Ctrl-Alt-Del: scheduled obsolescence of programmers

About 600 programmers gather at the PyGotham conference in New York each year. The organizers know that the IT industry is represented mainly by whites and men , so they make special efforts to assemble a diverse line of speakers . They promote this event in the mailing lists for women and women of color, conduct seminars, lure them in every possible way. All speakers fill out a questionnaire, and the organizers track annual statistics on the demographic diversity of the conference.

I work in the conference committee, and at the end of the current PyGotham I realized that I had not made any effort to eliminate the under-representation of one particular demographic group: elderly coders. Compared to the underrepresentation of women and minorities in technology, the shortage of programmers from the age of forty usually eludes attention. In New York, there are no meetings for them, no mailing lists, or well-known organizations representing their interests. Next year I will definitely look for age programmers to speak at PyGotham. But while I do not know where to look for them.

The software industry is extremely young. The median age of Google and Amazon employees is 30 years , while the median age of American workers is 42 years . A survey of 100,000 programmers worldwide on Stack Overflow in 2018 showed that three-quarters of them are younger than 35 years old . Hacker News periodically raises the topic: “What happens to mature developers?” Alarmed developers 35-40 years old go to the topic and say that they are one of the “older” ones.
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In October, I turned 40, I worked seven years at the same job at the New York company MongoDB. Many programmers of my age returned to study to change their profession or become managers. I dedicated my life to programming, but the career path for decades to come is not very well understood. I am worried about too few engineers older than me, whose examples I can follow. Where did all the old coders go and what are the career prospects for those of us who stayed?

In 2007, the 22-year-old Mark Zuckerberg voiced what many in the software industry secretly think: “The young are just smarter,” he said. Twelve years later, the shortage of age programmers is still little studied compared to other dimensions of demographic diversity. For example, Google’s annual diversity report counts how many women or people of color work for them. Microsoft counts its American Indians and Alaska Natives , and Apple proudly hires former soldiers . It is commendable that these companies have revealed some indicators of diversity, but there is an omission: no one reports on the age distribution.

47-year-old engineer Ari Rapkin Blenhorn quit her last job because the company, she said, wanted “a crowd of cheap youth. They did not want to support older people with a recognized career. ” Her employer, whom she asked not to name, appreciated her professional contacts, but did not send them to the conference. "I believe that they really did not understand why this is important and how my participation in a research conference differs from the participation of younger developers in technical training."

Blenckhorn says that as soon as she returned to the labor market, sexism aggravated the problem with age. Despite deep technical advances, recruiters considered her an inappropriate and boring "mother." She recently received a PhD in computer science and hopes that a degree will increase her chances in the job market.

Kevin Stevens, a 55-year-old programmer, faced a similar attitude when he applied for a position on the Stack Exchange six years ago. He was interviewed by a young engineer who said: “I am always surprised when older programmers understand modern technologies.” Stevens was not hired. Now he works as a programmer in a hotel company, where, according to him, age has not become a problem.

For other programmers, the results can be much worse. A study of 2018 by Peter Gosselin and Ariana Tobin from ProPublica about age discrimination at IBM showed that starting in 2014, the company tried to breathe new life, replacing older workers with younger ones. She fired veterans by the thousands, and sent other retired technically well-equipped ones. Ed Kishkill, a 60-year-old system engineer, received a letter of resignation on condition that he did not find another job at IBM within 90 days. Despite his many years of experience, he was rejected in all positions. By the time the article was published in ProPublica, Kyskill was already working as a salesman in the Staples store.

Professional programmers must keep their skills relevant, but they are in a constant race with time in a continuously changing industry. According to a 2018 research paper , in the field of STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics), skills change faster than in other industries, and the pace for programmers is particularly rapid. Kadim L. Noray, one of the authors of the article, says that “STEM is more skill-oriented than other areas,” here short-term competencies are more important than solid long-term knowledge. For each learned skill, the other is already becoming obsolete, leaving little chance of accumulating skills and increasing salaries.

Although initial wages in technology are high, in the first decade of employment, their advantage over other areas has been halved. “This is something that most economists simply do not know,” says Noray. The 2017 Hired.com report showed that salary offers for technical workers over 50 are actually lower than for the young ones. Therefore, many STEM workers are moving into more stable professions in search of sustainable wage growth. At the age of 24, 89% of STEM graduates work in their field, but at the age of 35, this number drops to 71% and continues to decline.


Data on age and wages for technical workers. Hired.com

One option for a programmer to avoid race skills, but to stay in the industry is to become a manager. A 54-year-old engineer from Massachusetts told me: "My company has an obvious path for new people: they come as developers and move up the chain to management."

But management is not for everyone. Sue Laverso, a 54-year-old senior MongoDB engineer, says: "Managers need certain personality characteristics, but I'm an introvert, and I'm interested in solving technical problems." A 63-year-old engineer from Google said that his short period of work as a manager was uncomfortable: “I knew that I could rely on myself in my work, but I could not figure out how to rely on others.”

As an alternative to the managerial path, Google, Microsoft, and other large companies define the “Individual Contribution Track (IC)” - a ladder of positions for senior engineers that rises parallel to the ladder of management. Track IC allows engineers to climb the ladder without giving up their favorite work.

But track IC is not perfect. Familiar programmers say that progress is slower, and the differences between posts are blurred. According to David Golden, a 45-year-old MongoDB engineer, “on the track, it's just more difficult for me to go to the next level to develop. It’s unclear how you go from one to the other and whether you can really do something. ”

After an interview with half a dozen programmers, it is clear to me that companies must create a qualitatively different role for the most senior employees. Candidates for such positions will be judged by their past performance as managers, rather than by a quick list of skills. Greater clarity would mean that engineers could climb the ladder faster, and prestige and new intellectual tasks of each level would support programmer motivation up to fifty and sixty years old.

Proven engineers in the highest positions can solve the most complex problems in the most important projects. Their roles should emphasize technical leadership through articles, lectures, and mentoring.

Thanks to their deep knowledge and extensive experience, older programmers can translate their knowledge into ordinary terms, which gives them the opportunity to act as ambassadors in the world of non-programming. Ari Blenckhorn performed this role when she headed the fabric modeling project at the Industrial Effects and Light Magic Studio. “Yoda’s robe, Harry Potter’s coat, Dementor robes — all this was in the software I helped develop,” she says. - It was necessary to speak the language of both the research group on physical modeling and the animation team. Those do not think about partial differential equations. They think of a fabric that is silky, stretchy and dazzled in the wind. ”

I was lucky: my company responded to my boredom and allowed me to go on a journey of professional research. This year I rotate between three teams for several months each, to decide who I want to be in the future.

Other companies may not be so generous. I am especially worried about older women and women of color who are subject to a combination of prejudices. Companies need to define meaningful levels for programmers moving along the IC path. Meanwhile, programmers should be more active, organize and put pressure on companies to combat age-related prejudices. Trade unions can standardize wages and protect senior employees from layoffs: this is likely to help reduce racial and gender wage differentials .

Companies will become more efficient and fair if you make the software industry more comfortable for coders over thirty and create roles for very experienced programmers. These changes will benefit all the rest — in a society increasingly governed by software and algorithms, programmers must gain some wisdom appropriate to their strength. Lessons should be learned from recent hacking cases, biased algorithms, and online incitement of genocide . The only way to learn from it is for the most experienced programmers to stay in the industry for a long time, passing on knowledge to their successors. Cultivating lifelong programmers ensures that today's lessons will be remembered by everyone in another 50 years.