9 ms·

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 use

• 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.
    • 67726e 10y ago
      > Turns out the other party arguing in favor of Vue had actually never even used React before. It's entirely possible to do your research and evaluate a framework, language, or tool without having to use it, just like I don't have to go out and shoot some smack to know that heroin is probably not for me. Being able to evaluate what your needs and wants for a tool are, without having to write a To Do list is a useful skill.
      • viraptor 10y ago
        You're comparing a short experiment with no side effects to getting possibly addicted for life though... Sure, you could research some tech from the books and references, but that's never the same as having an experimental, hands-on experience. Mostly because people almost never have the exact same use case as you, so you may realise what's missing in a few minutes of experimenting - but nobody wrote about it before, because it wasn't relevant for them. Research may be enough. But research + trying a simple prototype is always better.
    • doktrin 10y ago
      > I see people as young as 25 being set in there ways as well when it comes to the latest hipster trends I once watched a fistfight almost break out in the office over threads vs. event loops. Both engineers were in their mid 20's (as I was, at the time). From my limited experience, pig headedness seems to be a personality trait - not something intrinsically age related.
    • cmiles74 10y ago
      At my office, we play darts and drink beer for the last hour and a half of every Friday. The majority of the time everyone is there and we spend a lot of time chatting while we play. It's fun and I really think it keeps everyone friendly, it's that much easier to remember the other person is a real person when you disagree. Sometime people go out to a bar or something afterwards. I may feel like I'm missing out but it never feels like something I "should" be doing.
    • olivierva 10y ago
      Totally true, I sit at my desk at 7am work till 6pm. The kids come in at 11am and do oh so much over time when working till 7pm. And don't get me started about their relationship problems. And this happy hour is the worst social thing ever. I work in London and there are a lot of people here who don't drink alcohol because of religious reasons or it's not a big part of their culture. Happy hour is only social for people who like to get drunk. No problem with that but a company with a drinking culture will never be diverse and will therefor suffer creatively. I once managed a super multi cultural team (9 nationalities and 5 different religions). We socialised by going to a museum or a historical walk through London. That said, I see a lot of young people who can only can do small talk after a couple of drinks. Which is a shame because it shows when new people join the team.
  • jghn 10y ago
    "and complain about the cyclical nature of programming" What is wrong with this? There are cycles in our industry. Sure, it's not exactly the same each time around but the themes go back and forth.
    • humanrebar 10y ago
      I agree with you. At the risk of speaking for someone else, my impression is that "cyclical nature" is fighting the last battle filtered through cognitive dissonance. It also comes across as aloof and/or academic to some people.
  • graycat 10y ago
    Knowing Cobol, Algol, Fortran, APL, Lisp, PL/I, several assembler languages, several scripting languages, etc., actually, maybe surprisingly, does not damage the brain! There is a lot in, say, PL/I that should be in more recent languages but is not. Gee, guys, C was always supposed to be a toy language, to run on an 8KB DEC PDP-8 (IIRC), and C++ was originally just a Bell Labs pre-processor to C. In contrast, PL/I was a very carefully designed language. IIRC the Multics and Primos operating systems were written basically in PL/I. Yes, D. Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming is old, but heap sort, the Gleason bound, and AVL trees are all in there and still relevant. Also that is one of the best places to learn the combinatorial and probabilistic math for finding big-O evaluations. But, statistics in Python and R? Some people got started in such things by writing their own code, using the IBM Scientific Subroutine Library, using SPSS and SAS. So, who is better at digging into statistics via Python and R? Also some of the older guys actually took good courses in mathematical statistics and know about minimum variance, unbiased, maximum likelihood, statistical hypothesis tests and the Neyman-Pearson result, etc.
    • nickpsecurity 10y ago
      "Primos operating systems were written basically in PL/I." I thought Primos was supposed to be some Fortran dialect (FORTRAN IV in Wikipedia). Then a PL/I variant much later. I've been citing it as an OS written in a Fortran-like language given I had no data countering that. You got some? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRIMOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRIMOS
      • graycat 10y ago
        The first versions of Primos were written in a slightly tweaked Fortran. The PL/I role was significant but later. I managed a Prime system when I was in grad school and later lead an effort to get a later Prime system when I was a B-school prof.
        • nickpsecurity 10y ago
          That makes sense. Was there anything good or unique you remember about it versus the competition? Or just a boring also-ran of that period?
  • Retric 10y ago
    Years in the stack of choice is almost the worst possible choice when looking for people. Someone with 20 years _ learned stuff during that time period unless they are a drooling idiot. The most practical reason to look for younger workers is to find people willing to work below their market rate because they are bad at negotiation. A decade of 5-10% raises can usually keep them happy which is a huge net win as they end up even further behind what the market would pay them. The problem is they only ever learn your internal system and often become blind to it's issues.
