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Age Discrimination in Silicon Valley

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Re: Age Discrimination in Silicon Valley

#31

Post by collyw »

mrbird wrote: post #18

Is there any published research on what CS majors or people working as software engineers in their 20s are doing at age 30, 40, 50, 60? As many has observed, the numbers don't make sense for everyone to be a manager or CTO. I definitely sense anxiety when people talk about their future - "I know I don't want to still be coding in 10 years" - but I wonder if that's partly an incomplete picture of what others are doing…

I do want to be coding in ten years, but I realise I also want to be respected for my experience. At the moment, despite having designed and implemented the database and front end that my entire organisation runs on, they decide that I ought to be fixing dumb excel errors, rather than writing an interface that would rid them of all the problems they get from using Excel in the first place.

Re: Age Discrimination in Silicon Valley

#32

Post by kasey_junk »

steven777400 wrote: post #6

How much of the "ageism" is actual discrimination and how much is "we have a small budget and need 80 hour weeks" that older workers won't accept? I received an offer from a very interesting startup in southern California (down between LA and San Diego, not SF). The offer was $30K/year (with increases as revenue increased), with minimum 80 hours a week expected. As cool as the projects were... There's no way I at my…

I made more than that 15 years ago as a very junior developer in a very interesting startup.

Re: Age Discrimination in Silicon Valley

#33

Post by [deleted] »

blutoot wrote: post #15
fleitz wrote: post #11

The key with ageism in tech is to move into mgmt. You're not supposed to be a code monkey at 30. And especially not having 10 years of experience in a technology 10 years old. Also as you said, young people put up with shit no one over 30 would ever put up with. $30k for 80 hour weeks? No thanks, I'd rather flip burgers because it pays more than $7.50/hr, McDonalds also has free soda.

But a lot of people finish their PhD in their early 30s and becoming a code monkey is one of the foot-in-the-door ways to get into the tech industry.

[deleted]

Re: Age Discrimination in Silicon Valley

#34

Post by geebee »

Honestly, much of this wouldn't irritate me so much if silicon valley weren't so emphatic that there is a critical shortage of software engineers that requires special consideration.

Could it be that one of the many reasons that other segments of the economy aren't experiencing a labor shortage is that they don't discard people at age 35?

Re: Age Discrimination in Silicon Valley

#35

Post by blutoot »

VLM wrote: post #24
blutoot wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But a lot of people finish their PhD in their early 30s and becoming a code monkey is one of the foot-in-the-door ways to get into the tech industry.

If the employer only wants one year of experience or less noobs and excludes anyone experienced as out of date or too expensive, then the recent PHD grad is by definition excluded unless the PHD took less than a year.

But I have seen many recruiters/companies treat a 5-6 year PhD as the equivalent of 1-2 years of industry experience.

Re: Age Discrimination in Silicon Valley

#36

Post by JabavuAdams »

You should hire young ... but not to get the best technical ability. You should hire young because we older developers, while being technically superior to our younger colleagues, don't want to put up with your bullshit.

I've been on enough projects that can best be described as rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic that I don't put up with management dropping the ball. The challenge for more experienced developers is to recognize when some extra individual effort would actually save the project and also be compensated, without getting burned on another fucked project.

In every software company I've worked at there's been no feedback loop for poor management tighter than project failure, or ultimately company failure -- but that takes a long time. Also, it can be attributed to many confounding factors by bosses who are less than self-aware.

Re: Age Discrimination in Silicon Valley

#37

Post by fleitz »

enraged_camel wrote: post #23
fleitz wrote: post #11

The key with ageism in tech is to move into mgmt. You're not supposed to be a code monkey at 30. And especially not having 10 years of experience in a technology 10 years old. Also as you said, young people put up with shit no one over 30 would ever put up with. $30k for 80 hour weeks? No thanks, I'd rather flip burgers because it pays more than $7.50/hr, McDonalds also has free soda.

>>The key with ageism in tech is to move into mgmt. You're not supposed to be a code monkey at 30. Said the pointy-haired boss who once used to be a code monkey.

Haha, yep, pretty much.

If you can't be part of the solution, there's plenty of money to be made being part of the problem.

Re: Age Discrimination in Silicon Valley

#38

Post by chimeracoder »

ashwinaj wrote: post #2

Well there goes another person who is "offended". Is there age discrimination? Possibly, but at my workplace there are a lot of slackers and you guessed it, they're usually (emphasis on "usually", stop trolling) older, paper pushers, "Let's have a meeting to talk about changing a line of code" people, etc. Needless to say, I work in a big company. The best way to avoid discrimination of any kind is to continuously up…

> The best way to avoid discrimination of any kind is to continuously update your skills (technical, social, inter-personal etc.)

That may be a way to respond to discrimination, but it's not a way to avoid it.

Discrimination, by its definition, refers to what happens after one's skills and qualifications are sufficient and comparable to other candidates, and yet other candidates are systematically shown preference.

Re: Age Discrimination in Silicon Valley

#39

Post by was_hellbanned »

fleitz wrote: post #11

The key with ageism in tech is to move into mgmt. You're not supposed to be a code monkey at 30. And especially not having 10 years of experience in a technology 10 years old. Also as you said, young people put up with shit no one over 30 would ever put up with. $30k for 80 hour weeks? No thanks, I'd rather flip burgers because it pays more than $7.50/hr, McDonalds also has free soda.

The key with ageism in tech is to move into mgmt.

Where are these abundant management jobs, ready to absorb every programmer over 30? Personally, having had several awful managers who were worker-bee programmers, I find nothing worse than the idea that programmers should move into management. Good managing is a completely different skill set from programming.

You're not supposed to be a code monkey at 30.

What an awful attitude to have. Code monkey? Personally, I was just getting good at about 30.

And especially not having 10 years of experience in a technology 10 years old.

It's been my experience that good products tend to end up living to ten or more years. And new technologies tend to only get deeply explored and solid after something like ten years.

Re: Age Discrimination in Silicon Valley

#40

Post by JabavuAdams »

collyw wrote: post #29
adambratt wrote: post #16

I've worked in a few different industries that are traditionally a lot more corporate than most startups. Most notably, finance. What I've noticed is that while these companies tend to have older tech guys than you'll find at a lot of startups, it's still a lot younger age-wise than the rest of the business. I think part of it is that the number of young people who were in tech 20 years ago compared to now was much s…

I am just about to turn 40. Been developing software for 11 and a half years professionally. I realise that I am a lot better developer than I was a while ago. Actually I have seen a lot more problems, and I have a good idea what will work two months down the line, and what will be a constant fire fighting exercise due to a half though through design. How do I get this across to employers? All they seem interested is…

Start consulting or doing independent contractor work? Apply to Fog Creek software or Trello, and let us know whether the reality is as good as the marketing?
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