5 ms·

The marketplace always seems to fail in situations like this one. There are always groups that are discriminated against, based on race, gender, age, etc. There

The marketplace always seems to fail in situations like this one. There are always groups that are discriminated against, based on race, gender, age, etc. Therefore a business seeking talent should view those excluded groups as a goldmine of available talent. For example, imagine if most baseball teams started excluding non-white athletes again. If I owned a team, I'd immediately start hiring those athletes; I'd have by far the best team in baseball in short order (EDIT: To be clear, I'd have the best team because I'd have the market cornered on a large portion of the talent; it wouldn't be because of some imagined (and false) racial differences in performance.) But in business (and in sports) it never works out that way. Certainly some executives have discriminatory attitudes, but that doesn't account for all. Certainly some will give into and/or are more exposed to social pressures, but not all. With the very high demand for talent, why aren't there businesses snapping up the older developers? (There also is another problem: Excluded groups tend to avoid that marketplace. They are discouraged by their parents, teachers and peers, and they may not want to have to deal with discrimination every day for their whole careers. But that shouldn't apply as much to middle-aged developers; that labor supply is already in the pipeline.)

watwut 10y ago
If there would be such a lack of talent, salaries would be going up and working conditions would be getting better and better. So I bit doubt the lack of talent narrarive.
- flomo 10y ago
  The problem is being addressed both supply-side (H1B body shops) and demand-side (salaries and working conditions are broadly better than they used to be IMO). So it is hard to say. I do think there is some truth in "ten years of experience" versus "one year of experience times ten". There are a lot of jobs in this industry where you only have to know so much, and that's all you have to know. CRUD forms are CRUD forms, at least until they change the technology stack. Software is a fad-driven industry, but I think the underlying reason for continual new-stack fetishism is to shake-out the 1x10 people, rather than say the 5x2 people.
  - watwut 10y ago
    I am more cynical. I think that reason for new-stack fetishism is incompetence combined with what I call "signaling game". Many people are unable to talk rationally about benefits and costs or solutions, so they jump anywhere where crowd goes to signal "I am passionate hacker". If people would think for themselves, you would see much less of herd behavior and less insecurity induced posturing.
- freyr 10y ago
  Salaries have gone up, and software companies regularly rank among the very best companies to work for in the world. What exactly are you expecting?
  - watwut 10y ago
    It depends on which company you talk about. Google and Facebook are not the same employers as Uber and many startups (I know that some startups are good employers). But more importantly, we had a bit of coder shortage locally. It meant that companies were: a.) Willing to give applicants time to learn and hired them for technologies they did not knew. They hired people who were changing careers. Many position were treated as truly entry level positions, meaning dudes got hired for demonstrating a bit of iq. b.) People negotiated part time and still had pretty good career. Some people worked long hours, but it was by no means required (ok, you had to be assertive and say no and stand your ground, but in the end nobody could afford to punish you for it). c.) Nobody cared about things like culture fit (as someone below cares - did you grew in right culture?). They were starved for people doing the work. d.) I have seen old programmers. Not all of that was shining, specifically some people should not have been hired. I am not saying it was some heaven on earth awesome in everything for everybody situation. Just that the environment was different.
- lmm 10y ago
  Markets are only efficient under the assumption of perfect information. There's no point offering higher salaries and better working conditions to attract top talent if your hiring process can't measure that talent.
vinceguidry 10y ago
> why aren't there businesses snapping up the older developers? There are, the problem is three-fold. One, older developers are too numerous for any one firm or group of firms to really hire all at once. Second, the job market is way more geographically constrained than people want to admit. (insert rant about "all companies should be remote" here) Third, older developers that need jobs need to be able to find companies willing to hire them. The last aspect is the one that really matters from a social perspective. The market can come up with a matching service to pair job seekers with companies, but just having the service exist doesn't mean that all companies and all job seekers will use it. Motivated individuals will find it, but not all individuals are motivated. The lesson here is that markets can't solve all social problems. Sometimes they exacerbate them. In these cases you really need a social solution.
- hackuser 10y ago
  > The market can come up with a matching service to pair job seekers with companies, but just having the service exist doesn't mean that all companies and all job seekers will use it. Motivated individuals will find it, but not all individuals are motivated. And I'll add, few businesses are that motivated. Most look to get their hiring done as efficiently as possible; it's a burden, a delay, and a cost.
josephagoss 10y ago
