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Claims of Age Bias Rise, but Standards of Proof Are High

nytimes.com

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Re: Claims of Age Bias Rise, but Standards of Proof Are High

#121

Post by ryandrake »

edwinnathaniel wrote: post #119
zippergz wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, to be clear. I think that having many years of experience, hard-won judgement, really strong foundations, and experience with a variety of technologies (even if they aren't the newest) SHOULD be enough to be seriously considered for a job. Someone who has been in the industry for 20 years and knows a bunch of languages and frameworks is most likely going to be able to pick up a new one quickly. And he or she wi…

I was on the other side of the table: as an interviewer (plus a resume screener). I've seen this before with my own eyes but then my experience is just an anecdote: back in the 1998-2005 era, people keep piling on multiple technologies: C, C++, Java, Perl, XML, XPath, XQuery, XForms, SOAP, etc but whenever I looked into their resume, it becomes quite clear that they "learn" these technologies while working on somethi…

The programming language keyword padding is a response to employers who inexplicably list very specific language and technology demands. You never see a job posting that says: "Wanted someone who's smart, works hard, and ships software".

Imagine a want ad for a carpenter: "Home builder wanted. MUST use Makita brand circular saw."

Re: Claims of Age Bias Rise, but Standards of Proof Are High

#122

Post by pm24601 »

edwinnathaniel wrote: post #119
zippergz wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, to be clear. I think that having many years of experience, hard-won judgement, really strong foundations, and experience with a variety of technologies (even if they aren't the newest) SHOULD be enough to be seriously considered for a job. Someone who has been in the industry for 20 years and knows a bunch of languages and frameworks is most likely going to be able to pick up a new one quickly. And he or she wi…

I was on the other side of the table: as an interviewer (plus a resume screener). I've seen this before with my own eyes but then my experience is just an anecdote: back in the 1998-2005 era, people keep piling on multiple technologies: C, C++, Java, Perl, XML, XPath, XQuery, XForms, SOAP, etc but whenever I looked into their resume, it becomes quite clear that they "learn" these technologies while working on somethi…

You have to come up in the search results. I add technologies because I need the recruiters to see me.

Re: Claims of Age Bias Rise, but Standards of Proof Are High

#123

Post by CuriouslyC »

huherto wrote: post #63

I am 47. 27 years of professional experience. Got hooked in Basic. Fell in love with Pascal, C, C++, Smalltalk, Perl, and Java. Most new technologies are a re-encarnation of something that I did already the first time or second time around. I don't think my resume looks trendy. Still, I feel my skills are better than almost all of my friends and coworkers. They are 21-35. But, I see things that they don't. Subtle thi…

To be honest, if I were looking at a resume that reads like I expect yours would, I would probably pass on it unless I was looking for an architect/principal software engineer, and in that case I would need to see interesting technical accomplishments and leadership experience as well. Less experienced developers are cheaper, probably have a more current education, and are less set in their ways (e.i. more trainable).

I recognize you will probably make fewer dumb mistakes than a younger developer, and your experience probably enables you to learn new technologies faster (though I'd wonder if you didn't list any trendy technologies on your resume). On the flip side, if your resume showed a long period without any significant career advancement I might question your competence.

Re: Claims of Age Bias Rise, but Standards of Proof Are High

#124

Post by gaius »

disposeofnick9 wrote: post #49

In the Standford med school, an IT admin named Can______ was pushed out for the treacherous crime of being older, and no pretext was used to pretend it was anything else because their supervisor admitted it openly. People have to realize this will be them, and that normalized hate is unacceptable and speak up against it.

They will wish that they'd started the fight back against it, when they were in their 20s themselves...

Re: Claims of Age Bias Rise, but Standards of Proof Are High

#125

Post by edwinnathaniel »

pm24601 wrote: post #122
edwinnathaniel wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was on the other side of the table: as an interviewer (plus a resume screener). I've seen this before with my own eyes but then my experience is just an anecdote: back in the 1998-2005 era, people keep piling on multiple technologies: C, C++, Java, Perl, XML, XPath, XQuery, XForms, SOAP, etc but whenever I looked into their resume, it becomes quite clear that they "learn" these technologies while working on somethi…

You have to come up in the search results. I add technologies because I need the recruiters to see me.

