10 ms·

I am afraid I am risking to be misunderstood, but I think, it is a question worth asking and considering. One's outlook and productivity changes with time and

by omeid2 8y ago

I am afraid I am risking to be misunderstood, but I think, it is a question worth asking and considering. One's outlook and productivity changes with time and age, just like an athlete's fitness. I suppose the hard question is, if a productivity and alignment with organization attitude and culture index correlates indirectly with age, what is to be done?

nate_meurer 8y ago
I think you mean inversely. The question is a bit of a red herring. By all means, get rid of unproductive and troublesome employees. But if you try to use age as a simplistic predictive proxy for productivity or attitude, I think evidence shows that you'll fire a lot of the wrong people, as well as court the wrath of labor attorneys.
- omeid2 8y ago
  > I think you mean inversely. No. > But if you try to use age a simplistic predictive proxy... Well, that is obviously the wrong thing to do, but I am not sure how that relates to my question.
  - jsivakumaran 8y ago
    Your comment above would make more sense had you said inversely.
  - nate_meurer 8y ago
    Ok, then I have no idea what you were asking. Can you state it in a different way?
    - User23 8y ago
      Bluntly stated, young fools who work 80+ hours a week provide a greater short term return for employers than older persons who have a life and a family that also makes demands on their time.
      - smbullet 8y ago
        I don't think omeid was talking about time spent in the office but rather cognitive ability.
- killaken2000 8y ago
  Indirect (negative) correlation is used when something goes up but the thing under discussion goes down. I think you were thinking of inversely proportional. Searching Wikipedia, inverse correlation is also valid but I've always heard it called indirect or negative. I knew what you meant and you were on the right track.
acct1771 8y ago
Stop tying compensation to seniority, and start giving it upon completion of tasks/improvement of business...?
- paganel 8y ago
  The task thing is questionable, because that way you just create incentives for the people involved to introduce more (most of them un-needed) tasks into the system, tasks which will show up on the performance reviews as being completed. A lot of the senior guys solve un-created tasks, so to speak, by saying stuff like YAGNI or KISS or by eliminating potential bugs (future tasks) by pointing out that going a certain development route will create those bugs.
- LoSboccacc 8y ago
  > Stop tying compensation to seniority next, on hacker news: "why nobody makes children anymore"
- ThenAsNow 8y ago
  There already is (and has been) knee-jerk reaction to this comment, but fundamentally I think your first clause represents territory that should be explored. I'm a huge believer in the value of retaining senior staff and making it part of their responsibility set to help mentor and develop more junior staff. However, if we take at face value the argument that it is too expensive to keep these people on staff, why not explore ideas that reduce how closely correlated compensation is to seniority rather than some measure of overall value across all dimensions of contribution?
awakeasleep 8y ago
In the USA, we decided that we're willing to make that trade off. We have 'protected characteristics' and we don't hire and fire people based on those characteristics, or proxies of those characteristics. It might be less efficient for businesses, in some cases, but through the courts and our legislature, and within the bounds of our constitution we've decided it's a good trade-off for society.
- tomjen3 8y ago
  But then businesses will keep doing so secretly and indirectly, which will just hurt people who share correlating traits with the disadvantages hires, e.g women with no interest in having children.
  - jhall1468 8y ago
    I'm not sure advocating that we remove the law in order to prevent businesses from quietly breaking it is really solving the problem here.
    - tomjen3 8y ago
      At least if that was the case we would be able to quantify it, and people would know which industries it was worst in, and how much (eg. you should expect your income to peak at 42 years, save accordingly).
      - jhall1468 8y ago
        Sure, we can also legalize murder and learn a lot more about people that do it, why and a whole bunch of other data, but we don't do that for obvious reasons. This is just a less fantastical example of that. And you can see how successful their attempt at hiding it was.
      - nsgi 8y ago
        Why would age discrimination be easier to quantify if it was legal?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
tomjen3 8y ago
In the cases where you have an indirect correlation, all you have to do is make it easier to measure the source that actually causes your undesired effect. E.g if your customers assume only your male retail workers can help them with their electronics, you can make sure everybodies name badge says "Certified $PRODUCT expert". The problem is when you have a situation like this, where the protected trait is likely the cause of issue (we all get slower and less intelligent as we age), or where you have government idiots say that you can't discriminate on traits that are correlated with a protected trait. In the latter situation businesses will do so anyway, they will just do it secretly and try to cover it up.
noitsnot 8y ago
It sounds more like a budget issue more than anything else. If companies want to exploit young, cheap labor for free 'overtime' then maybe it's a business ethics problem.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
lhinds 8y ago
> One's outlook and productivity changes with time and age On what data do you make this statement? A quick cursory search shows its completely false and based on not much more than ignorance or prejudice.
- omeid2 8y ago
  Are you suggesting that there is no age-related cognitive decline? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4767530/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4767530/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4015335/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4015335/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2683339/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2683339/
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - perfmode 8y ago
    Cognitive decline is not the same as drop in productivity.
    - anticensor 8y ago
      It is correlated as aging also slows reaction. Slower reaction and worsened cognition together put a ceiling on how fast you can produce.
      - sifoobar 8y ago
        Produce what, exactly? Because anything beyond pushing a button N times per hour is going to benefit from experience, and it gets more important with task complexity. I would much rather have someone with 30 years of experience writing code I depend on than a 20-something who can type 10 times as fast.
      - tertius 8y ago
        Because you say so? Because you feel it's intuitive?
sbov 8y ago
