At Google, You're Old and Gray At 40 543
theodp writes "Google faces an imminent California Supreme Court decision on whether an age discrimination suit against it can go forward. But that hasn't kept the company from patting itself on the back for how it supports 'Greyglers' — that's any Googler over 40. At a company of about 20,000 full-time employees, there were at last count fewer than 200 formally enrolled Greyglers working to 'make Google culture ... welcome to people of all ages.'"
Maybe Google are right (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm rapidly approaching 40, and I'm becoming more risk averse by the day.
Here's why: I know that when companies over-reach, then it'll be me who's pulling the late nights and weekends to deliver, not the guy that over-sold the product.
Younger guys either haven't learned that yet, or don't care as much, because they think that Arbeit Macht Frie. Well, I put in the Arbeit years ago, and I want my Frei now - just as today's young turks will want theirs tomorrow when they have families to take care of.
But they don't want it today, and that's why they make better employees, plain and simple.
Working on a long term project (Score:4, Interesting)
It's amazing the differences, working on a long term project. How long term? Our first released version was in the mid-nineties - and yes, we're doing more than just maintenance, even now. It's a defense project.
I'm on a team (within the larger project, which is 70-100 people) of seven people. Four are over forty, in some cases by a lot, one is about to turn forty, I'm thirty-three, and then we have our one, shiny just out of college person. We're pretty representative of the project as a whole, with the UI team trending younger than the others. The idea that older people don't know what they're doing, even on new languages, is pretty silly to me.
Re:Not just Google (Score:5, Interesting)
Some believe that the H1B flooding is actually designed to get rid of older IT workers
I think that's just to keep wages down in general. Our universities are pumping out plenty of CS and MIS grads as well as math and engineering graduates to keep up with demand. The companies that say there are shortages are just saying that to justify going overseas or to bring in H-1bs.
My father in law in quite an accomplished design engineer but as he got older, he has been gradually moved into testing positions.
It starts off with a lay-off and he gets it, finds another job that's not quite what he did before, lay-off, then another job not quite like what he did, and so on until now where he's writing Perl scripts to take data from testing equipment and putting that into Excel spreadsheets. Pretty beneath him, but he's grateful to have some sort of technical job at 70. All his contemporaries went into management (if they could) a long time ago, changed careers or they're now retired.
In my programming experience, I've known very few folks who stayed in programming after 40. One was well into his 50s but he grabbed onto a product and stuck with it for years. When I left, he was still programming C on Dos. But folks came and went because they didn't want to work on old shit and he was very lucky to have gotten a product with a very long market life - cash register software.
Re:Not just Google (Score:5, Interesting)
There are more experienced techies who understand new technology than there are young ones who understand old technology. Or how their new technology works behind the scenes, for that matter.
And no, people aren't old at 40-50. With a normal work life lasting from 20-25 to 60-70, that's only halfway through, and is more likely to be near the peak of performance.
Re:Not just Google (Score:2, Interesting)
Is it? Or do the old-timers just not get new technology?
Besides, most people over 40 don't want to spend 60hours+/week at work.
It depends on the sort of work that is available. Older people are certainly good for a certain things: Ideas? Sure. Concepts? Of course. Writing the code to see those in the latest "in" language? Not probably so much.
With numbers that drop down in the "upper age" bracket, it means to me that there is simply less of the work to go around for these guys. The visionary guys at the very top of the pyramid? I don't think that age will see those folks go, the kids at the fat end of the pyramid doing the coding, yeah, I can totally see how the more mature folks will neither WANT to do those tasks, or probably be cutting edge enough to do them.
I don't really see this as too bad a thing. Heck, if I had work at Google under my belt, chances are that I would also be looking to move on at some point and make a squillion dollars by taking that experience and showing another company how to do it with their company.
Obligatory Primer quote: (Score:4, Interesting)
Clean Room Technician: You know what they do with engineers when they turn forty?
[to Aaron, who shakes his head]
Clean Room Technician: They take them out and shoot them.
Re:Not just Google (Score:3, Interesting)
That is a bizarre statement and one that I generally hold to be the opposite of the truth. I find that the least willing to do overtime are the younger crowd. The older crowd tend to do the "early to bed, early to rise" routine whereas the younger crowd are the "party all night, show up late in the morning" people. (YMMV)
As for older people not getting the new technology? Wow. That is quite an assertion. There are and always will be people on both sides of the [arbitrary] age line that will get it and that won't. It has little to do with age and more to do with aptitude. What I find is that there are truly fewer people with aptitude than not. If there are problems with the workforce, it is mostly among the youth who are far too easily distracted and don't commit themselves too much to their work. (once again, YMMV)
Where I work, the older the people are, the earlier they show up and the later they leave. In places prior, that was also the general pattern. But with that said, I was "older" a lot sooner than most people as my own work ethic started in my teens as my parents were extremely old fashioned and I grew up much as they did.
