21 ms·

Too Much Experience to Be Hired? Some Older Americans Face Age Bias

213 points by happy-go-lucky 10y ago

tabeth 10y ago
So who's not being discriminated against? Let's review who's currently getting the short end of the stick. 1. Women [1] 2. Older Americans [2] 3. Minorities [3] 4. Foreigners [4] What can be done about this? The answer is clear: anonymous screening, interviewing and hiring of candidates. All other solutions are subpar. People will argue that there's value to be had in asking about things such as hobbies, and other irrelevant, superfluous information, but those who advocate this are probably not in one of the groups mentioned. --- [1] http://www.vogue.com/article/female-discrimination-tech-industry-study http://www.vogue.com/article/female-discrimination-tech-indu... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/lizryan/2014/01/31/the-ugly-truth-about-age-discrimination/#1f36519e44e7 https://www.forbes.com/sites/lizryan/2014/01/31/the-ugly-tru... [3] http://money.cnn.com/2015/11/25/news/economy/racial-discrimination-work/ http://money.cnn.com/2015/11/25/news/economy/racial-discrimi... [4] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alev-dudek/foreign-born-citizens-in-america_b_8030968.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alev-dudek/foreign-born-citize...
- jMyles 10y ago
  Just to be clear: are you advocating that all organizations be required to perform this "anonymous" form of hiring, lest they face the long arm of the law? I think that's crazy. Talent seeking is a space where diversity makes a great deal of sense, as evinced by the fact that many very diverse companies do very well.
  - tabeth 10y ago
    I'm confused -- anonymity wouldn't affect diversity, unless the organization was discriminating to begin with. What are your arguments against anonymity, exactly?
    - saurik 10y ago
      I don't know if this is the specific problem that the person you are responding to was alluding to, but: a purely anonymous system is going to end up with hiring tons of young white males--surely fewer than a company that actively discriminates against other groups, but noticibly more than a company that is actively looking for diversity--due to young white makes making up a large percentage of the available talent pool at any given level of expertise (due to a combination of factors, including but not limited to all of "available time", "increasing population", "availability bias", and "systemic oppression"). A company might specifically find value in "we don't just want the world's best engineers: we want a diverse set of backgrounds and viewpoints", and a forced anonymous hiring process actually removes the ability to do that, which might actually help continue to entrench the systemic oppression issue (as then everyone builds things for the same market demographic as that's all they understand).
      - toomuchtodo 10y ago
        If it's okay to hire for diversity, is it okay to say "I only want to hire white guys in their 20s and 30s"? If not, why not? Is there proof that "diversity hiring" (back in the day we called this "affirmative action", the lingo changes but the goals remain the same) provides substantial benefits to an organization? If so, fantastic! We should promote it across the industry. I have yet to see any data that this is the case though. "In God We Trust; all others bring data"
      - tabeth 10y ago
        A lot of what you say really requires some evidence. For example: > a purely anonymous system is going to end up with hiring tons of young white males- A system that's non anonymous has already proven itself to hire a ton of young white males... > surely fewer than a company that actively discriminates against other groups, but noticibly more than a company that is actively looking for diversity- Citations needed. > A company might specifically find value in "we don't just want the world's best engineers: we want a diverse set of backgrounds and viewpoints", Discrimination isn't good, period. That means discriminating for or against white males. Also, you imply that the groups I mentioned couldn't succeed on their own merit. Overall, you basically encourage discrimination. Got it.
  - RUG3Y 10y ago
    Isn't the purpose of anonymity in this situation to ensure that the best candidates get hired? Wouldn't diversity be the natural result, assuming that diverse types of candidates are qualified? I'm not advocating for this as law but I feel like this would encourage rather than discourage diversity.
  - yuhong 10y ago
    This is part of why I dislike employment anti-discrimination laws. They probably worked better for manual labor and other commodity jobs. A compromise would be to limit them to these kinds of jobs.
- an_account 10y ago
  Does someone doing anonymous screening get to see the past experience of the candidate? If so, it doesn't solve the issues raised in this article.
  - tabeth 10y ago
    In the actual research [1] you can see that the discrimination is also affected by gender. In any case, anonymous interviewing doesn't inherently require one to see the duration of ones past experience. I agree the implementation could be tricky, but in any case, it's better than what currently exists. [1] http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/2017/february/age-discrimination-and-hiring-older-workers/ http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic...
  - kawera 10y ago
    Maybe only mention recent experiences, say, last 8 or 10 years.
  - ccajas 10y ago
    I also don't believe that the hiring process can be made 100% anonymously, with a total lack of bias. That would be impossible. You have to meet with the candidate in person at some point, and get to see what they look like and learn their name.
- jazzyb 10y ago
  However, checking the past experience of the applicant -- which seems perfectly reasonable for the hiring company to do -- would still allow discrimination against older Americans and foreigners. I'm not sure how that could be fixed even with anonymity.
  - mamon 10y ago
    simple: You don't write all of your experience in your resume, only the experience relevant to the job you apply for. They want 5-7 years experience in Java? List only your last two Java jobs, don't mention that you did 15 years of C++ before that.
    - jazzyb 10y ago
      That's easy for someone who's worked at many different companies. What about the applicant who's primarily worked for a single company for many years? This is much more likely to be true for an older applicant. Do you lie about how many years you worked at the company? Regardless, it still doesn't solve the problem for foreigners who may have only worked for companies outside the US.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  Government does this where they use civil service exams. The problem is that maintaining a meaningful evaluation process is difficult. So the exams tend to remove some forms of discrimination, especially against women, but reinforce others, and create other issues too. The process works overall. In one place I'm familiar with, black and Latino minorities candidates successfully sued because although the candidates had good professional credentials and outcomes, the test disadvantaged them because their educations in grade/high school tended to suck and people in these categories did more poorly in questions regarding English grammar, analogies, etc. Foreign born people have a similar experience. If you use these types of methods to hire people, you'll need to adopt government style hiring practices. If you need 3 people, hire 5, because you're likely to be forced to hire some duds. When duds are too bad and firing gets difficult, you promote the idiots, etc.
  - tabeth 10y ago
    What are the other forms of discrimination that are reinforced? I'm still unconvinced that anonymous interviewing isn't superior in every way for those who are currently discriminated against. It seems most of the counter arguments basically say "you'll discriminate," unrealizing that occurs, either way.
    - Spooky23 10y ago
      The cultural discrimination that I cited is one example. You also create a system where people who are good at testing or manipulating systems will excel in. Personally, I've found in the .gov environments that the best technical people score in the 80-85 range. The people who do better on the exams tend to come from certain less technical backgrounds or job roles. Taking human judgement out of the process just displaces accountability to some test or other assessment. IMO, the way to fix these things is to treat hiring like an incident. Do a post-mortem/debrief, document how decisions are made. Coach people hiring to be better at it.
- lacampbell 10y ago
  I'd suggest providing sources that aren't op-ed pieces - one of them from a tabloid - if you want to be taken seriously.
  - tabeth 10y ago
    Which of the following do you not believe? All of these are common knowledge. I don't have time to be educating people won't aren't aware of basic facts. Maybe you're not from the U.S, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt(all of the links I posted link to actual sources, anyway). 1. Women are discriminated against in the workplace in the United States. 2. Minorities are discriminated against in the workplace in the United States. 3. Older Americans (unnecessary, as the evidence is already provided) are discriminated against in the workplace in the United States. 4. Foreigners are discriminated against in the workplace in the United States.
    - lacampbell 10y ago
      What I believe or not is completely irrelevant - that's an attempt on your behalf of re-framing what I said, and I reject it. If you want a serious informed discussion on these issues, find some reasonably impartial and factual sources with real figures, not op-ed pieces from your favourite partisan publications. If you don't have time to provide sources, then I'd suggest not talking about the topic since you're ill-equipped to discuss it.
Ghostium 10y ago
Again? I'm annoyed of this topic. If you kept improving yourself along the way, I'm confident you will find a good company that value your knowledge.
- untilHellbanned 10y ago
  Let me guess less then 35? Male?
  - necessity 10y ago
    Let me guess: The same?
- rm999 10y ago
  This article is about age discrimination happening at the initial levels of the job application process, before you're evaluated on your merits. The study the article mentions is about identical resumes with different ages. The lawsuit against R.J. Reynolds is about guidelines given to recruiters. In both these cases, it doesn't really matter how good you are if you're trying to get a job through the standard process.
- itg 10y ago
