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Silicon Valley's Dirty Little Secret: Age Bias
MightyMait writes "With my 40th birthday coming up, seeing this article makes me happy I have a good job (and a little wary of having to find another). From the article: '[T]he start-up ethos extols fresh ideas and young programmers willing to toil through the night. Chief executives in their 20s, led by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, are lionized, in part because of their youth. Many investors state bluntly that they prefer to see people under 40 in charge. Yet the youth worship undercuts another of Silicon Valley's cherished ideals: that anyone smart and driven can get ahead in what the industry likes to think of as an egalitarian culture. To many, it looks like simple age discrimination - and it's affecting people who wouldn't fit any normal definition of old. "I don't think in the outside world, outside tech, anyone in their 40s would think age discrimination was happening to them," says Cliff Palefsky, a San Francisco employment attorney who has fielded age-discrimination inquiries from people in their early 40s. But they feel it in the Bay Area, he said, and it's "100 percent due to the new, young, tech startup mindset."'"
If you read Slashdot, you are too old.
Seriously, people, this hasn't been a "secret" in at least 10 years.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
If you don't like it, consider the alternative. The system craves fresh meat/blood. So what?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Olds like Steve Jobs and Jony Ive have no hope of creating products that young, hip consumers want. Only some grandpa with a calcified brain would have put money in their shit. That's why Apple has a sprightly young turk heading up their marketing.
The age bias is because kids are young and stupid and will happily waste 40, 60, even 80 hours a week slaving away for peanuts on the Next Big Thing in computers. There's something to be said though for people with a few years under their belt. For one, they know what failure looks like. For two, they don't go with the shiny things because they're shiny -- they understand business needs and can design things that'll last and can be scaled up. The dot com bubble happened precisely because everybody thought the dumb fresh-out-of-college kids had all the answers and we threw money at them like girls throw wet panties at singers on stage.
And we paid for it. Apparently though, we didn't learn anything from the experience. Like say, a modicum of business sense.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
15 years ago, I worked for a well known integrated chip manufacturer in Redmond Washington. They make very expensive power conditioning components for aerospace. It was my "dream job".
I started work there as a Database Admin at a salary of well into the 80's with a teaser to move into the 90's, I thought that after years of grunt IT work, I'd hit it. I was 35 at the time.
Well, of course there is a "and then it happened.." I got laid off.
Long story short, at 35, and the "peak" of my "career", I found that employers wanted 20 to 25 year olds because they would do the same job, except at 60 hours a week, and for less money.
So I went back to my military connections, and got a Civil Service job. I make less, but guess what? I have DECENT HEALTH CARE, and - here's the kicker - I GET 5 FUCKING WEEKS OF VACATION A YEAR.
The biggest benefit is that some 20-something puke is not going to take my job.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
...not give a rat's a** what your age is if you've got a good idea AND a good implementation (ideas are cheap - despite what you may think.)
I perform technical due diligences for multiple investors and they do consider the makeup of teams but never has age been a factor in the decision making.
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Well aren't you smug.
Whoa now, some of those 40 year old techies actually have enough qualifications to fit the impossible requests on job requirements. If we hire them, we can't get more H1Bs and complain to congress there aren't enough skilled workers in the US despite a depressed economy where jobs are hard to come by.
God spoke to me
Suing an employer for age discrimination is very difficult. Proving it in a court of law is almost impossible. Worse, a former head of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sat on some 20,000 age discrimination complaints until the statute of limitations expired. That person is now a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court -- Clarence Thomas.
When seeking a job, however, there are things you can do on your own to reduce the likelihood of age discrimination. In your resume (electronic or hardcopy), omit any experience more than 10-12 years old. While listing schools attended and degrees earned, omit the years. Both men and women should use hair dye to "cover the gray", but men should not hide their baldness. (Young men are often bald by choice; but a comb-over, weave, or toupee too easily indicates an older man.)
No good software engineer need be unemployed. There is just too much work.
I started coding professionally in 1970 and I'm still coding. Not a single day of unemployment so far, and I don't expect one anytime soon. Just keep up your skills and maintain a network of current and former coworkers, just in case. And do good work so people want to keep you around.
I was fired from my job because I'm 50+ and failed several performance reviews. Would they have fired somebody younger in my position? Or made him on management track? Rhetorical.
You were fired because you failed at doing your job, hence failing serveral performance reviews. You were NOT doing you job decent enough. Age has nothing to do with it, so quit making excuses because you were lazy at work.
Be seeing you...
And this is a secret how?
I developed grey hair in my early twenties.
Depending on whether I've dyed it back to its original color, the experience of age bias is universal, whether tech firm, fellow parents, or getting carded for liquor.