> "I was very surprised that such a high percentage of my group was laid off, because my group was running under budget and was exceeding its performance targets." Under budget, exceeding targets, so when you say changes with time and age, do you mean gets better? Or what?
- radicalbyte 8y ago
  Clearly worse. As a consulting company IBM makes more money when their customer's projects are running over budget whilst being under performance targets.
- omeid2 8y ago
  "my group" is always the best. -- every group ever. But when I say changes with time and age, I mean the well establish notion of age-related cogitative decline and increased family responsibilities that taxes job commitment.
  - Aeolun 8y ago
    The only thing family responsibilities tax is ‘time in office’. That doesn’t correlate with commitment at all.
    - omeid2 8y ago
      I don't buy that, family responsibilities can cloud your mind all day long. Family like other social and personal responsibilities are not something that you can simply switch off.
      - Aeolun 8y ago
        In that case it’s irrelevant if those ‘responsibilities’ that clog your mind come from family or friends.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
Someone 8y ago
The same thing we do if it is indirectly correlated with, say, skin color, gender, or being named “Smith”.
TomK32 8y ago
Maybe old-timers could sell their brains with decades of knowledge and experience to the company who then implant that brain into a 20yr-old? It doesn't guarantee loyalty so the kid might be gone to the competition in two years (it thinks the avg is even less for some programmer roles) but who cares long-term?
YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
>> One's outlook and productivity changes with time and age, just like an athlete's fitness. According to the former exec's claim, the workers laid off were over 40. The following is a list of 40 athletes over 40: http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/14799377/who-calling-old-40-athletes-40-jaromir-jagr-defied-father http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/14799377/who-cal... Which should lay to rest any sweeping assumption about the fitness of athletes that are older than some arbitrary cut-off point after which it's all "downhill from there". And that's not before pointing out what a huge assumption it is that your ability to perform office work declines at the same rate as muscle fitness. Or that having say 10 years of experience in an industry is rather more valuable than having firm biceps.
- omeid2 8y ago
  "process x is temporal like y" does not suggest that they follow the exact rate or trajectory. My intention was not to suggest that cognitive skills decline the same rate as muscle fitness, though, physical fitness certainly does impact cognitive health. Nor I suggested that 40 or any age as a cut off point, but age related cognitive decline is a fact, specially in relation to complex tasks, so it is given that as people get older there will be a higher change in their productivity. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4767530/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4767530/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4015335/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4015335/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2683339/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2683339/
  - Retric 8y ago
    Cognitive function is not a single thing. Look at the highest ranked Go players and they are not nessisarily young. At the same time Starcraft players peak very yong. Business is not about twitch reflexes.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
    There are many reasons to be cautious when drawing any conclusions from the three studies you quote. The first is a neuroimaging study that is rather inconclusive and even poitns out that some cognitive abilities are thought to deteriorate with age, while others are thought to improve. The second is a discussion of various assumptions and results and asserts that the decline of cognitive abilities can be averted by engaging in certain activities. The last concludes that changes in cognitive abilities in the same individual over time do not necessarily reflect the results of aging ("maturation"). In other words, those studies do not support your assertion that "age related congitive decline is a fact". None of the studies discusses "productivity" (or "outlook" as per your earlier comment).
mikeash 8y ago
Let me ask a slightly modified version of that question: if alignment with organizational attitude and culture correlated with being white, what is to be done?
- Consultant32452 8y ago
  This is only a problem if you believe that racial bias provides real economic value to the ones doing the biasing. Otherwise, why do you care if a bunch of racists make their businesses less economically efficient? Someone else who is otherwise equal but not racist will eat their lunch with all these high quality people hired at a discount because the original group biased against them.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    That’s a nice theory but conflicts strongly with how this has actually worked in the real world.
    - Consultant32452 8y ago
      There are two axioms in my previous post: 1. Minorites are just as valuable as white workers 2. Relatively economically efficient companies tend to prosper compared to inefficient ones Which theory/axiom do you disagree with?
      - mikeash 8y ago
        There is at least one more: 3. the combination of 1 and 2 will overcome everything else and is enough to force racist companies out of business. That is the one I disagree with.
        Consultant32452 8y ago
        What is "everything else"? It sounds like trying to force people with $bad ideas to become even more wealthy and powerful by legislating they make better business decisions. That seems like the opposite of what I'd want to do.
coldtea 8y ago
>One's outlook and productivity changes with time and age, just like an athlete's fitness. Statistically, as the world currently is (even if it's due to cultural or economic reasons), it might also change with race and sex. Should companies also hire less blacks/women/etc?
scottlocklin 8y ago
"if a productivity and alignment with organization attitude and culture index correlates indirectly with (sex/sex identity/race/eye color/blood type/religion), what is to be done?" Asking the question with different nouns instead of "age" so you can see what is wrong with it.
- pluc 8y ago
  Except none of your qualifiers match what age does to an aging person. But keep pushing for political correctness where it's completely irrelevant!
  - scottlocklin 8y ago
    Citations needed: you don't know that. For all we know, FB and Google's best employees might be a bunch of straight white 30 year old dudes. Should they only hire such people?
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - Aeolun 8y ago
    It’s not about the fact that it happens gradually, as long as someone is doing their job perfectly there’s no legitimate reason to fire them for being old.

