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Report: Ageism in the Tech Industry

82 points by lladnar 9y ago

kelukelugames 9y ago
1) I've witnessed ageism. 2) I've worked with old timers who do nothing and get paid a ton. I still can't figure out what they do all all day. I think they go on 10 coffee breaks and browse the web. I suspect the latter is a stereotype that motivates the former.
- craftyguy 9y ago
  It's just yet one more form of discrimination based on one (or more) stereotypes.
  - Chris2048 9y ago
    Isn't all hiring based on stereotypes? e.g the "ninja" programmer?
    - craftyguy 9y ago
      Hmm, maybe you and I have a different definition of 'ninja programmer'.. I, and my coworkers, define it as someone the is highly skilled and is able to get in and get the job done quickly and effectively. I don't see how you can stereotype based on a skill, ignoring physical qualities of the people with the skill. Maybe we're just naïve.
      - Chris2048 9y ago
        And how do you determine this in an interview?
- mythrwy 9y ago
  "I still can't figure out what they do all all day." Could be not much of value, but could also be that you just haven't figured it out. I've seen two kind of older employees. 1) Those that have the experience to know which problems are worth solving and how to solve these problems with minimal effort and disruption and 2) Those that have simply grown lazy and complacent while developing the workplace skills to keep their position. Younger me had a hard time telling the difference and figured it was just lazy all around.
  - kelukelugames 9y ago
    There are people whose value I don't understand. There are people who are on reddit and coffee breaks constantly. They produce no output. Others complain about them too.
excalibur 9y ago
> In fact, 29% of our survey respondents say the average employee age at their company is between 31 and 35. Millennials, yes—albeit at the older end of that demographic. A further 17% say that their company’s average is between 20 and 30. > By contrast, 3 in 10 (27%) respondents say that the average age of employees at their company is 36-40 years old, making them members of the younger end of Generation X. The over 40s (Gen X and Boomers alike) have to share the remaining 26%. That's 56% of tech employees between 31 and 40. Xennials FTW!
expertentipp 9y ago
Then come over to EU. Here not only one have to be young but as well cheap. 100k USD? Forget about it max we can do is 30-40k USD. Apart few exceptions in Germany haven't seen a developer above 40 years old, rarely have seen one above 35.
- aantix 9y ago
  Why do you think that is? (both the depressed salaries and only younger devs)? On a side note: make your way to SF. As a software engineer, you will feel like a king and there's a meetup for every niche topic you can think of..
  - expertentipp 9y ago
    Developing countries (PL, CZ, RO) - dominance of low cost and outsourcing centers. Developed countries - software and internet are perceived as some quirks and working on them professionally as undemanding "sitting by the computer", in Germany they value obedience and compliance the most and perceive these professions as bricklaying even (tons and tons of brain numbing corporate Java projects).
- colinb 9y ago
  Come to Dublin. Where I work, we'd love to hire more experienced people. I'd say around 15% of my colleagues are >40, with 3 or 4 > 50. I don't think it is at all unusual to get paid significantly more than €40k..
  - expertentipp 9y ago
    There is one major thing which turns me down about Ireland - I'd have to rent a place to live.
  - sgift 9y ago
    > I don't think it is at all unusual to get paid significantly more than €40k.. It's neither in Germany. I have no idea where op gets their information. Sure, compared to the US pay in Germany is lower, but 40k is not even remotely on the high end for a developer.
baron816 9y ago
I watched a talk by Bob Martin in which he claimed that the number software engineers in the world doubles every 5 years. For a huge majority of those new engineers, it's their first careers. Thus, almost half of the world's software engineers should be between the ages of 22-27. So, tech companies are dominated by the young not because they hate old people, but because there are so many young people with technical skills and that number is growing rapidly.
- jordanb 9y ago
  I'd like to see his data on that. I find it difficult to believe that there are twice as many programmers now than there were in 2012. At least, not in the United States.
- throwanem 9y ago
  Doesn't he claim a lot of things? I mind me of his "unit tests and self-discipline are all you ever need" philosophy toward software reliability, as recently discussed here on HN.
- nhebb 9y ago
  throwanem and jordanb: The growth rate numbers are from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
austincheney 9y ago
