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Tech workers worry about age discrimination at age 40: Study

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Re: Tech workers worry about age discrimination at age 40: Study

#81

Post by jakobegger »

dogruck wrote: post #76
allengeorge wrote: post #73

I suspect there are a couple of reasons - especially in the newer/startup space: * Salary. Older employees are more experienced, but, just as importantly, they've already job-hopped a bit, so their base is a lot higher. And they've probably a lot more personal financial responsibilities. All told, they're unlikely to go for the same salary as a new grad. * Interview process. Anecdotal experience, but, the interview p…

Some of those points are actually age discriminatory. For example, why assume that an older person should earn more than a younger person? Instead, it's better to think about paying people in proportion to the value that they provide to the company. I understand that many startups simply do not have the cash required to pay a high base salary. But, that's what equity compensation is for.

The problem with that line of thinking is that it is extremely hard to measure the value that employees provide to the company. “Pay them what they are worth” sounds straightforward, but in reality you just can’t put a number on a candidate.

The younger candidate might be inexperienced but a fast learner; the older candidate might have a lot of experience, but might be reluctant to adopt the companies coding practices...

There’s no way to know which of them is going to provide more value in the long term; but you do know that one of them expects a significantly higher salary.

Re: Tech workers worry about age discrimination at age 40: Study

#82

Post by zeroxfe »

dogruck wrote: post #76
allengeorge wrote: post #73

I suspect there are a couple of reasons - especially in the newer/startup space: * Salary. Older employees are more experienced, but, just as importantly, they've already job-hopped a bit, so their base is a lot higher. And they've probably a lot more personal financial responsibilities. All told, they're unlikely to go for the same salary as a new grad. * Interview process. Anecdotal experience, but, the interview p…

Some of those points are actually age discriminatory. For example, why assume that an older person should earn more than a younger person? Instead, it's better to think about paying people in proportion to the value that they provide to the company. I understand that many startups simply do not have the cash required to pay a high base salary. But, that's what equity compensation is for.

> For example, why assume that an older person should earn more than a younger person?

They shouldn't earn more, if they're providing the same value as someone paid less. But, they typically ask for more, because they have more experience (which is difficult to validate), and usually have more financial obligations.

It is up to the employer to decide if they want to pay the price of seniority.

> I understand that many startups simply do not have the cash required to pay a high base salary. But, that's what equity compensation is for.

As one gets older, it's in their best interest to become more financially risk averse, and require more predictability and less uncertainty. Startup equity is very high-risk, and therefore not acceptable as a replacement to more salary.

Re: Tech workers worry about age discrimination at age 40: Study

#83

Post by michaelgrosner2 »

SeanDav wrote: post #3

> "...Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg reportedly said that young people are more intelligent while speaking to a group of entrepreneurs " I would be fascinated to hear if his opinion changes once he is 40+ ...

Why would it? He will never face any sort of age discrimination; he's got so much money that his grandchildren's grandchildren will never need to look for work.

Re: Tech workers worry about age discrimination at age 40: Study

#84

Post by consz »

sotojuan wrote: post #63
donatj wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also family and responsibility. When I was young and single I had no reason to really go home after work, so I’d linger at work to finish things and I would work on work things at home in my spare time. Now that I’m married, I have more important things to do and my company gets much less free labor.

> When I was young and single I had no reason to really go home after work, so I’d linger at work to finish things and I would work on work things at home in my spare time. I am 23 (started working in programming at 22) and this view confuses me. I don't want to sound rude but... you didn't have hobbies? Friends? Partner? Errands to run? Non-work programming projects? Even when I was single and lived alone, I had ple…

Not the OP, but I had a similar view when I was younger. It was a mix of (a) no errands because all of this was exported to other services, (b) no partner, most friends were also busy so I only was hanging out with friends 1-2 evenings a week, and (c) I've never had non-work programming projects (then or now). Most of my hobbies were solitary activities I could do at home, and since they were flexible, it was easy to shift things around when I was bored enough to spend extra time on work related things.