  Having years of work experience doesn't count as improvement? Because it does in almost every other industry out there.
klancaster 10y ago
I first felt this when I was asked by a sales rep if I would be interested in coming to work for his company since I had exactly the credentials and experience they were looking for. He said he would talk with the head of development and get back to me. Time passed, and when he did get back to me, he said that the dev manager was looking for someone under 35 and that my resume - which did not have my age - told him that I must be older (I was around 45 at the time). In retrospect, I should have sued, but instead just let it drop.
- Overtonwindow 10y ago
  If it was in writing you should have absolutely sued. That is clear age discrimination.
  - TheGrassyKnoll 10y ago
    I don't know anyone who was ever happy when they had to deal with lawyers...
  - bobbington 10y ago
    Better not to be trigger happy. Much better for society. He probably found a job where his age and wisdom is more valued. The fact is some roles are better for young ones and others are better for older more experienced.
  - ChuckMcM 10y ago
    To what end? Do you really want to work at a company that you sued and as part of the settlement they had to give you a job? What sort of damages do you think you could convince a judge or jury to give you for 'not hiring' you? I get that it is wrong, and that the employer's should have some downside for discriminating against older employees (other than losing out on some great employees) but as an individual seeking a job, the downside is much greater for the individual to sue than the company. Rather than sue, send a note to the National Labor Relations board and have them set up a sting operation and catch them in the act. Justice is served and your life isn't impacted by being part of a lawsuit that would do you no good anyway.
mark024 10y ago
you're a young white male? of course you won't understand, "keep improving yourself" what an elitist thing to say from the IT bubble.. most profession plateau, it doesn't matter if you have 10 or 20 years of experience, even in IT it doesn't.
- artursapek 10y ago
  I've conducted a lot of job interviews and debriefs at "IT bubble" startups and have not seen anything resembling race/gender bias. Where is this bias happening?
  - lazyasciiart 10y ago
    Did you read the article?
    - artursapek 10y ago
      Article talks about age bias. I'm responding to a SJW whining about someone being a "white male"
  - mark024 10y ago
    Just recently I saw a reddit thread about a black web developer women being paid much less than her coworkers, she overhead her boss talking on the phone about hiring another guy because they have a lot of work, talking about how he affords it, because he pays her so little and he can get away with it, because "what she's going do", "who is going to hire her" a black developer woman.
    - ThomPete 10y ago
      If she is any goood any of the big companies would take her. There is always a shortage of good talent.
    - bbcbasic 10y ago
      Another lawsuit ITT :-)
SpikeDad 10y ago
Gee I just got divorced and was looking at spousal support - the court said that at my age I was only a minimum wage person. Good for me but shows that the bias is legally recognized. (That's after 30 years in the IT industry)...
cbanek 10y ago
I don't doubt that there's age discrimination going on in the industry. What I'm wondering is why? Pros of being older: - More work experience (hopefully useful to whatever position applied for) - More mature mental / emotional outlook Cons: - Possibly higher salary requirements because of the pros above. - Higher relocation cost? - Perceived feeling of being able to work less hours? Overall I'm just not sure I understand the economic reasons for wanting to only hire young people. Especially when most jobs are only for a few year period (nobody is looking for life long employees anymore). Is this possibly some kind of part of the backlash against elitism, where we hate experienced people that might know what they're talking about?
- grepthisab 10y ago
  I've worked with some extremely smart older people, who did some awesome stuff in the 70s/80s. My impression is that usually, in my experience, they're very jaded and set in their ways. They seem to like to do things their own way and give the impression that they're infallible because they deconstructed an x stack in y decade, and complain about the cyclical nature of programming. They also seem to usually not go out to happy hours/events with the team to get to know one another as often, so they're excluded a little more, which leads to fewer people getting to know them. I have seen exceptions, one of the PMs on my current team must be in her 60s and she exhibits none of the characteristics above and is a really amazing, smart person. It's just that most of the older people I have personally met seem to have the traits I described above. This would give me a little pause when choosing between equal candidates for, say, an angular dev position where both candidates have equal experience in the stack, but the older one has the baggage(?) of having been a programmer since the 70s and knows COBOL or something. I would likely have an unconscious bias to hire the younger one.
  - treehau5 10y ago
    I see people as young as 25 being set in there ways as well when it comes to the latest hipster trends. For example we had a heated argument about Vue vs React at work the other day. Turns out the other party arguing in favor of Vue had actually never even used React before. They were just blindly recycling the same bike-shedded arguments against JSX as every other middle-tier dev I have ever encountered seems regurgitate. You can get set in your ways at any age. The solution to the happy-hour problem is to have your happy hours during work, not after hours. Even I, who am young, healthy, no kids and loves beer, would get tired of having to go to xyz happy hour at 6p.m just to keep my edge. The other thing: I bet that old guy is the first one in every morning. And probably brings his lunch every day. Also is not interested in an afternoon ping pong break. Translation: He or she probably actually works more, despite being "at work" less.
Overtonwindow 10y ago
As an aside, I always make sure my resume makes me appear to be someone in early thirties. I combine the experience under a few recent jobs, and never put when I graduated college.
- mvid 10y ago
  I imagine that if I knew your name and email address, i would have enough information to find the year you were born on the internet. Not having an online presence is a red flag, unfortunately.
  - Overtonwindow 10y ago
    Hehe, actually in my line of work, it's an asset.
startupdiscuss 10y ago
Did anyone notice that they specifically ask for a lower GPA? Go for 2.8-3.1 GPA w/ lots of activities. Avoid 4.0 with no other activities. Now If they had just said go for activities, I would understand, but they actually asked for a lower GPA too.
- dikdik 10y ago
  It could be a cultural thing, they want those that care more about having fun than just keeping their nose down and doing the work. Or they may be want people who aren't very bright because they might be willing to take more abuse from management?
  - Cyph0n 10y ago
    Or maybe they want people who wouldn't be able to easily switch jobs as soon as shit hits the fan.
  - jotux 10y ago
    >they want those that care more about having fun than just keeping their nose down and doing the work This is purely anecdotal, but many 4.0 students I knew in college were not at all interested in "keeping their nose down and doing the work." They were 100% interested in having "4.0 GPA" on their resume which generally meant doing very well on tests, everything else be damned. So they were awful to have in a project groups and didn't participate in any activities because it didn't contribute to their GPA at all.
- adjkant 10y ago
  I've seen this a few times now already - a GPA over 3.7 or so is a red flag for many employers - I think they interpret it as "does little outside of school".
  - madengr 10y ago
    As an engineering major, you won't have time for anything outside of school.
startupdiscuss 10y ago
If discrimination exists doesn't that imply someone can arb the situation by, in this case, hiring all the smart older workers for more than what others are paying and still get a good deal?
- my_first_acct 10y ago
  As Keynes (or someone else [1]) said in a somewhat different context, "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." [1] http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/08/09/remain-solvent/ http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/08/09/remain-solvent/
  - pandaman 10y ago
    In arbitrage you make money from the market being irrational so remaining solvent could not be a concern for somebody doing it. It's for the market being arbitraged to become rational or become insolvent.
deleted 10y ago
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a3n 10y ago
I put obvious clues in my resume that I'm old, beyond number of jobs and dates. If you care about my age, I don't want you to waste my time; I really don't care about your time, but that does save your time too.
- romanhn 10y ago
  I similarly have mentioned having a family in the past during interviews. If interviewers dislike the work/life balance considerations that come with kids, I'd much rather find out about it in that interview than on the job.
Pica_soO 10y ago
You got to visit actor camp, where you learn to pretend to be hyped by the same rediscovered technologies and do "fruitfull" failures once more. Oh brave old world, that holds such people.
losteverything 10y ago
Totally anecdotal but before the over 60yr old office manager was hired only young were hired (college and under 30). Now, recent hires include two over 55 women. Interviwees are only older. We concluded it is a simple as who does the hiring.
wellpast 10y ago