From my experience working with web businesses age is irrelevant to hiring, but it strongly influences office culture. As a side note I am a front-end developer which tends to skew extremely young, but I have been doing it for 20 years. I don't consider myself either a baby-boomer or a millennial. In offices of extremely young teams without a lot of mentorship the big focus is on abstractions and frameworks. The primary technology is JavaScript. I get the feeling of people wanting to move really fast and build cool things, but with huge limitations around their understanding of the technology. In offices of much older developers the focus is more heavily directed towards code design and architecture. Contrasting to the previous group the older folks feel more confident they can build just about anything and don't mind jumping into the technologies directly, however their focus tends to be more narrow as though there are a set fixed few ways of doing things. This group generally tends to treat web technologies with an utter disregard and prefers to isolate themselves in Java. Actual fullstack people are rare to either demographic but tend to have a wider understanding of how things work outside their comfort zone.
- le-mark 9y ago
  I agree, what I see in the midwest is that experienced, senior developers are in hot demand. The only companies that skew young are the Big Dumb Corps with horrible cultures (overtime, low pay, atrocious legacy code). There are a lot of second or third tier universities graduating cs (or whatever) majors who don't go to silicon valley. One company here, in particular, vacuums these people up. Senior developers won't put up with that. Me and a lot of my peers have done stints there, and consider ever going back to be a last resort. Hence this particular company pays outlandish prices for contractors, even flying people in from out of state, weekly.
  - logfromblammo 9y ago
    Is it Epic Systems? It sounds like Epic Systems. I did a stint there, and going back isn't even a last resort. I'd rather move to Elbonia and sell stolen credit card numbers.
    - 9y ago
jitix 9y ago
I think it boils down to one thing: How enthusiastic an old engineer is about technology in general and whether they are proactive on keeping themselves up to date on the latest things (vs reactively learning something when a project requires it). I worked at a startup for the last 4.5 years which had a lot of older (40-50 yr) people (the founders were in their late 40s). I also interviewed a lot of older people (both with positive and negative feedback). What I noticed is two clear groups: One set of older devs have been in the tech industry just because they needed a job and have somehow kept up with the technologies in a reactive manner. This set of people have mentality of "this is how we used to do this back in 19xx/20xx". It doesn't always work out. The other set of people are genuinely interested in technology and proactively seek new things, present papers, blog about stuff, and are always on the look out for the next improvement and the next thing. This set of people tend to learn from their own experiences and improve on things while providing guidance to devs in their 20s/early 30s. This set of people never have trouble finding jobs. The bottom line is that the tech industry requires you to do continuous learning and be enthusiastic about stuff. If you can't do that you'll have trouble finding jobs when you're older. Edit: I’m seeing the same pattern at my current job even though the percentage of older devs is lower here.
- amyjess 9y ago
  If people have to "present papers" and "blog about stuff" just to keep a steady paycheck, it's a sign the industry is broken.
  - jitix 9y ago
    The industry itself is only a few decades old.. it'll take some time before it stabilizes to a point where you can largely do the same thing your entire career. Also everybody doesn't have to present papers, or speak in seminars, etc. but most older developers who are sought after usually do.
    - Karrot_Kream 9y ago
      Because the person who writes a lot of blog posts is the person who spends a lot of time marketing themselves but not actually getting shit done. If you think a blog post is proof of knowledge, well wow, you'd be shocked at what academia's peer review process is.
amyjess 9y ago
Ageism is the one -ism everybody suffers from. It doesn't matter how privileged you are. You might think "hey, I'm a straight cis white male, I'll never have to worry about discrimination!". And then 20 years later, you're middle-aged. Hello age discrimination!
- beingmyself2 9y ago
  I've been rejected from a job before (where I knew someone working there) and was told they had to go with a "diversity hire" since they lost their only female engineer earlier that year. The comments implying I have it easy just because of my gender and skin color are ridiculous and only serve to further divide, not to mention incredibly insulting to the groups mentioned.
- alexanderstears 9y ago
  Dumb argument - straight cis white males are agrubly the ones who have to worry about discrimination the most. Why do you think we're seeing articles about ageism in tech? It's because people do care about it. Look at all the ethical issues that don't get much attention - H1Bs and social stratification in India for example.
larrywright 9y ago
