Development, Leadership, Age

While I was at the VMWare HQ getting some amazing training a few weeks ago, we had the opportunity to meet a large number of “C” level people from that organization and Pure Storage. In addition, they had multiple development and project management leads come and talk to us. All the attention was nice (but it was the information we were receiving that was truly awesome). But part way through the second day I realized something. I was sitting in Silicon Valley. I was talking to, effectively, the captains of industry and their chief lieutenants. And many, most, of them were at or near my age. Wait a second. I thought the Valley was run by teenagers?

I’m constantly told that older people are getting squeezed out of technology by magazine articles. Yet, most of my friends are well past 30 and none of them is hurting for work. I get it, the plural of anecdote is not data. Yet, the accumulation of anecdotes eventually leads to data. And the indications are, senior positions are held by senior people, and yeah, by senior, I mean “old.” Why is that?

Learning a development language is fairly hard work and requires quite a lot of time, way past your average work day. Most of the time, youngsters are doing this, not older people. So, when you’re looking to hire a hot new developer for the hot new language, are you likely to get the lady who is running kids to the ball park after work, or the lady who doesn’t have kids yet and is living, eating and breathing, SooprC00LanguageX? The latter. But, in a few years, you’re not looking at the newest coolest languages any more. You just want your stuff to work. And maybe the older languages are more stable. Now… who gets hired? That’s right, the lady with the kids and the grey hair. Not only is she GREAT at the language, but she’s not at all flighty, brings a lot of maturity and experience to the table, and can help your project move forward in a major way.

Say what you want about older people not learning computers well (and gods above, you should meet my mother-in-law), there are still plenty out there with agile, flexible minds who also bring steadiness and maturity to the table. Yeah, their middle might be slightly expanded, but they’re pretty clearly up to the job. And, anecdote or not, it seemed clear to me that Silicon Valley companies recognized that.