I am 53. I just started at hardware startup 1 week ago. I am working 60 hour weeks for a few reasons. I am getting over 3% of the company stock. I aw unemployed 6 months. I had to take a 15% paycut. However, 15% is far better than zero income. I willingly signed up for this gamble, ane it is the classic silicon valley gamble. Stock vs lower pay and long hours. What is interesting is the experienced old fart with the same old tool set is out performing thf youngster 5 to 1 in production of code and documentation. Its called working smarter. Fewer mistakes and knowing what the documentation has to contain. Also IKl knew what I was signing up for.
I’m somewhere over 50, but I look younger, which helps (sometimes!), and here’s my experience.
a. MOST of the younger people now have a terrible work ethic, particularly, I’m sorry to say, native Americans.
b. MOST of the H1-B’s are worthless. They do, however, work together very well and eventually can solve a problem (native born people are far too egotistical to do this). Fortunately, I’m still worth almost any number of them.
c. I can’t compete with younger people in terms of cutting edge code, because I won’t put 15+ hours a day getting good at it (which I actually DID 30 years ago). HOWEVER, in terms of analyzing systems and finding errors (even in languages I don’t even write in), I’m untouchable, which is a very, very valuable skill and fortunately, management is aware of it.
For now...
d. One “unwritten” (for legal reasons) advantage of older workers is that they don’t lose about an average of 5 hours a week on soccer practice, parent-teacher conferences, divorce proceedings, custody battles, kid’s doctor appointments, and so on. Again, not written anywhere, but...
Bah! I'd take a 50% cut just to get back in a wafer fab.