Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Asks: Have You Experienced Ageism? (observer.com)
Friday the Huffington Post wrote that "Ageism runs rampant through Silicon Valley, where older workers are frequently overlooked for jobs." They ran tips from the man who recruited Tim Cook for Apple, who pointed out that it's difficult and expensive to recruit new talent, urging businesses to "stop seeing workforce diversity as a good deed; it's good business."
And earlier this month The Observer ran an article by Dan Lyons, a writer for HBO's "Silicon Valley," who shared his perspective on ageism from his time at HubSpot. Their CEO actively cultivated an age imbalance, bragging that he was "trying to build a culture specifically to attract and retain Gen Y'ers," because, "in the tech world, gray hair and experience are really overrated."
Meanwhile, Slashdot reader OffTheLip writes: Information technology is a young business in comparison to many other industries but one of the few where older workers are not valued for their institutional knowledge... As a recently retired techie I experienced this firsthand, both as an older worker, and earlier in my career [as] one who didn't see the value in older workers. As Lyons states, older workers are good business.
What are your thoughts? And have you experienced ageism?
Meanwhile, Slashdot reader OffTheLip writes: Information technology is a young business in comparison to many other industries but one of the few where older workers are not valued for their institutional knowledge... As a recently retired techie I experienced this firsthand, both as an older worker, and earlier in my career [as] one who didn't see the value in older workers. As Lyons states, older workers are good business.
What are your thoughts? And have you experienced ageism?
It's a shit deal for workers if you find yourself unable to find a job for something as stupid as age. And if "companies can be free to do what they want" is going to let them continue to get away with abusing workers - then they shouldn't feign surprise when those workers join together and fight back.
we all KNOW this is a problem.
we all know h1b is a problem.
but the place where it needs to be discussed - the national stage of public opinion, perhaps prompted by news coverage (crickets chirping sound heard) - it is NOT discussed. its swept under the rug.
I'm in the bay area, I'm over 50 and I've been a sw/hw guy since my teens. I'm currently out of work, looking, and its been dead for months, for me, so far. this is typical and usual, sad to say, and I have a little more time left before I'm empty and near bankruptcy again. yet again. I don't know if I'll ever see reliable employment in tech ever again.
I have tons of experience and a great resume. but I'm older, white, male, independant and aware of management's BS; and I guess ALL of that is out of favor for hiring prospects.
I really wish this was made more visible to non-geeks. taking to geeks is not useful, about this, as we all know about it already.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
While I'm sure some small number of companies may in fact try to hire a younger crowd, why would I want to work there anyway? A big part of the reason a company is usually doing that is either to pay less or work people much more, or a combination of both...
The large majority of companies I've seen have older workers, are totally fine with middle age and older technical staff. So a few companies who take age into account do not hurt job prospects.
A big pat of success for me personally has been keeping ahead of technical trends, and making sure not to fall into some pit of technology you cannot escape from and do not enjoy. if you enjoy technical work the keeping up to date is fun and the enthusiasm for your work shows. It also helps a lot to respect co-workers and be someone others enjoy working with, instead of just tolerating.
Another reason why it should be LESS hard as an older worker to find work is the connections and friends you make over the years. That's by far the best way to find jobs anyway, and building up good connections over years is less hard for traditionally more withdrawn technical people than cold-starting a relationship with someone in a company you are trying to hire into.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have hired over-40 programmers who were rockstars, and some over-40 workers who just could not deliver.
Age is just one variable among many, but people obsess over it because it is easier to ballpark someone's age in an interview than it is to get a read on other indicators of talent.
The biggest problem is that over-40 workers are universally more expensive than the 20's workers. They all want to jump in at the senior level, and feel justified in this based on their experience. This makes them a bigger risk to take, and ultimately more expensive if they don't pan out.
On the other hand, too much investment in kids results in software that works upfront but absolutely does not scale, and winds up full of ticking time bombs.
well, my friend
(turns on yoda voice)
you will be. you *WILL* be.