Kriston
I left that place when I was 32 - after I sold my creations (plural) there to the highest bidders
Reminds me of a scene from the book Microserfs (Douglas Coupland):
Ethan: "I have brought four products to market myself. Four very successful products. (Unspoken sentiment hangs in the air like dying fart: "Yeah, but your companies all tanked within a year.")
lucm, indeed.
Whenever I hear these types of arguments I always think there must be some psychological term for this. That is, whenever someone has been deprived of some benefit, it is all too easy to get him to rally behind depriving others of the same.
Why should every business endeavor be a race to the bottom for everyone but the shareholders?
And good god do you really want the people who will do the job just because it's a job? Desperation breeds loyalty by necessity but it is not a very healthy state of mind. I guarantee the civil service job is anything but sexy and probably pays nothing more than a reasonable wage. These are the tradeoffs that, generally speaking, have emerged from the free market system.
Most of the successful people I know got that way to because they took a risk they were largely unaware of. These people were either psychopathic or young, both stupid. For every one of them, I'm sure there are thousands who suffered the consequences.
But as an investor, who would you go with? The crazy ones of course.
>You were fired because you failed at doing your job, hence failing serveral performance reviews
Ah, to be young and innocent again.
The funny thing about performance reviews, my dear boy, is they are written entirely by your manager(s). If your management chain gets it into their heads that they're tired of your face, well...
In Silicon valley, when you reached the age of 40 you supposed to have at least 50 millions dollars under you name...
Right.
Just a small piece of information that might prove relevant to your argument here.
The year is 2012, not 1999.
If you are 40 and still looking for opportunities in the Valley, it isn't because you're trying to figure out if the $80,000 signing bonus is worth more than the beach condo in the summer they're offering. It's probably because you're broke and have been unemployed for 6 months, and are willing to take any job just to stay in the tech field..
Like I said, it's not 1999 anymore. Wake up.
I hope your post is satire. If not, then fuck you.
You know what's really wrong with this country? It's the people at the top fucking over what's left of the middle class. Money doesn't trickle down, it rises upward if regular people have money to spend. People are working longer, harder, and for less while their jobs are being outsourced and benefits are being slashed. The 1% is making money hand over fist and even though they're richer than they've been in the last 50+ years they still bitch and moan when it comes time to pay their fair share of taxes. If they don't like Clinton rates then we could always go back to Eisenhower rates.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
I am sorry to say but it's folks like you that are responsible for the USA's [finacial] woes it finds itself in at this time.
People who say things like this, and actually believe them, aren't entirely responsible for our economic problems, but they're probably the worst offenders.
To make matters worse, your statements do not reflect an iota of sorrow for the tax paying ordinary American!
(a) Federal employees pay taxes like everyone else. Yes, their jobs are ultimately paid for by everyone's tax dollars (including their own) but it makes no difference to the person getting the paycheck.
(b) I'm sure he feels a great deal of sorrow for the people caught up in the rat race of private-sector employment, which is why he's taken the step of not being one of them any more. Your statement makes as much sense as saying to someone who's happy to have survived cancer, "Your statements do not reflect an iota of sorrow for the people whose tumors don't respond to chemotherapy!"
Those five weeks should be cut down to say two, and your salary shuld be reduced by at least 20%.
(a) Right. God forbid someone should have a reasonable vacation and benefits package instead of being expected to work himself half to death. Clearly the solution is to drag everyone down to the same miserable level.
(a) You have no idea what his salary is. Most likely, it's less than his private-sector counterparts make. That's one of the tradeoffs you make when you take a government job. Sorry if that doesn't jibe with your ideology.
I can still find folks willing to do your job under such conditions.
Ah, got it. You're one of the parasites, then. See my first line, above.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
The funny thing I've found throughout my is that companies run and inevitably staffed by younger people tend to be a mess. Everything is done inefficiently, emotions affect decisions and everyone is far too comfortable working excessively long hours. They're definitely a lot more in tune with the latest trends, but they're also a lot more likely to waste their time on unproductive nonsense.
Companies run by an older group tend to be far more stable and productive. Ironically, you're also a lot more likely to be appreciated. The challenge, however, is not getting stuck somewhere that's stagnated.
On the employee side, however, if you want job security in the long term you'd better be considering management or a very special niche for yourself.
"I don't think in the outside world, outside tech, anyone in their 40s would think age discrimination was happening to them," says Cliff Palefsky
I love this, only a person who can't remember their youth would make such a ridiculous statement. Age discrimination is ever-present, but tech is one of the few areas where it works in reverse. Remember not being able to vote or drink or smoke or drive or choose where you wanted to live or go to school? Yeah... no age discrimination.
