First off, it is a profession that has been increasing in importance and size in recent decades, I assumed that would lead to a larger younger generation of workers. Second, there is the industry perception that many programmers age out into other related careers like management. None of these assumptions appear to be bearing out in the numbers (although the median age obviously doesn't disprove any bias).
If you look at the sources for age data for Silicon Valley "gems" [e.g. Google, Facebook] they are all below the median.
Java is one of the most used languages but you wouldn't know that reading HN. http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....
I've seen those stereotypes absolutely nowhere on the East Coast and I've lived in several cities in several different East Coast states.
There is some people on HN that seem to not realize that their experience being 24 working at a SV startup can be different from someone else's experiences. Especially the ones who talk about how many jobs there are in the industry. Because somehow if there are jobs in my town there must be jobs everywhere else too?
Even if a young person can hold as information as an older person does, I bet it's not as nuanced. There's a huge difference between seeing generations of people age and seeing the way culture moves across the internet. Socio-cultural shifts are not the same as generational, age shifts. And growing up in an economy of technological boom and prosperity is not the norm either.
People would benefit just from having the experience from a different perspective of how to observe the world, interpret information, and relate to it. I view my generation as one that is intrinsically linked with technology, and I think it blinds us to a lot of assumptions as to how we think the world functions, and I think there is a lot of stuff we haven't existed long enough to observe and become aware of. It's like an invisible divide. I don't know how much I take for granted about my perspective, and I don't know how much others take for theirs, but I know that often, I am rarely correct in understanding how other people think, and I know often, that there is so much more variance that exists, that doesn't get translated through numbers and words. It's like it disappears, but it affects the way one navigates and establishes their own existence.
Even thinking in terms of how a computer 'thinks' versus how people 'irrationally' think is a ridiculous and absurd irony. Judgment is overrated.
You make it sound as if it's a 20-something's fault for getting hired.
What do you think the median age of managers, HR employees, and executives are? They're the ones doing the hiring.
Software engineering employees tend to have a lot more say in hiring than in other fields. I have not participated in a single interview process, on either side, where a single engineer expressing doubt about a candidate would not at least be seriously listened to and discussed. And sure, none of them are going to say right-out, "This guy's old!" But, if they are truly discriminatory, they will consistently find other things wrong with those candidates and overplay issues that they would normally not. And that kind of discrimination will play itself out over time into a skewed distribution of employees.
The sad thing is, they already know it. They just don't care. They think "Oh, that's 15-20 years away, what do I have to worry about? They'll have something sorted out by then..."
They don't realize that the next 10-15 years for them is going to fly by. Ages 1-22 feel like forever. It feels like a lifetime. Unfortunately, age 22-42 is completely different. Those years will fly by.
I have read every scrap of reporting on age discrimination in the Valley that I can find. The idea that my age will be a detriment to me in the coming decade is viscerally real for me.
It is also mind-boggling that age discrimination would be going in this direction. In industries like mfg. and oil and gas, the gray beard is a sign of status. I would not be offended at ALL if I was beaten out of a position by an equal candidate 20 years my senior. I'd be honored to have similar qualifications.
Just a single anecdotal counter-point to your stereotype. "They" covers quite a few people in your comment.
> The lawsuit notes that Google’s Diversity webpage does not include age-related workforce data, despite disclosing data about other worker characteristics. Other tech companies releasing workforce diversity data did not typically disclose age data either.
The entire industry really trying hard to cover up the issue.
Everybody talks about diversity but nobody mentions age. For example Reddit CEO Ellen Pao declared to the WSJ that she is on a crusade to hire for diversity - yet not once does she talk about "age".
> She has eliminated salary negotiations from the hiring process because women often end up fairing worse in terms of pay. She has hired a well-known diversity consultant to advise Reddit. She has passed over candidates who are not committed to gender and racial diversity, according to the interview.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/06/technology/ellen-pao-reddit-...
