Claims of Age Bias Rise, but Standards of Proof Are High • Hacker News Board

Re: Claims of Age Bias Rise, but Standards of Proof Are High

#41

Post by WalterSear » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 6:45 PM UTC

chroma wrote: post #25

Swizec wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't want to end up being a 50+ year old who can no longer get a job So just stay relevant? I'm 28, been coding for 19 years. What was relevant to learn when I was in middle and high school is completely useless now. All those endless hours spent learning how to make games in Pascal, irrelevant technologies. All those endless hours spent learning PHP3/4 and cobbling together websites and crude frameworks, irrele…

> So just stay relevant? I'm 28, been coding for 19 years. What was relevant to learn when I was in middle and high school is completely useless now. One thing that older people (50+) have impressed upon me is that learning gets harder as you age. It's not just that your body and mind become tired more easily. In general, if a 20-year-old and a 50-year-old spend the same amount of time studying something, the 20-year…

Keeping physically fit helps.

Re: Claims of Age Bias Rise, but Standards of Proof Are High

#42

Post by mathattack » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 6:47 PM UTC

I've found that I've had the best luck interviewing with people +/- 5 years of me. This has trumped gender or ethnic differences. (Sample size of just me)

I'll also say that I only had a handful of non-college interviews before my mid-30s, so I don't have a ton of data on if this were true when I was younger.

Re: Claims of Age Bias Rise, but Standards of Proof Are High

#43

Post by mathgeek » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 6:49 PM UTC

> The email, from their boss to a colleague at another university, said Ms. Taaffe and her fellow teachers were “an extraordinarily change-averse population of people almost all of whom are over 50, contemplating retirement (or not), and it’s like herding hippos.”

This is simultaneously amusing and saddening.

Re: Claims of Age Bias Rise, but Standards of Proof Are High

#44

Post by true_religion » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 6:50 PM UTC

terrywilcox wrote: post #35

chroma wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So just stay relevant? I'm 28, been coding for 19 years. What was relevant to learn when I was in middle and high school is completely useless now. One thing that older people (50+) have impressed upon me is that learning gets harder as you age. It's not just that your body and mind become tired more easily. In general, if a 20-year-old and a 50-year-old spend the same amount of time studying something, the 20-year…

Learning doesn't get much harder. Making time to learn gets much harder. The real problem is that while the 50 year old has already had 30 years more learning than the 20 year old, the 50 year old probably doesn't know who the Kardashians are . How can you not know who the Kardashians are? What's wrong with you? My exact experience.

> the 50 year old probably doesn't know who the Kardashians are. How can you not know who the Kardashians are? What's wrong with you?

I know it's just a throw-away example, but I'd like to point out "Keeping up with the Kardashians" has been on TV continuously since 2007. The more prominent Kardasihan sisters themselves are all 34-36 years old.

I don't think anyone in their 50s really would have a hard time relating to someone in their mid-30s, nor be completely flummoxed by a TV show that's been available for 10 years.

More to the point--pop culture is popular culture and seeps its way through all age groups. A better example would be a music artist that's popular only with teenagers or some niche group. I couldn't name a single artist popular with teens/tweens now.

Re: Claims of Age Bias Rise, but Standards of Proof Are High

#45

Post by Retric » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 6:50 PM UTC

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #34

kasey_junk wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So just stay relevant? The point of age bias isn't bias against people without relevant skills, its an actual bias against person of certain ages. Our industry is ripe with stories of folks with extremely relevant skill sets not getting jobs after a certain age (50 seems to be common). There is some (unintentional I'm sure) age bias even in the response of "stay relevant" as if the implication is that older devs do…

>There is some (unintentional I'm sure) age bias even in the response of "stay relevant" as if the implication is that older devs don't do that as a matter of course while younger ones do. Take two doctors. Both learned all their knowledge going through med school. Neither did anything else to stay relevant. One graduated 5 years ago, the other 25 years. Which is likely to have more relevant knowledge? Is it because…

Doctors spend a lot of time staying current. IMO, the real issue is you can't have 20 years of experience in a 10 year old technique. Which makes older workers seem like there asking for increased pay for irrelevant experience.

However, there is more than one learning curve involved. Knowing Ruby or Objective C is only part of the story you also want someone that understands non technical pitfalls.