The tech world is different. Different because it's based not on hard labour, but on making clear and correct decisions. Be it programming, analysis, or project management, in this world the real effort isn't in the work; it's in deciding what work should be done.
The actual work -- the long hours, the youth-oriented efforts discussed in the post -- is the blue-collar work. It's the low-wage, low-responsibilty, low-risk work of this industry. Of course it's best-suited to the young.
It's not age discrimination to say that any 40 year-old in this industry should know how to make decisions without being told what to do. It's not age discrimination to say that any 40 year-old in this industry should be ready and willing to take responsibility for their own decisions. It's not age discrimination to say that any 40 year-old in this industry should want to be accountable for their work and take the financial risks associated with that work.
What makes this industry different is that the lowly bottom-rung intern programmer has a direct path through project management into senior management right from the start. Unlike most other industry, there's no "management track". Everyone's in the management track. That intern should become a team programmer, then a senior programmer, then a team leader, then a senior team leader, then a team manager, then a senior manager, and then should be acquiring and selling to their own (or partially own) clients.
So given a 40 year-old, with more than 5 years of experience in the industry, who isn't in a management role, it's not age discrimination to say that the person isn't interested in becoming anything more than they already are. And given a employee who isn't interested in moving up, it's not age discrimination to prefer an employee who does.
This industry is all about those willing to spend an absurd amount of time focusing on a ridiculously specific task, and those willing to risk their finances on the success and viability of their own decisions. If you aren't willing to work through the night routinely, and you aren't willing to put your own money on the line, then there are plenty of other industries for you.
Believe it or not, this industry is not about four decades of being told what to do. It's about 2 years of being told, 2 years of being taught, 2 years of being encouraged, and if you don't get it by then, 2 years of finding someone else. As an employer, I'm not interested in the 40 year-old that I need to supervise. I'm not interested in risking my money on the reliability of that 40 year-old. And I'm not interested in paying such an employee more than I would to someone I'm expecting to grow.
So, as always, if you don't like the employment options available to you, start your own business and do it however you like.
Start a business that only hires 40 year-olds. That's perfectly fine too. It can be the first question in your interview. It can be the only question in your interview. Make it work your way. Stop complaining when others do it their way. That's exactly the point. Either make decisions, or do what you're told. And sometimes, what you're told is that you simply aren't good enough. So when that time comes, stand up and prove otherwise with your own business. Some of us have.
lets just cut to the chase and call it what it is. The inexperienced getting taken advantage of. For every facebook there are hundreds of failures and I doubt that a venture capital firm would be so eager to invest in these if they had no way to extract a profit from them. Older also means more savy.
Don't be naive. It's pretty easy for management to manufacture a reason to terminate 'for cause', especially in an at will state. While it's certainly possible that the performance reviews were legit and the person was terminated because they weren't great at their job, don't automatically assume that just because some manager said their performance was below par, that's fact. I've had a few run ins with managers over the years who torpedoed my reviews for questionable reasons. The most memorable being the one who cited me for a lack of professionalism. Apparently, telling a manager they're wrong (privately, and very very conscientious of word choice, context, and tone) is unprofessional. This is why I refuse to work for little tin gods. The second I find out my direct manager is of that vein, I'm either seeking a transfer or another employer. My discretion and ability at choosing who to work for has gotten much better with iteration.
Everybody at my place is over 30, mostly over 40, and we have several over 70. A lot of people come here after 'retirement' because they just go stir crazy sitting at home and not solving problems.
We have a hardcore interview on real world problem solving skills and experience (not Google or MS gotcha brain teasers) and it's very easy to get a feel for how internally motivated someone is. We hire the good people even though they cost a lot more than the ones right out of college. But a good experienced guy can get twice the work done with half the effort/time, because we've already made all the mistakes - and then twice that at least if nobody else on the team is dragging them down. Another 2x if management isn't! It's a bargain if you look at it like that.
Silicon Valley works on the model of 'hire newbies and burn through their endless energy for cheap while we spend the VC money on goodies' so what the story says isn't wrong. But I'd like to let experienced middle-aged people who really feel driven to engineer know that you can always get a good job at a decent small to mid-sized company - the job market there is huge. I get at least a couple job inquiries every month, and they know how old I am.
It's the driven part that counts - I get a high off solving problems and making cool useful stuff, and so do the other people here. I've never thumbs downed a candidate who had decent skills and just couldn't stop talking about the cool things s/he'd done. But we can all smell a stagnant large company 'lifer' when s/he walks in the door. If you've got the drive, don't let yourself get trapped, even if 'it's a job!'
