Is it more difficult to find work after 40?

Question

One of my colleagues once told me that when you hit 40 it's a lot more difficult to find a programming gig. You need to:

• own your own company
• become really specialized
• or go into management

I'm 40 now, and am wondering does anybody see any truth to this? And if so, how are you enhancing your value as you age?

Personally, I went down the 'your own company' path, and lets just say ... I'm not sure it's for me.

EDIT: Just to clarify; this was intended as a career strategy question ... not an age discrimination question.

Answer 1

Whilst it's probably true that any given company only needs/wants a 1:many between senior and junior coders (juniors are cheap and only so many seniors can fit into any given project before the animosity sets in), perhaps it's you?

I'm only 30ish and I already find fewer positions of business interest and fewer which meet my developing standards. Certainly I was more open to weaker jobs 5 years ago.

Answer 2

You might already be very specialized and not know it. At 40 I'm guessing you could put a few bullet points on your resume where you might have multiple decades of experience. Few people would have that. At most companies I've worked at we had some people over 40 doing programming; big companies, startups, and government contract shops.

Answer 3

I really hope it's still possible to find work. This is probably the biggest fear I have for my career - coding is one of the younger professions around and so there aren't all that many people who have seen a career all the way through just yet.

I'm 34 and I'm aware that I learn more slowly than I did five or ten years ago. I fear it may be hard to keep up with the accelerating changes in the industry right up until I'm 65.

Of your three choices, I'd have to go for the second one: I don't have the business sense to run my own company and I don't have the skills needed to be a good manager either.

Specialising's a risky business too though: if your chosen specialist subject ends up on the scrapheap of history, you're pretty screwed.

Answer 4

I think the answer here is it depends. It is real easy for your skill set to become obsolete (the number of win32 SDK jobs is way down compared to 10 years ago, Delphi programming is not so hot), for you to price you self out of the market, and so on. Those really are only correlations with age. The other tricky part is that you become a tougher interview for a 20/30 something to relate to. And if people don't like you, they will not hire you. .

Answer 5

After 40 what? Beers: yes!

Answer 6

Try to look young, anyway. My offer-to-interview ratio went up dramatically when I started dying my hair. This is not necessarily how the world should work, but it's my experience.

Answer 7

Your previous experience IS your enhanced value as you age. You have a better understanding of how business works. If you eventually find that you can't keep up with programming language changes, you could transition to more of a design/architecture role where you use your experience in software develop to determine how the application will work and leave the actual programming to the younger people.

Answer 8

I'm 51 and have had a couple of job offers for more money win the past 2/3 years. I'm pretty sure I could get more opportunities, especially if I were willing to take a drop in pay. I don't look particularly young, but I try to stay in shape and look good.

I don't mind if a guy is older. They've been around the block a few times and know how to function in a company and how to deliver. There are young guys who can't learn, and older guys who can learn like crazy.

We just hired a younger guy who is 30, and he's working out great. We have another guy 29, and he's having a tough time. Doesn't like to follow direction - thinks he's smarter than everyone else. Not good.

I keep learning by working toward a Master's degree. I'm taking two courses this semester, and the final course in the fall. Learned a ton. C, C++, Unix, Perl, SOA, Data communications, Security, shell scripting, php/Ajax, a bunch.

Answer 9

I'm 36 and after writing code for 20 years I gradually moved towards managment and haven't written code for the last several years.

I had the same fear, my move was to management (project managment, team managment, head of development roughly) - and I like it very much.

If you're uncomfortable with going into managment, consider these options where it's a normal thing to be older than 40:

• Becoming an (system-) architect
• Becoming a consultant with special knowledge on your terms (not a 80h-100h one, sell knowledge not your work ;-)
• Start giving talks at conferences for money (helped by writing a blog and a book)
• Start teaching at a university or a company
• Start an ISV, and although "I'm not sure it's for me." and ISV might be what you like
• Writing articles for money
• Becoming a trainer

Answer 10

I'm 36 and there are 4 other programmers on my team who are all over 60 with the oldest being 73. A few months ago there was also a graduate programmer on the team but he was "shifted" into a non-programming role after he didn't quite come up to scratch.

If management are under pressure and need to get the job done I doubt they'd care how old you are. On the other hand if it's a big corporate looking to find talent and nuture a career they'll obviously be looking for young guns.

Answer 11

This isn't one of your alternatives, but another option is that you could teach programming at a local high school, college or university. You could possibly try teaching a night course or two and then, if you like it, you could start to transition to full time. The drawback is that you wouldn't necessarily be a part of a software development team, but an added benefit would be that you could still do consulting, research, or your own projects on the side.

Answer 12

yes it does get harder to find "jobs" because you're way overqualified for most of them

by age 40, i had solid experience in a dozen different industries, mastered a half-dozen programming languages, built tools for developers and shrink-wrap boxed software and could claim (and prove) full-time professional experience spanning over 20 years - almost all of it on the cutting edge or "close to it".

You will not find this kind of depth and breadth of experience in 20-somethings or 30-somethings. And it does not come cheap ;-)

I try to stay moderately current, but primarily practice learn-to-earn; shiny new toys are not the attractive time-wasting distraction they used to be. It helps to communicate well, know how to lead and how to be a team player, and to generally be helpful and likable ;-)

Stand proud if you're still writing code at 40 (and beyond).

Note: at 42 I had "had enough of jobs" and started my own company. Now I have too many jobs (marketing, business development, public relations, sales, development, architect, consultant, etc.) but I don't think I will ever go back to cube-land.