by omeid2 8y ago

nate_meurer 8y ago

I think you mean inversely. The question is a bit of a red herring. By all means, get rid of unproductive and troublesome employees. But if you try to use age as a simplistic predictive proxy for productivity or attitude, I think evidence shows that you'll fire a lot of the wrong people, as well as court the wrath of labor attorneys.

omeid2 8y ago
> I think you mean inversely. No. > But if you try to use age a simplistic predictive proxy... Well, that is obviously the wrong thing to do, but I am not sure how that relates to my question.
- jsivakumaran 8y ago
  Your comment above would make more sense had you said inversely.
- nate_meurer 8y ago
  Ok, then I have no idea what you were asking. Can you state it in a different way?
  - User23 8y ago
    Bluntly stated, young fools who work 80+ hours a week provide a greater short term return for employers than older persons who have a life and a family that also makes demands on their time.
    - smbullet 8y ago
      I don't think omeid was talking about time spent in the office but rather cognitive ability.
killaken2000 8y ago
Indirect (negative) correlation is used when something goes up but the thing under discussion goes down. I think you were thinking of inversely proportional. Searching Wikipedia, inverse correlation is also valid but I've always heard it called indirect or negative. I knew what you meant and you were on the right track.

acct1771 8y ago

Stop tying compensation to seniority, and start giving it upon completion of tasks/improvement of business...?

paganel 8y ago
The task thing is questionable, because that way you just create incentives for the people involved to introduce more (most of them un-needed) tasks into the system, tasks which will show up on the performance reviews as being completed. A lot of the senior guys solve un-created tasks, so to speak, by saying stuff like YAGNI or KISS or by eliminating potential bugs (future tasks) by pointing out that going a certain development route will create those bugs.
LoSboccacc 8y ago
> Stop tying compensation to seniority next, on hacker news: "why nobody makes children anymore"
ThenAsNow 8y ago
There already is (and has been) knee-jerk reaction to this comment, but fundamentally I think your first clause represents territory that should be explored. I'm a huge believer in the value of retaining senior staff and making it part of their responsibility set to help mentor and develop more junior staff. However, if we take at face value the argument that it is too expensive to keep these people on staff, why not explore ideas that reduce how closely correlated compensation is to seniority rather than some measure of overall value across all dimensions of contribution?