I have been in software for 32 years professionally. Whether there is age discrimination or not it is certainly not evenly distributed across all employers. It is not easy to find employees and co-workers who are adept at software. Even merely adequate software engineers can be elusive to find. So many companies realize that discrimination on any basis is not something they can afford. I am 58 now and still going strong. There is no way I experienced any age discrimination in my 40s. And there are several people at my current small company (80 people or so) who are older than I.
You're quite correct, I do make less that the "private sector". A lot less.
People have this strange idea that most Federal workers are making "bank" and that just isn't so. I also work my ass of to support the mission of the agency I work for (the Air Force) for the benefit of all Americans. When you work for the government, you work for the People.
About my vacation. I said 5 weeks, but I started out with less than that. All the same, the United States is one of the FEW civilized countries in the world where most worker bees get so little vacation time, an almost INHUMAN 2 weeks?
Seriously, what can you do in 2 fucking weeks?
Yes, I know that all the right-wing Tea Baggers thing government workers should be happy with $10 an hour and 2 weeks a year, but you know what? They're "Tea Baggers" which mean they are also morons.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I am sorry to say but it's folks like you that are responsible for the USA's [finacial] woes it finds itself in at this time.
To make matters worse, your statements do not reflect an iota of sorrow for the tax paying ordinary American!
Those five weeks should be cut down to say two, and your salary shuld be reduced by at least 20%.
Funny how in many other countries, people start with 5 weeks of paid vacation and 35 hour weeks, and still have higher productivity than here in the USA.
Methinks there is something else wrong. Like zapping away the joy and pride of work by attempting to squeeze all you can get out of your workers. I wouldn't be surprised if a lesser amount of Americans like doing their job than in any other Western country. Hint: This isn't the fault of the workers.
During the dotcom bubble, I was at the top end of the age range (35-ish) that was fashionable and working for a US TLA as a general-purpose sysadmin greybeard in an all-Unix shop. I networked more than most and corresponded with lots of folks both in govt and the private sector. I don't know why I did it because I loved my work and wasn't looking for anything new but I did like to keep up and keep in touch with lots of folks. Also, it didn't hurt and sometimes greatly amused me that the part of my email address just to the left of the ".gov" tended to get my emails read.
During those years I turned down a number of job offers. I don't remember specifically; some were informal "let's talk" and others were "I'll pay you $X to come work for us". But I distinctly remember several offers that would have as much as quadrupled my pay (which would have put me at double the going rate since, as a fed, I was already being paid only about half what the average private sector employee in my position received.)
I never bit. Of those companies, none survive today. All of them wanted me to trade my 40-hour work week with time-and-a-half for overtime for positions where I essentially worked 24 hours a day, perhaps 12 at the office and the rest of the time wearing a pager. None offered more than a couple of holidays. None offered sick or vacation time that was more than a farce. The pay, though, would have been great if I was willing to step into the hamster wheel and start running.
So maybe I'm a doddering old fool. Maybe I was unambitious. All I know is that now I'm retired. My retirement check covers my expenses plus a little...and that's after deductions for all taxes, decent health insurance, very good life insurance, and fairly good long-term care insurance. It's not lounging on a yacht with supermodels but I'm not afraid of being three paychecks from living in my car, either.
Folks who spit on public-sector employees simply don't understand. I often wonder if it's worth the (usually wasted) effort I sometime put towards trying to help them see things from a broader perspective.
Younger people need to put in the extra time till they learn how to do it right.
I tell everyone I mentor - I want to walk in, press one mouse click on a button, go get my coffee and have your eight hour day done before I get back.
The problem is the PHB folks that don't get that you can actually get things done if you don't put in an 80 hour week.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
The role that people 40 and above play in Silicon Valley is that of the Angel Investor.
Nonsense.
They post one of these every month or so. Maybe my perspective is off because I've worked more with Fortune 50 companies there, but I've never seen a real life age bias out there. Intel, for example, when I was there, hired a few really talented people in their 40's as contractors. So did HP, when I was there. In fact, most everywhere I went, there were at least a few 40ish or over 40 people working hard on project work. Same with the Microsoft related entities. Getting an orange badge is easy if you're smart enough to get through the interview. I haven't worked for Facebook, but I would assume, based on what I've seen that it's the same there, too.
Then again, I do my best never to work for startups. My wife doesn't like the horrible instability it brings.
I think, as a general rule, there are more kids that are scared of one day becoming totally obsolete on Slashdot, than there are working professionally in the Valley. When age is an issue, it's usually mainly their issue. Not really anyone else's. Experience in production counts. Anyone who tells you otherwise is full of shit.
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Lol.
You need to look up Stacked Ranking.
The other posters are right. And the supremes said even a pattern of laying off / repeatedly firing only the older employees
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On the story- wow I remember when 45 was the age you got hit by age discrimination in IT.