I'm on LinkedIN and I don't mean to brag but I never listed long-list tech stuff on my LinkedIN. I'm still being recruited albeit I... kinda suck though. I'm definitely not Google material (just between you and me ;)).

Re: Claims of Age Bias Rise, but Standards of Proof Are High

#126

Post by Futurebot »

dasil003 wrote: post #108
zippergz wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, to be clear. I think that having many years of experience, hard-won judgement, really strong foundations, and experience with a variety of technologies (even if they aren't the newest) SHOULD be enough to be seriously considered for a job. Someone who has been in the industry for 20 years and knows a bunch of languages and frameworks is most likely going to be able to pick up a new one quickly. And he or she wi…

At 37 I'm somewhere in the middle and I think there are two major factors at play in terms of SV age bias. The first is a proliferation of young founders who have no experience and thus no frame of reference to evaluate older developers, so they just pattern match on the new tech they are familiar with. Nothing really to be done about that since convincing twentysomethings (particularly SV funded ones) of their hubri…

They may very well be at a competitive disadvantage, but unless something magical happens to communicate to someone that fact as "having contributed to failure" or "at the margin, caused the failure", that disadvantage doesn't translate into anything that helps either discriminated against individuals, nor does it help improve cultures that allow or encourage discrimination.

The individual or even group decision-making (with regards to not just company goals, but to lifestyles and associations) means that things like that end up as a wash. Make it more concrete:

28 year old founder decides to pass on excellent 47 year old programmer. What does that do the founder's life or company? Let's speculate on some possibilities:

- It does nothing, because even though the older developer would have been better, their level of experience wasn't even necessary to do the job well.

- The business winds up marginally less profitable, but still succeeds.

- The business fails, somehow, because at the margin, missing out on hiring that older developer somehow started a chain of events that could have been prevented if said older developer were hired.

In all cases, the founder goes on to find another job, makes plenty of money, is able to surround themselves with the type of people they'd rather be around (people their own age) and never is even aware of any impact on anything. To that person, it was just "didn't hire someone, something happened or didn't, life went on well, and founder was still happy, ultimately."

What I'm saying is that the "disadvantage" and other related theories start sounding like a secular version of Karma; people use them as a way to tell themselves there will be justice (not that you're necessarily doing that, I have no idea), when in truth it's likely there will be none.

You can try to "prevent" the discrimination through your own actions, which is by no means easy (https://medium.com/@spencer_th0mas/dealing-with-ageism-in-te...), but as the article makes clear, even in egregious cases, it's hard to prove or do anything about. Look how long we've had these various kinds of incredibly well-intentioned anti-discrimination laws, and look at the success rates on the suits / how often they're brought. The results are terrible. It's just too hard to prove.

Re: Claims of Age Bias Rise, but Standards of Proof Are High

#127

Post by djb_hackernews »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #106
djb_hackernews wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of your career was contracting, if any? Were you an employee of Google? I have heard Google is probably the best of the SV tech giants when it comes to age discrimination, FWIW. I think contracting is a lot different and in that case more experienced consultants are preferred over younger ones where as it is the opposite when it comes to permanent employment. The thing I don't agree with is that we should be…

re: "The thing I don't agree with is that we should be expected to keep learning." I believe that in many fields it is important to keep learning, not just in software development. 20 years ago one of the brightest developers I knew made the case that object oriented programming was the 'final paradigm' and that we didn't need any other model for organizing code and data. Now, I would be tempted to say that functiona…

Right, and I think you are anecdote after anecdote of what is wrong with our profession. I wish I could put that more gently but this is something I'm pretty passionate about.

I'm definitely not advocating for the end of all learning and I hope you'd give my message a more charitable interpretation.

The idea that OO was new 20 years ago or functional programming is new today is completely backwards and is the attitude that ensures that it looks like our profession is running around with its head cut off for the next 20 years and ultimately contributes to the ageism that does exist in our industry. I'm extremely happy for you that you've found a niche as a contractor but I think you'd experience it more and understand the stress people feel if you were to apply for full time employment.