The real problems you will find today come from the general pop culture.
Re:Not just Google (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm over 40 (almost 50) and get all new technology except for mobile phones. Maybe it's just me. I just don't have the social network I used to have in my 20s. By get, I mean motivated/interested in developing applications for. Not many new graduates seem to understand web services, SAS or SOAP.
I'm 54 and not grey (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not just Google (Score:2, Interesting)
I find the opposite - it's the main reason they like the younger ones. They have no family commitments so will happily work through the night on a problem when the older ones have to go pick up jnr from school etc.
That said, I'm currently 46 and through the wonders of home working now work more hours than I have for years but that's because I can stop at 3:30 to pick up my son, cook dinner, sort out homework then be back in front of the PC at 6PM for a few more hours.
Re:young company (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not just Google (Score:3, Interesting)
My masjid is full of programmers over 50. For example, one of them just start working at NIST, another worked for ages supporting Cobol code, third one works for private government contructor. Since I do not see apparent correlation between religiosity and coding till your beard is gray, I assume that there are plenty of them outside the masjid as well. (The only bias I could see is that it's DC area and a lot of government related jobs which is less agist than a private sector - I do not know though if it is a good thing or not for the country).
Re:Not just Google (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:young company (Score:3, Interesting)
The same is true for many other companies as well, Qualcomm for example. In 2001 I bought a small condo in SoCal from a single lady who retired from Qualcomm and moved out to a mansion on a hill overlooking a heavenly SoCal valley. I have heard a phrase "qualcomm millionaire" quite often.
Try to replace 'em (Score:5, Interesting)
My department wanted to hire me (46 y.o.) a younger "assistant" to help with all my duties. Mostly they're nervous that I'll leave and be hard to replace.
So HR asked for the skills and qualifications I have that are needed for the jobs and projects that I do.
After getting the list and doing some research, HR told them they would need to hire 3 or 4 younger people to meet those qualifications, at a cost of at least 2 to 3 times my salary.
So yeah, experience beats youthful enthusiasm every damn day. Get yourself some experience, kids.
Oh, I got a raise out of the deal.
Steve Jobs is 55, I guess he's over the hill (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Not just Google (Score:5, Interesting)
I like how this comment ignores the generational gap between digital natives and digital immigrants.
Note
but perhaps they're not relevant to your lifestyle
Communication without disturbing anyone nearby (on public transport, during lessons at school, in the office)
There exists a mental technique called 'patience'. The huge downside to instant communication, and instant gratification from it, is that we fail to realize that half of our thoughts aren't important enough to actually send. If/when you have to wait 20-30 minutes to communicate it, you tend to condense things down. Your brain chews on them a while. Try it. Even with the digital tech, you may find the practice to be enlightening. This is what people used to do before cell phones, because, believe it or not those situations did pop up within their lifestyles.
Communications when the recipient is busy, or might be busy, but can respond later
See the above. And as you said, email might be better, and would likely be less intrusive. Texts tend to be small and very, very frequent. Again I assert that a great many of them are 'junk' that are only sent because they can be, rather than because they actually benefit either the sending or receiving party.
A note that doesn't need a reply when the sender doesn't want to be drawn into a conversation (e.g. text parent/partner to say you'll be late)
This is actually a decent example, but you may be surprised to note that before everyone had a phone in their pocket, people used to just try and not be late. They'd let others know to expect them well prior to the event, rather than twenty minutes beforehand. And on the flip side, we'd typically just stop inviting people who weren't dependable in this way. Life would happen, as it does today, and the party who arrived late would typically have a story to tell, which often garnered some sympathy, etc. Today it is "I got a text from Jim, he'll be late," and it has become just a bit too mundane.
The point being, people haven't changed much. The technology exists to prop up a certain level of impulsiveness that is the trademark of youth, but even the youths of yesteryear got by without such things. I think, too, that there are benefits of both points of view. And I think many of the older generation can see the benefits of the newer tech. On the other hand, none of the youngsters seem to get it, and I worry that society is feeding their sense of self-importance just a bit too quickly for our collective good.
