Ageism Haunts Some Tech Workers In the Race To Get Hired (wired.com) 67
An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a Wired article: The U.S. economy is showing remarkable health, but in the tech industry, layoffs keep coming. For those out of work, finding a new position can become a full-time job. And in tech -- a sector notoriously always looking for the next hot, new thing -- some people whose days as fresh-faced coders are long gone say that having decades of experience can feel like a disadvantage. Ageism is a longtime problem in the tech industry. Database startup RelevantDB went viral in 2021 after it posted a job listing bragging, "We hire old people," which played off industry stereotypes. In 2020, the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found that IBMhad engaged in age discrimination, pushing out older workers to make room for younger ones. (The company has denied engaging in "systemic age discrimination.") A recent LinkedIn ad that shows an older woman unfamiliar with tech jargon saying her son sells invisible clouds triggered a backlash from people who say it unfairly portrayed older people as out of touch. In response, Jim Habig, LinkedIn's vice president of marketing, says: "This ad didn't meet our goal to create experiences where all professionals feel welcomed and valued, and we are working to replace the spot." [...]
Tech companies have laid off more than 400,000 workers over the past two years, according to Layoffs.fyi, which tracks job cuts in the industry. To older workers, the purge is both a reminder of the dotcom bust, and a new frontier. The industry's generally consistent growth in recent decades as the economy has become more tech-centric means that many more senior workers -- which in tech can sometimes be considered to mean over 35 but includes people in their late forties, fifties, or sixties -- may have less experience with job hunting. For decades, tech workers could easily hop between jobs in their networks, often poached by recruiters. And as tech companies boomed during the Covid-19 pandemic's early days, increased demand for skills gave workers leverage. Now the power has shifted to the employers as companies seek to become efficient and correct that over hiring phase, and applicants are hitting walls. Workers have to network, stay active on LinkedIn, join message boards, and stand out. With four generations now clocking in to work, things can feel crowded.
Tech companies have laid off more than 400,000 workers over the past two years, according to Layoffs.fyi, which tracks job cuts in the industry. To older workers, the purge is both a reminder of the dotcom bust, and a new frontier. The industry's generally consistent growth in recent decades as the economy has become more tech-centric means that many more senior workers -- which in tech can sometimes be considered to mean over 35 but includes people in their late forties, fifties, or sixties -- may have less experience with job hunting. For decades, tech workers could easily hop between jobs in their networks, often poached by recruiters. And as tech companies boomed during the Covid-19 pandemic's early days, increased demand for skills gave workers leverage. Now the power has shifted to the employers as companies seek to become efficient and correct that over hiring phase, and applicants are hitting walls. Workers have to network, stay active on LinkedIn, join message boards, and stand out. With four generations now clocking in to work, things can feel crowded.
Backwards (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this article is out of touch. I find younger candidates have very little real understanding of how any of the technology they use actually works. They have a very superficial perspective on technology, only capable of working within whatever walled garden they were trained in. And a lot of them barely know how to type. How the tables have turned.
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Thanks, renter...
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I see a lot these days who are obviously uncomfortable leaving their room at their parent's house. No social skills, no understanding of hierarchy, expect to have everything handed to them - and if you try to teach them they just use it to get you to do their job and will have the same skill deficit tomorrow. I have no idea how they managed to get hired in the first place.
And this isn't just 'cranky old man' talk. I do still remember being young, inexperienced, arrogant about my knowledge but scared to ch
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Anyone over 40 has hopefully learned not to put up with all of the bullshit crunch and odd hours, or if they will to bill in accordingly for it.
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or if they will to bill in accordingly for it.
If you're salaried there is no billing. Sure, you might be able to negotiate a slighty different salary if you think there might be odd hours or some crunch time, but that's about all. People over 40 are generally not looking to be contractors. They want stability. The sole exception to this would be a contractor with the government (local, state, or federal). Those contracts can potentially last years which gives that stability as the contracting company le
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I am retired from SW development now (late 50s) but my last three gigs were contracts (full time) by my choice. I think you have it backwards; when you're young and up-and-coming, you want full-time employment to build up stability and experience. With any luck, by your 40s you will have built up some financial cushion and will be more open to contacting. Additionally, with lots of experience under your belt, you can command a lot higher contracting fees than someone just starting out.
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A lot of this problem is solved by hiring people to solve problems instead of hiring to write code.
