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At Google, You're Old and Gray At 40
theodp writes "Google faces an imminent California Supreme Court decision on whether an age discrimination suit against it can go forward. But that hasn't kept the company from patting itself on the back for how it supports 'Greyglers' — that's any Googler over 40. At a company of about 20,000 full-time employees, there were at last count fewer than 200 formally enrolled Greyglers working to 'make Google culture ... welcome to people of all ages.'"
I think the belief that IT workers are washed-up at 40 is fairly widespread. Some believe that the H1B flooding is actually designed to get rid of older IT workers.
Logan's Google?
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
I'm rapidly approaching 40, and I'm becoming more risk averse by the day.
Here's why: I know that when companies over-reach, then it'll be me who's pulling the late nights and weekends to deliver, not the guy that over-sold the product.
Younger guys either haven't learned that yet, or don't care as much, because they think that Arbeit Macht Frie. Well, I put in the Arbeit years ago, and I want my Frei now - just as today's young turks will want theirs tomorrow when they have families to take care of.
But they don't want it today, and that's why they make better employees, plain and simple.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
last few SQL Server conferences i went to, almost everyone there looked at least 40 or close to it.
It's amazing the differences, working on a long term project. How long term? Our first released version was in the mid-nineties - and yes, we're doing more than just maintenance, even now. It's a defense project.
I'm on a team (within the larger project, which is 70-100 people) of seven people. Four are over forty, in some cases by a lot, one is about to turn forty, I'm thirty-three, and then we have our one, shiny just out of college person. We're pretty representative of the project as a whole, with the UI team trending younger than the others. The idea that older people don't know what they're doing, even on new languages, is pretty silly to me.
Is it possible that this statistic is just due to the fact that Google is a young company? My hypothesis here is that they've just done the most hiring where there are the most candidates, straight out of school. I don't know whether this is sufficient to explain the numbers, but it's not like they can focus on retaining employees that have been with the company for twenty years. Anyone old at Google was hired old.
So, what are typical age discrimination activities?
I've worked myself into a pleasant niche position, with literally most of my fellow employees being older than I am, and I'm rapidly approaching the big 40, so I literally don't know.
Other than blatant stupidity, like kids walking around chanting "old people suck! old people suck!" or refusal to hired based on grayness, what exactly is a culture for 40-year-olds?
The 20s I have worked with whine like little punks about how management wants them clean and sober and on time early in the morning, don't they know they "had to" close the bar last night? They don't even get it that whining to me is a waste of time since I don't do stupid stuff anymore. They don't whine about age discrimination, but bad judgment / bad time management like that is pretty much a kid thing, so its pseudo-age discrimination.
The 30s that I'm in and work with are constantly taking sick days because of their kids, and holidays/summer-time/snow days are absolute chaos with those folks. Again they don't whine about age discrimination, but kids interfering with work is mostly a 30s problem, plus or minus a decade or so.
As for the old folks ... I don't really know how the company hassles them / soon to be me ... Like... removing the 401K match contribution? or company wide crappy catastrophe only health insurance, which does seem oriented toward the kids? No free geritol in the lunchroom although there's free coffee?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
There is always the talk of how older people don't get new technology, but i think this only described the people who grew up without IT and were confronted with it at a late age for the first time.
This might be naive, but i think now is the time where people grew up in this high tech scenario and for the first time actually grew old with it, too. Society needs to understand that the "new old guys" are just as proficient in adapting new technology as the young ones because adapting is what they did their whole life.
Clean Room Technician: You know what they do with engineers when they turn forty?
[to Aaron, who shakes his head]
Clean Room Technician: They take them out and shoot them.
I fall into the old & grey category too. However, I still pwn n00bs 24/7...
This case is not cut and dried (the guy was already over 50 when he was hired), which is unfortunate because age discrimination is very, very real in IT and especially in the software industry.
If you in IT, and are at age 40, and have not been promoted to management, become an independent contractor, started your own business, taken a government job, or switched careers... well, you better look good in blue, because you are one pay check away from having no other choice but to become a Wal*Mart greeter.
Jessica 6: A friend of mine went on carousel. Now he's gone.
Logan 5: Yes, well, I'm sure he was renewed.
Jessica 6: He was killed.
...and it is discrimination, plain and simple. I get why some managements are compelled to favor new, young employees over older, experienced employees. It's an ego thing. They want to create a culture that reflects their goals and values, and if you were around before they showed up, you represent the old culture that they are trying to wipe out. Especially in blue/gray collar professions where you may have a guy who has been on the job 10 years but has no degree, but the guy with a BS that has been there for only two years gets promoted because the new management values education over experience. I am in a similar situation where I work. Look guys, we all turn 40. Not everyone is going to be the guy running things. It's discrimination, and if it happens to you go do your homework and fight it if they are violating internal policy or law.
http://pseudoexpert.com
Imagine Microsoft 20 years ago.......that is Google today.....
Beware the Lollipop of Mediocrity, Lick it once and you suck forever.
I'm bald. But the good news is I never get called away from work because of an emergency with the children, they left home long ago. I don't have to take time off for pre or post natal activities. Or to watch some 6 year-old in a school activity. I don't break a leg on "adventure" holidays and require all my co-workers to subsidise my recklessness. I don't get drunk every weekend and have "off" days every Monday. I don't spend half my working day trying to chat up my co-workers (for which they're very grateful) and I don't feel so insecure that I need to challenge every decision, or jostle for promotions - no matter how meaningless.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I'm 43 and work in IT in Vancouver, Canada. Vancouver's version of Google is Electronic Arts (EA). EA has many employees in Vancouver, a 'cool' office and lots of perks, like Google. It also has a very young workforce with people like me generally not interested in working there. Why? Because there's very little life/work balance at EA. I'm married, I have a kid and another one on the way - I'm not interested in working 80 hour weeks in exchange for free breakfast and a basketball court. I'd rather go home on a summer evening and play frisbee with my kid - Not play ultimate with my co-workers, then go back to work for another 3 hours. Google builds cool stuff, but I suspect their culture just isn't skewed to provide those things that someone like me would want, i.e. a good life outside of the office. Doesn't mean they're a bad company, they're just not a good fit for people like me.
