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Chinese tech firms are throwing out applicants over the age of 30
- jerf 8y agoWell, as ways to ensure that China never really becomes competitive technically go, this seems to be one of the faster ones. I mean, the idea that people get better with experience... ludicrous! Beyond ludicrous! Unpatriotic! Not entirely sure I buy it as a industry-wide phenomenon, though. I'd guess this is a particular subset of the industry or something, just as it is in the West.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Buttons840 8y agoThere is some karma here at least, as those 20 year olds who establish a culture of age discrimination will themselves become old and be discriminated against.
- jerf 8y agoMy go-to argument against age discrimination on those occasions when I see a ~20-25-year-old in my area spout the idea that the old fogies just can't keep up with those hot young whippersnappers is to ask them point blank, "do you honestly see yourself not getting any better and learning anything in the next ten or twenty years? You seriously believe that you are, right now, as good as you will ever be?" It occurs to me as I write this out right now that I should also add "If so, please put me in contact with your manager as I'm sure they will be overjoyed to hear that you do not ever expect to deserve a raise, and, indeed, expect to be paid progressively less over the next few years as your skills rot away and you become steadily less effective." It doesn't help that as near as I can tell, the undergraduate computer science education has barely changed in the 20-25 years since I took it. This is generally a good thing, not a criticism; it shouldn't be chasing every fresh hot trend, that's not its job. But if the fresh young whippersnappers are supposed to be picking up the hot skillz that will put this 20+-year veteran to shame, it's not clear to me exactly where they are supposed to be getting these hot skillz from. It certainly isn't from their undergraduate education.
- geoka9 8y agoThey'll all be rich by that age and won't need to work.
- jandrewrogers 8y agoWhat could possibly go wrong when your hiring processes preclude most people with in-depth real-world experience? Learning lessons the hard way is expensive.
- cheez 8y agoPeople who think this way are missing the forest for the trees. The trees: fire anyone above 30. The forest: Many development processes that required experience are being outsourced to companies like Amazon, Google, via their cloud computing platforms. It is now possible to read some docs, follow some tuts and have a service that scales. If the inside is ugly, no one cares. That's the forest. The problem is that this is how management thinks all over the world because it is short-term profitable. Find another industry, seriously.
- WrtCdEvrydy 8y ago> Find another industry Nah, roll in, make some money, fuck off in two-three hours.
- steve76 8y agoThe inside leaks credit card information. Google and Amazon ban you for life. You never run a business again. I care very much about something like that.
- rightbyte 8y agoThat's a universal problem not just programming. Imagine if sleezy fast food restaurants raised the wages abit so they could keep employees longer before they go for a 'real' job. But no, instead you set the wage so that anyone with a choice leaves. I think the main reason for these places that are mainly hiring young programmers are that they are way less expensive if you count in unpaid overtime you can force them into. Older programmers that agree to that are desperate and not sought after anyway. Young programmers need experience so that they can become older programmers and agree to it.
- JustSomeNobody 8y agoThis works if you're selling a $20 IoT device and need a cloud access. This doesn't cover all development, though. There are still industries that need people with domain knowledge and experience. You may not make FAANG money, but you won't lose your job on your 30th birthday, either.
- terryschiavo22 8y agoMore punitive OT laws help discourage this kind of behavior. You'd seek out more experienced workers if it meant avoiding the huge salaries you'd otherwise be paying younger workers working large swaths of OT.
- nudpiedo 8y agoThe rest of the developed world is aging, I guess each society has to leverage their strengths.
- marcinzm 8y agoAs I understand it, China is aging more than the developed world rather than less. The one child policy has led to a massive disparity between generation sizes with proportionally fewer young people.
- jackfrodo 8y agoI recently was talking to a libertarian friend about this kind of thing (specifically the gender wage gap). He argued that if there were a group of people getting paid less for the same work, then any good business would only hire people like that, because it's cheaper. Obviously this isn't the case, but I do find it curious that the market doesn't seem to prove a strong enough incentive for the people making hiring decisions to overcome their biases.
