Slashdot Asks: Have You Experienced Ageism? (observer.com) 561
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?
This is going to be fun (Score:5, Funny)
With the amount of angry whitebeards inhabiting /., we can expect a totally calm and reasonable discussion of the topic.
Maybe. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Maybe. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
omfg... THIS
Re:Maybe. (Score:5, Informative)
Who wants to hire a rock star? I want to hire someone who can do the job, and the job doesn't involve preening and prancing and ego.
Re:Maybe. (Score:5, Insightful)
My general experience is that the older, experienced programmers are exactly those who don't preen and prance and have egos. They just know how to get the job done. Meanwhile, the 20 somethings are all busy trying to prove themselves better than each other.
Re:Maybe. (Score:4, Interesting)
My general experience is that the older, experienced programmers are exactly those who don't preen and prance and have egos. They just know how to get the job done. Meanwhile, the 20 somethings are all busy trying to prove themselves better than each other.
We have very different experiences. Where I work 90% of the people are 45-55 years old. I'm not yet 40. Sitting and listening to them is painful. They spend hours talking about the good ole days and how cool they were. One guy literally comes in at 7am every day and does nothing but talk with the gang until about 10am. I think in an average day he does 2-3 hours of work even though he likes to be present until 5-6pm. He and some of the others there think that because they are there for 10-12 hours a day somehow they are worth the money, even though they dont do shit the entire time.
I work circles around these people. One of them has spent, literally, the last 14 months trying to decide what the right tool is for our department. I got sick of waiting on him and implemented a collection of open sources tools with some glue code just so I could get some damned work done. He ignores this and goes into every conversation as if it doesn't exist. Because he's the senior guy, everyone takes their lead from him. So they're all waiting on a solution while I get the job done. Yes I am extremely bitter about it.
I got more done last week than most of these guys will get done in a month or longer. They have been set in their ways for the last couple of decades. They don't do anything until some suit tells them to, despite our new CIO telling people they need to be making decisions themselves. When they do decide to work on something they bitch the entire time as if we're all putting them out by asking them to actually do their job. They sit and decry all the new tools and software because it's not WinXP and NT4.
Certainly not everyone over 50 is like this. I know I won't be. But all too often when you see someone in a technical role in their 50's it's because they couldn't move up or because their attitudes had them shuffled from job to job and they couldn't build relationships and network they way they should have.
Hell even Linus Torvalds has moved on from a technical role into a more managerial one. Yes he is still technical but he's moved beyond being a code monkey.
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This has been my experience as well.
Most of their processes are 2 decades old, and when they came up with them they were new and fancy. I'm this close to just replacing them with a Python script. A lot of engineering is still old and boring stuff. 20 years ago the 'hot new' fancy way to do something was write a VBA script in Excel. And for the last 20 years they've been resting on that. But the world has changed. I'd rather just have Python scrape a supplier's website for prices (or interface with their API
Re:Maybe. (Score:4, Informative)
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Why the fuck are you re-writing things that already work?
Ususally because they actually don't. Of if they do, they do so at an outrageous cost (often the reason is that most of the costs are sunk, but that bodes ill for the future).
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Real engineers use what ever they have at hand as a hammer to pound what ever nails they have on hand.
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You're in an entirely different field. If I said the word Bash at work I'd get blank stares. I'm a mechanical engineer. But the 'problems' of ageism are the same.
Take a guy with a PhD in mechanical engineering that refused to learn CAD.
According to him he's highly skilled and isn't getting hired because of ageism. According to the workforce he has no usable skills. Who is right?
And why would you scan 10,000 remote servers from a single machine? Turn it into a celery task. Distribute it to machines based on
Re:Maybe. (Score:5, Insightful)
But all too often when you see someone in a technical role in their 50's it's because they couldn't move up or because their attitudes had them shuffled from job to job and they couldn't build relationships and network they way they should have.
Keep in mind that this is context-dependent. Some (mostly larger) companies have sufficient need for senior technical people that there opportunities for people to have full, purely-technical careers without ever moving into management. In other cases, senior engineers that don't want to manage go independent.
I'm nearly 50, and have no intention of ever leaving a technical role. At my current employer (Google) there's no need for me to ever make that move. I hear you, though, I've run into my share of people who've just chosen to vegetate in place. They can be hard for management to dislodge.