I'm retiring at 51. Got laid off 4 days before my planned retirement date... with severance.
Oddly, I'm a little upset about it even tho I will end up with more money this way.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
In its last quarter, Apple made about 50 billions and achieved an increase of around 25% of its earnings. Yet the value of its stock dropped because analysts expected more. What kind of message do you think this situation sends to executive? Focus on long-term growth?
I'm pretty sure that you don't follow Apple stock that closely; I was an Apple employee for 8 years, and here's how Apple works: they make reasonable projections, and the street gets pissed at them for not forecasting higher. The stock goes down for a couple weeks, then slowly goes up to the per-prjection value, then goes past it. When it's time for the earnings call, Apple exceeds their projection. The street gets pissed off because they didn't exceed it by "enough". The stock goes down for a few weeks, then slowly goes up to the pre-announcement value, then goes past it.
This is how it has historically always worked.
Now Apple is pretty much over (IMO) due to their loss of Steve Jobs as both umpire (bye, Scott F.!) and the arbiter of taste (Jon Ive, like you a lot, but of the 12 designs you make, Steve was more qualified to pick the 2 to pursue), and there's no one to ride herd on the rest (Tim C., you are a great supply chain guy, but when Steve told you to spend more on the displays to delight the customers, you should have kept that in mind picking the iPhone 5 pixel aspect ratio).
So yeah, it's going to go down over time from its $710 high, but that's not due to the analysts getting a clue about the claims made on Steve's departure from the company that there were more years worth of product in the pipeline than the 1.5 year insiders knew were actually there. It's going to be current_product++ all the way down: Steve did not have a protege to keep them from making bad long term business decisions after he was gone, and so now they are making them.
I see a lot of positions open for people with years of experience in various technologies and a 20 year old isn't going to have that. I'm in my 40s and am contacted almost weekly about open positions both at startups and established companies. Experience is everything, that, and networking among former colleagues. At my company we have a number of positions open. We don't care much about age, we care about experience and skill. A programmer who has been around the block a few times will tend to write better more maintainable code. We've been looking for another experienced toolchain engineer (GCC, etc.) for some time now, for example, but they're hard to come by.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
I'm over 40 and I honestly have not seen any age discrimination in IT. Maybe it's just the circles I travel in but often age is associated with experience and in many fields it's an asset not a liability. I have seen one or two older people get let go but honestly their skills were not up to what they should be - age had nothing to do with it. Sometimes people get some skills early in their career and make some headway and then just sort of settle in and stop learning. You can ride those skills for a while but eventually the industry moves on and, if you're not careful, you will get left behind. Sadly, by the time you figure it out it might be too late.
Age becomes a crutch, an excuse. In IT, like in many other professions, it's crucial to keep your skills relevant and up to date. Maybe your employer will train you, maybe you have to do it yourself. Either way, you've got to find a way to stay on top of the new developments.
After the first failed performance review that should have been a clear sign that it's time to step it up. If that's me I'm asking my manager what do I need to do to improve? Get a plan together and work towards it. Set some short term goals.
If it really truly is age related discrimination then that's also a clear sign - to get your ass out of there. Go work for someone that appreciates your skills. Better yet, go into contracting. You'll make more money, you'll work on stuff you enjoy, and you'll be hired for what you know and your experience is seen as a positive thing.
I look towards 40 as an age where I hope to just be getting started. The jobs that exist for the young all-nighter guy amount to being someone's bitch. Personally, I don't like to be anyone's bitch. I prefer to produce work that I am proud of. Alas, that's not always the case, since there are plenty of "I'm smart and I have a bunch of someone else's money and I need to be a part of everything because I'm the badass" type folks out there. Fortunately for me, this creates a nice niche where I get to clean up where others generally fail due to this approach.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
I'm 40-something but due to a lifelong aversion to manual labor I look 32-ish.
Dont give these fuckers any ideas. I dont know how long my luck will hold out.
P.S. Get off my lawn!
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
The "shareholders" are not paying the slightest bit of attention to what management is doing, or who the hell the managers are.
You could only think this if you've never had experience in the industry. Big mutual funds are very much paying attention to who is on the management team, the numbers the company is putting up, and anything else that might eventually be reflected in the stock price. I worked at a fund company, and trust me, this is what they spend their time doing. They don't change their positions very often just because there's too much information to absorb before you make a change.
Now, is this true for one-man hedge funds run by coke-snorting idiots who see themselves as "Masters of the Universe"? No. But you should try to keep your money away from those guys because they and the funds they manage don't last long.
And what's wrong with 5 weeks of vacation a year?
