7 ms·

Ageism in the Game Industry

85 points by Red_Tarsius 12y ago

ejr 12y ago
"You don’t fit in with our culture" I've seen similar sentiment in many other places in tech, applied to ageism, sexism etc. Maybe I'm naïve, but I fail to see this in any way other than discrimination by proxy.
- Turing_Machine 12y ago
  Whenever I see this I wonder if getting sued for age, sex, or racial discrimination, and losing, does fit in with the company's "culture". That can be expensive. Very.
  - ejr 12y ago
    The percentage of people who would take that route is very small, I'm afraid. There are countless little insults and grievances that simply get shrugged off as the cost of living in society. It shouldn't be that way, but the punishment for bravery is just too severe.
    - Turing_Machine 12y ago
      If no one is hiring them anyway they have nothing to lose, and the payoff can be quite large. http://www.dailynews.com/general-news/20140227/66-year-old-man-awarded-26-million-in-age-discrimination-lawsuit-against-staples http://www.dailynews.com/general-news/20140227/66-year-old-m... Note that insulting "jokes" were a factor.
    - danielweber 12y ago
      I wonder what it would take for someone to flip and say "yeah, we discussed why we didn't hire that person, and it was <ageism, sexism, racism>." How much longer until you learn the real reason? I once had a boss who didn't want to hire someone who had fought in Vietnam. Said boss had escaped the draft by being in college (and from a rich family). I was pretty shocked that he would say it out loud, especially by how much he considered himself super-progressive.
- makeset 12y ago
  Culture fit can be important in a sufficiently small company. What's baffling is why anyone would say that out loud to a declined candidate.
loydb 12y ago
It's not just the game industry -- it's high-tech in general. As a 50-year-old programmer with zero desire to manage people, I am in the same boat.
- ObviousScience 12y ago
  If it makes you feel any better, as someone in his late 20s that has led a couple teams and is eyeing management, I can't think of any particular reason not to hire you (except maybe that you'd demand more money than a recently started programmer, but now we're just talking cost-benefit analysis, which seems a fine basis for decisions) and several benefits, assuming you'd be okay taking direction from someone that much younger than you. Can you perhaps elaborate on the kind of responses you get or conjecture on why you think people are making those kinds of choices? I've heard similar stories from mentors and older friends who work in tech, but I've never really gotten a chance to discuss it in detail. It's kind of an awkward topic, so I won't take it badly if you decline, I'm just honestly hoping to hear a view that I'm not exposed to, being young and fresh in the market.
- skj 12y ago
  It's not universal, on my team of 8 there is a ~60, ~65, ~70. I use ~ because I have never actually asked, and that's unlikely to change.
jiggy2011 12y ago
Why would you want to work in the game industry at 50? Poor pay, too many hours and being managed by someone 20 years younger than you. The only exception I can imagine is if you have already built enough of a reputation to go and do your own thing via your own studio or kickstarter etc in which case you don't need anyone's permission. > According to data collected by the Entertainment Software Association, the percentage of people over 50 years old playing games is slightly higher than the percentage of people under 50 playing games. We ARE your audience. It would be interesting to adjust that data for amount of time spent gaming and amount of money spent on gaming related products. Somehow I don't get the impression that COD servers at peak times are rammed full of senior citizens.
- w1ntermute 12y ago
  I've never understood why someone would ever want to work in the game industry, regardless of their age. It's full of people who are willing to make absurd sacrifices just so they can make games. It's a much more rational decision to write code for a "boring" industry. You're still honing your software engineering prowess and gaining experience, but you're getting paid a lot more and not being required to work ridiculous hours - a win-win situation.
  - jiggy2011 12y ago
    Because it seems like a high status career choice when you are 21, other 21 year olds will be jealous. It's also a good place to get a lot of practical experience actually writing code, ex games programmers tend to be pretty good at taking a big messy code soup and turning it into something that actually works.
  - kabdib 12y ago
    I usually tell "kids" (I'm 53 and this describes a lot of you, okay? No offense :-) ) not to get started in the games industry. I lucked out by starting out writing game cartridges, then doing systems programming for the next 25 years. Now I'm back to games (or rather, gaming platforms). Remember who got rich in the California Gold Rush? Not the folks digging the gold, but instead it was the shop-keepers, bankers, real-estate men and similar infrastructure-like people. Be one of them. I don't mean go into things expecting to be rich, but don't be a starry-eyed fool and start at (say) EA just out of college, get burned-out and then expect to have anything out of it. Make sure you can use other things than a shovel. Get a grounding in systems. Do graphics, do networking, do LAMP, basically do as much as you can "wide" and focus on some areas that interest you ("deep"). Then you can work on games (great!) or servers or UX or whatever you chose. You can work at a games company (great!) or you can work some place else (also highly recommended). Don't focus on games because they're cool, do the tech behind them, with games as an incidental. Don't get into games and expect that rewriting the same piece of code in the same soccer game year after year is going to be fulfilling. You'll wish you had the ability to go somewhere else, so ensure that you do. And for God's sake, never think that you're going to get a foot in the door by starting out in Q/A. Just don't do that.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- ObviousScience 12y ago
