Tech workers worry about age discrimination at age 40: Study • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sun, Oct 22, 2017, 4:46 PM UTC

fsloth wrote: post #116

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Domain as in 'aerospace', 'construction', 'finance', 'computational geometry'... If any of those die software is kinda pointless anyway.

Those are too broad. For aerospace, you could specialize in avionics for passenger jets, or design tools, or entertainment systems, etc...

We are seeing domain specialization at work now, though not many really saw the Deep learning coming so most of those people aren't senior yet (and the ones that did are super successful in their domains; e.g. A friend of mine has done really really well in applying DNN to speech recognition very early). In research, we talk about areas, but even these are not very well defined and people aren't really interchangeable.

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

#192

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sun, Oct 22, 2017, 4:47 PM UTC

walshemj wrote: post #144

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Selection bias. The older tech workers that have survived the industry have done so in "safer" corporate environments. If startups have bias against older employees, they simply couldn't survive the industry there in general barring a few exceptions. It isn't well known that people become more conservative as they age actually, younger people tend to be more liberal, they aren't changing their ideologies much as they…

that statement "they simply couldn't survive the industry" is screamingly ageist do you hold similar views against females and BME candidates.

I'm older actually, and I'm already seeing friends drop out. The career paths in our industry are shaped like a pyramids after all.

This applies to all tech workers regardless of gender, ethnicity, or whatever.

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

#193

Post by 5ilv3r » Sun, Oct 22, 2017, 4:55 PM UTC

edgan wrote: post #118

gerbilly wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You don't know what the technology behind a website is? Then it's a minus, as you've missed out on ten years of technological advancements in your field. Huh, we hired a guy who worked on the JVM and the Java compiler. Not much web experience. Would he have been technical enough for you? You don't like COBOL it seems, but you do realize that web development and it's byzantine combination of random languages, documen…

Many people hate XML more than JSON, and I would agree with them. I hate both, and prefer yaml.

json and xml are visually balanced. All beginnings have an end. I have trouble with yaml because it lacks that.

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

#194

Post by brightball » Sun, Oct 22, 2017, 5:04 PM UTC

I’ve operated under the assumption that I won’t be able to get a job as a programmer after age 49 from the beginning. It affects how I plan for retirement, how I look at investments, how I view my career path, etc. My wife is well aware of this and we both plan accordingly.

That’s why we have a 15 year mortgage. It’s how we plan for our kids college, etc. The goal is that as soon as the kids get out of school our monthly expenses will be as low as possible so that we can live very light or seek alternative income if needed.

Either that or I’ll complete a multimillion dollar side project. :)

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

#195

Post by bitsnbytes » Sun, Oct 22, 2017, 5:10 PM UTC

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…

"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 plenty of reasons to leave after 8 hours."

When I was 23 I had a very active fun social life as you appear to have as well. BTW I had the same opinions as you at that age as well.

The difference is most of those activities are at your discretion and OPTIONAL and you have enormous amount of 'myself' time available . When you have kids and a family your OPTIONAL activities diminish and your 'myself' time is non existent, due to REQUIRED commitments.

In addition staying up to 3am or 4am or all night sometimes was common for me at that age.

After having a kid and family you can still do that. The issue is your kid doesn't give a F that you stayed up till 3am to fix something and you have to take care off all your REQUIRED responsibilities throughout the day. After a while it takes it toll on you.

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

#196

Post by xux » Sun, Oct 22, 2017, 5:11 PM UTC

Sorry, I don't buy this whole "older workers more likely to see through bullshit" narrative that many presumably older folks on HN push.

It sounds awfully like the arguments that traditionally nationalist groups use against immigrants, contending they're less intelligent and accept lower wages because they're culturally inferior and just don't know better

Maybe it's just that younger workers legitimately provide better labor for lower cost. For a small startup, you really don't need someone with 30 years of experience, and it's better to spend your money on someone demanding a lower wage and will work fast.

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

#197

Post by ThomaszKrueger » Sun, Oct 22, 2017, 5:14 PM UTC

We may be looking at this the wrong way. It isn't a question of ageism, rather did that person keep up with the evolution of languages and ecosystems? It is OK to be old(er) as long as one has what companies are looking for. Waiting for the time go by and count on "seniority raises" alone is counterproductive.

I am 55. I am as current as I can be, including when it comes to cloud, nosql, APIs, and the javascript renaissance. I try to do what companies need. My experience is a bonus because of the things I don't do, because of the problems I did not cause, because of the things that didn't happen. These in my experience are valuable even though almost impossible to measure.

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

#198

Post by bdcravens » Sun, Oct 22, 2017, 5:18 PM UTC

Being 40 years old, can I play the devil's advocate?

Many older developers I know are often unemployable due to the fact they have let their knowledge stagnate, but as a 40 year old looking around and seeing older developers taking longer to find that next role, perhaps you chalk it up to discrimination.

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

#199

Post by dogruck » Sun, Oct 22, 2017, 5:18 PM UTC

sangnoir wrote: post #164

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.)

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

Seems like a nitpick.

You might find these interesting:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapiro%E2%80%93Stiglitz_the...

http://news.mit.edu/2016/economist-bengt-holmstrom-nobel-pri...

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

#200

Post by seattle_spring » Sun, Oct 22, 2017, 5:19 PM UTC

curtis wrote: post #168

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 doi…

Out of curiosity, why does your LinkedIn not list months for all of the 1 year jobs you have? It seems really suspicious to me, and as a hiring manager it would almost certainly have been a red flag.