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The Brutal Ageism of Tech

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Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#111

Post by ChuckMcM »

tsotha wrote: post #98
ChuckMcM wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a huge part of it, folks who stop "keeping up" with the technology eventually find there is a huge amount of catching up to do. When that happens, especially if there isn't a lot of runway, it can be difficult. I remark to folks all the time that you can take someone right out of high school, and have them spend about 2000 hrs learning about "computers" and now they are 'hot shot programmers' that are…

>Had they instead spent that six months re-tuning old talents, sending out the occasional resume, and building stuff, that seems to get people hired regardless of age. There are two problems with that logic. The first is if you have only six months of experience doing something your pay is likely to reflect that. Second, look at it from an employer's perspective. You can hire a twenty year old or a fifty year old. Th…

I'm not sure I see this:

    > The first is if you have only six months of experience
      doing something your pay is likely to reflect that.
My experience is building things has very little to do with the current frameworks and languages. Building a payroll system with a NoSQL back end and an AWS front end is "different" than building the same with an Xwindows client and an Oracle back end, but the things that may a payroll system "good" or "bad" often have nothing to do with the bricks and mortar and more to do with the kinds of things that typically go wrong or requirements that are left unstated. Someone with 20 years of experience writing programs will often know that part much better than someone who has yet to experience them.

   >  You can hire a twenty year old or a fifty year old.   
      They have the same experience with whatever the 
      latest thing is. The twenty year old has the energy 
      of youth. No wife or children. He may come in 
      hungover occasionally but with enough Red Bull 
      he'll bounce back by noon.
That however is what sounds like actual age discrimination, that might be like not hiring a woman because "Darn it she decides to have a kid and then what? Force me to pay maternity leave? No thank you!" or "Hire that blind guy? Really like we all we need around here is someone whose computer keyboard costs more than a Retina Macbook, No thank you!" or any number of people "not like you."

   > Who do you think is going to be more productive?
     Who's going to put in 16 hour days at crunch time?
That is a good question, but one where the answer might surprise you. One of them might not have to put in 16 hours a day a crunch time, and one of them might be more productive in 6 hours than the other is in 12.

But if you assume work performance based on age, gender, race, religion, or sexual orientation, you will always be doing it wrong.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#112

Post by jmspring »

nahname wrote: post #104
Retric wrote: post #8

The odd thing is hiring older workers is generally a great idea. From an organisational perspective programming teams don't scale vary well so hiring less skilled people is generally a terrible long term strategy. Personally, I have worked with a few hundred programmers and I can only name 3 that where competent before 30. Outside the valley you find a plenty of really competent programmers mostly in there late 40's…

>I have worked with a few hundred programmers and I can only name 3 that where competent before 30. Are you sure you are not committing the same ageist judgement here?

Depends on what one defines as "competent" and the problem space. A lot of colleges that the thirty and under set that I've talked with don't always have a required path in CS that teaches systems and architecture, let alone C (or assembler). So, if one expect such from someone with a CS degree, that could be an issue.

The tooling accessible to people today as opposed to those that started 10 years prior is also extremely different. Running Windows? Trumpet Winsock, understanding the win.ini, config.sys, and autoexec.bat were important. Linux - a lot of people have wasted a lot of time getting sound and video drivers (as well as xf86config files) to work right, most just work fine now. All these required a level of digging that required knowing more about the system than you may have wanted.

Not saying your point isn't valid, but it does depend on what one's definition of "competent" is.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#113

Post by mbrubeck »

Retric wrote: post #8

The odd thing is hiring older workers is generally a great idea. From an organisational perspective programming teams don't scale vary well so hiring less skilled people is generally a terrible long term strategy. Personally, I have worked with a few hundred programmers and I can only name 3 that where competent before 30. Outside the valley you find a plenty of really competent programmers mostly in there late 40's…

The software industry has been growing rapidly in recent decades, and the growth has been concentrated in a few geographic areas. So employers in those areas (especially Silicon Valley, and also smaller hubs like Seattle and Boston) have to recruit a lot of their workers from other regions, as their job openings grow faster than the "organic" growth of the local worker population.

Theory: This importing of workers has negative effects on age and gender diversity, since it means a higher proportion of jobs go to people who can easily relocate for work. That includes young people (who are less likely to have kids and/or spouses) and men (who more often receive the primary or larger income in a household). I'm sure you can think of other things that are advantages or disadvantages when it comes to moving to California for a job.

There are ways to test whether this effect exists and how large it is. For example, you could compare age and gender diversity across industries. The theory predicts that age/gender imbalance is correlated with geographic concentration of employment growth for each industry. You could also see whether these imbalances are worse within industry hubs, compared to companies in the same industry outside the hubs. (Though the effect can also spread outside the hubs if it influences a culture that gets exported to the rest of the industry.)

