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New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

nytimes.com

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Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#81

Post by spork12 »

scarface74 wrote: post #6

I’m 45. I didn’t start aggressively job hopping until I was 35, before then I stayed at one job for almost 10 years. I haven’t once had a problem finding a job quickly. I was a generalist when I was 35 and started down the road of specializing in the Microsoft stack in 2008. I start pivoting in 2016 to more architect level roles but still staying hands on but with more cross platform languages (.Net Core, Node, Pytho…

I'm 32 right now and am considering specializing in the microsoft stack as well. I've come across tons of not so sexy, large companies using .NET while working as a contractor at my current job. Companies like Ford or Blue Cross for example.

They don't seem to have the same age bias as these startupy nodejs/react firms, and they pay just as well.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#83

Post by hsudheh »

outlace wrote: post #74

If 70 year olds really are less productive software engineers than single Red Bull-fueled 22 year olds (on average), and you thus end up hiring less 70 year olds, is that really discrimination? I get the article has stories from older people that seem to suggest they are well-qualified for the job and literally just their age number seems to lose them the job, which of course would be discriminatory. But the law suit…

“...less productive software engineers than single Red Bull-fueled 22 year olds (on average)...”

If you think a bunch of 22 yo people running around in circles creating technical debt and missing the point of features to get an over engineered pos out the door that you’ll spend way more on to ripout the 20,000 npm librarians and crashing severs because “how does memory work” and “I wrote sooooo many lines of code” - yeah, you’re part of the problem.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#84

Post by dba7dba »

pleasecalllater wrote: post #34

I still require to work in a company where my manager/boss/CTO know much more than me. I'm almost 40. It's really hard to work for a 20-something guy who has almost no experience and is happily making all the mistakes he could read in books about. Still, finding a job where my boss would know more is more and more problematic. When I was 33 I was rejected by a recruiter with "you know, here I have dozens of resumes o…

> a surgeon of my age is usually not experienced enough

Forget surgeons. My dentist is nearing retirement age and a younger dentist was brought in to be groomed to replace him. The youngish dentist on more than a few occasions mentioned he couldn't/wouldn't do certain procedures because one with more experience was necessary.

The 'young' dentist is no more than 30 years old. And in coding world, if you are over 30, you are considered over the hill.

> The experience is not valued here. So what is? The lack of experience?

What is valued is someone who can get productive with new trendy framework right away, while receiving minimal pay.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#85

Post by spork12 »

pmiller2 wrote: post #19
scarface74 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None. I don’t live on the West Coast and that seems to be mostly a west coast thing. According to all of the local salary surveys and anecdotal information that I’m getting from recruiters, former managers, and former coworkers, I’m slightly on the right side of the bell curve for architect/principal engineer, etc. Not bragging, the salary and cost of living is well below the west coast. My last job where I thought I…

Interesting. What region do you live in, and how do you think your bottom line compares to what you’d see in a comparable role in the Bay Area? I’m not really architect / principal level just yet (probably 3-5 years of continuous improvement from that I would say), but I feel like I’m just barely getting ahead as a senior making $200k paying $2300/month in rent with no hope to buy and about a 40-60 minute commute (de…

I'd like to toss North Carolina out there as a great up and coming tech hub as well. Cheap living and lots of software jobs.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#86

Post by [deleted] »

mykowebhn wrote: post #33

I'm 48, on the West Coast, and recently finished interviewing, receiving multiple offers. I did 250 Leetcode problems, practiced System Design, and Behavioral. In the end, I found doing 250 Leetcode was probably overkill, but it definitely helped. This will probably get me severely down-voted, and I do understand the antipathy toward having to Leetcode, but the way I see it is that I'm really lucky. I get to sit on m…

[deleted]

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#87

Post by ihuman »

mykowebhn wrote: post #33

I'm 48, on the West Coast, and recently finished interviewing, receiving multiple offers. I did 250 Leetcode problems, practiced System Design, and Behavioral. In the end, I found doing 250 Leetcode was probably overkill, but it definitely helped. This will probably get me severely down-voted, and I do understand the antipathy toward having to Leetcode, but the way I see it is that I'm really lucky. I get to sit on m…

I know what tthe leetcode website is, but what is 250 leetcode?

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#88

Post by scarface74 »

matwood wrote: post #65
scarface74 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My resume has always been one page. I hate looking over 3 page resumes. I don’t care what you did in the 90s. No one cares that I wrote C for DEC VAX and Stratus VOS mainframes in the late 90s or the systems I wrote with a combination of C++/COM and Vb6 in the early 2000s. I only go back 10 years. In fact, I negotiated not to be a team lead at my current job.

Not only that, but I don't want to be hired to fix some old VB6 app or write Crystal Reports. If I'm ever desperate for a job I would change my tune, but that's a different situation.

I took off anything related to C for a similar reason. While C and C++ have a special place in my heart, I was interviewing for a C# position around 4 years ago and I had an interviewer spend 5-10 minutes on C minutiae even though it had nothing to do with the job just to prove how smart he was.

I got the job. But, when I interview there are certain things I want to emphasize and that wasn’t one of them.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#90

Post by xd »

outlace wrote: post #74

If 70 year olds really are less productive software engineers than single Red Bull-fueled 22 year olds (on average), and you thus end up hiring less 70 year olds, is that really discrimination? I get the article has stories from older people that seem to suggest they are well-qualified for the job and literally just their age number seems to lose them the job, which of course would be discriminatory. But the law suit…

"(eg I’ll take an older more experienced surgeon over the new junior attending any day, but I’ll bet on the young person in a football match or tasks that require a lot of cognitive flexibility)"

You seem to be contradicting yourself there, why you would you think an older surgeon lacks cognitive flexibility?

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