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.

I retired from the industry many years ago and I was amused to read Jack's article as it seems that all those problems we had back then still exist. Ever-dissatisfied users, incredible frustration over system problems or legacy program glitches, urgent need to keep abreast of ever changing technologies etc etc. You still need 9 out of Jack's 10 "things". Yes I omitted the age thing, agreeing with the shouting in previous posts. I got in at 34 and retired at 60 still with an active brain (did part-time teaching to keep in tune). I''ll never forget a colleague who was almost hired by another company, until they realised he was (horror of horrors) 40. He was an excellent programmer and ticked all their boxes - except for their self-defeating age policy,

I 've been reading techrep for a couple of years now.Never thought I should write cause I felt i lived in a country were IT is perceived to be an all kinds of things ready to be plugged in AC/DC(greece).
I am 28 and already in the field for 10 years. Never had anything else to live by except IT. I simply can't refuse the fact that I agree with every one of you. Not only because the older more experienced ones still give me a hell of a hard time everyday I go to work but the younger ones still challenge me to teach them. I am in the exact middle of things (older bosses/younger IT) and can't help but noticing how both sides react. Yes its true that younger ones do give up early but give me a break how did you feel when you were younger. There is no such thing as equal opportunity once money gets involved or even "opportunity". The cheaper survives. No one gives a damn if you know Remote Desktop upside down.Young or old.It's money that counts in all fields.Bottom line is (speaking as youth) we should always try to doubt what olders are doing if we want to create a better place for the new ones to come. Never forget that. I never wear out quickly nowdays (ps:take a good look at the next sentence) I am experienced.

Both my manager and I are "older" IT workers. I challenge anyone to keep up with us and to have the same broad-based knowledge!

If your comments where directed toward race or sexual orientation no one would publish you again, and your statement about age is baseless and false.

I started my IT career when I retired from the military in 1996, long after your frame of the acceptable age, and I have been going strong ever since. It is not the old that have problems getting our of bed at two o???clock in the morning when a text message says a server is down, it is not the old that speed their work days on instant messenger when they should be doing the work their company pays them to do, and it is not the old that have the entitlement mentality that is ruining our country making us fall behind the rest of world in productivity.

Perhaps if the job required what some occupations in the military do, ruck 20 miles to targer through the night to do a dawn attract, except I knew solders that where 50 that did that.

You are full of crap, and it is you who needs a new career.

Nearly a complete failure here so far.

IT in general, favours the young for consumable positions, that is, the positions that consume lots of hours. Throw enough "monkeys" in a room and they will build a system. But they are flighty. They don't stick around to maintain the systems they build and don't see post implementation faults either. They jump ship at the slightest distraction for bigger and better assignments (larger trees with more green stuff). Many are simply not interested in a long career in one domain, where caretaking critical business knowledge is more important that fast following. They apply IT skills and do learn valuable business acumen but do not stay long enough to really leverage those skills in the one domain.
Speaking from 25 years experience in a quite tight domain of automation systems, knowledge and its application far outweighs fancy programming when the installation of new technology only sees light of day every 10-15 years. That would certainly be a long time between drinks for a young IT professional. Hence our current push for bypassing uni graduates and targetting mid-career professionals with big mortgages and lots of kids. These stable professionals are more likely to stick around and prvide long term value.

I don???t agree with what author has written. He may not know the real world. Most of the IT pros are of age range between 40-50 and They are real good. Age is not the criteria, it is the skill. Pls. stop publishing such articles.

Yes I agree, these articles are derogatory towards older employees, and may even put people off a career in IT, which otherwise may be well suited to them

But I suspect that you will not be in IT any more. At 57 I don't find it hard to work at all hours of the night and often send younger workers off to home because they are exhausted. Then again I am also a volunteer firefighter and notice that it is again the younger ones who think that they have all the energy but it is actually the older ones who are on the fireground at 3AM. Not having young children at home to look after also liberates the older workers.
If you at 40 think you are nearly past it then YOU possibly are - start looking for an alternate career (with less demands and responsibilities) right now. In the meantime don't insult those of us who can and will continue on regardless of physical age. I am fascintaed by technolggy and have no desire to remove myself from it, nor stop earning money from it while I can enjoy it.

Jack Wallen is an age discriminate moron and just one more of the useless who write blogs about things they know little about. I shall waste no more time reading his blogs.

I fit into the 'older' category of IT worker and am finding no troubles with age discrimination. Its actually quite the opposite. We are finding it hard to find good junior techs with the motivation and focus required to succeed. This has led to guys my age being in more demand than ever. So I cant complain!!

Also, the most valuable guys I have worked with are all 40+.
Experience, plus coming from a time when hard work was normal means these guys take long hours and complex problems in their stride. Just hope I can be at that level when I'm mid 40s!

Jack please! I have been at this since 1973. And guess what came across the desk last week. Old time IBM EBCDIC format data containing packed decimal. And of course none of the young pups had a clue. They wasted many hours Googling it before it landed on my desk. There is a reason for seasoned mentors. It is called institutional knowledge. And a skills exam I took not long ago placed me far higher than my young counter parts and I still can do the hours. Although I stopped the late night partying years ago.

Do not continue to discriminate based on age. Young in IT tends to mean dumb.

Hi all you good IT guys out there.I am going on 70 come July. I started in the electrical trade, moved on to Electronics then TCM got hold of me to do IBM outsourcing.Thats where the IT virus got hold of me and i've got the passion ever since. I am running a small business network at the moment [heaven help them} learning new tricks as i go and enjoying every moment of IT. God is good and age just a number!

I got my first job in IT at age 43, after staying home and raising my children for 20 years. I work in the public education sector and most of our IT people are over the age of 40--many much older. Although we may not have the energy of a 20-somthing, we more than make up for that with patience! I am told time and again by the end-users I assist that my unflappable calm is simply amazing. No amount of chaos can rattle me at my age, which make me more productive than a younger worker who is too stressed by the situation to accomplish anything. I do agree that the desire to learn is a key to success. If you aren't willing to keep up with the latest and greatest, you will fall behind.

with the age nonsense you spouted. In my fifties, I have more energy, drive and persistence than the twenty-somethings in my office, for example. Plus, I can spell ...

I've been in IT since 1960. My experience makes me better. Recently I recovered data for a client who had two younger people in for hours and couldn't find it!

You are right, at age 54 I'm ready to to take a nap by 3pm. Give me a break. And why not include married people with kids. After all how can you expect someone with family commitments to to put in such long hours?

Thanks for the chuckle this morning.

One thing that makes a difference IMHO is the type of environment that you work in. I have 25+ years in IT and can say that I was absolutley happiest when the company I worked for did not outsource anything and we did the work - regardless of all the pluses and minuses of the job itself. I worked as a contracted outsourced IT staff member, currently as a IT manager wholly dependent upon outsourced people and very early in my career as a person who did the IT work for the compnay that paid me. By far that was the best becuase everybody there had a stake in the success of the company. No lawyers, contracts and amendments. It was very peaceful by today's standards.

Once upon a time, one of my bosses had a sign on his desk:
Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill.
Ha, now I understand....

If you are an American worker, no matter what age, corporate management will judge you overpaid when compared to the $2 an hour talent available in Bangalore and those come without benefits. Big plus. Outsourcing has killed off great sectors of the IT field in this country, all for "cheaper,faster,better" (one word) and if you fire all that IT DEADWOOD, shareholder value will skyrocket. Lies but American management believes it. So, move to India, live badly and the jobs will come to you.

"Cheaper, faster, better" should have been "cheaper, unable to understand, worse than before the call" ( 9 words)

Your comments are all true. Support from India generally is soooo poor it is not funny. Painful really. And the loss of productivity for the company is horrendous, but invisible.

Cheaper, cannot do it unless you plug into the "New Dehlia network", and God help you if you need an answer in a meeting. Can't..."Let me think about it" well at close as you can get to that in butchered english. Then they go back and call there buddies and get an answer... and 9 times out of 10, it's not right or will not fit all of the reqs. Fortunately I'm see a trend that Management Sees that the cost of this is double - because we have to fix everything. And don't get me started on the consulting firms. - OMG they are even worse!