I'd link it to the incredible percentage of IT projects that end up canceled, over-budget, or partial/total failures. Unless Grey workers do nothing at all to keep up-to-date technically, and start working very short hours, I don't see how their experience can be easily dismissed... unless it's actually perceived as a drawback.
There's also the question of whether older workers leave because they want to, or because they have to. I've seen a lot of burn-out, mainly due, again, to the immaturity of industry practices.
And it's deeply entrenched. Do computer technicians command as much money as plumbers, yet ?
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
"Greyglers" sounds like pure HR bullshit.
Google sounds more and more like a crappy company to work for as time goes by.
Posting as AC because I'm too lazy to create an account.
Look at the bright side, if this was Logan's Run, they'd have been dead for ten years already...
in relative terms, no
assume parent poster is 38
in one year, time until age 40 goes from 2 years to 1 year, or a 50% decrease in time until age 40
assume a comparison person of age 24
in one year, time until age 40 goes from 16 years to 15 years, or a 6.25% decrease in time until age 40
so time until age 40 is an accelerating change
so yes, a 38 year old is approaching 40 more rapidly than a 24 year old
i'm certain a real mathematician can express this concept far more elegantly than i can, but you get my point
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Not sure if I could get a job at a big company, but I probably wouldn't try. But at startups, results and track record matter a lot more than appearances. Nobody cares how old you are.
It does start to feel funny when the CEO is always younger than you though.
you think 800 * 600 is just too damn small!
http://www.writeitfor.us - Writing IT for the IT generation.
This is all about benefits. When you are 18-25 and working on Summer of Code, the last thing on your mind are thoughts of retirement or your perspiration drug plan. The sad part is that we completely buy it. I was at a conference some weeks ago and roughly half of the speakers kept pushing this (though suspiciously all of these people were in either community organization or management roles, not one programmer or engineer had a thing to say about it). 30 is treated like the new 90.
hmm, Steve Jobs is 55... I guess it's OK if people think you are a cool old dude then... But as soon as you start acting like a fart, you're outta here!
The bad news is, I probably don't pick up new crap as quickly as I used to. The good news is, I don't need to because most of it is like the old crap I've already learned.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
I loved those guys on Babylon 5. Wait, or were they a clan in Masquerade?
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Here's a nickel, sonny. Go buy yourself a real computer...
I feel bad for these youngsters! They'll never get to experience the joys of COBOL on a mainframe, never know the bliss of starting simultaneous INGRES queries and then going outside to play football while the Vax thrashes. They'll never feel the warmth given off by a line printer spewing 2000 pages of log files you accidentally printed. Woe to them!
I weep.
And during your interview, when you mention the phrase "I've been doing this professionally for seventeen years..." the conversation shifts to how subtly and quickly you can be shown the door.
It happens, and shame on those who do this to us.
Kriston
Real geeks are constantly excited by new tech. Real geeks are too busy to have families, so they have no problem with 80-hr weeks. Hell, real geeks can put in an 80-hr week from home. Google doesn't know what they're missing.
If anything it's the kids that are a problem. Most of the 20-somethings I've worked with are irresponsible, couldn't show up on time if you held a gun to their heads, don't understand the word deadline, and tend to overestimate their abilities big-time. Sure, a few of them turn out to be better than expected, but that's the minority.
I'm 45 and I'm still willing to kill myself for the job. I feel like I'm making a difference every day. I know people are depending upon on me. Sure, I've never been married, but I never wanted to be married. Why anybody would want that is beyond me. All that does is take away from time that could be spent being productive.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
A few months ago I left a job at a web hosting company, where at 24-25 years old, I was an "old man" by comparison. I was the only non-manager on the tech side of the company to have a degree, and had been programming C when most of the kids I worked with were in elementary school. Yet, they looked at me like I was some sort of "n00b" for not knowing PHP. Partly, I didn't have any desire to know PHP. My co-workers looked at "add more memory" as the solution to all their performance problems. Not one of them had ever programmed in a compiled language, never had to tweak out more memory, or anything like that. It was incredibly frustration when we were doing maintenance reboots against the memmap 0 bug that was out at the time and the senior admin and myself were the only two people in the department that knew why the bug was an actual problem, the difference between kernel space and userspace in memory, etc.
Anyway, I eventually left for a company that does its own hardware design, writes everything in C and Perl, runs FreeBSD instead of CentOS and has actual engineers. I'm the youngest, greenest person on the block again, and so I actually have to start learning again. Luckily, I'm learning in my own comfort level. They could have doubled my pay at the hosting company and I'd never have been happy there. Maybe I'm stodgy; maybe I'm a curmudgeon; maybe kids today really aren't as smart as they used to be. Frankly, though, I think that when you reach a certain point in your life, free pizza and the ability to keep a nerf gun next to your desk don't compensate for low pay, long hours and having to put up with idiots who are fat, white and loud yet somehow think they're ninjas. It's the difference between the kid running Ubuntu at home and a professional AIX admin. As you get older, your professional goals change, your life goals change, and you take a different direction. Most of the "cool" companies are started by kids who are still in their nerf war stage. A company like IBM or Juniper is probably a lot less "ageist" than one that uses terms like "agile" as if the term is domain-specific with no other meaning.
I'm 40 and graying rapidly!
