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Will Millennials Be Forced Out of Tech Jobs When They Turn 40? (ieeeusa.org)
dcblogs shared an interesting article from IEEE-USA's "Insight" newsletter:
Millennials, which date from the 1980s to mid-2000s, are the largest generation. But what will happen to this generation's tech workers as they settle into middle age? Will the median age of tech firms rise as the Millennial generation grows older...? The median age range at Google, Facebook, SpaceX, LinkedIn, Amazon, Salesforce, Apple and Adobe, is 29 to 31, according to a study last year by PayScale, which analyzes self-reported data... Karen Panetta, the dean of graduate engineering education at Tufts University and the vice president of communications and public relations at the IEEE-USA, believes the outcome for tech will be Logan's Run-like, where age sets a career limit... Tech firms want people with the current skills sets and those "without those skills will be pressured to leave or see minimal career progression," said Panetta...
The idea that the tech industry may have an age bias is not scaring the new college grads away. "They see retirement so far off, so they are more interested in how to move up or onto new startup ventures or even business school," said Panetta. "The reality sets in when they have families and companies downsize and it's not so easy to just pick up and go on to another company," she said. None of this may be a foregone conclusion. Millennials may see the experience of today's older workers as a cautionary tale, and usher in cultural changes...
David Kurtz, a labor relations partner at Constangy, Brooks, Smith & Prophete, suggests tech firms should be sharing age-related date about their workforce, adding "The more of a focus you place on an issue the more attention it gets and the more likely that change can happen. It's great to get the new hot shot who just graduated from college, but it's also important to have somebody with 40 years of experience who has seen all of the changes in the industry and can offer a different perspective."
The idea that the tech industry may have an age bias is not scaring the new college grads away. "They see retirement so far off, so they are more interested in how to move up or onto new startup ventures or even business school," said Panetta. "The reality sets in when they have families and companies downsize and it's not so easy to just pick up and go on to another company," she said. None of this may be a foregone conclusion. Millennials may see the experience of today's older workers as a cautionary tale, and usher in cultural changes...
David Kurtz, a labor relations partner at Constangy, Brooks, Smith & Prophete, suggests tech firms should be sharing age-related date about their workforce, adding "The more of a focus you place on an issue the more attention it gets and the more likely that change can happen. It's great to get the new hot shot who just graduated from college, but it's also important to have somebody with 40 years of experience who has seen all of the changes in the industry and can offer a different perspective."
Every generation thinks it will be the exception. Gen-X techies were computer literate. We were around when the internet went mainstream. We were sure that Tech was going to grow up with us - but lots of Gen-X'ers found themselves on the wrong side of 40. Some got to hang around, but most moved on. The same will happen to the millennials, replaced with those born after 2000. Younger is cheaper.
Outside that shit hole of garbage where they want young people to shove in the meat grinder this maybe the case. Outside of SV, I've seen more senior people fought after because they don't make junior mistakes. SV loves young people because they'll work 90 hour weeks and not think twice. Older established folks want a normal work week but can put out a better product.
The big tech companies want young (especially childless) workers because those workers will work insane hours in an effort to generate marginally more output than the person at the next open-plan table. Lots of other companies are more reasonable about expectations and environment.
Over half of those companies are very young, Apple and Adobe being the outliers. If they hired young, their workforce will still be young. The numbers themselves do not say that older people are being forced out.
At least half of those companies also experienced phenomenal growth in recent years. There is a good chance that a subset of the early employees could afford to leave the company (stock options, rapidly being promoted, etc.). Those who were stuck in dead end positions had plenty of examples to encourage jumping ship for better opportunities. Again, age statistics alone cannot tell us much on that front.
Of course, simply reporting the median age alone does not say much about the age distribution. It implies a normal distribution, which is where I suspect the 40 year old figure comes from, yet that may be misleading.
When the CEO of my company said in an all-hands meeting that the company would focus on hiring younger engineers, I decided to leave voluntarily, seeing that I would quickly become a target.
Sure enough, in the months since then, they've started forcing out the "old" guard though hostile working practices and punitive performance reviews.
I studied engineering because I loved the art, but our culture has destroyed the art of technology. I don't miss working in tech at all, but I do enjoy teaching high school math and science (my new career), and doing whatever I can to discourage students from pursuing a career in it.
Your experience is an outlier though. It's not a misperception. The facts don't lie the average age in tech is not much above 30. The median is even less. And this is not just age discrimination too - a lot of people move on into business development, executive management, or just decide to leave tech altogether for other pursuits. Few want to stick it out for 40 years doing the same job.
out.
Engineers in their 40s are pushed toward marketing or management, but there are 10 engineers for every one of those jobs. And that insight and perspective that an older engineer can provide can be provided by one engineer. You don't need 20 of them on the payroll.
Engineering is fine work while you're younger, but you should be working toward your second career by the time you're 30.
I left engineering (or shall I say, engineering and I parted ways?) when I was in my mid 40s. I went back to school for 6 years and became a dentist. That's a field where most patients prefer to see an older person...
It will be the same for Millenials as it is now for Gen X. Those with genuine ability will enter the highest paid portion of their career, and those who never grew professionally will be pushed out of the industry. Nothing new to see here.
Those who don't continue in IT have plenty of other options if their soft skills are developed. Those without soft skills or IT skills are the ones who come to Slashdot to complain about ageism.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
That open plan bullshit is wasting billions. Let's pay people to think, and force them into a noisy fluorescent lit hellscape for the entire workday.
Advocates of open office need to wake up and smell the headphones.