  Percentage is also a terrible metric for that, because it ignores total population. Taking the argument to an extreme: 100% of the people that exactly match my profile play video games (ie, I play games), but that doesn't mean they should focus a retarget on me and ignore their other clients. From US census data[0]: 112 million people are 18-44, while only 97 million people are 45+, with only 62 million in the 45-64 range (which is probably most of the older video game players). So there needs to be a 15% higher percentage of older game players (assuming they all play) or an 80% higher percentage of older game players if we use just the 45-64 group. Certainly, either case requires more than a "slightly higher" percentage for them to be the main market for games, ignoring any differences in amount of money or time spent gaming (which is also a significant pattern). [0]: http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-03.pdf http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-03.pdf (Table 1) Edit: The comment to which I was replying was deleted, but I'll repost it here for context (minus the poster name). ---------- > According to data collected by the Entertainment Software Association, the percentage of people over 50 years old playing games is slightly higher than the percentage of people under 50 playing games. We ARE your audience. It would be interesting to adjust that data for amount of time spent gaming and amount of money spent on gaming related products. Somehow I don't get the impression that COD servers at peak times are rammed full of senior citizens.
  - jiggy2011 12y ago
    I rolled my comment into my previous comment and deleted the superfluous one.
  - dghughes 12y ago
    I'm 45 and I spend way too much time gaming especially CoD it's fun to get top score and hear the little kids whine. A fast map like the now ancient classic Nuke Town with a small submachine gun, every speed perk I can add and a Rockstar drink, good times :)
kabdib 12y ago
I review a lot of resumes. Age is never a factor. It's all about experience; basically, trying to figure out what value you bring. If your resume is difficult to read, then that's a problem. I still try, but I lean pretty heavily towards a "no". If your resume doesn't contain any detail and I can't figure out what you've actually done, then I stop. I'm done. Learn how to write a better resume. If I still can't tell what you've done because your resume is littered with phrases like "empowered the team..." and "synergized the product..." then it's a pretty much total plonk. Feel free to rewrite. A good resume tells me what you've done and doesn't contain unsupported stuff. I can skip over obvious verbiage ("... team player ... fast learner..."), but in the end it's what you've done and how you did it that matters. How old are you? I don't care, I don't even want to know.
- seivan 12y ago
  Could you an example of what you'd like to see?
  - kabdib 12y ago
    It's invariant for any company I've been at. Pretty much what I said: Be clear and be factual about what you've done, including how you did it and what happened as a result. I'm looking for evidence that you've done things that are interesting.
    - walru 12y ago
      You realize this is most often hampered by the team the individual is working on? Not every company puts their employers in an opportunity to claim great successes.
      - seivan 12y ago
        Or give time nor opportunity to do great success. This is why I appreciate it when a potential employee wants to see tools or code as well.
      - 12y ago
mark_l_watson 12y ago
I felt like I experienced some age related bias about ten years ago. I had been working mostly on Nintendo and Disney projects in California - a great experience. After my wife and I moved to Arizona, I kept getting calls from Electronic Arts HR people. After a year or so of getting emails and a few phone calls from them I said that I would fly to Vancouver for an interview. I had probably four or five people during the interview process nervously laugh or giggle when they first saw me. The receptionist who initially showed me the the interview conference room rolled her eyes at the interviewers while nodding in my direction. The technical interviewers seemed really weak, as far as the questions and our interactions. Not very professional. The good part of the interview was that EA flew me up a day early, and I also had the morning after the interview to enjoy Vancouver, so it was not a waste of time. I appreciated a free trip. I had a very different experience working at Google last year: there was not any feeling of ageism, at least none that I noticed.
- raverbashing 12y ago
  Didn't EA get the hints of your age? Like graduation year, year of first projects? Looks like they're not the brightest bunch
  - mark_l_watson 12y ago
    Great point! I graduated from college in 1973 and that was on my resume. Also, on the phone I had mentioned that I had mostly retired except for small consulting jobs.
skrebbel 12y ago