I work circles around these people. One of them has spent, literally, the last 14 months trying to decide what the right tool is for our department. I got sick of waiting on him and implemented a collection of open sources tools with some glue code just so I could get some damned work done.
I just want to mention that this part of your story isn't very convincing to me. I don't know what sort of tool you're talking about, but depending on what it is and how it fits in, it may very well be fully worth taking two years to select something, and your hacked-together assemblage of components may be a really bad idea. What I'm saying is that the other guy may be right and you may be wrong, and his greater perspective is what allows him to see that your approach isn't good.
Or maybe not. I'm not judging, just pointing out that it's not impossible that you're misjudging.
Re:Maybe. (Score:4, Insightful)
> One of them has spent, literally, the last 14 months trying to decide what the right tool is for our department
>> , it may very well be fully worth taking two years to select something,
This is almost _never_ the case. It's usually a sign of extensively overdesigning the solution, insisting that the single tool solve _all_ the problems. I've seen it happen repeatedly, with email systems, QA tools, clustering projects, and even physical architectures. By the time the decision is made and implemented, the problem will have changed and it will no longer be the perfect solution. And the investment in hacks to work with the old infrastructure will be so large that it creates _another_ round of evaluation to move off the old systems, which have to be maintained in place during the switchover.
I've seen this type of over-extended planning, repeatedly, and it's painful.
Re: (Score:3)
This is almost _never_ the case. It's usually a sign of extensively overdesigning the solution, insisting that the single tool solve _all_ the problems. I've seen it happen repeatedly, with email systems, QA tools, clustering projects, and even physical architectures. By the time the decision is made and implemented, the problem will have changed and it will no longer be the perfect solution. And the investment in hacks to work with the old infrastructure will be so large that it creates _another_ round of evaluation to move off the old systems, which have to be maintained in place during the switchover. I've seen this type of over-extended planning, repeatedly, and it's painful.
Yeah. However I've also seen projects fail because they didn't do enough planning, particularly:
a) What is the critical functionality that absolutely must be in place before the old system can be shut down?
and
b) Does the new system have limitations that mean you're eventually halfway down an implementation project hit a brick wall?
For example, there's nothing like half an accounting system. Either it works to do your accounting or it doesn't. If you get caught up in all the "nice to have" improvements, you
Re: (Score:3)
My solution, if adopted more widely, might get us stuck with a solution that doesn't integrate well with our other systems or is something nobody can maintain.
It's hard to know without more information from you about what exactly these tools are and what they do, but because you wrote these tools yourself (using FOSS components), this seems false: the biggest benefit to home-grown solutions is flexibility. You wrote it, you have the code, so you can much more easily integrate it with other systems than so
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But all too often when you see someone in a technical role in their 50's it's because they couldn't move up
Move up to where? Management?
I'm just over 50 myself, and in the corporate networks group for a large public sector employer. I enjoy my job, I get to play with all the latest enterprise class geeky stuff and find that keeps my interest. I like that it is constantly evolving and we are always training on new things.
Then I look at my managers, who don't really even make that much more money and ask w
Re:Maybe. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, if you don't want to count experience, don't ask for the guy's employment history.
If you want to know if there is ageism, just watch the first reaction when you walk into the office. The same thing applies to race. Watch one or two people flinch a little when a black person walks in. It won't necessarily a be conscious one, but it certainly can explain why the denials are so fierce. People are simply unaware.
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Try not to look old. After I started coloring my hair, my offer-to-interview ratio went from somewhere around 0 to 40%. (It probably helps that I have oily skin, so my face looks middle-aged as long as there's no white hair showing.)
Re:Maybe. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hope that helps. I think that people 'my age' can bring a lot to the party. One (unpopular) thing is looking at something and knowing it's stupid because I've seen it fail about fifty times already. Experience.
Re:Maybe. (Score:4, Informative)
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.
I think the money thing is a big issue alright. Apart from the knowledge and experience they bring, the over-40s have mortgages to pay and kids to put through college so working for entry level salaries is not an option. Like with offshoring, many employers assume that 3 cheap (but inexperienced) developers for the price of one expensive (but experienced) developer is a good deal. It isn't; it's a false economy.
A couple other things I've seen. Employers who assume that the brain ossifies at 40 and that "old dogs" are incapable of learning new tricks. We aren't. I'm continually learning new skills. And then there are folks who are concerned about managing developers who are older and more experienced than they are [slashdot.org]. A bit of honesty and respect goes a long way; we've seen most "management du jour" fads and we know that most of them are BS.
