March 26, 2015 at 3:23 am
I think it's been natural for me to slow down in terms of churning out work. I have more of a take stock of things, get things going properly, offer sage advice and guidance on the optimal way forward, fix nasty issues type role these days.
That said if not interrupted (very rare) I still really enjoy getting down to a good stretch of headphones on, lose yourself coding. The younger ones are probably quicker at that sort of thing though sadly, if not quite as neat, precise and elegant though I say so myself.
March 26, 2015 at 6:31 am
I tend to be a bit slower as I get older but make fewer mistakes. I try to think ahead and anticipate problems, addressing them up front instead of after testing.
March 26, 2015 at 7:12 am
I'm 65 and have no current desire to stop working (I'll soon be the oldest guy in the department, but not the oldest the company, because a co-worker is retiring this month). I like having an actual income, and I don't think I'd do well just stopping working. I function better when I'm part of what's going on, when people depend on me.
My efficiency is better. Experience helps me to see problems and solutions more quickly, but I've also become much better at time management over the years.
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-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
March 26, 2015 at 7:23 am
Been in IT for 30 years, a DBA for 20, you get smarter by learning from your mistakes, those who think they are smarter than everyone else just don't realize they make mistakes that everyone else sees
March 26, 2015 at 8:11 am
sarafian_developer (10/21/2010)
I have noticed the same, on me but on others.As a developer, you can't but notice the enthusiasm of youth and the get the work done approach of a an older one.
I agree with you. One of my bits of 'wisdom' generated from 42 year of IT experience is: 'The best developer is a lazy one'. I think when we are young and enthusiastic and maybe not so wise, we think we need the latest and greatest tools, methods, and toys. And we pride ourselves on being able to produce complex solutions to needs. Then as we age and 'get lazy', we tend to want to find the simplest, straight-forward, most efficient, and even ELEGANT methods. On the other hand, once we have produced said elegant solution, I found that younger managers are often too timid and have very little enthusiasm to implement changes and fixes.
As far as the age discrimination issue, in my last position and the very best of my career, I experienced exactly the opposite. When I opted for an early retirement package, after a few weeks I was invited to return and eventually worked a few more years in a contract position for which I am grateful to my final employer.
Rick
Disaster Recovery = Backup ( Backup ( Your Backup ) )
March 26, 2015 at 8:21 am
Even though this is a reprint of the article, this topic is still current. My experience (50 years as of 2/1/2015) has been that performance counts, not age. I have always been a programmer/analyst on different platforms with my main concentration is as a maintenance P/A. I have never seen an app or system that could not be improved. I was hired at my current government employer 15 years ago as a COBOL P/A on an IBM mainframe supporting the payroll system. I then transistioned to Windows client/server using Powerbuilder (major culture shock), and then nine years ago became the main support of an enterprise permitting system using MS SQL and Crystal Reports. I have always enjoyed my work but this job is the best I have had. I am given free rein to do whatever I deem necessary to improve the system as long as the users are kept happy. I am constantly learning new things: I get daily SQL oriented emails like SQLServerCentral and browse them for interesting articles that I can apply to my work. The only thing that slows me down is not having access to certain areas that I feel that I need to for correcting problems. At age 75 I am valued and respected by management and users. So I have not noticed any age discrimination in my experience, but believe that my attitude is that of a much younger person and that makes all the difference.
March 26, 2015 at 8:38 am
dennis.oconnor (3/26/2015)
At age 75 I am valued and respected by management and users. So I have not noticed any age discrimination in my experience, but believe that my attitude is that of a much younger person and that makes all the difference.
Dennis:
Congrats on your very long career. You beat me by a few years. I noticed your pseudo 'grasshopper'. Interesting that that is the address of my retirement hideaway. Also interesting that you have recently used Cobol. I used it in my first programming job, along with Informatics Mark IV. As you know, then as now, there were good Cobol programmers and bad Cobol programmers. I wish you the best. Obviously you must really enjoy working at your advanced age, and I applaud you for that. But be careful that you don't give away some of the joys of retirement also if you are able. It's wonderful if you have prepared for it.
Another coincidence is that after 30 years away, I have for the winter months returned to live within a couple miles of where my first programming trainee job was located, mainly because the 'grasshopper' location sometimes has five feet of snow on it.
Rick
Disaster Recovery = Backup ( Backup ( Your Backup ) )
March 26, 2015 at 9:45 am
Over the last few years I have come to the conclusuin that "Management Is't". A simple Koan that is frighteningly true. Management is a group of game players marshalling resources to achieve wins, not necessarily strategic success. Corporations since 1972 have dismissed workers as non stateholders. So management treats workers as resources, not assets.
When you treat people as resources, cheap is good, dumb is good, inexperienced is good. Basic skills, very specific skills are all that fits into the spreadsheet.. So ageism becomes very real Experience costs money and the game isn't geared for anything but lowest cost.
Sandy proved to me that experience trumps working skills. While everybody was all over the place trying to put things back together, it was clear that the ability to keep your cool was almost more important than knowledge. Nothing worked the way it was supposed to and the ability to adapt and learn became the most important skills.
So you don't become more efficient with age, you become more effective.