I'll bet geographers or sociologists have published research on this subject, though I don't know enough to search for it effectively. (I found some vaguely related papers on Google Scholar, but nothing yet with data that would directly answer these questions.) There are some historical parallels of course, like gold rushes and resource extraction booms that cause new industries to grow suddenly in a particular area.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#114

Post by mgkimsal »

mwfunk wrote: post #108

I dunno. I can think of three ways in which an older developer might have a hard time finding a job: (1) If someone doesn't keep up with currently relevant technology, they will find themselves without the job skills that employers are looking for, regardless of whatever other qualities they may have. This isn't ageism. (2) If someone works at the same place for 10+ years, getting raises every year and becoming more…

"If someone doesn't keep up with currently relevant technology, they will find themselves without the job skills that employers are looking for, regardless of whatever other qualities they may have. This isn't ageism."

Except.... I do see younger people getting hired who don't necessarily keep up with current technology. It may just be that they're ultimately cheaper, and it's just financial. But I do suspect that older devs are held to a higher standard on this front ("what? you're still using Rails 3? luddite!")

It's not necessarily rational unless the company holds all candidates to the same standards ("current with technology", for example).

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#115

Post by kansface »

mgkimsal wrote: post #110

How much overlap is there between the types of companies in this article and the typical "we can't find anyone qualified to hire!" company? I suspect it's not total, but there's probably some overlap. I can't wait until these 22 year olds of today hit their 40s and they reap what they've sown. Zuckerburg said "younger people are just smarter"? Certainly there's a degree of hubris in youth that you don't lose without…

I don't think this anecdote really illustrates your point. One day, some naive kid will actually be stupid enough to solve this problem. For that matter, I would guess a large number of highly successful startups solve exactly these sorts of problems. pg calls these schlep problems- http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html. I agree, this is not a cut and dry space.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#117

Post by leccine »

Young people just smarter. Also, less experienced this is why they re-invent hot water every day (hello node.js). I have seen "young people" fail countless time because they could not get away from the "being in the Silicon valley, I must be super smart and I am always right" attitude. The most performant techie people are 30+ with significant relevant experience, they are not getting horny about a useless new technology over a blog post, understand the stack all the way, fluent in their language(s) and can make great decisions based on their experience (wisdom) and knowledge. The CEOs in their mid 20s are guys, nobody will remember maybe 1 out of 100 makes it to history the rest is just going to lead a mediocre company and quit when they realize that the IPO won't get them anywhere (if they make it to the IPO at all). As Paul Graham pointed out regarding LISP, using something that your competitors don't understand gives you an edge. Apply the same to hiring, and get some 30+ guys on your team now! Will ya?!?!?! :)

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#118

Post by kabdib »

Older workers, while more experienced, are also more expensive. You can't hire a 40 or 50 yo hacker for what you can pay someone a few years out of college.

On the other hand there is a basic cost to each employee regardless of salary, so the higher pay is not proportionally as high as comparing salaries.

On the gripping hand, older employees often have families, who incur more expense for health care and so on. You can expect older people to have health issues on their own, too. This is a fairly big deal in the US, where the health care payment system is broken.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#119

Post by codygman »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #111
tsotha wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Had they instead spent that six months re-tuning old talents, sending out the occasional resume, and building stuff, that seems to get people hired regardless of age. There are two problems with that logic. The first is if you have only six months of experience doing something your pay is likely to reflect that. Second, look at it from an employer's perspective. You can hire a twenty year old or a fifty year old. Th…

I'm not sure I see this: > The first is if you have only six months of experience doing something your pay is likely to reflect that. My experience is building things has very little to do with the current frameworks and languages. Building a payroll system with a NoSQL back end and an AWS front end is "different" than building the same with an Xwindows client and an Oracle back end, but the things that may a payroll…

Honestly I've found for the most part that those who work 6-9 hours get more done than those who work 10+. Usually those spending 10+ are playing catchup or learning a new technology at the same time.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#120

Post by randomdata »

fecak wrote: post #77
zomgbbq wrote: post #55

I'm a 40+ engineer in the NYC metro area and I've never felt more in-demand in my life! I think it boils down to a simple idea: computer-science is a dynamic field and THE FUN PART is that you need to always be learning. There are still some colleagues my age who still wax about the days of writing JCL for their mainframe jobs and never evolved past the 80's and perhaps they gave a bad name for others who built on th…

A decision to specialize in mobile in 2009 would probably have even worked out for a 60+ engineer if they were good at it. The best way to combat ageism is to stay technically relevant. Good decision.

> The best way to combat ageism is to stay technically relevant.

As I get older, I find that is easier said than done. I still spend quite a lot of time learning new things, but I've become less interested in learning things that are immediately marketable. Learning yet another framework that is marginally different than the one I used on the last project is not the interesting pursuit it once was. At this point I would rather invest that time in something that might fundamentally change my outlook and understanding of the world, which is beneficial in a meta way, but isn't really something that you can specifically write down on a resume.

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