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.
Do you mean not willing to work 100hr weeks for 30 hrs pay?
$150k clearly goes a lot farther in your fantasy world than in reality.
We would kill for more Cobol programmers. Many of our big iron people have retired and we need to replace them. None of the younger applicants have the experience that we need to maintain our mainframe systems... and they don't want to learn. These systems are not going away but the human resources are.
Especially since a lot of IT managers in their 20s are usually the ones who arn't so great at producing actual software so are slowly moving sideways into project management before they get found out and don't like being picked up on stupid technical decisions by someone old enough to be their dad. I speak from personal experience.
There is an age bias in IT, always has been. It is my observation that this engenders a younger, and therefore, less experienced staff who have no access to older people who have a lot to offer in terms of their experience and developed skills. And so one sees these younger developers struggle with issues that an elder would have a ready solution to. In the development shop I work in it constantly amazes and frustrates me to see the inexperience manifest itself in the functional code delivered. FRs and NFRs that I take for granted are missed completely, requiring a return to the codebase to implement later, if at all.
It is not a matter of pulling weight. More, it is a different weight that the elder will pull, and that is not measured in sheer volume of code, but in quality and the reduction not only in gaps and defects, but also improved long-term productivity. Intangibles in a project-led culture that IT has become, where the load is transferred to in-production where disproportionate levels of human support are required to keep systems and services running.
soon they will want a post doc for help desk Level 1 and then can you a few year later.
$150k a year goes very far where I live. Correspondingly, though, there are no jobs which pay $150k a year here so the point is moot.
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 had an interview yesterday, in fact. first one in months (been out of work a while...)
they didn't even let me finish the interview.
I've been writing C since the mid 80's. and while I don't know every corner of C (and certainly not c++), I do get my job done and my code does tend to run and run well. many shipping networking boxes have my code inside them.
but I can't find a C programming job.
and I'm 50. in the bay area.
I also hate to say it, but there is racism, too. I look around and find the indian guys trying to thumbs-down the westerners. makes me sick to even say such things but I'm finding its true. I enjoy working with indian guys but I am very much turned off by the 'take-over' that I'm seeing right before my eyes. over the last 10 years, the tech industry is flushing out western guys and making it an 'import only' field.
its not just age. its 'reverse racism' too and I wish I was kidding!
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Age is a minor issue if you ask me. A larger issue is that you tend to hit a wall on compensation around your early 30's. Meaning, my experience is that around $130K consistantly is about the best you can do working for someone. Once you reach that barrier, the logical next step is to start building/marketing your own products/services. Personally, I am not a big fan of services because you have to keep your work performance at such a rate that burnout because a big issue. Also, being an older developer, the advantage you have over younger developers is that hopefully you have saved a good part of that high salary rather than blowing it on fast cars and houses so that it opens up options for you...
In short... As a developer, you need to either grow or dwindle. Some do not have the skills/desire to move forward. For those, the decline in wages and stagnation of performance is clearly going to be a problem over the long haul.
I would gladly be a C programmer if I could've found a job willing to hire me to do it out of college. The only places that would hire anyone with a BS in CS were horrible PHP shops, so that's what I learned how to do. It's basically the same story for every I went to college with.
If industry can't find any experienced C programmers, it's their own fault because they don't take the steps necessary to create them.
you're an idiot.
you cannot see that your company is burning YOU and others out.
but you can call it 'pace' all you want. but its the company LAUGHING at you. you will be disposed of soon enough. so save me a laugh at your expense when you get your pink slip.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
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.
"and its abused. oh, how c++ is abused."
Thats true.
"I find very little is NEEDED beyond regular c."
I use code in classes because it saves having to write mystruct-> all the time which makes the code a bit neater, and the STL has its uses if you're in a hurry. But other than that...
"if they use c++ they probably have a bunch of 20somethings wanting to show off this or that feature of the language."
Maybe true 10 years ago, these days substitute C++ for Java where the coders have even less of a clue whats going on and just let the VM garbage collector sort out their mess for them.
