That pretty much confirms what the OP said.
If someone has spent 20 years working at a trade, and is indistinguishable from a fresh graduate, is this 'ageism'?
It's rather that, if you spent the last 20 years building CRUD apps (some even made ppl money and were successful!) and some kid also built a CRUD app, you're fucked, because as you get older you're expected to be some kind of brilliant outlier -- afterall, what have you been doing for the last 20 years?!
This is what ageism really is, and it sucks because you can easily spend/waste a decade on some project/startup that goes nowhere, or worse still, some tech stack that's now defunct or deemed archaic.
This is why I like to joke that I'm a Senior Flash Developer with over 20 years experience, hire me please xD
If you spend 20 years doing the same work, do you have to be a 'brilliant outlier' to have insights a junior person doesn't?
edit spelling/punct.
And so, the industry is mostly populated by inexperienced people and many of its pathologies and adverse outcomes are due to this.
I'm not sure I follow your math. 5% of roles are principal jobs, but devs with 20+ years are not 100% of the talent pool. This doesn't hold up if devs with 20+ years are are 5% or less of the talent pool.
(oddly enough, the 'average' programmers entire career was 10 years last I checked. People seem to burn out and move on..)
> The law prohibits discrimination [against people over 40] in any aspect of employment, including hiring, firing, pay, job assignments, promotions, layoff, training, benefits, and any other term or condition of employment.
I think a lot of hiring companies over-index on "what's the candidate's current job title/function" as an indication of potential.
It also creates problems for both you and your peers - you will have a very ambitious 28 yo giving guidance, from a management or senior position, to a 40+ yo. You might feel bad in that situation and it's not going to be easy for the younger person having to guide you.
> In a FAANG you need to be competitive.
I've worked at Google since 2006 and have done well over 250+ interviews here, competition is assureadly not a quality we select for. In fact, as an interviewer, I tend to bias against that behavior.
> If you are junior and 40+, you probably had different priorities and struggles in life, so you might not be willing to have the dedication required.
"probably" and "might not" are strong words when talking about assumptions and prejudices. What "dedication" are you talking about? The interviews FAANGs use are amongst the most gruelling in the industry -- if a candidate expresses through them that they have the skills and are interested in the job, and the corp needs it filled, it should be filled regardless of age, sex, gender, background, race, creed, or color. Full stop.
I'll also note, most of Google's upper management is 35-40 years old, if not older, and the younger managers are trending closer to 35 these days, and actually not as prevalent as they used to be.
I've managed older folks underneath me in the past -- I never had a problem with guidance or behavior. In fact, they were often the most hands off because they usually already knew what was needed next.
Actually no wait they BOTH sound like someone needs to jettison their ego.
I was on an interview loop the other day with a 30-something year old candidate. He had worked for nearly a decade in another industry, but got bored and got a CS degree in his spare time. He was applying as a new grad, and he was treated as a new grad. We hired him because he was pretty darned good- for a new grad. We hired him at a junior level, the same as any other new grad.
It's not about age it's about [growth / years of work]. It's about predicting the future of a candidate and asking if they will grow further.
Like I said, if you've spent 20 years in industry and haven't grown, what have you been doing?
Edit: A candidate who has not grown in 20 years is not equally qualified as a candidate who just graduated and can do the same things.
There's a lot of growth that can happen in 20 years that will be invisible to you in an interview loop. Things like patience, humility, perspective, compassion, ability to teach/mentor, etc. Focusing on technical ability at the junior level with leetcoding, and technical growth at the senior level, means you will filter out all but the most exceptional (or one-dimensional) senior candidates.
In your opinion, is it acceptable to have grown for the first 10 years of your career, hit a personal snag (burnout, parental healthcare, medical condition) and then reluctantly chosen to coast on your career and skills for 10 years? If this is not 'equally qualified' as a candidate who has been "only" been working for 10 years, then what are you saying about older candidates? Because this kind of stuff happens to a lot of us--and I might even be as bold to say it happens to most of us.
And as far as "predicting future growth", does this mean you wouldn't hire a 60-year-old who planned to retire in a few years? Keeping in mind that most hires leave before a few years anyway.
God I hope not- that what I've been doing, lol. But seriously though, if you've spent 10 years growing as a developer, you're probably at the level of a senior dev. Those soft skills are also interviewed for- we don't just ask technical questions.
I've been on interview loops where at the end, we've said "This person's soft skills are out of the park good, but they're technical skills lacked. Are there other roles we could consider this person for, like a project manager?" because soft skills are king. I've also been on loops where we said "This person's technical skills are out of the park, but there are too many worrying signs in our soft-skills questions to go forward".
> does this mean you wouldn't hire a 60-year-old who planned to retire in a few years
Hasn't happened to me yet. Most folks with 30+ years in the industry aren't looking for junior level dev jobs.
Not quite - they said been in the industry for 20+ years, not 20+ years older than other candidates.
I've read that companies like Google evaluate employees in an up-or-out manner up to a certain level; before level X, if you've been a satisfactory junior engineer for Y years but have not been promoted to the next tier on schedule, your performance reviews will nonetheless begin being judged against the next tier's performance criteria and the "meets expectations" junior level work you've been doing will become unsatisfactory (even though you're still a junior engineer). You either grow according to expectations as you gain experience or you are managed out. Happy to be corrected if I've misunderstood the system.
Given that, if companies require current employees to progress in their careers to stay with the company, why should prospective new hires from outside the company with umpteen years of experience (for which they will be compensated with higher-than-new-grad pay) get a pass on that same expectation of showing growth throughout their career?
Also the old person probably has higher salary expectations.
