Just 22% of Techies in UK Aged 50 or Older, Says Chartered Institute For IT (theregister.com) 105
A little more than one in five techies in Britain is aged 50 or older, and enticing more of that demographic to enter the world of information technology could help alleviate a perennial skills gap. From a report: This is according to research by the British Computer Society (BCS), which reckons just 22 percent (413,000) of the 1.9 million IT specialists in the local industry are at or past the half century mark. To fall in line with the average number of 50 year olds or older across all other employment areas (561,000) in the UK, an additional 148,000 people in that grouping are needed in the tech sector, the BCS claimed, basing its finding on data provided by the Office for National Statistics.
"We can only achieve the government's ambition for the UK to be the 'next Silicon Valley' by closing the digital skills gap and making this vital profession attractive to a far broader range of people," said Rashik Parmar MBE, CEO of the BCS. For those not aware, the UK government's latest harebrained scheme, outlined in the Autumn statement by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, is to convert the island nation into "the next Silicon Valley". Sounds plausible? Oven-baked plan? No, we didn't think so either. The age factor was most pronounced in the north-east of the UK where just one in eight programmers/developers was 50 or over, the research found -- but didn't state why.
"We can only achieve the government's ambition for the UK to be the 'next Silicon Valley' by closing the digital skills gap and making this vital profession attractive to a far broader range of people," said Rashik Parmar MBE, CEO of the BCS. For those not aware, the UK government's latest harebrained scheme, outlined in the Autumn statement by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, is to convert the island nation into "the next Silicon Valley". Sounds plausible? Oven-baked plan? No, we didn't think so either. The age factor was most pronounced in the north-east of the UK where just one in eight programmers/developers was 50 or over, the research found -- but didn't state why.
Stop it (Score:5, Insightful)
Rather recruit over fifties than under fifteens (Score:5, Insightful)
Eh, if you're over fifty you won't get in regardless of whether you want to.
Me, I'm pretty good with them thar computars, over forty, and out of a job. Stopped looking, in fact. Really no point, for multiple reasons.
I probably should move on to the next big thing for burned-out sysadmins, lawn-mowing. I just hate to be outside.
Re:Rather recruit over fifties than under fifteens (Score:4, Insightful)
Eh, if you're over fifty you won't get in regardless of whether you want to.
Me, I'm pretty good with them thar computars, over forty, and out of a job. Stopped looking, in fact. Really no point, for multiple reasons.
The summary neglected to explain why (only) "one in five techies in Britain is aged 50 or older," but that's the reason right there. They stop getting hired once they reach 40, because the companies don't want older programmers (where "older" means "out of their twenties", and so they leave the field for jobs that they can get hired for.
Not a problem, because there are mountains of 20-something programmers eager for a job who will work cheaper anyway.
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I think "why" might be answered by explosive growth and also transformation of the sector. We were addressing fundamental issues of computing - one on one with computer, OS, networking. Now, as it moves to the cloud, it is about virtual machines, implementation/testing routine instead of former programming, and segmentation into separate duties. It is different from what we carry, also there were only that much of IT Engineers 30 years back or so.
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Now, as it moves to the cloud, it is about virtual machines, implementation/testing routine instead of former programming, and segmentation into separate duties.
Things of course change, but that's often not for the better and definitely not for the more transparent. The "youth" have no real chance to see the way things are built. 90% of IT people over 45 will have built their own network at some point. Only 10% of those under 25 will ever do it. Simple wireless routers and mobile networks have taken away the need for these things. Most will never understand the importants of a Netmask and if they are lucky will end up calling in some consultant to explain why 25% o
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This. Once you're over 40~50 you have 3 options for dealing with the tech industry's rampant ageism: Get out of tech, start your own business in tech, or "bunker up" (find a secure tech job you think you can stay in until retirement, likely in IT management). It looks like the 22% are those who took one of the last 2 options. I knew this before getting into tech.
Re: Rather recruit over fifties than under fifteen (Score:3)
People kept saying that after your 30s you pretty much can't get software development jobs so you have to quit at that point if you aren't already in a job, and pray you never get fired. And by and large, I believed that but didn't really care because I didn't intend on doing that anyway.