(/voice)
think long and hard about it. while you dance today, tomorrow will be different.
and that thought actually gives me delight. the SOB bastards that are fucking me and my kind over right now; they'll soon experience it and while I won't be there to laugh, I'll laugh now in advance.
HA!
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I can see you are young. you think its about SPECIFIC SKILLS.
lol
its not. a good guy in C can get any job done, really. c++ guy, java guy, whatever. this insistance on specific domain knowledge IS THE PROBLEM!
we used to have people who knew how to code and would learn the specifics on the job. that worked and it can still work, but companies are spoiled fucking rotten and they have had too much specific selection for too long. they now only want narrow skills and you can't keep chasing that and stay employed. there are too many things that come and go for you to retrain on specifics like that and still be effective.
your view is part of the problem! you really do seem to think that its 'old skills' that is the problem. I guarantee you that even if I had the latest 'skilz' that the grads leave school with, today, that will still not be enough. I demand a salary that is higher than theirs and companies refuse to pay unless they absolutely have to. they generally talk themselves into paying younger kids, for all the reasons mentioned in all the threads, here.
its not about skills. that argument does not hold water if you have been in the industry long enough.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Yes, I have experienced it, and it's not just the tech field. ;)
A little ranting about the value of experience is below. Feel free to ignore it.
Though at my previous tech job, I was the secret asset. If a techie had a problem they couldn't solve, they were required to go to the help desk and were forbidden to the senior techs about it. (New and relatively young manager had foolish ideas.) After the helpdesk was unable to help, they'd come by my cube to 'chat'. Usually had an answer for them in a minute or two, or at least a few things to test out to isolate the issue. It's not just that I had more experience with the software than they did, but I also understood a LOT more of how the machine functions as I'd started fooling with computers all the way back in the early 80s. That's not to say that knowing machine language for a 6502 processor is directly applicable, but rather knowing the intimate details of how a computer actually does it's work will allow you a certain insight into the operations of any computer that someone who grew up in a gui world just doesn't get. The greater understanding and experience employing that allows for greatly enhanced options for approaching an issue. The others really didn't like it if I couldn't solve an issue because that almost always guaranteed it was getting kicked to the devs.
They are not the only friends I have. But yes in fact I DO want to the people I work with to be friends at some level. The people in the group I work with currently I spend almost zero time with outside of work yet I consider them friends on some level, and enjoy spending time with them - a good thing too as the people you work with you'll spend far more time with than most "real" friends.
Business today does hiring based on money.
HA HA HA HA HA HO HE HAHA HO....
That was hilarious. You should go on stage with that act. The things business does daily are so remote from real monetary concerns as to be laughable. It certainly does not come into play when hiring technical people as most businesses are simply DESPERATE (and I do not use that word lightly) to find someone responsible who knows what they are even doing.
There are probably a few businesses that hire because "cheap labor" but as I said why would you even want to work there? Such businesses are no fun, and more importantly they will not be around that long anyway so you'd just have to find new work. That's why the few places that are so short sighted simply do not matter in terms of *my* ability to find work, which is what the main article is about (older experienced workers ability to find work).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm in the bay area... I'm over 50 and I've been a sw/hw guy since my teens. I'm currently out of work
Get a grip on reality - that is to say, you are NOT LIVING IN IT.
Move anywhere outside and you can find work, and a good life...
The "Bay Area" is an aberration that wrongly colors of discussions around issues. It's a reason why theres such a furor over diversity in tech hiring, because the "Bay Area" is filled with a lot more drama than you will find in any workplace outside.
That said even in the "Bay Area" I know plenty of older SW workers who are quite happily working across a number of companies.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Not at Google, Microsoft, FB, Amazon and other top tier companies. They hire so much, they can't afford to age-discriminate even if they wanted to. Which they don't.
That's basically my feeling on it also, and I'm mid-40's. Too many people stagnate naturally, or end up (or stay too long) in jobs that don't provide any avenue for technical growth. I built my skills on a foundation of solid Unix/Linux admin at financial places, but have also done 4 startups, picked up solid Network skills along the way, etc.
