8 ms·

If age alone isn't a reliable factor in determining success, then why do most of the big Silicon Valley companies lean young? Shouldn't economics sort them out

If age alone isn't a reliable factor in determining success, then why do most of the big Silicon Valley companies lean young? Shouldn't economics sort them out if they really aren't getting more bang for their buck with younger employees? Couldn't I get way more done by gaming the market (and therefore win) if I only hired older employees who were rejected by Google solely for their age? I see lots of conspiracy theories here, but none answer that question. It seems to me like young employees may have a few properties going for them (on average), that may be less true as they age: -motivation/drive/desire to put in hours -low cost -flexibility -creativity/fresh ideas -more likely to bond with other young employees, and participate in company culture (instead of having a family they need to spend time with). To me, it basically means that for basic software engineering, at a certain point you actually do (on average) become less valuable as you age, unless you move up into system architecture, specialism/subject matter expertise, or management.

ubernostrum 9y ago
Shouldn't economics sort them out You know the old saying that markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent? http://danluu.com/tech-discrimination/ http://danluu.com/tech-discrimination/ It’s true that markets have impose a cost on firms that discriminate. In the long run, that can put pressure on firms that discriminate, but as we’ve seen, that timescale can easily be longer than half a century. In other words, a generation or more can pass while the discrimination continues. If you're OK with that -- and with the risk that it can happen to you! -- then you're OK with it. If not, consider that sometimes the market needs change forced upon it. Also, tech companies "lean young" primarily because younger employees A) earn less B) put up with more mistreatment.
- hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
  But your last sentence basically obliterates the reasoning behind the rest of your post: > Also, tech companies "lean young" primarily because younger employees A) earn less B) put up with more mistreatment. That's kind of the point. Companies aren't acting based on irrational discrimination, they are trying to get more output for less money, and if they can pay employees less and work them harder (what you refer to as "mistreatment"), then it's an economic advantage for them.
  - bergie 9y ago
    > then it's an economic advantage for them. Breaking laws can be lucrative, of course. At least until you're caught.
    - lithos 9y ago
      Getting caught is a cost of doing business.
  - ubernostrum 9y ago
    But your last sentence basically obliterates the reasoning behind the rest of your post: I believe overworked/underpaid/mistreated people are cheaper to employ in the short term, but I don't believe that offsets the decreased effectiveness of them being, well, overworked, underpaid and mistreated.
    - taneq 9y ago
      That's why you swap 'em out regularly.
- jstanley 9y ago
  So which is it? Is the market irrational, or are employers getting away with more "mistreatment" and lower wages if they hire younger people?
  - ubernostrum 9y ago
    If you believe people who are overworked and underpaid are more effective, you're free to believe that.
SamReidHughes 9y ago
Many of their employees moved from another state. That's what young people do.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
shados 9y ago
the funnel in tech is growing and there's drastically more people now than there were 10-15 years ago. if you hired EVERYONE with a CS degree who didn't give up during the dotcom crash, you'd lean young too.
danjoc 9y ago
>Shouldn't economics sort them out if they really aren't getting more bang for their buck with younger employees? You seem to be missing something really important. That's illegal. Just like it's illegal to discriminate against someone because of their sex or skin color. Being over 40 years of age puts you in a protected class in the US.
- lend000 9y ago
  >That's illegal. If there is a difference in value, then it isn't illegal to choose the superior candidate. I described characteristics which can be legally used in making a hiring decisions, because they affect value offered for the position. These characteristics tend to on average make younger employees more desirable for typical software engineering positions, all other things equal (like perceived programming skill). For any individual case, where 25 year old Alice and 45 year old Steve have similar perceived programming value but Alice will (a.) work for less and (b.) seems like a better cultural fit, do you think Steve is entitled to the job? What if they are completely identical from a value and cost perspective, 'cultural fit' aside -- is Steve entitled to the job? Unless you can prove Steve was superior for the job and lost it anyway, which is highly arbitrary, there is no recourse for legal action. Which is why I think private discrimination laws are ridiculous, because they are effectively unenforceable. Most prejudiced employers will not print out a rejection letter stating the exact prejudice that led to the decision. Laws are not the "word of God", and just because there is a law, it doesn't mean you stop discussing it. EDIT: Quotes around "word of God," because it was apparently taken literally.
  - nolite 9y ago
    Protip: don't go writing any screeds
  - mythrwy 9y ago
    I personally think the phrase "cultural fit" should be illegal. Mostly because I get sick of hearing it but also because it sounds pretty blatantly discriminatory. From my perspective, any company that has management using that phrase has an extremely unhealthy culture.
nitwit005 9y ago
Or, more likely, much of that would turn out to be false if you bothered to check if your assumptions were true with a some research. A few companies like IBM and Google actually have tried to do such research, but most people just make it up like you're doing. There's an exceptionally long history of companies making terrible assumptions about who to hire. Just look back a few decades ago at all the companies shocked to learn women did just fine.
kartan 9y ago
