Being Malleable

I was reading Hacker News comments and someone was complaining about how they weren’t able to find a job in computers anymore due to ageism in tech. Reading this, something occurred to me which I thought was worth writing about, which is the idea of malleability.

First of all, I agree that ageism in tech is a thing and it’s a problem for experienced people trying to find a new job. In a capitalist society you want to hire the cheapest employees who can “get the job done”, and experience is often grossly under weighted. My hypothesis for why it occurs has to do with the fact that some people perceive more experienced technologists as more expensive and less malleable.

What Malleability Means in Tech #

What do I mean by that? When it comes to hiring people, you generally want people who are open to new ideas and doing things differently. In my experience the most difficult people to work with are those who are set in their ways and don’t want to do things differently. To be fair, sometimes it’s better to avoid thinking outside the box when the core proficiency of your business is not creating new technology.

Malleability as a technologist working in technology is important for a variety of reasons, but for starters let’s consider technology itself. Technology is the application of the scientific method to various applications or industries in order to solve problems. It is, by definition, a process of exploration and experimentation.

As a technologist one must be tolerant of inevitable failures along the path to creating a finished product, process, or whathaveyou. Malleability is about adapting, being tolerant of change, and having a certain expectation that in order to make progress you must have change, and change inevitably leads to regressions and failures. Being set in your ways, i.e., not malleable, is a failure in and of itself if you are a technologist.

The Malleability Paradox #

A lot of hiring managers seem to assume that more experience means more rigidity, more “this is how we’ve always done it” thinking.

The experience that should make you more valuable can get read as a liability if people assume it also made you less adaptable. This is particularly true in tech, where the half-life of technical knowledge can be measured in years, sometimes months.

What years in tech usually give you is practice adjusting. Someone who has stuck around for 15+ years has already lived through multiple paradigm shifts, technology transitions, and methodology revolutions. Usually they did not survive all that by being rigid.

The Myths About Experienced Technologists #

Some of the assumptions people make about older technologists are:

Myth 1: “They’re stuck in outdated technologies.”
The reality is that most long-term technologists have already pivoted multiple times in their careers. The person who started with COBOL likely moved to C++, then Java, and maybe now Python or Rust. They’ve demonstrated malleability repeatedly, yet this history of adaptation is often overlooked.

Myth 2: “They’re resistant to new methodologies.”
Most experienced developers have seen methodologies come and go—from waterfall to Scrum to Kanban to DevOps. They might be appropriately skeptical of the “new hotness,” but that skepticism comes from having seen similar ideas repackaged and renamed multiple times.

Myth 3: “They can’t keep up with the pace of change.”
The truth is that older developers often have better learning systems in place. When you’ve learned ten programming languages, the eleventh comes much easier. Their knowledge frameworks allow them to assimilate new information more efficiently.

Myth 4: “They’re not passionate or hungry enough.”
This often translates to “they won’t work 80-hour weeks” or “they prioritize sustainability over burnout.” Usually it means they’ve learned what burnout costs and they’re no longer interested in pretending that cost is noble.

Cultivating Demonstrable Malleability #

If you’re an experienced technologist facing these perceptions, here are strategies to showcase your malleability:

1. Maintain a learning portfolio

Document your ongoing learning in visible ways. This could be:

• Contributing to newer open source projects
• Writing blog posts about new technologies you’re exploring
• Speaking at meetups or conferences about bridging legacy and modern systems
• Creating side projects that utilize current tech stacks

2. Use experience as a framework, not a constraint

When discussing your experience, frame it in terms of patterns you’ve recognized and principles you’ve extracted, rather than specific technologies:

• “I’ve seen this pattern play out in three different technology cycles”
• “The fundamentals here are similar to challenges we solved with different tools”
• “Let me show you how this modern approach solves the same problems we faced before”

3. Practice “Yes, and…” over “No, but…”

When faced with new ideas, especially in interviews or team discussions, practice additive thinking instead of contradictory thinking:

• Instead of: “We tried that at my last company and it failed because…”
• Try: “We tried something similar before, and learned these key lessons that could help us succeed this time…”

4. Highlight your adaptation history

Explicitly discuss the major transitions you’ve navigated in your career:

• Technology shifts you’ve successfully managed
• Methodology changes you’ve implemented or adapted to
• How you’ve mentored others through significant changes

5. Stay visibly current

Perception matters. Keep your online presence, resume, and conversational references current:

• Update your LinkedIn with recent technologies and methodologies
• Ensure your GitHub shows recent activity
• Be conversant in current industry trends and terminology
• Maintain relationships with people across generations in tech

The Hidden Advantage of Experienced Malleability #

Here’s what many organizations miss: experienced technologists who stay malleable are often better at telling the difference between a real shift and old ideas in new packaging.

This skill allows them to:

• Adopt new approaches with appropriate speed and caution
• Avoid costly detours into technological dead-ends
• Bridge communication between different generations of technologists
• Implement change in ways that bring others along
• Combine the best of multiple approaches rather than swinging from extreme to extreme

For Hiring Managers: How to Evaluate True Malleability #

If you’re on the hiring side, here are better ways to assess malleability than using age as a proxy:

1. Ask about learning experiences, not just knowledge

• “Tell me about the most significant technology transition in your career.”
• “How did you approach learning [recent technology]?”
• “What’s your process for evaluating whether to adopt a new tool or approach?”

2. Present scenarios that require adaptive thinking

• “How would you approach integrating a new microservice into a legacy monolith?”
• “What would you do if the team wanted to adopt a technology you were skeptical about?”

3. Look for evidence of continual growth

• Has their role evolved over time?
• Have they taken on different types of challenges?
• Do they show curiosity about emerging technologies?

4. Value complementary perspectives

• Does their experience provide a viewpoint currently missing in your team?
• Could their historical knowledge help avoid repeating past mistakes?
• Might their approach balance out tendencies in your current team?

Experience Still Matters If You Can Move #

I think discriminating against older technologists is not just unfair, it’s dumb hiring. Experience combined with malleability is unusually useful, especially on teams that need judgment and not just raw output.

If you’re talented, experienced, and find yourself being rejected in job interviews by 20-somethings who believe they’ve already achieved enlightenment, I’d suggest you hang in there and keep doing what you’re doing, but try to present yourself as being a little more malleable. Not just in your words, but in demonstrable ways that make your adaptability undeniable.

The technologies will continue to change. Programming languages will come and go. Methodologies will cycle through new names for old ideas. If you’ve built a career by adjusting as the ground moves, that’s still the thing that matters.