Re:Not just Google (Score:3, Interesting)
Those two articles you cite debating the conclusions of the Washington Post article are the same; Business Week reposted the Harvard Business Review article. I'd like to see more than one source, especially when the source reads like a defensive rebuttal by someone who felt insulted by the conclusions of the Pew study (or at least Washington Post story about the study).
Having taught some college classes and labs over the past several years, I can say that the sense of entitlement and poor work ethic (however you define it!) is real. My experiences may be anecdotal, but the data in form of that Pew study does back my experiences, somewhat.
Its culture (which is age) (Score:2, Interesting)
Google doesn't hire older engineers precisely because they are culturally different than the new grads they prefer to hire. I doubt they have a policy of age discrimination, but when interviewers fill out their evaluation forms, they can shape and tilt their answers to disfavor people they would not prefer to work with. So when you have a culture that is predominantly new grads, hiring "old guys" is not likely to happen, even if there is no official policy of age discrimination, because people tend to hire people who are similar to themselves.
I interviewed with Google, answered all their dumbass 'programming puzzle' questions, and didn't get an offer. The most experienced guy who interviewed me had 10 years of experience. I have 30+. Out of the 6 interviewers I spoke with, their industry experience 10, 5, 5, 5, 3, and 1 years. In other words, I had more experience than all of them put together.
In the end, I was glad I didn't have to decide whether to accept an offer from Google because, after seeing their work environment, which resembled a college dorm room with no privacy whatsoever , I would not have been able to work for them anyway. While this is off topic, I was amazed that a company with so much money would drink some stupid management Kool Aid and eschew giving people decent offices within which they could concentrate to work.
Re:young company (Score:3, Interesting)
Right on the money. That was my experience. I'm 49 and I was invited to an interview with Google (Approached). This was
initially flattering. However, when I got there the only person I saw all day that seemed anywhere near my age was the security guard at the front. not that this bothered me at all. During the interview they asked me to write a binary search algorithm on the whiteboard in whatever language I liked. Now all this some it was feeling somewhat insulted as these things are elementary, I also felt awkward doing such on a whiteboard, I spend almost 24/7 behind a computer and type faster than most folks I know. In addition, I spend 7 years working on hardcore search engine design and wrote a system that could fully index a 10GB corpus of text and html in a single pass (TREC test data) in 45 minutes on a circa 2002 PC (I know there was some systems that were faster, I could do it better now as well), and to be asked to write a binary search algorithm was not so inspiring, particularly when I asked if they wanted to see anything about the search engine I was working on they declined, stating that it would taint they interview procedure which was based on some standard tests. So what it comes down to is that it appeared that they did not take any past experience into account apparently (A procedure that maybe is just as well when hiring new graduates). Bizarrely enough, they didn't hire me for a sysadmin job, claiming I was weak in coding!! Some friends of mine reported that they knew some very smart people that reported the same experience, which helped my ego somewhat I'm glad.
I was better off that they declined anyway, I'm earning much more now than I could ever have earned there and have a couple of new promising businesses well on the way in addition to my day job (Business involving lots of coding, BTW).
Re:Not just Google (Score:4, Interesting)
You can work 40 hours and retire well.
All you have to do is spend less than you make consistently.
I make about 60k after all taxes are taken out. I spend about $36k a year. This includes a couple decent $1k vacations. Every year I basically build up a half year's retirement even without any return on the investment. Besides that, my car and house will be paid for in about 4 years and then my spending drops to $24k a year.
I drive a new car, with a warranty plan (so no unexpected bills for 7 years) and I have a warranty repair plan on my house (so no unexpected bills period). I dress well. I eat well (if I ate out less I could spend $30k now- I probably blow $500 a month on food).
I have one pet. When it dies, this will save me another $1k a year, until I replace it when I retire.
I suppose I could be blowing that $14k. I lived that life for about 6 years. It was fun-- but after a hiccup in the job market, I opened my eyes and said, "this is stupid".
I'm on track to be able to retire in about 8 years. Basically I have 4 years living expenses now- every year that grows by another 9 months worth (and if it starts growing from investments again like it did from 2000-2003, I could see 2 year increases each year).
On top of that I have social security- which currently would provide all my living expenses but which I may never see.
On top of that I have a pension which will be about the same as social security.
In some ways, once I finally start saving and retire- my spendable income will go up.
Unfortunately, I may have to work longer than I want due to medical issues but only about 15% of the population has to deal with that.