awakeasleep 8y ago

In the USA, we decided that we're willing to make that trade off. We have 'protected characteristics' and we don't hire and fire people based on those characteristics, or proxies of those characteristics. It might be less efficient for businesses, in some cases, but through the courts and our legislature, and within the bounds of our constitution we've decided it's a good trade-off for society.

tomjen3 8y ago
But then businesses will keep doing so secretly and indirectly, which will just hurt people who share correlating traits with the disadvantages hires, e.g women with no interest in having children.
- jhall1468 8y ago
  I'm not sure advocating that we remove the law in order to prevent businesses from quietly breaking it is really solving the problem here.
  - tomjen3 8y ago
    At least if that was the case we would be able to quantify it, and people would know which industries it was worst in, and how much (eg. you should expect your income to peak at 42 years, save accordingly).
    - jhall1468 8y ago
      Sure, we can also legalize murder and learn a lot more about people that do it, why and a whole bunch of other data, but we don't do that for obvious reasons. This is just a less fantastical example of that. And you can see how successful their attempt at hiding it was.
    - nsgi 8y ago
      Why would age discrimination be easier to quantify if it was legal?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

tomjen3 8y ago

In the cases where you have an indirect correlation, all you have to do is make it easier to measure the source that actually causes your undesired effect. E.g if your customers assume only your male retail workers can help them with their electronics, you can make sure everybodies name badge says "Certified $PRODUCT expert". The problem is when you have a situation like this, where the protected trait is likely the cause of issue (we all get slower and less intelligent as we age), or where you have government idiots say that you can't discriminate on traits that are correlated with a protected trait. In the latter situation businesses will do so anyway, they will just do it secretly and try to cover it up.

noitsnot 8y ago

It sounds more like a budget issue more than anything else. If companies want to exploit young, cheap labor for free 'overtime' then maybe it's a business ethics problem.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

lhinds 8y ago

> One's outlook and productivity changes with time and age On what data do you make this statement? A quick cursory search shows its completely false and based on not much more than ignorance or prejudice.

omeid2 8y ago
Are you suggesting that there is no age-related cognitive decline? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4767530/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4767530/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4015335/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4015335/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2683339/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2683339/
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- perfmode 8y ago
  Cognitive decline is not the same as drop in productivity.
  - anticensor 8y ago
    It is correlated as aging also slows reaction. Slower reaction and worsened cognition together put a ceiling on how fast you can produce.
    - sifoobar 8y ago
      Produce what, exactly? Because anything beyond pushing a button N times per hour is going to benefit from experience, and it gets more important with task complexity. I would much rather have someone with 30 years of experience writing code I depend on than a 20-something who can type 10 times as fast.
    - tertius 8y ago
      Because you say so? Because you feel it's intuitive?

sbov 8y ago

> "I was very surprised that such a high percentage of my group was laid off, because my group was running under budget and was exceeding its performance targets." Under budget, exceeding targets, so when you say changes with time and age, do you mean gets better? Or what?

radicalbyte 8y ago
Clearly worse. As a consulting company IBM makes more money when their customer's projects are running over budget whilst being under performance targets.
omeid2 8y ago
"my group" is always the best. -- every group ever. But when I say changes with time and age, I mean the well establish notion of age-related cogitative decline and increased family responsibilities that taxes job commitment.
- Aeolun 8y ago
  The only thing family responsibilities tax is ‘time in office’. That doesn’t correlate with commitment at all.
  - omeid2 8y ago
    I don't buy that, family responsibilities can cloud your mind all day long. Family like other social and personal responsibilities are not something that you can simply switch off.
    - Aeolun 8y ago
      In that case it’s irrelevant if those ‘responsibilities’ that clog your mind come from family or friends.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

Someone 8y ago

The same thing we do if it is indirectly correlated with, say, skin color, gender, or being named “Smith”.