- minikites 8y agoAlmost no person even resembles the "rational actor" we learn about in Econ 101. Environment, unconscious biases, and conscious biases have a large influence on most people's behavior.
- karlkatzke 8y agoLibertarians are totally right ... when they only consider certain variables that are favorable to their arguments. When you combine "wages are lower for women" with "the free market," you get "businesses will insist on hiring more women any way they can." But when you add in "techbro bias against women (and mutual disgust at having to work with the techbro fraternity with constant harassment)" and reference again "women in tech get paid less" you get fewer women available in a market (because a free market goes both ways) and less chance of women being hired on despite HR and management constantly pushing for more women.
- anonlapwarmer 8y agoLibertarians are insane utopians who got their ideas from the Koch brothers' Cato Institute and a fiction writer who was damaged goods from an extreme overreaction to totalitarianism masquerading as communism.
- thorwasdfasdf 8y agoYou are theoretically correct. To some degree that is already happening. But, I would imagine, the gap isn't large enough for it to overcome other factors: companies aren't always able to make perfect hiring decisions, there's a great deal of error involved. Alot of times highering decisions are just made based on the interviewer's feelings, or sometimes just the order in which the candidates were presented. I've seen situations where the best candidate was interviewed first and failed (just because he was first). Then by the time the company got around to finish interviewing 5 more, several weeks later, the interviewees got so tired of interviewing they just accepted the last candidate, even though in my opinion there had been several better ones earlier.
- duxup 8y agoA little bit like the US maybe? I was already in a technical field, was laid off after a company buyout, I changed careers and took a coding bootcamp. A few like minded classmates and I would compare notes after we did interviews. The other two older guys and I got a lot of "culture" related questions. One dude was actually told by the recruiter that they were worried he was too old, he was surprised they'd actually say it to him so he asked ... and the recruiter repeated herself happily. Meanwhile the younger classmates reported hearing nothing about "company culture" in any of their interviews... The description of culture was often pretty benign ("we like to have fun" and so forth) but I couldn't help but wonder if it wasn't just a placeholder for some bias. On one occasion I got a description of "we're a young office".
- sf_rob 8y agoWow, I've received frighteningly little interviewer training, but the "things to not say/consider" talking point has been reiterated strongly. That said, I can't say I'm surprised.
- sevensor 8y agoI once sat next to an HR manager as he asked a room full of entry-level candidates who they thought should win the next presidential election. The woman from HR who was sitting on his other side turned and gave him a horrified look. A minute later when he tried to ask about their religion, she shut him down.
- duxup 8y agoAt a big company a while back I sent an email asking about parental leave. I got an email back from very young HR girl who seemed perfectly nice... but clearly didn't understand the policy as she mixed up a lot of terms and concepts in her response. But that wasn't really a big deal, I was used to HR reps at that company not understanding anything about benefits. The kicker was that her profile picture in the email was her in the company bathroom, taking one of those "hold the camera up in the air to accentuate cleavage" type photos. I didn't even want to keep her her email open too long...
- reilly3000 8y agoYounger workers are less likely to take moral positions on company activities. I worked at a mortgage lead generation site in the 2000's and bought everything management sold. I can't see myself doing anything like that at this stage in my life.
- marcinzm 8y agoAt the same time older employees have more to lose by protesting and getting fired. They may have health issues, kids to support, mortgage to pay, etc. They also tend to be more conservative so they'd protest less against certain things. I'd argue that protesting is tied to how easy it's to find a new job which tends to be easier with experience.
- rxhernandez 8y agoI mean I avoid the weapons industry like the plague as I dont want there to be a strong chance my work will be used to kill anyone. I also dont think I've ever ate up anything management has told me that would begin to go against what I morally believed. Maybe some parents raise their kids to be a lot more skeptical of the world? Moreover, it seems unintuitive that someone with a mortgage and kids to feed could be more discerning about where their paycheck comes from.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago> Younger workers are less likely to take moral positions on company activities. Is that actually the case? When I think of protests, I don't think of the elderly.
