Discussion on:

10 things you gotta have to succeed in IT

You are right on with all by number three...after about 12-14 hours on the job, the youthful ones give out, all because they were up all night, the night before, at a party.

I don't buy the age argument, and the IT industry will be hard pressed to replace retiring workers with younger ones, there simply aren't enough of them to fill all positions. Besides if you look after yourself you can work until any age, after 75 it might get problematic though.

I started in the computer industry as a tech with DEC in 1980 at the age of 28. I later picked up a position with Lockheed and there became interested with programing and a couple of years later with system administration. My supervisor was in his 60's and the director didn't retire until he was 74. These 'old' guys were some of the sharpest mentors I ever had.

Their confidence in me made it possible for me to take on the semi-managerial roles I have had since then, but I have gone back to the field work because I enjoy the rigorous lack of a daily grind. At 59 I am still keeping the younger people of the organization a challenge to keep up with me. Don't ever discount the advantages of experience.

You young whipper snapper! I joined DEC in '77 at the age of 29.
I agree, but I am slowing down. Why beat my body up when I can use my brain to help the kids learn with mentoring.

joined DEC at 30-something in 1983

How many jobs did you have in Mass ?

from my experience, the vast majority of people hiring IT staff would rather have someone cheap and uneducated than expensive and skilled. The reason for this is simple. the majority of IT work is not sophisticated. It's complicated because of poorly designed tools and interfaces but it's not sophisticated. It's cheaper to train uneducated talent to use the next generation of poorly designed tools than it is to retrain someone with deep understanding of the current generation.

We are letting down people would have we let them think the IT career has any substance. we need to educate them to the fact that the day they start working IT is the day they need to start training for the second career.

And More BS!

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Hey Jack, please stop with the age discrimination. I am 49, and yes, I am getting older but I am far from dead! I have been working in the field for over 20 years and hopefully I have many more years left to go. So lighten up! Just remember, you too will be 49 one day as well!

For someone who doesn't know his ass from his elbow, given indissolute youth, about how it is that we all are.

It's, "sheer intelligence", by the way; not, "shear".

Squeeze all you can, Jack, out of your writing "for more than 12 years". No self-respecting, intelligent writer -- thinker -- would be caught dead saying that in public, unless an indissolute flack.

That's a tad ageist, too, innit?

Indissolute youth and flack-ness aside, "shear" is now fixed.

Not to be picky but it's spelled undissolute...

Tsk, tsk, tsk Jack. Yes there is age discrimination out there. But you don't have to continue to promote it!

As an over-50s engineer and now self-employed IT Consultant (as I got rejected time after time for the going positions), I can say one thing, the older we are, the BETTER we are. The young ones THINK they know PCs, servers and networking. But they don't - for example - UNDERSTAND how the "GPS" signal indicator on their iPhones work! Or bother to take the trouble to find out. If you want something fixed PROPERLY, it's the past elbow grease that counts. Unlike other jobs, working in IT is not a job, it's a LIFE. Something that the young ones don't seem to understand.

I have found that when work is required after hours, the "1040ez" crowd are the first to "whine" about their precious time being taken away.The majority of them were hourly and still "b1tched" about it. Mature IT workers resolve issues, young IT workers apply "band-aids and work-arounds. I have had employess of all ages and each age group has it's share of weak IT skills. I also have found that veterans, young and old, have all of traits you've listed.

As an over 50, with 30+ plus years experience in this field, this is exactly what I have experienced. The company I work for now has an awesome group- some older, some younger but we all work together- we all make mistakes and we all learn from them. This group has been the exception rather than the rule?

You were lucky to have that environment. My old company systematically eliminated all the over 40 team bringing in young employees they could hire at entry level pay. Then complained when they left in weeks to a year for better pay.

As a 53 year old training for a career change the age comment really pisses me off. I am currently in the restaurant biz 12 to 16 hour days are routine! One of the reasons I have to work so much is younger workers that don't show up! A good friend who is a Net.Admin said my work ethic would do well in IT so that is why I have pursued the training. I feel that I will have a good 20 years to give when I start.

