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jducoeurBoy, I have rather mixed feelings about this article. Summary: a 64-year-old software engineer, who interviewed with Google unsuccessfully several years ago, is trying to set up a class-action age-discrimination lawsuit against them.
Actually, no, that's not true -- my feelings really aren't mixed. Mind, I fall into the class in question: I'm 50, and I did interview unsuccessfully at Google back in 2012. But that had nothing to do with age -- AFAIK, that had to do with the fact that we were in the middle of the nymwars at the time, and I made it unambiguously clear that I was going to be a complete and deliberate pain in the ass about it if I was hired.
I won't claim that there's no age discrimination in the software industry, but I would bet there's a good deal less than many older engineers would like to believe. The reality is, it comes down to skills, because skills in the software industry rust *frighteningly* fast. I mean, the guy launching the suit was specifically looking for assignments in C++, Java and PHP. Of those three, the only one I consider *marginally* current is Java, and I would far rather see someone with C# experience. (Yes, yes, you can all read your anti-Microsoft bigotry in. The fact is, Java is only now catching up to where C# was ten years ago.) And I'd consider PHP on a resume to be a strong net negative.
I've known too many engineers who really believe that software was basically solved by Knuth, Dijkstra and company fifty years ago, and that getting up to date is simply a matter of learning the syntax of another language. That's bullshit -- it's never been true, and it's less true than ever now. The programming business has not only continued to evolve in recent decades, that evolution is *accelerating*.
That's happening at all levels. The languages are in the middle of another paradigm shift: if you're not comfortable with at least the core of functional programming (as well as OO), you are facing obsolescence. Software architecture has realigned almost out of recognition over the past five years: you need to be comfortable with scalable approaches, preferably including map-reduce approaches such as Hadoop / Spark / whatever, and ideally grokking the Actor model as well -- not to mention being completely solid on parallel programming. Even the *process* of software development has changed radically in the 15 years since Extreme Programming started the revolution -- while you need to take the trendy consultants with a grain of salt, you absolutely need to be comfortable with the core agile processes in order to be effective.
It's easy to believe that you're being discriminated against, when the truth is you're just *rusty*. Putting this in concrete terms: I spend an average of 30-60 minutes *per day* on self-education in the field. That takes many forms -- reading documentation on new tech, watching presentations, using new technologies in practice, and participating in the communities around that tech. I consider that to be part of my job, and I've never hidden it from employers -- if I'm going to stay sharp, I need to put in the time learning and exercising new skills, so that's part of what you're paying me for.
The lawsuit cites the low average age of Google employees as the basis for believing there is age discrimination. Even granting their numbers (which I don't -- they're based on self-reported data from Payscale, which I would bet skews young), I'm suspicious of the assumptions here. I *expect* any high-end software company to skew young -- not because of intentional discrimination (at this point, most sensible companies will hire any really good programmers they can find), but because there just aren't enough 50-year-olds who are willing to put in the work and discipline to stay sharp. If your skills aren't current, don't expect people to want to hire you.
The moral of all this is, as I've said many times: if you want to work in software, you need to focus on self-education, and make a lifelong habit of it. Several of my friends are professional veterinarians, and I've always found the mandatory continuing education requirements of that field to be intriguingly wise. I enjoy working in an unregulated field, and I suspect most other programmers do as well, but that just means that you have to take responsibility for that continuing education yourself. Expect that to be *hard* -- the world is constantly changing, and you are never going to get to stop and breathe. But it's necessary if you want to stay relevant, and if you embrace it whole-heartedly, it does keep things mighty interesting...
Actually, no, that's not true -- my feelings really aren't mixed. Mind, I fall into the class in question: I'm 50, and I did interview unsuccessfully at Google back in 2012. But that had nothing to do with age -- AFAIK, that had to do with the fact that we were in the middle of the nymwars at the time, and I made it unambiguously clear that I was going to be a complete and deliberate pain in the ass about it if I was hired.
I won't claim that there's no age discrimination in the software industry, but I would bet there's a good deal less than many older engineers would like to believe. The reality is, it comes down to skills, because skills in the software industry rust *frighteningly* fast. I mean, the guy launching the suit was specifically looking for assignments in C++, Java and PHP. Of those three, the only one I consider *marginally* current is Java, and I would far rather see someone with C# experience. (Yes, yes, you can all read your anti-Microsoft bigotry in. The fact is, Java is only now catching up to where C# was ten years ago.) And I'd consider PHP on a resume to be a strong net negative.
I've known too many engineers who really believe that software was basically solved by Knuth, Dijkstra and company fifty years ago, and that getting up to date is simply a matter of learning the syntax of another language. That's bullshit -- it's never been true, and it's less true than ever now. The programming business has not only continued to evolve in recent decades, that evolution is *accelerating*.
That's happening at all levels. The languages are in the middle of another paradigm shift: if you're not comfortable with at least the core of functional programming (as well as OO), you are facing obsolescence. Software architecture has realigned almost out of recognition over the past five years: you need to be comfortable with scalable approaches, preferably including map-reduce approaches such as Hadoop / Spark / whatever, and ideally grokking the Actor model as well -- not to mention being completely solid on parallel programming. Even the *process* of software development has changed radically in the 15 years since Extreme Programming started the revolution -- while you need to take the trendy consultants with a grain of salt, you absolutely need to be comfortable with the core agile processes in order to be effective.