Yeah, I think that that statement if you're still writing Cobol code the likelihood is that you won't be employed very long was just a quip-- the author of the article was trying to be funny, and that was the oldest language he could think of. I expect that the workers who can maintain Cobol probably aren't likely to be laid off without warning, because they can't be replaced by twenty-one-year-old coders who are willing to work for ramen noodles and a vague promise of a stake in some future IPO.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
but I can't find a C programming job.
Then you're exactly the sort of person the article is talking about - a curmudgeon who wants to keep on doing exactly what he was doing in the 1980s.
A youngster would have a hard time finding a C programming job, too.
No sig today...
$150k clearly goes a lot farther in your fantasy world than in reality.
Depends on where you live:
In SanFran or NTC? $150k will get you by, but not by too much. You could rent a somewhat comfy apartment with it and not have to drive too far to work,
Up here in Portland (OR), $150k is very comfy... not quite a king's ransom, but enough to get a decent 3-bdrm house in the 'burbs. Here, you can do pretty well on $80k/year.
Back where I'm from (Northwest Arkansas/Ozarks), $150k/year can get you a nice big house with acreage, all paid off on a 5-year note. You could then retire in 10 years on that income. Out there, you can live rather cozy on $40k/year.
In some parts of Mississippi, West Virginia, and Alabama? $150k/yr income can let you live like a near-deity. Out there, folks get by rather cozily on $25-30k/yr.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Actually for embedded work there is still a lot of C coding going on, and it's not all that easy to find qualified people in that area. Of course - if you do embedded work you also need to have decent understanding of hardware, just coding is not sufficient.
Disagree.
Writing a GUI in C, maybe. Writing an embedded controller, not a problem.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
No, and how the heck do you expect me to if everyone keeps asking exactly that question.
Seriously. I've been sitting in too many job interviews (as the interviewer, or actually, as the guy who assesses the person being interviewed by HR because HR knows pretty much NOTHING what I can use, hence I demanded to sit in there for the interview. I got kinda tired of the "javascript experts" they sent me for work that requires intimate knowledge of x86 assembler). And whenever we're hiring for a "junior" something (i.e. entry level, assistant position) and I hear HR ask exactly this question I feel like jumping at her throat. NO, of course he did NOT do this job before. Why the hell would someone with previous experience apply for a junior/apprentice level position at all?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Your post is absurd, and displays the narrow mindedness that is pointed out in the article as a weakness of older workers.
C++ is an extrememly powerful tool.
Powerful tools can cut off your fingers... but they can also allow a skilled work to create something incredible.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
if they use c++ they probably have a bunch of 20somethings wanting to show off this or that feature of the language.
Yes, damn 20 year old kids and their trendy C++ language. Kids these days with their hula hoops and fax machines...
Actually: anyone interested in a C/C++ embedded job in Munich, Germany? Contact me: r8cye2f4g6@snkmail.com.
The discussions seem to be pretty biased towards coding. In the sysadmin side of things, I don't tend to see a ton of age bias. Where I do see it is where you get 50-somethings who are applying to be sysadmins, but because they moved career's 5 or 10 years ago from something completely different. But otherwise, a late-40's or 50's sysadmin is usually in a pretty senior position, because they usually have a lot of root experience. I see a TON of older people when I do various training courses. They're excellent teachers simply because they have so much experience and can bring so much depth to the course. But I'm not a coder, so I can't comment to the coding side of things.
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
If the only thing you know is C, I wouldn't hire you either. I'm 51, and have written in just about every major language at some point in my career. If you haven't bothered to learn anything else, I don't want you.
Because the truth is that things change, and folks unwilling or unable to change will be left behind. I started in assembler, dabbled in FORTRAN, wrote COBOL for 15 years, then migrated to C, C++, and now mostly Java. I can program in both the Oracle and Microsoft versions of SQL, do a little C#, wrote PERL scripts for about 10 years, and could easily learn a new language at any time if I needed to. The only reason I don't know Ruby or Python or a dozen other Web languages is I don't have the time or the need. But I've looked at them and know I could very quickly.