No, really, I am.
learning to speak a new language at age 7 is much easier than learning to speak a new language at 47
i don't see how this concept is any different between human languages and learning "machine" languages
at a young age, there's a certain plasticity of mind where if you learn to program, it always comes easy for you, but if you learn programming at an older age, programming will always be a dreary slog
much like the kid who learned spanish at age 7 can speak it without an accent and as fluently and as easily as any other native spanish speaker. but if you learn spanish at 47, you'll always have a funny accent, and it will always be a difficult slow cognitive slog to frame your words as you say them
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
[waves 67-year-old-hand]
I'm not evil either! Well, not very.
but i still think its a language grey area
"rapidly approaching" does not refer to a change in the speed of time itself. of course that is silly
but "rapidly approaching" DOES refer to the an increase in the rate of change in proportional age difference between your current age and the age of 40
in other words, it is perfectly appropriate and logical for someone to say they are "rapidly approaching" 40. it really does make sense
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm not 40 yet, but I can attest that I don't have then energy that I used to. Not only that, but I can smell a crap idea earlier that I used to and I'm not afraid to make my opinion known. It does seem to me that a lot of the older folks are rather complacent, but appearances can be deceptive. That old dude who appears to be just idling along is possibly just very efficient. For example, with my experience now, I can do the work that would take two or three of me when I was in my 20's.
There is a perception that older employees are dinosaurs, which I think is wrong. I think it has more to do with shit management that doesn't know how to tap into those resources.
It's "old and grey" not "old and gray" At least Google can spell, they have "Greyglers" not "Grayglers", although to be honest both of those spellings make for an equally abhorrent word.
It's great that these middle-aged geeks are experienced and all but (and maybe I'm wrong) isn't creativity kind of important? It strikes me that the exact kind of person you are looking for is a young engineer. Sure 40-somethings can be creative and they probably have a better percentage of quality ideas than younger people. But they are also far less likely to bend the rules of computing and I imagine that's exactly what a company like Google wants.
You want 40-somethings to critique the ideas, not to make them. Management, not engineering.
So, at 40... maybe I should start that IT career I've always wanted?
My department wanted to hire me (46 y.o.) a younger "assistant" to help with all my duties. Mostly they're nervous that I'll leave and be hard to replace.
So HR asked for the skills and qualifications I have that are needed for the jobs and projects that I do.
After getting the list and doing some research, HR told them they would need to hire 3 or 4 younger people to meet those qualifications, at a cost of at least 2 to 3 times my salary.
So yeah, experience beats youthful enthusiasm every damn day. Get yourself some experience, kids.
Oh, I got a raise out of the deal.
has a built in karma
if you are white, you'll never be black. if you're a man, you'll never be a woman
but if you are 20, some day you WILL be 50. therefore, all of the hatred you dish out will be visited back on you... by your own self. karma still applies to sexism and racism, but it comes back in the form of other people's views of you. not the special hell of a self-created low self-opinion
if you are 20, and have a bad attitude towards the aged, someday, you will have a bad attitude towards yourself. self-hatred is something all of us carry around to some extent, but to have self-hatred gradually grow as you get older must be a terrible weight to bear, and it keeps growing
you can see it on the street: the guys with the ridiculous fake hair and the women with the ridiculous facial plastic surgery: this is self-hatred. who wants to walk around broadcasting their lack of confidence and stinking of desperation, to telegraph that you want to be something you can never be again? to worship youth, but then turn into someone old, must be a terrible experience to go through. to simply look at yourself in the mirror and be filled with anguish: built in karma for being an ageist. this also might explain some suicides by people in their 40s and 50s
meanwhile, if you always treated the elderly fairly and gracefully, then when you yourself are older you will still be confident, and still like yourself, because you will treat your older self the way you treat older others today. built in karma still applies, but in the positive: you age gracefully, and have a full happy life
so the cost of being an ageist is to have an unhappy older life
don't be an ageist. look at the elderly and see yourself as you will be someday, and smile, for the sake of your own future happiness. you want to age gracefully, you really do. so prepare yourself psychologically now for aging gracefully, by treating the aged you encounter today with the same grace you want to treat yourself with later
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
He heads up a couple of semi-successful businesses, Apple, Inc and Pixar. I wonder if Google would consider him qualified?
Just like living in the domed city of Logan's Run.
Except without all the scantily-clad beautiful young women.
Geezers have just learned that everything is over-hyped crap, and folks just don't appreciate having their parade rained on.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Fuck the little piss ants at Google, I am gonna start using Bing, MS supports us old codgers
The article seems misleading. It says that Google has 20,000 employees and fewer than 200 of them over the age of 40 are working to "make Google culture... welcome to people of all ages."
It makes it sound as if they are saying Google is a company of 20,000 with fewer than 200 employees of age 40 or over, but that isn't true. It's just that fewer than 200 of them have joined this specific group to make Google culture welcome to people of all ages. Seems like we've made a "news story" out of thin air. Slow news day?
If they're over 40 and good at what they do, senior technical people are a huge asset. They can spot the disaster before it happens, or cut through the complex requirements and identify what it is the customer really needs before you waste six months of development time. Because they've seen it before.
They also tend to be tired and kind of grumpy, because they've seen it before, but a savvy manager will cling to these folk for dear life.
My guess would be that most of the original hires have long since moved on, due to financial stability and better opportunities. That leaves lots of 20 nothings competing hard to get those jobs. They are going to beat out inexperienced older workers easily. Most well-qualified older IT workers are not looking to start new jobs at Google, there's simply too many other exciting opportunities (Google is not going to have another IPO, afterall), and they don't need a career starting resume bullet. That said, I'd gladly work at Google (39), but they'd have to match my current 6 figure income, which is not going to be entry-level.
"Don't you know you're going to shock the monkey?"- Peter Gabriel
...is turning grey.