TomK32 8y ago

Maybe old-timers could sell their brains with decades of knowledge and experience to the company who then implant that brain into a 20yr-old? It doesn't guarantee loyalty so the kid might be gone to the competition in two years (it thinks the avg is even less for some programmer roles) but who cares long-term?

YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago

>> One's outlook and productivity changes with time and age, just like an athlete's fitness. According to the former exec's claim, the workers laid off were over 40. The following is a list of 40 athletes over 40: http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/14799377/who-calling-old-40-athletes-40-jaromir-jagr-defied-father http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/14799377/who-cal... Which should lay to rest any sweeping assumption about the fitness of athletes that are older than some arbitrary cut-off point after which it's all "downhill from there". And that's not before pointing out what a huge assumption it is that your ability to perform office work declines at the same rate as muscle fitness. Or that having say 10 years of experience in an industry is rather more valuable than having firm biceps.

omeid2 8y ago
"process x is temporal like y" does not suggest that they follow the exact rate or trajectory. My intention was not to suggest that cognitive skills decline the same rate as muscle fitness, though, physical fitness certainly does impact cognitive health. Nor I suggested that 40 or any age as a cut off point, but age related cognitive decline is a fact, specially in relation to complex tasks, so it is given that as people get older there will be a higher change in their productivity. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4767530/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4767530/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4015335/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4015335/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2683339/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2683339/
- Retric 8y ago
  Cognitive function is not a single thing. Look at the highest ranked Go players and they are not nessisarily young. At the same time Starcraft players peak very yong. Business is not about twitch reflexes.
- YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
  There are many reasons to be cautious when drawing any conclusions from the three studies you quote. The first is a neuroimaging study that is rather inconclusive and even poitns out that some cognitive abilities are thought to deteriorate with age, while others are thought to improve. The second is a discussion of various assumptions and results and asserts that the decline of cognitive abilities can be averted by engaging in certain activities. The last concludes that changes in cognitive abilities in the same individual over time do not necessarily reflect the results of aging ("maturation"). In other words, those studies do not support your assertion that "age related congitive decline is a fact". None of the studies discusses "productivity" (or "outlook" as per your earlier comment).

mikeash 8y ago

Let me ask a slightly modified version of that question: if alignment with organizational attitude and culture correlated with being white, what is to be done?

Consultant32452 8y ago
This is only a problem if you believe that racial bias provides real economic value to the ones doing the biasing. Otherwise, why do you care if a bunch of racists make their businesses less economically efficient? Someone else who is otherwise equal but not racist will eat their lunch with all these high quality people hired at a discount because the original group biased against them.
- mikeash 8y ago
  That’s a nice theory but conflicts strongly with how this has actually worked in the real world.
  - Consultant32452 8y ago
    There are two axioms in my previous post: 1. Minorites are just as valuable as white workers 2. Relatively economically efficient companies tend to prosper compared to inefficient ones Which theory/axiom do you disagree with?
    - mikeash 8y ago
      There is at least one more: 3. the combination of 1 and 2 will overcome everything else and is enough to force racist companies out of business. That is the one I disagree with.
      - Consultant32452 8y ago
        What is "everything else"? It sounds like trying to force people with $bad ideas to become even more wealthy and powerful by legislating they make better business decisions. That seems like the opposite of what I'd want to do.

coldtea 8y ago

>One's outlook and productivity changes with time and age, just like an athlete's fitness. Statistically, as the world currently is (even if it's due to cultural or economic reasons), it might also change with race and sex. Should companies also hire less blacks/women/etc?

scottlocklin 8y ago

"if a productivity and alignment with organization attitude and culture index correlates indirectly with (sex/sex identity/race/eye color/blood type/religion), what is to be done?" Asking the question with different nouns instead of "age" so you can see what is wrong with it.

pluc 8y ago
Except none of your qualifiers match what age does to an aging person. But keep pushing for political correctness where it's completely irrelevant!
- scottlocklin 8y ago
  Citations needed: you don't know that. For all we know, FB and Google's best employees might be a bunch of straight white 30 year old dudes. Should they only hire such people?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- Aeolun 8y ago
  It’s not about the fact that it happens gradually, as long as someone is doing their job perfectly there’s no legitimate reason to fire them for being old.