Aging out of tech

[Anonymous]

Why is tech/IT the only industry people age out of? Do changes occur so fast it’s hard to keep up?

[Anonymous]

I think you need to work on your management skills. In that arena, your age will be somewhat of an advantage, because you will be seen as more authoritative and experienced just by virtue of being older. I've seen this in my company, we have a lot of web developers and the ones who are older managing the younger ones just seem to have more experience and wisdom.

The reality is that you having been around for a long time should have given you some perspective and insight that's valuable. If you haven't gained any insight or wisdom into trends or patterns or management, or your particular industry, then yeah, you do have zero competitive advantage over the young ones. But you have probably picked up things that you aren't even realizing, even simple things like interpersonal skills, that count for a lot.

There are a lot of young smart and savvy web devs and tech staff that are simply arrogant, or haven't learned how to work well with others, or can't write at all, or don't know how to communicate with clients. These people are a dime a dozen

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do 50 year old men also have this problem or is it just women? In my line of work a 50 year old gets more respect than a 20 something!

And what is that? Lawyer, Big 4 Partner, Doctor, Professor?

In tech older knowledge is useless. Imagine me telling kids at work I did Y2K work in 1998 or even better we hired ex college football players to work in tech in early 1980s as the data center equipment was so heavy. They laugh

Yes, doctor/ professor.

Tech is all about youth. I would look into federal, state or local government that might want your skill set and may skew older.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why is tech/IT the only industry people age out of? Do changes occur so fast it’s hard to keep up?

Happens in a lot of business functions, like marketing etc.

Mostly it’s the because you don’t need an advanced degree or certification (bar exam, CPA, MBA) that limits the number of entries of younger professionals.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This happened to my husband - after a 25 year career he hit a wall, multiple lay offs and restructures and dry spells after never worrying his entire career. It went from people begging him to work for them to struggling to stay relevant almost over night.

He pivoted hard, we bought a small business that aligns to his recreational passions. It is a risk but we don't see a future for him in tech and figure he can take his energy and try to build something on his own.

what kind of small business, how much did you buy for and does it make a living wage?
Considering a similar route...

[Anonymous]

What is the appeal of tech? It seems like it's great for any 20-to-30-something. And then after that you're old and stressed out about lay-offs?

It makes me want to discourage my teenage DD and DS (both college students) from pursuing this field.

DH and I are lawyers in our early 50's, and we find that we are just hitting our stride. As empty nesters, we now have time to really take on bigger projects. Our experience is valuable. And the younger lawyers in our offices are respectful (at least to our faces) and great colleagues.

Maybe the appeal of tech is that you can make tons of money as a 20-to-30-something, and then you'll be financially independent? And then you can pivot to more of a helping career like teaching? And so age discrimination will not matter? (If that's not the case, I really do not see the appeal of tech.)

[Anonymous]

The elite high paying tech jobs are youth oriented. But if you age out and don't break into management, then you can switch to non elite low paying jobs like government, nonprofit, or enterprise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is the appeal of tech? It seems like it's great for any 20-to-30-something. And then after that you're old and stressed out about lay-offs?

It makes me want to discourage my teenage DD and DS (both college students) from pursuing this field.

DH and I are lawyers in our early 50's, and we find that we are just hitting our stride. As empty nesters, we now have time to really take on bigger projects. Our experience is valuable. And the younger lawyers in our offices are respectful (at least to our faces) and great colleagues.

Maybe the appeal of tech is that you can make tons of money as a 20-to-30-something, and then you'll be financially independent? And then you can pivot to more of a helping career like teaching? And so age discrimination will not matter? (If that's not the case, I really do not see the appeal of tech.)

1) no law school
2) no huge debt for said law school
3) way way more tech workers have really well paid careers vs the big law/sht law schism, and big law has the up or out, so lots of lawyers wash out and do less well paid paths.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is the appeal of tech? It seems like it's great for any 20-to-30-something. And then after that you're old and stressed out about lay-offs?

It makes me want to discourage my teenage DD and DS (both college students) from pursuing this field.

DH and I are lawyers in our early 50's, and we find that we are just hitting our stride. As empty nesters, we now have time to really take on bigger projects. Our experience is valuable. And the younger lawyers in our offices are respectful (at least to our faces) and great colleagues.

Maybe the appeal of tech is that you can make tons of money as a 20-to-30-something, and then you'll be financially independent? And then you can pivot to more of a helping career like teaching? And so age discrimination will not matter? (If that's not the case, I really do not see the appeal of tech.)

1) no law school
2) no huge debt for said law school
3) way way more tech workers have really well paid careers vs the big law/sht law schism, and big law has the up or out, so lots of lawyers wash out and do less well paid paths.

OK. Those 3 reasons seems like good reasons.

But (and forgive my ignorance), does your knowledge become obsolete every few years, and so there is literally no advance to having experience? If so, it seems like an undesirable field in general, as you are really not building anything?