As a country, we've outsourced hundreds of thousands, if not millions of jobs. But, it's not just India. The rest of Asia is getting a piece of the pie and getting bigger. I've heard from several recruiters that China is the next India. Mexico and several South American countries are getting their outsourcing gigs up and running. Even some of the old Eastern-Bloc countries are making a play for outsourced IT work...

I am not a racist or sexist. It seems to me that some people are out of touch with the reality. To be successful one needs to be lucky.
It is very important which technology to go with say Microsoft, UNIX, web etc.
Interviews are very important. These days IT is dominated by Chinese and Indians, and 99% they give jobs to their people.
Recently I was invited to an interview by the name of Richard. I was expecting Anglo-Saxon white man, but it was an Asian! I had all qualifications, experience ??? but not the right skin or country of origin!
Let us publicly speak about the real world.

The age thing was of course completely nonsense. But if I read this dude's bio correctly, he's in his early 30s and is a technical writer. I too was once a technical writer. While a good tech writer is hard to find, this position in no way qualifies one to be an expert on the IT field itself. You're outside looking in. It's like a nurse writing about the experience of being a doctor.

Btw, I'm 58 and have been in the IT biz for 15 years, after a 25-year military career. I'm not quite ready to be put out to pasture, yet.

Ok, you did get 9 out of 10, but age is a great asset. I have been doing technology for 47 years and run rings around the youngsters in the technology company that I own. In fact, I run two shifts of staff and I work both shifts personally. Give it a few years and your opinion on age will change as you finally gain real wisdom!

Jack,

Who asked you to troll this one through the forum? Because this sure seems inflammatory. When I first read it, I thought: "Yeah, he's right. I've not picked up a new gig in a few years for that "age" reason (Learned about it through a friend on the inside, and I'm only 46. Been doing this for about 30 yrs though.)". Just cheaper to hire the young guy. I get it....

Then, before I decided to respond to the obvious flame-bait, I read the current responses. Lo, and behold, you got the desired effect. And don't tell me that this wasn't the intent.

Reminds me of that post somewhere that implied Corp IT staff were "minor leaguers", but Consultants were "PROS". Now THAT one, I left alone. Way too much emotion behind that one! (Not mine, I do have that thick-skin thing and am getting wise enough to recognize flame-bait when I see it.)

I commend you guys here at TR and ZDNet for the loss of interest in discussing matters technical, and resorting to trolling for arguments. Please tell me, when you selected the order of the items in the list, did you already expect to prove a point?

Allow me:

1) Thick Skin - In a nutshell, what follows is going to test that "Thick Skin", aka "No Offense intended, but..."

2) Persistence - Are you brave enough to read all of this? Or will you be p***ed by my next statement?

3) Youth - The ultimate in flame bait, guaranteed to get the readers uptight, and my eyecount up.

(Breaking the fourth wall here: I imagine most readers of TR - ARE - more mature, seasoned IT types.)

I'll stop there, but if you read the rest of the list, you can add your own.

4) Patience
5) Skills
6) Ability to Improvise
7) Sense of PR
8) Connections
9) Desire to learn
10) Passion (Oh yeah! We got the Passions up. Read the replies.)

It becomes more difficult each day to find good discussion forums. But the search goes on. If little else, at least I'm assured of one good laugh daily here.

M.

So at age 45 you what? Retire on 1/2 a 401k? Start you own IT firm? Please, IT has no age limit. You are soooo wrong on this. I know some retired or near-retired IT people that put some 30 somethings to shame. Plus most colleges now are tuning out idiots that your company has to train! The age thing is a HUGE misconception promoted by aging IT management that don't want to deal with smart, mature talent and instead want ignorant "moldable" young slave admierers around them. Yechh.

Given the reaction to your comments Jack, I would like to wish you all the best in your search for a new career.. Maybe a careen in comic book writing would more suit your talents. In that genre fantasy is highly prized.

An observation: Most of the responses here seem to be by folks lacking in item number 1. Where's all the discussion about the other points?

Item 10: Totally agree, without passion for the implementation and support of technology, I would have ditched this field years ago. I love implementing improvements and improving implementations of technology.

You may as well become a MD. You'll be doing something that has meaning and make more than $38,000 a year.

Just sayin'.

So maybe I'm biased, but I think #3:Youth is Mutually Exclusive of #4:Patience and #5:Skills. I don't think you can get Patience and Skills overnight. It takes time.

It's a bitter pill to swallow when they told me back in the 80's - "Get into computers - You'll always have a job" and I've been unemployed for a year now.

I CANNOT believe in this day and age someone would actually practice AGE DISCRIMINATION so openly and flagrantly!!! This guy would NEVER be hired by ANY corporation that at all values the fact of not wishing to be sued for employing someone who ACTUALLY PROMOTES AGE DISCRIMINATION!!!

His article shows just how IMMATURE AND IGNORANT he is about anyone who has been in the IT field for any length of time. I can do more from home, at a restaurant, in fact, ANYWHERE and it doesn't tire me or anyone else my age out.

Methinks Mr. Jack Wallen needs to grow up and think twice about EVER writing anything of a public nature again.

I am also flabbergasted and unsure how TechRepublic could EVER let any of this drivel ever be associated with their organization. Does the publishing of this article mean that TechRepublic actually endorses the immature and incorrect conclusions of this illiterate and immature author?

I think a PUBLIC APOLOGY by the author as well as a statement from TechRepublic is needed here. Where is Toni Bowers? WHO was the editor that allowed this drivel to ever be published? Doesn???t TechRepublic have any kind of editorial prerogative?

You give ten things an IT pro needs. What a real success IT pro needs is two tricks. If you are good at technical issues - whatever the job entails, that is only one trick. Match that with good communication skills (can communicate with IT people, managers, end users), and you go from being just like anyone else, to someone who has something valuable to add to the organization.

......you'll be fine. If you're missing 2-3 of the others, then yeah, you better have youth cause you gonna be up late nites gaining the experience that age has. I am thankful cause at 53 I am still truckin'. I moved into IT full time about 11 yrs ago (I was "computer technology" oilfield trash for 21 yrs before that, you want to talk about youth as a requirement, try that one). In corporate USA I clawed my way to IT Mgt before dumping out (my choice) due to the politics (think knives in my back). Consulted for a year or so and then took a position (from one of my contracts) with a small, but successful, family owned and focused business. Note: I will never be CIO or CTO, but then still I like to actually touch the technology (and not in a duisturbing way ya perverts...)

A passion for the possibilities presented by technology combined with the years of experience from the school of "Hard Knocks" sounds like the recipe for a great IT person. When the operational security and data integrity of an entire organization is hanging in the balance you had better have someone who always "plans for the worst and forever has an alternate plan in place. In a time of panic you can't afford to be bankrupt of plans, preparation or nerves-of-steel. All those come together in their strongest form in "some" of the older IT staff. When you can find one, use them to teach others If they are prepared to learn and managers have the courage to manage the skills training of their staff.
Unfortunately, managers generally feel threatened by the experience and knowledge of older staff, when instead they should be happy to have that knowledge and experience available.
"Joy-Stick-Jockeys" with the reboot/restart mentality are a danger until they are paired with older, more experienced workers.

You need to be able to function while living in fear.

Brush up on your Hindi. Although you may not have even heard of it, India's second official language is English.

Jack,
I really enjoyed reading your article. All the whiners on here giving you flak about the age comments are either haters or super egomaniacs who will probably implode from all the stress built up in their old bodies. I believe you hit the nail head on stating the younger the age the better the ability to work the hours on a continued basis. There's nothing wrong with that. Anyone can work long hours however the human body performs better at a younger age.
Every point you made was well thought and written. I've worked in the IT field now for over 10 years and I love what I do and it is time consuming, continued learning, demanding, and often stressful job. Patience is key to success in this field. If you don't have it, you shouldn't be working in IT. You also have to wear many hats including, helpdesk, desktop, security, and networking as well as server and DB administration and Telco. It's more than just having an MSCE certificate. Thank you for writing this article.