I still enjoy a few drinks every weekend, but know how to stop so that I'll be clearheaded and ready to tackle Monday mornings at 100%. My younger co-workers... not so much, I am the one picking up their slack. None of them can touch my technical expertise however, they all come to me to solve difficult problems for them, almost to the point of disrupting my task schedule... I hope they are learning something other than enablement and dependence. I don't break any bones on "adventure" holidays, and even though I am generally more risk-averse the older I get, I do have a hobby that some think is quite dangerous: I just recently built a 200+ MPH experimental, fully acrobatic airplane. If something bad happens and I fuck up in it, nothing will matter to me anymore and all my work problems will become somebody elses.
cloud computing!
(kill me now)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Google doesn't hire older engineers precisely because they are culturally different than the new grads they prefer to hire. I doubt they have a policy of age discrimination, but when interviewers fill out their evaluation forms, they can shape and tilt their answers to disfavor people they would not prefer to work with. So when you have a culture that is predominantly new grads, hiring "old guys" is not likely to happen, even if there is no official policy of age discrimination, because people tend to hire people who are similar to themselves.
I interviewed with Google, answered all their dumbass 'programming puzzle' questions, and didn't get an offer. The most experienced guy who interviewed me had 10 years of experience. I have 30+. Out of the 6 interviewers I spoke with, their industry experience 10, 5, 5, 5, 3, and 1 years. In other words, I had more experience than all of them put together.
In the end, I was glad I didn't have to decide whether to accept an offer from Google because, after seeing their work environment, which resembled a college dorm room with no privacy whatsoever , I would not have been able to work for them anyway. While this is off topic, I was amazed that a company with so much money would drink some stupid management Kool Aid and eschew giving people decent offices within which they could concentrate to work.
Most people over the age of 30 have got bored with "present-eeism", the idea that because you're present in the workplace, you're somehow contributing. I'd prefer someone who did one thing well in a 4 hour working day than someone who spent the first 2 hours talking about their "awesome" new game, then just "had" to check FB every 30 minutes and tweeted every 10. Then took 2 hours for lunch because they wanted to check out the Mall (give it up, you're not 12 any more) and spent the whole afternoon playing a "hey dude, look at this" website they stumbled across. And after that stayed at work to watch TV online because the connection was faster that they got at their parents' place.
So a 60 hour working week rapidly changes into 30 hours of "work" and 30 more freeloading, or worse: distracting the people with actual talent, who could achieve the same results in half the time, if they weren't being continually diverted off at a tangent by the individuals who didn't have the self-discipline to get their heads down and do their jobs.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
the movie sucks, i never released it, too embarrassing ;-P
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
As a 30-year old college student who will be entering a high-tech career around 32, stories like this terrify me. It seems the only employees that are valued are the 18 to 20-something range because they are cheap, don't yet understand how the world works, and can be forced into working excessive hours on projects until their passion for their work is destroyed. Like EA.
Having known several people who "burned out" from careers in programming, it's not something I'd ever want to go through. But I dislike the idea that I'll be "too old" for a company in just a few more years.
I guess you can't win.
Very good observation - sorry I don't have any mod points. The games industry exploits these factors to the max, hence the phenomenon of "EA Wives" and "Rockstar Wives".
Squirrel!
Logan: NO! Don't go in there! You don't have to die! No one has to die at 30! You could live! LIVE! Live, and grow old! I've seen it! She's seen it!
[Shows the crystal on his palm]
Logan: Well, look! LOOK! LOOK, IT'S CLEAR!
[Crowd laughs]
P.A. System: Lastday, Capricorn 29's. Year of the City: 2274. Carousel begins.
Jessica: No! Don't! Don't go! Listen to him! He's telling the truth!
[More laughter]
Jessica: We've been outside! There's another world outside! We've seen it!
[Sandmen grab them]
Logan: Life clocks are a lie! Carousel is a lie! THERE IS NO RENEWAL!
path should naturally evolve to put you in a management position? For instance, I sent my friend a link to this discussion and his response was: "No, that's about right. You move into management to stay relevant. Get your college degree so you can do the same, or prepare for difficult times later." It's a weltanschauung completely alien to me. The notion that you're cognitively impaired, lazy, or otherwise worthless if you're 40 and still like being in the trenches is absurd. I can certainly appreciate the skills required to be a good manager, but that manager still needs experienced engineers to get things done on time, on budget, and with enough foresight to ensure the maintenance costs are predictable. Management as the apex of a career is _A_ path, but not necessarily _THE_ path -- at least that's how it appears to me.
Honestly, "Greyglers" is an opt-in list. It's a group you have to CHOOSE to be in. Just because "only" 2000 people are in the group doesn't mean that there are only 2000 over 40s at Google. Just like I'm sure the mailing list, group for African Americans doesn't have every single African American on it.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Pigs in Zen..
I am enjoying watching these youngsters re-invent X-Windows in the browser. It's quite interesting.
Performance.. what performance? Security.. what security? bwaaahaaaa...
The law aside, Google is making a mistake by not attempting to mix generations. A retired federal law enforcement officer who is like an uncle to me has a saying, "You can learn something from anyone and everyone." The older worker is often more disciplined with a better work ethic than someone fresh out of school. The older software engineer is more experienced and can thus produce better quality code. Why not foster an environment that mixes the youthful ideas and enthusiasm with the experience and wisdom of the older worker? Why not use the older worker as a mentor and guide? By automatically discounting someone based on age, you blind yourself to any good that said person has to offer. And before anyone says I am an OG (Old Guy,) I am 33 and have been able to learn a lot about best practices and network engineering from a 60 year old grandpa!! Because I gave him the time of day, I learned some techniques that could potentially avoid pitfalls and served me very well.
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the biggest reason that there aren't more people over 40 working in IT and software development. For me anyway, it was the realization that technology keeps changing but it doesn't really improve. Sure, there is more "eye candy" and "cool" interfaces but how is it really improving our lives? The challenge to get some technology to work when your young can very appealing but after a while you get tired of fixing the same problems over and over. Especially when the benefits of the new product is marginally better, or maybe even worse, than the previous product.
