Silicon Valley's dirty secret - age bias
reuters.com
Silicon Valley's dirty secret - age bias
1–10 of 261 posts
Re: Silicon Valley's dirty secret - age bias
#2would love to hear pg weigh in on this...
Re: Silicon Valley's dirty secret - age bias
#3Because clearly no other industries or regions in the US are biased against older workers.
Re: Silicon Valley's dirty secret - age bias
#4Because clearly no other industries or regions in the US are biased against older workers.
Actually, no, not as much. That's the point of the article. Age bias is cited significantly more frequently in California. That's why the article is news. The first 1/3 of the article provides a few paragraphs worth of hard numbers and statistics.
Re: Silicon Valley's dirty secret - age bias
#5I've had someone in a YC funded company flat-out tell me that it was going to be a problem for me. (43, and no, he wasn't in the process of hiring me.)
Re: Silicon Valley's dirty secret - age bias
#6I'm 37, and honestly this has started to scare me over the past couple years.
Re: Silicon Valley's dirty secret - age bias
#7Two points:
1. There's a big difference between job-searching at 40 and job-searching at 60. At 60, you're potentially 5 years away from retirement, so it's not surprising that companies are hesitant to hire.
2. Depending on the specific startup, younger people really may be more effective, at least in certain areas. For example, something like Facebook (during its early days), which targeted college students. A twenty-something will have much more insight into the mind of a college student than a 60-something. This obviously doesn't apply to areas of the company that don't relate directly to the end users.
Edit: I don't agree with the logic of companies, I was just playing devil's advocate.
Re: Silicon Valley's dirty secret - age bias
#8A real issue, but lame scope. 50 is really a wall... you run into all sorts of 50-somethings who are basically wandering souls doing random consulting things after they get RIF'ed from some big corporation.
It's not a phenomenon specific to Silicon Valley. But insular culture of SV is more well known, but exists anywhere there is a cluster of particular types of business.
Re: Silicon Valley's dirty secret - age bias
#9Because clearly no other industries or regions in the US are biased against older workers.
Actually, no, not as much. That's the point of the article. Age bias is cited significantly more frequently in California. That's why the article is news. The first 1/3 of the article provides a few paragraphs worth of hard numbers and statistics.
California != Silicon Valley, though. It also includes the LA area, for example.
Re: Silicon Valley's dirty secret - age bias
#10Dirty yes, secret no.
Straight talk:
I'm the CTO at a startup and I often have to call out the founders and employees for ageism. I resent that they say things that make me think they wouldn't take hiring an experienced engineer seriously.
I resent that they think my profession is best served by dumb happy newbies with no private life.
I refuse to tolerate this in any company I work for and I will ceaselessly call them out for this ageism.
I'm 24 years old and I will not stop programming just because I eventually grow a unix beard.