Jack...I loved the article but you're way off on the age thing. I'm thinking that you added that little piece to make the article more "interesting" and/or more controversial. If you knew people half as good as you seem to think, you would know your age comments were inappropriate and a truly large, steaming pile of horse shiattte.

Here's my argument:
1) I'm 56. I've had a GREAT career in IT. Didn't start until I was 40. I was in the Airlines before. My career is going great right now as a College Instructor and an IT Professional. I enjoy a very healthy relationship with Contractors and Companies of all kinds. They call me ALL of the time....thank you very much.
2) My sister is 50. She works for the Army Corps of Engineers. She makes KILLER money as a Sys Admin site lead. She's an MCSE and a full fledged employee of Lockheed-Martin. He future looks nothing but bright.
3) My sisters husband is 52. He is an IT Professional also. He's very good and very current on his skills & Certs. Contractors are all over him all of the time. In fact, he's talking to one as I write this.
4) One of my best friends works for IBM. He's an IT Professional also. He's 63. GREAT guy and still smart as a whip.

Shall I go on? I do have more examples but I think you get the drift. You're very wrong about the age thing. Please don't write stuff like that anymore. It doesn't represent you or Tech Republic very well. Plus...it's just plain inaccurate information. Other than that...I love your articles. I read them all of the time.

Paul - Atlanta

Especially in IT. The secret is knowing how to pace, when to push and when to relax. That takes experience.

I've seen young and old deal with stress both well and poorly. It's not really an age thing. It's in your head. The old paradox, in order to concentrate you need to relax. I had a hard time figuring that out when I was young.

I started my I.T. career at age 44 and and 54 now. I'm doing just fine thank you very much. I worked my way up from entry-level tech to I.T. Operations Manager and supervise younger people who, unable to think for themselves, come to me for everything that requires out-of-the-box thinking. Stress isn't caused so much by external factors as it is by how you react to those stressors. I am much more patient now than I was when I was in my twenties and thirties. You have done a great disservice to older workers with your age-biased comments.

Good comment - this article has indeed done a disservice to older workers, and could even discourage older workers from entering IT. Stress is caused primarily by one thing, namely incompetence, and that can occur with all age groups.

As an IT operations manager how many older people have you hired? I notice that you mentioned supervising the younger people but no mention of the older workers.

I worked in other fields before IT. Sure IT is stressful. Every job is stressful, if you let it be. I'd much rather work in IT than work in a control tower at a big airport! I'm not sure why, Jack, you would think that younger people handle stress better than older people. I've seen exactly the opposite in my own experience. Maybe you saw some "old guy" melt down and that colored your perception?
As far as the other implied "old guys can't cut it in IT" conjecture, I've seen rookies come and go where I work, and they can't stick to a problem more than a half an hour (and that is being generous) before they give up and move on to something else. My theory is that they are products of the 15 seconds commercial/click a new link for a new subject/140 character text message generation. Completely pulled in so many directions that sheer concentration is impossible for them. Not their fault, but it's there.
Hey, I just realized that I'm a ageist too!

Great comment! The age issue is really totally out of hand. Who is going to employ people simply because they are young? What utter nonsense! What kind of business could afford to do such a thing? In IT everything is about KNOWLEDGE. That's why they call it the KNOWLEDGE economy. When people get older their knowledge simply gets better and better, so long as they are motivated and interested to keep learning. Great comment, much needed in this discussion.
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Dude....are you really serious about your statements? If you are, then you are far more immature and unaware than you think or understand. I'm 56 and I am definitely in my prime pal. My skills are sharper than ever and my ability to deal with stress is FAR better than I ever thought it could be. Yes...IT is stressful. But humans have an amazing capacity to adjust to their environments and thrive. This is one of the most miraculous reasons why we rule and survive so well as a species.
If you take care of yourself....continue to build & grow in your skills & career, then life just gets better. You become dominant by default with whatever vocation you choose. Never forget...President Reagan was 72 when he elected to Office. He was 80 when he was succeeded. He was argueably one of the most effective, productive and successful Presidents we've ever had in this country. He had been in Politics for over 30 years. He knew how to -deal-.
Mr. Wallen, before you make such ludicrous comments like the ones in your post(s), do your homework. Look around you. MOST of the IT Professionals I see at Microsoft Conferences and Road Shows have grey hair and are well into their 40's, 50's and beyond. By the time we're that age, we've learned our craft and have matured to the point of knowing how to successfully deal with the stresses that the world dishes out. Our lives are more peaceful and prosperous because of this.
Please....quit while you're ahead in this arguement.