I'm 40 with 20 years of real and varied industry experience (big and small companies; crossing systems, desktop, and much web/distributed dev), rabidly curious, and deeply study (and use on real, often side projects) bleeding edge this and that. What I think is my core value is the long-developed ability to build sound/robust architectures fast, with very good estimation and delivery prediction, and using latest tools, platforms, and technologies. I know this may sound self-promoting, egotistical perhaps but I believe it's true. Less experience brings a lot of risk in the form of opportunity cost -- without hard-won experience, you simply don't yet have the ability to predict delivery or make the kind of "don't-look-back" decisions and optimal prioritizations that comes with mastery. I can go to market and find a few companies that can pay my current salary. But the jobs I've been interested in (often medium-sized companies) seem to be trying to fill out a slate of 5 junior/mid-level roles, implicitly devaluing the kind of experience that I have. I don't blame them. How do you demonstrate that you can truly "make better prioritized decisions" or "build sound architectures quickly" -- I can do these things, but the proofs are all counterfactuals. I know people in the industry for more than 20 years who did not cultivate their skill set. So how does a company first differentiate between me* and the other 20-year veteran? On the job you'll experience the difference in talent between him and me, but how do you a priori tell? We need a way to show the houses we've built in our careers. How I can I show you that the 100,000 LOC code base(s) that I built or refactored at my last job(s) is stucturally sound with little leaks and supports agile development? As opposed to the other guy who left his spavined˜construction to a company in misery trying to maintain it? Then the second thing is how do get these companies to value the skill set? "Working" is the mantra of the day, but "working" code that's not "sound" doesn't just start bleeding you in a year or two but in weeks from now. In other words, 20 years is worth paying for. * Swap "me" for "some guy who _has_ mastered his craft to the level I'm describing". Yes, needs definition, but assume there is a definition.
- wellpast 10y ago
  Just for the record I've worked on large codebases but 100,000 LOC isnt the goal just an example. Mastery of course (typically) yields smaller code bases.
- older_employed 10y ago
paulsutter 10y ago
Alternative viewpoint: Roles that require less experience generally outnumber the roles that require a lot of experience. As you go up the experience pyramid, more and more experience is required, but fewer and fewer roles exist. I'm not talking about management per se, just trying to count roles by experience needed within a generic organization. Challenge being that any group of individuals advance in age at a fixed rate (one year per year). Does that make sense? Not sure about it myself.
- SFJulie 10y ago
  It makes sense. It is not age bias, it is knowledge bias. You may be a good employee when you have experience, but you may also know what to expect from a "good management", like paying the hours worked. For instance, I have been literally barred from an interview because they made explicit references to young people being more flexible about accepting to work (way) more than the announced weekly work hours on the contract for free. I said I would accept without making a fuss, they did not trust me. Actually they were right; if you try to trick me, I will do too.
- aanm1988 10y ago
  This is true. Having a few people at the top who can give a product direction is really all you need. Implementation is easily done by delegating. You give a chunk to the person who is in their early 30s, and they give smaller pieces to the more junior people. It's cheap, it's effective, and people learn. or you can stack a team with half a dozen 40 year olds and one guy in his 20s and he gets to do all the bullshit that the older people don't want to bother with.
seesomesense 10y ago
I have found that some older employees have decades of valuable experience.Others have one year of experience repeated thirty times....
ryanmarsh 10y ago
Ageism is just poor leadership. By that I mean discrimination purely on the stereotypes of older workers is a response to one's own failings as a leader. Think we don't like to go drink with our friends? Don't like to learn new things? LOL. If I would rather go home than drink with you once a month then maybe you should take that to mean you're a bore. Maybe be pleasant and interesting? If I don't like to deploy on new stacks for the sake of deploying on new stacks maybe that's a strength? If you think I can't be motivated to use something new that is legitimately better then maybe you can't articulate your ideas well? Maybe you aren't very inspiring? If you think I can't work hard because I don't do long hours that's on you. Maybe you should stop wasting my time at work and get out of my way so I can get the job you pay me for done during normal business hours. I could go on...
LVB 10y ago
I've always been intrigued by the age requirement to become an air traffic controller--a federal job no less--which is under age 31 [1]. I recently came across the study [2] that preceded this rule. An interesting read. [1] https://www.faa.gov/jobs/career_fields/aviation_careers/ https://www.faa.gov/jobs/career_fields/aviation_careers/ [2] http://libraryonline.erau.edu/online-full-text/faa-aviation-medicine-reports/AM71-36.pdf http://libraryonline.erau.edu/online-full-text/faa-aviation-...
- npunt 10y ago
  Fascinating. From what I remember reading about it, air traffic control is a tough job. Very stressful, long hours, have to be sharp, but quite routine. It's a very downside protection job and seems to have the kind of properties that would benefit from some serious (partial) automation.
  - jghn 10y ago
    In my first job we had a PM who was completely fried. Always on edge, super stressed, not quite right. It was explained to me that up until not long before that she had been an air traffic controller and this is what the job did to people. I have no idea to this day if that was a n=1 anecdata or if that's true, but it left a lasting impression in my head.
  - Asooka 10y ago
    Air traffic control sounds like the last place you'd want long hours. How are longer hours better than less hours and more shifts?
kitsunesoba 10y ago
Regarding this issue, at least for software engineering positions in the Bay Area there's a possibility that I haven't seen mentioned that I don't condone but understand. Here, most companies' SE departments are dominated by younger engineers largely because that's what's readily available and affordable. These engineers are likely to want to be working with/surrounded by engineers within their general age range not out of any particular distaste for those older than themselves, but rather because highly experienced engineers are intimidating and on some level difficult to relate to. 20 and early 30-somethings want to be treated like they're intelligent, capable workers who are well-peered with their fellow engineers and introducing titanic knowledge+wisdom gaps can toss that out the window. It can make a young guy with 3+ years of solid experience in the industry feel like he's a half-useless greenhorn who can never catch up, which is demoralizing. These people are quite aware of the gap (see the rampant impostor syndrome in the same age bracket) but would prefer to not have it pointed out constantly. Just as one can't magically subtract years from their age, one also can't just snap their fingers and stop being young and less experienced. While engineers don't directly control the recruiting process, they are often the ones doing the phone screenings and technical interviews and often have a lot of swing as to who gets hired. I wouldn't be surprised if this is partially why SV company hires continue to skew young.
- walshemj 10y ago
  younger engineers "want" tough I want 50k a year
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- ntsplnkv3 10y ago
  Isn't it more likely that younger, fresh out of school employees have less leverage and it's easier to get more hours for less pay out of them? Isn't the most obvious reason cost?
arnonejoe 10y ago
I left the bay area last summer for this very reason. I had a recruiter at an agency in SF tell me how my resume should look for a "candidate my age" and sent me a resume of an older candidate so that I could follow the format. The bay area is the worst for age discrimination. It's the subtle bias I find disturbing. I know a lot of awesome software engineers who are over 40.
hoodoof 10y ago
Call this an unfair generalization if you must, but old people are no good at everything. - "The Simpsons"
koolba 10y ago
If older employees are so awesome compared to young workers, why does this bias/discrimination continue to exist? Wouldn't a shop that rids itself of the stupidity of age based discrimination rise above its competitors as it's able to seize on a talent pool that would otherwise be ignored?
- tastythrowaway2 10y ago
  My guess is that the market for high quality software engineering simply isn't there at scale. A lot of what we use day to day really just scrapes by the threshold of passable. So that's the bar they need to clear. If your customers are content paying you for 80% reliability, why pay for engineers who can deliver 5 9s?
wbl 10y ago
How much of this is explained by increasing health insurance rates if your company has an older age pool?
- drawkbox 10y ago
  This along with privacy, backroom fixed market pricing, making it harder to change jobs and making it harder to start a business, is a big reason to remove healthcare from employment. Employment should provide salary only. People need to get their own insurance for health, home, fire, life etc. Keep your employers out of your personal dealings.
  - dragonbonheur 10y ago
    Then US hospitals should provide free healthcare for all and not insist on getting insurance details before providing actual health care. Glad you see the whole picture and embrace SOCIAList ideals like the rest of the planet.
- kazinator 10y ago
  My thinking exactly, and you can easily make that entire line of thinking moot by contracting.
kazinator 10y ago
> These were actual guidelines that tobacco company R.J. Reynolds gave to job recruiters. Right, but it also told its marketers to get children hooked on cigarettes. Who gives a rat's about hiring at tobacco companies? Way to scrape the bottom of the barrel for examples.
Steeeve 10y ago
For those providing the excuse of culture - culture is something strongly valued in the Bay Area, and it's one of the biggest weaknesses. Diversity brings so much more to the table than people who can drink a beer together. Diversity in age and experience brings different problem solving techniques and instincts to the table. Put together a group of young single males of the same ethnic background and you will probably get a group of people who don't mind working all night long together six nights a week. Put together a group of people in different age brackets, different educational backgrounds, and different cultural backgrounds and you have a group of people who won't have to work all night long together in order to solve problems and get things done. Don't stagnate. Evolve. We can all do a better job of opening up.
