Ask HN: Is it just me or is the IT field becoming discriminatory?

Fifteen or so years ago, it was recommended that I remove two items from my CV, my age and my marital status. It was suggested to me that both of those items would, in quite a few circumstances, put me on the automatic reject list, irrespective of what I had achieved in the past.

>When I mention that I have a wife and kids, I don't know if that's good or bad in the company's eyes.

You have two options: either don't mention the wife and kids and take the chance of getting a job that doesn't respect what you want from your work/life balance because they didn't know, or mention you have a wife/kids and not get hired for a job you would have hated anyway.

I don't want to speak on your behalf, but I would rather get passed over for a job that was a bad fit than take a job that's going to have a negative impact on my family life.

You seem to be approaching this from the wrong direction.

If you're really suffering from age discrimination, instead of thinking of women and minorities as the reason you're not being hired (do you really think that's the case when there are so few in tech comparatively?!), you should be thinking of them as people who are plausibly in same situation as you: suffering from a form of discrimination.

So:

(A) you should be feeling solidarity with people who have hard time getting hired, not getting upset companies are trying to be more fair in their hiring practices by encouraging broader range of people to apply.

(B) when you encounter companies that encourage women/minorities/etc. to apply, those are probably companies that are trying to hire people on merit, rather than preconceived notions. So those are exactly the places you _want_ to apply!

But the research project exists to inform future changes in their hiring practices.

It's quite likely Automattic already tries to discriminate in hiring because they mention their "strong focus on metrics" along with their amusing puzzlement that merely demanding more women and trans people be hired didn't automatically make it so. They certainly want discriminatory outcomes.

That said I agree with what you write. I'm not sure explicit age discrimination is common though. It may appear to be happening but is often other things, nobody is actually deciding they don't want older people. Age discrimination against young people, that's common (e.g. young people not being allowed to be CEOs, like Larry Page). Not necessarily bad but common. Gender discrimination against men I've seen a bunch of times, and it's explicit. People say "we won't hire men".