- yardie 8y agoMy experience so far, the younger crowd are more likely to take a moral position. But, whoa, are they woefully unprepared for any kind of organized protest.
- luckylion 8y agoThis. Older people have families and long-term obligations. They usually can't afford to lose their job over politics or ethics.
- 0815test 8y agoLooks like SV is exporting techbro ageism to China, this will surely help with the trade deficit!
- mzo123231 8y agoBasically there are no senior developers in those tech firms. They are going to be running around in circles. I couldn't think of a worst idea.
- logfromblammo 8y agoUnfortunately, the current US immigration policy has made it unlikely that US tech firms would be able to take advantage of any prejudicial ageism bias in China. It'd be nice to entice them to resettle in cities other than those on the west coast, too, but that might be a local culture problem, less amenable to remediation by legislation.
- qaq 8y agoMajority of large tech firms have dev. offices in EU and India so they sure can take advantage of this.
- thorwasdfasdf 8y agoIt's all symptoms of the same problem: a vast oversupply of educated talent. To some degree we have it here to in the US, but it's much greater in China. With an oversupply of labor/talent, companies can be arbitrarily selective. In China, seasonal workers coming into the city actually earn more than college degree holders because there's just so many people with degrees. We something similar starting to happen in the US, as more and more people get bachelors degrees, those people get compensated less and less.
- Loughla 8y ago>We something similar starting to happen in the US, as more and more people get bachelors degrees, those people get compensated less and less. Maybe 10 years ago you could say this. But today the statement needs to solidly be: >This is what the state of affairs has been in the US for years now. More people got bachelor's and were compensated less and less. More positions that previously required a high school degree now arbitrarily require a bachelor's. Students are flocking to trade schools in record numbers, and colleges/universities are almost all in a downward spiral right now.
- TheGRS 8y agoMaybe as a broad category of all employees, but if anything there aren't enough software developers in the US. > Employment of software developers is projected to grow 24 percent from 2016 to 2026, much faster than the average for all occupations. Employment of applications developers is projected to grow 31 percent, and employment of systems developers is projected to grow 11 percent. The main reason for the growth in both applications developers and systems developers is a large increase in the demand for computer software. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/software-developers.htm#tab-6 https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...
- superhuzza 8y agoI don't think that's accurate: "The proportion of high school students who earned three or more credits in occupational education — typically an indication that they're interested in careers in the skilled trades — has fallen from 1 in 4 in 1990 to 1 in 5 now, according to the U.S. Department of Education." https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/04/25/605092520/high-paying-trade-jobs-sit-empty-while-high-school-grads-line-up-for-university https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/04/25/605092520/high-pa...
- trhway 8y agothe same reason why everybody drafts/conscripts youngsters into the army - the youngsters dont ask questions, dont hold theirs superiors responsible and with great enthusiasm do what they told to do. A very powerful sledgehammer style tool. Obviously been there myself - not the army, that i dodged by the way of ROTC (USSR/Russia), i mean i've been to that place of stupid(well, looking back it looks that way even though it is in significant part a result of inexperience) unquestioning enthusiasm.
- anonlapwarmer 8y agoWorkers forget they're basically underpaid chattel.
- AFascistWorld 8y agoConsidering what big tech firms do in China mostly is copying other people's ideas using their own guys then drive them out of business, cheaper is better.
- syntaxing 8y agoInterestingly enough,I'm having the opposite problem here in the US... I've been applying to multiple tech firms for hardware roles and keep on getting rejected since they are almost all trying to hire senior positions rather than mid-level at this time.
- bluGill 8y agowhen you have been around for a while you learn that senior people know something worth paying extra for. Then you start to demand only that until you discover all the senior people retire close to the same time and you don't have any organization depth coming up behind them. Which is why when my department asked to hire a senior person to replace someone who transferred on leadership made us hire an entry level person to train up (then the next person left and we were allowed to hire a senior person).
- IWeldMelons 8y agoBecause hardware is very conservative side of the hi-tech. CMOS NAND gates did not change much since 1970-s, they just got faster.