It's crude, but prevailing ageism makes a big opportunity for non-moronic employers. Basically, there's a giant talent pool right there for you to hire from, no matter your location, as long as you don't insist people are 22 and willing to sell all waking hours to your business. Increasing the average age of your employees is a much smaller change to make to your company than, for example, hiring remote people (assuming you aren't already doing that). Even if you're currently the all-work-no-life 80-hours-a-week always-crunch-time kind of company, if you really have trouble finding the right talent, there's an option right there for you. It requires more sane working hours, yes, but maybe that's not a horribly bad idea anyway. People not even considering this are doing themselves a disservice. Anecdotally, I have found the argument that not-super-young people are somehow less smart or less eager to be entirely false.
- ubershmekel 12y ago
  I wonder if increasing the average age of your employees could cause younger candidates to be less eager to join.
  - walshemj 12y ago
    only if the younger employers are ageist take your argument and apply it to women, African American or Latino?
  - skrebbel 12y ago
    Not the younger folks I'd want on my team. Note, I said "older", not "boring".
  - jiggy2011 12y ago
    Probably not as much as the other way around.
  - kelukelugames 12y ago
    Only if it's at an extreme. I have heard of interns saying they didn't want to work at company X because every interviewer was over the age of 30. I've also heard people complaining about not seeing a single woman or any person of color. I strongly advocate representing diversity in the interview loop: Include a recent college hire, a senior dev, an ethnic person, and a woman. Or maybe just have all interviewers be brogrammer--each company can shape their own talent pool demographics.
raverbashing 12y ago
You know what? Good Older people have less patience for endless crunch time, BS management, new overhyped fads (but that's more in Web development than game), unreal deadlines, etc.
paul9290 12y ago
Ageism, sexism, racism, you don't look like me/model(ism) I would say runs rampant in many industries that are fueled by egos and trying to out do each other. I have had more negative experiences dealing with tech douchebags at meetups and in tech communities in general then say attending hiking meetups via meetup.com. Everyone at a hiking meetup is there to make friends/not try to out do each other. Not to say I havent met some nice people who are not douchebags, but you don't expect to have to deal with dBags in tech communities whose age range from 20 to 45. I attend and have attended tech events to meet similar nice people and share interests, but half the time or more you run into Dbags who aren't genuine, friendly and make you feel like it's high school all over again.
- Roboprog 12y ago
  I'm happy that this is NOT the case at the monthly SacJUG meetup I attend. I think there is a "hump" of 40-ish +/- attendees, but the age ranges from 20-ish to retired, and it's an enthusiastic, friendly, group. Even though the core Java topics are very "ordinary" and work-related, aimed at the Sacramento job market, people are always exploring the peripheries for interesting libraries, new databases and related platforms or alternate JVM compatible languages. Anyway, it's a friendly group, and we usually go out for a good long BS/dinner/drink session afterward at one of the local bar & grills. Of course, Sacramento is not Silicon Valley, and we're just working stiffs, not maneuvering to make our next million.
  - paul9290 12y ago
    Oh I live on the east coast and experienced this from DC to Baltimore to Philadelphia to New York. Again, not everyone in the "scene," is a dBag, it's just jarring to meet and encounter a large percentage of them! It makes starting up and doing a start up a whole lot tougher, but whatever you just do it because you are driven no matter how you are treated.
matheusbn 12y ago
Quote: "After several phone and in-person interviews, the company flew him and his wife to their location, put them up in an expensive hotel, and conducted a final interview. However, in that interview he was finally introduced to the person who would be his immediate supervisor, someone twenty years younger. The next day, he was told that he was no longer a candidate." Wait... they passed over all this to figure his age in person? His résumé hadn't age?
- lostcolony 12y ago
  You don't put age on a resume. You may leave out earlier projects and graduation date on a resume; even if you don't, speaking as someone who has interviewed, you don't really look at the years. "Oh, they worked at X, Y, and Z", not "Oh wow, they've been doing this professionally for twenty five years, they're at least in their mid 40s". Especially if it's a newish technology. This person has ten years of Javascript experience, two of that with Angular, awesome, we need a front end dev familiar with Angular. Holy crap, they're in their fifties; they just didn't list, or I didn't notice, all the non-relevant experience.
  - matheusbn 12y ago
    I see what you mean! But in that case they should do a webcam interview first, before make someone move around (even it's paid) to see he "doesn't" fit the "requirements".
    - lostcolony 12y ago
      Well, he wasn't moving, yet. Just he and his wife were flown out for the interview; his wife was included so they could take a day or so to go look for rental properties for the short term, I am guessing.
- kelukelugames 12y ago
  I don't doubt discrimination against age exists, but it's wrong to automatically assume it's the root cause for a rejection. Maybe they had a stronger candidate? Maybe the interviewer overestimated his performance?
walru 12y ago
I'm 36 with seventeen years experience as a designer/creative director shipped dozens of titles on all platforms since the PSX and no one will touch me. I've long suspected that my age was partially to blame, but I also know it's because most studios don't value design as a discipline.