It's miserable pukes like you that are clueless and responsible for the USA's financial woes. A happy, well rested employee is more productive and more creative than a miserable, tired, and heartened employee. An extra week of vacation really only translates out to a 2% bonus, and helps keep them refreshed and will keep them more productive, happy, and less likely to burn out.
Whenever I hear these types of arguments I always think there must be some psychological term for this. That is, whenever someone has been deprived of some benefit, it is all too easy to get him to rally behind depriving others of the same.
The term you're looking for is the Just-world hypothesis. Basically, it's the idea that good behaviors are rewarded and bad behaviors punished as a universal law of nature. So when someone is successful, it's not because of luck or chance, but because they deserved it. Likewise, if someone is suffering, they also deserve it. But it doesn't take modern psychology to figure this one out -- the greeks made a latin proverb out of it, which translated says "every misfortune is to be believed when directed against the unfortunate."
This belief enables and extends into other things, such as a blame the victim mentality, and things that follow from the phrase "I was just following orders." Similar studies have been done on personal responsibility and it was found that the more people that could help, the lower the likelihood is of anyone helping -- that is, a person's sense of guilt is divided by the number of people present. Beyond a certain threshold, nobody does anything. That's why you hear stories about how someone was murdered in the middle of rush hour, in the middle of the street, and nobody helped the victim or even called 911.
The asshat you were replying to simply has a larger than average dose of self-importance... a logical consequence of buying into the belief a bit, uhh, more than average. At least amongst the educated.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Not sure if you are implying that people "looking for opportunities" are unemployed in a desperate market, or that 40 year olds can't get a job in SV, but either way it's complete bullshit. The demand so far outstrips the supply right now in the Valley it's painful.
Painful because of how many interviews it takes to find anyone decent - but if you are a good engineer who works well with others many companies do not in fact give a shit about your age. Facebook and the other social media companies/startups are still a small fraction of the Bay Area employers.
You're full of shit, and just looking to stroke your own ego. You aren't Mark Zuckerburg. You aren't Steve Jobs. Nothing wrong with that, most people aren't.
Most people around here work for companies; they don't own them. That's practically tautological. At my company, the vast majority of engineers are over forty. Many, perhaps even most, are millionaires, but only just. That'll happen when you make six figures for most of your life and are competent at math. But the notion that everyone over 40 either has tens of millions or is a failure is total bunk. Just something you say to make yourself seem cool.
5 weeks of vacation is normal in Europe, for any job. Some get more. Why would you take this away from the OP? Rather, every US worker should have the same amount of holidays.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Very rarely it is so. Very often, the gov provides services much cheaper than industry, in a more timely and efficient manner, and with higher quality. Health care is an example (not in the US, but just look over the pond).
You are so full of shit.
Ageism is based on two things:
= Old Person wants a quality of life and stability
= Old Person is expensive in both salary and benefits
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Don't know anything about the GP, but I do agree that his posts on this thread don't sound like they came from a mature adult. Having said that I'm over 50 with 3 grand-kids, family life takes up a lot less time than when the kids were at home. Yes I am slower than I used to be, some of that may be due to dead or dying neurons, but I like to think it's because I have accumulated a long list of answers to the proverbial question; "What could possibly go wrong?"
From the employers POV there are two main reasons to hire old farts like me.....
1. More industry experience.
2. More life experience.
Speaking from my own experience, Once the kids leave home the financial pressures dissipate, even if you have no kids your mortgage is now what your rent was 20yrs ago. I was a middle manager for a few years in the 90's, herding cats is a thankless job and I don't want to go back. I would much rather get slightly less pay, spend my work time training my future boss and go home at 5pm. It's hard to explain that to young people who's only measure of success are the rungs on the corporate ladder and the digits on their paycheck. It's even harder to explain why some of my co-workers still turn up every morning even though they are in a financial position that would allow them to comfortably retire.
As for Zuck and the other wizz-kids, they didn't get where they are by working for a boss, they got there by selling new ideas to a new generation. The keys to that kind of success are; the right place, and the right time.
Disclaimer: Age != Maturity. I'm also fortunate enough to work as a developer for a Japanese multinational, they have an entirely different POV wrt to age and loyalty.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I'll admit I've never worked in the valley (I've always lived and worked in the UK) but where I've encountered cries of ageism it's always been strongly correlated with incompetence or laziness.
Like the British tradesman who likes to knock off early, and do a shit job complaining about Polish immigrants taking his work when they do so because they work twice as hard and do a much better job, it's simply an excuse used by who are too lazy to compete in the labour market and want an easy ride handed to them.