Maybe Mountain View is different, but the Seattle office has a pretty fantastic work-life balance as far as I can tell.
I'm not sure what would make you think that some of the most profitable companies in history are castles built on sand.
I'm sitting in an office at 6pm and everyone under 40 is headed to a bar. I looked around and things currently reflect the median age mentioned in the article.
I doubt it. Google would be just fine if 99% of employees limited themselves to 40-hour weeks. People aren't productive-- not in the long term-- when pushed to work longer hours.
The age issue isn't about work hours; besides, I know plenty of older people who work quite a lot. It's about pliability, deference to authority, and not knowing what they're worth. There's also a bit of union-related fear in it. I think that the likelihood of Google unionizing is very low, but Silicon Valley's leaders are terrified of collective bargaining arrangements (even if they come in a form like the lightweight unions of Hollywood for actors and writers) and one of the best ways to prevent that is to avoid hiring older, seasoned people with the organizational skills and experience to pull it off.
Age discrimination also puts a harmful time pressure on workers. It encourages to take career risks (and, often, those risks are unwise for them) because, at least as things are presented to them, they have to do everything in the first third of a normal career or they will be cast aside. It's much easier to push someone into bad decisions (or, I should say, decisions where he'll defer to your expertise because he's out of his depth and scared) if you convince him that he'll probably never get another chance to be a founder, learn a new technology, program again, etc.
I look forward to the outcome of this suit. There's bound to be more gold dug up in discovery than there was for Ellen Pao. I hope it doesn't end in a settlement, because I want this issue to see enough air to set off a chain reaction and crush this age discrimination problem. After all, we're all going to get old.
I wonder if anything could be done to make hiring someone who is potentially near retirement more appealing to companies?
In terms of headcount, how does that differ from (for example) a 25-year-old leaving for another employer after a couple of years?
Because those ones will become extremely valuable to the company. Especially a company that has eg a 6 month ramp-up period.
Given that the average stint for employees at SF/SV companies these days seems to be about two years, I don't understand why these companies think older job candidates pose flight risks. It's certainly not that they're obliged to pay pensions.
On the other hand it is curious none of the companies self reporting their diversity demographics included any age information, but then, age is not a protected class, as far as I know.
As tech jobs become the mainstream of jobs, it'll be interesting to see if the median ages of workers continue to skew younger than the workforce in general.
Uhm, no, that is not at all the argument being made here. The argument is:
Google had a median age of 29 in 2013, while the U.S. Department of Labor reported that the median age was 43 years in the U.S. for computer programmers
The real number is 42.1 for "computer programmers", 40.3 for "software developers" (more than 2x as common), and 36.5 for "web developers" (less common).
Which has gotten hairy in circumstances where employers have been accused of discriminating against <50 year old workers, or in favor of older workers.
Age >40 is a protected class (in hiring). Only older than 40 though.
I myself have adopted a "buzz cut" hair style that minimizes grey. I would consider going bald. I know that I'm not the only person over 50 that does this.
If only I had a choice about that...
Let's say you work for a company that has "up or out" until a certain level (a lot do). Let's say they do that for reasonable reasons (IE i don't want to argue about whether this is a reasonable policy, it's not the point here).
Let's say you have a position to fill, and your candidates are a 30 year old woman with 1 year of experience and a 99 year old woman with 45 years experience (the fact that you were able to get two female candidates should make it clear this is a fake story in silicon valley)
You interview them both.
30 year old does okay. The 99 year old does okay.
Neither one of them would really meet the bar for any level above "up and out", and so if they don't grow, they're going to get fired. Let's say they have about 2 years.
Here's your problem: The 30 year old is just starting out. So while they aren't at the "up and out level" yet, there is some hope they may be in a year or two, and can demonstrate continuous growth until then.
The 99 year old has been at this for 45 years. If they haven't become that good in 45 years, it's pretty close to certain they never will.
Thus, the 30 year old gets hired over the 99 year old, but not because the 99 year old is 99, but because he hasn't grown to be good enough in 45 years.