A basic proficiency demonstrated to write code and a curiosity and desire to learn is worth far more than a degree, to my mind. I've brought a handful of folks up and into this industry now who are fantastic at what they do now, but started out as laborers and truckers and a desire to learn.
Jr Dev -> Dev -> Dev manager
Desktop support -> sysadmin -> support manager
L1 support -> L1 support manager
Re:Backwards (Score:5, Insightful)
Your first two examples are part of the problem.
Why, in order to advance in one's career, must one go into management? The skills and abilities that make one a successful developer, or a good sysadmin are not the same ones as the ones that make you good manager.
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Depends on what a "dev manager" does. We have a similarly named position - "dev coordinator" - and that person's job is to deal with the users, works up some/most of the specs and creates and assigns the work item/ticket. They are also responsible for dealing with QA and user-testing and all the user meetings, etc. - leaving us "just devs" to happily code away with minimal meetings etc.
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Depends on what a "dev manager" does. We have a similarly named position - "dev coordinator" - and that person's job is to deal with the users, works up some/most of the specs and creates and assigns the work item/ticket. They are also responsible for dealing with QA and user-testing and all the user meetings, etc. - leaving us "just devs" to happily code away with minimal meetings etc.
That sounds awfully familiar: "Well--well look. I already told you: I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?"
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Exactly. You have proved my point. Those skills are not necessarily the ones that make one an excellent dev.
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I find that it depends on the individual.
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I find younger management/supervisors have very little real understanding of how any of the technology they use actually works. They have a very superficial perspective on technology, only capable of working within whatever walled garden they were trained in. And a lot of them barely know how to type.
It looks like management is fully primed to hire the insufficient candidates you are seeing. It is fun watching management drive off of cliff after cliff, supremely confident in that they have chosen the best path.
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And, yet, they are hired. And, yet, candidates perceived as older are not favored. It doesn't matter why to the older candidates, trust me.
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This is why there's value in having a mix of experience levels in the organization. People who know how stuff works, and people who aren't limited by prior assumptions. Complementary.
Certain well-known companies practice explicit age discrimination by proximity policy. Who's going to live in a van in the parking lot in Palo Alto? 23 year old single males. Who isn't? People with famlies and mortgages and lives.
Similarly by demanding in-office work they're quite deliberately discriminating against peopl
Think it has more to do with salaries.... (Score:5, Insightful)
What I consistently see are businesses asking for a laundry list of skills/talents/specialties but at the end of the job posting? They've got a salary listed that means nobody in the field for decades will entertain it.
Except for maybe some of the "startups" run by younger people, I don't really run across a lot of "ageism" against older I.T. workers. People generally acknowledge we're the crowd with real world experience with a lot of tech that evolved into what's out there today - and that's a plus. It's more that places decided they don't want to PAY for that much skill/knowledge so they'll take the young, eager and smart candidate who will work for less.
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Exactly.
They don't want us greybeards until they need us. Often, they don't even know they need us until it's too late, and having more of us could have averted whatever disaster it is that's likely to end their business.
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The laundry list is to narrow down the field of job seekers to a specific person whom they've already chosen who lives overseas, in order to prove to regulators that they couldn't find a qualified candidate within the USA and need that H-1B approved.
RE: H1B candidates (Score:2)
IMO, it doesn't matter how things got to the point where the H1B candidate got the job. The *real* issue is often the same. A company asks too much (as in your example where the people with the skills requested didn't find the offer attractive enough to consider relocating for it). Then they "expand the search" (typically with downward modifications to the salary, since "now we're settling for someone with fewer specialized skills") -- and again, people say, "Yeah... that doesn't sound appealing." So finall
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Except for maybe some of the "startups" run by younger people, I don't really run across a lot of "ageism" against older I.T. workers.
Ah, yes. The 25-year-old cofounders, fresh from their PhDs, with some seed funding but no real industry experience. I've met a few of those over the years, too. Their ideas about how to run a successful business are often... different... aren't they?
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It's probably true that salaries are a major factor in the motivation, especially from the c suite.
The catch is that discrimination is subject to an inverse of the "correlation does not equal causation problem." If a person gets laid off based on a factor that correlates with age, and not their actual age, the effect is still the same for that person. When that happens to a large number of people, the effect is still the same for all of those people.
