7 ms·

You're Too Old for That: Age Discrimination in Japan Tech

66 points by pwim 3y ago

coldcode 3y ago
If this is true, given their birth rate, they will have to change, or run out of people to do things.
- jalapenos 3y ago
  A reminder Japan's birthrate isn't a special case: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_f... Same as Spain and Jamaica, higher than China and Korea.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - brailsafe 3y ago
    Closer to Canada than Canada is to the U.S.
  - zeroCalories 3y ago
    You probably want to look at overall population growth, as many countries have young immigrants that contribute to their growth.
    - jalapenos 3y ago
      No, I don't. I'm specifically commenting on the Japan birthrate trope they reiterated.
      - zeroCalories 3y ago
        I thought the topic was about countries running out of workers. Western countries are doing fine, as they're able to import workers.
        phendrenad2 3y ago
        There's also the question of what a country even is anymore, other than a company that collects taxes when goods or money move across an arbitrary border, in exchange for using its brand image.
neilv 3y ago
On age discrimination closer to home for US techbros... Pretty early in one warm-fuzzy FAANG, around the time a friend of mine finished a big-name CS-ish advanced degree, and he was at an event where the FAANG was recruiting. It might've been a campus event. At the event, he happened to overhear some of the 20-something recruiting representatives of the FAANG, making fun of a candidate they'd interviewed for being "old". I didn't ask, but, based on the way he said it, he might've been the one they were making fun of. (Then again, he's always defending others, and might've just been very upset on someone else's behalf. Though, if he'd been defending someone else, he probably would've ripped those representatives a new one, at least three different ways.) I think he was still in his 30s, despite two successful earlier careers (one as an old school tech-ish entrepreneur). He went to the gym and was fit, but he looked like what he was: a kid from humble upbringings, who'd seen some rough situations, including being gay when and where that was not OK, and had pulled himself up by his bootstraps, to success despite all that. And while also doing a lot of activism to help some of the most disadvantaged and persecuted, when it was unfashionable. He showed some of that weathering, and -- I suspect this might've been a barrier with that group -- didn't look like an affluent Palo Alto recent-grad. So, "old". Or, if those airhead representatives had had HR training, they would've called it "culture fit". Which is doubly ironic in his case, since, in principle, he was pretty much a poster-child for the warm-fuzzy FAANG's PR: socioeconomically-diverse, cross-disciplinary, whole-self, make-the-world-better, with LGBTQ+ sprinkles on top. He seemed very disappointed in those representatives of the FAANG, and had some choice words about who that FAANG "was hiring now". And in the couple decades since, he never did go there, even though, on paper, it would've been the obvious choice at multiple points of his career accomplishments.
swader999 3y ago
In practical terms, I've never been asked my age in an interview. At some point I'm going to prune my experience if I have to.
- phendrenad2 3y ago
  Interviewing continues while on the job. People have been put on layoff lists, "encouraged" to quit, and passed over for promotion based on age, too. People have take these cases to court but it's not easy to prove.
- whatyesaid 3y ago
  Age is pretty easily guessable by degree dates and your appearance, they don't need to ask it explicitly.
  - Aeolun 3y ago
    Maybe at some point it’s better to leave off your degree? Your 20 years of experience are a lot more important (and the 10 before those irrelevant).
    - tom_ 3y ago
      I did this once, after working for 15 years. Maybe that wasn't long enough? First question in the interview: whether I had a degree.
    - swader999 3y ago
      I could audit a class and put that as the date. Still live near the same uni I graduated from.
  - Retric 3y ago
    Is there some reason to add degree dates? I removed them as clutter.
  - tarxvf 3y ago
    More than that, too. I bet you could guess my age within 2 years with solely a list of technology I've used. I don't think it would even have to be sorted by date.
wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
You know what japan always does though? They always respond to applications. Theres no instant automated rejection email. Theres no getting ghosted by 90% of companies. Pay is bad though.
- shiroiuma 3y ago
  The pay (for tech jobs) isn't that bad compared to other peer nations. It's bad everywhere, compared to the US, where salaries are much, much higher than pretty much everyplace else, except possibly Switzerland. However, the cost of living is much lower in Japan than in the large tech-hub cities in the US (and probably even mid-tier cities). Life in the US is really expensive these days.
  - sureglymop 3y ago
    Compared to the US, tech salaries in Switzerland are pretty bad unless you work for a big US tech company that has their hq here. However, salaries in general are high. Tech salaries are just not significantly higher like in the US.
- barbazoo 3y ago
  > Pay is bad though I wonder if that is in any way correlated to this: > Gov't study finds only 3,065 homeless people in Japan https://japantoday.com/category/national/gov%27t-study-finds-only-3-065-homeless-people-in-japan https://japantoday.com/category/national/gov%27t-study-finds...
  - TapWaterBandit 3y ago
    The full quote is: > Last Friday, Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare released the results of an annual study of the number of homeless people *in the country’s parks and riverside areas.* So this isn't the full count of homeless, just the ones living in specific park areas.
    - shiroiuma 3y ago