- Roboprog 12y ago
  If you started working at 19, you might consider going to college and getting some kind of degree, just in case. List a recent AA in art (or whatever suits your tastes) and the most recent 10 years experience before that and be done with the rest of the list on your resume. The game platform you worked on in 1997 is probably about as significant for most employers as the C code for batch processing I did around that time :-) (I'm not implying that you didn't learn anything valuable - of course you did - but trimming resumes to a Goldilocks size for the benefit of the reader is a fine art)
lostcolony 12y ago
The fifty year old with ten years experience in X is identical to that thirty year old with ten years experience in X, except with an extra twenty years of other experiences to draw upon. Any other consideration you make based on his/her age is pure unfounded assumption; age should be a -plus- when hiring, not a detriment.
joosters 12y ago
It's notable that in all the recent 'diversity' announcements made by tech companies, none of them (AFAIK) have studied the age range of their employees. The subject seems to be ignored by them.
EliRivers 12y ago
Cheap labour from kids too young to realise how much they're ripped off, and how badly the company is treating them. The bizarre glamour of making games attracts enough suckers to the big production-line, conveyor-belt studios that there's no need to pay well or treat the staff well. People with experience tend to know what their time is worth, and tend to tell the boss to shove it when he's taking the piss, and can see past the glamour.
- nilkn 12y ago
  I hear this sentiment a lot. Honestly, I think young people in the technology industry generally are paid very well and treated very respectfully as well, so I've never understood where this notion comes from. What other career options would come close without requiring significantly more education? Finance maybe, but young people are definitely treated way better in technology than in finance. Other engineering disciplines generally can't keep up in pay with software development, with the one exception being chemical engineering. Practicing law is out without getting a law degree, passing the bar, taking out a vast amount of debt, and then successfully getting a high-paying job (which is not easy in the current law market). Practicing medicine is even harder. Medical school is 4 years and costs even more than law school. Then you'll have a bare minimum of 3 years of residency, during which time you will be a practicing doctor but will be paid less than a freshly minted programmer (and you'll be treated like shit too, working 80 hours a week). So, yeah, I think programmers, even young ones, have it pretty damn good right now. As a career, it's pretty much "best in class," meaning that it's at least as good as all of its peers in terms of entry requirements.
  - EliRivers 12y ago
    Honestly, I think young people in the technology industry generally are paid very well and treated very respectfully as well, so I've never understood where this notion comes from. We're not talking about the technology industry generally. We're talking about the games industry. The games industry, generally speaking, pays worse and offers worse conditions. Because they can. People with more experience know when they're being ripped off, and know when the working conditions are far worse than they could get outside the games industry. Kids blinded by the glamour of the games industry are cheap labour.
claudiusd 12y ago
I think many people cry "ageism" when there is in fact a legitimate reason not to consider a vastly experienced person for a role: people with more experience typically demand more pay for it, not to mention that taking a significant salary cut is something few people can afford to do once they get settled in to a lifestyle. If I don't need that much experience for the role I'm hiring for then I'll take the less experienced person every time in order to save cash. Merely starting the interview process with someone who far exceeds the requirements for the role is a risk... my employees and I may waste our time interviewing this person just to find out their salary requirements are too high. I would say "too experienced" is a legitimate reason to reject someone from a role for this reason. This is especially true in the gaming industry, which is extremely competitive and has no shortage of young talent with low salary requirements that are appropriate for senior management.
- nbm 12y ago
  Strangely, you're describing ageism. Replace older/more experienced with women, and salary demands with pregnancy and family responsibilities, and you're at sexism. Older people tend to have more job experience. Not even starting the interview process on someone because they have a lot of experience, means not starting the interview process for older people, which is ageism. Rather make the offer if they earn it, even if it isn't in the range the person might seem to want. It's up to them to decide to accept it or not.
  - claudiusd 12y ago
    This is not ageism. I can judge a candidate based on her work experience. I would be just as quick to reject a 20-something with too much experience as a 50-something, and I would absolutely hire a 50-something with the right level of experience. Don't get me wrong - there is an ageism problem in the tech community. If we take these arguments at face value though and don't make an effort to understand why a rational, unbiased person might appear to discriminate, then cannot effectively address the problem.
  - danielweber 12y ago
    IANAL, but you can advertise and recruit for junior developer positions without risking ageism.