I appreciate your reservations on proclaiming functional programming the final paradigm, but why can't we just proclaim that a solid foundation in the pillars of computation is all one needs and as long as the tools and frameworks we use from one project to the next are built on those pillars then we can accomplish things at greater speeds and at larger scale?

Re: Claims of Age Bias Rise, but Standards of Proof Are High

#128

Post by Futurebot »

halite wrote: post #73
zippergz wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the reasons I spend time on the weekends doing projects in new technologies. I can put Rails, React, Angular, Swift, etc. on my resume and answer questions about them (and point to projects I've used them on). I see keeping up with new technologies as an important part of my career development. If someone is truly biased against me because of my age, there's not much I can do about that. But I definite…

> I spend time on the weekends doing projects in new technologies. Is that weekends are for? I do that too but do wonder at times...

We live in an age of forced autodidactism (I personally like it, but we should not expect everyone to) and growing hypercompetition. The Average is Over/Superstar effects, and shrinking number of well-remunerated, non-cognitive, non-high skilled jobs means that anyone that wants to stay ahead (or even in) the game now has to be prepared to train nonstop (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/business/to-stay-relevant-...)

Fair, desirable, optimal? All debatable depending on one's perspective, but unstoppable. I think the only way we'll be able to get a handle on it is to manage its effects through policy (which has to happen eventually, given how many people will be affected, and how few will actually be able to be one of the "superstars"), rather than turning this train around.

Re: Claims of Age Bias Rise, but Standards of Proof Are High

#129

Post by DanielBMarkham »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #106
djb_hackernews wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of your career was contracting, if any? Were you an employee of Google? I have heard Google is probably the best of the SV tech giants when it comes to age discrimination, FWIW. I think contracting is a lot different and in that case more experienced consultants are preferred over younger ones where as it is the opposite when it comes to permanent employment. The thing I don't agree with is that we should be…

re: "The thing I don't agree with is that we should be expected to keep learning." I believe that in many fields it is important to keep learning, not just in software development. 20 years ago one of the brightest developers I knew made the case that object oriented programming was the 'final paradigm' and that we didn't need any other model for organizing code and data. Now, I would be tempted to say that functiona…

Yes. The time to put energy in is when there's truly a new paradigm at work. Not when it's just another version of something you've already seen a half-dozen times before.

Bootstrap? Cool. Maybe follow that up with 1 or 2 other grid systems. But if you start chasing every layout framework coming down the pike, you're wasting your time.

Same goes for imperative vs. functional programming. There's a big difference. You should know that.

I think where the problem arises is when there's some new cool version of the same thing. You probably already know how it plays out, so your rational response is to not bother. But if you don't have it on your resume, you're going to be doing some fast talking.

There's a difference between learning in order to execute and learning in order to impress. If you want to stay in coding, sadly, you gotta keep learning. And the things you learned all have to do with marketing yourself, not being a better programmer.

I think that's the part that sucks most about getting older as a coder -- watching the community walk away from solution delivery in order to intellectually amuse itself with 4 or 5 year fads, which usually involve a cool video and a ton of hidden complexity.

Re: Claims of Age Bias Rise, but Standards of Proof Are High

#130

Post by xeromal »

toyg wrote: post #92
ronyeh wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just playing devil's advocate, but isn't that a logical approach? If two junior programmers show up on my doorstep, and one is 25 and the other is 55, why wouldn't I go with the 25 year old (all other skills being equal)? If I'm lucky, maybe the young person will want to work with my company for a decade or two, or even more. Would the 55 year old want to work for several decades more? Of course, I am also worried ab…

The guy at 55 knows what he can give, he's a known quantity at all levels. He will likely hit the ground running without requiring extensive training, because he's seen it all before; and once he's settled, he will have no incentive to move on -- he stopped dreaming about jobs at Google/FB/Twitter a long time ago. If he has a problem, he'll just say it straight to your face with no anger, because he's tired of manage…

He specified junior programming in his argument. If you have a 55 year old who is clueless or green, it might be a tough sell.
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