Re:Not just Google (Score:5, Interesting)
I can totally relate to this. I had an internship last year (as a Junior in college) where I was told I would have to work 30 hrs/week at least. This is already a lot for a part time job, but I was going to get $400 a week. Of course this sounded enticing. Well this was November and shit ended up getting hardcore. I dropped out in the beginning of April; by that point I was making $600 a week (this was all flat rate, not hourly), but I was working up to 70 hour weeks (this was BEFORE school factored in, classes and homework). I spent pretty much my entire winter break working, weekends and all, along with spring break (I worked weekends consistently through January and February until I finally spoke up). My transportation wasn't paid for and when you have 10-14 hour days and work across town, you end up taking expensive cab rides so my salary already lost $25 a day, for the most part. I wasted away and my girlfriend was depressed, I couldn't hang out with my friends and I couldn't lift at the gym and lost a lot of the muscle I had put on. I finally had to quit because finals were coming up and I couldn't handle it. Now, over the summer, I have to work on a paper that I didn't do well on but had a nice enough professor that she gave me an incomplete so that I could work on the paper after the term and get at best, a C in the class. My other classes I didn't do all that much better in, but luckily I get credit for all of them (even the major classes) so it's not the end of the world. However the stress literally made me waste away and push away people around me. My parents just assumed I hated them because I stopped going home as often.
My girlfriend constantly told me I was getting used, and I blew her off refusing to believe her and would get angry thinking she just didn't want me to succeed.
Finally, I saw the light and realized I didn't like where I was in life. The hardest part was breaking away from the "cool company" ideal every young developer dreams of in high school and realizing how full of shit it generally is when a business tries to appeal to your fun side and act relatable. It's worse than a high school assembly where some 20 year olds try and come in and act relatable so they can warn you about the evils of sex and drugs. If I'm in a work environment, then it should be relaxed but it shouldn't constantly pretend it understands where I'm coming from while feeding me bullshit.
I had to eventually "buy out of" the whole idea that the work I was doing was important; that our small dev shop was better than everyone else's small dev shop and all the other internal propaganda that gets circulated around. This is the hardest to do because the reason you work so many hours is because you are tricked into thinking that by doing so you are going to become the next 20 something year old billionaire if just put enough hours in and that everything your company thinks of is gold. In the end, just like every other small dev shop, it's people scrambling around in the twilight of the social networking boom trying to latch on to the one or two social networks that will remain relevant even after the bubble bursts (think the Amazons and Ebays of Web 2.0 compared to whatever the hell websites thought they had a future back in 1998 that no one remembers or cares about).
The good thing to come out of all of this is that I learned my lesson and got some experience. I want to make it, but I'm not going to listen to any management bullshit that I need to work mandatory unpaid overtime to get there. No one "makes it" putting their life into someone else's company. The only time working a job significantly more than M-F, 9-5 is if it is your company or partly your company. If you have an idea or you and a friend have an idea, then you put your life into it. If someone has an idea, don't let them hire you to put your life into it. There is no reason to ever do this much work for someone else because you will never reap the benefits. I was strung along with guarantees of a couple thousand here, a couple thous
Overtime ultimately destroys productivity (Score:5, Interesting)
Many of the other developers in their 50's are putting in 60+ hour weeks (and have been for several months).
Here's a graph you might find interesting: Productivity, 40 hours versus 60 over eight weeks. [lostgarden.com]
From the same presentation:
Working more than 40 hours per week leads to decreased productivity
- Less than 40 hours and people weren't working enough.
- Greater than 40 hour work week gives a small productivity boost.
- The boost lasts three to four weeks and then turns negative.
Ford chewed on this problem for 12 years and ran dozens of experiments. As a result of Ford's experiments, he and his fellow industrialists lobbied Congress to pass 40 hour a week labor laws. Not because he was nice. Because he wanted to make the most money possible. We like to think of a 40 hour work week as a 'liberal policy' when in fact it was hard headed capitalism at its finest.
Re:Not just Google (Score:3, Interesting)
Our universities are pumping out plenty of CS and MIS grads as well as math and engineering graduates to keep up with demand.
As someone who works for a large employer that recruits actively among recent college graduates... NO. This opinion is ubiquitous and ignores one important fact: most recent graduates are woefully less qualified than their college education would seem to indicate. There are kids coming out of college who are bright and can do the work, but they represent maybe the upper quartile of all bachelor degree grads.