> The marketplace always seems to fail in situations like this one The free market fails because ageism, sexism, racism is cultural and sometimes so deep we don't even realize we're doing it. To a lot of HR types even now, being an older programmer is seen as failure as they cannot understand why you wouldn't move into management. HR will probably catch up, but for that to happen we need to keep talking about it and showing that it's an issue and it's actually better to give some of these people a shot.
- throwawaysbdi 10y ago
  The free market optimizes in a way that isn't "fair". Young people are measurably quicker thinking and willing to work longer hours for less pay. They cost the company less in insurance and sick pay as well. Young males tend not to have familial responsibilities and don't get pregnant. Then you have race, where hiring white people is seen as the safest option for the business because they generally aren't discriminated against. It minimizes the risk of your company getting a bad reputation with certain groups, and minimizes the risk of lawsuits when you need to fire people. With business the market isn't cultural as much as it's about maximizing profitability. That still doesn't make it fair.
  - Chris2048 10y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean by "getting a bad reputation with certain groups", companies fall over themselves to appear "diverse", to the extent of hiring people to make it so..
    - vidarh 10y ago
      A lot of companies try to have their cake and eat it too, and continue practices they know will lead them to stay white and male while putting together "diversity committees" and the like to appeal to minorities. E.g. my ex works for a bank where she is on a diversity commitee, where the constant frustration is that the bank is only willing to take actions that everyone knows will have very little effect: The underlying problem is that they continue to insist to hire mainly from schools that predominantly have students from wealthy families, and are skewed heavily towards white students to the extent that if they took the entire graduating classes for the next decade without considering results, they'd still not solve their diversity problems. But any suggestion of widening their search to less elitist schools and focus on results instead gets shot down instantly. Thus they remain mostly white, while holding all kinds of diversity events etc. to look like they're trying hard to solve the problem. To be fair to them, they're happy enough to hire minorities from those schools. The point is they know that will not address their imbalance, and all their other diversity work is window dressing. I don't think it's because they have anything against hiring non-white people, but simply because they care more about the prestige of the schools they hire from than they care about diversity (even if you could guarantee to only consider candidates with equally good results). I think you will find this many places.
koliber 10y ago
I like your analogy. I may have an insight into why the theory of hiring just talented people does not lead to guaranteed success (regardless of whether they come from a disenfranchised group or not). The problem is that the skills of an individual are only part of the formula for success. In team sports and in companies, people need to work as a group to achieve a common goal. This involves leadership, management, teamwork, and individual contribution. Super talented people, by definition, are great at individual contribution. They may be good team players, or they may not. Their individual talent is not a barometer of how good of a team player they are. Add to that the management skills of the coach or team leader. If they're lacking, even skilled team players will have much lower chances at success. Finally, there is leadership. If inadequate, there are no clear goals, there is no culture, and no guiding principles. Progress will be made haphazardly, at best. Long term success will be severely compromised without good leadership. The marketplace is not failing. The ingredients to success involve more than superior individual talent.
- hackuser 10y ago
  I agree that it depends on much more than talent, but that hypothesis wouldn't explain discrimination against older workers: There's no reason older workers would be less capable in the non-talent aspects of what you describe, and there are strong reasons that they would be more capable: Experience, acquired skills, and maturity. On the other hand, part of creating a team is fitting in, and many organizations take the easy way out and avoid diversity on their teams - even though research shows that more diverse teams produce better results (what good is the 8th team member with the same experience and frame of reference?).
bcoates 10y ago
If the problem is overhiring not underhiring then there's no market failure: companies waste dumb money on hiring reams of sexy culture fits, smarter/leaner companies hire broadly but selectively at appropriate volumes. Older and otherwise non-traditional devs miss out on an undeserved windfall, but the market pressure is on drying up the hiring binge not on broadening the high-demand pool.
acdha 10y ago
One huge factor in the U.S. is how broken the healthcare model is. Older employees tend to need more healthcare, if for no reason other than more commonly having families, and the employer is paying for all of it — and at a significant multiple of the base cost anywhere else. I've heard plenty of stories about people who left startups or consulting because they needed BigCorp's insurance plan. That's understandable for the worker in question but puts a strong pressure on the employer in favor of hiring single 24-year olds.