Dittobot alert.

And how are you supposed to get the hats if you don't have a few years on you...give me a break.

I have been in IT for over 20 yrs and I am enjoying the challenge that the discipline brings. I am now 48 yrs old and I have noticed that the younger generation do process technology faster, but with many mistakes and not a deep understanding of IT. What I know now, I would not trade it for the opportunity to be 20 again. I have grown with age and so will the youth, if they can sustain.

1. My ex-husband, soon to be 60, is DESPERATELY hung onto by his company, because he is one of the FEW PEOPLE THEY HAVE who STILL KNOWS IBM Assembly Language (and, YES, there are BANKING and FINANCIAL systems that are still based on IBM Assembler - more than you would think). The younger people eschew COBOL, etc - they only know the "sexier" languages such as C, C++, Java, etc, etc
2. This 1958 Baby (yah, do the math) - just went through the THIRD data center move in 12 years, and put in 70-80 hour weeks because the OUTSOURCE COMPANY FROM INDIA had NO CLUE, MOSTLY, about our servers, operating systems, etc, etc. Even now, when I and one other DBA are left, we STILL have to do "operational DBA" work (when someone figures what this actually means - let me know) - keeping systems up and running, bailing out Outsourcer Butt. The outsource company has many, many bright young people working for lower wages, but when they DO NOT have the LATEST operating systems, applications, databases, etc - they are thrown for a loop - in the REAL world, you have companies STILL running Windows NT4, SQL Server 2000, Oracle7 and Oracle8 - because end-users either lack the $$$$ and/or the will for upgrades - and, many times, it is the Old, Tired, Decrepit People Who Still Know How To Keep Them Running, Thank You Very Much......

IT for the young only? I think not - having started in the days of the IBM 360 and still working in the field today at a second career in the nonprofit industry - I feel fully qualified to say that as long a you are willing to learn, IT is a good place to be at any age.
As to your list - two important skills/abilities not mentioned are
1) the ability to plan ahead and avoid crisis situations
2) flexibility to be able to adapt your plans as business needs evolve.
CCP

1: Thick skin
You need it to be able to put up with reading this article.

2: Persistence
This is necessary to keep you coming back to this dribble as my sides were aching from laughing so hard at such off the mark $#1t.

3: Youth
The reason for laughing so hard. I'm 53, all the "Youth" comes to me looking for answers, which I can give them. They can have all the book smarts you can pack 'em with. The wisdom of what to use when and moreover why isn't in the books.

4: Patience
To keep telling the "Youth" the same answers over and over and not blowing your top.

5: Skills
See the third sentence it #3. Skills don't come from a book. If you want to work on computers... Think like one.

6: The ability to improvise
And fix the impetuous mistakes of youth.

7: A good sense of PR
To keep from knocking the egotistical latter climbers on their respective butts when they tell everyone how good they are and can't back it up.

8: Connections
I had a lot of connections back in the '70s. But that's another story. The only connections I seem to have are those asking questions.

9: The desire to learn
This is the one that should have started with the sentence. "This one should go without saying."
My parents told my when I was young. "The day you stop learning is the day they put a Lilly in your hand." I. E. You'll be DEAD.

10: Passion
This one is redundant again... LOL See #9. No passion, no learning. The key to ANY learning is passion / desire.

Jack, I've enjoyed your articles for a long time. This one however, should have either been given more thought, or stayed home.

is, my Few Fellow Sisters In IT: A set of 'virtual testicles' (yah, I said it). When I go to technical meetings, I am usually the only female present (and increasingly, the only person born in the United States)......Men can argue, even curse at each other, but let me even raise my voice, and "I'm hysterical, out-of-control', yadda, yadda, yadda". So be it - I have three sons, and being the anatomical minority in the house, _never_ expected the seat to be up; my first job was on a major Eastern railroad, in a freight yard that did not have a separate women's bathroom - no problem; just announce myself before I came in, and no one in there had anything that I hadn't seen before, anyway. I let guys be guys, and if they are checking out/commenting on female attributes, I am appreciating the fact that UPS guys generally have nicer legs than FedEx guys and waaaay better legs than the United States Postal Service......

I've been 30 years in the IT industry and I can tell you one thing, the longer you stay in IT, the better chances you have to answer in one minute what takes younger technicians hours or even days. It's experience - which comes with time - what really makes an IT guy valuable for the job.
I've met a lot of young people who are really smart, fast thinkers and patient, but the majority of them - not all - think in terms of novelty and like to resolve isolated, easy problems. When it comes to big solutions - normally to big issues - you need the big picture and a lot of knowledge of disparate things covering so many areas. That is possible only with experience and, by the way, when you have the experience, you don't need to stay late like when you were young because you make much fewer mistakes than those who are just beginning the journey you've been in for so long.

Your article is good, but #3 was totally out of touch. Hope you learn from this mistake.

#3 and #8 make me think that you are a pretty stupid.

Hey, Wallen,

Thanks a lot for using your pulpit to further reinforce and deepen the age discrimination that is sadly all too prevalent in our industry. I'm mid 50's but i can and do work many of my colleagues under the table. For you to imply that only the young have energy and drive is an insult to those of us who are older but work just as hard (or harder) than our younger cohorts. Big fat rasberries to you, sir!

0: It is the people that count.

Showing genuine concern for your customers, management, and co-workers is vital. They will overlook minor flaws if they know that you really want to help them, and that you are doing the best possible job that can be done to take care of their needs.

I'm 48 years old and I can run rings around any 20-35 year olds working today, I have much more experience than most of them will ever have and I'm still very active and up to date in my field. The young requirement is total BS! It's something that is hard enough to overcome in the work place, but when so call professionals like yourself promote this kind of discrimination and bigotry. Personally I think someone, namely you, should be fired! As far as I'm concerned Its directly equivalent to using the N-Word and you should be complete ashamed of yourself and this posting. I'm amazed you would create an atmosphere that you too will someday have to deal with. I hope you some day can't find work because today you promoted this unjustified and discriminatory crap!

BTW. many research studies have also disproven the myth that younger workers are in any way better than older workers, in fact most of these studies have shown older workers are actually better performers and that they almost always bring experience that 20-25 year olds just can???t have!

I suppose the stuff you talk about is pretty relevant to those who do network, system administration and help desk type stuff, but most of it is completely irrelevant for programmers and systems analysts.

For Programmers (and analysts) the most essential skill is the simple ability to figure stuff out. Old code, new code, business problems. Interpersonal communication is a big deal too.

Over the years I've had users come to me asking for byzantinely complicated projects, and I've talked to 'em about their needs and why they wanted what they were asking for, and a project of months became a project of weeks, which fulfilled their needs even better than what they initially asked for.

But, I suppose programmers are a pretty small minority of IT folk nowadays.

I'm almost 62 and loving my job as a stand-alone remote site technician. Most of the work is desktop support with lending on- hand help to the network and server teams at the client's home location. What's interesting is that I was supporting two different clients up to six months ago until I was released from one because of contract changes. I was replaced by a younger technician subcontractor. Although his basic skills seem sufficient, he's not been able to make it work out. I've now been asked by the client to bring me back to straighten things out. I don't think I have any skills out of the ordinary, my company has quite a few stand-alone remote site techs that are at least equally qualified. Some of them are older, some younger.
What matter's is that they have all the qualities other than age listed in the article.

This screed is just another hackneyed affirmation of the accepted stereotypes.

YOU can set YOUR boundaries when you are good enough. I NEVER wore an electronic leash and I have some reservations about any employment that requires it. A landline is all I have or need. No " Brain Nuke " stuff here....

When everything starts crashing after a " routine " upgrade, your EXPERIENCE and LEADERSHIP skills ( leaders are made, not born ) as a result of YEARS in the IT business will often save the day.

The size of the ME WALL is usually inversely proportional to the technical skills of the person who has it...