How do your arguments apply differently to any other profession? If no family means: > motivation/drive/desire to put in hours > low cost > flexibility > more likely to bond with other young employees, and participate in company culture (instead of having a family they need to spend time with). This will be truer for professions that require no expertise than for technical ones. The myth of young computer hackers comes from the fact that most developers were as young as the profession itself. So the typical software company was made of young people. As the profession gets older, this will disappear. For the last one: > creativity/fresh ideas I'm that guy that was the smart young developer that was innovating and getting new ideas (I started as a developer at 17, and I was helping people twice my age). Nowadays I'm still him, just I got 25 more years of professional and life experience. And I got a lot better at understanding problems (technical and human) and how to solve them. The same people that think when they are young that their ideas are "fresher" are the ones that complain about "nowadays young" when getting older. It is just lack of empathy and understanding. Trying to justify discrimination by age, gender, country of origin, etc. doesn't help anyone.
mythrwy 9y ago
Older people are wiser. Young people quite often don't believe this, but that is because they don't know what they don't know yet. Problem is, wisdom isn't necessarily a valuable commodity in rank and file. For instance, after many years and lots of faces a person starts learning how to work systems and people. Sometimes this takes the place of actually contributing. An older person who isn't management but who has well practiced political skills and extensive experience working systems for their own benefit is a bit dangerous to have around. Particularly if they aren't fully "on board" (and who is after seeing 20 years of nonsense?). And doubly so if they don't have good work habits or contribution ethics. Young people in general have more energy and more stamina. They are faster. I think this is biological fact. Quite often they do foolish things, but this is probably overcome by the increased capacity to do. The flexibility. The lack of jadedness. The ability to get excited. The ability to be directed. There's a reason the military only accepts younger people. And there's a reason you have to be a certain age to be president of the U.S. I don't think we should pretend everything is equal between ages. It manifestly isn't. But I do think for a certain definition of "old" a person can perform most programming tasks at an equal or greater level than the average younger programmer (if they are dedicated and so inclined and have the experience). But if it's hype and rah rah and running all around and back and forth (which is not to knock these things, sometimes it is what's needed), ya, a younger person is better for that. Over 40 myself. Pretty sure I'm a far better employee than I was in my 20's but also I wouldn't put up with a fraction of the crap and silly I put up with in my 20's. So I think there's probably different "best spots" for the place one is. As far as Google, I don't know. They sure are a fat target lately. Every aggrieved group under the sun appears to have the knives out hoping for their pound of flesh. Which is a cost of getting big and rich it appears. I just hope the measures they take or are forced to take don't negatively impact their products. Because I don't really care who they hire so long as the search is good.
- misja111 9y ago
  > Over 40 myself. Pretty sure I'm a far better employee than I was in my 20's but also I wouldn't put up with a fraction of the crap and silly I put up with in my 20's. I think you are making many good points, but I personally see this one differently. I'm over 40 too, but I'm actually accepting more crap than when I was in my 20's. That's because I have learned to realize that no company is perfect, no human being is infallible and so there is a certain unavoidable amount of crap everywhere.
gaius 9y ago
If age alone isn't a reliable factor in determining success, then why do most of the big Silicon Valley companies lean young? Shouldn't economics sort them out if they really aren't getting more bang for their buck with younger employees? Yes it does - young people are easier to exploit, you can make them work long hours and pay them in stock instead of cash, and if they burn out there's another fresh crop next year. Remember that for every Google or Facebook, there are 1000 startups that went nowhere. They were full of young people too. Other countries do this too, tho' to a much greater extent. Why do you think your running shoes and electronics are so cheap...? Is that the kind of economic success we really want?
kagamine 9y ago
> -motivation/drive/desire to put in hours Why is someone experienced considered less motivated/driven? Surely an unfounded biased assumption? Desire to put in hours? Surely you mean less inclined to accept exploitation of the worker? > -low cost You get what you pay for, pay peanuts: get monkeys. > -flexibility I'm over 40 and use my spare time to learn new things. Have worked for companies stuck on the same old, same old tech for 10+ years, it's why I have to learn the new stuff in my own time. > -creativity/fresh ideas Why the assumption that this automatically trumps experince? And who is to say that either new ideas have value simply because they are new or that experienced people cannot have new ideas? > -more likely to bond with other young employees, and participate in company culture (instead of having a family they need to spend time with). Absolute tosh. Again, you're assuming something rather silly that can be turned around to say "young employees struggle to bond with older employees and are more likely to be out on the tiles every night, staying up late watching reality TV (instead of being well rested and able to concentrate). > To me, it basically means that for basic software engineering, at a certain point you actually do (on average) become less valuable as you age, unless you move up into system architecture, specialism/subject matter expertise, or management. Absolute twaddle. A cursory glance back through history will show many people reach their greatest heights as they become older. Mathematicians, coders, authors, politicians, whatever their chosen career, there's an endless list of people who contributed something worthwhile after they turned 30. Perhaps you are the one who isn't connecting, who can't see the forest for the trees?
- lend000 9y ago
