[Spooky23]

At 45 you become untouchable. Too old to be young, too young to be old. How many 50 year olds do you see in SV companies?

I knew a guy who was about 50, brilliant, brilliant engineer working for one of the big IT players. Well respected and trusted advisor to many customers. He got vaporized in some big restructuring that hit his division.

Because of non-compete and what he did, he was basically out of work for almost a year, and was stuck in career purgatory for a few years doing random contract work.

[geoelectric]

I see quite a few 50 year olds in larger, more established companies. Older people don't join startups because they can't afford to, as a general rule, but the rest of the age skew that exists is as much because the current round of technological skill set is rooted in the GUI and Internet advances of the 90s as much as anything. That ends up putting a soft bound on career length based on if you did your primary learning before or after that.

Anyone older cut their teeth on assembly or C, NetBIOS, and CLI and may or may not have stayed current afterwards. Consider that the industry was a lot "older" (just look at old pictures) until those technological shifts happened and shook out all the people that learned in the 60s or 70s.

If something like quantum computing or a parallel functional computing revolution or VR/augmented interfaces or anything else grossly disruptive to current development practices comes around, we're all going to be in the same boat: learn or die. Getting through that is not so much a factor of age as the circumstances around age and one's willingness to keep at it.

[cableshaft]

Oh, please bring the VR/augmented surfaces revolution. I'd happily switch over my career to that. As it is, my next hobby game is probably going to have VR support.

[RealityVoid]

> Anyone older cut their teeth on assembly or C, NetBIOS, and CLI and may or may not have stayed current afterwards.

Is there something wrong with these in that they are not useful anymore? I see a lot of jobs that require these, and I think they're still very relevant. Actually, I'm relatively young and love that stuff and work with that stuff... I'd love to work with someone who's been working with those for decades, experience really does show.

[geoelectric]

No, they're still useful but the people posting that they don't see older people in tech almost certainly aren't working in these technologies.

[Spooky23]

Absolutely. The point is, when they get RIFed, they are screwed.

IBM was particularly brutal about this stuff when they were eliminating people still on the pension plan.

[greggarious]

I don't understand - I thought non-competes were unenforceable in CA?

[ghaff]

Wasn't clear in the CA and the non-compete parts of that comment were connected.

However, in any case, the reality is that for small companies, for all but the most senior and/or desired employees (and even then), a potential non-compete issue just isn't worth dealing with. Doesn't matter whether it would ultimately lose in court, you're just not prepared to go there. That's the real issue with non-competes.

I've worked for a small firm and a candidate with even the most peripheral non-compete was just a non-starter.

[wcummings]

Especially if they prevent you from making a living.

[gaius]

Usually a non-compete would be void if you were laid off.

[Spooky23]

I've worked in NY and MA. They are very enforceable there.