Take the time to sit on your ass in front of your computer and at least get to know something else. You don't have to be an expert in it if you can show you are a good programmer and follow good programming practices, such as maintainability and error handling.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Put your hair in a pony tail and wear a tie-dye t-shirt to your next interview. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
You're right, but what options does he have? Almost all companies operate at the same 'pace' these days.
You can start your own company and then try to compete with the others that treat employees as consumables...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Agreed, I've also been looking for a job lately (although I already had employment, I was just after career advancement) and had no problem whatsoever finding one, and managing a not to be sniffed at ~37%, 5 figure increase in wage to boot.
Although I've worked mainly with C# and Java in recent years I kind of felt like a C++ role because I hadn't worked with it in a while and thought it'd be nice to get back into it- that was far from my highest priority though, career progression was at the top of the list by far. I ended up settling for a job that has a mix of C#, Java, and a bit of PHP, because the fact is C++ jobs just weren't out there (with the exception of a handful of embedded jobs, but I have no embedded experience). There were far more C# jobs out there than candidates though, so as a result I really was able to basically just name my wage within reason- it took a couple of interviews at different places to get the kind of increase I was looking for with some firms having given me lower offers, but I got it okay in the end with a bit of patience.
You can't expect to get exactly what you want, the key point people miss nowadays is that if you want to get a job, or have a decent career, then you must provide what the market wants- it's not for the market to provide what you want. Although I've mainly been doing C# and Java, and was looking for C++, I still went for a few PHP jobs because the career direction, location, and wage were all right- PHP was not my first, or even my second or 3rd choice, but keeping it open as an option, kept the options open for me as a candidate.
I spoke to a lot of recruitment agents in recent weeks and a few of them I built up a decent working relationship with had a similar sentiment- that there are enough jobs for developers, if it weren't for the fact that a lot of developers just refuse to change languages or technologies, and because of that there is actually a shortage of developers fit to fill the posts available. This is very frustrating for the agents, because there's a lot of developers out there whining about being unable to find a job, even though there's a job there waiting, if only they'd be willing to spend a few weeks learning C#, the .NET framework, and SQL server or whatever rather than insisting they use what they've used for the last 20 - 30 years.
The worst part? a lot of the old curmudgeon stuck in the muds complaining about younger people coming in above them and not wanting to hire them are missing the point that the only reason those younger developers are coming in above them is because those younger developers do just happen to have been taught the specific languages that are relevant today. They're oblivious to the fact that they too could have those posts if they just bothered to make the slightest bit of effort to make their skills match the market and it's sad- because with a firm background in C++, picking up C# is easy, and developing with it is a fuckton more pleasant! Those younger folks aren't getting the job instead of you simply because they are younger, they're getting them by mere virtue of the fact that they've recently just come out of an education that teaches skills relevant to the current market and you're too fucking lazy to learn the same!
These people complaining are simply their own worst enemies. You wont always get fair treatment, some companies really are bigoted and such, but the vast majority aren't- they're just pragmatic, they'll take the person who can and wants to actually do the job, not the person with 2 decades experience in another language and who outright refuses to jump to the technologies the company that is recruiting has chosen to use and is already invested in.
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.
This is so much horse hockey. I’m a 44 year old software architect and have no trouble make a 6 figure salary. As a consultant I change the company I’m working for regularly and don’t see any age bias. What I do see is a work environment that many over 40 workers do not like.
1) It is a learning business. The day you are not willing to learn the newest technology or language you are going to lose your job. Many over 40 workers get complacent and stop learning.
2) You must earn your salary. You can’t work as a programmer and expect 10% raises every year if you are not adding value. If you have been promoted to senior developer because you’ve been there that long but, can’t really do the job you are likely to be laid off.