I don't hire RG's without two letters of recommendation from professors or one letter from either the department chair they graduated from or the dean of the college. I rarely hire RG's who did not graduate with honors. If you had a circumstance like working full time through college, or an illness that no longer affects your ability to work, I would consider that in lieu of honors. However, if you have no honors and no record of having worked full time - then you slacked off. Statistically, if you slacked off and did just well enough to get the degree in college, you're going to do the same to me. Yes there are diamonds in the rough. Time is valuable. I don't go looking for those rare gems because making a mistake is too expensive.
Our university's are not pumping out enough well qualified engineers.
The companies that say there are shortages are just saying that to justify going overseas or to bring in H-1bs.
No, we bring in H1bs because there isn't enough native talent. Or at least not enough that knew how to balance partying and working for the degree.
Re:Not just Google (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm only 33, have already transitioned out of IT for a living, and have a LOT of respect for the older generations, especially the mainframe engineers and the people who created the BBS scene. I agree with most of your post.
Is there any "new technology" out there to get, that I didn't get decades ago with a different marketing campaign and different command line syntax?
MediaWiki (Wikipedia) was really new. We had had user-generated content before (e.g. BBSes) but wikitext, history, discussion pages, integration with email, and concurrent revisions IMHO made a really new animal.
But beyond that, I'm kind of drawing up a blank too.
Google and Greylers; (Score:2, Interesting)
80 Years Old - A Small Tale (Score:2, Interesting)
My girlfriends father is nearly 81 years old and is very adept with using technology, but only what interest him.
For example, he only has a prepaid cell for emergency use. Never text messages, has voicemail disabled, etc. Home phone or nothing for him. However, he constantly works on his Mac with Photoshop CS5 on family pictures, etc, and produces some very impressive work. Much of it is on par with professional graphic design people (self created artwork and image manipulation). Granted, he loves to learn from online tutorials and books, but he is in no way afraid of technology. He can handle upgrades and troubleshoot on his own, calling customer service on when necessary. Owns his own Wii to play Tiger Woods himself, and Wii Sports with the grandkids. Has a projection TV and surround sound setup that he researched himself to find one that fit his needs (albeit installed professionally).
What was his talent/hobby before that came along? He hand build custom and often complex doll and bird houses. What was his career? He was a car salesman for nearly 50 years.
He didn't grow up in the age of Commodore 64, NES, and 286-386 as I did. He didn't attend schooling for CS, or take any type of computing classes. I can't see why it has to be an age problem. I find computing and tech to be just like anything else in life, if you are interested in it, you learn it, do it, and enjoy it. We all just do this to a different extent. Just my two cents, YMMV.
Re:Overtime ultimately destroys productivity (Score:3, Interesting)
Not sure how well researched the studies referred to in the Wiki article on Working time are, but they suggest a 4-day, 32-hour week are even more productive than a 40-hour week when you take enough factors into account (e.g. worker's improved education, worker's improved heatlh, etc).
Re:Not just Google (Score:3, Interesting)
This is too easy. I almost feel guilty.
If you cna fir ta use for it, that's your problem.
Ummm. . . Yeah, what you said. I think.
If someone is interested in somethign else, twitter is a great way to stay in touch. I have a twitter account with several other people for the sole purpose of posting grams of fat we eat. Since none of us really know each other, we can get on someone case when they don't post or eat too much fat. It's been a great tool for that.
The amount of crap food you eat is fascinating beyond belief and I'm sure well worth both your time and money, and that of a bunch of strangers. Verizon and/or Sprint thank you from the bottom of their Balance Sheets
Which brings me around to what twitter, et al, actually is: a tool. If someone thinks a hammer is useless, it's th persons fault, not the hammers.
Twitter is the ultimate (for now) "self-esteem" boost, making the senders feel important and the recipients feel connected. However it's all really an illusion. What you ate for lunch is completely irrelevant and the people who read what you had for lunch really aren't connected to you in any meaningful way.
You suffer from a hubris attitude, and myopic mind, and you let your ignorance allow you to be more arrogant. "y the time someone hits 50, they should be on their own" because everyones life is just like you, right fuck twad?
I'm pretty sure you were trying to be insulting. But it doesn't actually matter.
Anybody with a few really solid technical skills, the ability to take a risk, and the ability lower their shields long enough for some coaching in various aspects of social interaction in business can be a sucessful consultant.
Replacing your current salary will generally take about half the work you're currently doing (maybe less if your current employer is really riding you)
And even though you were an asshole, I didn't get mad. Because nobody pays me to get mad. It's counterproductive because it's not billable and spoils my mood. Now go back and finish those TPS reports.