- devmunchies 10y ago
  I find that the bay area and Seattle (my home) value the wrong kind of diversity. Its the unimportant stuff like skin color and gender that everyone means when talking about diversity. The diversity that matters (diversity of thought and experience) is not the major area of focus for some reason.
  - rifung 10y ago
    > I find that the bay area and Seattle (my home) value the wrong kind of diversity. Its the unimportant stuff like skin color and gender that everyone means when talking about diversity. The diversity that matters (diversity of thought and experience) is not the major area of focus for some reason. Why do you say that it's unimportant? I can see how you could argue that it's not the only thing that matters and that too much focus is being placed on it, but it is still important for people who are of a gender or race to feel valued, included, and like they are treated equally. Otherwise, they won't be as open to sharing their ideas.
    - dsfyu404ed 10y ago
      The computer doesn't care what color fingers are hitting the keyboard. Diversity of thought is the goal in the workplace (unless you've got some other diversity metric you need to hit for regulatory reasons). If you've got a group that's very homogeneous except for skin color and gender you're not gonna get much diversity of thought.
DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
I think there's an elephant in the room, at least for many of us who are over 40: We are in some ways less intelligent than we were 10 years earlier. We sometimes process complex problems a little more slowly, the maximum complexity of our mental models is a little lower, and we can sometimes learn more slowly. We pray that our greater experience and wisdom compensate for that. For some of us it does, for others not so much. Perhaps many hiring companies do reject us 40+ workers for the wrong reasons. But in some cases, perhaps their reasons are illegal but correct.
- vikingcaffiene 10y ago
  I'm about to turn 40 and at the top of my game. Unless some magic spell hits me when my next birthday comes, I'm not real worried about this elephant you speak of. It's about staying on top of your skills and never assuming you know enough. Always be learning. Most older devs that I know that started sliding into irrelevance did so because they didn't keep up on that.
  - DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
    I think you raise a great point. Perhaps I'm conflating some issues that should really be separate. It would be interesting to see a breakdown of why older devs get less awesome over time. I can imagine a variety of causes: - Slower learning due to reduced brain plasticity. - Early stages of dementia. - More poorly rested due to kids, age-related physical discomfort during sleeping, or obesity-based sleep apnea. - Reduced focus on career development due to getting comfortable and/or responsibilities outside of work (child-rearing, etc.) This includes less time on evenings / weekends to self-learn new technologies. - Reduced exposure to new technologies, because they're now so expensive that employers only want to pay them to work in their current niche(s) of expertise. - False perception that they actually are less awesome. E.g., they write half as much code as before, because of a better idea about what's a waste of time.
- alistairSH 10y ago
  Citation?
- 10y ago
ianamartin 10y ago
My mother and Father deal with with this internally as German Professors in a university. My mom is in her mid 70s and my dad is is in his late 90s. For reference, I'm in my mid/late 30s. No one wants to hire my mom because she's too expensive, and no one wants to hire my dad because he's too old. The university they are currently employed at won't give them any reasonable updates to their salaries. They have newer, younger managers telling them that they suck at their jobs. And when you get enough of that, it starts to wear on you, on your friends, and your students. My Mom could go anywhere to any university in the country, but she built a house and wants to stay in that house. There's not a university that wouldn't hire her, and probably dad as well. They have every credential you could ask for. How do I find an attorney that could take this case and put this university in place? My parent's have basically no money. But I have a cash cow. I'll pay bucketloads to get this right. PM me if you think you can help. And a I also have 5 other cases from women and men with similar claims. If someone is willing to take it, we're talking about 5 cases minimum, and I will front the cash. Get in touch.
- meric 10y ago
  Your dad is 90 IMO enjoy more time with him than to waste his remaining time on some lawyer.
- mdpopescu 10y ago
  > No one wants to hire my mom > There's not a university that wouldn't hire her Something doesn't sound right.
blitmap 10y ago
I believe age-based discrimination can happen to anyone of any age. The government does not: https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/age.cfm https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/age.cfm I am a younger adult performing IT functions. Because of my age, some authority figures don't expect me to know how to perform complex tasks with greater responsibility. Often those tasks are given to older folks who (in my view) don't have the experience. It goes both ways - I'm not saying any of it is right/fair/karma.
neves 10y ago
I bet that if were for software dev jobs the reject rate would be a lot higher.
brudgers 10y ago
Older workers are more likely to utilize health insurance for major procedures. More claims will drive up group health insurance rates. For a business that subsidizes employee health insurance, this is a bottom line cost. For a business that does not, higher health insurance costs are still a competitive disadvantage. Because health insurance is so expensive, the costs can be non-trivial and not hiring older workers can be economically rational. The cost of adding people who utilize health care services to the pool establishing group policy rates is why employer provided health insurance policies typically excluded pre-existing conditions until it became illegal. As fear of going without is a brake upon entrepreneurship, the rate increase from older workers is a brake upon productivity that derives from national health care policy.
- stevenwoo 10y ago
  I worked at a startup 25 years ago, and we had trouble getting group health insurance for our company of just over a dozen people because the accountant was over 50 years old, and it's not like we were going to fire him to get insurance. I imagine the problem is different today with ACA.
  - brudgers 10y ago
    The costs are higher today than 25 years ago. A dozen employees at $150/month/employee (10% increase at $1500/month) is nearly $50k/year. That's meaningful money in a lot of contexts. It's also worth considering that most older job candidates aren't in a highly skilled occupation like accounting where experience often adds value. Most employees are more fungible, particularly outside the world of startups. Just for clarity HIPAA changed the landscape for pre-existing conditions in 1997.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  While this could be a worry for some smaller companies, I think there are more significant costs involved with employees who are closer to retirement than not. This becomes more serious the older one gets. When retirement becomes a short-term prospect (within 5 years), it gets really bad.
RestlessMind 10y ago
A possible factor (but not the only one) - older workers are more expensive to hire due to higher salary expectations and higher health costs. That would make them unappealing to a whole swath of companies - the ones with limited hiring budgets, the ones with simple enough job requirements that a new-ish grad can do them for cheap etc etc. It would be interesting to see the data pertaining to salary+health costs based on age.
equalarrow 10y ago
I've said it before as an 'older dude', network, network, network. I'm not trying to downplay any one person's hardships, but if tou have a good netoekr of people that can vouch for you, it's 10x more powerful than coming into a place hat in hand.. Good luck and network!!
E6300 10y ago
Maintaining your health and the health of those under your care is your own responsibility. You don't get to blame other people when you get yourself infected.
- DanBC 10y ago
  >You don't get to blame other people What? Of course you do. Sick people should probably stay away from work, especially if they have things like Noro.
  - E6300 10y ago
    So your only rebuttal is "nuh-uh"? In that case, I say "yuh-huh". See my sibling response.
- sdiupIGPWEfh 10y ago
  In other words, "Just don't get sick." As if it worked that way.
  - E6300 10y ago
    No. In other words: your well-being is your problem. Don't expect other people to change their behavior for your sake. If you don't take care of yourself, no one will.
- davidgay 10y ago
  You must live in some imaginary world where bacteria and viruses respond to your will and refuse to infect you. And of course, if you happen to be asthmatic, it's all psychological, and you get to decide, eg, whether that cigarette smoke will trigger an attack or not.
  - E6300 10y ago
    > You must live in some imaginary world where bacteria and viruses respond to your will and refuse to infect you. Are you saying there's no such thing as prophylaxis? Doctors must wear gloves for fashion, since microbes apparently just phase through solid matter. > And of course, if you happen to be asthmatic, it's all psychological, and you get to decide, eg, whether that cigarette smoke will trigger an attack or not. Regardless of whether you're asthmatic or not, deciding not to go near the smoke is within your power.
Proven 10y ago
So do younger Americans and so on. Nothing special. The ability to discriminate is one of foundations of freedom.
misingnoglic 10y ago
This is a huge issue for my mom - she's an amazing designer (graphic and general), but she stopped working to take care of me and my siblings, and now she can't find a job anywhere. She always makes it to some end round, but is passed off for someone younger. I wish I could help somehow :/
nonsince 10y ago
I'm a young developer, but if my experience is anything to go by I think that this age bias is driven by a desire for cost-efficiency over quality. It's cheaper per unit of work (for some fuzzy definition of unit of work) to hire two young developers than one experienced one, even if the quality of the latter's work would be superior. I'd say I'm a good developer, but I think my employability is as much due to my low wage requirements as it is due to my skill.