I am 45 years old, and work for a very large consultancy (I won't name them here, but you can figure it out if you're curious). I don't actually work as a consultant, but rather on a product. One of the things I like about working here is that when I go to company events, like the internal conference that I'm at this week, I see people at all age levels. Plenty of young people, but also plenty of people my age or older. And the people older than me aren't coasting until retirement - they're mentoring, leading new initiatives, working on exciting projects. It gives me hope that I'll be able to work on interesting things until I'm ready to retire. All this to say, there are plenty of companies that value age and experience, but you might have to look outside of the startup scene.
jakebasile 9y ago
This is one of the many pernicious effects of the Standard Developer Interview™. Despite the fact that older developers may have years of proven experience at other companies, pretty much every interview goes in assuming the interviewee is no better qualified than a random person picked off of the street. Focusing so heavily on computer science trivia questions favor those who recently went to college, since those tidbits are so rarely needed at the drop of a hat in industry those neurons wither away with more time away from academia. Older developers know you can just look it up. Take home quizzes and side projects require significant time investments. People tend to have less free time as they get older due to family obligations, changing priorities, and so on. People directly out of college likely have less of these external time pressures and would have less of a problem solving your so-clever little project that only takes 20 hours. Until we, as an industry, get over the lie that hiring must be incredibly accurate and therefore favor the so-called "false negative", we won't get rid of this kind of discrimination and we'll continue to harm people simply because they're older; not to mention losing out on potential co-workers with a plethora of knowledge and experience. It's bizarre to me that ageism exists. Other forms of discrimination can be traced to othering someone because they are dissimilar to you. Every single human will become an older person one day, barring early death. Perpetuating this cycle is self defeating in the end.
- vkou 9y ago
  > This is one of the many pernicious effects of the Standard Developer Interview™. Despite the fact that older developers may have years of proven experience at other companies, pretty much every interview goes in assuming the interviewee is no better qualified than a random person picked off of the street. Many people who interview feel like random people off the street. You really can't tell if the resume's completely bullshit until you ask them to sit down and implement fizz-buzz. > Focusing so heavily on computer science trivia questions favor those who recently went to college, since those tidbits are so rarely needed at the drop of a hat in industry those neurons wither away with more time away from academia. Older developers know you can just look it up. Is this still a common practice? Neither Facebook, Google, nor Amazon trains its interviewers to ask bullshit trivia questions to non-intern candidates (I don't know if they train them to ask, or not ask those questions to intern candidates.) I mean, it's entirely possible that particular interviewers at those companies do, but I have skimmed through many, many interview transcripts. None of them focused on bullshit trivia. (Unless you feel that 'Is it possible to have a memory leak in a language like Java or C#?' is bullshit trivia. I've had people who have spent five years programming in those languages answer, with full conviction, 'No'. After some more prodding, they sometimes say yes, if there was a bug in the garbage collector.) At this point, this feels like a meme that has been ten years out of date (Because all it takes is one person having a bad interview experience to revive it.)
whipoodle 9y ago
It's incredibly irresponsible to see this and think "not my problem". This is the one form of discrimination that eventually comes for us all, unless you get rich or die first. And yet, does it come up in discussions of diversity and inclusion? Rarely, and if it does, pretty much just as an aside. I've never seen a company that had goals to hire people in certain age brackets, or even bothered to offer an age breakdown of recent hires, as they do with race and gender.
- mythrwy 9y ago
  I wonder what the industry will look like at the time ageism really starts affecting the early 20 somethings. If we are still doing JavaScript frameworks and Webpack in 20 years I'll be a bit surprised. In which case it might be a double whammy. Ageism and a significant start over.
NTDF9 9y ago
There are 2 kinds of old people: 1. Old battle hardened veterans who can just jump in and clean the floor. The desire more battles and will confront problems head on 2. Folks who are in the industry for a long time and are productive as a consequence of experience and not because they desire to be there There are folks intersecting the two sets above. But more often than not, folks in 2 are folks with families, mortgages and other commitments making them risk/battle averse. That kills their hireability. The reasonably confident, smart old folks are the ones who just walk into companies and bash the young interviewers right away (I experienced this as the young interviewer myself). Young engineers fit the above categories too but they get the benefit of doubt and get hired for potential. Older folks don't seem to have that luxury.