The negative remarks about age are totally unacceptable. This is equivalent to racial/religious/gender discrimination, and is ILLEGAL. This point in the article has offended many people, though otherwise the article does make some valid points. The fact about the so-called 'stress' that people talk about - its simply the consequence of bad planning, and incompetent employees who do not know their subject properly. IT is NOT about 'Professionalism' - that is a fairly shallow concept - it is all about KNOWLEDGE.

I'm really kind of embarrassed for you on this one. If i were your boss you would be trying to pull my foot out of your rear about now. This gives me an entirely new view of Tech Republic because they hired someone like you. Too bad!

I've worked professionally in the IT industry for about 16 years. Here is part of my history. On time, I worked as a consultant at a well known financial firm outside of New York for years. I had to train another worker tor assist me in doing the job. After 6 months I was laid off, and he replaced me. I sure at $10 less an hr. Just before I left, he still had to ask me questions which should have been elementary. I know that he certainly wasn't up to the job when I left. I still work in IT and I had to take a major pay cut. All the businesses see is cutting cost. I took a temp job at a web hosting call center. I worked there for about 10 months and found another job thankfully. It is a good thing I did. Six months later they closed the call center and moved the jobs to Bulgaria. I see certain parts of the IT industry going straight down hill. There's an old very true saying, " You pretty much get what you pay for."

Sorry to hear about your bad luck. Frankly many tasks in IT don't require a great deal of skill and are routine. The best job opportunities will be with good companies, who value employees with good knowledge and commitment to continued learning.

I had to read the replies and think about this carefully. I'm 57, in the best physical shape I've ever been in ( I was categorized as "platinum status" (?) after a life insurance examination last month), with 24+ years of very diverse IT experience. I can easily handle off hours and extreme overtime, since my other career is that of professional dance band front vocalist, and I can dance and sing till the wee hours.

Now that being said, the one thing that came to mind is... I have some moments where I think I may be getting jaded by the type of demands an IT career requires. My friends and the users I support often think I'm a miracle worker, and most of that is due to experience - after awhile, every problem resembles a problem I've already seen and conquered, or perhaps I know a solution some other wise guru conjured up. And there you go - do I want to continue in this vein? Or transition to something completely different, to spark creativity? Is it possible that after many years doing any one thing an intelligent person gets a little restless with the same-old every day, and yearns for a change? Maybe that's where the despicable 'age' commentary has some traction - we're old enough to know a lot, and have triumphed over almost everything - do we need more/different challenge? Meaning, we may not tire physically, but emotionally.

I'll probably be able to stay balanced longer than most, because I have the creative outlet of music & performance. In the meantime, I'll finish the multiple complex upgrades that I was hired to complete for a busy, public safety organization. And, I DO love my job.

Part of the reason younger workers are putting more hours in comes more from the lack of experience than need. Read the Mythical Man Month. There are top notch folks who can do 10 times the work of their fellow IT professional. I'm 42. I've been a software engineer, architect, Director, (code monkey), etc for 18+ yeas ad have been writing code since I was 10. Most of the newer engineers I run into with 10 or less years of experience have not gone through enough to even remotely keep up as their experience is generally limited to the projects they work on. I work everything from embedded to Web to mobile across most platforms and am getting better everyday. you are right about one thing though. Many companies do not want to pay the fee for experience. I've had clients who have had to figure it out the hard way between trying to out source or trying to go with someone younger and most fail when it some to the whole SDLC stack and working with business, legal etc to build the products they really want. Experience trumps this everyday of the week.

The Mythical Man Month was way before his time! (Age: 49 Started in technology at 18, Avionics for 3 years, then IT) Those are the things us geezers know about and the kids don't. We have all learned from mistakes, both ours and others. The kids think every thing that comes to mind is new and brilliant, we have seen most of it before. Like these new fancy functional programing languages, like Lisp.