Aeolun 3y ago
Hmm, I’ve had fresh people hired into management positions because that was age appropriate, never mind that those people were not interested in managing and had only one or two token reports.
blindriver 3y ago
Japan requires photos of woman on their resumes, and their age. Japanese employers don't like hiring women who are in their child-bearing ages because they might get pregnant. Say what you want about the US, but the level of protection workers have is so much better than most other countries.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- slily 3y ago
  They don't "require photos of woman", passport-style portrait photos are standard period. It's really no different from LinkedIn being the standard in Western countries where you're suspicious if you don't have a personal photo on your profile and where you can just as easily be discriminated against based on your looks or whatever other criteria you can think of. The only difference is that they'll use euphemisms or outright bullshit you, if they even bother getting back to you about your application.
- jalapenos 3y ago
  Bit disingenuous wording - they don't exclude men from photos & age. The US has summary firing. In Japan if you're a permanent employee you can reasonably expect to remain so. From the people pissing in bottles at Amazon your protections don't sound any better. Hiring discrimination against child bearing aged women is universal - it's just in the US they have to be more careful how they do it.
  - gyomu 3y ago
    Yep. I once had the CEO of an early stage, venture backed SF startup I worked for confide to me: “you know, every time we interview a woman in her late 20s/early 30s, I just have to wonder if she’ll take maternity leave 6 months in to working with us. As a startup we just can’t afford that”. Of course the public face of the company was all about fighting inequality, supporting diversity, etc.
    - 3y ago
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
In the company I worked for, it actually went the other way, from the US. There were levels and positions that were only available to employees of certain chronological ages (or above). I remember doing some fancy footwork, trying to get particularly bright younger engineers into positions of greater responsibility. They did force you to retire at 60, though. I suspect that is an artifact of their "full employment" stance. I’ll bet they are revisiting that, now, as the population is actually declining.
- zeroCalories 3y ago
  If we're working on a serious project(not tinder for dogs), I want to staff my senior positions with people that have tons of experience, not someone super bright. More broadly, I think the problem with age discrimination is a problem with engineers that have 30 years of experience doing unimpressive things. For an IC code monkey I would definitely prefer someone younger with a lot of energy and potential to grow. Not saying that I think age discrimination is okay, but that's too the reality of how people feel.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
    Preaching to the choir, here. If you know much about me, you know that SV’s ageism is one of my biggest peeves. I feel that many of these jurassic-scale disasters, we hear about, are likely the direct result of inexperienced, impulsive, decisions, made with no adults In the room. I just feel that each employee should be managed as an individual; an attitude that doesn’t mesh well, with today’s business culture.
tetrisgm 3y ago
In the next 10 to 15 years, tech is going to have a lot of millennial who reach 50+. We'll have a similar challenge in the US where tech culture leans towards hyping youth, and the new reality.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Luckily, there’s going to be a lot less youth (compressing demographic pyramid), forcing businesses to accommodate older workers if they want labor.
  - taude 3y ago
    nah, they'll just continue moving it offshore.
    - simonsarris 3y ago
      I have bad news about the demographic pyramid of nearly every country...
      - thfuran 3y ago
        Africa exists.
        coldtea 3y ago
        Well, I have bad news about the technological preparedness and infrastracture of almost all African countries. Except if you mean outside IT hires.
- cubefox 3y ago
  If the AI progress in the next 10 to 15 years will be like the AI progress in the last 10 to 15 years, tech culture will no longer hype youth anyway, or human employees in general.
  - 3y ago
andrewstuart 3y ago
You’ll never know if you’re being discriminated against due to age. Not here in Australia anyway, no one would ever say out loud. You just don’t get selected. I did go for a job recently where we had a great phone interview and the guy essentially said “everything looks great we just need to meet in person” and when we met in person I visibly saw his expression change. Something about my appearance, either age or weight or both. He emailed no thanks after.
- alephnan 3y ago
  This is a case where statistics could prove of systemic discrimination and statistical anomalies
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - bigstrat2003 3y ago
    They can prove statistical anomalies, sure. But no amount of statistics can prove discrimination (contrary to popular belief these days).
    - Terr_ 3y ago
      > But no amount of statistics can prove By that logic [0] no amount of data can prove anything, and the label "unproven" becomes meaningless. (Especially if the twist-ending is that you're trapped in a dream and this conversation isn't happening.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_demon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_demon
    - coldtea 3y ago
      With the right laws, a company could still be fined if they don't meet age percentage quota, so there's that. "Hmm, all your hires are < 30 huh? OK, we don't care if you intended to discriminate or not, here's the fine".
    - harimau777 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