March 26, 2015 at 9:54 am
At age 75 I am valued and respected by management and users.
Your lengthy and productive career in IT is a remarkable achievement, and I congratulate you on it. I thought perhaps at my age (60) and career length (38) I might consider retirement within the next few years, but I now realise I'm but a mere stripling compared to some! More importantly, we may still be of some use to others, without regard to age, as you have so ably demonstrated.
March 26, 2015 at 10:23 am
GoofyGuy (3/26/2015)
At age 75 I am valued and respected by management and users.
Your lengthy and productive career in IT is a remarkable achievement, and I congratulate you on it. I thought perhaps at my age (60) and career length (38) I might consider retirement within the next few years, but I now realise I'm but a mere stripling compared to some! More importantly, we may still be of some use to others, without regard to age, as you have so ably demonstrated.
OMG I am a baby!!! (only 43 and a half ;-))
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
March 26, 2015 at 11:19 am
I am 43, I did my MCSE when SQL Server 7 was the mainstream, I have done my best to move with technologies as they have been developed and released and follow best practises, as a result I find my SQL code today is far more efficient because of it, it is far to easy to go through training and then sit back and think I'm done now, I think we need to constantly question how we code and learn from new develops in our field.
March 26, 2015 at 2:37 pm
Well, for you guys planning your retirement, I have one piece of advice. You need to plan on the ongoing expense of a bottle of your favorite wine daily with your sweetheart. We call ours 'merlot time' which starts any time after about 2:00 pm, either on our front porch or on the deck at our cabin. It's very civilized, we never worry about efficiency, and red wine is even good for your heart....in more ways than one. Cheers!
Rick
Disaster Recovery = Backup ( Backup ( Your Backup ) )
March 26, 2015 at 2:41 pm
skeleton567 (3/26/2015)
Well, for you guys planning your retirement, I have one piece of advice. You need to plan on the ongoing expense of a bottle of your favorite wine daily with your sweetheart. We call ours 'merlot time' which starts any time after about 2:00 pm, either on our front porch or on the deck at our cabin. It's very civilized, we never worry about efficiency, and red wine is even good for your heart....in more ways than one. Cheers!
That sounds lovely, and as my sweetheart and I are often in California, come retirement there should be many a bottle of Cabernet enjoyed between us.
Thank you for the wonderful advice!
March 27, 2015 at 12:53 am
GoofyGuy (3/26/2015)
skeleton567 (3/26/2015)
Well, for you guys planning your retirement, I have one piece of advice. You need to plan on the ongoing expense of a bottle of your favorite wine daily with your sweetheart. We call ours 'merlot time' which starts any time after about 2:00 pm, either on our front porch or on the deck at our cabin. It's very civilized, we never worry about efficiency, and red wine is even good for your heart....in more ways than one. Cheers!That sounds lovely, and as my sweetheart and I are often in California, come retirement there should be many a bottle of Cabernet enjoyed between us.
Thank you for the wonderful advice!
Unfortunately, I am too impatient and usually can't wait...although I do wait until I have left the office 😉
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
March 27, 2015 at 8:50 am
As you age, employability depends a lot on where you live and willingness to relocate. I lived in Phoenix for most of my career and was mostly well-employed, starting in the early '80s doing dBase III then eventually SQL Server 4.21a and Access 1.0. I made the considered decision, along with my then-future-wife, that when I moved to New Mexico after we got married (astronomer jobs don't relocate easily) that we both knew it'd be hard for me to get a good job. I wasn't willing to only be home on the weekends, fortunately she made a good salary. I interviewed with the local city government for horrible positions: you must be able to do everything from servicing PCs to programming routers and working on microwave relays, and all for $13/hr. Fortunately I didn't get a garbage job like that, I think they were interviewing as a formality and already had a friend of a worker selected and just had to go through the motions.
My current job is as close to perfect as I could want. Brand new development project from scratch, spent two months reviewing the spec and interviewing people and experimenting and I now have a working demo. It's been a nice confluence of everything that I learned in school in the '70s and '80s, then all the jobs and skills learned since then. And I'm still learning, last night I found out that Cisco doesn't really have a CLI for router programming anymore, it's all GUI and works pretty well.
Is there ageism in IT? Yes. But it can be so subtly applied that you can't fight it. Do we become more efficient? Efficiency is very hard to measure, lines of code don't really apply because you have a hard time measuring whether or not it's good code and with rapid prototyping or development tools like Access, you don't have very much code to show. I think that as you age you think deeper and wider, you can look at a spec and see "well, that's not properly normalized", or "that there is a problem that'll be tricky to implement". You probably wouldn't have noticed that at the start of your career and you'd've been banging your head against a wall while trying to code your way around it.
I think the problem with ageism is going to get worse with certain American politicians wanting to push back retirement age. It will also slow down advancement in larger orgs as the cluster of older people at the top hold back people closer to the bottom from promoting and will cause resentment. But I'm happy with what I've got and have friends (and my wife) commenting on my happiness. The job will only last 7 years or so then my wife will max-out her retirement and we'll look for another position for her. But I'll certainly enjoy what I've got while I have it, and I'll worry about what comes next after we relocate and resettle.
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[font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]
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