But it's all bullshit. I got my very first one AT age 40. Prior to this I had never even done any software development at all, it was all basically infrastructure IT work. I didn't even start coding until after I turned 37.
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Single anecdote disproves existence of widespread trend! Up next, world's highest-paid female CEO announces festival celebrating the end of workplace discrimination against women.
Re: Rather recruit over fifties than under fiftee (Score:2)
Except, at least where I work, it seems to be a trend. Granted most have a lot more experience than I do.
Honestly I wouldn't be surprised at all if most people just burn out of it by my age. I know many, many people who have. Basically they were doing IT or software development in their 30s but decided they had enough by the time they were 45 or so. One of them was my former manager. The way he worded it is that after he got to a certain age, he just felt that he couldn't keep up, so he just went into manag
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In all of my jobs throughout my life, I did not see any discrimination against women, races, or age.
And yet, apparently it is a HUGE problem. I can believe it is problem, but I just do not see it myself.
Re: Rather recruit over fifties than under fiftee (Score:3)
Besides that, just how much of the workforce do you expect to be over 50? 22% seems like a decent number. I don't know about the UK, but in the US a third of the population is over 50. Now consider what era people over 50 grew up in. Very few of them would have been working with computers, let alone ON computers, until they were about in their 30s.
How many people do you know today that weren't already doing IT work in their 20s and then started in their 30s? It doesn't happen very often. So why should it ha
Re:Rather recruit over fifties than under fifteens (Score:5, Informative)
I'm well over 50, and had no trouble finding jobs. I'm confident that if I needed to look for a job now, I'd get one without too much trouble.
Not all companies have a bias against older employees.
That said... if I lost my current job, I'd probably retire. I don't like the direction the tech industry has taken in the last 10-15 years.
Re: Rather recruit over fifties than under fifteen (Score:2)
I honestly think that people who say this probably just haven't made it anywhere by the time they reached our age, probably because they just weren't very good at it to begin with.
Becoming a software developer has certainly changed my perspective on this, namely because there are some people that I used to think were good at it, but after I learned the ropes I understood that they weren't really that good at it after all, I just didn't know any different at the time.
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Eh, if you're over fifty you won't get in regardless of whether you want to.
Me, I'm pretty good with them thar computars, over forty, and out of a job. Stopped looking, in fact. Really no point, for multiple reasons.
I probably should move on to the next big thing for burned-out sysadmins, lawn-mowing. I just hate to be outside.
Really? For the past 10+ years, 50%+ of my team was 40+, and a good chunk were over 50. None of them had any trouble getting hired. Granted, these were all senior positions (Sr. engineer, architect, principals), so younger people mostly didn't have the experience.
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Eh, if you're over fifty you won't get in regardless of whether you want to.
I'm over fifty. I have ample employment opportunities through out my career because I'm old enough to understand what is relevant and what is not.
The difference now is I am very careful about what technology I invest my time in. When I learn something it's because it's interesting and it provides a financial return over time. This includes making the right tactical and strategic decisions about how I will conduct my career so that I am in demand.
Me, I'm pretty good with them thar computars, over forty, and out of a job. Stopped looking, in fact. Really no point, for multiple reasons.
If you stopped looking it's probably because you lost in
Re: Stop it (Score:1)
Re:Stop it (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're over 50 and you lose a tech job (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody cares how good you are at writing code. Large corporations have long since commodified software development. That's what devops was all about. Fast and using rally and agile to turn programming into an assembly line where they could slot in employees as replaceable cogs.
Re:If you're over 50 and you lose a tech job (Score:4, Insightful)
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I'm old, and starting to have old man health problems. I miss a fair amount of work for doctor's appointments and I'm not putting in 12 hour days 6 days a week anymore. Employers know this. They don't care how specialized your knowledge is. They spent the last 20
we need to make the medicare age 50 then ! (Score:2)
we need to make the medicare age 50 then !
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we need to make the medicare age 50 then !
