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Age Discrimination at Work

nytimes.com

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Re: Age Discrimination at Work

#21

Post by yabadabadoes »

factorialboy wrote: post #5

Allow me to provide a contrarian view. I'm not disagreeing that age-discrimination does not exist, however I must say it's not always the case. I'm 35, so I wouldn't qualify as young but neither old. Businesses tend to recruit younger devs for few reasons: - They can be easily convinced to work longer hours - They are typically paid much less However there is one trait in older devs that make them undesirable: - They…

While I agree, I think a bigger problem is that the fresh crop of talent has mechanisms to compete that achieve both ageism and a reduction in efficiency on par with full blown institutional dementia.

Eternal September in design and frameworks is so popular largely since it eliminates the problem of HR looking for the most years of experience. HR's terrible innefficiency is going to hurt someone, but the actual results are very interesting. In multiple framework cycles in industry one can see many a problem just below the threshhold of importance to a todo app might have initial structure to be solved by a first designer, then that structure is written over in a redesign, then a new cycle fixes another problem that had a clear fix in the old design, now it will be hard and therefore done incorrectly in a way that ensures it will never get solved given the frameworks cycles of starting over with new developers. The end result is a dead pile of mush that can't compete with a new framework with fresh style for todo apps.

Naturally these behaviors are not some problem with employees, the overall restructuring of industry has made it important to get repaid for redoing things over and over the wrong way such that there is always something important to get credit for. There is no longer an industry that keeps workers for life because it is profiting and accepts that their later work has diminishing returns because all the low hanging fruit was fixed long ago.

Re: Age Discrimination at Work

#22

Post by tarr11 »

factorialboy wrote: post #5

Allow me to provide a contrarian view. I'm not disagreeing that age-discrimination does not exist, however I must say it's not always the case. I'm 35, so I wouldn't qualify as young but neither old. Businesses tend to recruit younger devs for few reasons: - They can be easily convinced to work longer hours - They are typically paid much less However there is one trait in older devs that make them undesirable: - They…

> They tend to carry baggage from the past. This comes in various flavors, such as biases one has regarding the path of their careers, their interpersonal relationships (social and official), technology choices etc.

this happens as soon as you switch positions or companies - even as early as your twenties.

For example, think of all the people who share their learnings (at work, on Medium, etc) about “this is how we did X at [unicorn company].”

It may be that we are more biased to opinions of people who are similar to us, and dismiss the opinions of those who don’t fit our demographic.

Re: Age Discrimination at Work

#23

Post by mschuster91 »

michalu wrote: post #6

> At 66, I am in excellent health.... Then presume I’m Miranda Priestly... I do not want a childproof cap on anything that threatens to ruin my expensive manicure ... I do NOT have any children or grandchildren! If you're 66 and you're still sitting around in a corporate job, and you have no children because you model yourself after a BS character from a BS movie then you're really just taking up space for someone wh…

> If you're 66 and you're still sitting around in a corporate job, and you have no children, 9/10 you're really just taking up space for someone who needs to feed their kids, has a potential to grow, and a better place to funnel the earned money than "expensive manicure"

I agree with you in principle - the fact that aging Boomers and olders cling to their jobs and prevent younger successors from rising is a real problem. However, many of them have no choice because retirement/pension systems worldwide got fucked in the last decades.

Re: Age Discrimination at Work

#24

Post by the-dude »

robin_reala wrote: post #12
justanother wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the United States, literally nobody should be asking your age during a job interview.

In the UK (and I suspect all of the EU?) it’s specifically illegal to discriminate on age ( https://www.gov.uk/employer-preventing-discrimination ), and when I was last interviewing there HR would remove any birthdates that came in on CVs before passing them over to the interviewers.

Are the interviewers blindfolded too?

Re: Age Discrimination at Work

#25

Post by mschuster91 »

noir_lord wrote: post #9
michalu wrote: post #6

> At 66, I am in excellent health.... Then presume I’m Miranda Priestly... I do not want a childproof cap on anything that threatens to ruin my expensive manicure ... I do NOT have any children or grandchildren! If you're 66 and you're still sitting around in a corporate job, and you have no children because you model yourself after a BS character from a BS movie then you're really just taking up space for someone wh…

> you're really just taking up space for someone who needs to feed their kids, has a potential to grow, and a better place to funnel the earned money than "expensive manicure" That's a ridiculous assertion, if someone is physically well and wants to work it's nobody's business how they spent then spend the money they earn. Choosing to have kids or not shouldn't give you any special status in the workforce at all (tho…

> That's a ridiculous assertion, if someone is physically well and wants to work it's nobody's business how they spent then spend the money they earn.