If you treat us greybeards right we can be surprisingly good value for money. :-)
Re: This is going to be fun (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: This is going to be fun (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
As a bit of background to put this into perspective, one of the reasons why we humans have been successful as a species is the fact that we have grandparents, to put it simply. There is of course many more contributing factors, like intelligence, toolmaking, language, cooking etc, but 'grandparenting' is perhaps not quite as photogenic as the other factors, but it is one factor that is common for most long-lived, social species (elephants, for example). There is a great survival value to a group in having v
Re: (Score:3)
Well, I usually start the interview with hope, but that turns to disappointment when the millenial turns out to know nothing, and despair when the 40 something is also clueless. Overall though it's easier to find the 40/50/60 people to know something other than IT and web apps.
Fight Back (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Fight Back (Score:5, Insightful)
If business wants experience, they have to pay the price (in $$$). If they don't want the experience, they'll end up paying for that choice too. We are not replaceable cogs, much as they want to believe otherwise.
No skin off my nose any more - I've already had my fill of bs from this toxic industry.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Personal experience (because I'm not worried about ever being hired again): I had good evidence, but the reviewer at the state overlooked it. I wrote up his errors, and my lawyer recommended appealing to the Feds instead. I got back a response that said there was no evidence of age discrimination. The only way to go from there was a lawsuit, and I wasn't going to spend the money and energy on something that uncertain.
this does not need discussing here (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
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The trend is towards not seeing reliable employment in any industry. Tech is just a bellwether.
No, you need to get a reality check. Unemployment in tech is much lower than the national average (2.9% vs 5.1%), and tech job tenure is higher than average. There is no evidence that employment is becoming less reliable. Average job tenure in America today is higher than it was 30 years ago.
Re: (Score:3)
Leave the Wasteland (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:Leave the Wasteland (Score:5, Interesting)
the "Bay Area" is filled with a lot more drama than you will find in any workplace outside.
I live outside the Bay Area and experienced the exact same thing when I hit my mid-40s. Anyone who denies ageism is a factor in tech is either naive or part of the problem.
Ending the H1-B program completely might not solve the problem but it would be a good first step. Sure, companies would still outsource but that's a real pain the ass compared to having a galley slave right on site. After companies pay a couple times for untangling Bangalore Spaghetti Code that comes in late and doesn't run right they get a lot more practical.
Re: (Score:3)
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.
My story exactly.
Just under 40 years' paid Embedded Dev. Experience. HUGE resume (left out 90% of experience to get it to two pages). Laid off in January 2009. Posted said resume everywhere. Crickets. Actually, I STILL get headhunter calls every single week; but they are ALL horrible little short-term contract jobs halfway across the country, or more...
If I hadn't had an ex coworker help handshake me into a job writing hideous Windows ERP s/w JUST in the nick of time, plus having no house payment (house
Re: (Score:3)
we all KNOW this is a problem.
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.
No we don't. Lets look at another field that's not computer science / coding / programming: Engineering.
Everything that the coders here are complaining about I've heard in Engineering but when I drill down to who is having the problems it's a particular set of people.
An engineer turning 60 this year would have graduated in ~'78. CAD wouldn't have taken off like it has now. I know managers with PhDs who are highly intelligent but moved out of actual engineering refusing to learn CAD. They insisted they didn'
Re:this does not need discussing here (Score:5, Insightful)
let me school you on *reading* since you are having trouble even logging in...
if you want to read between the lines, read this:
"dear management: your request to work yet another weekend for YOUR company is being declined. your lack of want, in hiring the proper amount of staff to get the job done is NOT my problem and I'm not willing to give up time from my life, weekend after weekend just so that your bonus check can be even bigger"
signed,
guy who's old enough to see thru mgmt's BS. your 'emergency' is not MY emergency. its not my company; you guys made that abundantly clear over the last few decades.
Re:this does not need discussing here (Score:5, Insightful)
oh, and a post script:
I know you prefer the 'obedience' of the h1b indentured servant worker. they are generally younger, they are willing to do anything that they are told and they are under constant fear of being deported. they are the perfect little worker-bee who won't question you and will lick your boots nice and clean, as needed.
lets all call a spade a spade, shall we? we know why the older worker is being pushed out.