- moduspol 9y ago
  Respectfully there is also another group: 3. Folks who have been in the industry for a while, are very comfortable with the tools they've used previously, are not always open to embracing new tech, and have compensation expectations a little higher than the market value of what they're offering. I'm not denying ageism exists, but I think it's disingenuous to suggest people in our industry are immune to becoming complacent over time. I think the primary problem might just be that our industry is more punishing for people who do. I also think people are pointing at the young-skewing culture in tech and looking at it as the cause of the problem, when it's possible it's a symptom. I don't know how any of that can be measured, but I think it's something we have to keep in mind in this discussion about apparent ageism.
- watwut 9y ago
  What kind of companies do you all work for that willingness to "battle" and "risk" is so important? Software development is normally one of the safest jobs there is. It is even stereotyped to have above average amount of people on spectrum and that condition makes one sux at both political fighting and risk handling. If you need everybody to battle that often, then there is something wrong. And if ability to handle risk is so important for developers, then maybe management should start to manage that risk.
  - 9y ago
brightsize 9y ago
>Removing terms like “recent graduate” and “digital native” could help encourage older professionals to apply for these positions. Or, "you'll join a young team of developers ...", a type of phrasing that makes it very clear who will be a "culture fit" and who probably won't. Recently I came across a job ad from a SV startup company that contained the text "We are looking to hire talented young developers for backend development" . The message doesn't get much clearer than that.
indubitable 9y ago
I think framing things as some sort of discrimination, "ageism" in this case, constantly works to avoid actually approaching the question of why things are the way they are by instead simply blaming prejudice or other unreasonable issues. So for instance a few random issues, or perceived issues: - Older workers are genuinely more well qualified and are going to demand a substantially higher salary than younger workers. - Younger workers are less likely to have family and other outside commitments that may take priority over work related issues. - Younger workers may still see things like web technologies becoming obsoleted every few years as an exciting and invigorating thing, anxious to learn the next big thing (that will then be obsolete 3 years later). - Pair the above two to yield the fact that younger workers may be more inclined to spend their own time pursuing interests that could improve their perceived value as an employee. - Older workers have a better understanding of employee-employer relationships and may be less inclined to accept unreasonable 'friendly nudges' that can encourage younger workers to "give 110%" [without corresponding compensation] - Older workers are going to have a better idea of what they're worth than younger workers who will, almost invariably, dramatically lowball their worth. This gets back to point #1, but also arises in things like contract negotiations. "Ageism" suggests people are discriminating against individuals because of their age. Choosing to hire people who have certain characteristics, even when those characteristics are less prevalent in older individuals, is in no way discriminatory. And in framing it as ageism we ignore why people may prefer younger workers and the discussion of whether these reason are legitimate. I half wish we had a way to completely remove any identity related characteristic from the hiring process and end once and for all any allegations of discrimination. Full on voice scrambling, audio only discussion, and VR in lieu of on-site interviews. Only downside would be a necessary restriction on certain topics that could implicitly reveal identifying information. It'd be like the dating shows of the 90s. After you'd made an offer that was accepted, the block would turn and you'd finally get meet your new employee.
- wu_tang_chris 9y ago
  This for me was the most thought provoking comment on this entire thread. It tends to be the case that when accusations of prejudice are lightly thrown around, slowing down, thinking reasonably, and giving our fellow humans a cursory benefit of the doubt casts a totally different light on the issue. That said: > I half wish we had a way to completely remove any identity related characteristic from the hiring process and end once and for all any allegations of discrimination. Full on voice scrambling, audio only discussion, and VR in lieu of on-site interviews. I feel like I could figure out their age and race just from vernacular. Plus that would be ridiculous. I don't want to hire someone who I don't want around the office.