Younger people are famous for " reinventing the wheel ". Many of us old farts sit back and watch ( if there isn't an immediate crisis ) and wait until the " me wall " person learns a bit about " book learning " as opposed to real life. The SMART ones ( not the usual Bullsh!t, More **** and Piled Higher and Deeper types ) ask about what has worked in the past to solve the problem.

between 25 and 45? What a bunch of arbitrary non-sense. Why not 24 and 46? Sir, I've worked with many I.T. pro's who are well over the age of 45 and are amazing I.T. / programming pro's. You should write an article of public apology for that foolish and offensive comment in this article.

step aside and let us show you whatzup.

;^)

Somebody is going to need to fix what you break...

Once upon a time, I was a desktop technician on an inhouse team. After years of doing it well, they decided to promote us to different positions, and bring in a team of young guns with our hardware vendor to do the job cheaper.

I went on to manage projects, but within six months I had a new responsibility. Teaching the young guns how to provide good customer service. I heard all the complaints from the customers, many of whom had known me for years. I worked with the team's supervisor to improve their communications and skills. I even sat in on interviews when they hired new techs.

Mad tech skills are only part of the equation.

Well done with this list... I needed the reminder about 'thick skinned' again. Thanks!

I, too, am an over 50 engineer, and doing quire well in IT. The reason; this is, as you implicate, a knowledge profession. The lack of willingness to 'keep up' with technology is certainly a 'must have' for this profession. I also agree with all of the remaining nine as well minus the age references. However, I have seen entirely too many 20-45 year olds that are not willing to 'keep up'.

Jack:

Ahhh I see blatant age discrimination...
Your description of the IT field being best suited for the younger professionals is wrong across the board. Ha!

First I???m 60 and yes I can???t do a few things I did when I was 25 BUT I can do a lot more
then an average 25 can do now at 60. Example I get no more then 5 hours of sleep a night. Hence I can work longer hours if need be. 2. I have all of my (youthful) emotional issues solved, so more drama crap. I bring to the table patience that only a shogun IT oldie can bring I???m not interested in anything less then quality work however long it takes. I???m in better physical shape then I???ve ever been - even better then when I was 25! That???s because I???m not out partying or trying to look for a mate etc. all night long! All that???s behind me now??? If I were you Jack I would get out more often and meet some of the oldies in the IT field that take care of these companies back end and front end systems. There???re a lot of us still out there enjoying the work. Unfortunately we have guys like you that are giving HR more ammo to show us the door at age 45 or 50 because of the bull S*@T statistics related to aging that they get from their insurance companies. Everyone knows that discrimination is alive and well in the US and the companies want us off their books for many reasons, now you???ve given them a few more.
Thanks Jack!

We all know that any site (heck almost ANYthing) revolves around money. I think that somebody finally figured out something besides and OS centric post, (although it is a tried and true pot stirring method, generating hits, which equals revenue) needed to be tried. Enter this posting.

Kinda sorry I bit the bate.

I have often wondered how it is that so many managers have actually found the capacity to be such blithering idiots as to think that people older than 45 should not be hired. Energy? We're used to working hard. But, we're balanced. We know how to conserve our energy and persevere for the long haul. We have the experience to get things done fast, right, safely, and without screwing up everything else in the company in the process. We know how to negotiate toward a win-win rather than attempting to bully someone into a win-lose. If you're looking for ethics, your younger person may be fiery but misdirected while your older person may be keenly focused, provided that the people in question actually have any ethics. And if they don't, you shouldn't be hiring them anyway, or if you have hired them, the sooner you dismiss them the better. But, make sure you're seeing things correctly before you do and do it right. Whoever said you can't teach an old dog new tricks was an idiot or a person making excuses. Old dogs have a foundation to build on. We may not be able to answer all the technical interview questions regarding functions and parameters that are almost never used but are generally encapsulated into a compatibility library and accessed from a higher level in a more consistent and maintainable and reliable manner. So, the fact that we don't know something may be good thing. If your programs are chuck full of system calls, watch out because the system may change and so will ALL of your programs or modules. You may find that an older candidate may experience a little confusion because he or she has extensive experience working with dozens of computer languages, applications, and operating systems and tends to remember the foundations of commonality and the deltas from those foundations most recently in use. But give them a program in a language they have worked on in the past, and they'll understand it, analyze it, and improve on it making it faster, more reliable, more maintainable, and more scalable.

When you see a company full of nothing but young people and a manager stretching his suspender straps out and boasting about his superior intelligence for it, you have a manager on your hands who has no clue just how stupid and incompetent he is. Companies need a balance. Diversity is key. Differing opinions bring more perspectives, more potential solutions, and better solutions. You need the energy and focus of the youth and you need the experience of the older employee. Without both, your company simply sucks big time. Not only are you open to law suits when the older employees get sick of being discriminated against, but you're in for protests, boycotts, or perhaps the older employees will simply forget about taking that approach altogether because it won't be necessary. The companies with IQ's over 30 will come along and see an opportunity, grab it, and have an advantage the arrogant jackasses crying out for youth only will never have, and that is balance. In those companies, you will have experience training the youth and the youth training the older employee in newer technologies. You'll have a synergy that cannot be defeated. You'll have complete solutions rather than pathetic broken ones that spring from a hope that companies only struggle ineffectively to achieve.

But, don't go overboard and hire only old people unless you have a good reason to focus on getting them back to work. And if you do, consider filling in with younger folks or your company and your technology will die off as your older employees retire.

The key is balance. If you hire your employees based on their competence rather than being a coward and a closet bigot against the older and unemployed, you'll end up with better employees and more committed employees, too.

Most of the comments start by making the point that age isn't relevant and then beat to death the idea that older is better. Come on, get back to work!

First, a disclosure. Im 39 years old this year, have worked in the IT industry for 15+ years, and currently freelance my net admin and business skills to small businesses because I DONT want to work 50+ hours per week in a "regular" job.

The bad thing about lists like this is that theres always an exception to the general rule. On the whole I agree with the author's list, including the controversial topic of age. Some people my age and older certainly do retain keen mental skills. I've been priviliged to meet and work with people even into their 80s who are as sharper in general in their area than the younger generation coming into the workforce. Others (like myself) find that as the years click on it gets harder and harder to retain SPECIFIC technical details like we used to. I used to have a near eidetic memory for technical material, but now if Im honest I'll confess that I have to work harder to retain that information, and I have more trouble concentrating. Is it age? Is it environment? Is it my chronic sleep deprivation from sleep apnea? I cant say. I DO know that (anecdotally) numerous other professionals in my community express similiar issues. Moreover, statistics seem to show many mid level IT professionals abandon IT in the middle of their career, suggesting perhaps that as we grow older we really cant hack it anymore. Cast in amongst the two extremes are undoubtedly people who choose the wrong programming language or server platform, and in the fullness of time find their skills no longer in demand. Some care to relearn new material. Others dont. For some its an ability issue. Others just get lucky. Others find the passion (also on the list) has just faded. Whatever the source, it happens, and the BLS data supports that no matter how many 50+ people get on here and say something to the contrary, older people are outnumbered in the IT industry.

Im not saying (and I dont think the author is saying) that as we grow older we become less valuable. In my own case, where technical skills once reigned without equal now big picture thinking and broad systems understanding, along with patience, passion, and wisdom prevail. These skills are even more valuable than my old technical skills, because they're much more difficult to teach, whereas many day to day technical issues can be solved by SMEs or by a quick search of Google.

Assuming the rule proves true for you, the real issue is to ask yourself what youre going to do about it. There are options (like management - dont laugh). And if you find your technical prowess is still intact as you get closer to retirement, well then thank the good lord every day, because their are plenty of people for whom it simply isnt true.

Many of my co-workers are in your prime age range, Jack. And almost every one of the younger ones has trouble managing his call queue, to the extent that management requires them to plan their day on paper. Those of us that are exempt from this requirement are, with one exception, over 45.

And, at 56, I can still hold up my end of the 4u rack-mount UPS.