    • deleted 10y ago
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    • bbcbasic 10y ago
      I think most tech workers would know the market rates for their position at least 1 year into their first job. Even if they don't want to - e.g. the recruiter who placed them calls them up 6 months later for a friendly chat. "We just want to check that you are happy!".
  • Animats 10y ago
    Complain about the cyclical nature of programming. After you've seen the same mistakes repeated with a cycle of about 15 years, that happens.
    • sanderjd 10y ago
      Yeah, maybe instead of complaining about that complaining, it would behoove folks to take it seriously and make a study of prior art a part of their workflow. Those cyclical-nature complainers are a great resource for pointers!
      • nickpsecurity 10y ago
        I've found this to be true. Helped me solve lots of problems in highly-assured systems and INFOSEC. Hint: I just started with stuff people did (currently) almost 40+ years ago with some of foundations nearly 60. A lot of it still worked in similar contexts. It's why I drop so many links and references to prior art here.
        • sanderjd 10y ago
          For what it's worth, I usually find your links very interesting. Thanks!
  • bogomipz 10y ago
    >" ... 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 ..." Remove the word "decade" and that could describe people from just about any demographic in tech - millennials, Gen X, etc. >"and complain about the cyclical nature of programming" How is complaining about that particular thing different or worse than complaining about why language X sucks because it doesn't have generics or feaure ____" or any of the other complaints about various languages or frameworks that come up on HN all the time? >"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." The only way to get to know people is to go drinking after work? You know you can go out for coffee and lunch with people too right? Or is that somehow less meaningful because it doesn't involve booze or craft beers? Honestly your comments come off as ageist.
  • ludable 10y ago
    Glad you recognize it for what it is: bias. This is exactly what prejudice looks like. Take a small sample, derive a generalization, rationalize it, let it affect your judgement. At least you're aware of it, and hopefully fight it within yourself to try and work with the most talented people regardless of background.
    • ludable 10y ago
      I want to add something to my snappy answer. Age discrimination is just another facet of lack of diversity and rejection of difference that plagues many industries. Your well-intentioned comment has the pattern: "I've worked with some extremely smart <class of people>, who <positive comment>. My impression is that usually, in my experience, <display a different pattern of thinking to what I expect>. 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. It's just that most of the <class of 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 <class of people> one has the baggage(?) of <difference>. I would likely have an unconscious bias to hire the <more similar to the norm> one." Now, replace <class of people> with "women" or "muslims" and think about how it feels for people to be cast in a generalization. If it's not right in those cases, it's not right for experienced developers either.
  • cmiles74 10y ago
    I think this is more of a generational issue, I don't think it's all about age. People in their forties today seem way easier to deal with then the people in their forties that I worked with out of college.
  • quanticle 10y ago
    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. This, right here, is why Silicon Valley has problems with diversity. As a rule of thumb, the only people who actually want to go to happy hour with their co-workers after 8+ hours of taxing mental work are 1) young 2) white and 3) extroverted. In other words, they fit the "brogrammer" stereotype. I've never really liked going out with my co-workers after work. When I'm done, I want to go home and decompress, not deal with another two or three hours of enforced social interaction.
    • verylittlemeat 10y ago
      In my experience going out to happy hour suggests young and extroverted not necessarily white.
    • deleted 10y ago
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  • gexla 10y ago
    If they are set in their ways, how did they get to the point of having the required experience using Angular as well as the rest of the stack?
  • deepaksurti 10y ago
    >> 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 This should vary with context and one must be humble enough to accept the grey hair's argument backed by facts if it is valid and move on. Win win for everyone. >> 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 dont' understand this craze to know them? Why, for what? If after working/collaborating for 8 hours with some one over days/weeks/months, you cannot figure out their personality and working style and as long as it is not a disruptive one, there is no point in knowing. This knowing is just substitute for loose pointless talk. >> I would likely have an unconscious bias to hire the younger one. We as a software industry must seriously look at how successful sports teams are run and stop this BS about we a family etc whose frailty shows up come layoff time! Every successful sport team is always a MIX of YOUTH and EXPERIENCE.
  • aswanson 10y ago
    I think experience makes you humbler, at least it has in my case. You realize you don't know everything, it's always good to have someone to review/give alternate explanations and methods, and that things are not usually as simple as the appear at first. I'm a far better listener, more openminded, and willing to accept feedback from others than I was when I started my career.