Why? They just kill themselves when faced with medical bills at that age. Makes it much cheaper for society.
Seriously, go look up the suicide stats for males between the age of 50 and 65.
(I am not saying I approve of this, I am saying this is the thought process behind those who get to choose)
Re:If you're over 50 and you lose a tech job (Score:4, Insightful)
Not always. There are technical areas where they need people with actual experience. Embedded systems, COBOL developers (heck, financial in general), medical systems. Anything that isn't the fashion of the day will find that getting employees with the relevant experience or adaptability to be difficult.
India has sweatshops (Score:2)
The reality is we're replaceable. Sure, not perfectly, but we're talking paying $60k a year for a code monkey vs $180k. Management doesn't care. They'll just make the 25 year old Indian work 80/hr a week to fix thei
Re: India has sweatshops (Score:2)
Well, in this case lowering wage expectations helps a lot.
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That's what devops was all about.
No, no it isn't. Devops is about how to do deployments. The software itself is separate and often the same in a cloud and non-cloud environment. Wherever you work it sounds like a terrible place to have a job. Plenty of corporations have tried to commodify programming but they always end up coding themselves in a corner then I have to be brought in (at several times the rate) to fix all the problems they caused. Either that or they just stop whatever line of business the software supports. In the end,
You're confusing your dev ops (Score:2)
Re: If you're over 50 and you lose a tech job (Score:3)
I just got hired for software development at age 40, even though the only math I've ever done is calculus at community college in my early 20s, and I've largely forgotten most of it by now. At this point I can pretty much only remember basic algebra. I only started learning software development at age 37. Literally the first job I've had where I was hired specifically to do software development, my previous job didn't necessarily involve that but I started doing it purely out of necessity.
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Nobody cares how good you are at writing code. Large corporations have long since commodified software development. That's what devops was all about. Fast and using rally and agile to turn programming into an assembly line where they could slot in employees as replaceable cogs.
On paper.
I audit such companies. I've seen TWO where the above is true. The others are trying to get there, but are still far away and are very dependent on their key programmers.
What? (Score:5, Insightful)
we have the ranges roughly:
under 20.
20-30
30-40
40-50
50-60
60+
Not sure how big 60+ is. People drop out of the workforce due to retirement, death, illness and so on and also get promoted into less technical roles. Under 20 really only encapsulates a couple of years and very many techies go to uni. I'm going to claim that the 4 brackets would be the majority.
In which case you'd expect 25% on an even split, vs the 22% in reality. OK, so you might expect it higher due to 60+. Even so, though the numbers don't sound as bad as I expected.
Re: What? (Score:2)
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Yeah, seems about right..
wat (Score:5, Insightful)
"We can only achieve the government's ambition for the UK to be the 'next Silicon Valley' by closing the digital skills gap and making this vital profession attractive to a far broader range of people," said Rashik Parmar MBE,[...]
...lying through his cakehole.
There are plenty of older people with tech skills. The problem isn't that they don't exist, the problem is that they can't get hired. On average, Tech companies, like all companies on average, prefer younger workers they can more easily abuse. They would rather hire some young guy who lied on his resume than some old guy who didn't, and can figure out how to do what they want.
Re: wat (Score:2)
...the problem is that they can't get hired.
Or don't want to: IT - esp support - is a thankless industry where people who don't know how to do your job nevertheless tell you how. All while you're pitted against foreign, so-called "engineers" who use a flowchart to diagnose a problem.
The skills themselves translate well to other industries, however; manufacturing and automation come to mind. It's why I hedged my bets by getting both my CDL as well as my mechatronics/robotics certs...
50 years ago... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:50 years ago... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: 50 years ago... (Score:3)
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Yeah, that. I'm a little bit younger than that, and it was still unusual to even have a computer in the house, let alone for me to have my own. Most kids I knew had a video game console (usually a NES) but only the richer ones had computers. I managed to get my hands on an Amiga 500, though, because they were so very cheap. It was my generation's C64. You could still get one of those from Sears when I was a kid, but it was way too expensive for what it was by then.