3) Most new developers are crap. They might know the language but, they don’t have real world experience building applications that meet requirements, scale, are well documented and engineered for change. Older developers that have learned the hard lessons and can demonstrate that experience are well compensated.
I’ve seen lots of people young and old fired from this business. Mostly because for some reason people believe that just anybody can pick up a book and be a developer in 21 days. If you aren’t adding value commiserate with your salary you should not be making your salary and that is true for the young and old in every job.
No sigs in BETA. Beta SUCKS.
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.
The fact that this dipshit conflates C and Cobol, pretty much invalidates everything he can say on the subject.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Only those that know they don't know shit and are in management precisely because they don't know shit. Which is, like, 100% in management, else they'd do something productive.
I've taken the technical management position when I've looked around at the who else they would've put in that position and said "Oh, God! No!!" I usually wait until some other qualified person can take it over and go back to design and coding.
I've had hideous managers who thought that who ever the data entry clerk is on MS Project must be the technical lead.
Good management is every bit as daunting as good coding -- and a stellar manager is every bit as rare as a stellar developer. I still miss working for Sandy who realized that the best thing a manager could do was protect his people from other managers. His team was the most productive.
If you do leave your age off your CV, or "mistype" it down by 10 or 15 years, you'll get interviews but no offers on the basis that you lied on your application. If you put in a tru age of 40+ you won't even get an acknowledgement email - and if you phone up, you'll be fobbed off.
It may different in the UK, but in the US you should absolutely not put your age in your CV (unless you are a baby auditioning for diaper commercials).
Only list positions from the last 15 or so years, not every job you've ever held. If you did relevant work in those older positions, you can have a "skills" section that isn't tied to an employer or time period.
For education, list school and concentration, but not graduating year.
And don't lie. Especially about something like your age. The UK may be different, but in the US at some point you will have give your employer your date of birth, even if it's just on your ID establishing you can legally work in the US.
As a sysadmin, in most of the places I've worked, particularly in the larger organizations that have been around for a while, the ages of the employees have been about the same: there are some younger ones, some older ones and a bunch in between. The young ones get paid less, while the old ones tend to have a better idea of how the organization works overall. Therefore, management will try to get rid of, or avoid, the older ones when they can simply because they are more expensive, but not that much more valuable. That's one way to look at it.
There's also another way to look at employees. On the one hand there are the dime-a-dozen types who are always needed for mundane tasks, but who are not good at working independently, solving difficult problems, recovering crashed systems, working in an organized fashion, writing coherent reports, etc. These people never constitute the brains of an organization's IT department. On the other hand there are the relatively rare people who actually do have good brains, are interested in the various technical challenges, solve difficult problems all the time, who write all the detailed reports and can be counted on when disaster strikes no matter when it does.
IMO, older IT people of the first type are much more likely to suffer from age-related discrimination than older IT people of the second type. In my experience, upper management always finds out who the really important people are in the IT department -- the people they know can be counted on to get things running again following a major incident.
The main problem for (prospective) employees of the second type is how to get recognized as such. Indeed, for an employer it's the much same: how to find these people and then how to retain their services.
Try "Compiler Design in C". - 924 pages, hardcover, high-quality paper that you just don't see any more, and definitely NOT shovelware.
And no, it's not just useful for writing C compilers.
Let's say that the average company employs 1 senior engineer for every 10 fresh outs. By the pigeonhole principle, there is going to be a lot of unemployed senior engineers.
In my set of old college friends, only two of us are senior engineers. The rest, all of whom are great engineers, have found other positions. Some by encouragement, some by changing interests, some by following the path of least resistance and some by means that I am not aware of. It has to be that way.
FORTRAN: FOR The Really ANalphabet.
*Taking cover from flamebait flak*
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
I see. I have developed a set of systems over the past 2 years for retail integration and analysis, have it running in a 15 store chain with 65 suppliers connected to the system. I don't get much sleep at all.
You can't handle the truth.