• happy-go-lucky 10y ago
  Pros outweigh the cons. Of course, that's from an employee perspective :)
• Overtonwindow 10y ago
  I think it may also be a perceived long-term cost for health care. Despite more experience and maturity, they may be seen as costing too much in the long term. I worked at a non profit in Atlanta who hired a guy in his late forties. There were many comments that he might not fit into the "youthful culture" of the place, since the average age was 30. Employers want to hire young people because they can work them longer hours, with less health care costs to worry about, and a belief that they'll fit into the company culture more. I've also read about an issue of hiring managers who are young not wanting to hire people older than them.
• user5994461 10y ago
  > Overall I'm just not sure I understand the economic reasons for wanting to only hire young people. Cheap + naive + feeling they need to prove themselves. It's all about costs and exploitation ;)
  • humanrebar 10y ago
    > feeling they need to prove themselves To be fair, if you've only had the one boss, 100% of your bosses feel the way your current boss does. There literally aren't any other examples in your work history that you can use to prove (to yourself or to others) that your boss is unreasonable or incompetent. I also think undergraduate programs could do a better job preparing students for this sort of problem. You don't learn except through experience or maybe good mentoring that chronic crunch-time-to-meet-deadlines is a management failure, not a sign of developer incompetence. But, yeah, I agree that bosses exploit young employees.
    • user5994461 10y ago
      Young employees exploit themselves. A bad boss could make it worse but there doesn't need to be one at all.
  • gscott 10y ago
    It might be some who is so young might feel uncomfortable managing some who is older and more experienced. The lack of confidence and self esteem might throw a monkey-wrench in what could be an effective relationship.
• graycat 10y ago
  Why? Hiring manager A doesn't want subordinate employee B who knows more about the work of A than A does, or is better at office politics, meeting customers, managing people, etc. Or, manager A wants only subordinates (secondary, submissive, subservient, subordinate, dedicated, devoted, obsequious, obedient, etc.!). Manager A may be willing to hire experienced, capable people as outside consultants, e.g., lots of lawyers, physicians, licensed professional engineers, other experts get hired. The norms of an old Henry Ford factory are still there: The manager knows more, and the subordinate is there to add routine muscle to the work of the manager. That manager A acts this way is explained in the B-school, sociology, and public administration subject of Organizational Behavior and, in particular, well named, goal subordination. That is, manager A is looking out for the career of manager A, not to see how much smarts he can bring into the larger company. Of course, a CEO owner might be different: He doesn't have to worry about a subordinate replacing him. But, sure, if the CEO reports to a BoD, then there is a worry that the board will kick out the CEO and promote one of the CEO's subordinates. Ah, sure, but a CEO owner might worry about a very capable subordinate leaving and competing with him (the CEO)! Also an older worker might be more likely to file a law suit on discrimination of some kind. Sure, the flip side of this slippery coin can be an opportunity for an older, more capable worker -- start their own business and beat the company that is still stuck with lots of goal subordination. Back to it!
  • vostok 10y ago
    > Hiring manager A doesn't want subordinate employee B who knows more about the work of A than A does, or is better at office politics, meeting customers, managing people, etc. Or, manager A wants only subordinates (secondary, submissive, subservient, subordinate, dedicated, devoted, obsequious, obedient, etc.!). In every job that I've had, I've known more than my manager. This isn't particularly surprising because their job is to manage rather than know the things that I know.
  • Animats 10y ago
    This is known as "A people hire A people. B people hire C people".
• draw_down 10y ago
  Older employees often have families and are less naive, therefore harder to exploit
• gedy 10y ago
  Older workers (30s+) are harder to control, and have enough experience to see through management bullshit. Many (most?) companies try and paper over business or management problems with engineers willing to work long hours for little gain, and that's usually only young males/H1Bs.
  • amalag 10y ago
    I think this is the main issue. Hard for them to get enthusiastic with yet another project without clearly defined deliverables and lack of leadership.
    • cbanek 10y ago
      Wouldn't this be a chance where an experienced employee would be able to use their skills and experience to help define and lead it? Every project starts without clearly defined deliverables and a lack of leadership, but hopefully they don't stay that way.
      • gedy 10y ago
        Yes it would, but a lot of managers and business leaders don't want that. They want you to do what they say, and also frequently how.
      • sib 10y ago
        "Wouldn't this be a chance where an experienced employee would be able to use their skills and experience" Yes, in theory. However, particularly in the case of startups, many of which are led by smart but relatively inexperienced founders, those founders may not have the wisdom or humility to listen to the "grey hairs" who actually have seen the potential failure mode before. A 24-yr-old CTO may have trouble leading a 55-yr-old software developer who's been coding since before the CTO was born. Not all, of course, but far from 0%.