  You seem to have taken this post very personally instead of analytically. I suggested some reasons that would explain why companies that hire younger tend to be beating companies that hire older, i.e. that there clearly is an economic advantage. What's your explanation for the phenomenon? The secondary point I've brought up on this thread is that private employment discrimination is "absolute twaddle" to regulate in the first place, because it introduces the concept of a thought crime, which is quite Orwellian. That is, the employment decision (the action) is only a crime contingent on what the "perpetrator" was thinking while making the decision. This is completely different than normal laws, where the action is unequivocally a crime and it's a matter of whether it was committed by the defendant, with state of mind only taken into account as to alter the severity of the sentence. Even "conspiracy to commit" laws are in reference to actions which are crimes in and of themselves.
rsj_hn 9y ago
This is the kind of argument you hear from free marketeers explaining that discrimination can never happen, because it's irrational for firms to not hire certain groups who are talented. And yet it does happen, so there is something that the argument is missing, namely that firms aren't perfect optimizers and there's a lot of politics within a firm that is often unhealthy. Far from doing everything optimally, real life firms (and people) really struggle even to get the second or third best option right. They have blind spots, customs, narrow minded people in key positions, etc. There is some level of age discrimination in the valley, but I think most larger firms try to professionalize their HR to avoid that. However, there are biases within the population of fellow engineers and managers that may be at play. Having said that, I am not going to assume that they are guilty just because of the lawsuit -- let the lawsuit play out.
- lend000 9y ago
  Or maybe the properties I mentioned are real, and aided by the fact that people like working with similar people. The tech workforce is expanding, so the largest groups of similar people are younger, and there is a positive feedback effect. > They have blind spots, customs, narrow minded people in key positions, etc. There is some level of age discrimination in the valley, but I think most larger firms try to professionalize their HR to avoid that. No firm is perfect, but the interesting here is the statistically significant tendency to display this exact property (youth) across many companies. Perhaps it is not statistically significant when accounting for the size of young vs old workforces, but I doubt it. This kind of statistically significant thing doesn't just happen and succeed on a huge scale unless there's something to it, so I speculated some potential reasons. I think it's a cop out to just say "everybody prefers young people and that's that."
  - rsj_hn 9y ago
    In any expanding field, you will have more younger workers than older workers, because when the older workers were younger, there were fewer jobs in that field and so more went into other fields. That, combined with people having biases to be around those like them is an argument for age discrimination rather than against it.
desireco42 9y ago
Yep, you can more easily push them around, which is very convenient. Also, there are a lot of seriously mediocre people in management and they don't want people who can see through them. And you are expensive because you can solve problems, except often people don't want problems solved, or just can't understand it and are afraid of your expertise. That is my experience.
yladiz 9y ago
I really don't like how you characterize younger people able to work longer hours as something to do with motivation or drive. That's not the deciding factor, as many founders, including technical ones, of startups are well into their 30s. The reason older people can't work as long hours is simply because they often have families and other responsibilities when compared to someone in their early 20s. I also disagree that they're less costly due to their age. It's due to the lack of experience that commands a higher salary. I also think creativity is not related to age, again because many startup founders are 30s or older. As far as company culture, do you mean outings? You don't have to have a family to not want to participate in outings. Also for 'bonding': why do you think many younger professionals can have mentors well older than them? The only thing I could think of that might be a factor is that as you age, it is somewhat more difficult to learn new things as your brain is less malleable, so you may be slightly slower at picking up something completely new if you're 40 compared to 20. I would argue this isn't a factor though because most programming languages and systems are pretty similar, especially at startups.
oculusthrift 9y ago
i support this only because i'm sure there's all types of groups that are underrepresented for one reason or another. hopefully next short people will sue. and then fat people etc. eventually the system will either be exposed as a scam or simply implode.
aantix 9y ago
Have you ever been on a team of mostly junior devs? Lord help us all...
Clubber 9y ago
Many if not most people in positions of power are there because they know someone, not because of merit. I mean they have to be competent, but the person running the top company in the world, isn't the top CEO in the world necessarily. How do you even gauge that? Who is the better programmer, Englebart or von Neumann? Hard to say, and even if I said it, it is easily arguable. Each would be better at different things. It's like asking what is the best video game? There is no score in programming. Business has a lot to do with trust. I have a few people I've worked with for years that I prefer to continually work with. I know them, I know how they think, I know what to expect, I know they won't screw me over, I know I don't have to deal with petty bullshit. They might not be the best in the world, or even the best that I know, but they're the best for me to work with. The same thing happens everywhere. To think any market is 100% efficient at anything, or even resembling that is extremely naive. A capitalistic market's only claim to fame is it's the most efficient way to allocate resources that we know of. That certainly doesn't mean it's near 100% efficient. Add to that, Google is horribly inefficient. They can be though, they make so much money off search with little competition. They have a really good search engine, but many of their project ventures fail, and that's ok; but to consider them 100% efficient in hiring is just silly. Finally, more often than not, young people are cheaper and more willing to suffer fools. They are eager to impress because they haven't been screwed over yet. They still believe success, and I mean big success, is based on their skills.

