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Tech workers worry about age discrimination at age 40: Study
101–110 of 312 posts
Re: Tech workers worry about age discrimination at age 40: Study
#102The 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…
Lots of people in big companies specialize in things they think are domain specific but are really company specific, they become redundant and cannot get a similar position.
Odd to pick c++. If you are very well versed in c++ you could get a well paid job in 100s of places.
Re: Tech workers worry about age discrimination at age 40: Study
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
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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We were talking about domains, not technologies. They are very different concepts. Technologies are fungible, domains have people and business experience associated with them.
Node is not a domain, it is a tech.
Re: Tech workers worry about age discrimination at age 40: Study
#104I 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.
Nobody is assuming you should pay an older person more because they are older, but because they are more experienced. Paying someone with 30 years experience more than someone fresh out of school isn't age discrimination.
Find me a fresh out of school 20 year old with 30 years experience and I'll pay them more too.
Re: Tech workers worry about age discrimination at age 40: Study
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
I was top of my class at the seminary, and I just don't understand why I never hear back from these jobs seeking a technology evangelist!
Good example! More of this, basically.
Re: Tech workers worry about age discrimination at age 40: Study
#106I am 41 years old, still doing software development and enjoying it for the most part. I work in France.
Actually I enjoy it better than I used to since I find myself much more productive and I make less bad design decisions than I used to. I code daily in Javascript (NodeJs), Java and from time to time in groovy, python and golang. Being able to switch from 1 language to another, deploying in different cloud platforms also contributes to my enjoyment.
Recently I have had some bad experiences however when I had to work with exclusively young developers in very small teams (3-4 people). I did not like it mostly because either they were not really competent and did not recognize it (wanting to code on hard topics when they showed poor coding skills on easy ones) or because they were very arrogant (notably a Javascript dev who thought that NodeJs was the alpha and omega of the server runtimes) and were showing some signs of ageism. But I blame mostly the weak recruiting process of my company and management persons (for not constituting well balanced teams). Working with exclusively inexperienced (and not well recruited) people can become a nightmare.
But I am mainly worried because in France (and I think the situation is the same in all Western European countries) even if there's a shortage of tech workers, companies are very reluctant to offer decent wages and still prefer to hire young low paid people. Developers are still seen as blue collars in the IT industry and developers tend to hit very quickly the (salaries) glass ceiling. I tend to think that management persons do not recognize the added value of experienced developers. (I admit that things like maintainability or good design decisions are hard to assess).
I keep my skills up to date, but I am also considering about exit plans, well at least moving away from doing exclusively development.
Re: Tech workers worry about age discrimination at age 40: Study
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
That wasn't an opinion, that was propaganda. It was and still is in his best interests that young people buy that line, because from his perspective young people are not so much smarter as cheaper: fewer commitments, willing to put up with longer hours.
That's quite true. Once people have commitments like a family, they are less willing to put up with companies that demand so much.
No family, but been around long enough to see through the bullshit.
Re: Tech workers worry about age discrimination at age 40: Study
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good luck doing that with kids and a mortgage.
Have a kid and mortgage, but saving 60% of household post-tax income. We do what we can to stay lean, and have been doing that for the past decade. That means some sacrifices (e.g. no car(s)), but it's worth it for the peace of mind. Most people on this site are highly paid software engineers. If you have one or even two of those salaries but live like the mean or even median family, you will be able to save quite a…
Something like living without car is very difficult to pull off in suburban UK, I can’t even begin to imagine how one could do it in places like US or Australia. We have one car and already it limits our opportunities and the ones of our children so much that we’ve been discussing getting another for years.
I’m sure I could save more (we do eat out a bit), but nowhere near 60% of income. You must be making waaaay more than the median.
Re: Tech workers worry about age discrimination at age 40: Study
#109If you are applying for a Development job with 10+ years experience, that is wonderful. But what is not wonderful is to fill up your resume with tools/languages which are either dead/obsolete or which are not relevant for the job posting itself.
As part of a team in my office who currently interviewed and hired DevOps Engineers (I admit it is different than hiring a Programmer): there were quiet few older candidates we reviewed and interviewed but majority of them (as per their resume) seemed to be stuck in the past or it seemed there peak was 10 years ago.
And oh yes, we hired a 40+ year old whom we are extremely happy to have in our team.
Re: Tech workers worry about age discrimination at age 40: Study
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Nobody is assuming you should pay an older person more because they are older, but because they are more experienced. Paying someone with 30 years experience more than someone fresh out of school isn't age discrimination. Find me a fresh out of school 20 year old with 30 years experience and I'll pay them more too.
I can deliver a bunch of employees with 30 years of experience, who are overpaid.
I can also deliver inexperienced employees who are underpaid.