82 points by lladnar 9y ago

1) I've witnessed ageism. 2) I've worked with old timers who do nothing and get paid a ton. I still can't figure out what they do all all day. I think they go on 10 coffee breaks and browse the web. I suspect the latter is a stereotype that motivates the former.

craftyguy 9y ago
It's just yet one more form of discrimination based on one (or more) stereotypes.
- Chris2048 9y ago
  Isn't all hiring based on stereotypes? e.g the "ninja" programmer?
  - craftyguy 9y ago
    Hmm, maybe you and I have a different definition of 'ninja programmer'.. I, and my coworkers, define it as someone the is highly skilled and is able to get in and get the job done quickly and effectively. I don't see how you can stereotype based on a skill, ignoring physical qualities of the people with the skill. Maybe we're just naïve.
    - Chris2048 9y ago
      And how do you determine this in an interview?
mythrwy 9y ago
"I still can't figure out what they do all all day." Could be not much of value, but could also be that you just haven't figured it out. I've seen two kind of older employees. 1) Those that have the experience to know which problems are worth solving and how to solve these problems with minimal effort and disruption and 2) Those that have simply grown lazy and complacent while developing the workplace skills to keep their position. Younger me had a hard time telling the difference and figured it was just lazy all around.
- kelukelugames 9y ago
  There are people whose value I don't understand. There are people who are on reddit and coffee breaks constantly. They produce no output. Others complain about them too.

excalibur 9y ago

> In fact, 29% of our survey respondents say the average employee age at their company is between 31 and 35. Millennials, yes—albeit at the older end of that demographic. A further 17% say that their company’s average is between 20 and 30. > By contrast, 3 in 10 (27%) respondents say that the average age of employees at their company is 36-40 years old, making them members of the younger end of Generation X. The over 40s (Gen X and Boomers alike) have to share the remaining 26%. That's 56% of tech employees between 31 and 40. Xennials FTW!

expertentipp 9y ago

Then come over to EU. Here not only one have to be young but as well cheap. 100k USD? Forget about it max we can do is 30-40k USD. Apart few exceptions in Germany haven't seen a developer above 40 years old, rarely have seen one above 35.

aantix 9y ago
Why do you think that is? (both the depressed salaries and only younger devs)? On a side note: make your way to SF. As a software engineer, you will feel like a king and there's a meetup for every niche topic you can think of..
- expertentipp 9y ago
  Developing countries (PL, CZ, RO) - dominance of low cost and outsourcing centers. Developed countries - software and internet are perceived as some quirks and working on them professionally as undemanding "sitting by the computer", in Germany they value obedience and compliance the most and perceive these professions as bricklaying even (tons and tons of brain numbing corporate Java projects).
colinb 9y ago
Come to Dublin. Where I work, we'd love to hire more experienced people. I'd say around 15% of my colleagues are >40, with 3 or 4 > 50. I don't think it is at all unusual to get paid significantly more than €40k..
- expertentipp 9y ago
  There is one major thing which turns me down about Ireland - I'd have to rent a place to live.
- sgift 9y ago
  > I don't think it is at all unusual to get paid significantly more than €40k.. It's neither in Germany. I have no idea where op gets their information. Sure, compared to the US pay in Germany is lower, but 40k is not even remotely on the high end for a developer.

baron816 9y ago

I watched a talk by Bob Martin in which he claimed that the number software engineers in the world doubles every 5 years. For a huge majority of those new engineers, it's their first careers. Thus, almost half of the world's software engineers should be between the ages of 22-27. So, tech companies are dominated by the young not because they hate old people, but because there are so many young people with technical skills and that number is growing rapidly.