No. It was part of the unwritten "societal contract" that old people retire to leave place for young people to rise.

This worked for long times, but governments broke this contract decades ago by wrecking pension/retirement systems, and now the wannabe-pensioners have to work in their 70s to survive while people in their 30s are still where they were at 25 as they cannot reasonably rise up.

Re: Age Discrimination at Work

#26

Post by [deleted] »

jasoneckert wrote: post #15

I've seen and heard of age discrimination in non-tech industries, but in the tech industry I believe that age discrimination is often mistaken for skills obsolescence. As a software developer for as long as I can remember, I'm actually at the top of my game now in my 40s - I can software engineer (plan) off the top of my head, and my tenacity is balanced with a sense of direction I never had as a younger developer. I…

[deleted]

Re: Age Discrimination at Work

#27

Post by klingonopera »

robin_reala wrote: post #12
justanother wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the United States, literally nobody should be asking your age during a job interview.

In the UK (and I suspect all of the EU?) it’s specifically illegal to discriminate on age ( https://www.gov.uk/employer-preventing-discrimination ), and when I was last interviewing there HR would remove any birthdates that came in on CVs before passing them over to the interviewers.

In Germany, it's customary to include a picture of yourself in your CV.

...I think you can figure out your chances, if you don't include one.

EDIT: I'm saying this to show how the German (who are European) employers will try to circumvent such age discriminating laws. You get it taught in school, in vocational training, at jobless centers, self-help books and the Internet, that the picture must be of "high-quality", in a sense already arguing past the necessity of why they'd even require one in the first place. I personally do not agree with this practice, though it seems, that more and more employees are becoming aware of this and employers are starting to respect that too.

Re: Age Discrimination at Work

#28

Post by resoluteteeth »

jasoneckert wrote: post #15

I've seen and heard of age discrimination in non-tech industries, but in the tech industry I believe that age discrimination is often mistaken for skills obsolescence. As a software developer for as long as I can remember, I'm actually at the top of my game now in my 40s - I can software engineer (plan) off the top of my head, and my tenacity is balanced with a sense of direction I never had as a younger developer. I…

Whenever topics like this come up on HN, there are always tons of people in their 30s and 40s posting comments like this, which boil down to something like: "I'm not old enough to experience age discrimination yet, and I'm scared but I'm going to keep up with the latest languages/frameworks so I will be special and not be discriminated against like all the other developers, who allowed their skills to deteriorate when they got older."

On the other hand, when people who are already in their 50s post about this topic, they are saying things like, "My phone interview went really great and they were impressed by my skills, but when I went in their attitude changed the second they saw how old I am."

Re: Age Discrimination at Work

#29

Post by K0SM0S »

Kudos wrote: post #16
factorialboy wrote: post #5

Allow me to provide a contrarian view. I'm not disagreeing that age-discrimination does not exist, however I must say it's not always the case. I'm 35, so I wouldn't qualify as young but neither old. Businesses tend to recruit younger devs for few reasons: - They can be easily convinced to work longer hours - They are typically paid much less However there is one trait in older devs that make them undesirable: - They…

> be prepared to compete with the fresh crop of talent coming in The whole point is that you're not given a fair chance to compete, with your resume being discarded simply because you are older.

Should that happen, you're better off not working for that company anyway. Nobody wants to seldom hire young-er people for the good reasons.

Meanwhile, I find that there are increasingly more opportunities for experienced devs in their 30's and 40's. I suspect boomers were under the impression that 40 was already 'not so young' or 'too old' in terms of performance/productivity, but that's a vision from 1960, not 2019. People are slow to adapt to demographic realities, it's a generation's game.

Re: Age Discrimination at Work

#30

Post by mattbillenstein »

I've effectively "fixed" a couple startups built by fresh college grads and interns and made a pretty penny doing it.

I think some companies and some founders have thought engineering was an area where they could cut corners by not hiring experienced people, and they have learned this is a good way to fail.

That being said, you want a mix - more seasoned people leading the direction, processes, and technology selection; and younger people for their energy, enthusiasm, and willingness to learn new things.

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