The problem seems to be phrased most of the time as "older people can't keep up with the technology" when the real issue is "people with experience realize the futility and silliness of most of the new technology". Technology like social web sites and mobile phones have become almost pure entertainment pretending to be a useful tool. The CEOs of these high-tech companies don't want people around that keep bringing up the fact that "the Emperor has no clothes". Young people can be easily entranced with shiny objects and not realize that there are wasting enormous amounts of their lives. Especially when they're getting paid to waste their time.
I'm sure cognitive dissonance will keep most Slashdotters from accepting any of this but if I can help free one mind then it will have been worth it.
"Meaningless!, Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless!"
I blame it on the current talent pool in the midwest. Most of the people we bring in now all have this "video game" degree from the nearby university. Not one of them understands the concept of designing practical solutions. They also do not understand testing. They seem to fall into the duct tape programmer category. Simple obvious decisions about user interface, input formatting, smart security decisions, anticipating user mistakes, these things just dont come with that degree they arrive with. The seasoned programmers here watch the same stupid mistakes getting made over and over again. On the one hand, we desperately need the help, there is so much work to get done and tons of money to be made, on the other hand, these kids that come in just make more work for us in the long run as we keep recoding and recoding the stupid shit that they do. In a few instances, these kids get a degree and find out its not really what they wanted to do with their life. They just got the degree because they liked playing with their wii and their parents were excited to have something their kids would actually pay attention through in school.
I would much rather bring in the mature, more experienced programmer that has been through it all and builds in ways that eliminates all the obvious problems, so we can stay focused on the bigger issues of a project.
I think you find that there are a fair number of "old timers" who get new tech, but most of us are the folks who got into the industry for fun in the first place, not just for the money. :-)
I find this whole discussino amusing given that I'm 47 and I'm having to deal with multiple folks 15-20 years my senior here. And some of them are VERY clueful.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
60H/W with lots of meetings / paperwork then real work time.
How dead time is just waiting for the PHB to sing off on the next step / waiting for the ok to get apps / other stuff that you need to do your job. How much is reworking as the PHB keep changing the scope of the job.
For a while I thought that Google's short comings were the by-product of uber nerd hubris and the belief that they simply know the best way to do everything. Their lack of maturity shines through most visibly when it comes to support, documentation and long term planning. Their pre-sales processes are about the worst I have dealt with.
Wisdom comes from age. As people grow and mature, they tap into different sensibilities during different phases of their lives.
An older person might not have the grasp of complex search algorithms, or the glue that ties Wave together that a 30 year old engineer in their prime might have. On the other hand, that 30 year old super engineer probably knows fuck all about actually running a company, or balancing a departmental budget, or dozens of other things that have to be in place if a company will have long term success.
I use my dad as an example. He's a 65 year old retired Harvard MBA. He could be taking it easy but he enjoys what he does. He consults with startups and small businesses. He helps them establish the fundamental financial foundations that they need to be successful. There are plenty of people out there who are good enough at something to start a business doing it. However those businesses often falter and teeter on the bring of failure because the owner's brilliance in providing a service or inventing a widget doesn't translate into running a company. In his case, one of his assests is his age. He has been exposed to decades worth of macro economic trends and worked across different industries.
I'm not saying that Google should be snatching up 65+ year old retired folks simply because they have a lot of wisdom and experience. On the other hand, they could use some maturity. Take a look at the wifi debacle they're in. That is a great example of what happens when people lack maturity. They simply don't care about the consiquences of their actions, or if they do they minimize them. Personally I tend to agree with the prevailing thought process that if a person is broadcasting an unencrypted signal they shouldn't expect privacy. On the other hand, I have enough maturity to realize that the law is vague in those areas. I wonder if Google even bothered to have any competent lawyers review their plans, or if their conversation went something along the lines of,
"Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we just snarfed wifi traffic as we drove along?"
"Yeah! It would be like war driving on a massive scale!"
"Why not? We're already taking pictures of every square foot of property along side every paved surface in the developed world, we might as well map every wireless AP out there too."
The Chinese have a saying to the effect of, "At the times when things are going very well, that is when you have to be the most concerned about danger."
Google is entering that phase in their life. Their IPO is behind them. They are sitting on billions of dollars. They are introducing new products that are having some success. But now everyone wants a piece of them.
He got a PHD from CMU in CS, which is likely the best college for CS.
He invented the scribe text formatting language.
He invented the router, which became the first cisco router.
He co-founded what eventually became Adobe.
While at DEC, he and his group invented the altavista search engine.
There is more, but he clearly has serious computer science talents and vision.
Humanity has this strange way of portraying itself as stupid.
If you're young, you're inexperienced and thus unintelligent.
If you're old, uh, well, you're inexperienced and thus unintelligent.
Suppose Page and Brin started out hiring their peers: fellow college students and recent grads, people that they're comfortable working with, and (perhaps more important) people who are willing to work long hours cheaply for a startup. Immediately, that means that the group of individuals making up senior management today - or at least those with the most seniority - will mostly be in their thirties, no ageism or conspiracy required. For a variety of reasons, people tend to hire subordinates who are younger. (I'm not saying that this is a hard and fast rule, only a tendency.) Younger people are (again) usually less expensive to hire, and they can be groomed for long-term future promotion and as a source of institutional memory and continuity. Younger managers may feel uncomfortable or insecure giving direction to workers who are much older.
In other words, it's going to be another twenty years before the founders and big bosses get close to retirement age -- which means it's probably going to be almost that long before you see a more uniform distribution of ages among their employees.
~Idarubicin
I am probably the exception. We have a fair number of boomers coding here. We a vertical market software company in the energy industry. Domain-knowledge is very important. And many of the engineers were not originally in software. The main thing I observe that older people dont put in as much overtime as I think younger people do.
I have tried to structure my financial resources to prepare for early-retirement-downsizing about this age. In the energy industry 55 is the typical separation age. Earlier for software types. Unfortunately the economy has not cooperated as much I'd like. I'd like to go freelance and do something on smartphones when I separate from this company.
