zz The Tech Industry’s Darkest Secret: It’s All About Age

They don’t prepare you for this in college or admit it in job interviews. The harsh reality is that if you are middle-aged, write computer code for a living, and earn a six-figure salary, you’re headed for the unemployment lines. Your market value declines as you age and it becomes harder and harder to get a job.
I know this post will provoke anger, outrage, and denial. But, sadly, this is the way things are in the tech world. It’s an “up or out” profession — like the military. And it’s as competitive as professional sports. Engineers need to be prepared.
This is not openly discussed, because employers could be accused of age discrimination. But research, such as that completed by University of California, Berkeley, professors Clair Brown and Greg Linden shows that even those with masters degrees and Ph.Ds have reason to worry.
Brown and Linden’s analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census data for the semiconductor industry revealed that although salaries increased dramatically for engineers in their 30s, these increases slowed after the age of 40. After 50, the mean salary fell by 17% for those with bachelors degrees and by 14% for those with masters degrees and Ph.Ds. And salary increases for holders of postgraduate degrees were always lower than for those with bachelor’s degrees (in other words, even Ph.D degrees didn’t provide long-term job protection).
It’s the same in the software industry. Prominent Silicon Valley investors often talk about youth being an advantage in entrepreneurship. If you look at their investment portfolios, all you see are engineers who are hardly old enough to shave. They rarely invest in people who are old.
It may be wrong, but look at this from the point of view of the employer. Why would any company pay a computer programmer with out-of-date skills a salary of say $150,000, when it can hire a fresh graduate — who has no skills — for around $60,000? Even if it spends a month training the younger worker, the company is still far ahead. The young understand new technologies better than the old do, and are like a clean slate: They will rapidly learn the latest coding methods and techniques, and they don’t carry any “technology baggage.” The older worker likely has a family and needs to leave the office by 6 p.m. The young can easily pull all-nighters.
What the tech industry often forgets is that with age comes wisdom. Older workers are usually better at following direction, mentoring, and leading. They tend to be more pragmatic and loyal, and to know the importance of being team players. And ego and arrogance usually fade with age.
During my tech days, I hired several programmers who were over 50. They were the steadiest performers and stayed with me through the most difficult times.
It can be difficult for some companies to justify paying the age premium. For tech startups in particular, it always boils down to cost: Most can’t even afford to pay $60,000 salaries, so they look for motivated, young software developers who will accept minimum wage in return for equity ownership and the opportunity to build their careers.
We can blame the employer, but in a free economy you can’t really force any company to hire workers who have the wrong skills or to pay higher salaries. Larger companies develop products for global markets and have global workforces. They will hire where they can get the best skill for the best price.
So, whether we like it or not, it’s a tough industry, and the onus is on employees to keep themselves marketable. I know that many people will take offense at what I have to say, but here is my advice to those whose hair is beginning to grey.

• Move up the ladder into management, architecture, or design, and diversify your experience. Work with business executives in your company, in areas such as sales, finance, marketing/product management, legal, and operations. Develop a broader set of skills that make you more valuable to your employer and that differentiate you from others with just coding skills.

• Become an entrepreneur. Despite what some investors say, older age is an advantage in the startup world. You know more about industries and markets, and have ideas for products that the world actually needs and a better ability to motivate and manage than a kid out of school does.

• Keep your skills current. This means keeping up to date with the latest trends in computing, programming techniques, and languages, and adapting to change. To be writing code for a living when you’re 50, you will need to be a rock-star developer and be able to out-code the new kids on the block. Top developers are always in demand and companies will readily pay top dollars for them.

• If you’re going to stay in programming, realize that the deck is stacked against you. Even though you may be highly experienced and wise, employers aren’t willing or able to pay an experienced worker twice or thrice what an entry-level worker earns. Save as much as you can when you’re in your 30s and 40s, and be prepared to earn less as you gain experience.

Finally, I don’t know of any university, including the ones I teach at, that tells its engineering students what to expect in the long term or how to manage their technical careers. Perhaps it is time to let students know what lies ahead and prepare them for their difficult careers.

Goodbye fluorescent bulb? Philips says yes.

Goodbye fluorescent bulb? Philips says yes.