85 points by Red_Tarsius 12y ago

ejr 12y ago

"You don’t fit in with our culture" I've seen similar sentiment in many other places in tech, applied to ageism, sexism etc. Maybe I'm naïve, but I fail to see this in any way other than discrimination by proxy.

Turing_Machine 12y ago
Whenever I see this I wonder if getting sued for age, sex, or racial discrimination, and losing, does fit in with the company's "culture". That can be expensive. Very.
- ejr 12y ago
  The percentage of people who would take that route is very small, I'm afraid. There are countless little insults and grievances that simply get shrugged off as the cost of living in society. It shouldn't be that way, but the punishment for bravery is just too severe.
  - Turing_Machine 12y ago
    If no one is hiring them anyway they have nothing to lose, and the payoff can be quite large. http://www.dailynews.com/general-news/20140227/66-year-old-man-awarded-26-million-in-age-discrimination-lawsuit-against-staples http://www.dailynews.com/general-news/20140227/66-year-old-m... Note that insulting "jokes" were a factor.
  - danielweber 12y ago
    I wonder what it would take for someone to flip and say "yeah, we discussed why we didn't hire that person, and it was <ageism, sexism, racism>." How much longer until you learn the real reason? I once had a boss who didn't want to hire someone who had fought in Vietnam. Said boss had escaped the draft by being in college (and from a rich family). I was pretty shocked that he would say it out loud, especially by how much he considered himself super-progressive.
makeset 12y ago
Culture fit can be important in a sufficiently small company. What's baffling is why anyone would say that out loud to a declined candidate.

loydb 12y ago

It's not just the game industry -- it's high-tech in general. As a 50-year-old programmer with zero desire to manage people, I am in the same boat.

ObviousScience 12y ago
If it makes you feel any better, as someone in his late 20s that has led a couple teams and is eyeing management, I can't think of any particular reason not to hire you (except maybe that you'd demand more money than a recently started programmer, but now we're just talking cost-benefit analysis, which seems a fine basis for decisions) and several benefits, assuming you'd be okay taking direction from someone that much younger than you. Can you perhaps elaborate on the kind of responses you get or conjecture on why you think people are making those kinds of choices? I've heard similar stories from mentors and older friends who work in tech, but I've never really gotten a chance to discuss it in detail. It's kind of an awkward topic, so I won't take it badly if you decline, I'm just honestly hoping to hear a view that I'm not exposed to, being young and fresh in the market.
skj 12y ago
It's not universal, on my team of 8 there is a ~60, ~65, ~70. I use ~ because I have never actually asked, and that's unlikely to change.

jiggy2011 12y ago

Why would you want to work in the game industry at 50? Poor pay, too many hours and being managed by someone 20 years younger than you. The only exception I can imagine is if you have already built enough of a reputation to go and do your own thing via your own studio or kickstarter etc in which case you don't need anyone's permission. > According to data collected by the Entertainment Software Association, the percentage of people over 50 years old playing games is slightly higher than the percentage of people under 50 playing games. We ARE your audience. It would be interesting to adjust that data for amount of time spent gaming and amount of money spent on gaming related products. Somehow I don't get the impression that COD servers at peak times are rammed full of senior citizens.

w1ntermute 12y ago
I've never understood why someone would ever want to work in the game industry, regardless of their age. It's full of people who are willing to make absurd sacrifices just so they can make games. It's a much more rational decision to write code for a "boring" industry. You're still honing your software engineering prowess and gaining experience, but you're getting paid a lot more and not being required to work ridiculous hours - a win-win situation.
- jiggy2011 12y ago
  Because it seems like a high status career choice when you are 21, other 21 year olds will be jealous. It's also a good place to get a lot of practical experience actually writing code, ex games programmers tend to be pretty good at taking a big messy code soup and turning it into something that actually works.
- kabdib 12y ago
  I usually tell "kids" (I'm 53 and this describes a lot of you, okay? No offense :-) ) not to get started in the games industry. I lucked out by starting out writing game cartridges, then doing systems programming for the next 25 years. Now I'm back to games (or rather, gaming platforms). Remember who got rich in the California Gold Rush? Not the folks digging the gold, but instead it was the shop-keepers, bankers, real-estate men and similar infrastructure-like people. Be one of them. I don't mean go into things expecting to be rich, but don't be a starry-eyed fool and start at (say) EA just out of college, get burned-out and then expect to have anything out of it. Make sure you can use other things than a shovel. Get a grounding in systems. Do graphics, do networking, do LAMP, basically do as much as you can "wide" and focus on some areas that interest you ("deep"). Then you can work on games (great!) or servers or UX or whatever you chose. You can work at a games company (great!) or you can work some place else (also highly recommended). Don't focus on games because they're cool, do the tech behind them, with games as an incidental. Don't get into games and expect that rewriting the same piece of code in the same soccer game year after year is going to be fulfilling. You'll wish you had the ability to go somewhere else, so ensure that you do. And for God's sake, never think that you're going to get a foot in the door by starting out in Q/A. Just don't do that.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