BTW, did nobody explain that the older you get the less sleep you need? http://news.discovery.com/human/adults-sleep-age.html so the whole working longer hours is off base. We don't need to work longer hours because we work smarter. We handle small problems while they are still small.

I find it almost comical that people like you are just so eager to toss the seasoned IT force right out the window just because we have reached a certain age. I've been in this industry quite a while now and I've seen them come and go. I can't tell you how many young hot-shots I have had to baby-sit over the years because they did not have any common sense or any real experience beyond the tests they cheated on and the beer bong parties they managed to survive in college. Try putting an actual tool in their hands and see what happens. Really, Jack, you should try thinking a little before sticking your foot in your mouth.

ALL the young people who've worked with us, under the age of 30, are no longer here, either they found a "better" job, couldn't take the stress and long hours, or eventually just plain didn't like it. I went back to school at 45, got this job at 49, and have been at it for 7 years now. Granted I'm not on the road as much now as I was at first, but I think I embody most of the qualities you mentioned: patience, skill set, desire and ability to learn, persistence. Over and over, my "older" colleagues and I are in for the long-haul, at times working all night, when the youngsters were falling all around at 9 p.m. Yeah, maybe they partied the night before, but they just don't have the pacing and stamina that experience bestows. And like someone else mentioned, they're often not interested in the solution, but the quick-fix band-aid--in and out. If I had listened to you when I first thought about going back to school, I probably wouldn't have done it...and I'm glad I did. Sure it's a hard, stressful, often thankless job, but I get a lot of satisfaction from figuring things out with my team and learning another new thing EVERY day. So, I'd have to agree with most of the other responders, back off the age thing, it doesn't really apply here...oh, and "past my prime"...I don't think so. Thanks TechRepublic for many thought-provoking and informative articles.

If you can't laugh at work, why bother coming in at all! Laugh at yourself, your coworkers, the bosses, the rules and regs, your customers (maybe not in their face), the endless patches from you-know-who. Some days you just have to find the humor in the situation - or make something up if you have to - just to get through it.

In a long-term consultancy, or with an in-house IT staff position, the hours can be difficult for an older person. However, perseverance, a good work ethic, openness and honesty with clients, and the other characteristics in the article are much more important than age. One that was not mentioned is flexibility. Some clients have schedules that are as crazy and unpredictable as we do. You have to be able to roll with the punches. Some young people are unable or unwilling to do that, or try to save face instead of being open. I have problems with the statement in the article that, ".... sometimes you have to lie ..." Aside from the fact that it is morally wrong, it is also eventually going to blow up in your face if you do that.

In regard to age, I think that a 50-ish person can easily keep up with the 20-ers. However, unlike most 20-ers they tend to have more outside influences THAT COUNT...that is family, a home, etc. Which creates prioritization and stress...and eventually burn out.
Again in regard to age, I think the author is correct but for the wrong reason, IF you are fortunate enought to be in you 50's and still have a job....especially with a good company like HP or Lockheed....things are great. Now, say you were let go....at 50...with all that experience....and perceived price tag....well things aren't so rosey. Regardless of all the glowing things that people write about 'experience' and 'what it brings'....the bean counters are the ones that make the final decision.
I am sure if say two 20 year olds come in nice and fresh at say 30,000 each....and you have a senior experienced candidate coming in at 60,000....although from an experince, technical and trouble shooting aspect s/he could blow the doors of both the 20ers....bean counters will go for the 2 at 30000. Oh and did I mention that the benefits (given to either) would be more expensive for the 50er? More bean counting.

You see, from a tech viewpoint....odds are pretty good that the 50er is the one to pick for the position. Bean counter are not tech....much like management....they just see the bottom line.

So to summarize....if you are blessed to be in your 50's in the field and with a decent company...count you blessings....if you are one of the many 50ers cut a drift by the bean counters...well....you may end up teaching....or working at 1/3 at what you made at one time (likely with no benefits)....and many that are in that situation consider themselves....'lucky'

That's unfair dismissal, and against the law. Companies would be bulleting people left right and center if they could get away with that. New employees, especially younger ones, move on to new jobs looking for - guess what? - more money. Its like a dog chasing its tail.