213 points by happy-go-lucky 10y ago

So who's not being discriminated against? Let's review who's currently getting the short end of the stick. 1. Women [1] 2. Older Americans [2] 3. Minorities [3] 4. Foreigners [4] What can be done about this? The answer is clear: anonymous screening, interviewing and hiring of candidates. All other solutions are subpar. People will argue that there's value to be had in asking about things such as hobbies, and other irrelevant, superfluous information, but those who advocate this are probably not in one of the groups mentioned. --- [1] http://www.vogue.com/article/female-discrimination-tech-industry-study http://www.vogue.com/article/female-discrimination-tech-indu... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/lizryan/2014/01/31/the-ugly-truth-about-age-discrimination/#1f36519e44e7 https://www.forbes.com/sites/lizryan/2014/01/31/the-ugly-tru... [3] http://money.cnn.com/2015/11/25/news/economy/racial-discrimination-work/ http://money.cnn.com/2015/11/25/news/economy/racial-discrimi... [4] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alev-dudek/foreign-born-citizens-in-america_b_8030968.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alev-dudek/foreign-born-citize...

jMyles 10y ago
Just to be clear: are you advocating that all organizations be required to perform this "anonymous" form of hiring, lest they face the long arm of the law? I think that's crazy. Talent seeking is a space where diversity makes a great deal of sense, as evinced by the fact that many very diverse companies do very well.
- tabeth 10y ago
  I'm confused -- anonymity wouldn't affect diversity, unless the organization was discriminating to begin with. What are your arguments against anonymity, exactly?
  - saurik 10y ago
    I don't know if this is the specific problem that the person you are responding to was alluding to, but: a purely anonymous system is going to end up with hiring tons of young white males--surely fewer than a company that actively discriminates against other groups, but noticibly more than a company that is actively looking for diversity--due to young white makes making up a large percentage of the available talent pool at any given level of expertise (due to a combination of factors, including but not limited to all of "available time", "increasing population", "availability bias", and "systemic oppression"). A company might specifically find value in "we don't just want the world's best engineers: we want a diverse set of backgrounds and viewpoints", and a forced anonymous hiring process actually removes the ability to do that, which might actually help continue to entrench the systemic oppression issue (as then everyone builds things for the same market demographic as that's all they understand).
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      If it's okay to hire for diversity, is it okay to say "I only want to hire white guys in their 20s and 30s"? If not, why not? Is there proof that "diversity hiring" (back in the day we called this "affirmative action", the lingo changes but the goals remain the same) provides substantial benefits to an organization? If so, fantastic! We should promote it across the industry. I have yet to see any data that this is the case though. "In God We Trust; all others bring data"
    - tabeth 10y ago
      A lot of what you say really requires some evidence. For example: > a purely anonymous system is going to end up with hiring tons of young white males- A system that's non anonymous has already proven itself to hire a ton of young white males... > surely fewer than a company that actively discriminates against other groups, but noticibly more than a company that is actively looking for diversity- Citations needed. > A company might specifically find value in "we don't just want the world's best engineers: we want a diverse set of backgrounds and viewpoints", Discrimination isn't good, period. That means discriminating for or against white males. Also, you imply that the groups I mentioned couldn't succeed on their own merit. Overall, you basically encourage discrimination. Got it.
- RUG3Y 10y ago
  Isn't the purpose of anonymity in this situation to ensure that the best candidates get hired? Wouldn't diversity be the natural result, assuming that diverse types of candidates are qualified? I'm not advocating for this as law but I feel like this would encourage rather than discourage diversity.
- yuhong 10y ago
  This is part of why I dislike employment anti-discrimination laws. They probably worked better for manual labor and other commodity jobs. A compromise would be to limit them to these kinds of jobs.
an_account 10y ago
Does someone doing anonymous screening get to see the past experience of the candidate? If so, it doesn't solve the issues raised in this article.
- tabeth 10y ago
  In the actual research [1] you can see that the discrimination is also affected by gender. In any case, anonymous interviewing doesn't inherently require one to see the duration of ones past experience. I agree the implementation could be tricky, but in any case, it's better than what currently exists. [1] http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/2017/february/age-discrimination-and-hiring-older-workers/ http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic...
- kawera 10y ago
  Maybe only mention recent experiences, say, last 8 or 10 years.
- ccajas 10y ago
  I also don't believe that the hiring process can be made 100% anonymously, with a total lack of bias. That would be impossible. You have to meet with the candidate in person at some point, and get to see what they look like and learn their name.
jazzyb 10y ago
However, checking the past experience of the applicant -- which seems perfectly reasonable for the hiring company to do -- would still allow discrimination against older Americans and foreigners. I'm not sure how that could be fixed even with anonymity.
- mamon 10y ago
  simple: You don't write all of your experience in your resume, only the experience relevant to the job you apply for. They want 5-7 years experience in Java? List only your last two Java jobs, don't mention that you did 15 years of C++ before that.
  - jazzyb 10y ago
    That's easy for someone who's worked at many different companies. What about the applicant who's primarily worked for a single company for many years? This is much more likely to be true for an older applicant. Do you lie about how many years you worked at the company? Regardless, it still doesn't solve the problem for foreigners who may have only worked for companies outside the US.
Spooky23 10y ago
Government does this where they use civil service exams. The problem is that maintaining a meaningful evaluation process is difficult. So the exams tend to remove some forms of discrimination, especially against women, but reinforce others, and create other issues too. The process works overall. In one place I'm familiar with, black and Latino minorities candidates successfully sued because although the candidates had good professional credentials and outcomes, the test disadvantaged them because their educations in grade/high school tended to suck and people in these categories did more poorly in questions regarding English grammar, analogies, etc. Foreign born people have a similar experience. If you use these types of methods to hire people, you'll need to adopt government style hiring practices. If you need 3 people, hire 5, because you're likely to be forced to hire some duds. When duds are too bad and firing gets difficult, you promote the idiots, etc.
- tabeth 10y ago
  What are the other forms of discrimination that are reinforced? I'm still unconvinced that anonymous interviewing isn't superior in every way for those who are currently discriminated against. It seems most of the counter arguments basically say "you'll discriminate," unrealizing that occurs, either way.
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    The cultural discrimination that I cited is one example. You also create a system where people who are good at testing or manipulating systems will excel in. Personally, I've found in the .gov environments that the best technical people score in the 80-85 range. The people who do better on the exams tend to come from certain less technical backgrounds or job roles. Taking human judgement out of the process just displaces accountability to some test or other assessment. IMO, the way to fix these things is to treat hiring like an incident. Do a post-mortem/debrief, document how decisions are made. Coach people hiring to be better at it.
lacampbell 10y ago
I'd suggest providing sources that aren't op-ed pieces - one of them from a tabloid - if you want to be taken seriously.
- tabeth 10y ago
  Which of the following do you not believe? All of these are common knowledge. I don't have time to be educating people won't aren't aware of basic facts. Maybe you're not from the U.S, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt(all of the links I posted link to actual sources, anyway). 1. Women are discriminated against in the workplace in the United States. 2. Minorities are discriminated against in the workplace in the United States. 3. Older Americans (unnecessary, as the evidence is already provided) are discriminated against in the workplace in the United States. 4. Foreigners are discriminated against in the workplace in the United States.
  - lacampbell 10y ago
    What I believe or not is completely irrelevant - that's an attempt on your behalf of re-framing what I said, and I reject it. If you want a serious informed discussion on these issues, find some reasonably impartial and factual sources with real figures, not op-ed pieces from your favourite partisan publications. If you don't have time to provide sources, then I'd suggest not talking about the topic since you're ill-equipped to discuss it.

Ghostium 10y ago

Again? I'm annoyed of this topic. If you kept improving yourself along the way, I'm confident you will find a good company that value your knowledge.

untilHellbanned 10y ago
Let me guess less then 35? Male?
- necessity 10y ago
  Let me guess: The same?
rm999 10y ago
This article is about age discrimination happening at the initial levels of the job application process, before you're evaluated on your merits. The study the article mentions is about identical resumes with different ages. The lawsuit against R.J. Reynolds is about guidelines given to recruiters. In both these cases, it doesn't really matter how good you are if you're trying to get a job through the standard process.
itg 10y ago
Having years of work experience doesn't count as improvement? Because it does in almost every other industry out there.

klancaster 10y ago

I first felt this when I was asked by a sales rep if I would be interested in coming to work for his company since I had exactly the credentials and experience they were looking for. He said he would talk with the head of development and get back to me. Time passed, and when he did get back to me, he said that the dev manager was looking for someone under 35 and that my resume - which did not have my age - told him that I must be older (I was around 45 at the time). In retrospect, I should have sued, but instead just let it drop.