jordanb 9y ago
I'd like to see his data on that. I find it difficult to believe that there are twice as many programmers now than there were in 2012. At least, not in the United States.
throwanem 9y ago
Doesn't he claim a lot of things? I mind me of his "unit tests and self-discipline are all you ever need" philosophy toward software reliability, as recently discussed here on HN.
nhebb 9y ago
throwanem and jordanb: The growth rate numbers are from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

austincheney 9y ago

From my experience working with web businesses age is irrelevant to hiring, but it strongly influences office culture. As a side note I am a front-end developer which tends to skew extremely young, but I have been doing it for 20 years. I don't consider myself either a baby-boomer or a millennial. In offices of extremely young teams without a lot of mentorship the big focus is on abstractions and frameworks. The primary technology is JavaScript. I get the feeling of people wanting to move really fast and build cool things, but with huge limitations around their understanding of the technology. In offices of much older developers the focus is more heavily directed towards code design and architecture. Contrasting to the previous group the older folks feel more confident they can build just about anything and don't mind jumping into the technologies directly, however their focus tends to be more narrow as though there are a set fixed few ways of doing things. This group generally tends to treat web technologies with an utter disregard and prefers to isolate themselves in Java. Actual fullstack people are rare to either demographic but tend to have a wider understanding of how things work outside their comfort zone.

le-mark 9y ago
I agree, what I see in the midwest is that experienced, senior developers are in hot demand. The only companies that skew young are the Big Dumb Corps with horrible cultures (overtime, low pay, atrocious legacy code). There are a lot of second or third tier universities graduating cs (or whatever) majors who don't go to silicon valley. One company here, in particular, vacuums these people up. Senior developers won't put up with that. Me and a lot of my peers have done stints there, and consider ever going back to be a last resort. Hence this particular company pays outlandish prices for contractors, even flying people in from out of state, weekly.
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  Is it Epic Systems? It sounds like Epic Systems. I did a stint there, and going back isn't even a last resort. I'd rather move to Elbonia and sell stolen credit card numbers.
  - 9y ago

jitix 9y ago

I think it boils down to one thing: How enthusiastic an old engineer is about technology in general and whether they are proactive on keeping themselves up to date on the latest things (vs reactively learning something when a project requires it). I worked at a startup for the last 4.5 years which had a lot of older (40-50 yr) people (the founders were in their late 40s). I also interviewed a lot of older people (both with positive and negative feedback). What I noticed is two clear groups: One set of older devs have been in the tech industry just because they needed a job and have somehow kept up with the technologies in a reactive manner. This set of people have mentality of "this is how we used to do this back in 19xx/20xx". It doesn't always work out. The other set of people are genuinely interested in technology and proactively seek new things, present papers, blog about stuff, and are always on the look out for the next improvement and the next thing. This set of people tend to learn from their own experiences and improve on things while providing guidance to devs in their 20s/early 30s. This set of people never have trouble finding jobs. The bottom line is that the tech industry requires you to do continuous learning and be enthusiastic about stuff. If you can't do that you'll have trouble finding jobs when you're older. Edit: I’m seeing the same pattern at my current job even though the percentage of older devs is lower here.

amyjess 9y ago
If people have to "present papers" and "blog about stuff" just to keep a steady paycheck, it's a sign the industry is broken.
- jitix 9y ago
  The industry itself is only a few decades old.. it'll take some time before it stabilizes to a point where you can largely do the same thing your entire career. Also everybody doesn't have to present papers, or speak in seminars, etc. but most older developers who are sought after usually do.
  - Karrot_Kream 9y ago
    Because the person who writes a lot of blog posts is the person who spends a lot of time marketing themselves but not actually getting shit done. If you think a blog post is proof of knowledge, well wow, you'd be shocked at what academia's peer review process is.

amyjess 9y ago

Ageism is the one -ism everybody suffers from. It doesn't matter how privileged you are. You might think "hey, I'm a straight cis white male, I'll never have to worry about discrimination!". And then 20 years later, you're middle-aged. Hello age discrimination!

beingmyself2 9y ago
I've been rejected from a job before (where I knew someone working there) and was told they had to go with a "diversity hire" since they lost their only female engineer earlier that year. The comments implying I have it easy just because of my gender and skin color are ridiculous and only serve to further divide, not to mention incredibly insulting to the groups mentioned.
alexanderstears 9y ago
Dumb argument - straight cis white males are agrubly the ones who have to worry about discrimination the most. Why do you think we're seeing articles about ageism in tech? It's because people do care about it. Look at all the ethical issues that don't get much attention - H1Bs and social stratification in India for example.