- Bukhmanizer 8y agoWhy are the standards of evidence so much lower for trends in Chinese and Japanese culture? First of all, the title of the article isn’t supported by the content. Secondly, the evidence of the title appears to be a single unnamed recruiter. Third, of course a vast majority of people in tech in China are going to be young. Do people not remember the economic situation of China 20-30 years ago?
- mythrwy 8y agoAll firms? Some firms? Most firms? The biggest firms? China is pretty big place. Not that I don't believe it because things like that appear to happen informally in the US as well, but article would have been better with some supporting numbers.
- Jonnax 8y agoIt's funny how executive leadership never consider themselves too old for the job.
- sneakernets 8y agoSo experience doesn't matter anymore? Why even bother?
- madengr 8y agoYou can always work in the military industrial complex. Lot’s of gray hair, including myself. Most under 35 don’t know WTF they are doing anyway; sometimes amusing to watch them flop, then $$$ for me to fix their mess.
- itissid 8y agoThis would make a good study in Economics: 1. Given Large supply of Developers as compared to Demand. 1.1 What causes Poor Software Quality Control and Poor hiring practices(resume padding or tech hiring offloaded to non techies)? Are things like Long/Odd Working hours, Poor wages(race to the bottom), Talent flight and High attrition rate, Poor productivity etc just enforcing a vicious cycle till things hit some sort of equilibrium(software that just works and is barely maintainable and business margin is based on things like PPP between countries)? 1.2 How do good things come about; Like Decent/Good Software Quality Control, Good Hiring practices? Perhaps these cases have just okayish wages but poor working hours/balance? And there is an implicit bias towards a Younger talent pool because of focus on productivity. 2. Given short supply of workers as compared to Demand I have seen similarities to 1.1 and 1.2, the only difference is that people have options and always gravitates towards better employers and work conditions; the wages are overall much better than case 1 period. There are still many interesting economic questions to be answered here, but likely different, more specialized ones as compared to (1).
- alphamale619 8y ago"They’re not able to focus on the high-intensity work" That is true. most 30 and over people with work experience know devoting 9-12 hours a day to a company is not worth it. While, a young engineer right out of college doesn't know any better. Burn them out after 2-3 years. rinse and repeat. The main problem is employees are "at-will." Meaning they can be fired at anytime without reason. companies have no incentive to not overwork employees. Laws regarding "at-will" need to be changed
- jondubois 8y agoIn the future, the majority of the world's population will be either hackers or mafia members. It will be a complete breakdown of human values. World governments will probably be forced to legalize crime. If we remove meritocracy, we'll end up with anarchy.
- known 8y ago"If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." --Reagan
- thrownaway954 8y agoMaybe for programmers, but for DBAs, Sys and Network Admins, most companies want older candidates in my experience.
- mistrial9 8y agoconfirm -- recent first-person account by an American living in Vietnam capital city .. tech dev ads explicitly ask for under-30
- atum47 8y agoThat kinda sucks. I was recently approached by two Google employees, one of them said he likes my projects on GitHub, that I'm Google material and if I would like for him to refer me to a job there. I was very excited, of course. Did all they asked, applied for 3 positions as the usual on their process and managed to not even pass to the first interview. I'm 34 and going to college for 2nd time, graduating this year. Maybe this isn't my case, but I can't help to wonder.
- purplezooey 8y agoI don't like what we're doing to people over 30/40 at all. How long will this last? Is it a global fad of some kind?
- charliebrownau 8y agoNo different then the West currenty If your over 35 Male STRAIGHT and support Democracy chances are you wont get employed in companies worth over 1M dollars
- charliebrownau 8y agoAn huge amount of men are leaving IT in Australia and migrating to jobs like Construction Electrical Trades Driving - trucks/cab/uber/etc In AUSTRALIA you can get AUD$32.50 per hour driving a truck or you can work your arse off in IT for AUD$28.50 for WANKERS that refuse to spend money on gear and backup correctly
- dang 8y agoThis article is both shallow and basically blogspam of https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-02/china-s-tech-industry-wants-youth-not-experience https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-02/china-s-t.... Note that the site guidelines include: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html