ObviousScience 12y ago
Percentage is also a terrible metric for that, because it ignores total population. Taking the argument to an extreme: 100% of the people that exactly match my profile play video games (ie, I play games), but that doesn't mean they should focus a retarget on me and ignore their other clients. From US census data[0]: 112 million people are 18-44, while only 97 million people are 45+, with only 62 million in the 45-64 range (which is probably most of the older video game players). So there needs to be a 15% higher percentage of older game players (assuming they all play) or an 80% higher percentage of older game players if we use just the 45-64 group. Certainly, either case requires more than a "slightly higher" percentage for them to be the main market for games, ignoring any differences in amount of money or time spent gaming (which is also a significant pattern). [0]: http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-03.pdf http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-03.pdf (Table 1) Edit: The comment to which I was replying was deleted, but I'll repost it here for context (minus the poster name). ---------- > According to data collected by the Entertainment Software Association, the percentage of people over 50 years old playing games is slightly higher than the percentage of people under 50 playing games. We ARE your audience. It would be interesting to adjust that data for amount of time spent gaming and amount of money spent on gaming related products. Somehow I don't get the impression that COD servers at peak times are rammed full of senior citizens.
- jiggy2011 12y ago
  I rolled my comment into my previous comment and deleted the superfluous one.
- dghughes 12y ago
  I'm 45 and I spend way too much time gaming especially CoD it's fun to get top score and hear the little kids whine. A fast map like the now ancient classic Nuke Town with a small submachine gun, every speed perk I can add and a Rockstar drink, good times :)

kabdib 12y ago

I review a lot of resumes. Age is never a factor. It's all about experience; basically, trying to figure out what value you bring. If your resume is difficult to read, then that's a problem. I still try, but I lean pretty heavily towards a "no". If your resume doesn't contain any detail and I can't figure out what you've actually done, then I stop. I'm done. Learn how to write a better resume. If I still can't tell what you've done because your resume is littered with phrases like "empowered the team..." and "synergized the product..." then it's a pretty much total plonk. Feel free to rewrite. A good resume tells me what you've done and doesn't contain unsupported stuff. I can skip over obvious verbiage ("... team player ... fast learner..."), but in the end it's what you've done and how you did it that matters. How old are you? I don't care, I don't even want to know.

seivan 12y ago
Could you an example of what you'd like to see?
- kabdib 12y ago
  It's invariant for any company I've been at. Pretty much what I said: Be clear and be factual about what you've done, including how you did it and what happened as a result. I'm looking for evidence that you've done things that are interesting.
  - walru 12y ago
    You realize this is most often hampered by the team the individual is working on? Not every company puts their employers in an opportunity to claim great successes.
    - seivan 12y ago
      Or give time nor opportunity to do great success. This is why I appreciate it when a potential employee wants to see tools or code as well.
    - 12y ago

mark_l_watson 12y ago

I felt like I experienced some age related bias about ten years ago. I had been working mostly on Nintendo and Disney projects in California - a great experience. After my wife and I moved to Arizona, I kept getting calls from Electronic Arts HR people. After a year or so of getting emails and a few phone calls from them I said that I would fly to Vancouver for an interview. I had probably four or five people during the interview process nervously laugh or giggle when they first saw me. The receptionist who initially showed me the the interview conference room rolled her eyes at the interviewers while nodding in my direction. The technical interviewers seemed really weak, as far as the questions and our interactions. Not very professional. The good part of the interview was that EA flew me up a day early, and I also had the morning after the interview to enjoy Vancouver, so it was not a waste of time. I appreciated a free trip. I had a very different experience working at Google last year: there was not any feeling of ageism, at least none that I noticed.

raverbashing 12y ago
Didn't EA get the hints of your age? Like graduation year, year of first projects? Looks like they're not the brightest bunch
- mark_l_watson 12y ago
  Great point! I graduated from college in 1973 and that was on my resume. Also, on the phone I had mentioned that I had mostly retired except for small consulting jobs.

