Let's figure it out.
Vote in the poll below/inside:
I predict 45-54, and also a strong incidence of goatees.
Growing up, everyone at ISC East seemed to be Vietnam vets with big cop mustaches.
I was there but my wife made me shave the mustache. Never was a cop, though.
This poll only measures those who can drop $200 for an IPVM membership. The "skinny-jeans" set probably can't afford that as easily as us "older" folks. The fact that there are more Y's than Xers, before correcting for self-selecting paid IPVM-ers, is promising.
Hmm, fwiw, my hypothesis is (somewhat) the opposite.
'Older' people tend to dislike or discount IPVM much more than younger people. "What the hell is this blog?" or "Why would I read a website?" or "Who the hell is this guy?" I've never heard an industry person under 30 tout how they read print trade magazines but in the over 50 segment, they seem to wear it as a badge of honor.
That said, I agree with you that an offsetting factor is people who pay or value reading 'inside baseball' topics on IPVM tend to be older. Entry level field techs or inside sales people are assuredly disproportionately underrepresented in IPVM.
"What the hell is this blog?" or "Why would I read a website?" or "Who the hell is this guy?"
These are almost verbatim quotes from my grandmother when she asked me to explain my job.
I am not married to your grandmother, even though my wife has the same attitude.
(and I'm still unsure of the answer to "Who the hell is this guy?")
I bought a pair of skinny jeans, but my wife told me to take them back to the store.
ok...now we're all just trying to get "Funny" votes to shave a few cents off our IPVM membership.
Here's an article about median ages for Silicon Valley companies:
By comparison, the list of various larger companies shows median ages commonly ~40.
So far, in this poll, the numbers are running early 40s which probably is fairly close to actual for the security industry.
I think it might also be interesting to break this down according to possition w/in the industry. For example, I work at a manufacturer, and our oldest employee turned 40 a few days ago. I think it's likely that manufacturers skew more towards the younger side, while integrators and distributors scale more towards the 40ish range.
Btw, I do have a goatee, and it is wonderful.
In my mind, certain manufacturers personify older age than others.
I'll let you guess which brands are characterized in my brain as old, frustrated, and grumpy compared to young, brash, and egotistical.
A, with 91 votes so far, manufacturers are skewing younger than integrators. Let's see what happens when more people vote over the weekend as we promote this further, but I wouldn't be surprised if this stands.
That said, even with manufacturers, I suspect the larger (and 'older') the manufacturer, the older the average age is.
With the age groups I would be intertested to see what the average amount of years spent in the industry has been per group. I would suspect that the older the group the more years they have been in the industry.
Surprised the data is returning as young as it is. I'm AARP-eligible and I usually feel like the kid in the room at conferences (and many job sites.) Most of my customers are old enought I can tease them about that time they told the story about deploying maglocks in the Lincoln White House. If this biz is so full of punks how come we all still have stories of co-workers grumbling about this new-fangled IP thing that doesn't work well with crimp-on coax connectors.
The weighted average age from the survey (with 210+ votes) is 44.4, is that really young? :)
That said, I agree that a lot of people in 'power' or decision-making positions in the security industry tend to be 55 or even 60+
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