Re:this does not need discussing here (Score:5, Interesting)
Hi!
I'm in the bay area, and we're looking for hardware/software people. Email me, adrian@freebsd.org !
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
We're also looking for HW/SW people, so please shoot me an email: rick@castar.com
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read this:
"dear management: your request to work yet another weekend for YOUR company is being declined.
I think I understand why you are unemployed. I am over 50, and if my employer needs me to come in on an occasional weekend to supervise the younglings, then I am there.
You complain about ageism, and in the very next breath you display the very sort of surly attitude and "senior privilege" that employers are trying to avoid. If you cannot find a job in the SF Bay Area in the current economy, then the problem is you.
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There's putting in the occasional weekend/overtime and there's the expectation of putting in hundred hour weeks. At my age I wouldn't put up with hundred hour weeks, especially as I know that after about 8 hours of actual work the errors start piling up and the next morning is spent fixing last nights work. It does make you look productive though.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: this does not need discussing here (Score:5, Interesting)
Being an old white male means your life must be perfect.
If you're old fat white male coming in to an interview, forget about it. I've never been hired after an in-person interview in the last ten years. However, if I get hired over the phone and show up for work, the hiring manager will look at me, look at my stellar resume, and wondered if he made a mistake. Doesn't take me long to prove that my stellar resume is what I claim it to be.
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I'm going to assume you are willing to move.
I'm going to assume you are willing to pay for my relocation. If not, then you aren't serious.
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The company I work at seems to continually restructure.
I've been contracting since the 80's and have worked at about a dozen companies, and every single one of them has restructured constantly. I always assumed it was just a part of working at a large company (like getting free coffee) and one of the reasons never wanted to be a direct.
Not a problem at all that I've seen (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Do you really want your friends in your social life to be the nerds and geeks you work with? I'm not THAT dysfunctional to think any good can come from that.
Business today does hiring based on money. When they can get two newbs for the price of one experienced person, they take the 2 newbs, because they don't understand that IT workers aren't replaceable cogs. And this way, when the inevitable fubar happens, they can blame it on the workers instead of their own incompetence.
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Did the GP say that he did? There are friends and there are coworkers and there is usually some overlap, but not necessarily.
Rgds
Damon
If you don't work with friends, how sad a life. (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
Keeping up is part of why you don't have an issue (Score:3)
I work for a university doing IT and as with most universities, you see a big mix of ages. We have everything from students up to people in their 80s (I'm 35). The most common problem I see with older workers is the lack of willingness to keep up with new tech. IT, development, or any computer field progresses fast, of course. If you are going to be effective, you have to be open to learning new things all the time and changing how you do things. Some older workers have a lot of trouble with that. They act
I haven't (Score:2)
Ageism is the last refuge of incompetent whippersn (Score:5, Informative)
Am 51, and for the last decade I've experience some, yes. The most overt was for a Bay Area startup position that was going swimmingly until I did a Skype with the (much younger) DoE, and he saw I was "old". (Guess he couldn't read a resume.) But the more annoying ageism is a general assumption by some of the kids that if there is a difference of opinion on an engineering question, it's because the old guy is clinging to his anachronistic ways. Version control? Testing? Even a one-page design doc? Don't be such an old fuddy duddy!! :-)
It has its plusses, though. As an old guy, you realize that there's serious money to be made cleaning up after the kids. And experience can often tell you which projects are sure failures, which can save working on something hopeless for a year.
Re:Ageism is the last refuge of incompetent whippe (Score:5, Informative)
serious money to be made cleaning up after the kids.
YES!!! There's also serious money to be made in the support of 40 year old technology running on critical systems whose documentation was lost years ago.`
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As an old guy, you realize that there's serious money to be made cleaning up after the kids.
My first IT job was a Token Ring to Ethernet conversion project. A real simple job of removing the coaxial cable from between the Token Ring card and the wall plug, plugging in the Ethernet cable between the motherboard port and the wall, and testing the video app that required the extra bandwidth. We had 300 systems. I took 150 on one side, the two fresh out of high school kids took 150 on the other side. When I started overlapping the computers that they did and noticed that the video app didn't work, I c
Is it ageism? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it ageism when I turn down work because the company wants my experience but is only willing to pay the price of a someone straight out of college?