He was a prof at my college and left early under some cloud too. I thought he was a fairly clever guy. But he may not be the kind of team player industry likes. Then he may be using age as the main excuse, when there was really something else.
I worked at google for a few years.
I don't think google discriminates based on age.
The founders feel strongly that intelligence is more important than experience.
So they believe that they discriminate based on intelligence.
The problem I had working for google is that the company wants to employ only the "A" personality type engineer.
The "googly" engineer accepts no compromise, makes no mistakes and is driven to produce the best solution at any cost.
After 20+ years of working in the industry, I'm willing to compromise and to produce a great solution now until I can produce a better one tomorrow.
At google, the founders have stated that great is not good enough.
I'm an "AB" personality type and that "B" part is not good enough for google.
Google has amazing benefits and so working there is amazingly lucrative.
I would work there again if I could but I fear it would end the same.
At google, you need the approval of your peers.
The "A" personality types are the majority and as such they don't want any other types around.
(There are exceptions if you're charismatic or attractive but that is the same at other companies.)
Well that explains why I got turned down for a job there (I'm 40) when I was qualified. Calling my lawyer. (Yeah right)
Many of the other developers in their 50's are putting in 60+ hour weeks (and have been for several months).
Here's a graph you might find interesting: Productivity, 40 hours versus 60 over eight weeks.
From the same presentation:
Working more than 40 hours per week leads to decreased productivity
- Less than 40 hours and people weren't working enough.
- Greater than 40 hour work week gives a small productivity boost.
- The boost lasts three to four weeks and then turns negative.
Ford chewed on this problem for 12 years and ran dozens of experiments. As a result of Ford's experiments, he and his fellow industrialists lobbied Congress to pass 40 hour a week labor laws. Not because he was nice. Because he wanted to make the most money possible. We like to think of a 40 hour work week as a 'liberal policy' when in fact it was hard headed capitalism at its finest.
"On our last big push 10 years ago we had a fairly young developer die when an other wise mild virus wasn't taken as sick time and he worked and worked and finally it crossed the blood brain barrier."
I had recently started at & was on my 1st on-call week for a major .com when I started feeling sick. I'd be DAMNED if I was going to call in sick 3 days into my 1st on-call so just tried to gut it out (pun pending). by Wed I finally called my Dr who basically said: you have APPENDICITIS, you F-tard! drop what you're doing & get to the nearest ER _NOW_!!!. after they took it out the surgeon told me it had "perforated" (analogous to running over nail vs having blow-out) & that I was lucky I didn't have peritonitis/wasn't looking at a much longer recovery or worse. I'm pretty sure they don't name buildings after or make holidays in memory of people who (literally) get themselves killed for their jobs...
FWIW, I'm now 40+ & trying to figure out what I want to do when I grow up...
Unions may be inefficient, but so is working your ass off to get fired because you're being replaced by a 22 year old H1B who will do insane hours, but knows jack shit about the problem domains, and will move on to a different company in a few years.
If anyone can fix the problems with unions and get most of the benefits, it's us geeks. We must hang together or hang separately.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
I often wonder about my opportunities (or lack thereof) once I finish my electrical engineering degree. I'll be competing with the 22-year-olds when I'm 40.
Please,I beg of you, please don't hand me this bullshit about respecting the talents of older IT workers. It is a boldface lie and a conspiratoral act of discrimination running wild throughout IT. I should know. I'm 56 and I've been on medical leave since a 2009 accident. I have already been told that my career is finished,done,dead as a doornail. Why, I asked$ My attorney's response? "No one in network support or network management wants a 57 year old." Oh, so 26 years experience means nothing, I asked ? Maybe it's a different mindset. Most guys my age can work the ass off a lot of 20 somethings. Most of us don't window Warcraft on our desktops.Usually,we don't quitly leave a port open here and there for our own 'private' networking access. And guess what;we don't give a shot what someone else is up too, so long as it hurts no one else or the network. Usually, especially those of us from the military, are better team players. I have worked on projects with 20 somethings. Its a little chilly with managers;maybe we fart too much or something stupid like that, I don't know. We do seem to work better with the worst of the worst end-users.Maybe we prefer coffee to a RockStar at 8 in the morning. Maybe we don't burn a number during lunch;we'll wait until the ride home. I don't have a problem working with a twenty-something- unless he's got a problem me just because I have white hair,older tats and roll tighter joints. What I do know is this: All of those 20 somethings need someone who has "failed,and failed often" in order to pull it off. The basis of prejudice towards others is grounded in Mark Twain's quote, "All generalizations are false, including this one ". Yeah, I'm just too old to contribute to any team or project. Discrimination is discrination is discrimination, plain and simple. I am waiting for a massive age discrimination law suit to get corporate IT's attention.
"The life clocks are a lie. Carousel is a lie. There is no renewal"
My advice for the Google employees approaching LastDay, don't try to run from the Sandmen in HR, I hear they are well armed.
Entry level at Google is six figures, though it be as high as your six figures. One report I got was $140k, but I believe that was actually $110k + $30 signing bonus (his gf told me); it was a mediocre kid fresh out of a no-name school, but Google's interview process is so biased towards hiring people right out of school that he probably would have beat you for the job even if you've already demonstrated your brilliance in the field in the exact same type of work. You really need to take classes, or self-study for a long time, in order to get a job there. That, and the fact that they tend to have ridiculously protracted interviews, is why I've never bothered to apply.
Do you know how that sounds? Like that
You'll be happy to know that the administrations from both sides since 9/11 have made it very hard to emigrate, although there is a lack of skilled workers in hard sciences in the US (please visit the DOS website if you doubt it). I won't even mention the fact that banks that received TARP money were not allowed to hire H1Bs. That's right. The system is broken, and the only thing the administration was able to do is rule out the hiring of thousands of more capable workers. Btw even low skilled immigration benefits a country's economy in many ways, there are studies on that (citation needed, I know).