Overtonwindow 10y ago
If it was in writing you should have absolutely sued. That is clear age discrimination.
- TheGrassyKnoll 10y ago
  I don't know anyone who was ever happy when they had to deal with lawyers...
- bobbington 10y ago
  Better not to be trigger happy. Much better for society. He probably found a job where his age and wisdom is more valued. The fact is some roles are better for young ones and others are better for older more experienced.
- ChuckMcM 10y ago
  To what end? Do you really want to work at a company that you sued and as part of the settlement they had to give you a job? What sort of damages do you think you could convince a judge or jury to give you for 'not hiring' you? I get that it is wrong, and that the employer's should have some downside for discriminating against older employees (other than losing out on some great employees) but as an individual seeking a job, the downside is much greater for the individual to sue than the company. Rather than sue, send a note to the National Labor Relations board and have them set up a sting operation and catch them in the act. Justice is served and your life isn't impacted by being part of a lawsuit that would do you no good anyway.

mark024 10y ago

you're a young white male? of course you won't understand, "keep improving yourself" what an elitist thing to say from the IT bubble.. most profession plateau, it doesn't matter if you have 10 or 20 years of experience, even in IT it doesn't.

artursapek 10y ago
I've conducted a lot of job interviews and debriefs at "IT bubble" startups and have not seen anything resembling race/gender bias. Where is this bias happening?
- lazyasciiart 10y ago
  Did you read the article?
  - artursapek 10y ago
    Article talks about age bias. I'm responding to a SJW whining about someone being a "white male"
- mark024 10y ago
  Just recently I saw a reddit thread about a black web developer women being paid much less than her coworkers, she overhead her boss talking on the phone about hiring another guy because they have a lot of work, talking about how he affords it, because he pays her so little and he can get away with it, because "what she's going do", "who is going to hire her" a black developer woman.
  - ThomPete 10y ago
    If she is any goood any of the big companies would take her. There is always a shortage of good talent.
  - bbcbasic 10y ago
    Another lawsuit ITT :-)

SpikeDad 10y ago

Gee I just got divorced and was looking at spousal support - the court said that at my age I was only a minimum wage person. Good for me but shows that the bias is legally recognized. (That's after 30 years in the IT industry)...

cbanek 10y ago

I don't doubt that there's age discrimination going on in the industry. What I'm wondering is why? Pros of being older: - More work experience (hopefully useful to whatever position applied for) - More mature mental / emotional outlook Cons: - Possibly higher salary requirements because of the pros above. - Higher relocation cost? - Perceived feeling of being able to work less hours? Overall I'm just not sure I understand the economic reasons for wanting to only hire young people. Especially when most jobs are only for a few year period (nobody is looking for life long employees anymore). Is this possibly some kind of part of the backlash against elitism, where we hate experienced people that might know what they're talking about?

grepthisab 10y ago
I've worked with some extremely smart older people, who did some awesome stuff in the 70s/80s. My impression is that usually, in my experience, they're very jaded and set in their ways. They seem to like to do things their own way and give the impression that they're infallible because they deconstructed an x stack in y decade, and complain about the cyclical nature of programming. They also seem to usually not go out to happy hours/events with the team to get to know one another as often, so they're excluded a little more, which leads to fewer people getting to know them. I have seen exceptions, one of the PMs on my current team must be in her 60s and she exhibits none of the characteristics above and is a really amazing, smart person. It's just that most of the older people I have personally met seem to have the traits I described above. This would give me a little pause when choosing between equal candidates for, say, an angular dev position where both candidates have equal experience in the stack, but the older one has the baggage(?) of having been a programmer since the 70s and knows COBOL or something. I would likely have an unconscious bias to hire the younger one.
- treehau5 10y ago
  I see people as young as 25 being set in there ways as well when it comes to the latest hipster trends. For example we had a heated argument about Vue vs React at work the other day. Turns out the other party arguing in favor of Vue had actually never even used React before. They were just blindly recycling the same bike-shedded arguments against JSX as every other middle-tier dev I have ever encountered seems regurgitate. You can get set in your ways at any age. The solution to the happy-hour problem is to have your happy hours during work, not after hours. Even I, who am young, healthy, no kids and loves beer, would get tired of having to go to xyz happy hour at 6p.m just to keep my edge. The other thing: I bet that old guy is the first one in every morning. And probably brings his lunch every day. Also is not interested in an afternoon ping pong break. Translation: He or she probably actually works more, despite being "at work" less.

Overtonwindow 10y ago

As an aside, I always make sure my resume makes me appear to be someone in early thirties. I combine the experience under a few recent jobs, and never put when I graduated college.

mvid 10y ago
I imagine that if I knew your name and email address, i would have enough information to find the year you were born on the internet. Not having an online presence is a red flag, unfortunately.
- Overtonwindow 10y ago
  Hehe, actually in my line of work, it's an asset.

startupdiscuss 10y ago

Did anyone notice that they specifically ask for a lower GPA? Go for 2.8-3.1 GPA w/ lots of activities. Avoid 4.0 with no other activities. Now If they had just said go for activities, I would understand, but they actually asked for a lower GPA too.

dikdik 10y ago
It could be a cultural thing, they want those that care more about having fun than just keeping their nose down and doing the work. Or they may be want people who aren't very bright because they might be willing to take more abuse from management?
- Cyph0n 10y ago
  Or maybe they want people who wouldn't be able to easily switch jobs as soon as shit hits the fan.
- jotux 10y ago
  >they want those that care more about having fun than just keeping their nose down and doing the work This is purely anecdotal, but many 4.0 students I knew in college were not at all interested in "keeping their nose down and doing the work." They were 100% interested in having "4.0 GPA" on their resume which generally meant doing very well on tests, everything else be damned. So they were awful to have in a project groups and didn't participate in any activities because it didn't contribute to their GPA at all.
adjkant 10y ago
I've seen this a few times now already - a GPA over 3.7 or so is a red flag for many employers - I think they interpret it as "does little outside of school".
- madengr 10y ago
  As an engineering major, you won't have time for anything outside of school.

startupdiscuss 10y ago

If discrimination exists doesn't that imply someone can arb the situation by, in this case, hiring all the smart older workers for more than what others are paying and still get a good deal?

my_first_acct 10y ago
As Keynes (or someone else [1]) said in a somewhat different context, "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." [1] http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/08/09/remain-solvent/ http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/08/09/remain-solvent/
- pandaman 10y ago
  In arbitrage you make money from the market being irrational so remaining solvent could not be a concern for somebody doing it. It's for the market being arbitraged to become rational or become insolvent.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

a3n 10y ago

I put obvious clues in my resume that I'm old, beyond number of jobs and dates. If you care about my age, I don't want you to waste my time; I really don't care about your time, but that does save your time too.

romanhn 10y ago
I similarly have mentioned having a family in the past during interviews. If interviewers dislike the work/life balance considerations that come with kids, I'd much rather find out about it in that interview than on the job.

