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

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

#271

Post by xux » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 12:01 AM UTC

georgeburdell wrote: post #256

xux wrote: post #196

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 bett…

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 Is this the new Godwin's Law?

Perhaps you can offer a rebuttal to my arguments instead of doing an implicit name-calling?

Immigrants do work harder and offer cheaper labor, not unlike the example of younger developers vs older developers. Companies can feel free to make the trade off

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

#272

Post by mixmastamyk » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 12:03 AM UTC

5ilv3r wrote: post #177

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've recently been thrown into the position of interviewing many candidates for both more senior roles than I have, and job functions I know nothing about. So I'm totally guilty of this, sorry. We had a candidate a while ago with lots of experience in many different stacks, but none in the ones we use. I suggested to the hiring manager that ageism might be a factor here, as he clearly could learn new stacks based on…

> but only after it was needed by the sales team.

?

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

#273

Post by manigandham » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 12:06 AM UTC

xux wrote: post #271

georgeburdell wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Is this the new Godwin's Law?

Perhaps you can offer a rebuttal to my arguments instead of doing an implicit name-calling? Immigrants do work harder and offer cheaper labor, not unlike the example of younger developers vs older developers. Companies can feel free to make the trade off

Big difference in unskilled vs skilled labor. Knowledge workers do better when they are more educated and experienced, something that there is no shortcut for.

But you don't have to take it from me: https://twitter.com/werner/status/867323121019351041

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

#274

Post by mixmastamyk » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 12:07 AM UTC

intellectronica wrote: post #46

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 a 40+ engineer working in startups and I can't complain - my work life is good. I did, however, encounter age discrimination (where I wasn't the victim, just a bystander) a few times during my career. This is only anecdotal evidence, but this usually correlated with places where the management was not very mature and professional and there were other problems. I am a bit worried about the future, but I also have…

> but it's decreasing with time and will probably not

What’s your source for this assertion?

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

#275

Post by mgkimsal » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 12:46 AM UTC

pan69 wrote: post #254

subway wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The title will be handed out as a perk when you've been with the company for a relatively long period (on the order of a couple years), or to add and ego bump to the salary bump of an offer at a new gig. In our field, it's a near meaningless title modifier.

I've actually seen titles being used in very different way, as a form of currency. You can offer people a lower salary for which in return they get a big inflated title to stick on their Linkedin profile. Loads of people love big titles to prance around with (especially the younger ones).

I wonder if it ever occurs to these people that I can still see (on linkedin) that you're a "senior javascript engineer" who just graduated from college 2 years ago. 2 years ago you really were a 'senior', but now it's just title inflation?

I also wonder if these same people assume everyone else with "senior" in their title has as little experience as they do.

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

#276

Post by rdl » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 2:16 AM UTC

scaryclam wrote: post #21

rdl wrote: post #10

Maybe I'm being overly optimistic, but I think a lot of the discrimination is specifically anti-Boomer or anti-people-who-didn't-grow-up-with-Internet, not specific to age. If true, then 40 will be the 30 of 10 years ago.

Which would be funny since the people who didn't grow up with the Internet are the ones who invented it.

A very small percentage of people born in 1930-1955 were involved in building the Internet. I suspect people like Vint Cerf don't get age-discriminated against -- we're mostly concerned with age discrimination against people in the ~35-70 age range who don't have specific major accomplishments.

(I was born in 79, but first got (limited) Internet access in 1986 or so, and much more Internet access in 1990. At the time, everyone was ~18-~40yo. There were some BBS people who were slightly younger, but even that only kicked off in the 80s.)

There really weren't a lot of people working on Internet technology until the first dotcom boom of the 1990s -- people who were generally young at the time. Even then, it was a small percentage of people compared to today. There were more people involved in UNIX, telcos, general technology, etc. who were early adopters of the Internet in the 90s, or who retained access from university in the 70s or even 80s and continued in parallel with their primary career, but in the mid/late 90s, "knows how to use the Internet" was still a useful selector in hiring, as it was rather rare.

There are all the other reasons why older people get discriminated against (perceived and real higher salary expectations, working requirements, location inflexibility), but those aren't as specific to technology. Hence, I think the actual level of discrimination in tech is going to fall to be the same as a lot of other fields.

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

#277

Post by ralphc » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 2:18 AM UTC

alasdair_ wrote: post #258

sokoloff wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the problem is trying to employ people in France or, more specifically, worrying about the day when you need to stop employing someone in France. After going through it once, I'll never voluntarily do it again.

Germany is also an issue. At a previous job, we completely moved all development work from Munich to Dublin because the added headaches caused by hiring/firing in Germany were enormous.

Do France and Germany have the concept of the "contractor" worker, where the company can just call the contracting firm and say we don't need the developer anymore?

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

#278

Post by toyg » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 2:24 AM UTC

purplethinking wrote: post #155

toyg wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mor…

The trick is to not live in the suburbs if you can avoid it. They're money-sucking black holes :) I know it hurts to hear, since having a house and a back yard is part of the western dream, or having grown up in that environment we even feel entitled to it. We imagine our children will be emotionally scarred if they don't get their backyard, but the truth is it reflects more on our own preference than our kids. Long…

I agree that suburbia can be expensive (house and garden maintenance are money pits), but city-centre living over here tends to be much worse under most parameters (from real estate and grocery prices to noise, pollution, crime and so on), because it's entirely geared towards younger people.

Also correct me if I'm wrong, but education is entirely free in Norway including university, right? In the UK universities are not free, and if you want a decent chance to get in the best ones you'll also have to pay for highschool. That's a huge amount of money right there.

We make above the median and we take home about $77k after tax. We can save about 25% of that when we don't eat out, but more than this we'd have to wear plastic bags and generate our own electricity.

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

#279

Post by fsloth » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 4:45 AM UTC

matwood wrote: post #248

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…

> "I know C++ in an out". I know what you mean, but this was a bad example. People who really know c++ are having to turn jobs down right now. Fintech is all over my c++ acquaintances. Your advice about clear economic terms is spot on for resumes at any age. You have to link to numbers and then try to link to dollars. "Developed a Python API for reporting." -- boring "Developed a Python API that handled X amount of d…

"... this was a bad example. People who really know c++ are having to turn jobs down right now. Fintech is all over my c++ acquaintances."

Yeah, maybe some easier language would have been a better example of dangerously shallow knowledge base.

The basic theme was to give a financial valuation to a knowledge base - in your example, I presume a software engineer who had financial experience and could explain his contribution in financial terms would still have an edge in negotiating a compensation over the one who didn't :) ?

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

#280

Post by onlite_67 » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 4:53 AM UTC

I am nearing 40 and hard of hearing. So far I have survived with fellow people's help, but not sure how it would go, going forward when I am expected to be in supervisory or managerial position attending meetings, conference calls and managing people, which I am not good at, because of the handicap. I am good with technology, though, and fairly updated with cloud skills and other latest stuff. Hmm.