What right wing racists and left wing protectionists fail to understand is that education in this great country fails to motivate "natives" to study hard sciences. I was lucky enough to study for a while in the U.S. and get (another) advanced degree here. Looking at the classroom is just like looking at my company now: "natives" are totally unrepresented because they simply don't have the skills in hard sciences. The CS and MIS grads you mention were not necessarily in the States, and they're the main portion of the supply for H1B.
Whatever the reason for a rant against H1B may be, there are 2 solutions: either study hard to get the job, or contact your congressmen to support protectionism. I personally worked hard to emigrate, and US immigration laws are the most intricate in the OECD. I firmly believe that bringin g in bright minds is the best way to boost this country's economy, and I like to think I contribute to that.
You know what? In about a year from now I'll have a Green Card in my pocket too. If I ever "take your job" I apologize in advance for it.
Worker in their 40's and up are rather disinclined to work 120 hours/week and basically live on the Google campus, away from their spouse and teenage children. Free cokes and junk food only goes so far - about 26. So yes, there's a cultural mismatch: older workers have a life outside Google.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Google jumped the shark long ago. It's not the company we fondly remember from the beginning, it's full of useless people that make useless crap for below-average wages in exchange for some free food and the right to bask in the Google aura.
I believe it was acceptable in the 80's. But then again, so were a lot of things.
It was acceptable at the time?
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
They actively favour recruiting out of school and promoting those "younger" hires over experienced people.
Microsoft in Denmark actively do not hire Danish employees, they actively go to Poland and Romania and Turkey. Cheap and young.
I dunno, I've applied twice for positions with them. Once had few phone interviews. My impression was that a) they don't care about past experiences and b) they consider them a liability. I kind of got that vibe "you are too old for us, judging by your resume". I've chatted with some people online who had the same experience/got the same feeling interviewing with them. Well, karma is a bitch...
BookDetective.net - book search engine and ranker I donate my skills to.
So while our life expectancies have jumped into the seventies and beyond, employers now want to view us as though we have the same useful life as someone living hundreds of years ago.
Seeing as how wage stagnation over the past 20-30 years has hit a lot of peoples' ability to save -- not to mention what the recent banking disaster did to most peoples' retirement funds -- one has to wonder what corporations expect those folks over 40 that they laid off to do with the rest of their years. Sure, the corporations don't have any legal obligation to keep people on the payroll. On the other hand, if everyone over 40 winds up unemployed, there's going to be an awful lot of people who are not buying the products and services sold by the corporations.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Just kidding.
I find that TXTing is much more convienent than calling. Sometimes you don't actually want to talk on the phone with someone and only want to say: "[insert bar name] 5:30?", "Disc?", "When are you coming to [location]?", etc... You arn't interested in having a conversation with them unless there is a reply or needs to be a negotiation on what bar or time.
Likewise I'm not interested in talking to someone about going to the bar if I'm not feeling well or am not in town and you can get by with a simple "No", "busy", or "out of town".
I agree with what you are saying about people over using texts but they are quite usefull and I usually still hear some sort of excuse if someone is late even if they did text and say they were going to be late.
Fine, I'm forgoing the mod points I've already spent in this thread, since there's so much damn cluelessness about the "value" of overwork.
For everyone who thinks habitual working hours over a sustainable 35-45 hour pace (which varies by individual) is a good thing, go read Tom DeMarco's book Slack. He neatly debunks the pointy-haired boss myths (and gullible, guiltable workaholic engineer myths) regarding overwork. Some examples: very quickly after working at maximum sustainable pace, your work output per hour starts to drop. Eventually, you've been pulling 60 hours or more for just a few weeks and you're not really getting any more done than you would have at your sustainable pace. For severe overwork, you're getting a LOT less done. Also, "undertime" becomes endemic at high workloads -- that need to "just pop out for a few hours" during working hours to deal with all of that life-stuff that's being neglected.
The larger points of the book surround how a concept of "slack" is vital to the success of any individual, team, and/or company that depends on knowledge work. This "slack" is an ingredient which supplies the ability to quickly respond to changing requirements, to seize opportunities, and to handle market shifts. One of my favorite distinctions that DeMarco draws in the book is between an organization's efficiency and effectiveness. In this context, efficiency is roughly defined as "how fast are we moving towards some goal?" while effectiveness is defined as "are we moving towards the right goal?" Many organizations optimize solely for efficiency -- moving forward at a breakneck pace -- and sacrifice effectiveness in so doing. The organizational ship becomes hard to steer, and often times ends up at the wrong goal.
Heck, Barbara Liskov (2008 ACM Turing Award winner) has a great quote on this topic... IIRC, to the effect of how she felt guilty for times when she worked less, until she realized that she was always more productive and energized during those times.
My girlfriends father is nearly 81 years old and is very adept with using technology, but only what interest him.
For example, he only has a prepaid cell for emergency use. Never text messages, has voicemail disabled, etc. Home phone or nothing for him. However, he constantly works on his Mac with Photoshop CS5 on family pictures, etc, and produces some very impressive work. Much of it is on par with professional graphic design people (self created artwork and image manipulation). Granted, he loves to learn from online tutorials and books, but he is in no way afraid of technology. He can handle upgrades and troubleshoot on his own, calling customer service on when necessary. Owns his own Wii to play Tiger Woods himself, and Wii Sports with the grandkids. Has a projection TV and surround sound setup that he researched himself to find one that fit his needs (albeit installed professionally).
What was his talent/hobby before that came along? He hand build custom and often complex doll and bird houses. What was his career? He was a car salesman for nearly 50 years.
He didn't grow up in the age of Commodore 64, NES, and 286-386 as I did. He didn't attend schooling for CS, or take any type of computing classes. I can't see why it has to be an age problem. I find computing and tech to be just like anything else in life, if you are interested in it, you learn it, do it, and enjoy it. We all just do this to a different extent. Just my two cents, YMMV.