skrebbel 12y ago

It's crude, but prevailing ageism makes a big opportunity for non-moronic employers. Basically, there's a giant talent pool right there for you to hire from, no matter your location, as long as you don't insist people are 22 and willing to sell all waking hours to your business. Increasing the average age of your employees is a much smaller change to make to your company than, for example, hiring remote people (assuming you aren't already doing that). Even if you're currently the all-work-no-life 80-hours-a-week always-crunch-time kind of company, if you really have trouble finding the right talent, there's an option right there for you. It requires more sane working hours, yes, but maybe that's not a horribly bad idea anyway. People not even considering this are doing themselves a disservice. Anecdotally, I have found the argument that not-super-young people are somehow less smart or less eager to be entirely false.

ubershmekel 12y ago
I wonder if increasing the average age of your employees could cause younger candidates to be less eager to join.
- walshemj 12y ago
  only if the younger employers are ageist take your argument and apply it to women, African American or Latino?
- skrebbel 12y ago
  Not the younger folks I'd want on my team. Note, I said "older", not "boring".
- jiggy2011 12y ago
  Probably not as much as the other way around.
- kelukelugames 12y ago
  Only if it's at an extreme. I have heard of interns saying they didn't want to work at company X because every interviewer was over the age of 30. I've also heard people complaining about not seeing a single woman or any person of color. I strongly advocate representing diversity in the interview loop: Include a recent college hire, a senior dev, an ethnic person, and a woman. Or maybe just have all interviewers be brogrammer--each company can shape their own talent pool demographics.

raverbashing 12y ago

You know what? Good Older people have less patience for endless crunch time, BS management, new overhyped fads (but that's more in Web development than game), unreal deadlines, etc.

paul9290 12y ago

Ageism, sexism, racism, you don't look like me/model(ism) I would say runs rampant in many industries that are fueled by egos and trying to out do each other. I have had more negative experiences dealing with tech douchebags at meetups and in tech communities in general then say attending hiking meetups via meetup.com. Everyone at a hiking meetup is there to make friends/not try to out do each other. Not to say I havent met some nice people who are not douchebags, but you don't expect to have to deal with dBags in tech communities whose age range from 20 to 45. I attend and have attended tech events to meet similar nice people and share interests, but half the time or more you run into Dbags who aren't genuine, friendly and make you feel like it's high school all over again.

Roboprog 12y ago
I'm happy that this is NOT the case at the monthly SacJUG meetup I attend. I think there is a "hump" of 40-ish +/- attendees, but the age ranges from 20-ish to retired, and it's an enthusiastic, friendly, group. Even though the core Java topics are very "ordinary" and work-related, aimed at the Sacramento job market, people are always exploring the peripheries for interesting libraries, new databases and related platforms or alternate JVM compatible languages. Anyway, it's a friendly group, and we usually go out for a good long BS/dinner/drink session afterward at one of the local bar & grills. Of course, Sacramento is not Silicon Valley, and we're just working stiffs, not maneuvering to make our next million.
- paul9290 12y ago
  Oh I live on the east coast and experienced this from DC to Baltimore to Philadelphia to New York. Again, not everyone in the "scene," is a dBag, it's just jarring to meet and encounter a large percentage of them! It makes starting up and doing a start up a whole lot tougher, but whatever you just do it because you are driven no matter how you are treated.

matheusbn 12y ago

Quote: "After several phone and in-person interviews, the company flew him and his wife to their location, put them up in an expensive hotel, and conducted a final interview. However, in that interview he was finally introduced to the person who would be his immediate supervisor, someone twenty years younger. The next day, he was told that he was no longer a candidate." Wait... they passed over all this to figure his age in person? His résumé hadn't age?

lostcolony 12y ago
You don't put age on a resume. You may leave out earlier projects and graduation date on a resume; even if you don't, speaking as someone who has interviewed, you don't really look at the years. "Oh, they worked at X, Y, and Z", not "Oh wow, they've been doing this professionally for twenty five years, they're at least in their mid 40s". Especially if it's a newish technology. This person has ten years of Javascript experience, two of that with Angular, awesome, we need a front end dev familiar with Angular. Holy crap, they're in their fifties; they just didn't list, or I didn't notice, all the non-relevant experience.
- matheusbn 12y ago
  I see what you mean! But in that case they should do a webcam interview first, before make someone move around (even it's paid) to see he "doesn't" fit the "requirements".
  - lostcolony 12y ago
    Well, he wasn't moving, yet. Just he and his wife were flown out for the interview; his wife was included so they could take a day or so to go look for rental properties for the short term, I am guessing.
kelukelugames 12y ago
I don't doubt discrimination against age exists, but it's wrong to automatically assume it's the root cause for a rejection. Maybe they had a stronger candidate? Maybe the interviewer overestimated his performance?

walru 12y ago

I'm 36 with seventeen years experience as a designer/creative director shipped dozens of titles on all platforms since the PSX and no one will touch me. I've long suspected that my age was partially to blame, but I also know it's because most studios don't value design as a discipline.

