Age Discrimination In the Tech Industry

Presto Vivace writes: Fortune has an article about increasingly overt age discrimination in the tech industry. Quoting: "It's a widely accepted reality within the technology industry that youth rules. But at least part of the extreme age imbalance can be traced back to advertisements for open positions that government regulators say may illegally discriminate against older applicants. Many tech companies post openings exclusively for new or recent college graduates, a pool of candidates that is overwhelmingly in its early twenties. ... 'In our view, it's illegal,' Raymond Peeler, senior attorney advisor at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency that enforces workplace discrimination laws said about the use of 'new grad' and 'recent grad' in job notices. 'We think it deters older applicants from applying.'" Am I the only one who thinks many of the quality control issues and failed projects in the tech industry can be attributed to age discrimination?

Comments

Re:Speaking as a guy in his 40s...

[Runaway1956]

It really is best to have a mix of young and old. Youngsters come up with the new ideas, older people kick those ideas around, turn them upside down, examine them for flaws, toss them back to the kids. The kids then modify, improve, or even flush the idea down the toilet.

I've never had a job in which youth and experience weren't both valuable.

The manager who dismisses either youth, or experience, is setting himself up for failure.

I used to be an engineer. I worked for Motorola,

[mark_reh]

HP, Fujitsu, and TI among others. When I turned 42 the pressure to move into marketing or management started. I was not interested in either, so I continued to do engineering. Then the layoffs started. With each layoff, the next job became harder to find and hold. After a couple years and three jobs/layoffs, I saw the writing on the wall and went back to school for 6 years.

Now I am a dentist. My age and gray hair are appreciated as symbols of knowledge and experience by my patients (even though my experience doesn't match my appearance). Most of my patients thank me for the work I do, and I sleep well at night, secure in the knowledge that the work I did that day was valuable and helped someone to have a better life. This is the exact opposite of my engineering work- no thank yous, only the continual justifying of my job, fighting for vacation time, forget about the promised company-paid continuing education, and long hours of meaningless work on "important" projects that do things like let teen aged girls post selfies to Facebook.

Now I work a 40 hour, 4 -day week, and never, ever take work home with me. I have two 3 day weekends per month and one 4 day weekend per month. That leaves me time to pursue my hobby- engineering, of course. Sure, there's some stress on the job, like when an extraction isn't going well, or when I have to work on little kids, but I am compensated for it and it is very short duration.

Screw the high tech industry and the dopes who run it.

Age discrimination exists, but it works both ways.

[Qbertino]

I've had this issue myself here on /. a few times in the last 2-3 years.

Here's my current take on it:
People discriminate based on age, in any field or situation. That's simple psychology. You can tip the reactions in your favor, based on how you behave. I'm skinny, move a lot and wear a relatively up-to-date hipster / better-dressed nerd mix of clothing and my basic temper is sanguine, so people usually judge me roughly 6-8 years younger than I actually am. That does help me when trying to get a quick hire in the webshop next door, although that is getting more difficult in certain ways.
In the field you're easier in for a cheap quick hire if you appear young and nimble. Emphasis on cheap and quick. Easy in, easy out, no hurt feelings on either side. At a first glance, getting such a gig is definitely more difficult if you have a deer-gut, are approaching your 50ies and looking it too.

Then again, take that same deer gut 50ies body, dress it in a good suit and a well chosen shirt and tie combo, adjust your behavior and your speaking a little, perhaps take some training or stage classes, print some neat business cards with "Consultant" written on them and your salary instantly rises by 15K per year easily. Try that as a mid-twenties guy - it's going to be very difficult.
This only starts to work in your favor once you've got wrinkles and gray hair to show. I call it the 'gray-hair-bonus'. You need one guy from that camp for every contract worth 100k and up. They are indispensable, especially if they can talk and have the decades of experience to back it up. I'm turning into that sort of guy and helping the transition with some extra 'finally-grow-up' efforts. It does magic to my rates. And it's simply that I look the age that make 50% of all that possible. I just have to get used to letting that fat student kid do the setup of the next server, even if he makes tons of mistakes ... after all, I'm there to help him out if he's in a jam. But forcing yourself to keep your hands off is a bit of a challenge, I do admit. :-)

My 2 cents.