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If 70 year olds really are less productive software engineers than single Red Bull-fueled 22 year olds (on average), and you thus end up hiring less 70 year old

If 70 year olds really are less productive software engineers than single Red Bull-fueled 22 year olds (on average), and you thus end up hiring less 70 year olds, is that really discrimination? I get the article has stories from older people that seem to suggest they are well-qualified for the job and literally just their age number seems to lose them the job, which of course would be discriminatory. But the law suits of companies based on statistical analyses of the number of older people in the company made it seem like a company can be sued for not having an expected distribution of ages but it’s not clear what assumptions are baked into these analyses (ie is it assumed a priori that all ages are equally productive). Certainly older people are more productive in certain contexts than others (eg I’ll take an older more experienced surgeon over the new junior attending any day, but I’ll bet on the young person in a football match or tasks that require a lot of cognitive flexibility).

bsder 7y ago
> If 70 year olds really are less productive software engineers than single Red Bull-fueled 22 year olds (on average) That's a really big "if", and seems to have no supporting evidence. Let me turn this around into an only slightly less unsupported statement: Youngsters in programming are desirable because most programming has become a shitty job where you need obedient people just slightly smarter than average but no smarter. Genuinely smart people are actually unwelcome in most programming jobs. Programming now is mostly plumbing garbage data between crappy APIs that change every 6 months according to whim and fashion and you don't need smart people for that. In that environment, any knowledge you learn has a half-life of 3 months and you are solving the same problems over and over in different languages and APIs. Or, alternatively, most VC money is chasing scalable "fad" social businesses, and having youngsters is useful because they are willing to expend enormous amount of money following fads while attempting to get laid. Again, knowledge half-life is under 3 months. People making actual money and solving business problems seem to have no problems with hiring older people.
hsudheh 7y ago
“...less productive software engineers than single Red Bull-fueled 22 year olds (on average)...” If you think a bunch of 22 yo people running around in circles creating technical debt and missing the point of features to get an over engineered pos out the door that you’ll spend way more on to ripout the 20,000 npm librarians and crashing severs because “how does memory work” and “I wrote sooooo many lines of code” - yeah, you’re part of the problem.
xd 7y ago
"(eg I’ll take an older more experienced surgeon over the new junior attending any day, but I’ll bet on the young person in a football match or tasks that require a lot of cognitive flexibility)" You seem to be contradicting yourself there, why you would you think an older surgeon lacks cognitive flexibility?
- deleted 7y ago
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- outlace 7y ago
  Not a contradiction. Surgery is a skill honed by repetition and experience over many years. A cognitive task like mathematical theorem proving can be mastered by a bright teenager in much, much less time. I suspect as you age your Bayesian priors become stronger and stronger so all new data only mildly updates your priors. Young people have very weak priors, so new data can easily affect their thinking. Anecdotally, my mom has had a smart phone for more than 5 years but she still has just memorized certain functions she knows how to do like texting and placing a call. Ask her to do anything else and she throws up her hands. My 2 year old daughter, while not able to text or place calls, has a much more intuitive grasp of how the phone works and has been able to learn a lot of functionality on her own. Or another example is that I've noticed from my (albeit limited) experience that all the surgeons I've worked with who used robotic surgical systems were younger (30s-40s). Anecdotally but I think there's a pattern there. Younger people tend to be more open to learning something radically new. So while virtually all skills benefit from repetition and experience, some skills require more cognitive flexibility (ability to forget what you already know and start fresh) and demand frequent learning and re-learning.
- deleted 7y ago
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- neilv 7y ago
  Because "developers get dumb by 30" is an HN meme that just won't go away. So every new batch of impressionable 20 year-olds hears it, at the same time VCs and big corps are telling them "you're so smart, now just submit to this series of hazing rituals."
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
bonestamp2 7y ago
> is that really discrimination? Along similar lines, we have a decent amount of senior (read "older") people at our company that are well paid. But, most of the work we do can be done by less experienced people who are much cheaper. That almost always means they are young. We don't discriminate based on age, but if you just looked at the ages of people that we mostly hire then that data would look like we're discriminating based on age when age is not part of the decision at all.
- manfredo 7y ago
  This is what I observe as well. If you have job that really just boils down to hooking up event listeners in java-script and fiddling with html and css until it looks they way the designers want it then experience beyond competency isn't really all that important. On principle, a company should hire an older dev with decades of experience if they're willing to work at rates that reflect the job they're doing. But devs with decades of experience are probably looking for work that is more complex and pays better.
HillaryBriss 7y ago
this has to be viewed in the overall context of employment law and its purpose in society. we have anti discrimination laws not because the government is trying to give each and every corporation all the fuel it needs to become devilishly efficient. we have anti discrimination laws to increase equality and create a more even distribution of wealth and opportunity despite disadvantages imposed upon applicants by circumstance. also, the government can be viewed as having an interest in keeping people employed in general so that they do not become dependent upon government for sustenance.

