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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

#221

Post by loeg »

matwood wrote: post #215
amelius wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find myself much more productive and I make less bad design decisions than I used to But how much more expensive is a 40yr old developer as opposed to an entry-level one?

Depending on location, probably less than you think. Because of the general shortage of developers, juniors are probably overpaid. This makes senior positions 1.5x the cost at the high end with 1.2x->1.3x at the low end.

Anecdote: I'm now paid more than 2x my starting salary, 6 years ago. Same company.

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

#222

Post by matwood »

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…

I'm 40 and have never witnessed age discrimination[1]. I know multiple people 40+ and 50+ who work in tech and they don't seem to have any problems finding jobs (or being poached) or finding contracts. Admittedly, the people I know have all been ICs, managers, CTOs and back during their careers. I do not personally know anyone who has just been an IC their entire career.

I'm sure age discrimination happens, but I wonder if this (like many things in tech) is common the SV bubble and way less common everywhere else.

As someone else mentioned below, I think what age discrimination is out there is going to go away as the first big programming generation gets older. First, many ICs in general will be older. Second, and probably more important, is the whole generation who is getting older now is used to the skills treadmill.

[1] I wonder if age discrimination is the wrong word here. I'm going to guess it's more of family obligation discrimination. A 40 something with no kids or family is not going to be that different from a 20 something without any obligations. Age has just become an easy proxy here because many people now wait until their 30s to have kids.

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

#223

Post by twblalock »

curtis wrote: post #216
seattle_spring wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My LinkedIn profile is not my authoritative job history -- my resume is. Your first job as a recruiter or potential hiring manager is to find my resume. It's not hard. I should also mention that when I'm looking for a job, I'm usually contacting you. If I email you I will include a direct link to my resume. If I'm applying through a portal it will ask me to upload my resume. Either way there's no excuse for people in…

Most recruiters are going to look at your LinkedIn profile, and they won't do the digging to find your resume unless they like your LinkedIn profile. That's just the way it is, whether you think there is an excuse for it or not. You're only hurting yourself by refusing to spruce up your LinkedIn profile.

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

#224

Post by matwood »

psyc wrote: post #136
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…

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'll give a detailed answer than I know to be correct and insightful, and they'll say it's wrong

Wow, do you have an example?

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

#225

Post by mythrwy »

tMcGrath wrote: post #19
j10t wrote: post #8

There is substantial scientific evidence showing age-related cognitive decline begins relatively early in adulthood. The science is not controversial. http://examinedexistence.com//wp-content/uploads/2013/12/cry... This is a simplified view but communicates the idea. Some might say crystallized intelligence is under-valued in tech. That might be true. But then we should discuss that, not through the lens of social ju…

There's a reason the axes are left unlabeled in this graph. If you look at a paper that gives values over time for these quantities you'll find that this 'effect' mounts up to about 3 IQ points over the range discussed in the article in a population with an SD of 12 [0]. As a basis for discrimination, this is nonsense: on an individual basis you learn next to nothing about an individual's IQ if you know their age. Of…

The graph on page 11 is particularly interesting.

It looks like fluid IQ peaks around 24 then rapidly declines until around 30. Between the 30 and 50 the decline somewhat levels off.. i.e, doesn't decline a much during that period and crystallized IQ increases slightly.

After 50, fluid IQ resumes a rapid decline at a steady rate until about 75 where it really begins to tank.

But you are right, for the timescale in question the IQ difference is pretty small. I'm sure everyone reading this is very smart so a difference of 3 or 4 points shouldn't concern them all that much :)

A couple of things I wonder about, lack of physical activity (I've read) helps hasten cognitive decline. Sitting in a chair for 20 years as opposed to being active for 20 years, wonder what difference it makes? Perhaps sitting in a chair and thinking more than offsets the difference?

Also I wonder about so many world leaders being well over 50 or 60, for example Supreme Court Justices in their 80's. What would happen if a long resume didn't matter so much and we had a slightly younger (not 24 god forbid!) group running government? Just a hypothetical question.

But from that graph, if you are going to hire a 30 year old over a 45 year old (because "younger people are smarter") it appears you'd actually be better off with the 45 year old in sum (crystallized and fluid) intelligence plus whatever experience bonus.

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

#226

Post by [deleted] »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #31
mcny wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've known some amazingly productive old people. I learned from one of the best in the gamedev industry. He was my mentor, and basically a mini carmack. When I hear statements like this, I cannot fathom how people believe this myth that old people are inherently less able to kick your ass at programming. I'm increasingly old (and hope to live to be really old) but we should try to keep our personal self interests o…

We need a strong social net that works for everyone, not equal opportunity at work for old folks (or insert demographics here). Disagree. The point of a social net is to catch those who fall, not those who dont. I'd take this one step further though. Equal opportunity programs seem to be harmful in our industry. The moment we try to enforce a hiring quota, everyone else starts to feel resentful. That causes real diff…

[deleted]

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

#227

Post by matwood »

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.

This may not have been an age thing, and more of being threatened by your experience thing. Could also be that they were so clueless that they couldn't put together that you could obviously do java 8. A lot of places writing pretty basic software really do think they are Google and have weird impossible to meet interview standards that no one working there could ever pass.

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

#228

Post by sk5t »

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.

Have you really read the YAML spec? It's a rather complex grammar. I get that YAML is visually cleaner than JSON; however, unless we're constrained to very trivial use cases there's probably too much to think about. JSON's strong lack of TMTOWTDI is an asset here.

As for XML: namespaces, DTDs, entities, XSD, XSL, XPath, and on and on, have resulted in some absolutely horrendous architecture astronautism. XML itself is (mostly) perfectly fine but there are too many unqualified people in the industry wielding XML, poorly, and creating massive headaches. XML also presents some interesting security challenges.

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

#229

Post by sotojuan »

dudul wrote: post #220
sotojuan wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You should save this comment somewhere and get back to it in ~10 years if you happen to be married and have a kid :) I'm not being snarky or anything, I used to think the same. You'll soon realize that side projects, friends and hobbies are nothing to be compared with having a spouse, responsibilities and taking care of a young child or an elderly.

The grandparent post, when young and single, did not seem to have anything else to do than work. I am well aware that people with kids are busier than me. My point was that being young and single does not make it fair to your employer or anyone to expect ridiculous hours. I was just surprised that someone would willingly do it and have little else going on in their lives.

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

#230

Post by sotojuan »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #74
sotojuan wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You'd be surprised how much a family sucks time from your life. Before baby, I had plenty of time to overtime work as well as pursue my hobbies. Now that is all gone....

My point was that, at 23, I also have no time for overtime work. Not because I have kids to pick up or take care of sure, but that does not make it OK for companies to expect long hours outside of emergencies.
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