Re: Claims of Age Bias Rise, but Standards of Proof Are High

#46

Post by jkubicek » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 6:51 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #14

tetraodonpuffer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So while this might be a problem now, it's correcting itself with time. that assumes that the reasons behind age discrimination/bias are purely based on competence (or lack thereof). I don't see the problem correcting itself when it seems the drivers behind age discrimination are wages and perceived cultural fit (anecdotally more evident in cases where the manager is younger than the candidate)

As a 33 year old tech worker, I have specifically accelerated by plans of getting out of tech by my mid 30s due to ageism in the industry (unless I decide to start my own "lifestyle" startup I can live off of). I'm not going to be a good culture fit when I want work/life balance, no more than 40 hours a week of work, not on call 24/7, etc. EDIT: Perhaps I've just been working the wrong gigs. Thanks for the feedback a…

I'm a mid-30s tech worker. I've never had problems maintaining a work/life balance across jobs from tiny startups to larger 2000+ person companies. If you do want to stay in tech as you grow older, there are places to go that don't require abandoning your family.

Re: Claims of Age Bias Rise, but Standards of Proof Are High

#47

Post by kamaal » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 6:53 PM UTC

terrywilcox wrote: post #26

Swizec wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't want to end up being a 50+ year old who can no longer get a job So just stay relevant? I'm 28, been coding for 19 years. What was relevant to learn when I was in middle and high school is completely useless now. All those endless hours spent learning how to make games in Pascal, irrelevant technologies. All those endless hours spent learning PHP3/4 and cobbling together websites and crude frameworks, irrele…

> Technologies change, syntax evolves, semantics improve, but your deep understanding of how to ask just the right question of a business person that turns a mathematically unsolvable problem, into something you can build in three days. That is always going to stay relevant. I used to think like you. But I'm 51 now. I've discovered that I was wrong. The younger the technical interviewer, the less interested they are…

>>But I'm 51 now. I've discovered that I was wrong.

When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.

- Oscar Wilde

I've seen clear bias in our industry. Though I'm in my 30's. I've seen people in my age group clearly discriminate against older programmers.

Save, invest, prepare for your retirement and be safe instead of betting your life on a unforgiving younger generation.

Re: Claims of Age Bias Rise, but Standards of Proof Are High

#48

Post by up_and_up » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 6:53 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #14

tetraodonpuffer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So while this might be a problem now, it's correcting itself with time. that assumes that the reasons behind age discrimination/bias are purely based on competence (or lack thereof). I don't see the problem correcting itself when it seems the drivers behind age discrimination are wages and perceived cultural fit (anecdotally more evident in cases where the manager is younger than the candidate)

As a 33 year old tech worker, I have specifically accelerated by plans of getting out of tech by my mid 30s due to ageism in the industry (unless I decide to start my own "lifestyle" startup I can live off of). I'm not going to be a good culture fit when I want work/life balance, no more than 40 hours a week of work, not on call 24/7, etc. EDIT: Perhaps I've just been working the wrong gigs. Thanks for the feedback a…

> no more than 40 hours a week of work, not on call 24/7

I work at a startup in NYC and our culture is like that. Seems like you might want to explore the culture at other companies. There is no reason you need to kill yourself to work in tech. Work/life balance is important at many companies. It leads to longer-term employees, higher morale, better team-work etc (anecdotally speaking as I have worked for companies at all ends of the spectrum).

Re: Claims of Age Bias Rise, but Standards of Proof Are High

#49

Post by disposeofnick9 » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 6:53 PM UTC

In the Standford med school, an IT admin named Can______ was pushed out for the treacherous crime of being older, and no pretext was used to pretend it was anything else because their supervisor admitted it openly.

People have to realize this will be them, and that normalized hate is unacceptable and speak up against it.

Re: Claims of Age Bias Rise, but Standards of Proof Are High

#50

Post by true_religion » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 6:53 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #18

danharaj wrote: post #9

I think this is caused by how heavily age segregated our societies are, from education and child care to nursing homes and elder care.

You're right this would be solved if we had babies in nursing homes and waited until someone was 80 to teach them calculus!

As an aside, I think that age-segregation in schooling results in behaviour problems.

Teenagers want to take their behavioural cues from older children and young adults, but they simply don't have enough interaction with them so instead take their cues from what they believe to be true via mass media.

Imagine how many fewer 15 year olds would ask "what can I do with calculus" if they had to brush shoulders with 20 year old engineering students and could visibly see what kind of projects you'd work on with a deeper mathematics background?

Cross-polination programs do exist today, but its not the same thing as having it be systemic.