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Hold up, people turning 50 now are not that old! We had C64's as kids, or a ZX80 I suppose in the UK.
Exactly. In fact, the current 45-50 year olds are the ones that grew up with computers where we had to really understand them to actually get them to work properly (as opposed to the 50+ people that were much more likely to not have computers at all, and the younger people that had plug-n-pray).
I'm 45, and spent my high school years tweaking my computer's boot parameters every time I tried to run a new game.
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Re: 50 years ago... (Score:2)
Re: 50 years ago... (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe there's something about having nothing but computer books... to force you to think about problems - rather than pretend you already understand them.
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Re: 50 years ago... (Score:1)
Of course, Dunning-Kruger and all that.
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Re: 50 years ago... (Score:2)
Also the era that produced the most security holes in software somehow.
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Not strange at all, self-selection.
At that time, you only went into computers if you had an interest in them serious enough to push against the trend and do something unusual. Engineering was a much larger tech-space than this strange new sub-field of mathematics.
So people self-selected. If people go into a strange field with a small commercial base, you'd be surprised if they were NOT very good at the stuff.
Today, lots of people with mediocre talent go into IT simply because it pays well.
Re:50 years ago... (Score:4, Insightful)
... very few kids had access to computers. Most of the people I know at that age never developed an interest.
Exactly this.
From 1970-1990, the US granted 365k degrees in computer science.
From 1991-2010, the number was 741k.
How is it surprising that those over the age of 50 are underrepresented in the IT field?
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You didn't always need a degree to get a tech job, though. A lot of secretaries became their local admins because nobody else was going to do it. I got my first sysadmin job based on my Linux hobby, and my first network admin job based on that — and there, I also learned how to program a PBX on the job with zero experience (except a little POTS wiring with punchdowns... and star-wired token ring, which is basically the same.) Now every employer wants years of formal experience with everything, how's s
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Of course you don't need a degree to get a tech job, and you certainly don't need a computer science degree. But simply looking at when the popularity of computer science degrees kicked off you can see when the workforce started to get flooded with new grads entering the field. So when you see an industry with only 22% of the workforce over the age 50 instead of the 29% industry average, it isn't hard to explain.
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when you see an industry with only 22% of the workforce over the age 50 instead of the 29% industry average, it isn't hard to explain.
You're right, it isn't hard to explain, you're just not doing a good job [corporatec...sights.com].
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I am in my mid-50s and owned a computer at age 15 (TRS-80 Color Computer). The issue is that older employees are willing to put up with crap, want a decent salary, and are not willing to work in sweatshop conditions.
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Uh... not willing to put up with crap. :)
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Many of the twenty somethings today have never developed an interest beyond web or phone applications. They never had the interest in finding out how things work deep inside. But that's _always_ true. The snag is that 70 years ago the small fraction of people with an engineering style of outlook were enough to drive and create the computing industry almost from scratch, whereas today the need for, ahem, techies, is vastly larger and so you're stuck having to deal with people without any real fervor for en
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My aunt had one. [youtube.com]
Sounds about right... (Score:5, Insightful)
25% of the working population is over 50 so having 22% in tech is about right.
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Re: Sounds about right... (Score:2)
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It's a little bit lower than 25% in the UK. Currently I think state pension age is 64 (it'll 67 by the time I get there), and 50 and 60 year olds make up 24.24%. Or 18.9% if you halve the 60-69 group to take in to consideration retirement age.
Data from the Office for National Statistics that I tossed in to an Excel pivot table:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplep... [ons.gov.uk]
Percentage of total population for each decade:
00: 11.99%
10: 11.39%
20: 12.98%
30: 13.31%
40: 12.61%
50: 13.57%
60: 10.66%
70: 8.45%
80: 4.13%
90+: 0.91%
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Ugh, I hit submit instead of preview.
If take the working age groups only:
20: 20.55%
30: 21.09%
40: 19.97%
50: 21.50%
60: 16.89%
In this, 50+ is 38.39% of the working population (or 29.9% if you roughly guess for retirement age). So the 22% of IT people being over 50 isn't proportional with the total working population by quite a way.