Roboprog 12y ago
If you started working at 19, you might consider going to college and getting some kind of degree, just in case. List a recent AA in art (or whatever suits your tastes) and the most recent 10 years experience before that and be done with the rest of the list on your resume. The game platform you worked on in 1997 is probably about as significant for most employers as the C code for batch processing I did around that time :-) (I'm not implying that you didn't learn anything valuable - of course you did - but trimming resumes to a Goldilocks size for the benefit of the reader is a fine art)

lostcolony 12y ago

The fifty year old with ten years experience in X is identical to that thirty year old with ten years experience in X, except with an extra twenty years of other experiences to draw upon. Any other consideration you make based on his/her age is pure unfounded assumption; age should be a -plus- when hiring, not a detriment.

joosters 12y ago

It's notable that in all the recent 'diversity' announcements made by tech companies, none of them (AFAIK) have studied the age range of their employees. The subject seems to be ignored by them.

EliRivers 12y ago

Cheap labour from kids too young to realise how much they're ripped off, and how badly the company is treating them. The bizarre glamour of making games attracts enough suckers to the big production-line, conveyor-belt studios that there's no need to pay well or treat the staff well. People with experience tend to know what their time is worth, and tend to tell the boss to shove it when he's taking the piss, and can see past the glamour.

nilkn 12y ago
I hear this sentiment a lot. Honestly, I think young people in the technology industry generally are paid very well and treated very respectfully as well, so I've never understood where this notion comes from. What other career options would come close without requiring significantly more education? Finance maybe, but young people are definitely treated way better in technology than in finance. Other engineering disciplines generally can't keep up in pay with software development, with the one exception being chemical engineering. Practicing law is out without getting a law degree, passing the bar, taking out a vast amount of debt, and then successfully getting a high-paying job (which is not easy in the current law market). Practicing medicine is even harder. Medical school is 4 years and costs even more than law school. Then you'll have a bare minimum of 3 years of residency, during which time you will be a practicing doctor but will be paid less than a freshly minted programmer (and you'll be treated like shit too, working 80 hours a week). So, yeah, I think programmers, even young ones, have it pretty damn good right now. As a career, it's pretty much "best in class," meaning that it's at least as good as all of its peers in terms of entry requirements.
- EliRivers 12y ago
  Honestly, I think young people in the technology industry generally are paid very well and treated very respectfully as well, so I've never understood where this notion comes from. We're not talking about the technology industry generally. We're talking about the games industry. The games industry, generally speaking, pays worse and offers worse conditions. Because they can. People with more experience know when they're being ripped off, and know when the working conditions are far worse than they could get outside the games industry. Kids blinded by the glamour of the games industry are cheap labour.

claudiusd 12y ago

I think many people cry "ageism" when there is in fact a legitimate reason not to consider a vastly experienced person for a role: people with more experience typically demand more pay for it, not to mention that taking a significant salary cut is something few people can afford to do once they get settled in to a lifestyle. If I don't need that much experience for the role I'm hiring for then I'll take the less experienced person every time in order to save cash. Merely starting the interview process with someone who far exceeds the requirements for the role is a risk... my employees and I may waste our time interviewing this person just to find out their salary requirements are too high. I would say "too experienced" is a legitimate reason to reject someone from a role for this reason. This is especially true in the gaming industry, which is extremely competitive and has no shortage of young talent with low salary requirements that are appropriate for senior management.

nbm 12y ago
Strangely, you're describing ageism. Replace older/more experienced with women, and salary demands with pregnancy and family responsibilities, and you're at sexism. Older people tend to have more job experience. Not even starting the interview process on someone because they have a lot of experience, means not starting the interview process for older people, which is ageism. Rather make the offer if they earn it, even if it isn't in the range the person might seem to want. It's up to them to decide to accept it or not.
- claudiusd 12y ago
  This is not ageism. I can judge a candidate based on her work experience. I would be just as quick to reject a 20-something with too much experience as a 50-something, and I would absolutely hire a 50-something with the right level of experience. Don't get me wrong - there is an ageism problem in the tech community. If we take these arguments at face value though and don't make an effort to understand why a rational, unbiased person might appear to discriminate, then cannot effectively address the problem.
- danielweber 12y ago
  IANAL, but you can advertise and recruit for junior developer positions without risking ageism.