Almost Half of Tech Workers Worry About Losing Their Jobs Because of Ageism, Says Survey (siliconbeat.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from SiliconBeat: More than 40 percent of tech workers worry about losing their jobs because of age, a new survey shows. Jobs site Indeed also found that 18 percent of those who work in the tech industry worry "all the time" about losing their jobs because of ageism. The release of the survey Thursday comes amid other news about diversity -- or lack thereof -- in tech workplaces. Often when we report about diversity issues, readers wonder about older workers. The Indeed survey offers insight into the age of the tech workforce: It's young. Indeed concluded from surveying more than 1,000 respondents in September that the tech workforce is composed of about 46 percent millennials, with 36 percent of respondents saying the average employee age at their company is 31 to 35, and 17 percent saying that the average worker age at their company is 20 to 30. What about Generation X and baby boomers? Twenty-seven percent of respondents said the average age of employees at their company is 36 to 40, while 26 percent of respondents said the workers at their companies are 40 and older.

Comments

What comes around goes around.

[JoeCommodore]

What do you expect when you came in in the 90s and 00s and shunned the older workforce, that you would be able to be an older worker later on?

Re:What comes around goes around.

[murdocj]

Who are these mythical "older workforce" people that refused to stay current? I know exactly one guy like that. I sure have kept up, and I started in the 70's on batch FORTRAN. And the advantage I have is when everybody raves about some exciting new tech, I can use the good parts and recognize the parts that are either reinventing the wheel, or were discarded decades ago because they were a bad idea.

This myth that older devs are universally hulking dinosaurs is just plain dumb. There are good older developers and bad ones, just like younger devs. And the idea that the younger ones have a leg up because they used the latest tech in college doesn't hold water. Tech is changing continuously. In the last few years I've gone from C++ to Ruby on Rails to .Net MVC to a single page client app in Typescript. The key is being able to learn. No one comes out of college knowing everything.

Re:What comes around goes around.

[rmdingler]

I don't think it's so much older employees refuse to stay current. It's a balance sheet decision.

The drawbacks of older employees include higher pay and less patience to tolerate bullshit, occasionally uncompensated, overtime demands. There more likely to tell you how they really feel, which is sometimes viewed as insubordination instead of candor. You know, some of the same foul-tasting criteria employers outsource a youngster's job to on the infamous H1B program.

There are indeed likely benefits to consider. Youthful employees are more easily distracted, less experienced, and decidedly more prone to underperformance at work due to self-abuse the previous night... haven't even learned to hold their liquor.

Re:What comes around goes around.

[Ol Olsoc]

Who are these mythical "older workforce" people that refused to stay current? I know exactly one guy like that. I sure have kept up, and I started in the 70's on batch FORTRAN.

Exactly. After retirement, I was called back into work on an emergency hire to do all the things the smart new folks just out of college couldn't do. And it wasn't old school stuff.

The young folk especially, fresh out of college, with ultra high self esteem, ready to move to management in a month because they knew the straight dope, and were going to change the world after righteously wresting it from teh cold dead hands of thos old folks who they were much better than.

And then they found out that they didn't know half of what they did. And then it go weird. They started treating the older people like servants. A typical response would be to try to slough off work onto me when they didn't know how to do it. One young woman I caught pawning work off to me, and I caught her busy with her social media all day. You would thiing they understood how easy it is to find out what you are doing on teh intertoobz. Told her I assigned the work, and if she didn't know how she had to learn quickly. Fortunately or unfortunately, she took the Millenial exit eventually, quitting with no new job, and moving in with grandma. But this has been the case with most of them, coming in, expecting to turn the world upside down, than crashing and burning after learning that the world no longer revolved around them. GenX'ers only have the normal good employee to bad employee ratio. They were fine. To the point where I recommended 40 and up for hires.

The real reason why any ageism exists is because the suits want to pay an entry level employee less money and create an artificial profit until you have to hire the olde fartes back.

Re:What comes around goes around.

[TheGratefulNet]

the suits want a bunch of things:

- low pay for the worker bees

- abusable workforce with little experience to be able to say 'no, I wont work that weekend. I already worked too many in a row'

- energy level; I'll give the kids that; they have more energy, but there's a lot more to writing code than pure energy

- they are not set in their ways; so you can 'program' them to your culture, even if its a toxic culture

there are lots of reasons. the elephant in the room knows all this, but the media are not allowed to mention it (a third rail, don't touch!)

its amazing how few people know about this, outside of tech. I tell people all the time and they have a hard time believing me.

Don't live stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Save as much as you can while you're young, when eating ramen and living in squalor is still cool. Then when you're older, worst case scenario is you lose your job and you're like, meh, didn't need it anyway. Best case scenario is you keep your job and glide into retirement driving expensive foreign cars and Teslas.

I'm 39 and already seriously concerned about this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting anon,.....

Living in Australia with over 250 to 300k per year immigration, we're seeing an incredible drop / stagnation in wages. If you're not a seriously skilled professional (admitedly, a reasonable percentage of /. posters but certainly in no way, all nerds and geeks) then you're in potential trouble.

We've got more and more and more people, willing to work for significantly less money. These people are accustomed to a poorer quality of life back home, so when they come here and share a house with 5 other people, they think it's a palace, but sounds like torture to us.

Plus you've got people who simply made a couple of bad choices skills wise or job wise, wound up in a role and found themselves simply with antiquated skills. I'm one of these myself. Yeah it my fault but my government is NOT making it easy. Wage stagnation is going on seriously for the middle class across the world.

We're getting boned.

If it's worrying you....

