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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

#101

Post by dba7dba »

DataWorker wrote: post #46
ajcodez wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You made my point better than I did. “Not everyone can reach the top.” Young people have had fewer opportunities to reach the top. Not being at the top is a negative signal that gets stronger every year.

There’s no room for those young people, so the chance one will be 100x, whatever you mean by that, is effectively 0. Young people are malleable and cheap. The majority of workers are never more than commodity labor. As the saying goes anyone can be replaced. That being the case cheaper and easier to exploit is what’s being optimized for. But they’ll let you think you got a shot at 100x, it’s how the scam work kiddo.

ONLY a kiddo would say something like

> If you hire a young person they might be 100x or 10x or 1x in a couple years.

100x?

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

#102

Post by [deleted] »

dba7dba wrote: post #84
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, y…

[deleted]

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

#103

Post by [deleted] »

xd wrote: post #90
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?

[deleted]

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

#104

Post by mavelikara »

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…

Aren't some of your earlier bosses and colleagues able to make introductions?

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

#105

Post by andrewprock »

emit_time wrote: post #27

Anecdote: My dad (finance/accounting guy) lost his job in his 40's and was never able to find another one. Thankfully my mom makes enough for things to work out, and they own a piece of rental property, and my dad stashed away a lot of money for retirement while he worked (to the dismay of my mother). Additionally, the company I work at is half (or more) people hired straight out of college which kinda makes me feel…

Employment is not an efficient market. Transaction costs are very high, bidding is not public, and utility is a non-linear function of more than just compensation.

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

#106

Post by scottLobster »

invalidOrTaken wrote: post #28
invalidOrTaken wrote: post #5

Seen on Mastodon (not me): >Whenever I hear "We need more programmers! Make more young people interested in programming! Teach programming at kindergarten!" I always get the urge to ask "What did you do with the old ones you had?" >Where are all those programmers you hired 5-20 years ago? Why is no programmer at your company older than 40? Why do you have senior software engineers that are 25 years old? What did you…

My own commentary on this: I've been consulting the last few months, mostly brought in to coach CTO's. I'm (somewhat unwillingly) coming to the conclusion that nobody really feels like they know how to manage programmers. This leads to mismanagement, and nobody likes being mismanaged, (also it usually means you're being underpaid), so devs eventually wise up and get out. If you think about it, this is a natural exten…

Sounds about right. A non-technical manager managing technical people is like the commander of a tank battalion not knowing how fast his tanks can go or what kind of ammunition they shoot, their fuel range, hell he probably doesn't even know how many people can fit in a single tank. But he thinks he's fit to manage such a unit because he's an expert in "general warfare", and he has all the "metrics".

I've seen it in my own employment multiple times, my team's(admittedly good-hearted) managers come in and say "We'd like to do (list of 10 things). Now we know the software has limitations, and we don't have any money for feature enhancement, so feel free to tell us no on any of these."

Us: "We can do 2 of those, maybe three if you can give us a couple of days to hack in one of the simpler requests"

Managers: confused, questioning but begrudgingly accepting looks

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

#107

Post by Hermitian909 »

dba7dba wrote: post #96
Hermitian909 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reasons age discrimination happen are fairly complex (and I'm not ready to write all the ones I understand out), but to your point about the best in the field being part of the older generation, it is my anecdotal experience that top performers don't seem to have problems with employment as long as they can work (generally). My own mother was exceptional in her field, thought not so much as to be written about, a…

So sorry to hear about your mother. But it seems to be a rule of life. Rich get richer. Top performers get more/better offers. Poor get poorer. Non-top performers get less/worse offers. I remember reading something where Paul Graham of Ycombinator said top performers never apply for jobs. They are often referred and handed jobs. And on the other side, you have ton of (supposedly) not so great workers who are sending…

I'm not familiar with the PG essay you mention, but there's one by Joel Spolsky that says something similar to what you describe, that great developers rarely apply for jobs[0], that I've found to generally be true. If you do great work, and are great to work with, former coworkers will jump at the chance to work with you again and recommend you to their own colleagues.

[0] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/09/06/finding-great-deve...

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

#108

Post by 4ntonius8lock »

Odd that in an article about age based discrimination, they don't mention that there is also age based discrimination against young people, for example, getting into C level positions in the non-tech world.

When I used to be employed by other people, I specifically remember being told "we can't really promote you to director, you are too young". I wasn't inexperienced (I started working full time at 16). It wasn't that I hadn't earned it. It was because the old farts on the board wouldn't take me seriously.

Discrimination sucks.

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

#109

Post by lliamander »

freyr wrote: post #54

Can someone tell me where the older software engineers in the Bay Area have gone? I recently moved into the software industry (after years in the telecom industry), and the lack of older software engineers is disconcerting in a Soylent Green type of way. I guess some have moved into management, and others have made enough money to retire, or they've moved somewhere with better value than the Bay Area. They're likely…

I think a fair few are moving out to the Sacramento area to raise a family. Others are moving to Texas, Idaho, etc., for similar reasons

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

#110

Post by rdiddly »

tyingq wrote: post #48
rdiddly wrote: post #43

The ironic thing of course is that it's hard to imagine what actual advantage a practice of age discrimination might provide. All real and true criteria for a job can be tested for directly; there's no need to make age a dubiously-accurate proxy for any of those. It literally makes no sense. From the COMPANY'S point of view.

The perceived benefit is avoiding someone with reasonable salary and work hour expectations.

Yeah but you can do that by means of "salary and work hour discrimination," see what I'm saying? Those are things you can state outright, legally. Just make it clear that those are parameters of the job, and if they accept the job, they accept the job. I dunno maybe I've gone completely batshit crazy up in here.
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