But yes ..I have experienced ageism in a former company. I once worked for a company that had a president like the mentioned HubSpot CEO. Me and 3 other middle career hires once sat around with dropped jaws during one company meeting when he gushed over hiring people straight out of college because then he could "shape" them into the perfect company workers. Where as he couldn't do that with older hires. Apparently us older workers with all our experience were outright trouble makers.
Fortunately I was only at that place for 6 months.
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that's one of the key points; and you seem to have learned it first-hand.
being able to underpay is half of it; but the other half is that young and fresh on the job market means you are going to drink THEIR koolaid and its the first one you'll ever have, so you'll think their way is the right way and the only way.
companies LOVE THIS. I fully get that and understand that.
but its still wrong.
they get away with it, because they can. that's why. they know its wrong, but they have no morals. companies are li
Don't make me get up (Score:5, Funny)
I'll show you ageism, you little shits. If I have to get out of this chair, somebody's gonna cry.
Older people don't like the unpaid OT and end less (Score:2)
Older people don't like the unpaid OT and end less 60-80 hour weeks so that is a black flag to HR / PHB.
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Ageism exists (Score:2)
I can't be sure. (Score:5, Interesting)
Not without being a mind-reader.
I do know that after a long and very successful career I took two years off to deal with health issues with one of my kids (now happily resolved) and thereafter as an over-50 engineer with an employment gap I was pretty much unemployable.
My experiences in the interviews I got suggest something subtly different than ageism -- at least of the sort that believes older engineers can't do the work. I'd meet with a bunch of people and everyone would seem excited and enthusiastic about my background... except the hiring manager. Whomever I was going to work for would seem distinctly colder, as if they'd decided I wasn't going to get the job before they even met me.
I think what's going on is that people don't like the idea of supervising someone who is older and highly experienced. Maybe they think a more experienced worker would be less cooperative. Or maybe they were afraid we'd be angling for their job. I don't think, given my resume, that anyone believed I couldn't do the work. They just doubted my word that I really wanted the job because of my experience.
Is that ageism?
I think it's very common for more experienced engineers who've reached the point where they've been doing engineering management to want to get back down and dirty, only to be frustrated by the fact that nobody wants you for that kind of work at your age. You hear it a lot -- I enjoyed being a project leader or program manager, it was rewarding and I'm glad I did it, but now I want to get back to the stuff that brought me into the field in the first place. Except once you've taken any kind of senior position nobody wants you for grunt work anymore, even if you've been armpit-deep in engineering on a day-to-day basis.
Is that ageism?
I dunno. But it does suck.
Re: (Score:3)
Best decision I ever made. My career's basically in the toilet now, but I've spent the past eight years with all the time in the world for my kids when they needed me. The oldest is in college now and the youngest is looking at colleges, so I have more time for myself. In the past year I've lost nearly 100 pounds and reversed the Type 2 diabetes and am well on the way to reversing the arthritis that was starting to cripple me -- using my engineering skills, of course.
Still wish I could get a job doing wha
Part of it older people = Management? (Score:2)
There a lot of tech pro's who don't want to deal with / are not that good all doing all of the Management work and just want to do tech work.
Experience is required (Score:4, Interesting)
I've experienced the bias against older tech workers. I've also seen the results of that bias: work that would've gotten a failing grade even in the college courses I took, let alone at some of my employers. There's a considerable advantage to having been there, done that, can see how current problems match previously encountered problems and what methods already exist to solve them. To give an extreme example, traditional Web applications (most logic on the server, Javascript in the client is used primarily for input validation and display formatting) mirror very closely the flow of ancient 3270 workstation "green-screen" applications: the server sends a block of display and validation instructions to the client, the user enters the data without interacting with the server, the client sends the completed form back to the server as a single block for processing. The same flow held for the forms applications I build for DEC VAX/VMS in the 80s. And many of the tricks developed to maintain session data across requests for web application are the same tricks we used for the same purpose way back when. I can see the same pendulum swing at work as well: 3270 workstations gave way to interactive terminals (where the application could directly interact with the user), which gave way to forms applications, which gave way to thick clients (PC applications that accessed remote servers via various protocols), which in turn gave way to Web applications, which are now giving way to thick clients again (this time Javascript framework applications running in the browser accessing remote servers via XML/JSON and RESTful interfaces). That perspective gives me a big advantage in knowing where to go for things that already exist and have had all the kinks thoroughly worked out that I can apply to the current problem, rather than having to work solutions out from first principles or copy-and-paste code from StackOverflow as a black box as many of the younger developers do.
