hope you have a good 401k then :) If not it's going to suck when your my age. And one day you will be my age.
If we hypothetically had a 20 year old candidate and a 50 year old candidate with somehow exactly equal job skills and experience, what difference does age make?
My question exactly. It shouldn't make a difference but it does.
(We need to have this whole discussion of course keeping in mind that age is a protected class when interviewing, and it's illegal to discriminate against someone based on their age. What we're really trying to combat here are implicit biases that may be more subtle.)
Yes this is true but is does allow you to answer the very broad simple yes or no question of "Have you hired anyone over 50 yrs of age for a junior developer position".
Once again thank you for your insights Tyler.
Happy Coding
"I have no special skills, just passionate curiosity"
Albert Einstein
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Thank you for this article it was very well written.
I would like to get your input on some questions that I have had for a while and since you are a hiring manager your input on this would be highly valued.
At what age do you stop considering candidates for employment? More precisely at what age does the resume get buried on the bottom of the stack?
Would you, and have you ever considered a "Senior" (someone over 50) for a junior development role?
Which is more important to you personally when it comes to hiring a developer, experience or social fit. I understand both are desirable but if you had to choose?
Please do not take this as an attack, this is only an attempt to gain insights on what "Senior" (people over 50) developers such as my self should do to land that developer position.
Thank you and happy coding
Charlie,
Are you trying to bait the author? Why would you even ask, "At what age do you stop considering candidates for employment?" That's like asking, "How old do you have to be before I will consider hiring you for a software position?" Come on. You're giving us senior software engineers (over 50) a bad name.
I don't take the author's meaning of "Senior" to be "Senior Citizen", but it appears as if you are ("Senior" someone over 50). Any software developer, regardless of calendar age, needs to have skill to be considered "Senior" as I understand it to mean. Senior has nothing to do with age or the number of years of software development experience. Any software engineer that has been doing the same thing, year after year, for 20 years, has only one year of experience in my book.
However, any software engineer that has been taking online courses, experimenting, building, sharing with others (blogging, meetups, tech lunches), is worth their weight in gold. They have something that can't be bought - a passion for the craft of being called a professional.
No just asking the tough questions. After being "ghosted" by countless recruiters and hiring managers once they find out my age, yes I feel this is a very relevant question and one that needs to be raised.
What does "Senior' mean then?
I disagree I would call them an "expert" on the subject.
Yea I use to believe that until I started looking for a job. After 4 years of job searching I do not agree with this statement.
To be clear I'm not looking for any special treatment just because I'm old.
All I want is a fair shot, and from my experience that doesn't seem to be the case.
Food for thought, will there be a place for you in the IT industry when you hit 50 years old?
Happy Coding
Yup, there will be a place for me in the IT industry when I hit 50... How do I know that? I'm already 50+ and I've got a great Software Engineering job. Sorry you feel you haven't been given a fair shot, but I would challenge you to look inward and ask yourself what you could be doing to improve how you communicate the skills you have to recruiters. Can you write blog posts about the skills you have? Can you show a portfolio of projects that you have developed? Have you contributed to open source projects? Have you presented at a Meetup? Have you presented things about software topics at previous software gigs? Have you mentored others? If you can't do at least a couple of these things, regardless of your age, you're going to find it hard to find a job in this industry and I'm trying to challenge your mindset rather than pointing the finger at the recruiters.
This is good to know, at least there is still hope :)
Yes I have done all this and more. My sons business website is up on Heroku, my blog is up on Gatsby Cloud, my resume is up on AWS, maintained several packages in Debian and was an uploading developer for Ubuntu. I even moved to Seattle from Texas to be "more appealing to potential employers".
After a 4 year journey that's not over yet, I have looked inwards many times wondering whats wrong with me, what am I doing wrong, why can't I do this, what can I do better. I appreciate your advise and it's good advise that others should follow, but so far it has not yielded any results for me. But who knows maybe one day :)
Happy Coding
Ageism is an issue in the software industry, at least from what I saw by reading experiences of older software engineers - that's why they moved to consultant roles, management or opened their own companies.
Thanks Charlie! It's an interesting question for sure. I hear about "ageism" in the workforce and especially in the software engineering field where you typically see twenty-something year olds in hoodies depicted.
I can only speak from my own experience, but I've hired people of all age ranges so far. The most important thing is whether or not the candidate has the right skill set for the position and if they can get the job done, so we should focus on that.
This is again just my own hunch, but I hope that ageism will begin to disappear from the workplace now that the nature of work has changed. It seems like it used to be that people worked for the same company for 30 years and then retired with a nice pension. Now people job hop much more frequently. It's common to see software engineers switch jobs every few years (that's been my work history so far!).
So with a much shorter expected time at each company, there's really not a disadvantage to hiring older employees. If we hypothetically had a 20 year old candidate and a 50 year old candidate with somehow exactly equal job skills and experience, what difference does age make? I wouldn't expect either person to still be with the company when they retire, so age would become irrelevant. This idea of hiring young people with potential who will be at the company for a long time and provide a good return on investment is hopefully an outdated one.
(We need to have this whole discussion of course keeping in mind that age is a protected class when interviewing, and it's illegal to discriminate against someone based on their age. What we're really trying to combat here are implicit biases that may be more subtle.)
Anyway, I hope this helps. My main takeaway would be to focus on having the right skillset and continuously learning, and the rest should take care of itself.
Thank you Tyler for your response it is very much appreciated.
Yes and that's a good thing, but have you hired anyone over 50 years of age for a junior developers position? I could be wrong but I would venture to say that the answer is "no".
Okay let focus on that. Let's discuss just one of my projects. It's a DIY security camera system that utilize's imagenode, imagehub, imagemzq, opencv, tensorflowlite and mongodb. Backend is written in python, and the frontend is written in flutter/dart with plans of using rsyslog, logstash, elasticsearch and kibana for a dashboard to monitor it. Skills aren't the problem age (or more precisely "social fit") is.
I hope you have a good 401k then :) If not it's going to suck when your my age. And one day you will be my age.
My question exactly. It shouldn't make a difference but it does.
Yes this is true but is does allow you to answer the very broad simple yes or no question of "Have you hired anyone over 50 yrs of age for a junior developer position".
Once again thank you for your insights Tyler.
Happy Coding