watwut 10y ago

If there would be such a lack of talent, salaries would be going up and working conditions would be getting better and better. So I bit doubt the lack of talent narrarive.

flomo 10y ago
The problem is being addressed both supply-side (H1B body shops) and demand-side (salaries and working conditions are broadly better than they used to be IMO). So it is hard to say. I do think there is some truth in "ten years of experience" versus "one year of experience times ten". There are a lot of jobs in this industry where you only have to know so much, and that's all you have to know. CRUD forms are CRUD forms, at least until they change the technology stack. Software is a fad-driven industry, but I think the underlying reason for continual new-stack fetishism is to shake-out the 1x10 people, rather than say the 5x2 people.
- watwut 10y ago
  I am more cynical. I think that reason for new-stack fetishism is incompetence combined with what I call "signaling game". Many people are unable to talk rationally about benefits and costs or solutions, so they jump anywhere where crowd goes to signal "I am passionate hacker". If people would think for themselves, you would see much less of herd behavior and less insecurity induced posturing.
freyr 10y ago
Salaries have gone up, and software companies regularly rank among the very best companies to work for in the world. What exactly are you expecting?
- watwut 10y ago
  It depends on which company you talk about. Google and Facebook are not the same employers as Uber and many startups (I know that some startups are good employers). But more importantly, we had a bit of coder shortage locally. It meant that companies were: a.) Willing to give applicants time to learn and hired them for technologies they did not knew. They hired people who were changing careers. Many position were treated as truly entry level positions, meaning dudes got hired for demonstrating a bit of iq. b.) People negotiated part time and still had pretty good career. Some people worked long hours, but it was by no means required (ok, you had to be assertive and say no and stand your ground, but in the end nobody could afford to punish you for it). c.) Nobody cared about things like culture fit (as someone below cares - did you grew in right culture?). They were starved for people doing the work. d.) I have seen old programmers. Not all of that was shining, specifically some people should not have been hired. I am not saying it was some heaven on earth awesome in everything for everybody situation. Just that the environment was different.
lmm 10y ago
Markets are only efficient under the assumption of perfect information. There's no point offering higher salaries and better working conditions to attract top talent if your hiring process can't measure that talent.

vinceguidry 10y ago

> why aren't there businesses snapping up the older developers? There are, the problem is three-fold. One, older developers are too numerous for any one firm or group of firms to really hire all at once. Second, the job market is way more geographically constrained than people want to admit. (insert rant about "all companies should be remote" here) Third, older developers that need jobs need to be able to find companies willing to hire them. The last aspect is the one that really matters from a social perspective. The market can come up with a matching service to pair job seekers with companies, but just having the service exist doesn't mean that all companies and all job seekers will use it. Motivated individuals will find it, but not all individuals are motivated. The lesson here is that markets can't solve all social problems. Sometimes they exacerbate them. In these cases you really need a social solution.

hackuser 10y ago
> The market can come up with a matching service to pair job seekers with companies, but just having the service exist doesn't mean that all companies and all job seekers will use it. Motivated individuals will find it, but not all individuals are motivated. And I'll add, few businesses are that motivated. Most look to get their hiring done as efficiently as possible; it's a burden, a delay, and a cost.

josephagoss 10y ago

> The marketplace always seems to fail in situations like this one The free market fails because ageism, sexism, racism is cultural and sometimes so deep we don't even realize we're doing it. To a lot of HR types even now, being an older programmer is seen as failure as they cannot understand why you wouldn't move into management. HR will probably catch up, but for that to happen we need to keep talking about it and showing that it's an issue and it's actually better to give some of these people a shot.