Experience -comes with it. I always love job advertisements that say " WANTED: NEW COLLEGE GRAD" (read that: cheap salary, just a kid) with EXPERIENCE IN Windows 2008 server, ActiveDirectory, Linux, Tape Management, Data Center Clustering, volume backups, disaster recovery scenarios and Ubuntu. OH REALLY, like a fresh kid knows all that in a real world experience???

You get what you pay for.

OK, I only read half the replies, not because i was running out of energy, but because I had to get it off my chest. Jack, you are full of crap! With age comes experience, with experience comes knowledge, and when you know what the hell you are doing, the stress level drops. From what I see, the young inexperienced ones have the stress if they care at all.
We older guys stick with the problem until it's resolved, most of the kids want to bail as fast as their limited experience can take them. If it weren't for Google, they couldn't fix most of the problems that come their way.
So before you play the friggin age crap again, think about how many old people you might piss off. We may have the answer you need!

Although some people over 50 may choose to leave IT and may no longer enjoy the challenges of working in a high-paced, high stressed environment, many highly intelligent people will continue to need and thrive on such challenges into their 80's or 90's. So, showing 50 year olds the door seems rather pathetically stupid to me. I say show the idiot manager the door and get a manager who actually knows how to hire people based on their contributions to their employers' success. Then let them train the younger folks so that the competence level of the organization actually grows.

Furthermore, what kind of morale do you expect an organization to have which promises nothing but the glue factory for those over 50? What kind of morale can you expect to maintain by showing your employees there is no hope of receiving promotions, of being rewarded for a job well done?

People think narrowly when they don't consider how important hope for the future plays in establishing commitment and loyalty. And in recent years it seems we have tried to operate without it. We throw jobs overseas to dodge taxes and fair labor laws and laws against discrimination, and then we play the closet bigot here discriminating illegally in such a cowardly way as to make such unfair discrimination easy to hide. What kind of loyalty can you expect from employees when you set an example totally void of any kind of "real" integrity? When even your integrity is fake, your ability to convince people or elicit commitment lacks. You may pride yourself with your momentary success in your latest scam, with your ability to get away with bad behavior, but your customers watch. Your employees watch. Your management watches. Your stockholders keep their eye on you waiting for that moment when your sins catch up with you and your collapse is simply colossal.

If you have a brain, the faster you end your love affair with any kind of unfair discrimination, the better off you and your company will be. Do your part for your country. Put the unemployed back to work. I'm not saying you have to hire the lazy bums who don't contribute anything or that you should hire the incompetent. But, give the unemployed and those over 50 another look. You may be looking into a gold mine that others were simply too stupid to explore. Actually, I have to correct myself on that. You will be looking into a gold mine many were too stupid to explore.

Come on Jack, you've got to be kidding! All of your points in the article are pretty much right on except for #3 "Youth". I can maybe see some companies (like perhaps Google) that might have predominantly younger employees in their 20's and 30's. However, there are plenty of other companies that hire and retain folks in their 50's and beyond. Some of it has to do with the culture and age of the company. For example, you will always see "mature" folks working at government jobs or at defense contractors. Well established companies will also have more "mature" staff members. I will be turning 43 next week, and I'm one of the younger employees where I currently work. When I was a manager I hired a guy that was 58, and he had more experience doing use cases than any of the younger employees. I think that you should remove #3 "Youth". I think #10 "Passion" sufficiently covers the real meaning of what you mistakenly put as "youth".

I find that it not so much what you say, but what you don't say that will determine how long you will survive in IT.

Enough has been said of your ageist comments that I hope you have learned. I also take issue with your acceptance of verbal abuse in the workplace. I would like to think IT has some civility. And if it's a corporate environment, rather than taking it, you should be allying with your co-workers and fighting for worker respect and rights.

I see some stress in my collegues and have experienced it myself. I've been in the workforce for 45 years and have 20 years business management and have been involved in programming and IT since it began to live in a PC in the mid-to-early 1980's.

Jack, you seem to have touched a nerve. Maybe the respect IT and software development folks is lacking in the world. I feel it. US techies are taking a great hit because of a lack of wisdom in the industry, especially the older developers. We've worked hard to gain skills and take on new challenges. How do you think this blog got established?

I don't mean to pick on you for your lack of understanding, however, you epitomize the misperception of age verses youth. I bet you are in your early 30's, and I could be wrong, you may be in your 20's. If you are in your 40's you better get with it because you are getting behind.

Jack is a metaphor for youth gone wild in a world of entitlement and deceit, a world that has lost its faith in a future for personal discipline and hope for a long career that might produce a retirement worth having. I believe the lack of faith in what we can become as we grow older is a prevalent demeanor among those who believe that no one cannot produce a lick of product worth buying because we've seen it all; A place where the McDonalds, fast food syndrome rules.

Wisdom is something to pursue. Caring for one another is important. Gotta have a wing man. We need to unite our efforts. Survival is important and truth is something you can sink your teeth into.

Absolutely amazing!!!!! As of my contribution Jack, justifiably, has been "ripped a new place to sit!" I will not belabor the already expressed age issue except to add the following regarding the age/energy equation ... at least my take on the subject.

At age 56 minus 2 months, I begin my mornings at a pace far above most of those half my age and as the day progresses my energy builds on itself until I have completed everything I needed to complete that day. During major national rollouts, it is more the norm than the exception to work 18 to 22 hour days, 7 days a week of 3 to 6 months. Part of those long days entail processing paperwork, uploading site documentation photos and detailing on-site work. I have had many days on projects lit this where I drove 2+ hours to get to the first site, leaving at 5AM to get to a 7AM call, working 15 to 30 sites and returning to the hotel at 11PM and needing to scan signoff docs, upload images, and provide detailed site reports only to get to bed at 2 AM and be on the road again at 5AM! The attrition rate for the 20 to 35 age range is greater than 85%.
There is and always will be an age discrimination factor in employment and it cuts both ways! In a recent conversation with an occupational therapist who specializes in high profile, high intellectual demand career profiles, I discussed this issue. What they disclosed was that for every 5 entry/mid-level hires, the trend is now to hire two experienced (50+) candidates. Why? Because they have come to realize that the experienced (50+) ITs have more than twice combined knowledge of the entry/mid-level hires. There is a meticulous nature with this class of employee, developed through the many years of work/life experience that affords them the ability to resolve a problem (not just come up with a band-aid fix) 3 to 5 times more quickly than their younger counterparts.
Jack appears to promote the idea that the 40+ person's ability to process information slows with age. On the surface, this may appear accurate except ... he does not factor in two very important aspects.
1. At this stage in one's career, the interest is in "in gauging the brain before the mouth." Time is a valuable commodity and they want to make sure they are understood the first time. This means carefully evaluating the original question, looking at the possible follow-up questions to the prospective original response and formulation an answer that will answer the original question and deal with the follow-up questions before they are asked. On the surface, this may appear as a slowing of mental ability but in actuality they are processing information at speeds rivaling super computers! This ability comes from years of experience and that experience is their second most valuable asset.
2. The greatest single asset the 40+ IT (Technology Professional in general) has is a lifetime of dedicated effort to keep up with new and evolving technologies. They have trained themselves to constantly learn. Statistically speaking, those who have spent a lifetime dedicated to learning have minds that stay razor sharp well into their 90's (if they live that long)!
Over all, aside from the age issue, I agree with much of what Jack had to offer observationally. Although possibly alluded to but not specifically addressed there are three additional tips I might offer. I will leave it to the readers to draw their own conclusion.
1. Presence: Establishing Customer confidence in one's abilities to accomplish the assigned task!
a. When dealing with a customer, on-site or remote, how quickly are you able to establish in the customer's mind that you know what you are doing and will make sure they are back to normal operations quickly so as to reduce the impact on their business?
b. Although a customer may not know you by name, they greet you with "I am so glad to see you here to take care of XYZ instead of the last guy that was here!"
2. Ownership: I know you have been having a problem, but that problem is now mine to deal with and correct!
a. When you go to a site to perform service, who is in charge?
i. The site's Manager?
ii. Some remote voice over the telephone?
iii. You as the on-site IT support person?
b. Do you proactively listen to the customer's complaints/rants and
i. assure them that the problems are now yours?
ii. set boundaries, expressed or implied, that provides you with the unfettered ability to perform your service without the constant 30 second interruptions that only slow down your service efforts?
iii. assure them that you will keep them appropriately updated about progress and/or delays?
3. DEPLOMACY ! Both of the above actually depend a great deal on this ability. But how is it defined?
a. Diplomacy is "the Art of Letting Someone Else Have Your Own Way!"
b. Very few on-site contacts understand what is actually necessary to accomplish effective IT service. Many want to try to micro-manage your time on site and this impairs one's ability to work efficiently.
c. What they do understand is the longer their system is down impacts their ability to do their own work efficiently and more important is the longer it takes for the on-site IT to finish the greater the bill for services rendered.
As far as I am concerned, the above are by far the most important attributes needed for a successful career, IT or otherwise.
Now, a response to Jack! I would enjoin you to step back and honestly evaluate your stance and attitude regarding the IT profession. If you are so disenfranchised due to your experience then maybe it is time for you to change careers. The IT field is as cut-throat as any other business and is definitely not without its ups and downs (whether working as a full time employee or as a consultant). An individual's success depends on their commitment and the effort they are willing to put into the development of their career.
In closing, while teaching electronics at a trade school in 1985, I had a student ask me "What do you think I should do as a career path?" I responded "Give up electronics and go into accounting! You will definitely make a better income!" Those of us who have made the choice to pursue a technology related career and stay with it for many years do so because we absolutely love the challenges we meet. We love learning and growing with technology. The fact that we are paid, sometimes very well, is in fact secondary. We are solution finders and thrive on the daily challenges we face.
Unfortunately, the younger generation of ITs will not be able to understand this "Cantankerous Old Fart's" attitude until they too are at an age to be considered a "Cantankerous Old Fart!"