This can compound when there are other factors - what ab
I'd rather work with age over confused pronouns! (Score:1, Troll)
When diversity started mattering more than skill, and pronouns were considered badges of honour over code, the quality, we lost the plot. I would much rather work with two 40+ year old developers, then 10 snappy, hi
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We've had two roles open for about five years and I've interviewed soooo
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You are commenting about ageism yet you seem to have your panties in bind over gender. Grow up.
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Wow, if you worked with me, your mind would be blown. Late 50s, 33+ years of experience in the field including 19 running my own software company. And trans.
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You really do pick the strangest hills to die upon.
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Likewise, I don't need 10 hours of HR training to figure out how to address someone. If it offends someone who looks a dude, that I called him, her, it, whatever, dude, then just let me
"power to the employers" (Score:2)
Don't buy this (bought and paid for) line. Employers absolutely do NOT have the power here.
Know your worth. Just because companies are robbing Peter to pay Paul and pushing quarterly reports over long term objectives does not mean you're not the valuable quantity here. They're trying to cut costs and avoid being savaged on the stock market, it doesn't mean you aren't worth the money.
"Nobody wants a 40 year old developer" (Score:3)
That was advice given to me many years ago, by a well-meaning person who was a principal in a consultancy. I was thinking about what direction to take my career, and we had a great relationship. And at the time he was right. I think the sands have shifted. Now it's more like, "Nobody wants a 55 year old programmer. But nobody wants new grads either." And for operational roles, unless they price themselves out of the market, grey haired folks are often the dependable bedrock.
I don't think it's "ageism" any more. I think the shift is away from the tech employee in favour of the "parners", and for the partners, it's who fills the seat for the least money. Now it probably plays out that this means the older folks get hit harder - they often can't compete on price because they have families and mortgages - but it's not because they're older. It just manifests there.
I suspect it's harder to be a new grad than a grizzled veteran. But... YMMV.
Nothing New (Score:2)
Ageism has been a thing for decades. This just confirms that it still exists, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. For those affected by it, use the info to your advantage. Most of this is probably common sense for somebody well into their career:
- Senior level tech workers should have a much larger network to draw from when it comes time that they need to try to find another job.
- Keep those skills updated (never sleep on that one) Continued education is the foundation of a well-prepared, agil
I didn't ever look for jobs after 35 (Score:2)
I'm an actual engineer, and was headhunted or networked. Why are tech workers (coders) so unable to do this?
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Nah brrm brrms.
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I dunno, do you think choo choo train operators get headhunted? Paging Casey Jones.
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Some people stay at good places for a few years each. That's great for gaining valuable experience and developing good judgement, but it's lousy for building a large professional network. And all of those pros and cons are amplified for roles at smaller companies.
Ignorance (Score:2)
Young = cheap (Score:2)
Companies would rather hire young people because inexperienced people are cheap. Hence also the huge numbers of H-1B and TFW visas - despite the hype, people knew damned well that the only reason Microsoft built their facility in Vancouver was so they could hire temporary foreign workers once they had exhausted their H-1B quota in Seattle. Cheap, do as they're told, work 70 hours a week.
When my current employers show me the door (or I walk) I know I'll be unemployable in tech at 62. So be it; I've had a g
Just wait until AI really hits (Score:2)
And then the young tech workers will be out of a job, too.
Why pay for a FT human dev when AI can do it in mere seconds (albeit with much less quality, but does that even matter to the BoD?) It's all about the bottom line to most current corporations, unfortunately. Most of the business world has a massive ethics deficit and it's likely going to get worse before it gets any better.
"The universe is hostile, so impersonal, Devour to survive, so it is, so it's always been" - MJK
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Why pay for a FT human dev when AI can do it in mere seconds....
AI will sink a company faster than anything ever devised by humanity.
You know what they do with engineers when they tur (Score:2)
Motivation to FIRE (Score:4, Interesting)
Make good money when you can. Save (and invest, and no I'm not talking fricking crypto) fully half of it. Move somewhere affordable but halfway nice (college towns are a good bet), keep your expenses low, and go semi-retired/semi-freelance by 45. Consider this as tech career advice from a 3-digit Slashdotter.
Easy Metaphor (Score:4, Interesting)
Modern corporate workplaces, and especially those that build technology in whatever form, are hierarchies consisting exclusively of generals and low-ranking enlisted.
