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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

#141

Post by gutnor »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #123
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)…

> Less experienced developers are cheaper

What are we talking about here ? Comparing a developer with 10 year experience vs with 20 years ? Or one fresh out of school, with a senior developer ?

Because around here, your salary will be determined by your actual responsibilities and the only way for a guy with 20+ years of experience to make more than one with 5-10 years is to have been in that company for during those 20 years, accruing benefits.

Similarly, contract price are about the same. They haven't even raised much in the last 10 years. Unless you become consultant on a specific topic, you are getting paid the same regardless how much more experience you have over 3 years.

The inflexibility has a flip side too: a developer that has been developing for 20 years is most likely doing exactly what he wants to do. Can probably count on him to be there to see the project through production, and not having "move up" or strategically move to other office, technology stack, companies.

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

#142

Post by slindsey »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #136
slindsey wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's difficult to codify "career advancement". What does it mean? To whom? I've been a "programmer", "analyst", "database administrator", "developer", "consultant", and "manager". What order shows advancement?

Well, it is a bit of a red flag if you list them in non-chronological order (unless you wrote a functional resume that was tailored specifically to the requirements for my position, in which case you get bonus points). You should be able to show career advancement via the achievements you list for each position. There should generally be a trend towards increasing responsibility and successively more impressive feats…

True. The description/achievements are key. I guess my point was that the distinction in my titles was largely a result of HR practices at the organizations and not an indicator of advancement. For example, at most companies an "Analyst" position is higher than a "Programmer", yet I had that first. And if I didn't choose to become a manager, showing growth at my current position would be difficult.

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

#143

Post by [deleted] »

wheaties wrote: post #79
mixmastamyk wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed that whether you are/were interested in management is a factor. Younger managers can imagine hiring older managers, but rarely engineers.

Guess I'm an outlier. I like people with experience more than not. I respect more older devs than I do younger. The older devs tend to have the best projects on Github. Then again, I don't allow stupid data structures or algorithms questions in interviews. I can pretty much tell someone's experience level by the types of interview questions they ask.

[deleted]

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

#144

Post by maerF0x0 »

rdl wrote: post #3

I still maintain there's age-cohort bias (anti boomer, etc.), not strictly age bias. In 2000, I remember most people over 30 being clueless about the Internet (given that the population who were familiar with the Internet in the 80swas so small...that core group was of course super clueful, but was of measure zero vs. people who were learning about it in college every year.) Now, it's largely been the case that anyon…

Along the same lines you propose for "grew up with internet" there will always be a next new hotness. For example many new grads will have no idea what its like to run a physical server because of cloud platforms.

Same thing for Android/iOS programming, or mobile websites, or microservices, or NoSQL etc etc. Some will have had them from school onward, others will have encountered them late in their career.

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

#145

Post by ElysianEagle »

ryandrake wrote: post #120
edwinnathaniel wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this all the time but you can't compare apple (doctor) to orange (software developer). Doctor is more "trustworthy" (perception-wise) as they get older while Developer is more in-demand when they're younger. Doctor also technically made way more money than Developer (in general though, the statement may not stand if you compare Silicon Valley but you get the idea, even in other countries, Doctor probably made m…

You forgot: Doctors have a strong professional organization that works for them, handles things like certification, keeps the labor supply favorable and wages high. Developers, on the other hand, swallow the "unions are bad" mentality and compete with each other in the usual "labor race to the bottom".

I wish I could add more, but you've nailed it. Upvoted!

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

#146

Post by gozur88 »

ryandrake wrote: post #120
edwinnathaniel wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this all the time but you can't compare apple (doctor) to orange (software developer). Doctor is more "trustworthy" (perception-wise) as they get older while Developer is more in-demand when they're younger. Doctor also technically made way more money than Developer (in general though, the statement may not stand if you compare Silicon Valley but you get the idea, even in other countries, Doctor probably made m…

You forgot: Doctors have a strong professional organization that works for them, handles things like certification, keeps the labor supply favorable and wages high. Developers, on the other hand, swallow the "unions are bad" mentality and compete with each other in the usual "labor race to the bottom".

I don't think the AMA has much affect on employment of older doctors. He's right - older doctors are in demand because they're assumed to have acquired some wisdom along the way. The same is not true of software developers.

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

#147

Post by [deleted] »

matwood wrote: post #104
halite wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

> Is that weekends are for? I do that too but do wonder at times... They are for doing what you want to do. Sometimes I code all weekend for fun, or go in the boat or sleep or play Diablo all day. But the reason why many people on this site are good at what they do is because they love doing it. Even if I was not paid to code, I would still immerse myself in coding (and IT in general). I am fortunate enough to love d…

[deleted]

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

#148

Post by true_religion »

terrywilcox wrote: post #83
true_religion wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the 50 year old probably doesn't know who the Kardashians are. How can you not know who the Kardashians are? What's wrong with you? I know it's just a throw-away example, but I'd like to point out "Keeping up with the Kardashians" has been on TV continuously since 2007. The more prominent Kardasihan sisters themselves are all 34-36 years old. I don't think anyone in their 50s really would have a hard time relating…

You've just reinforced my point. You understand that you are unaware of the younger generation's pop culture (pop music is as much part of pop culture as TV is), but you don't understand how people of my generation can be unaware of your generation's pop culture.

Plausible, but my spot testing by querying people in the office showed that pretty much everyone in their 50s have heard of the Kardashians, and most of them actually know more about their lives than I do due to the fact that they watch the evening news (in which E! Entertainment) immediately follows to give you celebrity gossip.

I'd posit that generations can't have their own unique 'pop culture'. If it's only popular to people born within 10 years of you, then it's not popular. By my measure a lot of 'pop artists' aren't really popular because even appealing to 100% of tweens in the USA, really means you've captured 3% of the total general population.

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

#149

Post by xixi77 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #39
yummyfajitas wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the problem correcting itself when it seems the drivers behind age discrimination are wages This is a situation where it's not age discrimination at all - it's merely a candidate pricing themselves out of the market. Similarly, toomuchtodo suggests that as his life moves forward he'll be less willing to put the work in than his younger peers. That reduces his value. Perhaps a significant chunk of age disc…

"Similarly, toomuchtodo suggests that as his life moves forward he'll be less willing to put the work in than his younger peers. That reduces his value." While my value is reduced by not working more hours than I'm paid for, I would argue that government should be stepping in when tech companies are discriminating against workers who would like labor law followed (paid for the hours you work). Why is it okay for work…

If you are an hourly worker, then the government should be stepping in already; but I guess you are not?

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

#150

Post by mark_l_watson »

djb_hackernews wrote: post #127
mark_l_watson wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 attitud…

I used a functional programming style in Scheme and Common Lisp starting in the 1980s (and wrote books published by Springer-Verlag for each language 20+ years ago) so I do know the history.

I really don't think that there is a final programming paradigm. The greatest thing I have seen today is news of a more programmable quantum computer. There is a lot of room for new ideas in programming languages for quantum computing.

I think there is a lot of headroom also for type inference applied to dynamic language like Ruby where entire programs are automatically type checked.

Computer science progress is in general accelerating rapidly, not just a few high profile areas like deep learning.

Exciting times!

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