...It really helps bro.. I'm an aspiring IT student.. I really want to be successful in my career.. hope to see you write more articles about it.. ^_^

For starters people, remember rule #1, thick skin, so if you feel age is an issue, move on to the next comment. I will say that if you are young, you probably won't have thick skin or patience. I don't think most IT people have "connections". I think most of us people who fix things are very right brained people, and can hyper focus on things, which means that we stay on target, and not look at other people. If we had connections, then we would be in sales. I am not saying that we don't know people, but if you look at someone's connections in LinkdIn, it appears that production IT people have far fewer connections than other business types. I think this list could be used for the perfect employeee for any field. There are some that would fit this mold, I don't think many could, or would.

As Mr. Wallen has so skillfully pointed out, the intense demands of the IT world may be too much for us doddering old 50+ guys. As my mental and physical abilities continue to erode, perhaps I may find more suitable employment as a tech blogger, where I can simply spew off-the-cuff drivel without consideration, accountability, or apology. But then again, how could I hope to compete with the likes of Wallen, with his "shear" [sic] talent?

I've been a Sys Admin for 12 years and at the "old" age of 35 I'm enrolled in my Masters working towards a degree in Enterprise Software Architecture to switch careers to development, and frankly...I'm not worried about the age thing. I have years of experience troubleshooting and dealing with the business suits, that moves me right past the youngins.

The age comments going around do seem a bit loaded. Perhaps experience would be a better trait than age specifically. Sure if you are older you may have had more opportunities to experience things, but those that really like a certain technology might dig in and break/fix things just to learn the product(s) - giving them a good amount of real world or useful experiences.

You are so wrong about the age thing. Us older guys are going to work the longer hours without complaint while the younger ones want to leave and go party, dude. We have the mature skills to overcome a long day. The young ones are clueless.

If it only took ten things to become a successful IT worker then everyone who can say "would you like fries with that" would be in IT. Everything you got and more is what it takes, sure the late nights are the dues you pay when the system crashes - only because you ineffectively planned for the situation that WILL occur. The age argument is indefensible - for experience, knowledge, planning and organization does overcome any of your arguments. Having been in the IT business for over 30 years I have seen it, done it, got the T-shirt, got the golf shirt, went to the cool trade shows, been part of the revolution and my best quality is still my ability to relate to the customer and to the vendors and the further ability to express those findings in a business manner to my bosses, and their bosses. From Board Room to boiler room, from the head of the healthcare system's office to the morgue the ability to be able to speak without a technological arogance to others that may have less, equal or more intelligence is key to the success that you can find in this field. While I know that I am not the smartest engineer even in my 500,000 person population area - I do know that I bring to my customers a peace of mind when dealing with technology that surpasses others. If you are super smart with gadgets and can't talk to people...go and build the next great gadget but if you can combine the passion for making someone's day better along with some well practiced technical know how - the you are on the right road in IT Support.

Put veteran leadership in charge and you won't need so much reactive overtime. Too much youth in charge in too many places has lead to this mess. It takes years of experience to know how to do IT right, and mostly it is done wrong, by those same youth who then have the energy to fix it. And furthermore, with the kids out of the house and a stable lifestyle, I have more time and energy, and vastly more knowledge than all of the youth that I work with, and I am desperately needed to keep the ship from sinking. You couldn't be more wrong about the youth factor. No wonder IT is so screwed up when someone prints this garbage.

i think we as IT professionals should age discrimation bcos with taht i don't think we all are making it.

Dude, age!?!??! I'm 40 and I know more about tech stuff now than ever, including the "new fangled stuff" Is young, fresh blood needed.. yeah, but I've got about 15 years in the biz and if i didn't have those guys with 20-30 to ask questions of, I'd spend all my time googling to find out that what I need to know ain't searchable on the web! No one knows the company network like guy who initially built it, migrated from old to new 3 times already, and has the desk it they WAY back behind all the bookshelves.

When the network for 5000 employess goes down at 2 am or on the weekends, my manager calls me to go in and fix it, because my work cell phone is on. And I will answer his call, instead of not picking up when I see it's him calling. And yes even scheduled maintenance can run way over the expected timeframe. But I do it. At 59 I'm the oldest network tech on the staff and the one who gets the call to fix problems. I won't complain about my younger coworkers, I'll take the work. It beats being unemployed.

I don't think so!!! I am an engineer in my 30s but i know a lot great engineers over 50 and beyond. The wisdom and knowledge they bring to the field is important and I would say essential for stability in our field. I have called on them from time to time to help me out of a jam, big time. I guess when you(JW) turn 46 you might want to get a job cleaning toilets.....

The best IT workers are those with expertise and judgment, both of which are highly correlated with experience. They are people who long ago drained the swamp, and quietly and calmly maintain and improve the sewage system so the alligators never come back.

Sure, sometimes people work and study hard, get the right experience, and begin to get really good at an IT field by their early 30s. But more often than not, when an IT professional needs expert help, they don't seek the advice of a 25-year-old. They usually sidle up to a grizzled graybeard and strike up a conversation.

The Internet and Unix are both 42 years old. The first decent Windows operating system (IMO) is only 17 years old. By and large, it's a young but graying profession, filled mostly by people who grew up in a PC world. The best of the best are those with the most experience, and - sorry, youngsters! - most of you have a lot to learn before you even meet the "best IT workers" entrance criteria.

from where I come from for the youth to get to IT in an established company, it might take you like a decade to be hired, they talk of expirience even if you got all that takes, all because they are scared of the young ones and bieng out dated as you wrote, and that's killing the industry and creativity among the youth

Jack Wallen is simply giving his perspective. Since our soldiers give daily to this same cause, Freedom of Speech, we should be open minded enough to listen, even if we don't agree. I have been in IT for 20 Years, 10 Years of which in Medical IT. I'm degreed, Ceritified and experienced in Networking. However, every day it seems I'm teaching the NEW guys, NEW skills. At this time I'm unemployed. How can a Degreed, Certified, and Experienced person like myself be unemployed ? Bottom Line, Money and Corporate Profit.
We have become a nation that blames each other for our issues. Let us reflect on why we got into IT and retrain ourselves with better and more up-to-date skill sets. Now that is repulsive Logic isn't it. Retrain, Rethink, and Reflect, Many Blessings to all, Young and Older alike.