Most of the bias I attribute to a mistaken belief that "old" = "unable/unwilling to learn". Some of that belief probably comes as a reaction to the normal skepticism older people have to the latest "silver bullet" sales hype. We've seen those fail to live up to the hype time and time again, someone who's only been in the business 5 years and who hasn't maintained a single application through many update cycles hasn't gotten the first-hand experience with the fallout. It's not that the shiny new tech isn't good, but the salesman is probably over-promising to try and seal the deal and I'd prefer to find the gotchas in a test project rather than by having production fall over.
Re: (Score:2)
Ageism on Slashdot (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Ageism on Slashdot (Score:4, Funny)
6 digits? What are you, 22? You have no idea....
When I got my ID (before Y2K) you could still browse the web with a modem, and a dollar would just about buy you a gallon of gas. We were in the middle of Clinton's "I did not have sex..." scandal (which, ultimately, nobody cared about anyway). Every woman in America was watching Titanic, and every man in America was saying "of course I'd like to see Titanic with you again honey!" with as much sincerity as they could muster. The Dow Jones was skyrocketing through 10,000 thanks to the dot-com boom, which was aptly named because boy did it go 'boom'. And speaking of bombs, The Phantom Menace came out and became the highest grossing Star Wars film ever, which was also appropriate as that film was (is) a gross betrayal of everything good in Star Wars. You could still watch actual videos on MTV (apparently, 2016 is the new 1999). And you measured your computer in Mhz and megabytes.
Pshaw! Get out of here with your "6 digit user IDs" flim-flam tallywhack, and while you're at it, get off my lawn too! You kids these days.
What ageism. (Score:2)
Some places are run by people who just want a pool of young ass to pull from or easily intimidated people to boss around. So unless you are the flavor they like and in your early twenties you are not going to get hired. Nor would probably want to work at that company.
After leaving the military the only ageism I get is "you want a job?! Oh thank God I don't have to deal with another fucktard kid that can't bother to show up on time, dress
yes (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Two words.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, actually... (Score:5, Interesting)
Recruiters like it when you shave you beard for interviews in the midwest. They do, they really like it. They prefer if you do it. They can't tell you that you have to do it anymore, but they still very strongly prefer it. I've always felt kind of awkward without a beard. So, one day, about five years ago, and just as my beard started going gray, I stopped doing it. It's idiotic to change your appearance in this way, especially when it's a dishonest representation of what you actually look like most of the time.
I've always had a good resume, I get compliments on it all the time from clients and recruiters alike. The only people that dislike the way I write a resume are college guidance counselors, and people poisoned by their terrible advice, but they're few and far between. So all things considered, that factor in this equation has not changed. But since I've been growing the beard both longer and grayer, the number of successful interviews I've had has gone up. And the way I've been treated on the job has changed, dramatically. Bear in mind that the type of roles I go for hasn't changed since I was 25. I like coding. I intend to continue doing it.
People are more respectful. They ask me for my insights more often. I'm treated like an eccentric code sage, and that's absolutely fine with me. Even when I fly out to work in places like California or Seattle, this does not seem to change. I can only think of one instance where this decision has worked against me. One interview for a very hostile publishing company a few years ago, where they made it a point to ask me how often I keep up with new things, where they refused to believe that I read more books every year than their CEO. That said, I think that one would probably have went poorly no matter what I looked like.
I don't mind being older than my coworkers or project managers.
I don't mind taking orders from people younger than me. This isn't my trip in life.
I'm just there to make better stuff, solve more interesting problems, and keep myself challenged intellectually.
My biggest problem is boredom, so I've learned to be pickier in selecting my assignments.
Getting older, and reaching middle age isn't a bad thing.
You just have to know how to sell it.
Re: (Score:3)
Sounds more like you just look better with a beard.
I've had the opposite problem. Due to horrible acne that persists in middle age even with medical treatment, I decided to grow a beard so my skin could heal. I kept it well trimmed and did still shave my neck, and I thought it looked pretty good. I noticed a very sudden change in how strangers treated me, notably, like I was dumb and a bum. After a month of that kind of harassment, I shaved it all off. Things went back to normal. Apparently, my acne a
Not at top tier companies. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Ageism plus increased retirement age. (Score:3)
I'm almost in my 50s and I've constantly experienced ageism. It's easy for people to point fingers and say if you're competent you'll get any job no matter what - that would come from people with endless network contacts, but if you're mobile - and have to find new networks all the time then it's not THAT easy because believe it or not - most HR and Recruitment centres ignore you if they see 40+ in your CV. They don't even bother to read it after that, you won't even be contacted.