ubernostrum 9y ago

Shouldn't economics sort them out You know the old saying that markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent? http://danluu.com/tech-discrimination/ http://danluu.com/tech-discrimination/ It’s true that markets have impose a cost on firms that discriminate. In the long run, that can put pressure on firms that discriminate, but as we’ve seen, that timescale can easily be longer than half a century. In other words, a generation or more can pass while the discrimination continues. If you're OK with that -- and with the risk that it can happen to you! -- then you're OK with it. If not, consider that sometimes the market needs change forced upon it. Also, tech companies "lean young" primarily because younger employees A) earn less B) put up with more mistreatment.

hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
But your last sentence basically obliterates the reasoning behind the rest of your post: > Also, tech companies "lean young" primarily because younger employees A) earn less B) put up with more mistreatment. That's kind of the point. Companies aren't acting based on irrational discrimination, they are trying to get more output for less money, and if they can pay employees less and work them harder (what you refer to as "mistreatment"), then it's an economic advantage for them.
- bergie 9y ago
  > then it's an economic advantage for them. Breaking laws can be lucrative, of course. At least until you're caught.
  - lithos 9y ago
    Getting caught is a cost of doing business.
- ubernostrum 9y ago
  But your last sentence basically obliterates the reasoning behind the rest of your post: I believe overworked/underpaid/mistreated people are cheaper to employ in the short term, but I don't believe that offsets the decreased effectiveness of them being, well, overworked, underpaid and mistreated.
  - taneq 9y ago
    That's why you swap 'em out regularly.
jstanley 9y ago
So which is it? Is the market irrational, or are employers getting away with more "mistreatment" and lower wages if they hire younger people?
- ubernostrum 9y ago
  If you believe people who are overworked and underpaid are more effective, you're free to believe that.