As an older worker, it's heartening to hear such a chorus of affirmation re: our skills and glorious intelligence, etc. However, isn't the real issue what kind of a workplace and what kind of a working world we want for the future? The whole concept of burning out or utilizing people till they drop seems really old-fashioned and inefficient. I would like to be thinking about how we can utilize more people in ways that are more efficient AND cover the needs of the organization or enterprise. Why aren't we talking about changing such out-moded models?

Good points on everything, except I'll join in the age discrimination chorus.

By your logic, age should also apply to doctors, nurses, airplane pilots, police men, fire fighters, and 100s of professions that require odd hours.

I'm 32, started IT at 25, been using computers and wrote my first BASIC program in Commodore 64 since I was 9, and if anything I always look at older workers with respect and as mentors, provided they stay current in their field.

Its not age, it is health that matters. Keep yourself up. Contrary to many beliefs, the IT industry is just as demanding physically as it is mentally. If you do not keep up to date in your knowledge, and in great physical condition, one of two things WILL give. Your job, or your health. Stay active, take care of your self, and know your limits, and you will strive in both areas. I commend everyone in the industry for doing their best, Remember, we all fall short of perfection, but it is the pursuit that makes us proud of who we are.

Wow. Who the hell are you? What qualifies you to make such statements?
I am fifty-one. I worked in a NOC for several years, before being released along with three others, all of us over fifty. During my tenure, the "youth" at this organization, constantly called in sick, came in late, left early , and essentially showed no respect to anyone. They were terrible at math and spelling, and are easily baffled by any vocabulary that goes beyond Adult Swim.
Here's the kicker. I am 5'11', 160 lbs. I take care of my body, and my mind, I read, study anything I can get my hands on, am open minded, and have tons of energy because I take care of myself.
Out of twenty-three "youths" in that organization, 18 are morbidly obese, they are sluggish and lazy.
None have any post K12 education and what they do know about I.T. is only applicable in their current environment, where they learned the "system", which is so unstable the network goes down daily. If they haven't been through a situation a dozen times, they don't know how to react.
I had never encountered an environment like that until I worked at that NOC. I do not allow that experience to sour me to all youth. It sounds to me like this author thinks he's been around, I was like that once, it was called "the arrogance of youth".

I just want to point out that it is illegal to use age as a factor in hiring employees.
Yes I understand the real world and the way employers can get around it.

At 59, I have hired many people for IT positions and the ones that are the most useful to me tend to be over 40. I have hired several 20 somethings and they were good at their jobs but lacked a solid background. In some cases for what I need, I find younger employees to be somewhat of a burden because of the constant learning curve.

Youth need to grow up. Mature / Smart people of all ages get along well in all professions. The creative ones do better here. We figure out how to solve everyone else's problems with technology.

Your assertion that youth is best suited for the IT Industry is woefully misinformed. It has always been my experience that it is the older workers, who are the ones willing to sacrifice, and put in the long hours neccessary to solve a production problem, to complete a successful rollout, or to come in the weekend when it can't be avoided.

I'm north of 55, had 3 back surgeries, and I am in constant chronic pain, yet I find the wherewithall to put in the extra hours at night after returning home from a full day's work, to put in the requisite weekend hours, or to ride a production problem to it's conclusion - even if it means putting in 30+ hours at a clip. The only workers in my company that put in equal, or any where near the same effort, are those in the 50+ age bracket. Then again, maybe you need years of experience to recognise the gravitas of a given situation, and realize the effort needed to accomplish a task, fix a problem, or implement a new feature..

You are doing we older workers a grave disservice by making such lame assertions.

I'm a 21 year old and Age defiantly is an added benefit for the field of IT for the very reasons you've mentioned. But as I am about to begin a new very serious, very deep route in the world of IT this article made me feel good about what I've decided to do with my life.

Jack, while I have the greatest respect for your professional knowledge, abilities, and contributions to the industry via TechRepublic and other venues as well, I must tell you that on a personal level you disappointment me with your comments which I consider a blatant endorsement for others to discriminate in regard to age. In a time which you and all other professionals should embrace the industry-wide talent that is available you are advocating throwing an uncomfortable percentage of talent and experience under the bus. I truly hope that somewhere down the road that no one posts comments that would make you feel unwanted, unneeded, and useless. As I said, truly disappointing.

To be in IT today I think you should also care about what the business goals for the brand it. Don't just try to use tech to keep your job, find ways to improve employee working situations. After all, that is what IT does, help people (and machines) to get real work done.

At thirty, my work in IT was conflicting with children's activities and other folks' demands on my time. At sixty, I'm in control of my own schedule. The years of experience have given me time to develop the other excellent qualities you mention, including the maturity to focus on the work that will deliver the most benefit to the business rather than the most technically fun.

I'm 56, been in IT for over 30 years and have no problem "keeping up" with today's youth. while they're busy "tweeting" or checking Facebook at work, I'm busting my ass developing multi-threaded real value solutions for my company. While they're busy trying to implement "Agile, Scrum, or whatever else is the lastest fad", I'm eating their lunch and developing robust, user loved systems that just plain work and are done on time, under budget. Sorry to see you 've fallen into the "younger is better" mindtrap... you should know better.

My company had been trying to fill positions that are critical to support our IT operations and despite offering excellent pay and benefits we were not able to consistently find young people who were willing to be called in during off hours. The ones who did do the job for a while complained incessantly or wanted ridiculous sums of money and moved on as soon as they found an "easier" or better paid position. The company has now recruited older employees who were retired but still skilled and we have had superior results. Your assertion about age is idiotic and incorrect. Young people, as a whole, have no work ethic whatsoever!

Just for starters: I'm 42, B.S. in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics, and a programmer of almost 20 years in IT, as well as having fulfilled 3rd-party software and hardware implementation roles of all sorts of types over the years.

I think that in regards to IT being better suited for younger people: That all depends on the environment...and the person.

In the environment that I work in, I am the youngest full-time staff programmer. The other (hardware) staff ages go all the way from 25 to 53.

Why? Well, we have a mix of systems here. The financial systems are all on an old HP mainframe. And, you can hardly get programmers that write COBOL still from universities. Most BS/BA programs have focused either on Windows development, web design, or Unix systems with language programming in C/C++.

The local university does still teach COBOL, but the reason is not us: it is that the world's largest retailer recruits every year most of the graduates to go work in their programming group. Basically, all the good programmers go for the money.

But, IT is not necessarily better suited for the young. Some environments make it that way, due to technology used or pace that some lifestyles prohibit.

But, IT itself is not the discriminating factor. The work situation is.

I agree with Jack that people over 45 are simply too old to handle the stress of network administration, and particularly work related to Linux, Android, and writing articles for TechRepublic.

Not many people know this, but Barack H. Obama used to be a network administrator. However, on his 46th birthday, he quit to seek less stressful work. Well done, Mr President; and well done to you, Jack, for turning an otherwise lackluster article into something worth commenting on.

... thread for me to read - the comments more so than the post, which itself was extraordinarily well-reasoned. Outside Flood Lights | Outdoor Party Lights

I thought this was going to be another article extolling this platform and that gadget, so I was pleasantly surprised to find an astute, insightful breakdown of the immaterial side of the business. Unfortunately, connections are a big deal in IT, and even more unfortunately, it means improvements and promotions are based on who you know fairly often. I would have ranked Connections #1.

About Jack Wallen
Jack Wallen is an award-winning writer for Techrepublic and Linux.com. As an avid promoter of age discrimination Jack tries to convert as many corporate hiring decision makers as possible to continue to foster the idea of Obsolescence of older I.T. professionals.....
When Jack isn't writing about Linux he is hard at work on his other writing career -- destroying careers and by manipulating perceived reality of mis-infromed hiring zombies career killers, assorted zero's, and just about everything else he can manipulate between the folds of reality. You can find Jack.....Jack?......Jack?.... Ooops! Your over 40 and nobody wants to hear from you anymore......