It's nothing to do with age and entirely about how much time and effort you spend on remaining relevant and with IT being such a fast moving industry with platforms and technologies changing all the time you can't sit still for long before your skills and knowledge do become outdated. It's just the nature of the industry.
Maybe Silicon Valley is now an anomally, maybe there are a bunch of upstarts (that wasn't intended as a pun on startups, but maybe it works) who have this problem, but if that's the case I expect Silicon Valley's reign as tech central to rapidly suffer because personally, the people I learn the most from, from reading their books, their online articles, their posts and so forth are those who are over 40 who have continued to learn throughout their life. Certainly I've never seen the attitude "Oh, he's too old to do that job" and on the contrary it's always been if anything "At his age, he'll hopefully have a lot of experience", as an aside, I have however seen two cases of people being told they were too young for a particular job even though they were the best candidates, though that was in public sector, and despite all the PC propaganda plastered around most public sector offices and e-mail systems, I don't think I've ever worked in such a racist, ageist, homophobic workplace as I did when I worked in local government in the UK.
Or to give an example of the problem, if someone has been learning day in, day out for 40 years, they're inherently going to have an advantage over someone whose only been doing the same for 20, or 30 years. If however someone has been learning day in day out for 30 years but stopped doing so, then by the age of 40 why would they realistically have an advantage over someone whose been doing so for 30 years? 10 years of stagnation doesn't look good, and it's a much safer option to take the person whose still working hard to keep uptodate.
To be fair, I don't think it's necessarily entirely always laziness (though much of the time it is), sometimes it's the pressures of having a family and so forth, but I'm not sure what the answer is here - that's still a choice you make, expecting to get paid just as well, despite having less talent than someone else who is younger than you just because you chose to have a family, and they haven't yet seems a bit unfair on the younger person- it's not their fault you chose to have kids and dedicate much of your time to that rather than continuous learning either.
But mostly it seems to be people getting to a certain milestone - 40, 50, 60, and looking back on their life and realising they missed a number of opportunities, but rather than accepting that, and simply looking at how they want to live going forward - to try again, or just be happy with what they have, they instead look for someone else to blame for their own failings.
Still, this is just my opinion based on my experiences, as I say, maybe in other places it really is a problem, but I'd be rather surprised as it seems to be entirely contrary to a region being succesful - throwing away the workers with most potential for competence and knowledge. I don't really see how Silicon Valley could have succeded as it has if it was relying entirely on the inexperienced, nor can I see how those many excellent older technical authors and bloggers living in Silicon Valley could have obtained the experience they have, to write about what they do in the level of detail and with the air of competence that they do if they hadn't been given opportunities in the valley, even post-40.
Pardon me for injecting myself, but, I have a lamp with a new reality bulb in it.
Anyone who's been on the job for more than a decade, actually in the middle of it, not just some office troll, knows better than the assertions placed in this topic. Just like sex, young guys are eager and fast and go all night. Problematically, they make huge mistakes, slack off on details, bother the "old" guys for help and generally haven't grown a full set of work ethics yet, leaving and unsatisfactory performance behind in the long run.
Logically, you can pay a young man to work like a demon for a week or someone with experience for a few days to do the same job and no guarantee the young guys quality is up to snuff. Usually not, but it looks good to investors to see a fury of motion. No one notices quiet consideration, till the product is complete.
As for investors who have listened to consultants, councillors and salesmen what can I say, consultants and their ilk are usually just grifters who will say anything that sounds "truthy" in exchange for far too much money. Having failed to make the MENSA roles and being relegated to merely the top 4%, sadly I still see MOST people as completely illogical morons, but it does explain the role of investors in this scenario perfectly. I suppose that's why investing is a gamble when you don't have the processing power to assess potential for yourself and rely on
"carnies" to do your thinking for you.
But then, I am far too clever to have gotten myself into an IT career to begin with....
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
What secret? IT is and always been age biased. The perfect IT employee is a 24 year old with 15 years experience in a 2 year old technology.
Plus about a million. I was a manager, and had been told to alter reviews to manage out people. I complained loudly that it wasn't true, but in the end they forced the hand. I got off the management train at that point, and I am happy to be where I am today.
Interestingly 5 weeks vacation is the legal minimum in the UK and most of the EU, plus public holidays. We also give workers to right to refuse to work more than 48 hours a week with no penalty (including loss of promotion).
I don't people in the US realize just how poor working conditions and worker protections are there.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You were fired because you failed at doing your job, hence failing serveral performance reviews. You were NOT doing you job decent enough. Age has nothing to do with it, so quit making excuses because you were lazy at work.
LOL. I've seen all sides of this situation, and let me tell you, there is always a way to get rid of people. It's called "managing them out". Read Corporate Confidential for a primer if you are really this clueless.