SamReidHughes 9y ago

Many of their employees moved from another state. That's what young people do.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

shados 9y ago

the funnel in tech is growing and there's drastically more people now than there were 10-15 years ago. if you hired EVERYONE with a CS degree who didn't give up during the dotcom crash, you'd lean young too.

danjoc 9y ago

>Shouldn't economics sort them out if they really aren't getting more bang for their buck with younger employees? You seem to be missing something really important. That's illegal. Just like it's illegal to discriminate against someone because of their sex or skin color. Being over 40 years of age puts you in a protected class in the US.

lend000 9y ago
>That's illegal. If there is a difference in value, then it isn't illegal to choose the superior candidate. I described characteristics which can be legally used in making a hiring decisions, because they affect value offered for the position. These characteristics tend to on average make younger employees more desirable for typical software engineering positions, all other things equal (like perceived programming skill). For any individual case, where 25 year old Alice and 45 year old Steve have similar perceived programming value but Alice will (a.) work for less and (b.) seems like a better cultural fit, do you think Steve is entitled to the job? What if they are completely identical from a value and cost perspective, 'cultural fit' aside -- is Steve entitled to the job? Unless you can prove Steve was superior for the job and lost it anyway, which is highly arbitrary, there is no recourse for legal action. Which is why I think private discrimination laws are ridiculous, because they are effectively unenforceable. Most prejudiced employers will not print out a rejection letter stating the exact prejudice that led to the decision. Laws are not the "word of God", and just because there is a law, it doesn't mean you stop discussing it. EDIT: Quotes around "word of God," because it was apparently taken literally.
- nolite 9y ago
  Protip: don't go writing any screeds
- mythrwy 9y ago
  I personally think the phrase "cultural fit" should be illegal. Mostly because I get sick of hearing it but also because it sounds pretty blatantly discriminatory. From my perspective, any company that has management using that phrase has an extremely unhealthy culture.

nitwit005 9y ago

Or, more likely, much of that would turn out to be false if you bothered to check if your assumptions were true with a some research. A few companies like IBM and Google actually have tried to do such research, but most people just make it up like you're doing. There's an exceptionally long history of companies making terrible assumptions about who to hire. Just look back a few decades ago at all the companies shocked to learn women did just fine.

kartan 9y ago

How do your arguments apply differently to any other profession? If no family means: > motivation/drive/desire to put in hours > low cost > flexibility > more likely to bond with other young employees, and participate in company culture (instead of having a family they need to spend time with). This will be truer for professions that require no expertise than for technical ones. The myth of young computer hackers comes from the fact that most developers were as young as the profession itself. So the typical software company was made of young people. As the profession gets older, this will disappear. For the last one: > creativity/fresh ideas I'm that guy that was the smart young developer that was innovating and getting new ideas (I started as a developer at 17, and I was helping people twice my age). Nowadays I'm still him, just I got 25 more years of professional and life experience. And I got a lot better at understanding problems (technical and human) and how to solve them. The same people that think when they are young that their ideas are "fresher" are the ones that complain about "nowadays young" when getting older. It is just lack of empathy and understanding. Trying to justify discrimination by age, gender, country of origin, etc. doesn't help anyone.