"The next silicon valley"? (Score:3)
Re: "The next silicon valley"? (Score:2)
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Oh boy, the UK wants to be the next Silicon Valley? Many have tried and failed. Although the strategy of divorcing Europe and recruiting an army of geezers is, to be fair, new one...
The thing is, the UK was the tech hub for Europe. The M4 (Motorway) from London to Reading was the tech corridor of the UK. I'm mere minutes away from the offices of giants such as Oracle and Microsoft's UK campuses.
The UK could attract the best IT talent from the entirety of Europe, had good infrastructure, excellent support, a highly educated population and a very business friendly government.
You may have noticed I've been using the past tense... This is because the idea of the UK being a tech hub i
Good "techies" often grow into leadership (Score:4, Insightful)
If you've been programming for 30 years, you probably have the experience to help coach and lead others who are younger. You might not be doing "tech" work yourself, but having been there, done that, you're probably better suited for a non-tech leadership role, than your younger peers. It seems natural that there would be a fall-off with age, from front-line jobs in tech, just as there is in every other line of work.
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Now I might rant a bit here but I subsequently joined an industry where the exact opposite is true: legal industry? Why is
Consider the timing, seems reasonable (Score:3)
For the record, I'm super close to being 50.
This doesnâ(TM)t seen unreasonable when I think about it. In 5 years things should come into line better, itâ(TM)s a historical timing situation.
First, to be 50 and in IT, one probably has done IT as a full career path. One doesnâ(TM)t just decide to be a developer (realistically).
When I came into the market in the mid-1990s, the public internet was being born, corporate email was really catching on, and AOL was "the internet". Things were changing very rapidly.
Thatâ(TM)s the period when IT got really exciting. Also prior to this, PCs were still really expensive, then commoditization started and prices began dropping (scale).
Prior to this, IT was still extremely "geeky" â" gray beards and Big Iron. Corporate didnâ(TM)t have a ton of developers doing customer facing functionality. Data was just being stored for operational purposes.
So those over 50 are mostly âoeold schoolâ mainframe/midrange. Or they were on the front edge of the Microsoft surge (COM servers FTW!). It wasn't really "cool" until the internet.
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I don't know about that. I decided to be a computer programmer (AKA software developer) when I was in 8th grade in 1980. Enlisted in the Air Force as a computer programmer in 85 and I've been developing software ever since. ...
TBF I did start out on mainframes, but haven't touched one since 88-89 timeframe. Of course I started doing web based stuff around 1992
Overlooking the obvious. (Score:2)
"...just one in eight programmers/developers was 50 or over, the research found -- but didn't state why."
As with any demanding profession, let's try not to overlook the obvious; burnout.
Most skilled careers require you to be attached to a slow-rolling steamroller of professional training. The speed at which IT progresses feels more like being chained to the bumper of a stolen sports car driven by a marketeer high on YOLO.
Needless to say, IT workers just might hit a fucking wall a bit earlier than others might.
Great timing (Score:2)
What is tech? (Score:2)
If you are over 50 your formative years would be around 1962-1992 (ages of 10-20)
Your experience with technology during that time would be mostly Cars, TV and Radio. A computers were for some rather detailed work, or for just silly video games. Then there was a social trend of NERDS being social outcasts, so a lot of people during their formative years shied away from being too interested in computer tech.
So the older (working age) folks who would be interested in tech, would be mostly focused on Cars, TV
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I was born in the mid 1970s. My dad was a scientist, so we had computers at home. When I was 9, I accompanied an older brother assemble an 8086 (mother board, sister boards, RAM boards, etc). My family subscribed to a programming magazine, so I was copying code at a young age. The internet was becoming public while I was in high school. By then my dad was a professor at a university, so we had access to the university's dial-up number. It was the perfect time to grow up with developing technology.
By 50 you're fed up with I.T. (Score:2)
All those over 50 in IT (including myself) have seen the steady corruption of privacy, reliability, stability, usability and the sheer bloat of all processes related to I.T.
