New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It • Hacker News Board

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#171

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 11:02 PM UTC

mykowebhn wrote: post #33

I'm 48, on the West Coast, and recently finished interviewing, receiving multiple offers. I did 250 Leetcode problems, practiced System Design, and Behavioral. In the end, I found doing 250 Leetcode was probably overkill, but it definitely helped. This will probably get me severely down-voted, and I do understand the antipathy toward having to Leetcode, but the way I see it is that I'm really lucky. I get to sit on m…

The leetcode angle at least makes interviews much more predictable and easier to prep for. The Google-style interview is well studied and documented by this point, like an SAT with an answer key you can study beforehand.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#172

Post by sokoloff » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 11:03 PM UTC

drchewbacca wrote: post #50

One thing I'm a bit confused about is why doesn't salary bidding fix this? For example if a 25 yr old coder is $X per year surely, even if you have terrible age discrimination, there must be some salary level, say $0.75*X where having the older worker is preferable? Is it that older workers are much more expensive and are bidding themselves out the market? Is it that people value youth so much they will pay a 3x mark…

The assumption that there exists some price at which the older worker is preferable is assuming that all software workers have a positive contribution and the only task is to value and compensate it roughly in proportion.

My experience suggests that a fair chunk of the population of software developers are incapable of sustainably creating positive business value overall (even if they were paid nothing). If that model is the correct one, part of what you're paying for in a younger applicant is they might be good, whereas with an experienced yet unskilled applicant, they might already be the equivalent of a scratched-off lottery ticket that isn't a winner. (There's no price at which you would buy it.)

Note that I'm well into the age range where I would be discriminated against if age discrimination were rampant. I'm also not claiming that experienced workers are more likely than younger workers to have a negative value. I'm merely claiming that their value is more likely to be determined and less likely to change in the future.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#173

Post by bongobongo » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 11:08 PM UTC

esoterica wrote: post #170

bongobongo wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is accurate. Age discrimination is rampant in tech because young people are essentially recruited as unwitting scabs against their older peers. Aside from depressing wages and increasing loyalty (via fear of precarity), it’s also a very effective way to fight unionization, which software desperately needs (not for compensation reasons, although that will change, but for professional and ethical reasons). It’s ea…

Based on your description of your priorities one could argue that older workers are the ones depressing wages, not younger workers. Many older workers (including you, by your own admission) value job security and work life balance over raw compensation and are less willing to rock the boat. Younger workers are more likely to go “fuck you, pay me, and if you don’t I’m going to move across the country to take up this o…

I understand the point that you are trying to make, but it's off the mark. Older workers are almost always paid more than younger workers, all else being equal. Unless there is some seismic shift in the economy, this might as well be axiomatic. So, it's just not possible for older people to depress the wages of younger people, unless older people in their prime working years for compensation (35-55+) for most sectors of the economy (including IT) started volunteering to do the same work for less compensation. As others in this thread have already made clear, even when they do that (e.g., out of desperation due to age discrimination), they're still going to be considered more "expensive" than a younger worker.

Also, let's be realistic: the vast majority of entry-level software developers just are not good enough to pull off the kind of thing you describe. They would be laughed off.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#174

Post by madengr » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 11:12 PM UTC

freyr wrote: post #54

Can someone tell me where the older software engineers in the Bay Area have gone? I recently moved into the software industry (after years in the telecom industry), and the lack of older software engineers is disconcerting in a Soylent Green type of way. I guess some have moved into management, and others have made enough money to retire, or they've moved somewhere with better value than the Bay Area. They're likely…

Wrong movie. Logan’s run would be more appropriate; Carousel.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#175

Post by mjkunc » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 11:15 PM UTC

allenu wrote: post #51

I'm 41 and still have recruiters contacting me and generally do well in interviews. I'm lucky in that the skills I have are harder to find (8 or so years doing iOS development). I also have to admit that one thing that helps me tremendously is that I look young. Just about everyone I work with assumes I am still in my 20s based on my appearance. They all act shocked once they do find out that I'm older. Looking young…

Same age here. Mid-thirties career switch into tech. Landed my first tech job at 37 (consulting), first startup at 40 (data engineering) and just started a new startup at 41 (data engineering/devops). I'm probably the oldest at my company by a decade. I don't think I look particularly young, but maybe? I'm not saying age discrimination doesn't exist, just that I've been lucky / fortunate enough not to have experienced it.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#176

Post by esoterica » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 11:19 PM UTC

bongobongo wrote: post #173

esoterica wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on your description of your priorities one could argue that older workers are the ones depressing wages, not younger workers. Many older workers (including you, by your own admission) value job security and work life balance over raw compensation and are less willing to rock the boat. Younger workers are more likely to go “fuck you, pay me, and if you don’t I’m going to move across the country to take up this o…

