经济与社会科学2020arxiv.org
大众媒体如何描绘年长软件开发者的就业能力
How popular media portrays the employability of older software developers
入门 · 约 30 分钟读完前置知识：软件行业就业市场常识、媒体内容分析基础
导读
这篇论文研究了流行媒体（如影视、新闻报道）如何刻画年长软件开发者的就业能力，分析媒体叙事中是否存在年龄歧视或刻板印象。基于 arXiv 摘要信息，论文通过分析媒体内容来考察“大龄程序员难以就业”这一普遍说法的来源与呈现方式。
HN 关注点：HN 读者多为程序员，年龄歧视与职业可持续性是社区长期关注的话题，大家常争论年长开发者是否真的难找工作、还是技能停滞所致。
HN 评论精选
这几条评论里：质疑 1 补充 1 亲历 2
亲历年长工程师的价值取决于是否持续更新技能，而非年龄本身
我共事过两类年长工程师：一类持续更新技能，一类没有。前者是知识和技能的宝库，价值远超任何初级工程师——经历过多个计算时代，对抽象和计算机体系结构有更高层次的理解，手写过汇编、C、Java，如今写 JavaScript 或 Python 时也清楚底层的每一层。后者则是负担，带着 1980 年代的最佳实践，维护着七十年代的遗留 BASIC 或 COBOL 系统，系统升级被裁后还惊讶找不到工作。这两类人很少混在一起，分属完全不同的公司类型。我自己的经验是：持续跟进的话需要投入约 20% 的时间，或者每 2-5 年做一次 1-3 个月的深度学习，钻研最新最潮的技术栈并做出产品。
woofie11查看英文原文
I've worked with two types of older engineers: 1) Ones who keep up their skills 2) Ones who don't The former are a treasure trove of knowledge and skills, and provide substantially more value than anyone junior ever could. Going through so many computing eras gives a higher-level way of thinking about abstraction, or understanding computer architectures. They've hand-tweaked assembly, C, Java, and when they're now doing JavaScript or Python, they understand all the layers of metal underneath. They've gone through flow charts, structured, functional, object oriented, and all the variants there-of. They've written high-speed algorithms to draw lines with pixels, to ray trace, and are now coding GPGPUs. The latter are liabilities, bringing in 1980-era best-practices. They're working on some legacy BASIC or COBAL system from the seventies, and surprised they can't find a new job when that's upgraded and they're downsized. I've rarely seen #1 and #2 mix. They're very different crowds, and in very different types of companies. My own experience is that I need to devote about 20% of my time to keep up, if I'm doing it on an ongoing basis, or about 1-3 months every 2-5 years if I do occasional deep dives. Basically, I dive headlong into whatever is the newest, trendiest stack, and get a product out using that, deeply learning all the deep things behind it too. That's what works for me. YMMV.
亲历54 岁开发者现身说法：继续写代码比转管理更有保障，核心知识长期有效
作为一名 54 岁的开发者：我热爱编程，每天仍在写代码，不想转管理岗。工作机会方面，开发者岗位远多于管理岗，所以做开发反而更好找工作。家庭方面，这个年纪孩子已二十多岁，比他们小时候自由得多。学习新东西正是做开发的吸引力之一，永远不无聊。而且虽然流行框架等东西转瞬即逝，但职业生涯积累的核心基础知识永远适用。
henrik_w查看英文原文
My perspective, as an older developer (I'm 54): - I love coding, and I still code every day. I have no desire to move into other roles (such as management). - As for job security, I think it is harder to find a job as a manager than as a developer, simply because there are many more positions for developers than for managers - Family-wise, it is much easier at my age, because my children are getting into their twenties now. Much more free time for me (including for work if I want), compared to when they were younger and need lots more attention (and being picked up from daycare) - As for learning - that's one of the attractions of being a developer. There are always new things to take in, it never gets boring - On the other hand, even if some things in programming are fleeting (the currently popular frameworks etc), there is a core of fundamental knowledge that you gain over the course of your career that will always apply.
质疑招聘顾问：很多所谓年龄歧视其实是技能停滞，并给出简历建议
我曾是初创公司技术招聘人员，现在是简历顾问，服务过 18 岁到 60 多岁的软件工程师。40 岁以上的工程师如果在做有趣的事、且和几年前做的不一样，就不会被歧视。我说过很多次：我们常把技能停滞误认为年龄歧视。如果你 15 年干同一份工作、维护同一套系统、用同样的语言，那不是年龄歧视，而是雇主认为你学不会新东西。简历上别暴露年龄：不必列出早期实习、第一份工作或毕业年份，写最近 15-20 年的经历即可，简历不是自传。
fecak查看英文原文
I'm a former tech recruiter for startups and now a resume writer and career consultant, and I've written for software engineers from 18 through their late 60's. - Older software engineers (40+) won't be discriminated against if they are doing cool stuff and are doing different stuff than they were doing a few years back. I've written this a thousand times before, but we often confuse ageism for stagnation. If you've had the same job for 15 years working on the same system and using the same languages, you aren't a victim of ageism as much as you are being discriminated against because they don't think you'll be able to learn new tricks. - On resumes, don't advertise your age if you're a bit older. We don't need to list that internship, first job out of school, or graduation dates from college. List 15-20 years of your career and leave the rest off. It isn't a biography.
补充35 岁开发者：团队需要年龄多样性，部分公司刻意只招年轻人以降低成本
我 35 岁，算是中间派。坦白说，我既不想在平均年龄 20 岁的公司工作，也不想在没有年长者的环境里干活。有时看到招聘广告写“年轻化的同事”，简直离谱。我希望的环境是既能和二十出头的年轻人交流获得新视角，也能和经验丰富的前辈共事——他们一眼就能看出我刚想出的点子既不聪明也没用。另外要考虑的是，很多公司业务模式简单，精简后并不需要多少资深人员，这些公司很乐意通过只招特定人群来维持现状。
cosmodisk查看英文原文
I'm 35, so kind of in the middle. Frankly speaking,I'd hate to work in a company where an average age is 20 as much as where an average age is 60. Sometimes I see job ads with things like ' youthful colleagues',which is crazy. I want to work in an environment,where I can talk to someone in their early 20s and gain from their perspective and understanding and also to someone who's been round the block a few times and can tell off the bat that the shit I came up with minutes ago is neither smart nor useful because X,Y,Z. Putting all this aside, one thing to consider is that there are there are tons of companies out there that do have reasonably easy operational model,which,once streamlined, doesn't require senior people,or only very few. And those companies are very happy to keep thr status quo by only employing from certain demographics.
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