  • SmellTheGlove 10y ago
    So don't bullshit them. Source: Am management.
• sceew 10y ago
  Seems pretty clear: older people have more years experience, thus demand a higher salary.
• cbanek 10y ago
  Thanks everybody. A lot of good threads, but I'm just going to try to sum it up. - Culture issues, like not wanting to go to off work events, and would rather spend time with family. I agree that these types of things should happen on work hours. This may be related to being exploited, but a lot of culture seems to reinforce the exploitation of the workers. Like work hard, be frugal, do more with less, and don't complain about sexual harassment. - Employees being basically too smart. Both in terms of knowing when management might be leading them down a boondoggle (which seems like it would be a good thing, if the company cared, but a bad thing for an egotistical manager). - Employees are harder to exploit. Well I think that's good for everyone. If your business model is all about exploiting your employees you've got bigger problems. I'm not going to make any mentions of car hailing services here. ;) It does seem like a lot of the SV mentality under the hood is to exploit your employees though, as much as possible, and pay them as little as you can. It's only the competition that will take them somewhere else to be exploited for slightly more money. Looking at this from a business case, having a smart person notify you when you're getting into the swamp sounds like a positive thing. Especially if they've been in the muck before. Throwing away weeks/months of work is pretty common, and a huge source of wasted resources.
  • uptownfunk 10y ago
    I think part of this is a control/power issue. Older people have more experience and hopefully more knowledge. They bring a lot to the table. Part of the issue is that this can intimidate the young 20-somethings you see taking on leadership roles with their cavalier elon-musk-type I-can-do-anything-from-first-principles attitude. Except that it doesn't always go down well that way and teams can benefit from elders with more experience. Obviously not trying to explain the entire picture here, but this is definitely something I've seen. Another thing I've noticed is that older people are harder to mold.. they do have their own set of ways, the cultures they've imbibed from the previous companies they've worked at, and sometimes it doesn't go well with the folks who've grown up entirely within the current company. I personally find the differences refreshing, but it takes some maturity to understand that I suppose.
    • eternalban 10y ago
• Bombthecat 10y ago
  A while ago there was an article in Germany about that ( to expensive to hire) it comes all down to cost. Cheaper is better. That's all.
  • cbanek 10y ago
    Would love to see a source. Cheaper is not always better. Really what you're looking for is value, which is how much you pay for what you get. More value is always better. If you have two people that both know nothing, scoop up the one for less pay. But if someone knows something, they might be worth the extra money because they can provide more value. Otherwise why would anyone ever get a raise?
• WalterSear 10y ago
  IMHO, those are often rationalizations - the real reason is often that an older worker must have obviously 'failed' in some way to be asking for the job in the first place. It's threatening to people's narrative that if they work hard, they will be rewarded. So, obviously, an older worker must not be a diligent worker.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• BurningFrog 10y ago
  > I don't doubt that there's age discrimination going on in the industry. I actually do, but I'm eager to be convinced by facts. How would you measure this? Does anyone do that?
  • noisebleed 10y ago
    The article references this study: 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... ... which is based on the rate of response to resumes that were identical except for age, submitted to thousands of job openings. There's also the whistleblower info that forms the basis of the RJ Reynolds lawsuit, which states they explicitly told recruiters to avoid experienced candidates in favor of people two or three years out of college. This allegedly resulted in a unusually low number of people over 40 being hired (19 out of 1000). Similar statistics have been used recently in lawsuits against Yahoo and Google for alleged gender and age discrimination (still pending, afaik)
• HillaryBriss 10y ago
  Why is this hard to understand? You don't create a hip, cool, sexy work environment filled with hot, good-looking people who all want to bang each other by hiring some old geezers with grey beards. Everyone should be under 30 and look like an actor from a Crest Whitestrips commercial.
• Tagore 10y ago
  As an older programmer, here's one drawback to hiring me: I'm unlikely to live in the office, and I'm unlikely to sleep under my desk. I'll put in extra hours, when actually necessary, but if I'm perfectly honest I just don't have enough energy to brain 16 hours a day anymore. On the other hand, I think that I brain pretty effectively during the eight hours a day I give an employer. I don't write a lot of lines of code anymore, but I don't discard much code either. I'm good at case analysis, and if management encourages handling errors... well, I know how to do case analysis. I like working with younger programmers. I can teach the brilliant guys to be disciplined, and that's what matters, and about all that matters. If they aren't brilliant, who cares. But if they are... they need to be taught a few things. Still- I'm afraid I can't pretend to be young anymore ;).