The biggest problem I've seen is young jocks wanting to use "buzzword technology" just for the sake of using them, even if it adds complexity for no gain, and then seasoned people get viewed as "old school" for using tried-and-true tech.
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
Know this: If you make me a fair offer that matches the position and I do take it, I won't gripe about the wages I agree to and I will work hard so you will want to promote me to a position where you can take advantage of what I have to bring to the table.
Then you would like working for me...
Years ago, I had a bookkeeper, she was in her late 30s, she had about 15 years experience in bookkeeping, HR, payroll, etc. I didn't have tons of money, so offered her a job for $36K, which she took because she needed a job and I needed someone to fill that job.
Within 6 months she already had a raise to $40k. Why? Because she came in and worked hard, never complained, and took on many tasks without being asked to.
At her first annual review, I think she was expecting maybe $42-43k... I gave her a raise to $50k, she about fell out of her chair.
My comment was simply, "you have done far more in the past year than I expected, you have fixed many problems within the company and taken on an office manager's role, while keeping an eye on the overall business. I hired you for a basic bookkeeping and HR position and you've turned it into the officer manager's position while still taking care of the bookkeeping/HR/Payroll."
"If I had to replace you, I have no doubt it would cost me $50k, so you're worth every penny."
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If you pay people what they are worth to you, rather than the "least you can get away with", then you can have long term employees who grow with the company. Sadly too many companies have forgotten this lesson.
My Grandfather served in WWII, he left the military after that and started at the ground floor in the mailroom of an insurance company. He retired in the 1980s from that same company. His last position? CEO. That doesn't happen anymore, but it should...
By the time someone is my age, they should have plenty of experience, be able to apply old tricks to new technologies, and have deep and wide professional network
Unless you have stayed too long in the same vertical amongst the same small set of players. My problem now is most of the network of people I have worked with, those who I have impressed over the years, have retired or clocked out.
It doesn't help that my skills are dependant on hands-on interaction with the data, code etc, and when it comes to a tag-team of interviewers quizzing me with stupid questions I go semi-autistic like a possum in headlights. Hopefully others who have stayed in IT into their 50's are a little better at giving good impressions and selling themselves. I never had to do the hard-sell before I got old.
If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.
Don't ever, EVER say "I told you so", no matter how tempting it may be.
At a large semiconductor company, where we are enjoying a huge layoff (the axe falls Monday, when you will know your employment status), lots of people are saying "I told you so". I told you so - for the management that thought skipping validation would draw TTM in. I told you so - for the architects who thought a home built internal bus standard would serve us well. I told you so - for the idjits who thought IP requirements flow from customer to IP creator, rather than from standard to both IP creator and IP customer. I told you so - for the management that thought they could save money by putting half a team on the other side of the world where pay is less.
As a tech employer that recruited a 19 new techs for a new cloudstack operation in our business I can say that the millenials are feckless, lazy and generally (not all) way less skilled and capable than they believe about themselves.
At the other end of the scale in the 50+ range I found that older people had a reluctance to learn new technologies and techniques even when they were far more appropriate for the task at hand. They are also much harder working than most millenials which was personally suprising to me.
In the end the average age of the team we settled with was 38. 2 of these were under 25yo, 3 were over 50yo, 5 were 40-50yo and the remaining 9 were 25-39yo.
Having a creative tension between new-tech and sticking with what works is good. If you organization is sound, the engineers can argue their side and come to understand the right path.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Shitty programmers end up in management. People who love the craft and excel at it keep on programming
Networking is key (I'm in my late 40s). I changed jobs last year and went to work for someone that I've known for 20+ years now, working along side someone else that I've known for 15 years. When you can tap your network like that, you bypass HR and your resume (or LinkedIn profile) lands on the right desk to get you hired.
It's one of the things I tell young collage-age kids. They need to pay attention to their social networks in college and build them and continue to expand them into their 20s and 30s. Because those connections will be what gets you good job after good job in your 30s and 40s and 50s.
(I don't care if you do it by hand, or do it via a tool like LinkedIn. But you must cultivate those contacts unless you want to find yourself in a dead-end job in your 40s.)