Pica_soO 10y ago

You got to visit actor camp, where you learn to pretend to be hyped by the same rediscovered technologies and do "fruitfull" failures once more. Oh brave old world, that holds such people.

losteverything 10y ago

Totally anecdotal but before the over 60yr old office manager was hired only young were hired (college and under 30). Now, recent hires include two over 55 women. Interviwees are only older. We concluded it is a simple as who does the hiring.

wellpast 10y ago

I'm 40 with 20 years of real and varied industry experience (big and small companies; crossing systems, desktop, and much web/distributed dev), rabidly curious, and deeply study (and use on real, often side projects) bleeding edge this and that. What I think is my core value is the long-developed ability to build sound/robust architectures fast, with very good estimation and delivery prediction, and using latest tools, platforms, and technologies. I know this may sound self-promoting, egotistical perhaps but I believe it's true. Less experience brings a lot of risk in the form of opportunity cost -- without hard-won experience, you simply don't yet have the ability to predict delivery or make the kind of "don't-look-back" decisions and optimal prioritizations that comes with mastery. I can go to market and find a few companies that can pay my current salary. But the jobs I've been interested in (often medium-sized companies) seem to be trying to fill out a slate of 5 junior/mid-level roles, implicitly devaluing the kind of experience that I have. I don't blame them. How do you demonstrate that you can truly "make better prioritized decisions" or "build sound architectures quickly" -- I can do these things, but the proofs are all counterfactuals. I know people in the industry for more than 20 years who did not cultivate their skill set. So how does a company first differentiate between me* and the other 20-year veteran? On the job you'll experience the difference in talent between him and me, but how do you a priori tell? We need a way to show the houses we've built in our careers. How I can I show you that the 100,000 LOC code base(s) that I built or refactored at my last job(s) is stucturally sound with little leaks and supports agile development? As opposed to the other guy who left his spavined˜construction to a company in misery trying to maintain it? Then the second thing is how do get these companies to value the skill set? "Working" is the mantra of the day, but "working" code that's not "sound" doesn't just start bleeding you in a year or two but in weeks from now. In other words, 20 years is worth paying for. * Swap "me" for "some guy who _has_ mastered his craft to the level I'm describing". Yes, needs definition, but assume there is a definition.

wellpast 10y ago
Just for the record I've worked on large codebases but 100,000 LOC isnt the goal just an example. Mastery of course (typically) yields smaller code bases.
older_employed 10y ago

paulsutter 10y ago

Alternative viewpoint: Roles that require less experience generally outnumber the roles that require a lot of experience. As you go up the experience pyramid, more and more experience is required, but fewer and fewer roles exist. I'm not talking about management per se, just trying to count roles by experience needed within a generic organization. Challenge being that any group of individuals advance in age at a fixed rate (one year per year). Does that make sense? Not sure about it myself.

SFJulie 10y ago
It makes sense. It is not age bias, it is knowledge bias. You may be a good employee when you have experience, but you may also know what to expect from a "good management", like paying the hours worked. For instance, I have been literally barred from an interview because they made explicit references to young people being more flexible about accepting to work (way) more than the announced weekly work hours on the contract for free. I said I would accept without making a fuss, they did not trust me. Actually they were right; if you try to trick me, I will do too.
aanm1988 10y ago
This is true. Having a few people at the top who can give a product direction is really all you need. Implementation is easily done by delegating. You give a chunk to the person who is in their early 30s, and they give smaller pieces to the more junior people. It's cheap, it's effective, and people learn. or you can stack a team with half a dozen 40 year olds and one guy in his 20s and he gets to do all the bullshit that the older people don't want to bother with.

seesomesense 10y ago

I have found that some older employees have decades of valuable experience.Others have one year of experience repeated thirty times....

ryanmarsh 10y ago

Ageism is just poor leadership. By that I mean discrimination purely on the stereotypes of older workers is a response to one's own failings as a leader. Think we don't like to go drink with our friends? Don't like to learn new things? LOL. If I would rather go home than drink with you once a month then maybe you should take that to mean you're a bore. Maybe be pleasant and interesting? If I don't like to deploy on new stacks for the sake of deploying on new stacks maybe that's a strength? If you think I can't be motivated to use something new that is legitimately better then maybe you can't articulate your ideas well? Maybe you aren't very inspiring? If you think I can't work hard because I don't do long hours that's on you. Maybe you should stop wasting my time at work and get out of my way so I can get the job you pay me for done during normal business hours. I could go on...

LVB 10y ago

I've always been intrigued by the age requirement to become an air traffic controller--a federal job no less--which is under age 31 [1]. I recently came across the study [2] that preceded this rule. An interesting read. [1] https://www.faa.gov/jobs/career_fields/aviation_careers/ https://www.faa.gov/jobs/career_fields/aviation_careers/ [2] http://libraryonline.erau.edu/online-full-text/faa-aviation-medicine-reports/AM71-36.pdf http://libraryonline.erau.edu/online-full-text/faa-aviation-...

npunt 10y ago
Fascinating. From what I remember reading about it, air traffic control is a tough job. Very stressful, long hours, have to be sharp, but quite routine. It's a very downside protection job and seems to have the kind of properties that would benefit from some serious (partial) automation.
- jghn 10y ago
  In my first job we had a PM who was completely fried. Always on edge, super stressed, not quite right. It was explained to me that up until not long before that she had been an air traffic controller and this is what the job did to people. I have no idea to this day if that was a n=1 anecdata or if that's true, but it left a lasting impression in my head.
- Asooka 10y ago
  Air traffic control sounds like the last place you'd want long hours. How are longer hours better than less hours and more shifts?

kitsunesoba 10y ago

Regarding this issue, at least for software engineering positions in the Bay Area there's a possibility that I haven't seen mentioned that I don't condone but understand. Here, most companies' SE departments are dominated by younger engineers largely because that's what's readily available and affordable. These engineers are likely to want to be working with/surrounded by engineers within their general age range not out of any particular distaste for those older than themselves, but rather because highly experienced engineers are intimidating and on some level difficult to relate to. 20 and early 30-somethings want to be treated like they're intelligent, capable workers who are well-peered with their fellow engineers and introducing titanic knowledge+wisdom gaps can toss that out the window. It can make a young guy with 3+ years of solid experience in the industry feel like he's a half-useless greenhorn who can never catch up, which is demoralizing. These people are quite aware of the gap (see the rampant impostor syndrome in the same age bracket) but would prefer to not have it pointed out constantly. Just as one can't magically subtract years from their age, one also can't just snap their fingers and stop being young and less experienced. While engineers don't directly control the recruiting process, they are often the ones doing the phone screenings and technical interviews and often have a lot of swing as to who gets hired. I wouldn't be surprised if this is partially why SV company hires continue to skew young.

walshemj 10y ago
younger engineers "want" tough I want 50k a year
deleted 10y ago
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ntsplnkv3 10y ago
Isn't it more likely that younger, fresh out of school employees have less leverage and it's easier to get more hours for less pay out of them? Isn't the most obvious reason cost?

arnonejoe 10y ago

I left the bay area last summer for this very reason. I had a recruiter at an agency in SF tell me how my resume should look for a "candidate my age" and sent me a resume of an older candidate so that I could follow the format. The bay area is the worst for age discrimination. It's the subtle bias I find disturbing. I know a lot of awesome software engineers who are over 40.

hoodoof 10y ago

Call this an unfair generalization if you must, but old people are no good at everything. - "The Simpsons"

koolba 10y ago

If older employees are so awesome compared to young workers, why does this bias/discrimination continue to exist? Wouldn't a shop that rids itself of the stupidity of age based discrimination rise above its competitors as it's able to seize on a talent pool that would otherwise be ignored?

tastythrowaway2 10y ago
My guess is that the market for high quality software engineering simply isn't there at scale. A lot of what we use day to day really just scrapes by the threshold of passable. So that's the bar they need to clear. If your customers are content paying you for 80% reliability, why pay for engineers who can deliver 5 9s?

wbl 10y ago

How much of this is explained by increasing health insurance rates if your company has an older age pool?

drawkbox 10y ago
This along with privacy, backroom fixed market pricing, making it harder to change jobs and making it harder to start a business, is a big reason to remove healthcare from employment. Employment should provide salary only. People need to get their own insurance for health, home, fire, life etc. Keep your employers out of your personal dealings.
- dragonbonheur 10y ago
  Then US hospitals should provide free healthcare for all and not insist on getting insurance details before providing actual health care. Glad you see the whole picture and embrace SOCIAList ideals like the rest of the planet.
kazinator 10y ago
My thinking exactly, and you can easily make that entire line of thinking moot by contracting.

kazinator 10y ago

> These were actual guidelines that tobacco company R.J. Reynolds gave to job recruiters. Right, but it also told its marketers to get children hooked on cigarettes. Who gives a rat's about hiring at tobacco companies? Way to scrape the bottom of the barrel for examples.