larrywright 9y ago

I am 45 years old, and work for a very large consultancy (I won't name them here, but you can figure it out if you're curious). I don't actually work as a consultant, but rather on a product. One of the things I like about working here is that when I go to company events, like the internal conference that I'm at this week, I see people at all age levels. Plenty of young people, but also plenty of people my age or older. And the people older than me aren't coasting until retirement - they're mentoring, leading new initiatives, working on exciting projects. It gives me hope that I'll be able to work on interesting things until I'm ready to retire. All this to say, there are plenty of companies that value age and experience, but you might have to look outside of the startup scene.

jakebasile 9y ago

This is one of the many pernicious effects of the Standard Developer Interview™. Despite the fact that older developers may have years of proven experience at other companies, pretty much every interview goes in assuming the interviewee is no better qualified than a random person picked off of the street. Focusing so heavily on computer science trivia questions favor those who recently went to college, since those tidbits are so rarely needed at the drop of a hat in industry those neurons wither away with more time away from academia. Older developers know you can just look it up. Take home quizzes and side projects require significant time investments. People tend to have less free time as they get older due to family obligations, changing priorities, and so on. People directly out of college likely have less of these external time pressures and would have less of a problem solving your so-clever little project that only takes 20 hours. Until we, as an industry, get over the lie that hiring must be incredibly accurate and therefore favor the so-called "false negative", we won't get rid of this kind of discrimination and we'll continue to harm people simply because they're older; not to mention losing out on potential co-workers with a plethora of knowledge and experience. It's bizarre to me that ageism exists. Other forms of discrimination can be traced to othering someone because they are dissimilar to you. Every single human will become an older person one day, barring early death. Perpetuating this cycle is self defeating in the end.

vkou 9y ago
> This is one of the many pernicious effects of the Standard Developer Interview™. Despite the fact that older developers may have years of proven experience at other companies, pretty much every interview goes in assuming the interviewee is no better qualified than a random person picked off of the street. Many people who interview feel like random people off the street. You really can't tell if the resume's completely bullshit until you ask them to sit down and implement fizz-buzz. > Focusing so heavily on computer science trivia questions favor those who recently went to college, since those tidbits are so rarely needed at the drop of a hat in industry those neurons wither away with more time away from academia. Older developers know you can just look it up. Is this still a common practice? Neither Facebook, Google, nor Amazon trains its interviewers to ask bullshit trivia questions to non-intern candidates (I don't know if they train them to ask, or not ask those questions to intern candidates.) I mean, it's entirely possible that particular interviewers at those companies do, but I have skimmed through many, many interview transcripts. None of them focused on bullshit trivia. (Unless you feel that 'Is it possible to have a memory leak in a language like Java or C#?' is bullshit trivia. I've had people who have spent five years programming in those languages answer, with full conviction, 'No'. After some more prodding, they sometimes say yes, if there was a bug in the garbage collector.) At this point, this feels like a meme that has been ten years out of date (Because all it takes is one person having a bad interview experience to revive it.)

whipoodle 9y ago

It's incredibly irresponsible to see this and think "not my problem". This is the one form of discrimination that eventually comes for us all, unless you get rich or die first. And yet, does it come up in discussions of diversity and inclusion? Rarely, and if it does, pretty much just as an aside. I've never seen a company that had goals to hire people in certain age brackets, or even bothered to offer an age breakdown of recent hires, as they do with race and gender.

mythrwy 9y ago
I wonder what the industry will look like at the time ageism really starts affecting the early 20 somethings. If we are still doing JavaScript frameworks and Webpack in 20 years I'll be a bit surprised. In which case it might be a double whammy. Ageism and a significant start over.