mythrwy 9y ago

Older people are wiser. Young people quite often don't believe this, but that is because they don't know what they don't know yet. Problem is, wisdom isn't necessarily a valuable commodity in rank and file. For instance, after many years and lots of faces a person starts learning how to work systems and people. Sometimes this takes the place of actually contributing. An older person who isn't management but who has well practiced political skills and extensive experience working systems for their own benefit is a bit dangerous to have around. Particularly if they aren't fully "on board" (and who is after seeing 20 years of nonsense?). And doubly so if they don't have good work habits or contribution ethics. Young people in general have more energy and more stamina. They are faster. I think this is biological fact. Quite often they do foolish things, but this is probably overcome by the increased capacity to do. The flexibility. The lack of jadedness. The ability to get excited. The ability to be directed. There's a reason the military only accepts younger people. And there's a reason you have to be a certain age to be president of the U.S. I don't think we should pretend everything is equal between ages. It manifestly isn't. But I do think for a certain definition of "old" a person can perform most programming tasks at an equal or greater level than the average younger programmer (if they are dedicated and so inclined and have the experience). But if it's hype and rah rah and running all around and back and forth (which is not to knock these things, sometimes it is what's needed), ya, a younger person is better for that. Over 40 myself. Pretty sure I'm a far better employee than I was in my 20's but also I wouldn't put up with a fraction of the crap and silly I put up with in my 20's. So I think there's probably different "best spots" for the place one is. As far as Google, I don't know. They sure are a fat target lately. Every aggrieved group under the sun appears to have the knives out hoping for their pound of flesh. Which is a cost of getting big and rich it appears. I just hope the measures they take or are forced to take don't negatively impact their products. Because I don't really care who they hire so long as the search is good.

misja111 9y ago
> Over 40 myself. Pretty sure I'm a far better employee than I was in my 20's but also I wouldn't put up with a fraction of the crap and silly I put up with in my 20's. I think you are making many good points, but I personally see this one differently. I'm over 40 too, but I'm actually accepting more crap than when I was in my 20's. That's because I have learned to realize that no company is perfect, no human being is infallible and so there is a certain unavoidable amount of crap everywhere.

gaius 9y ago

If age alone isn't a reliable factor in determining success, then why do most of the big Silicon Valley companies lean young? Shouldn't economics sort them out if they really aren't getting more bang for their buck with younger employees? Yes it does - young people are easier to exploit, you can make them work long hours and pay them in stock instead of cash, and if they burn out there's another fresh crop next year. Remember that for every Google or Facebook, there are 1000 startups that went nowhere. They were full of young people too. Other countries do this too, tho' to a much greater extent. Why do you think your running shoes and electronics are so cheap...? Is that the kind of economic success we really want?

kagamine 9y ago

> -motivation/drive/desire to put in hours Why is someone experienced considered less motivated/driven? Surely an unfounded biased assumption? Desire to put in hours? Surely you mean less inclined to accept exploitation of the worker? > -low cost You get what you pay for, pay peanuts: get monkeys. > -flexibility I'm over 40 and use my spare time to learn new things. Have worked for companies stuck on the same old, same old tech for 10+ years, it's why I have to learn the new stuff in my own time. > -creativity/fresh ideas Why the assumption that this automatically trumps experince? And who is to say that either new ideas have value simply because they are new or that experienced people cannot have new ideas? > -more likely to bond with other young employees, and participate in company culture (instead of having a family they need to spend time with). Absolute tosh. Again, you're assuming something rather silly that can be turned around to say "young employees struggle to bond with older employees and are more likely to be out on the tiles every night, staying up late watching reality TV (instead of being well rested and able to concentrate). > To me, it basically means that for basic software engineering, at a certain point you actually do (on average) become less valuable as you age, unless you move up into system architecture, specialism/subject matter expertise, or management. Absolute twaddle. A cursory glance back through history will show many people reach their greatest heights as they become older. Mathematicians, coders, authors, politicians, whatever their chosen career, there's an endless list of people who contributed something worthwhile after they turned 30. Perhaps you are the one who isn't connecting, who can't see the forest for the trees?

lend000 9y ago
You seem to have taken this post very personally instead of analytically. I suggested some reasons that would explain why companies that hire younger tend to be beating companies that hire older, i.e. that there clearly is an economic advantage. What's your explanation for the phenomenon? The secondary point I've brought up on this thread is that private employment discrimination is "absolute twaddle" to regulate in the first place, because it introduces the concept of a thought crime, which is quite Orwellian. That is, the employment decision (the action) is only a crime contingent on what the "perpetrator" was thinking while making the decision. This is completely different than normal laws, where the action is unequivocally a crime and it's a matter of whether it was committed by the defendant, with state of mind only taken into account as to alter the severity of the sentence. Even "conspiracy to commit" laws are in reference to actions which are crimes in and of themselves.

