Slashdot Mirror
Age Bias In IT: the Reality Behind the Rumors
CWmike writes "Is high tech really that tough on older workers, or are they simply not pulling their weight in an industry that never stops innovating? Age bias: Some consider it IT's dirty little secret, or even IT's big open secret. Older workers have been hit harder by the recession. '[Age bias is] something that no [employer] talks about. But it's a reality in tech that if you're 45 years of age and still writing C code or Cobol code and making $150,000 a year, the likelihood is that you won't be employed very long,' says Vivek Wadhwa, who currently holds academic positions at several universities, including UC Berkeley, Duke and Harvard. Wadhwa's observation indicates that age bias is a simplistic label for a complicated set of factors that influence the job prospects for senior tech employees."
The truth is that many of the managers in IT are younger and are not comfortable managing older workers.
Best regards.
I am over 45 but I work for a company with a HQ in japan. The work environment is completely opposite when it comes to age. In our shop if a older guy speaks everyone just shuts the hell up and does what he says.
Business is driven almost entirely by profit. If you're a highly paid person who has skills that aren't in the critical areas I'm at a loss for why any company should feel compelled to keep you on, regardless of your age. Knowing one or two languages, IMHO, is a suicide move. Besides, as one who helps technical and business folks achieve their goals, I don't want single-skilled people like programmers. Like it or not, I can get those a dime a dozen overseas. The needs for the organizations I've been with have been a mix of business process, design, and technical knowledge. Evolve or be unemployed. Or relocate. People bitching about there being no jobs often haven't explored relocation and there are jobs, just not in your locale perhaps.
I think it greatly depends on your domain. If you're a C programmer with 20-25 or more years experience with operating systems you're eminently employable. Extremely so, in fact. If your experience is application software on the other hand, then you're almost certainly in trouble. However, since this is about IT and not technology companies I think the finger is squarely on the second group. C is probably on its way out of IT - as a systems programmer I think that makes a ton of sense, myself. It may never be out of the systems space though.
As for COBOL, I think he's flat out wrong. If you can program COBOL you'll have a job - programmers are retiring faster than the systems they maintain. And, no, it wouldn't make any sense for someone new in the field either, because chances are good they'd outlive the systems. I bet just about every COBOL shop is hiring.
...spend years maintaining decades old code, never really getting to build anything yourself, gaining no new or relevant experience to so called cutting edge... probably working with derelict ancient hardware as well...
The trouble is that the companies that want to maintain Cobol systems are typically CHEAP companies... insurance companies, banks, etc... these people won't spend a dime on IT unless it returns a quarter or is absolutely necessary to operating the business.
I applied for a job like that 10 years ago at a life insurance company keeping their mainframe running and linked to newer processes... I was a relatively new college grad, 2 years out and working for a semi-conductor company... I remember thinking it would be great job security (because my industry tended to be steadily being outsourced to either India or China, and still is)... but then I heard their wage... it was $10K less than the lowest offer I had received anywhere else 2 years prior... I know a few people who work there, they were telling me about how great it was to work there because they receive a 3-4% raise every year... yeah that's wonderful, except that after 10 years you're earning what I was making my 2nd year out of school...
Except for those just starting out with no experience, this is true in all industries.
If you're a company trying to tighten your belt in a recession, you are not going to lay off the people with enough experience to do the job, who are young enough to be ambitious and energetic, and who have relatively lower salaries. You are going to lay off those who are older and slower (let's face it, once you get into your 40's, and especially beyond them, you slow down), who have a lot of knowledge and experience (the bosses always figure they have the greater knowledge and experience, anyway), but who are larger compensation relative to the less experienced.
When I was laid off my (non-IT) job at the height of the recession, a couple of the vice presidents semi-joked that all that would be left of the company would be the partners and young kids, none of them particularly good at doing the day-to-day work.
I'm turning 50 this year. Have a good full time job and more side work than I can do. But I have an advantage, I didn't go to college so I never got a piece of paper saying I am an engineer, I have to prove it everyday! I learned C from the K & R book, then C++ as it came along. I learned Java in 96 or 97. PHP around 2003. Learning Scala these days. I can administer networks databases, and, servers of most types (I know several dead operating systems and languages). Because I never stop learning and I never refuse to do something just because I don't know how. I just say up front, I don't know that API, it will take a little longer. I love to do the things I don't know. Plus I don't live in a world that has a cleanly defined line between management and contributor. I have moved back and forth many times. I currently have a VP title in a smaller company, but spend most of my time writing java code, and when something like a DNS record needs to be changed or a new router needs to be configured, I just do it. I used to have to find the manuals, now I can pull it up on my phone. No excuses. Flexibility is what it takes to keep your career going as you get older. I have worked for big industry players as both an engineer and as a manager. Those companies don't always last and neither does any single technology, the only constant is change. If you don't love change, get out of this business.
"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said I don't know." Mark Twain
Situations like these aren't always an issue of racism, but of culture and control.
If you've got a situation where a group of Indian workers are dominating a portion of the company or only hiring other Indian workers, it could be a situation where the boss is able to control the employees through the fear of losing their visa or using the respect that their place in the caste system as an appeal to authority that they wouldn't otherwise have. In addition, bucking authority and trying to gain upward mobility is frowned upon in Indian culture, giving a controlling boss even more power over a team of Indian workers, whereas a Western worker is more likely to rebel against unjust authority and try to take the boss's job.
They're more able to control other Indian workers and get the Indian workers to take more punishment than their Western compatriots because, a lot of times, their Western compatriots, especially older ones who have experience in the field and know what they're doing, won't put up with a lot of their crap.
A power-hungry dictator that is using every method of control that he can will see a Western programmer as a wildcard to their empire and call a thumbs down. They've built their fiefdoms, and can legitimately tell HR that an older Western worker will cause strife among their team.