And this is a freaking catastrophe - because at least Sweden (and Scandinavia) where I live, the government have decided that we're LIVING LONGER all the time and pushes the retirement age up towards 67 - 70yo because the society can't afford to support the pensioners that keep living longer and longer, we're expected to reach 100 nowadays, if your retirement happens when you're 60 years - this means we've got to support you for 40+ more years, no society can afford that.
But you do the Math: Ageism = companies want them younger and younger - Government expect us to live longer and longer = extreme poverty above 40 to you're 70 if you make it that far.
I commit ageism (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I commit ageism (Score:5, Interesting)
I am guilty of ageism: I prefer to work with older people.
:) Me too...
I'm 40, I recently interviewed for a video/sound editor position and the under 25 crowd is indeed willing to work for cheap, but for heaven's sake, can one of them please show up with a tie on?
The 40 year olds who show up for an interview? Suits and ties.
No, the position will never require you wear a suit or tie, you can come to work in t-shirts and jeans if you want, but the suit says "I'm here because I want the job and I'm serious about that".
----
15 years ago I was interviewing for my first flying job, it was a $16/hr no-benefits part time position. I showed up in a suit and tie. One of the pilots there (wearing jeans and a t-shirt) joked, "what's with the monkey suit", to which I replied, "I want the job, this says that from the minute I walk in the door".
I got the job, never wore a suit there of course, but even during the interview I was asked about that, same answer. Did it make a difference? I have no idea, but it didn't hurt.
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah, there's a reason - it says that you understand that their time is valuable to them and that they're willingly choosing to spend it talking to you, so you took some time yourself to at least make yourself presentable. It's a display of basic respect.
Recently, Yes (Score:5, Interesting)
I am 58, but look 15 years younger (partly genetics I guess, but I also lift weights and so am pretty buff - I can beat anyone in my company in push-ups and arm-wrestling). In my most recent job hunt (last year), I experienced what I think is age discrimination for the first time - having an interview with a start-up that went really well I thought, but then got an rejection with the explanation that I would not "fit into a start-up environment" (I had worked start-ups in the earlier tech boom though). But then I got an offer from a start-up a few weeks later, where I am currently working.
I dropped my first decade of experience off my resume years ago, as I thought it was not obviously relevant to the modern tech industry, and harmful in dating me, and so I also do not list my Bachelors graduation dates. I was fortunate to earn my Masters, and do PhD work, mid-career, so that I do list those dates on my resume, making me look more than a decade younger on paper (which is not then exposed upon meeting me since I look like my implied age).
I am concerned though, because I need to work until I am 70 to collect my full SS income, and build up a decent retirement account. The drain of a child with cancer for many years, before she died, and a wife that had serious health issues and an emotional breakdown during that same period set me well behind financially. (A lot of obviously young, and so far lucky, posters here make it sound like saving for retirement is always a piece of cake, and anyone who has trouble preparing is just stupid and lazy; but bad things can happen in life through no fault of yours that can really hurt your savings - there is no safety net to help you out). I am not sure how long my apparent youthfulness will hold out, and whether the industry will become even more intolerant of age. I just need 12 more years though.
Re: (Score:3)
Wow. Sad that that sort of strategy is needed, but more power to you. Folks also need to realize that someone who is 58, in good shape, and is standing strong after many life challenges you are likely more tenacious than anyone around you.
It's localized, I think. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
You will be. If you're lucky enough.
Re:I haven't (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Re:I haven't (Score:4, Interesting)
I am over 50, I live and work in Silicon Valley, and I have never personally experienced ageism. 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. If I was looking for a new job (I am not), I could easily tap old friends and coworkers, and have several offers within a day or two. If an old person is trying to find a job using Craigslist, Dice, etc. then that means they have no network, or don't think their old coworkers would recommend them, because they are unproductive. That is not "ageism", it is "unproductivism".