66 points by pwim 3y ago

coldcode 3y ago

If this is true, given their birth rate, they will have to change, or run out of people to do things.

jalapenos 3y ago
A reminder Japan's birthrate isn't a special case: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_f... Same as Spain and Jamaica, higher than China and Korea.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- brailsafe 3y ago
  Closer to Canada than Canada is to the U.S.
- zeroCalories 3y ago
  You probably want to look at overall population growth, as many countries have young immigrants that contribute to their growth.
  - jalapenos 3y ago
    No, I don't. I'm specifically commenting on the Japan birthrate trope they reiterated.
    - zeroCalories 3y ago
      I thought the topic was about countries running out of workers. Western countries are doing fine, as they're able to import workers.
      - phendrenad2 3y ago
        There's also the question of what a country even is anymore, other than a company that collects taxes when goods or money move across an arbitrary border, in exchange for using its brand image.

neilv 3y ago

On age discrimination closer to home for US techbros... Pretty early in one warm-fuzzy FAANG, around the time a friend of mine finished a big-name CS-ish advanced degree, and he was at an event where the FAANG was recruiting. It might've been a campus event. At the event, he happened to overhear some of the 20-something recruiting representatives of the FAANG, making fun of a candidate they'd interviewed for being "old". I didn't ask, but, based on the way he said it, he might've been the one they were making fun of. (Then again, he's always defending others, and might've just been very upset on someone else's behalf. Though, if he'd been defending someone else, he probably would've ripped those representatives a new one, at least three different ways.) I think he was still in his 30s, despite two successful earlier careers (one as an old school tech-ish entrepreneur). He went to the gym and was fit, but he looked like what he was: a kid from humble upbringings, who'd seen some rough situations, including being gay when and where that was not OK, and had pulled himself up by his bootstraps, to success despite all that. And while also doing a lot of activism to help some of the most disadvantaged and persecuted, when it was unfashionable. He showed some of that weathering, and -- I suspect this might've been a barrier with that group -- didn't look like an affluent Palo Alto recent-grad. So, "old". Or, if those airhead representatives had had HR training, they would've called it "culture fit". Which is doubly ironic in his case, since, in principle, he was pretty much a poster-child for the warm-fuzzy FAANG's PR: socioeconomically-diverse, cross-disciplinary, whole-self, make-the-world-better, with LGBTQ+ sprinkles on top. He seemed very disappointed in those representatives of the FAANG, and had some choice words about who that FAANG "was hiring now". And in the couple decades since, he never did go there, even though, on paper, it would've been the obvious choice at multiple points of his career accomplishments.

swader999 3y ago

In practical terms, I've never been asked my age in an interview. At some point I'm going to prune my experience if I have to.

phendrenad2 3y ago
Interviewing continues while on the job. People have been put on layoff lists, "encouraged" to quit, and passed over for promotion based on age, too. People have take these cases to court but it's not easy to prove.
whatyesaid 3y ago
Age is pretty easily guessable by degree dates and your appearance, they don't need to ask it explicitly.
- Aeolun 3y ago
  Maybe at some point it’s better to leave off your degree? Your 20 years of experience are a lot more important (and the 10 before those irrelevant).
  - tom_ 3y ago
    I did this once, after working for 15 years. Maybe that wasn't long enough? First question in the interview: whether I had a degree.
  - swader999 3y ago
    I could audit a class and put that as the date. Still live near the same uni I graduated from.
- Retric 3y ago
  Is there some reason to add degree dates? I removed them as clutter.
- tarxvf 3y ago
  More than that, too. I bet you could guess my age within 2 years with solely a list of technology I've used. I don't think it would even have to be sorted by date.

wegfawefgawefg 3y ago

You know what japan always does though? They always respond to applications. Theres no instant automated rejection email. Theres no getting ghosted by 90% of companies. Pay is bad though.

shiroiuma 3y ago
The pay (for tech jobs) isn't that bad compared to other peer nations. It's bad everywhere, compared to the US, where salaries are much, much higher than pretty much everyplace else, except possibly Switzerland. However, the cost of living is much lower in Japan than in the large tech-hub cities in the US (and probably even mid-tier cities). Life in the US is really expensive these days.
- sureglymop 3y ago
  Compared to the US, tech salaries in Switzerland are pretty bad unless you work for a big US tech company that has their hq here. However, salaries in general are high. Tech salaries are just not significantly higher like in the US.
barbazoo 3y ago
> Pay is bad though I wonder if that is in any way correlated to this: > Gov't study finds only 3,065 homeless people in Japan https://japantoday.com/category/national/gov%27t-study-finds-only-3-065-homeless-people-in-japan https://japantoday.com/category/national/gov%27t-study-finds...
- TapWaterBandit 3y ago
  The full quote is: > Last Friday, Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare released the results of an annual study of the number of homeless people *in the country’s parks and riverside areas.* So this isn't the full count of homeless, just the ones living in specific park areas.
  - shiroiuma 3y ago