I.T. work in general SUCKS now. Used to be about implementation and support, not constant changes, rolling backdoors, untested patches and unreasonable demands to embrace the latest buzzwords.
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All those over 50 in IT (including myself) have seen the steady corruption of privacy, reliability, stability, usability and the sheer bloat of all processes related to I.T.
I.T. work in general SUCKS now. Used to be about implementation and support, not constant changes, rolling backdoors, untested patches and unreasonable demands to embrace the latest buzzwords.
^ THIS ^
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Re: "but didn't say why" (Score:2)
Oh for $DIETY's sake, just say it: Age Discrimination! It's the same no matter which side of The Big Pond you're working.
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Run the survey again in 2032 and let's see the proportion then.
Try looking for something "uncool" (Score:2)
In my "uncool" corner of the industry there are plenty of older folks and women doing programming.
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Age Descrimination is Rampant (Score:2)
Hiring Patterns (Score:2)
FWIW, if you are over 40 (or 50, or 60) and in an in-demand position when the labor market is tight like this it is a great time to get back in. While I might have been a bit of an ageist earlier in my career, senior managers know better. Companies will likely pay a little lower than someone earlier in their career, kind of managing risk and reducing expectations on billable hours, but right now they will hire people that can perform. You need to interview more to overcome ageism, but there are jobs out
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Companies will likely pay a little lower than someone earlier in their career, kind of managing risk and reducing expectations on billable hours, but right now they will hire people that can perform.
Right now they're laying off people by the thousands, and they're hiring people with years of experience in current technologies.
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Big companies are laying people off. Smaller companies are hiring at any chance they get. Big companies have an advantage during boom times, small companies remain nimble during the busts.
Sounds about right (Score:2)
Age breakdown by decade:
20's: 30%
30's: 20%
40's: 20%
50's: 20%
60's: 10%
The above percentages are just my guestimates based on the general age of the workforce, so 22% for people in their 50's sounds about right. The number is lower for people in their 60's because people start to retire then. It is higher for people in their 20's because many people who enter tech do it because "That is where the future/money is!" and not because of a real interest in it. They find out by their 30's that tech
demographics (Score:2)
No shit,sherlock?
50 years ago was 1972. That's 10 years before the C64 appeared. Heck, it's 4 years before the Apple I was made.
There simpy aren't many people that age who are techies, because when the 50+ demographics decided which job to pursue and which subjects to pick at university, computer science was a fringe thing, often a sub-topic of mathematics and with little commercial appeal.
I'm a bit under that line, and my parents thought the C64 I had was only good for games and tried all the time to make
I mean - yes (Score:2)
50 years ago is 1982. 1982 was designated by the British government as "The Information Technology Year", and there was a major push in schools and on television. I know this off the top of my head because I wrote a piece of music a few years ago that sampled heavily one of those TV pushes: "The Computer Programme".
I loved it. I faffed with the school's ZX81, had a family ZX Spectrum and then moved to the Commodore 64 a few years later. Was when I got an ST th
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Nothing to see ... (Score:2)
60% of those aged 50+ in the UK are employed (the rest are mostly retired)
so 22% is perhaps more than in most other jobs ...
The responses in this thread baffle me (Score:2)
Why are all the responses about developers and programmers? They're not talking about only that tiny demographic they're talking about IT in general. I work for a huge multinational outsourcer and only a tiny number of the UK resources are developers (I'd estimate a few hundred out of 5000+ in the UK). All those types of jobs are long outsources offshore.
As someone who's been in IT 30 years and is at the magic age there's LOADS of reasons why there aren't more people in this age bracket joining IT. From the
Eldery people are targeted in IT jobs (Score:1)
This is what happened in one of top 500 fortune companies:
All people who were few years from typical retirement age received special email with a request to take early retirement due to company savings in 2020/2021 COVID years. ...Company's code of conduct states that it has Fair Employment Practices - Non-Discrimination.
Stupid (Score:2)
You can't teach an old dog new tricks. An old dog who already knows the tricks does a great job. These people are idiots, but no one should find that surprising.