rsj_hn 9y ago

This is the kind of argument you hear from free marketeers explaining that discrimination can never happen, because it's irrational for firms to not hire certain groups who are talented. And yet it does happen, so there is something that the argument is missing, namely that firms aren't perfect optimizers and there's a lot of politics within a firm that is often unhealthy. Far from doing everything optimally, real life firms (and people) really struggle even to get the second or third best option right. They have blind spots, customs, narrow minded people in key positions, etc. There is some level of age discrimination in the valley, but I think most larger firms try to professionalize their HR to avoid that. However, there are biases within the population of fellow engineers and managers that may be at play. Having said that, I am not going to assume that they are guilty just because of the lawsuit -- let the lawsuit play out.

lend000 9y ago
Or maybe the properties I mentioned are real, and aided by the fact that people like working with similar people. The tech workforce is expanding, so the largest groups of similar people are younger, and there is a positive feedback effect. > They have blind spots, customs, narrow minded people in key positions, etc. There is some level of age discrimination in the valley, but I think most larger firms try to professionalize their HR to avoid that. No firm is perfect, but the interesting here is the statistically significant tendency to display this exact property (youth) across many companies. Perhaps it is not statistically significant when accounting for the size of young vs old workforces, but I doubt it. This kind of statistically significant thing doesn't just happen and succeed on a huge scale unless there's something to it, so I speculated some potential reasons. I think it's a cop out to just say "everybody prefers young people and that's that."
- rsj_hn 9y ago
  In any expanding field, you will have more younger workers than older workers, because when the older workers were younger, there were fewer jobs in that field and so more went into other fields. That, combined with people having biases to be around those like them is an argument for age discrimination rather than against it.

desireco42 9y ago

Yep, you can more easily push them around, which is very convenient. Also, there are a lot of seriously mediocre people in management and they don't want people who can see through them. And you are expensive because you can solve problems, except often people don't want problems solved, or just can't understand it and are afraid of your expertise. That is my experience.

yladiz 9y ago

I really don't like how you characterize younger people able to work longer hours as something to do with motivation or drive. That's not the deciding factor, as many founders, including technical ones, of startups are well into their 30s. The reason older people can't work as long hours is simply because they often have families and other responsibilities when compared to someone in their early 20s. I also disagree that they're less costly due to their age. It's due to the lack of experience that commands a higher salary. I also think creativity is not related to age, again because many startup founders are 30s or older. As far as company culture, do you mean outings? You don't have to have a family to not want to participate in outings. Also for 'bonding': why do you think many younger professionals can have mentors well older than them? The only thing I could think of that might be a factor is that as you age, it is somewhat more difficult to learn new things as your brain is less malleable, so you may be slightly slower at picking up something completely new if you're 40 compared to 20. I would argue this isn't a factor though because most programming languages and systems are pretty similar, especially at startups.

oculusthrift 9y ago

i support this only because i'm sure there's all types of groups that are underrepresented for one reason or another. hopefully next short people will sue. and then fat people etc. eventually the system will either be exposed as a scam or simply implode.

aantix 9y ago

Have you ever been on a team of mostly junior devs? Lord help us all...

Clubber 9y ago

Many if not most people in positions of power are there because they know someone, not because of merit. I mean they have to be competent, but the person running the top company in the world, isn't the top CEO in the world necessarily. How do you even gauge that? Who is the better programmer, Englebart or von Neumann? Hard to say, and even if I said it, it is easily arguable. Each would be better at different things. It's like asking what is the best video game? There is no score in programming. Business has a lot to do with trust. I have a few people I've worked with for years that I prefer to continually work with. I know them, I know how they think, I know what to expect, I know they won't screw me over, I know I don't have to deal with petty bullshit. They might not be the best in the world, or even the best that I know, but they're the best for me to work with. The same thing happens everywhere. To think any market is 100% efficient at anything, or even resembling that is extremely naive. A capitalistic market's only claim to fame is it's the most efficient way to allocate resources that we know of. That certainly doesn't mean it's near 100% efficient. Add to that, Google is horribly inefficient. They can be though, they make so much money off search with little competition. They have a really good search engine, but many of their project ventures fail, and that's ok; but to consider them 100% efficient in hiring is just silly. Finally, more often than not, young people are cheaper and more willing to suffer fools. They are eager to impress because they haven't been screwed over yet. They still believe success, and I mean big success, is based on their skills.