There are no high-ranking enlisted to train recruits. There are no low-ranking officers to learn the business.
There may be a few stagnant middle-ranking officers who are kept around mainly to abuse the rabble when the self-congratulatory sociopath running everything is too busy playing slap and tickle with his college-age intern.
There are perhaps three people in any given corporate organization with enough authority to speak in declarative sentences. Everyone else is powerless and forever on the verge of being laid off for no reason. Despite what they tell you, the only two things they know how to do is fire people and cry to the government they can't find qualified workers.
They refuse to hire anyone over the age of 27 because grown-ups have a habit of challenging people when they hear bullshit. The reason for this state of affairs is because almost all corporate managers are both incompetent and malicious. Here's an example of the problem:
There are zero people on this planet who know how to fly an F-18 off a carrier unless they are either retired Navy or currently serving. That means in order to recruit a pilot, the Navy has to hire people with no experience and train them.
The Navy can take a young man or woman in their early 20s and teach them to land a $30 million aircraft on a 400 square foot target at night while loaded down with enough explosives and jet fuel to vaporize nine city blocks.
The average corporate workplace will reject that same young man or woman on the grounds they aren't experienced enough. Or because their resume didn't use a trendy font.
If the Navy used the same principles for hiring they would never get a plane in the air. Because you can't post a job ad looking for a recent college grad with five years experience flying an F-18 off an aircraft carrier. There are no such people.
P.S. The guy those new pilots will learn the most from is almost guaranteed to be the ship's ranking enlisted, usually a chief petty officer, also known as the HMFIC.
He ain't going to be 22 years old either.
Re: Easy Metaphor (Score:4, Interesting)
As a former naval officer, you are right. The military trains its people - something seldom seen in the corporate world.
One of a Navy Chief or Master Chief's roles is to mold junior officers - Ensigns. A senior officer will listen to a chief's input and choose it over an ensign's. The ensign listens and learns.
But, by the time that ensign has been promoted twice and makes Lieutenant (O-3) the tables are turned.
Chiefs will not, generally, argue with a lieutenant. Why? They don't know how long an officer has been in the service, 4 years or 10. A lieutenant earns their respect just by the bars on their collar - they feel the LT is where they are because they are competent. Same goes for a Captain in the other forces.
At least, that was my experience.
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This turns out to be another situation where the military seems to know something civilian managers don't. Navy lieutenants are presumed competent, not because it is convenient, but because they are rarely found to be otherwise.
It is very difficult to make O-3 absent competencies in a wide variety of disciplines. By the same token, it's very difficult to make E-7 or above, for exactly the same reasons. The military is one of the only pure meritocracies left. You do the work, you get the reward.
Not so in the
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Never served but from what I understand the officers ranks eventually hit an "up or out" moment so there is certainly some ageism involved there as well...
Keeping up with technology (Score:2)
A lot of older developers are still writing ASP.NET Classic, or maybe Ruby on Rails. They are really good at these technologies, and don't really want to learn yet another new technology.
Sorry, few companies want those skills anymore. If you want to stay relevant, you've got to keep up, learn how to do cloud development, microservices, and OAuth.
They're all looking for Yay-sayers. (Score:2)
I'm 54 and once again looking to a new gig. My experience makes it easy(er) to get into conversations that aren't totally pointless and those conversations are interesting, but I also find that a lot of people who do the hiring are often at a company for a longer period of time and are often looking for Yay-sayers and do so by posting more or less random job descriptions. Sort of like "We've got total chaos here and we need you to put up with this BS and secure my position for as cheap as possible." They to
Hard to say (Score:2)
Overwhelmingly true. (Score:2)
And if you got laid off, or did something, then are trying to find a job, "Oh, you're not fresh"* like you're some kind of bruised fruit, or forgot how to do something.
Oh, and of course older workers expect to be paid reasonably, unlike hired out of school, have no clue.
* Direct quote from a recruiter.
Reagan! ? (Score:2)
Ronald Reagan didn't say much of value, but one thing he did say is worth repeating "I won't hold my opponent's youth and inexperience against him."
This is complete stupidity. (Score:2)
The number of people I've interviewed for an IT position with "Cybersecurity" degrees who didn't know what the fuck an IP address was is bigger than the number of comments on this article. I don't know what they actually taught them, or what degree they paid for, but they somehow still don't know shit about computers or networks at even the most basic level.
The more disappointing p