throwawaysbdi 10y ago
The free market optimizes in a way that isn't "fair". Young people are measurably quicker thinking and willing to work longer hours for less pay. They cost the company less in insurance and sick pay as well. Young males tend not to have familial responsibilities and don't get pregnant. Then you have race, where hiring white people is seen as the safest option for the business because they generally aren't discriminated against. It minimizes the risk of your company getting a bad reputation with certain groups, and minimizes the risk of lawsuits when you need to fire people. With business the market isn't cultural as much as it's about maximizing profitability. That still doesn't make it fair.
- Chris2048 10y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by "getting a bad reputation with certain groups", companies fall over themselves to appear "diverse", to the extent of hiring people to make it so..
  - vidarh 10y ago
    A lot of companies try to have their cake and eat it too, and continue practices they know will lead them to stay white and male while putting together "diversity committees" and the like to appeal to minorities. E.g. my ex works for a bank where she is on a diversity commitee, where the constant frustration is that the bank is only willing to take actions that everyone knows will have very little effect: The underlying problem is that they continue to insist to hire mainly from schools that predominantly have students from wealthy families, and are skewed heavily towards white students to the extent that if they took the entire graduating classes for the next decade without considering results, they'd still not solve their diversity problems. But any suggestion of widening their search to less elitist schools and focus on results instead gets shot down instantly. Thus they remain mostly white, while holding all kinds of diversity events etc. to look like they're trying hard to solve the problem. To be fair to them, they're happy enough to hire minorities from those schools. The point is they know that will not address their imbalance, and all their other diversity work is window dressing. I don't think it's because they have anything against hiring non-white people, but simply because they care more about the prestige of the schools they hire from than they care about diversity (even if you could guarantee to only consider candidates with equally good results). I think you will find this many places.

koliber 10y ago

I like your analogy. I may have an insight into why the theory of hiring just talented people does not lead to guaranteed success (regardless of whether they come from a disenfranchised group or not). The problem is that the skills of an individual are only part of the formula for success. In team sports and in companies, people need to work as a group to achieve a common goal. This involves leadership, management, teamwork, and individual contribution. Super talented people, by definition, are great at individual contribution. They may be good team players, or they may not. Their individual talent is not a barometer of how good of a team player they are. Add to that the management skills of the coach or team leader. If they're lacking, even skilled team players will have much lower chances at success. Finally, there is leadership. If inadequate, there are no clear goals, there is no culture, and no guiding principles. Progress will be made haphazardly, at best. Long term success will be severely compromised without good leadership. The marketplace is not failing. The ingredients to success involve more than superior individual talent.

hackuser 10y ago
I agree that it depends on much more than talent, but that hypothesis wouldn't explain discrimination against older workers: There's no reason older workers would be less capable in the non-talent aspects of what you describe, and there are strong reasons that they would be more capable: Experience, acquired skills, and maturity. On the other hand, part of creating a team is fitting in, and many organizations take the easy way out and avoid diversity on their teams - even though research shows that more diverse teams produce better results (what good is the 8th team member with the same experience and frame of reference?).

bcoates 10y ago

If the problem is overhiring not underhiring then there's no market failure: companies waste dumb money on hiring reams of sexy culture fits, smarter/leaner companies hire broadly but selectively at appropriate volumes. Older and otherwise non-traditional devs miss out on an undeserved windfall, but the market pressure is on drying up the hiring binge not on broadening the high-demand pool.

acdha 10y ago

One huge factor in the U.S. is how broken the healthcare model is. Older employees tend to need more healthcare, if for no reason other than more commonly having families, and the employer is paying for all of it — and at a significant multiple of the base cost anywhere else. I've heard plenty of stories about people who left startups or consulting because they needed BigCorp's insurance plan. That's understandable for the worker in question but puts a strong pressure on the employer in favor of hiring single 24-year olds.