NTDF9 9y ago

There are 2 kinds of old people: 1. Old battle hardened veterans who can just jump in and clean the floor. The desire more battles and will confront problems head on 2. Folks who are in the industry for a long time and are productive as a consequence of experience and not because they desire to be there There are folks intersecting the two sets above. But more often than not, folks in 2 are folks with families, mortgages and other commitments making them risk/battle averse. That kills their hireability. The reasonably confident, smart old folks are the ones who just walk into companies and bash the young interviewers right away (I experienced this as the young interviewer myself). Young engineers fit the above categories too but they get the benefit of doubt and get hired for potential. Older folks don't seem to have that luxury.

moduspol 9y ago
Respectfully there is also another group: 3. Folks who have been in the industry for a while, are very comfortable with the tools they've used previously, are not always open to embracing new tech, and have compensation expectations a little higher than the market value of what they're offering. I'm not denying ageism exists, but I think it's disingenuous to suggest people in our industry are immune to becoming complacent over time. I think the primary problem might just be that our industry is more punishing for people who do. I also think people are pointing at the young-skewing culture in tech and looking at it as the cause of the problem, when it's possible it's a symptom. I don't know how any of that can be measured, but I think it's something we have to keep in mind in this discussion about apparent ageism.
watwut 9y ago
What kind of companies do you all work for that willingness to "battle" and "risk" is so important? Software development is normally one of the safest jobs there is. It is even stereotyped to have above average amount of people on spectrum and that condition makes one sux at both political fighting and risk handling. If you need everybody to battle that often, then there is something wrong. And if ability to handle risk is so important for developers, then maybe management should start to manage that risk.
- 9y ago

brightsize 9y ago

>Removing terms like “recent graduate” and “digital native” could help encourage older professionals to apply for these positions. Or, "you'll join a young team of developers ...", a type of phrasing that makes it very clear who will be a "culture fit" and who probably won't. Recently I came across a job ad from a SV startup company that contained the text "We are looking to hire talented young developers for backend development" . The message doesn't get much clearer than that.

indubitable 9y ago

I think framing things as some sort of discrimination, "ageism" in this case, constantly works to avoid actually approaching the question of why things are the way they are by instead simply blaming prejudice or other unreasonable issues. So for instance a few random issues, or perceived issues: - Older workers are genuinely more well qualified and are going to demand a substantially higher salary than younger workers. - Younger workers are less likely to have family and other outside commitments that may take priority over work related issues. - Younger workers may still see things like web technologies becoming obsoleted every few years as an exciting and invigorating thing, anxious to learn the next big thing (that will then be obsolete 3 years later). - Pair the above two to yield the fact that younger workers may be more inclined to spend their own time pursuing interests that could improve their perceived value as an employee. - Older workers have a better understanding of employee-employer relationships and may be less inclined to accept unreasonable 'friendly nudges' that can encourage younger workers to "give 110%" [without corresponding compensation] - Older workers are going to have a better idea of what they're worth than younger workers who will, almost invariably, dramatically lowball their worth. This gets back to point #1, but also arises in things like contract negotiations. "Ageism" suggests people are discriminating against individuals because of their age. Choosing to hire people who have certain characteristics, even when those characteristics are less prevalent in older individuals, is in no way discriminatory. And in framing it as ageism we ignore why people may prefer younger workers and the discussion of whether these reason are legitimate. I half wish we had a way to completely remove any identity related characteristic from the hiring process and end once and for all any allegations of discrimination. Full on voice scrambling, audio only discussion, and VR in lieu of on-site interviews. Only downside would be a necessary restriction on certain topics that could implicitly reveal identifying information. It'd be like the dating shows of the 90s. After you'd made an offer that was accepted, the block would turn and you'd finally get meet your new employee.

wu_tang_chris 9y ago
This for me was the most thought provoking comment on this entire thread. It tends to be the case that when accusations of prejudice are lightly thrown around, slowing down, thinking reasonably, and giving our fellow humans a cursory benefit of the doubt casts a totally different light on the issue. That said: > I half wish we had a way to completely remove any identity related characteristic from the hiring process and end once and for all any allegations of discrimination. Full on voice scrambling, audio only discussion, and VR in lieu of on-site interviews. I feel like I could figure out their age and race just from vernacular. Plus that would be ridiculous. I don't want to hire someone who I don't want around the office.