I once taught several 70+ year old engineers SQL and they picked it up right away; they were productive in well under an hour. So, the reality is that ability to do STEM work does not evaporate at age 35. The problem is that the employment opportunities evaporate noticeably starting at age 35.

http://www.aea.org/News/nsf_numbers.htm
"[During] the early 1970s... between 60K and 100K engineers and scientists were unemployed... Remember the early 1980s when the universities were lobbying for money to expand our engineering schools, turning away domestic students and at the same time were recruiting over-seas for students?... High school students were enticed to enroll in engineering only to find they were unable to get jobs upon graduation, older engineers were laid off and salaries failed to keep up with inflation."

Edith Holleman
"When I came to the Science Committee in July of 1991 as an investigator, by the end of my first week, I had heard that the much-repeated statement from the National Science Foundation [NSF] about a pending shortage of scientists and engineers was false. When I started to ask more questions, the first people I heard from were engineers telling me it certainly wasn't true for them. Older engineers were being off-loaded into contract positions [bodyshopped], losing their benefits and their careers as quickly as the new ones were graduated. Young engineers were doing work that in years past was done by drafts-people."

"'The industry says it wants the most recent skills, the hot skills, Java, for example.', said Bard-Alan Finlan, 43, who works as a temporary senior technician. 'But I could learn Java within a month. I've sent out 200 resumes over the past 15 months, but I can't find a full-time job.'... His annual salary? $36K."

"'I'd love to have somebody with 20 years of experience, but unfortunately I'm only paying for 3 or 4.', says the IT director at a large law firm on the West Coast."

"Career coaches acknowledge that looking younger -- or looking less old -- can shorten a job search..."

Well, there are a lot more out there, including articles which mention people who did re-tool in the latest publicized buzz-words, did well in the classes, had related experience, but still can't get the time of day from recruiters. Simply being savvy and knowledgeable isn't enough... because there is a ready supply of cheap, pliant labor from over-seas, with flexible ethics such that they are willing to do basically anything.

When one is young and starting out, of course, you don't necessarily know how you measure up in professional environment, so you tend to be willing to work very hard in hopes that the quality and amount of your productivity will eventually be rewarded. After you get a few attaboys, maybe a transfer/promotion of two and things are looking up; you start thinking about maybe being able to afford to start buying a home and maybe a family. And right about then the rug gets pulled you. You may still be learning, may continue to build up your personal knowledge-base, and may frequently be consulted within the firm and by customers for your expertise, but you're considered too old, not flexible/pliant enough, possibly a threat to management, and/or potentially too expensive, and the work is let out to the bodyshoppers. This is the pattern I read in other people's personal stories and in the published articles.

Just to rekindle the age one- i have gotten quite a number of old-timers on the internet lately-all working from home and doing just super. No fear of IT and loneliness? well what's that?

There is age discrimination but it isn't the young doing the discriminating it is the older people in the position to hire. Many of the commenters say that they have great IT jobs and they are over 40 but no mention of how many over 40's they have hired into IT positions.

I agree with skris88 about age discrimination. I am also an over 50 engineer that keeps getting turned down. I have worked corporate IT for over 15 years in such companies as Lockheed Martin and did everything on my own (in my 40s) when sister divisions had 4 people (in their 20s) to do the same job(s). I have also been in consulting role and have done some on location server upgrades for various companies. Lately I have beat out a company of 20 and 30 year old IT people to set up networks and have done their support and I feel darn good about doing that.

I'm 45+ and still play with my new android, Vsauce and Twitter. When a system is *really* broke who gets called? the old guys who have been around or where around when the system was installed.
There are lessons learned from taking backups, naming convention, testing backups with restore, keeping notes, organizing backups so they can be found and keeping a second set of installation media (disk or download)
PR to the non IT world can be hard. There is more to IT than "Insert CD, click accept, next, next and finish" though that is what friends and family see me do most often. Smile.

Besides YOUTH, which I completely disagree with anyway, even though I see the point being made, the rest of the SPECIAL TIPS are common to any role in almost any company. Whether MacDonalds or CEO of a billion dollar mining company, these rules all apply.

Anyone who is employed builds these abilities over time, if not, they are constantly seeking employment.

I don't want to say the original article was pointless but it was...well.....yeah.

I disagree with it too, but it's just a comment, who the hell cares? It's not AGE DISCRIMINATION! He's not refusing to hire anyone because of age, he just screwed up in thinking younger people are better candidates. SO WHAT?!?!?

All these posts about discrimination, losing credibility etc. What a lot of horse........

"I CANNOT believe in this day and age someone would actually practice AGE DISCRIMINATION so openly and flagrantly!!!"

@ron rocket....
He's NOT "practicing age discrimination", get over yourself. Did he not hire you because you were too old? No, so have a seat.
You want an apology, for a comment in an article, on a private website?
You are what's wrong with modern society, what a crotchety, bitter old dog!

@trichardson
"Jack Wallen is an age discriminate moron "
Learn what discrimination means before you spew you BS,

Seriously, the first thing you need in ANY role is a thick skin. Clearly, people are more focused on a single comment in a list of relevant observations than having a thick skin.

I could see it from kids if the comment was that you had to be older to be experienced and valued for such, which isn't too off base anyway, but this is just ridiculous. No wonder you live in such a PC society now where any comment results in a lawsuit from an easily offended and very think skinned loser.

Get a grip people, it's just a 'kin article. It's not a new law being passed, nobody is suggesting changing the Constitution, nobody has lost an eye, it was words and a personal opinion/comment, WHO CARES WHAT'S SAID? Disagree, offer your rebuttals but to take offense and start flaming the OP is just pathetic.

Yes - I'm almost 58, and I have been a Network Admin (MCSE) for the last 15 or so years. I started as a PC Tech, and have worked my way up. The company I currently work at, the IT team are all over 55. We do just fine thank you. I have seen far more discrimination as far as being a "female" network admin (that does both hardware and software) than I have seen in age discrimination. But to both, my motto is "just work harder and smarter." I can always outwork a younger person, and/or a man!! LOL

Thanks for the entertainment. Heaven help you when you get to my age!! Theresa

Now a days age of most of the professional IT are around 25 and above and it seem that even in that age they are making impossible stuff.

Yikes! At 44 I guess I fall into the category of "older" person that you think shouldn't bother with an IT career. I've been an enthusiastic superuser, tinkerer, and general computing enthusiast for years (first computer was a Commodore 64) but decided to take the plunge and get my M.S.I.T and certifications this year and am halfway done. I also have a steady work history consisting of both military and federal operations (logistics & communications) work which required many long hours in many austere climates and divers conditions around the world, many times while being shot at, mortared, or other types of dangerous, life-threatening situations. Most of what I know I learned on my own either out of pure interest or as a result of on-the-job necessity in situations where there were no I.T. personnel readily available but I knew what to do and did it or otherwise improvised a workable solution.

It is with that all in mind that I read your article and laughed out loud at your comment implying that us "older" workers could not hack the I.T. lifestyle. Do you think that everyone over 45 has had SUCH an easy life that I.T. would be SO difficult? Perhaps you experienced working with I.T. personnel in that age range and were dissappointed with their work/attitude but don't judge all by the actions of a few.

Right now I'm wondering if anyone else in their 40's who didn't know better may have read your article and been discouraged from pursuing I.T. as a career. If so, here's hoping they were able to scroll down and read the many comments here discrediting your rather erroneous and biased statements.

That was a Horribly blatant age discrimination comment. I work on average 10 extra hours per week and my co- worker whos past retirement age is on call 24x7. Here's why your just plain wrong on that comment. Besides being experienced and having the time to be available to the company by contrast many younger people prefer to be living their lives rather than being on call or doing ot. The older more experienced IT worker is saving / accelerating their 401k and savings to help support themselves and their younger family member most likely IT worker to gain a better education in IT. Staying in IT is also a crap shoot since most company's offshore 80% of their IT workforce and layoff their American workforce to avoid paying higher benefits. A few companies keep their American workforce to continue that local feeling for now. IT is more of a hobby for most Americans today. If you are good at what you do the company will hire you or keep you and age is only relevant to the stereotype you hold.