Steeeve 10y ago

For those providing the excuse of culture - culture is something strongly valued in the Bay Area, and it's one of the biggest weaknesses. Diversity brings so much more to the table than people who can drink a beer together. Diversity in age and experience brings different problem solving techniques and instincts to the table. Put together a group of young single males of the same ethnic background and you will probably get a group of people who don't mind working all night long together six nights a week. Put together a group of people in different age brackets, different educational backgrounds, and different cultural backgrounds and you have a group of people who won't have to work all night long together in order to solve problems and get things done. Don't stagnate. Evolve. We can all do a better job of opening up.

devmunchies 10y ago
I find that the bay area and Seattle (my home) value the wrong kind of diversity. Its the unimportant stuff like skin color and gender that everyone means when talking about diversity. The diversity that matters (diversity of thought and experience) is not the major area of focus for some reason.
- rifung 10y ago
  > I find that the bay area and Seattle (my home) value the wrong kind of diversity. Its the unimportant stuff like skin color and gender that everyone means when talking about diversity. The diversity that matters (diversity of thought and experience) is not the major area of focus for some reason. Why do you say that it's unimportant? I can see how you could argue that it's not the only thing that matters and that too much focus is being placed on it, but it is still important for people who are of a gender or race to feel valued, included, and like they are treated equally. Otherwise, they won't be as open to sharing their ideas.
  - dsfyu404ed 10y ago
    The computer doesn't care what color fingers are hitting the keyboard. Diversity of thought is the goal in the workplace (unless you've got some other diversity metric you need to hit for regulatory reasons). If you've got a group that's very homogeneous except for skin color and gender you're not gonna get much diversity of thought.

DoofusOfDeath 10y ago

I think there's an elephant in the room, at least for many of us who are over 40: We are in some ways less intelligent than we were 10 years earlier. We sometimes process complex problems a little more slowly, the maximum complexity of our mental models is a little lower, and we can sometimes learn more slowly. We pray that our greater experience and wisdom compensate for that. For some of us it does, for others not so much. Perhaps many hiring companies do reject us 40+ workers for the wrong reasons. But in some cases, perhaps their reasons are illegal but correct.

vikingcaffiene 10y ago
I'm about to turn 40 and at the top of my game. Unless some magic spell hits me when my next birthday comes, I'm not real worried about this elephant you speak of. It's about staying on top of your skills and never assuming you know enough. Always be learning. Most older devs that I know that started sliding into irrelevance did so because they didn't keep up on that.
- DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
  I think you raise a great point. Perhaps I'm conflating some issues that should really be separate. It would be interesting to see a breakdown of why older devs get less awesome over time. I can imagine a variety of causes: - Slower learning due to reduced brain plasticity. - Early stages of dementia. - More poorly rested due to kids, age-related physical discomfort during sleeping, or obesity-based sleep apnea. - Reduced focus on career development due to getting comfortable and/or responsibilities outside of work (child-rearing, etc.) This includes less time on evenings / weekends to self-learn new technologies. - Reduced exposure to new technologies, because they're now so expensive that employers only want to pay them to work in their current niche(s) of expertise. - False perception that they actually are less awesome. E.g., they write half as much code as before, because of a better idea about what's a waste of time.
alistairSH 10y ago
Citation?
10y ago

ianamartin 10y ago

My mother and Father deal with with this internally as German Professors in a university. My mom is in her mid 70s and my dad is is in his late 90s. For reference, I'm in my mid/late 30s. No one wants to hire my mom because she's too expensive, and no one wants to hire my dad because he's too old. The university they are currently employed at won't give them any reasonable updates to their salaries. They have newer, younger managers telling them that they suck at their jobs. And when you get enough of that, it starts to wear on you, on your friends, and your students. My Mom could go anywhere to any university in the country, but she built a house and wants to stay in that house. There's not a university that wouldn't hire her, and probably dad as well. They have every credential you could ask for. How do I find an attorney that could take this case and put this university in place? My parent's have basically no money. But I have a cash cow. I'll pay bucketloads to get this right. PM me if you think you can help. And a I also have 5 other cases from women and men with similar claims. If someone is willing to take it, we're talking about 5 cases minimum, and I will front the cash. Get in touch.

meric 10y ago
Your dad is 90 IMO enjoy more time with him than to waste his remaining time on some lawyer.
mdpopescu 10y ago
> No one wants to hire my mom > There's not a university that wouldn't hire her Something doesn't sound right.

blitmap 10y ago

I believe age-based discrimination can happen to anyone of any age. The government does not: https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/age.cfm https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/age.cfm I am a younger adult performing IT functions. Because of my age, some authority figures don't expect me to know how to perform complex tasks with greater responsibility. Often those tasks are given to older folks who (in my view) don't have the experience. It goes both ways - I'm not saying any of it is right/fair/karma.

neves 10y ago

I bet that if were for software dev jobs the reject rate would be a lot higher.

brudgers 10y ago

Older workers are more likely to utilize health insurance for major procedures. More claims will drive up group health insurance rates. For a business that subsidizes employee health insurance, this is a bottom line cost. For a business that does not, higher health insurance costs are still a competitive disadvantage. Because health insurance is so expensive, the costs can be non-trivial and not hiring older workers can be economically rational. The cost of adding people who utilize health care services to the pool establishing group policy rates is why employer provided health insurance policies typically excluded pre-existing conditions until it became illegal. As fear of going without is a brake upon entrepreneurship, the rate increase from older workers is a brake upon productivity that derives from national health care policy.

stevenwoo 10y ago
I worked at a startup 25 years ago, and we had trouble getting group health insurance for our company of just over a dozen people because the accountant was over 50 years old, and it's not like we were going to fire him to get insurance. I imagine the problem is different today with ACA.
- brudgers 10y ago
  The costs are higher today than 25 years ago. A dozen employees at $150/month/employee (10% increase at $1500/month) is nearly $50k/year. That's meaningful money in a lot of contexts. It's also worth considering that most older job candidates aren't in a highly skilled occupation like accounting where experience often adds value. Most employees are more fungible, particularly outside the world of startups. Just for clarity HIPAA changed the landscape for pre-existing conditions in 1997.
cookiecaper 10y ago
While this could be a worry for some smaller companies, I think there are more significant costs involved with employees who are closer to retirement than not. This becomes more serious the older one gets. When retirement becomes a short-term prospect (within 5 years), it gets really bad.

RestlessMind 10y ago

A possible factor (but not the only one) - older workers are more expensive to hire due to higher salary expectations and higher health costs. That would make them unappealing to a whole swath of companies - the ones with limited hiring budgets, the ones with simple enough job requirements that a new-ish grad can do them for cheap etc etc. It would be interesting to see the data pertaining to salary+health costs based on age.

equalarrow 10y ago

I've said it before as an 'older dude', network, network, network. I'm not trying to downplay any one person's hardships, but if tou have a good netoekr of people that can vouch for you, it's 10x more powerful than coming into a place hat in hand.. Good luck and network!!

E6300 10y ago

Maintaining your health and the health of those under your care is your own responsibility. You don't get to blame other people when you get yourself infected.

DanBC 10y ago
>You don't get to blame other people What? Of course you do. Sick people should probably stay away from work, especially if they have things like Noro.
- E6300 10y ago
  So your only rebuttal is "nuh-uh"? In that case, I say "yuh-huh". See my sibling response.
sdiupIGPWEfh 10y ago
In other words, "Just don't get sick." As if it worked that way.
- E6300 10y ago
  No. In other words: your well-being is your problem. Don't expect other people to change their behavior for your sake. If you don't take care of yourself, no one will.
davidgay 10y ago
You must live in some imaginary world where bacteria and viruses respond to your will and refuse to infect you. And of course, if you happen to be asthmatic, it's all psychological, and you get to decide, eg, whether that cigarette smoke will trigger an attack or not.
- E6300 10y ago
  > You must live in some imaginary world where bacteria and viruses respond to your will and refuse to infect you. Are you saying there's no such thing as prophylaxis? Doctors must wear gloves for fashion, since microbes apparently just phase through solid matter. > And of course, if you happen to be asthmatic, it's all psychological, and you get to decide, eg, whether that cigarette smoke will trigger an attack or not. Regardless of whether you're asthmatic or not, deciding not to go near the smoke is within your power.

Proven 10y ago

So do younger Americans and so on. Nothing special. The ability to discriminate is one of foundations of freedom.

misingnoglic 10y ago

This is a huge issue for my mom - she's an amazing designer (graphic and general), but she stopped working to take care of me and my siblings, and now she can't find a job anywhere. She always makes it to some end round, but is passed off for someone younger. I wish I could help somehow :/

nonsince 10y ago

I'm a young developer, but if my experience is anything to go by I think that this age bias is driven by a desire for cost-efficiency over quality. It's cheaper per unit of work (for some fuzzy definition of unit of work) to hire two young developers than one experienced one, even if the quality of the latter's work would be superior. I'd say I'm a good developer, but I think my employability is as much due to my low wage requirements as it is due to my skill.