bsder 7y ago

> If 70 year olds really are less productive software engineers than single Red Bull-fueled 22 year olds (on average) That's a really big "if", and seems to have no supporting evidence. Let me turn this around into an only slightly less unsupported statement: Youngsters in programming are desirable because most programming has become a shitty job where you need obedient people just slightly smarter than average but no smarter. Genuinely smart people are actually unwelcome in most programming jobs. Programming now is mostly plumbing garbage data between crappy APIs that change every 6 months according to whim and fashion and you don't need smart people for that. In that environment, any knowledge you learn has a half-life of 3 months and you are solving the same problems over and over in different languages and APIs. Or, alternatively, most VC money is chasing scalable "fad" social businesses, and having youngsters is useful because they are willing to expend enormous amount of money following fads while attempting to get laid. Again, knowledge half-life is under 3 months. People making actual money and solving business problems seem to have no problems with hiring older people.

hsudheh 7y ago

“...less productive software engineers than single Red Bull-fueled 22 year olds (on average)...” If you think a bunch of 22 yo people running around in circles creating technical debt and missing the point of features to get an over engineered pos out the door that you’ll spend way more on to ripout the 20,000 npm librarians and crashing severs because “how does memory work” and “I wrote sooooo many lines of code” - yeah, you’re part of the problem.

xd 7y ago

"(eg I’ll take an older more experienced surgeon over the new junior attending any day, but I’ll bet on the young person in a football match or tasks that require a lot of cognitive flexibility)" You seem to be contradicting yourself there, why you would you think an older surgeon lacks cognitive flexibility?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
outlace 7y ago
Not a contradiction. Surgery is a skill honed by repetition and experience over many years. A cognitive task like mathematical theorem proving can be mastered by a bright teenager in much, much less time. I suspect as you age your Bayesian priors become stronger and stronger so all new data only mildly updates your priors. Young people have very weak priors, so new data can easily affect their thinking. Anecdotally, my mom has had a smart phone for more than 5 years but she still has just memorized certain functions she knows how to do like texting and placing a call. Ask her to do anything else and she throws up her hands. My 2 year old daughter, while not able to text or place calls, has a much more intuitive grasp of how the phone works and has been able to learn a lot of functionality on her own. Or another example is that I've noticed from my (albeit limited) experience that all the surgeons I've worked with who used robotic surgical systems were younger (30s-40s). Anecdotally but I think there's a pattern there. Younger people tend to be more open to learning something radically new. So while virtually all skills benefit from repetition and experience, some skills require more cognitive flexibility (ability to forget what you already know and start fresh) and demand frequent learning and re-learning.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
neilv 7y ago
Because "developers get dumb by 30" is an HN meme that just won't go away. So every new batch of impressionable 20 year-olds hears it, at the same time VCs and big corps are telling them "you're so smart, now just submit to this series of hazing rituals."

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

bonestamp2 7y ago

> is that really discrimination? Along similar lines, we have a decent amount of senior (read "older") people at our company that are well paid. But, most of the work we do can be done by less experienced people who are much cheaper. That almost always means they are young. We don't discriminate based on age, but if you just looked at the ages of people that we mostly hire then that data would look like we're discriminating based on age when age is not part of the decision at all.

manfredo 7y ago
This is what I observe as well. If you have job that really just boils down to hooking up event listeners in java-script and fiddling with html and css until it looks they way the designers want it then experience beyond competency isn't really all that important. On principle, a company should hire an older dev with decades of experience if they're willing to work at rates that reflect the job they're doing. But devs with decades of experience are probably looking for work that is more complex and pays better.

HillaryBriss 7y ago

this has to be viewed in the overall context of employment law and its purpose in society. we have anti discrimination laws not because the government is trying to give each and every corporation all the fuel it needs to become devilishly efficient. we have anti discrimination laws to increase equality and create a more even distribution of wealth and opportunity despite disadvantages imposed upon applicants by circumstance. also, the government can be viewed as having an interest in keeping people employed in general so that they do not become dependent upon government for sustenance.