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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

#161

Post by RhodesianHunter »

dogruck wrote: post #152
Clubber wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue based on their contribution to the bottom line, all tech workers, regardless of age, are significantly underpaid.

I would argue that cannot be true. If it were true, new companies would emerge that paid good employees more -- closer to their fair value. (Also, most companies pay employees more than fair value, to discourage them from shirking.)

"new companies would emerge that paid good employees more"

This has been happening for a decade or more... Every time I look at salaries they've gone up significantly more that other fields.

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

#162

Post by peterlk »

I have found that working with older engineers has made me a significantly better developer. For example, it's really easy for new devs to become caught up in the latest libraries, even if they replicate functionality that's been in the OS you're (or whatever) using forever.

I was guilty of this with databases when we had the NoSQL fad; why was I giving up ACID compliance? "Because we're entering a new generation of database design, also, what's ACID?"

Shameless plug: at Aha! we have pretty decent age diversity on our engineering team (and in the rest of the company). If you want to work with us, check out http://aha.io/jobs

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

#163

Post by jpindar »

eric_h wrote: post #51
humanrebar wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...there is also a perception that for someone to not have climbed the corporate ladder by the time they reach their 40s is a signal of failure... How is this not age discrimination? Or do people make the case that age discrimination makes business sense?

Age discrimination can also be salary discrimination. People with more experience rightfully require more in salary.

>People with more experience rightfully require more in salary.

In your opinion. Why prejudge what you think they might require?

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

#164

Post by sangnoir »

dogruck wrote: post #152
Clubber wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue based on their contribution to the bottom line, all tech workers, regardless of age, are significantly underpaid.

I would argue that cannot be true. If it were true, new companies would emerge that paid good employees more -- closer to their fair value. (Also, most companies pay employees more than fair value, to discourage them from shirking.)

you forgot an asterisk in your argument: "assuming perfect competition"

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

#165

Post by RhodesianHunter »

dominotw wrote: post #147
psyc wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't be sure yet, but I'm starting to be concerned. I turned 40 recently. My current job search has lasted about 5x longer than any previous job search. I've been turned down for nonsensical reasons, such as not having enough experience in a specific language that I have a lot of experience in. (That was an assertion by the interviewer, not the result of technical questioning.) I've been interviewed several times…

I was recently rejected by a big tech company for not knowing Java 8. I code in scala in my day job and haven't kept up with changes in java. My coding exercise language options were nodejs,java, python, I submitted solution java 7. Interviewer said to my face( well..on the phone) that they won't be "moving forward" because I don't keep up with changes in technology and they are a 'fast moving' tech environment.

Sounds like you dodged a bullet.

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

#166

Post by Can_Not »

bengalister wrote: post #106

I 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 platfor…

This is what made my first place of employment sour. Everyone was arrogant, less than 1 year of experience, obsessively talked about how we should use the other framework or language and how it would solve all our problems (all these suggestions were driven by unbacked hype and ready-to-be-broked promises) and nobody really wanted to focus on actually getting the work done.

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

#167

Post by dogruck »

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #161
dogruck wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that cannot be true. If it were true, new companies would emerge that paid good employees more -- closer to their fair value. (Also, most companies pay employees more than fair value, to discourage them from shirking.)

"new companies would emerge that paid good employees more" This has been happening for a decade or more... Every time I look at salaries they've gone up significantly more that other fields.

It's likely that pay has gone up because tech workers are providing more value.

Consider an employee working at an investment bank 15 years ago versus today. 15 years ago, most value was generated by hoards of sales people and traders who cultured deep personal relationships with deep-pocketed customers. Today, tech people command a greater share of the wallet, and banks are making deep cuts to the ranks of sales people and traders.

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

#168

Post by curtis »

My last job search (in Seattle) took me months longer than I was expecting. This could be ageism at work (I'm 48), but I'm still inclined to think that there's a more mundane explanation: The recruitment and hiring process for software engineers has gone from crappy to damn near broken. If ageism is a significant problem right now, it's possible that it is primarily a completely unintended side-effect of how were doing hiring in the industry.

I don't know for sure, but we need to be careful about looking at obvious problems and then simply assuming that we know the explanation.

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

#169

Post by bitsnbytes »

oldboyFX wrote: post #33

I see all these articles about the average employee age at startups being 20-30, and how older developers face discrimination. Now this is 100% anecdotal, but I know a few 45+ year old developers and most of them are long-time corporate employees and are not really interested in the whole startup / bloggosphere / tech hype world. They have good stable jobs (think Perl, .NET, Java), and are mainly focused on their fam…

"Older developers of HN, what are your experiences?"

I'm 43.

When I was younger and first started out 20+ years ago I put in easily 50-60+ hour work weeks ,but only billed the client for 40.

I was young , hungry to learn, and loved the feeling I got when I accomplished a project or tackled something new and complicated. It was self rewarding. It was not a job or even a career , it was a feeling that wow somebody is actually paying me to do something I fully enjoy.

At 43 the only thing that has Changed is my ability to put in that extra time.

I was married young and in college as well, but with no Child. At 35 we had our first child and my father had a stroke not too far after that.

My responsibilities at home raising my Son and taking care of my older parents has consumed most of my free time.

While it has not impacted my area of expertise, It has impacted my ability to stay up to date with all the latest and greatest technologies.

Even when I was younger I always had a "learn as a needed" mentality and was able to quickly adapt. That hasn't changed nor my desire to learn new things.

However, what has changed is that I have become selective on which technology "I need to learn". I also can't afford the risk to take a pay cut to jump on a new cool technology when I'm making good money , in my current industry.

Having said that now I fantasize about retirement , but not to retire. I fantasize about that extra time and financial freedom to work and learn on the FUN projects I want.

I have always wanted to get into the robotics industry to improve the quality of life for elderly people and children. I love the software and hardware intermingling and actually seeing the physical result, versus just software virtual results on the screen.

Its something I fantasize enough about , that now I'm looking to purchase a new home with the space to build my lab (mwahahaha).

In regards to ageism, Yes , I have seen it and would say its far more prevalent then the other 'ism' in the tech world.

Luckily for me I don't really look like my age and can still pass for my 30's and have worked with the same clients for 20+ years, even after switching companies.

However on paper its another thing, and something I definitely worry about if I have to change jobs or clients.

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

#170

Post by nul_byte »

I really don't worry about this as a 46 year old engineer. For me I still feel young and I still love tech and my age just does not factor , and for anyone who it would factor, I don't want to work for. I have always had quite a good positive opinion of my talents / knowledge (but not to the point that I am a narcissist arsehole) and that has carried me well.
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