(I have a friend (PhD) who works in laboratory research at NIH. She said that, when her kids were born, she literally was unable to justify taking off more than 3 months because otherwise she would fall behind in her field and never catch up. That seems absurd -- so you cannot even take a brief leave of absence (like 9 months) or you're totally washed up (even with a PhD)? That seems like a career to avoid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The elite high paying tech jobs are youth oriented. But if you age out and don't break into management, then you can switch to non elite low paying jobs like government, nonprofit, or enterprise.

It's a lot easier to get a 150k-200k tech job in government or as a contractor than it is to get a comparably-paying job as a lawyer in government.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is the appeal of tech? It seems like it's great for any 20-to-30-something. And then after that you're old and stressed out about lay-offs?

It makes me want to discourage my teenage DD and DS (both college students) from pursuing this field.

DH and I are lawyers in our early 50's, and we find that we are just hitting our stride. As empty nesters, we now have time to really take on bigger projects. Our experience is valuable. And the younger lawyers in our offices are respectful (at least to our faces) and great colleagues.

Maybe the appeal of tech is that you can make tons of money as a 20-to-30-something, and then you'll be financially independent? And then you can pivot to more of a helping career like teaching? And so age discrimination will not matter? (If that's not the case, I really do not see the appeal of tech.)

1) no law school
2) no huge debt for said law school
3) way way more tech workers have really well paid careers vs the big law/sht law schism, and big law has the up or out, so lots of lawyers wash out and do less well paid paths.

OK. Those 3 reasons seems like good reasons.

But (and forgive my ignorance), does your knowledge become obsolete every few years, and so there is literally no advance to having experience? If so, it seems like an undesirable field in general, as you are really not building anything?

(I have a friend (PhD) who works in laboratory research at NIH. She said that, when her kids were born, she literally was unable to justify taking off more than 3 months because otherwise she would fall behind in her field and never catch up. That seems absurd -- so you cannot even take a brief leave of absence (like 9 months) or you're totally washed up (even with a PhD)? That seems like a career to avoid.

Not really, but the issue is three things:

1) tech does change so you would need to learn new software stack or algorithm techniques (like ML for instance) for the top jobs, but those aren’t changing month to month. I really am skeptical of biotech, where things often have to be grown, changes that fast. An older programmer will be better architect, engineer, and project manager — making sure good process is followed, comprehensive testing, not reinvent the wheel needlessly.

2) the business of tech does move fast and fickle. So waiting 2 months for some one to spin up to the latest stack (learn on the job, familiarize with technology) is a risk for a company running on VC cash and losing runway, so they always want the person who comes in basically already having done the EXACT skills they need for the job, and recently. Hence they bias young , people who basically were taught on that technology two weeks ago.

3) young people are willing to work insane hours under abusive conditions, and usually are starry eyed about “options” without looking to close at the cap table or cash runway the company actually has. So you can dilute them and not really risk losing them. That’s why you no longer see millionaire secretaries like dot.com, investors and founders hoard equity (and control, look at FB different share classes) via various tricks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The elite high paying tech jobs are youth oriented. But if you age out and don't break into management, then you can switch to non elite low paying jobs like government, nonprofit, or enterprise.

It's a lot easier to get a 150k-200k tech job in government or as a contractor than it is to get a comparably-paying job as a lawyer in government.

And that’s even with the natural gate keeping of the ABA and bar exam vs tech which is rife with “boot camps” and diploma mills, all vying for the same jobs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The elite high paying tech jobs are youth oriented. But if you age out and don't break into management, then you can switch to non elite low paying jobs like government, nonprofit, or enterprise.

It's a lot easier to get a 150k-200k tech job in government or as a contractor than it is to get a comparably-paying job as a lawyer in government.

And that’s even with the natural gate keeping of the ABA and bar exam vs tech which is rife with “boot camps” and diploma mills, all vying for the same jobs.

That's true. But for us, the gatekeeping issues are the citizenship limitation, which has a huge impact on supply, and also that many of the federal jobs (contractor and civilian) have degree requirements. Which I hope there will be more movement away from in a way that actually manages to assess skills.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The elite high paying tech jobs are youth oriented. But if you age out and don't break into management, then you can switch to non elite low paying jobs like government, nonprofit, or enterprise.

It's a lot easier to get a 150k-200k tech job in government or as a contractor than it is to get a comparably-paying job as a lawyer in government.

And that’s even with the natural gate keeping of the ABA and bar exam vs tech which is rife with “boot camps” and diploma mills, all vying for the same jobs.

That's true. But for us, the gatekeeping issues are the citizenship limitation, which has a huge impact on supply, and also that many of the federal jobs (contractor and civilian) have degree requirements. Which I hope there will be more movement away from in a way that actually manages to assess skills.

What, you don’t want them lowering garekeeping requirements, pay will plummet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, what are your tech skills? Do you have a security clearance?

I don’t have clearance.

I’m a full stack engineer in web development - .Net Core, Azure, AWS, Angular, React, a variety of databases, GraphQL

That’s a tough one because web dev both changes at the speed of light and there are tons of people coming out of boot camps who claim these types of skills. I would try and focus as much as possible on hyping your experience with robust, customer facing products: talk about testing, DevSecOps, CI/CD. Also picking up some Go couldn’t hurt.