[Minupla]

Get ready to change. There's lots of roles in IT that tend to prefer more experienced folks, the type of role where "Ya, I've seen that 5 times before, here's what we're going to do about it..." is the order of the day. Architectural roles of all stripes, infosec in general, etc. I've moved roles a few times in the last 25 years, (network monkey -> Mgmnt -> infosec -> infosec architecture) and I always find a new fun challenge every time I have.

You're probably in technology because you can adapt to change, not because you're scared of it. Embrace that.

Min

To the 50% who aren't worrying...

[93 Escort Wagon]

Give it a few more years... you will definitely start.

Not just Business but Academia too

[Anonymous Coward]

I spent years working at a university rearch center. When I got there, they had no direction or plan regarding technology. One system at a time, I built the technology that they used for everything from directory services, storage servers, database, phone system, and even a security camera system. I used tons of open source systems - Linux, BSD, Postgres/PostGIS, Asterisk - and saved the institute hundreds of thousands of dollars. My reward? Shortly after my 50th birthday, and a few months before I finished my doctorate, they eliminated my position. As a bonus, it was also Christmas time too. Just lovely people. Two car payments, a mortgage, and a kid in college. While my wife and I were taking Christmas presents back and cancelling every possible optional expense we could, my former employer was hiring twenty-something business school types to fill seats and firing nearly everyone over 40.

Filth. And doing this on the governments nickel down!

Re:The other half........

[Mike Van Pelt]

My last layoff was at age 57 from a pretty large tech company. The severance package was reasonably generous. Then, in addition, there was the "Promise not to sue us for age discrimination" add-on severance package, which was... pretty dang good. And, it came with about an inch thick stack of statistics about the ages of those laid off, which kind of established they were more than ready to defend themselves against any age discrimination suits.

I signed. It was a pretty good chunk of change (three months' pay, I think I recall) paid extension of benefits ... and there was an email from recruiting from another company in pretty much the same business in my inbox when I got home, which is where I'm working now.

The problem is avoiding management

[mikec]

I'm 61, writing code, and having fun. My advice:

First, find a company that lets you do what you want. In particular, find one that doesn't push you into management (unless that's what you really want). Many companies will push you in that direction, but unless you're really good at it, it's a dead end.

Second, don't get stuck on the same project forever. Being the old fogey who knows everything about that important legacy system isn't a good place to be when the old system is finally retired. It isn't enough to "keep up with new technology". Knowing it and doing at are different things and are judged differently.

Third, don't expect that your superior wisdom is enough. Be wise, but be productive, and help other people be productive.

Lost my job at 51

[Snotnose]

Haven't even been able to get an interview since then. I've played all the tricks like shaving off the first 20 years experience from your resume, whatever. But when it comes to "when did you get a college degree" you can't lie, cuz the college is going to give the real year.

Keep in mind, I'm not saying I interviewed and didn't get hired. I can't even get a fucking interview nowdays.

Re:Lost my job at 51

[mnemotronic]

My first layoff was in 2009. I was a couple years older than you. Typical storage industry downsizing. I'd been at the company just shy of 20 years. Oh well. At the time I thought it was the end of the world. I didn't know it but I had been stagnating. Three months later I was doing contract work on the east coast for considerably less pay, but vastly increased exposure to technology and problems and out-of-the-box thinking. Found that job through Craigslist, not Indeed or Monster. Two years after that I took an offer from the company that created the tools I had been supporting for the last 12 years. I worked in their professional services group, gaining even more exposure to unusual problems. and customers using the tools in unusual ways. That really broadened my knowledge. After 2 years that company did a 35% downsize. Out again. I ended up being an semi-independent consultant for a couple years, but trying to do that and provide daily care for a very sick wife was stressful and difficult. I interviewed with a friend of a friend and got a FT job with a big consulting company. By that point I had earned the label "subject matter expert".

So what am I saying? Don't give up hope. For me, every layoff has been a blessing in disguise. Each time I been able to broaden my skills, gain exposure to people and ideas, and learn to boldly go where no man has gone before.

It's not about what you know; it's about who you know, and who knows you. Go to Meetups. Stay in contact with people. Get your name out into the back channels.

One little trick to get your resume past the stupid HR filters. At the end of your resume add a section entitled "Software and products I've used or been exposed to:" and list every language you've written more than 1 line in, every technology and product you've used even if just once. Everything that you can legitimately claim to have been exposed to. Even if it was a demo. Now format that section in 1 pt font, white text. It becomes invisible in MS-WORD and in PDF, but the HR scanners care about content, not format. They will see all those magic buzzwords and your name comes out near the top of every search. It actually gets to be a pain when the endless Indian consulting firms begin matching you for every possible technology known. And now that that little trick is out there, it won't last long. Act appropriately, and good luck.

Re: I'm 39 and already seriously concerned about t

[Darinbob]

Mid 50s here, and I work in C and embedded systems. So it's hard to find qualified candidates for the jobs, plus I'm good at it, and get a lot of recruiter spam. So I'm not worried about ageism for me. There are people that definitely are dismissive of older workers but I haven't bumped into any for some time.

People say old people don't keep up on the skills, but that will apply to everyone. The problem is not about age or skills, it's about cost. If you're 30 you're NOT old, but even if you know 50 programming language you're still going to be compared to the cheaper worker who only knows the one language that the company wants. Those are dumb companies to be sure, they value quantity over quality, so maybe you're better off not getting a job at those places.

An even bigger concern than ageism, especially for those with moderate skills, is outsourced. No matter what your age in the US, they can find someone that costs less overseas. Not good workers mind you, but if they can hire 5 incompetent people for the price of one qualified person then many companies will do that. And there are countries where it is routine for the manager to lie our their asses about how awesome their workers are and how they can do anything you can possibly ask. Being young won't protect you there.