I understand the point that you are trying to make, but it's off the mark. Older workers are almost always paid more than younger workers, all else being equal. Unless there is some seismic shift in the economy, this might as well be axiomatic. So, it's just not possible for older people to depress the wages of younger people, unless older people in their prime working years for compensation (35-55+) for most sectors…

People job hop and use competing offers as leverage for pay raises all the time. It’s not as rare an occurrence as you seem to think it is.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#177

Post by mancerayder » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 11:19 PM UTC

m0zg wrote: post #137

mancerayder wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did this for 4 years and went back to full-time management. Even in NYC, I struggled as I (as a DevOps guy) never had the latest tech. If they needed AWS, I got AWS (experience and certs) but then they wanted Docker. Now Kubernetes. Despite years of programming experience in three languages, I still get whiteboarded. The point is, I was being treated like a full-time employee in consultant interviews. A few smaller…

What "interviews" are you talking about? Your track record is supposed to speak for itself. The interview boils down to sitting down with a client and figuring out what they need and whether you can do it. Because you're a contractor you can be fired effortlessly, so there's very little risk for the client. You can also fire the client, so there's little risk for you. I think you either don't have the right track rec…

Well it's partially a marketing issue, to answer your question of why interviews. It's recruiters who find me, and they present me as a contractor (when I signal I'm searching for this). The people I used to work with tend to ping me for full-time roles only, unfortunately, and word-of-mouth seems to be a common contractor route.

Finding clients outside of that requires what I expect is a social media presence, possibly publications and talks. None of which I've undertaken.

No one trusts the "resume/CV" track record, not in contracting and not in full-time roles. It's either word-of-mouth or some other method of trust, if it isn't a set of interviews.

I've picked up a decent full-time role to refurnish my image, as running an infrastructure with staff, you'd expect, should be impressive.

I'm skeptical of the contract market.

And to go back to the original thread, I found myself getting spurned due to age for any role which wasn't technical/managerial in the world of full-time work once I went back to it.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#178

Post by oblio » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 11:23 PM UTC

pmiller2 wrote: post #19

scarface74 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None. I don’t live on the West Coast and that seems to be mostly a west coast thing. According to all of the local salary surveys and anecdotal information that I’m getting from recruiters, former managers, and former coworkers, I’m slightly on the right side of the bell curve for architect/principal engineer, etc. Not bragging, the salary and cost of living is well below the west coast. My last job where I thought I…

Interesting. What region do you live in, and how do you think your bottom line compares to what you’d see in a comparable role in the Bay Area? I’m not really architect / principal level just yet (probably 3-5 years of continuous improvement from that I would say), but I feel like I’m just barely getting ahead as a senior making $200k paying $2300/month in rent with no hope to buy and about a 40-60 minute commute (de…

Excuse me, but at $200k you're making $100k net so about $8k per month. With rent at $2.3k, you should be able to save enough to buy something at some point, no? Or at least you could rent something more expensive, closer to work?

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#179

Post by s_m_t » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 11:27 PM UTC

uoaei wrote: post #124

wellpast wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love this. I think evaluating/interviewing is hard, should be much more about experience and past projects but so what if the industry has got it wrong, so what you have to study a little to get the job? The world is what it is. I think criticizing this from a ‘we could do better as an industry’ perspective is productive but from a personal perspective — today — what is going to get you hired is playing the game as…

"I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the software engineer's great stumbling block in his stride toward hiring fairness is not the Genius Asshole or the Bullshitter Who Can't Code, but the anonymous internet commenter, who is more devoted to 'pragmatism' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of reform to a positive peace which is the presence of fairness..."

Dude, really?

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#180

Post by luckydata » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 11:27 PM UTC

epc wrote: post #151

bonestamp2 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What area are you working in now?

Mostly retired. Stopped worrying about finding FTE 5-6 years ago and focused on making the cash I had work for me on a more immediate time scale. I do some advisory work with local startups for equity. Angel invested for awhile but stopped as mentioned elsewhere in an earlier thread. Would love to work again in tech but have never cracked getting on recruiters’ radar and I have better things to do than play whack—a-m…

I'm going to rock your world: almost nobody uses the keyword scanners in the ATSs. Sending a resume is mostly a waste of time, if you find a job you like just speak to someone that works at that company, preferably the hiring manager, and your likelihood of at least getting an interview goes up by about two orders of magnitude. Happy to teach you other tricks if you care for it.