I wish I had mod points in this thread.
Us "old folks" have learned valuable lessons like:
And that's why big companies don't want "old guys"
I think age often determines how you self-actualize. While a young people may seek to empower themselves through their workplace, older people realize that corporate entities don't really give a crap about them as business trumps any meeting any employee needs. A 40 something will seek to actualize through manageable and control-able means; hobbies, family, interests, etc. I think there are very few 20-somethings that are self aware enough to make the distinction of where they can achieve fulfillment.
I think it is possible to employ people of all ages if you can manage their needs which may differ by age as well as profession (power sources, social, behavioral types, corporate culture, etc).
I for one know a few very talented >40 year-old programmers, but in general they tend to be quite outdated. Those that stay up-to-date tend to be really good thanks to experience.
One key ability of a programmer is to learn to cope with change. Sometimes you will have to learn your ways in an entirely new environment. That is generally exciting, but also daunting, and can easily take it's toll on a brain that has gotten a habit of doing things in a certain way. I know far too many programmers that use only one programming language for the duration of their career, and never learned anything new. Some of them have stayed for more than 20 years doing the same. Obviously they can't really adapt well. I mean, they have been doing the same thing for as long as it took them to be born, grow up and learn everything they know. Their brain is pretty much hardwired a single task.
I don't blame fast-paced state-of-the-art Google for not hiring more older programmers. I suspect is not only Google's fault. These older programmers tend not to have the initiative or the knowledge to apply for one of those positions, heck, even for us younger ones is not that easy to fit the expectations.
Older programmers will always be at ease programming for banks or other positions that require their ways and experience.
I expect most slashdotters to remain current on new tech even after their fourties. Sort of like a Jedi council of the elders. Wisdom, experience and knowledge of the state of the art at the same time, that's a powerful combination.
haha old people.
You've confused correlation and causation.
Wisdom does not come from age, it comes from experience (and not in the sense of the same 1-year of experience repeated 30 times). While wisdom is highly correlated with age, it is not caused by it and it is both possible to find a young (20's or even teen's) person with much experience and possible to find an older (50's and up) person with very little experience.
Just so we're clear, this huge discussion is based on the alleged number of subscribers to an internal Google mailing list?
I am 23, fresh out of college and working at the company where all of my colleagues are around 40. And i actually admire those people. They are experienced, confident and clearly know their way around. The project i was assigned to can be considered a "modern technology". And i am surprised how these older people who are supposedly out of touch with the newer stuff give me great insights every goddamn day of what will and won't work with this technology they don't know a lot about. I could have ignored them, dismissed their opinion on the grounds of their age and went on and learned the same things the hard way, i actually did some of that when i was just starting out. There is something about this outstanding experience level that let them see some kind of general things in technology and reach a point where you all new things just seem to differ in packaging. So basically i look up to those people, try to imitate their though process, decision making, try to learn how they think, the skills they have, etc. I still have some healthy criticism left, but it is gradually diminishing as things progress. I hope i have not just got into too much positive discrimination though.)
Back when I was 40 - I got a unsolicited e-mail from a goggle IP from someone claiming to be google HR wanting me to apply for a job based on my skills.
I consider it spam, emailed various contacts within Google I had and even called HR asking for clarification.
(I hope the HR guy was run out on a rail)
Old at 40? LOL... Let's take the world famous mythbusters team as an example of "experience":
Jamie Hyneman, the man with the moustache and white shirt. Age 53. And Adam Savage, now 43....both debunking simple and mathematically advanced myths all over the world, so famous for their nerdy enthusiasm that they're even hailed by Scientists all over the world - despite NOT having a science degree, for being some of the brightest "kids" around ;)
Point is... ...I'm in my 40's too, and I'm still a big kid, playing around with science & computers as I've always done, in my spare time I've got a HUGE science lab with test-equipment and millions of components - doing science just because...science is FUN.
To read that I'm old and useless in the employers eyes is a laughing deal for me, I'm lolling all over the place. You want to know what my last employer told me - dear potential employers out there:
We've never had such a fast worker in our entire career as management, yes - you work only 37-40 hours a week or so, but wholly CRAP you can put it out. Before we used to hire younger people, but you sure are a prime example of how experience just beats 80+ hours any day from ANY young worker.
Needless to say, I worked there for years.
And I'm just as "kiddy" as kids today, I've got my playstation3, latest Android phone (had the iPod touch when it came out the first time), huge-ass tv, latest touch-screen PC's running several operating systems, toys everywhere - and a whole lot of youtube followers all over the world (yet I won't reveal who I am in here, because I like to discuss things without a face sometimes) ;)
But the point remains the same - any person thinking that 40-60 is old...needs to get their head checked, and furthermore - any 40-60 year old thinking that they're old not being capable anymore...shame on you for not wanting to work...lame excuse and make everyone else look bad! :o)
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
I saw my father humilliatingly made redundant after many years of loyal service (and in a country where corruption is rampant, having behaved all his professional carrer with decency and honesty, a fact that was recognized by his employer in multiple times).
Then I saw both of my uncles suffer a similar fate after a company for which they have worked tiressly fo 10 years dumped them after "2 bad quarters" (i.e. the company did not meet expectations, in spite of being profitable!).
I lernt this way that companies have no loyality, and that you are misguided if you believe they do.
I am now in my mid forties and I see no reason to change this, any young people starting now have a choice: make a stand or delude themselves in the false hope that they will progress based on merit alone.
If you want to progress network, that is all what there is to it. As long as you have passable perfromance if you are well networked you will progress, no need to kill yousrelf working yourself sick. Make sure everybody that matters knows you, specially when you do something right, hide away if you possibly can if you screw up (and make light of it by inviting the people that matter for a beer to discuss the matter).