It's easy to believe that you're being discriminated against, when the truth is you're just *rusty*. Putting this in concrete terms: I spend an average of 30-60 minutes *per day* on self-education in the field. That takes many forms -- reading documentation on new tech, watching presentations, using new technologies in practice, and participating in the communities around that tech. I consider that to be part of my job, and I've never hidden it from employers -- if I'm going to stay sharp, I need to put in the time learning and exercising new skills, so that's part of what you're paying me for.
The lawsuit cites the low average age of Google employees as the basis for believing there is age discrimination. Even granting their numbers (which I don't -- they're based on self-reported data from Payscale, which I would bet skews young), I'm suspicious of the assumptions here. I *expect* any high-end software company to skew young -- not because of intentional discrimination (at this point, most sensible companies will hire any really good programmers they can find), but because there just aren't enough 50-year-olds who are willing to put in the work and discipline to stay sharp. If your skills aren't current, don't expect people to want to hire you.
The moral of all this is, as I've said many times: if you want to work in software, you need to focus on self-education, and make a lifelong habit of it. Several of my friends are professional veterinarians, and I've always found the mandatory continuing education requirements of that field to be intriguingly wise. I enjoy working in an unregulated field, and I suspect most other programmers do as well, but that just means that you have to take responsibility for that continuing education yourself. Expect that to be *hard* -- the world is constantly changing, and you are never going to get to stop and breathe. But it's necessary if you want to stay relevant, and if you embrace it whole-heartedly, it does keep things mighty interesting...
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(no subject)
Date: 2015-04-30 01:56 pm (UTC)But I don't work in an ice-house or drive a horse-drawn cart delivering coal. Unlike those jobs, where change was measured in decades, change in this era is measured in years (sometimes even less).
You seem to be missing a point which I thought I'd made obvious: please let me make it more so. Ambition is the critical factor that I am describing, and which I think was part of the original discussion.
Ambition is to get a better job, or a better position, or improve oneself.
If you lack that drive, you can ride your early-days skills as far as they will go. In a Toffler-esque world, they won't make it to retirement, even if in earlier days they might have.
There are people who lack the time to service their ambition: single-parents with two jobs, some families with special needs kids, health issues: not everyone has the spare time or energy to give.
My point, I think the one you objected to, was that if you have the energy outside of work to participate in an absorbing hobby, the issue is not energy or time: it is simply a matter of choice and priority.
Harkening back to the start of the thread - Mr. Heath is claiming that Google systematically discriminates against people because of age. I think Justin and I agree: it discriminates against irrelevance (among other things). While that CAN correlate with age (because irrelevance is a function of time), it doesn't have to.
It highlights the benefits of ambition.
(In the mean time, for my everlasting amusement, our work-team got not one but two offers of additional work-paid training overnight. I signed up for both of them.)
(no subject)
Date: 2015-04-30 02:43 pm (UTC)And now that you restate it like this, I think I can put my finger on why this statement bothers me. You're presuming that energy is a single fungible characteristic, and I think that's just plain untrue.
Illustrating by example: for many people (especially but not exclusively extroverts -- it certainly applies to me), time spent socially, on a hobby, with friends or suchlike, can be fundamentally *re-energizing*. It is less consuming energy than providing it, and can be flatly necessary for long-term health. OTOH, for many (and I suspect most) people, self-education does consume mental energy, which may or may not be available.
So I don't think the equation is as simple as you're making it out to be. Social interaction is often very different from educational interaction, and can have very different effects on one's energy. That makes the choice much more complex: it's not nearly as simple as, "If you have time to play SCA, then you could spend some of that time on education".
(no subject)
Date: 2015-04-30 03:13 pm (UTC)When I watch most TV, I call that "down time". That's a different category.
I agree that social congress is not the same, and for some it is an onerous task and others it is a vivifying tonic.
I just find it orthogonal to the question: because if you LIKE social stuff, there is no reason to work on self-improvement skills alone. I have a very old friend who shares the same curiosity itches that I do, and we often learn together: sharing puzzles or studying books or articles as a form of social "play" as well as personal improvement.
So I do think it is "if you have time to play, you have time for self-improvement". And, I don't judge people harshly for making choice that suit their personality or their needs. If you don't (to steal from Stephen Covey) "sharpen your saw" on a regular basis, it gets dull: but if overall the balance you pick works for you, it's the best you can do.
In the past, I've sometimes accepted the consequence of "more play, less study", and other times I've gone the other way. In the last few years, it has certainly been "more study, less play", because really I was making a trinary choice: Family/Self-Improvement/Play, in about that order.
I can't have everything: I don't think anyone can. But the choices one makes, even if they don't realize it was a choice, are still choices with consequences.
And yes: like yourself, I am happiest when I can balance work/family/play/self-improvement in good proportion. I've been happiest when I could, I've been least happy when one dominates the others like a harsh master. (And at various times, I've had each of them dominate the others, never through personal choice.)