Aeolun 3y ago

Hmm, I’ve had fresh people hired into management positions because that was age appropriate, never mind that those people were not interested in managing and had only one or two token reports.

blindriver 3y ago

Japan requires photos of woman on their resumes, and their age. Japanese employers don't like hiring women who are in their child-bearing ages because they might get pregnant. Say what you want about the US, but the level of protection workers have is so much better than most other countries.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
slily 3y ago
They don't "require photos of woman", passport-style portrait photos are standard period. It's really no different from LinkedIn being the standard in Western countries where you're suspicious if you don't have a personal photo on your profile and where you can just as easily be discriminated against based on your looks or whatever other criteria you can think of. The only difference is that they'll use euphemisms or outright bullshit you, if they even bother getting back to you about your application.
jalapenos 3y ago
Bit disingenuous wording - they don't exclude men from photos & age. The US has summary firing. In Japan if you're a permanent employee you can reasonably expect to remain so. From the people pissing in bottles at Amazon your protections don't sound any better. Hiring discrimination against child bearing aged women is universal - it's just in the US they have to be more careful how they do it.
- gyomu 3y ago
  Yep. I once had the CEO of an early stage, venture backed SF startup I worked for confide to me: “you know, every time we interview a woman in her late 20s/early 30s, I just have to wonder if she’ll take maternity leave 6 months in to working with us. As a startup we just can’t afford that”. Of course the public face of the company was all about fighting inequality, supporting diversity, etc.
  - 3y ago

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago

In the company I worked for, it actually went the other way, from the US. There were levels and positions that were only available to employees of certain chronological ages (or above). I remember doing some fancy footwork, trying to get particularly bright younger engineers into positions of greater responsibility. They did force you to retire at 60, though. I suspect that is an artifact of their "full employment" stance. I’ll bet they are revisiting that, now, as the population is actually declining.

zeroCalories 3y ago
If we're working on a serious project(not tinder for dogs), I want to staff my senior positions with people that have tons of experience, not someone super bright. More broadly, I think the problem with age discrimination is a problem with engineers that have 30 years of experience doing unimpressive things. For an IC code monkey I would definitely prefer someone younger with a lot of energy and potential to grow. Not saying that I think age discrimination is okay, but that's too the reality of how people feel.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  Preaching to the choir, here. If you know much about me, you know that SV’s ageism is one of my biggest peeves. I feel that many of these jurassic-scale disasters, we hear about, are likely the direct result of inexperienced, impulsive, decisions, made with no adults In the room. I just feel that each employee should be managed as an individual; an attitude that doesn’t mesh well, with today’s business culture.

tetrisgm 3y ago

In the next 10 to 15 years, tech is going to have a lot of millennial who reach 50+. We'll have a similar challenge in the US where tech culture leans towards hyping youth, and the new reality.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
Luckily, there’s going to be a lot less youth (compressing demographic pyramid), forcing businesses to accommodate older workers if they want labor.
- taude 3y ago
  nah, they'll just continue moving it offshore.
  - simonsarris 3y ago
    I have bad news about the demographic pyramid of nearly every country...
    - thfuran 3y ago
      Africa exists.
      - coldtea 3y ago
        Well, I have bad news about the technological preparedness and infrastracture of almost all African countries. Except if you mean outside IT hires.
cubefox 3y ago
If the AI progress in the next 10 to 15 years will be like the AI progress in the last 10 to 15 years, tech culture will no longer hype youth anyway, or human employees in general.
- 3y ago

andrewstuart 3y ago

You’ll never know if you’re being discriminated against due to age. Not here in Australia anyway, no one would ever say out loud. You just don’t get selected. I did go for a job recently where we had a great phone interview and the guy essentially said “everything looks great we just need to meet in person” and when we met in person I visibly saw his expression change. Something about my appearance, either age or weight or both. He emailed no thanks after.

alephnan 3y ago
This is a case where statistics could prove of systemic discrimination and statistical anomalies
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- bigstrat2003 3y ago
  They can prove statistical anomalies, sure. But no amount of statistics can prove discrimination (contrary to popular belief these days).
  - Terr_ 3y ago
    > But no amount of statistics can prove By that logic [0] no amount of data can prove anything, and the label "unproven" becomes meaningless. (Especially if the twist-ending is that you're trapped in a dream and this conversation isn't happening.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_demon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_demon
  - coldtea 3y ago
    With the right laws, a company could still be fined if they don't meet age percentage quota, so there's that. "Hmm, all your hires are < 30 huh? OK, we don't care if you intended to discriminate or not, here's the fine".
  - harimau777 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]