Re:I haven't (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:I haven't (Score:4, Informative)
The biggest problem I've seen is young jocks wanting to use "buzzword technology" just for the sake of using them
Free advice: Pick your battles carefully, and avoid being overly negative. Instead, point out the drawbacks of new-fangelism, and make constructive suggestions. If your organization is, say, going with JavaScript so everything will be "cross-platform", then go with the flow, but suggest a framework/library that is actually cross-platform, familiarize yourself with JS static analysis tools like JSHint and Closure, and become the expert in on-device debugging (notoriously hard with JS). You won't be the high-flying trapeze artist, but you will be the guy with the safety net.
More free advice: Don't ever, EVER say "I told you so", no matter how tempting it may be.
Re: (Score:3)
Nobody will ever know if your suggestions would have led to a better situation or to a total nightmare. Unless you find a way to run parallel universes to compare the actual outcome of forks in the road, your "told you so" is worth nothing, it just makes you look shortsighted and petty.
Taking credit for "good decisions" that were not taken is like being proud of your daughter's Nobel Prize before you even fucked her mom for the first time.
Re:I haven't (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
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.
I can help a bit in this department...
The good news is, at least in Portland they *do* usually have a hands-on portion of the interview process (mostly because most employers are sick of being burned by fresh-out-of-college kids who talk a good game, but cannot code their way out of a paper sack.)
But, when it comes to the tag-team interview, if I get hit with a stupid question, I usually answer it with a question expressly designed to show them how stupid their question was. Handle it the same way you'd han
Re: (Score:3)
Re:I haven't (Score:5, Interesting)
Posting AC. My current job doesn't care, because they just need people who know what they are doing.
However, I've had previous interviews where I was asked if I would grow a full beard and wear flannel so I can "fit in the team" (once I realized I can't stand the place, I mentioned that the reason I don't bother growing a full mane is that gas masks don't seal over facial hair, which befuddled them greatly), or have been overtly called a "fossil" because I didn't put my whole life on social media, or been told, "find a mainframe shop, pops" when I mentioned the security ramifications of "just put it in Docker", or "move it to OpenStack."
Ageism is out there. I would say post 40, you have to be -exceptional- to be able to find any work. A 20-something with far fewer skills will always get the position before you every time, especially if the person is an H-1B, because of the payroll tax advantage.
Re:I haven't (Score:5, Informative)
To be honest, I agree with you with the exception of with my Asbergers "friends". I have worked with some of the most exceptional minds in computational mathematics and physics over the years and to be fair, these guys are genuinely unmarketable. They are the best people at what they do and they work extremely hard and for the most part diligently and make miracles happen in code. Companies around the world are desperate for their skills and talents. But they need to work the job they got when they graduated the university until they retire or they're screwed.
I know of at least three of these guys living on unemployment (maybe for the rest of their lives) because they are utterly unable to communicate with anyone with an IQ under 170 (I use the term IQ just to have some numerical reference... I just mean really really good at solving puzzles). It's not because they check IQ cards or they black list people because their IQs are too low. It's because they actually are medically incapable of being interested in holding an interest in communicating with anyone who doesn't provide "valuable input" to solving their puzzles. They have absolute focus on problem solving and have absolutely no interest in the outside world. These are real life Sheldons x10. I had a conversation with one the other night who displayed a very unusual level of emotion and excitement since his roommate (a girl with severe communication issues... crippled by fear of other people) had taught him to use a vacuum cleaner properly. He'll probably vacuum that apartment 16 times a day for three weeks.
I honestly never have any problems finding work in this business and my age has had absolutely no impact other than positive. I do recall having major problems with age when I was in my teens and early 20's. At 40, people simply assume that I know what I'm doing.
Re:I haven't (Score:5, Insightful)
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.)
Re:Willingness to learn (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
a good guy in C can get any job done,
Domain knowledge is sometimes more important than coding ability. Some industries, domain knowledge can take years, even decades, to acquire.
Re: (Score:3)
I think I read once where it takes about 20,000 hours to become an expert in a field. Some disciplines of engineering encompass more than one area of expertise. I remember one problem that was solved in two days by one of these 5k/day consultants that a dozen people hadn't solved in two months because they'd run across a similar problem a dec
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I can tell you from my personal experience that the amount of effort that I could put forward as a forty year old is much less than at twenty year old. OTOH, I can do much more even better than I could at twenty with less work. This is not because I am twenty years older, but because I spent twenty years getting better. Some people do that, many people don't and coast along
Re:hire me, I'm old and I'm cheap (Score:4, Insightful)
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."
---
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...