Re: Tech workers worry about age discrimination at age 40: Study

#85

Post by jroseattle »

allengeorge wrote: post #73

I suspect there are a couple of reasons - especially in the newer/startup space: * Salary. Older employees are more experienced, but, just as importantly, they've already job-hopped a bit, so their base is a lot higher. And they've probably a lot more personal financial responsibilities. All told, they're unlikely to go for the same salary as a new grad. * Interview process. Anecdotal experience, but, the interview p…

These points are all very true. As a hiring manager and someone who would qualify in this study, here's my personal response to all of these:

* Salary: you get what you pay for. (Senior folks -- you need to stand and deliver.)

* Interview process: it's broken, so we actively de-emphasize rote memorization. We instead look for application of principles to solve problems, because that maps well to our work.

* It's hard to gauge experience: we find experience is most valuable when it helps in delivery. Related to interview process, we look for people who can help us deliver solutions, and experience informs us about that.

* We devalue experience: yep, and we don't. Thanks, other hiring managers, for leaving us with a pool of candidates you're ignoring!

On the whole, we try to identify attributes among candidates that we believe are age-agnostic: curiosity in problem solving, a commitment to continuing to learn, ethical and moral code, etc. It's not perfect but it's our list and we continue to improve against it with each subsequent interaction with candidates.

Re: Tech workers worry about age discrimination at age 40: Study

#86

Post by purplethinking »

Not sure if it'll be a problem for the millenial generation, but I'm sure not going to wait to find out. My goal is to not need a job by 45. If by then I still have to "beg" businesses to employ me, I will have failed. That means either enough money in the bank + low enough expenses, having my own stream of income, or be good enough that I can do consulting for multiple businesses (and thus diversify my across employers).

Re: Tech workers worry about age discrimination at age 40: Study

#87

Post by humanrebar »

allengeorge wrote: post #73

I suspect there are a couple of reasons - especially in the newer/startup space: * Salary. Older employees are more experienced, but, just as importantly, they've already job-hopped a bit, so their base is a lot higher. And they've probably a lot more personal financial responsibilities. All told, they're unlikely to go for the same salary as a new grad. * Interview process. Anecdotal experience, but, the interview p…

> It's hard to gauge experience

I think this could be solved by coming up with a more common vocabulary of tech job titles.

In medicine you have technicians, orderlies, surgeons, general practitioners, anesthesiologists, physician-scientists, nurses, physicians' assistants, teaching physicians, and so on. Not to mention all the hospital administrators. They're not all "medical engineers". They don't (at least not to the same degree) require a combination of CV parsing and oral exams to figure out what their experience actually entailed.

There's some movement to create separate career paths for DBAs, SREs, etc, though the day-to-day responsibilities there vary quite a bit. I'd like to see specificity in job titles going forward. Someone who assists designers in creating brochure websites probably needs a different job title than someone designing lockless data structures from scratch. And someone who evaluates different production databases and picks the one to ship to production servers probably needs a different job title.

Re: Tech workers worry about age discrimination at age 40: Study

#88

Post by toyg »

purplethinking wrote: post #86

Not sure if it'll be a problem for the millenial generation, but I'm sure not going to wait to find out. My goal is to not need a job by 45. If by then I still have to "beg" businesses to employ me, I will have failed. That means either enough money in the bank + low enough expenses, having my own stream of income, or be good enough that I can do consulting for multiple businesses (and thus diversify my across employ…

Good luck doing that with kids and a mortgage.

Re: Tech workers worry about age discrimination at age 40: Study

#89

Post by kartan »

For an informed answer you can see: "Uncle" Bob Martin - "The Future of Programming" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecIWPzGEbFc

Please, see the video. It is an awesome informative and it will give you a lot of insight on our current situation. It is not about startups, but about the maturity of the industry itself.

Re: Tech workers worry about age discrimination at age 40: Study

#90

Post by stephengillie »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #77
fsloth wrote: post #66

The best insurance against age is to find some domain, and excel at that. At 40, it's not so good if your top claim in CV is "I know C++ in an out". "I was part of a team delivering product X, Y and Z which produced this much revenue for our company and which provided this and this value to our clients. I'm experienced contributor in domain W, and am comfortable in providing value using technologies A and B." is much…

By specializing in a domain, you live and die by it. It usually happens anyways, but it isn't all upside.

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