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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.
Surprise surprise, I didn't expect that to happen, but a large company just recruited me.
And I'm not even the oldest one they recruited, the oldest one was over 60. In fact, in our group of 20 people just newly recruited, every age group imaginable was represented, everyone from 19 to 60+ and inbetween.
I'm still kinda surprised by that, pleasantly surprised - but quite surprised. Guess there's a lot of common misconceptions about age discriminations.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
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.
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.
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...
I'm not sure age has much to do with it if you are 'good'. I'm 38 years old, been running my own tech company since 2000/2001. (We are small - 7 employees). We hired a really talented guy in his early 20's a couple months ago. More than satisfied with his work to say the least, and he was pretty good with the customers. I was more than satisfied with his tech capabilities, but didn't always work things out logically I found, missing the target - but he'll learn over time. Sadly, had to let him go this week, he could never arrive on time - and you could never, not once, get a hold of him on his mobile/email/etc during or after hours. I'm not talking 5 minutes late to work, I'm talking hours late to work, 4 out of 5 days a week - every week. WORK ETHIC COUNTS. I have shown up to work on zero hours sleep, hung over, etc - on-time and still effective. Same goes with the rest of the staff. People who know their stuff and are willing to learn will last forever. I have no age biases. I have a guy nearing retirement working for us for the past 8 years, and for the past 3 years I have a 21 year old (started 19 - still in school). Be a productive employee and keep learning & adapting - you'll last forever........ IF your workplace is not comprised of short sighted douche bags (or the environment is 'too' corporate).