I don't know about the specifics of the GP, but consider this: if senior management wanted to get rid of him for being 50+ and "expensive" compared to cheaper younger employees (and not get sued for obvious age bias) all they have to do is come up with a crap or impossible project he cannot succeed in. Or give him something they actually need, but starve it of resources - a team of 10 is needed but he gets 2, including himself. Then put in enough of a paper trail to cover their ass (establish a lengthy history of "failed" performance reviews) to ward off legal action, and poof, he's gone.
Again, if you are so naive as to think everyone let go is 100% responsible for it, well let's just say you must be quite young and stupid yourself.
...as a progressive, meritocratic business environment hasn't been squashed yet?
Not only is it even more ageist than the rest of the IT industry in general, but it's also racist as all hell.
Apparently nobody notices if you cover it up with some hipster glasses and trendy office design, good thing this wasn't discovered earlier.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The kids work hard because they want to get to where the 40 year old is, they want their career to progress and see working hard as a way to get ahead and prove themselves to their boss. How long will they continue to do that if they see there is no actual career path and that they will be used up and spat out by the time they are 40 ? Also technical skills are the easiest part of the job to learn, The skills like teamworking and experience are what takes years to build up, often at great expense but people with out wisdom and experience rarely value those commodities. Zuckerberg and his friends will get old and like almost everyone else they will wish that they could know what they know now 10 years ago and maybe they will realise how foolish they have been.
These age discrimination stories are really getting old.
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uhm... no.
programming through the night isn't healthy. I've headed up projects where I designed the hardware, firmware and software. BUT.. I always made time for my
girlfriend.. who is my wife now.. and the mother of my three sons. My boys are older now.. my wife and I are still happily married and I never let work interfere with family life. NEVER. Sure I help out if there's an emergency, but you have to draw the line somewhere.
If someone wants to work cheaply that's their decision. I'm going to work were I can earn what I think is a fair wage.
If there comes a day I can't get $97k I will try consulting.
BTW I always did well with performance reviews.
If you find yourself getting an unfair review then move on and look for an opportunity elsewhere.
And why is having robots do the grunt work bad?
Why not automate the hell out of everything and give everyone a twenty hour work week and ten weeks of vacation each year.?
More time off means more recreational activities, more holidays, economic boom for all the service sectors. Lower stress means reduced health care costs and probably just an all round happier society.
The average hunter-gatherer worked about five or ten hours a week to survive. With all our advances, it now takes 60 hours a week? That's bullshit.
I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen...
In Silicon valley, when you reached the age of 40 you supposed to have at least 50 millions dollars under you name.
The role that people 40 and above play in Silicon Valley is that of the Angel Investor.
If you are over 40 and still looking for opportunity to toil through the night hacking away - man, you do not belong in the Valley.
I left that place when I was 32 - after I sold my creations (plural) there to the highest bidders
I saw a documentary on Silicon Valley ageism once, it was called "Logan's Run".
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
In states with "at will" employment, you don't even need to go to that much trouble. The older a employee is, the more care needs to be taken to establish a paper trail justification (just in case), but for a non-contracted 39-year-old ("too young" to be a victim according to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act), an employer can just perp-walk them out of the building, with no reason given. (Guess how I know this.)
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
As a 50+ year old still earning good money at an IT company, I can say that yes, there is age discrimination, but yes, you can and SHOULD be able to work around it. The biggest problem that I see with fellow 50+ year olds is that they still want to be doing the job they signed up for when they were 22. Sorry, but if you are making a lot more money than you were when you were 20, then you should be doing a lot more. I keep seeing 50 year olds with resumes that brag about coding in Java or PHP. I'm sorry, but at your age and with that many years of experience behind you, you should be doing a lot more than coding. You should be leading, setting direction, defining architecture, setting the ground rules for the younger generation to avoid the mistakes that 20 year olds make. If you want an IT job at 50+, you need to show that you can do MORE than the 20 year old, not as much as the 20 year old.
I'm seeing a lot of people complaining that they're not being given opportunities because they're "too old".
That's very large pool of calm, collected, experienced professionals who've been through the trenches, and already know all the products, systems and software that currently run the world, and will probably *continue* running the world for at least a decade.
So why not literally pool together and form a company?
"At Silver & Steel, we specialize in providing you with experienced industry professionals that don't make youthful mistakes that can cost you millions in lost profits or corrupted databases. Our team of proven operators can walk into your legacy environment and take full command of any situation without breaking a sweat and bring your systems back up to full operational capacity in short order. We don't make theories, we give answers.
When you can afford to spend money on chasing your dreams, go for youth and enthusiasm.
But when your nightmares become reality, come to us."
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