By TOBY STERLING, Associated Press–12 hours ago

AMSTERDAM (AP) — If you've worked in an office, you're probably familiar with the soft glow of fluorescent tubes drifting from the ceiling. If Europe's Philips brand is right, those lamps could soon be history.
Royal Philips NV, the Dutch consumer appliances giant, said Thursday that it has developed an LED light that will soon be far more efficient than the best fluorescents on the market. That should make it cheaper and greener, as well.
It's a combination that will inevitably help the LED dominate the market for illuminating the world's workplaces, according to the global leader in lighting sales.
In an interview with The Associated Press ahead of the unveiling of the new light, a top executive said the prototype LED is headed to mass production and will hit the market in 2015. He claimed that in 10 years, LEDs will replace at least half of the world's fluorescent bulbs, which have been the main source of workplace lighting since shortly after World War II.
"This is a major step forward for the lighting world," said Rene van Schooten, CEO of Philips' light sources division. "It will bring an enormous savings in energy."
Experts outside the Dutch company say they have long expected LEDs to eclipse fluorescents. If Philips' predictions are correct, however, the arrival of the LED in office spaces will come faster than expected.
The potential impact in energy and cost savings, as well as pollution reduction, is significant — though toxic materials are used in manufacturing both fluorescents and LEDs.
Lights suck up more than 15 percent of all energy produced globally, and fluorescent lights currently make up more than half of the total lighting market.
In the United States alone, fluorescents consume about 200 terawatts annually, according to Philips' estimates. Cutting that in half would save $12 billion in electricity costs and lessen carbon dioxide emissions by 60 million metric tons per year, the company said.
Dr. Eugenia Ellis, a professor of engineering and architecture at Drexel University, who works with LED installations, said an efficiency improvement at the level Philips forecasts would be impressive. Cost savings from using LEDs can already be significant: Ellis gave the example of a hospital recently saving $75,000 a year on energy bills by switching.
In recent years, energy-efficient lights made by Philips, Siemens AG, General Electric Co., Cree Inc. and others using LEDs, or light-emitting diodes, have made significant inroads in the home market, replacing many incandescent and halogen bulbs.
But because fluorescent bulbs are themselves highly efficient, LED lights have so far achieved only a small foothold in business and industry. LEDs are competitive in heavy use settings where their longer lifespans and a minor energy edge pay off.
Philips says its new lamp will change all of that. The technical milestone the company claims to have achieved is the ability to produce 200 lumens of light per watt. A lumen is the standard measure of the amount of light a lamp casts in a given area.
According to Mark Hand, a technology expert at Philips competitor Acuity Brands Inc., that's about twice the output per watt of the best fluorescent tubes currently on the market; he estimated the best LED lamps may get up to 120 lumens per watt.
Cree already advertises an LED lamp it says reaches 200 lumens per watt under some circumstances. Van Schooten said the Philips lamp is different. It will be the first on the market that reaches that level of efficiency and functions across a normal range of temperatures and is capable of consistently producing the same amount of warm white colored light as comparable fluorescent tubes.
Essentially, Van Schooten said, "if you walk into the room, you don't say, 'what a funny lamp.'"
U.S. Department of Energy projections published in April 2012 showed the government had expected the industry would only achieve efficiencies of 160 lumens per watt for LED lamps by 2015.
Philips' Van Schooten said that initially, prices of its LED tubes will still be higher than fluorescent lights. But taking into account electricity costs, the increased efficiency in 2015 will make them cheaper to own within a year, as opposed to three years at present.
And further manufacturing savings and efficiency improvements to LED lights will come with each generation of technology.
"The case is rather compelling, but of course it takes some time to replace existing infrastructure," Van Schooten said.
Philips lighting sales in 2012 amounted to 8.4 billion euros ($11 billion) in a total global market that consulting firm McKinsey puts at 70 billion euros.
Acuity Brands' Hand said that Philips' 10-year view may even be pessimistic. Although LEDs currently make up only a small percentage of his company's $1.9 billion in annual sales, he expects that to change quickly.
"LEDs will take over, definitely within 10 years," he said. He predicted that LEDs would make up more than 50 percent of new sales "certainly within 5 years, maybe within three."
Ironically, Philips will both lose and gain from the change: It is not only the largest maker of LEDs, but also of fluorescent tubes.
"Clearly we'll have to phase that out," Van Schooten said. But "we knew this moment was coming for some time."