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Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age (2010)

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Re: Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age (2010)

#111

Post by fuxxlux »

littletimmy wrote: post #72
michaelochurch wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

31. The fact that 39 is "definitely old" is fucked up. Age discrimination isn't about competence (programmers peak much later than 40) but control. It exists because the VC man-child oligarchy (oddly enough, software inherits the age-discrimination culture from business-culture colonists who'd be "too old" to write code) thinks that people will work harder if this shitty, artificial time pressure is put on them. And,…

Don't know why you're being downvoted, because this is exactly true. Younger naive fresh graduates are much easier to exploit (or just force to stay in the office longer) than older, experienced people. That is why younger people are preferred.

I agree, I'm also 39. Force isn't obvious and actions are aimed at compliance which demonstrates perceived value. I've never seen myself as being on a "career path", everything in my life is a moving target. Engaged in a company's problems isn't why I woke up this morning.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age (2010)

#112

Post by lambdaelite »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #110
lambdaelite wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A dual income couple can tolerate more risk, but in my experience they are unwilling. After marriage, a couple's risk tolerance skews a lot closer to a woman's risk tolerance than to a man's. How is someone's gender in any way relevant to their financial risk tolerance?

The mechanisms are minimally known (it's believed to be linked to testosterone), but lower female risk tolerance is fairly well established. See this report and the sources it cites: http://www.pnas.org/content/106/36/15268.full And interestingly, this study was just posted here today, showing that testosterone levels fall in married men: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13129483

I think caution is advised at applying these studies broadly, as you are doing. Not only are they done on WEIRD populations, but a limited subset of that grouping.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age (2010)

#113

Post by yummyfajitas »

lambdaelite wrote: post #112
yummyfajitas wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mechanisms are minimally known (it's believed to be linked to testosterone), but lower female risk tolerance is fairly well established. See this report and the sources it cites: http://www.pnas.org/content/106/36/15268.full And interestingly, this study was just posted here today, showing that testosterone levels fall in married men: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13129483

I think caution is advised at applying these studies broadly, as you are doing. Not only are they done on WEIRD populations, but a limited subset of that grouping.

We are discussing the career habits of WEIRD populations, right?

The same pattern holds anecdotally in many other cultures I'm familiar with (Indian, southern African). Do you have any anecdotes or other evidence suggesting women are equally or more risk averse than men?

Re: Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age (2010)

#114

Post by S4M »

The elephant in the room is that most of SV companies don't do anything technologically sophisticated, so for them it's simpler to take the latest technologies and hire young people who will work without counting their time. Were they working on more complicated problem, they would require more experience.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age (2010)

#115

Post by lambdaelite »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #113
lambdaelite wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think caution is advised at applying these studies broadly, as you are doing. Not only are they done on WEIRD populations, but a limited subset of that grouping.

We are discussing the career habits of WEIRD populations, right? The same pattern holds anecdotally in many other cultures I'm familiar with (Indian, southern African). Do you have any anecdotes or other evidence suggesting women are equally or more risk averse than men?

Anecdotes? Sure. My wife loves to trade options. I generally avoid them, except for buy-writes. Across investments, she enjoys taking higher risk positions than I.

I can't say that gender doesn't play a role, and it would make sense if gender were a factor, but I don't see how it could be anything close to a dominant factor.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age (2010)

#116

Post by yummyfajitas »

lambdaelite wrote: post #115
yummyfajitas wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are discussing the career habits of WEIRD populations, right? The same pattern holds anecdotally in many other cultures I'm familiar with (Indian, southern African). Do you have any anecdotes or other evidence suggesting women are equally or more risk averse than men?

Anecdotes? Sure. My wife loves to trade options. I generally avoid them, except for buy-writes. Across investments, she enjoys taking higher risk positions than I. I can't say that gender doesn't play a role, and it would make sense if gender were a factor, but I don't see how it could be anything close to a dominant factor.

By "anecdote", I meant "a culture or subgroup where women are reputed to be more risk taking than men", not "an individual example". No one disputes that individual examples can probably be found in any culture, and their existence doesn't contradict my claim.

...I don't see how it could be anything close to a dominant factor.

Suppose it were a dominant factor. How would the world be drastically different than it is today?

Re: Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age (2010)

#117

Post by liquidcool »

LyndsySimon wrote: post #87
dominotw wrote: post #37

It is definitely not a secret. Age bias is so obvious that its actually celebrated. Look at this example from Jetbrains Jobs page https://www.jetbrains.com/company/jobs/ We offer: Fascinating work in a friendly, young team

For what it's worth, I'm 31 and read that as "the team hasn't been around very long", not "the team is composed of 20-somethings".

While that's a fair reading, click on "Company" and you'll see they've been around for 15 years. And most people who would work for them (primarily Java developers) are aware of this.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age (2010)

#118

Post by liquidcool »

Last year I went to a talk by VC Mark Suster.[1] He addressed age discrimination and how he doesn't participate in it and is actively against it. Why do other VC's do this?

It’s their goal: a billion dollar company. That takes 8-11 years to build, going at a full startup pace. A lot of life changes can happen in that time. You sure aren’t getting more energetic as the years go by. Your personal and financial responsibility is probably increasing over time. While he isn’t an ageist, he does say that the earlier you can do this, the better.

That explains VC's and startups active age discrimination. For non-startups, it seems more centered around a salary cap that is unattractive to experienced engineers. (Not to say that ageism doesn't exist there, and for the record, I am "plus-aged" myself.)

1. http://philip.yurchuk.com/career/mark-suster-talks-startups-...

Re: Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age (2010)

#119

Post by hhariri »

dominotw wrote: post #37

It is definitely not a secret. Age bias is so obvious that its actually celebrated. Look at this example from Jetbrains Jobs page https://www.jetbrains.com/company/jobs/ We offer: Fascinating work in a friendly, young team

TBH, given the fact that age has no impact on decisions when people join (and quite apparent given the range of ages we have at JetBrains) I'm not even sure why this is on there. I'll inquire into it.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age (2010)

#120

Post by bhayden »

dominotw wrote: post #37

It is definitely not a secret. Age bias is so obvious that its actually celebrated. Look at this example from Jetbrains Jobs page https://www.jetbrains.com/company/jobs/ We offer: Fascinating work in a friendly, young team

I contacted them about this and it looks like they changed it.
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