Now you realize it's not about age, but often about years of experience vs what you've done with them, and that a guy with 1 year of experience has a lot more uncertainty and possible positive than a guy with 45 years experience. There is basically no uncertainty about where that guy will top out.
IMHO, without any other knowledge about the person, it's reasonable to calculate it happening with a lower probability than someone else.
"Aren't there lots and lots of explanations for them not being at that level yet?"
As my father used to say: "At some point, potential doesn't matter, it matters what you do with it".
Why something happened is in some sense, irrelevant. They aren't at a level of competence you can hire them now.
In practice, i don't give a rats ass about their age. I rate a 99 year old with 1 year experience the same way I rate a 30 year old with 1 year experience. But I definitely expect anybody with 20 years experience, be they 10, 20, 30, 100, 1000, or whatever, to be comparable to the other people with 20 years of experience. If they aren't, i can't hire them at that level. So then i have to decide if i want to hire them at a lower level, which means i have to compare them against lower levels, which involves calculating predicted future competence, often against the people with less years of experience, to see if i believe which will be a beter candidate. At that point, yes, what you've actually done matters, not why you did it. I can't know why you did it, i can only know what has actually happened.
Honestly, i'd really like to understand why one would think the risk calculation of "conditional probability of guy who has been doing something for 45 years suddenly changing and becoming much better at it in 2 years" is somehow the same as "conditional probability of a guy who has been doing something for 1 year becoming much better at in 2 years".
Because i just don't see it, and am truly struggling to understand why one would think these probabilities are equal, outside of "it seems politically incorrect to say they aren't" and we wish they weren't (As I said, I'm getting older too, so i wish they weren't myself :P)
(Note experience means " in the job i want to hire him to do". So a 99 year old with 45 years experience as a math teacher is considered to have 0 years of experience as a software engineer, and i'd compare him against people with 0 years experience. So the guy with 45 years experience has been doing exactly the job i want to hire him to do for 45 years)
People don't know things because they've never encountered them. People don't stop learning as they age, and the things to learn do not run out. What people have achieved or not in their careers is not your business, when you hire. You hire based on competence.
Assuming that people don't grow at 99 because they've been at it for 45 years is stupid and ageist.
In fact, it's perfectly equivalent to say "I don't hire women in their 30s because they'll want to have children".
You seem really upset, and your argument seems almost entirely emotional.
"People don't know things because they've never encountered them."
I'm not sure what this has to do with anything. Could you explain how this applies to your argument?
If, after 45 years, you don't have a basic grasp of CS , and you were doing a CS job for 45 years, it doesn't seem likely to me you will gain one soon.
If you were a math professor for the past 10 years, yeah, i can understand that.
"People don't stop learning as they age, "
Whether this is true or not, after 45 years, they haven't learned any better than the guy with 1 year of experience.
"What people have achieved or not in their careers is not your business, when you hire."
???? I made an argument based on current skill level and likely future skill level.
"You hire based on competence."
Sorry, For lower levels, people hire based on both current competence, and likely future competence. Otherwise, nobody would get hired at lower levels.
Lawyers out of law school are incompetent. Firms hire them based on what their future rate of competence is likely to be.
Same with every software engineer out of college. Nobody hires for the long term based on straight current competence. It would make no sense (short term hiring, it often does).
Even if you were right, then they wouldn't get hired anyway, because they weren't at the level one would expect after being at it for so many years. That's what you seem to miss. It's your job to push yourself and grow. You can't seriously expect that if you haven't grown in 45 years, someone should take a chance on you expecting that in the next two, you are going to buck all that and grow.
"Assuming that people don't grow at 99 because they've been at it for 45 years is stupid and ageist." You haven't explained why. your argument above is 100% unpersuasive.
I'm not even assuming. I'm pointing out that they haven't grown. Whether they can or not is actually even somewhat besides the point.
They haven't. So either they aren't pushing themselves, or they can't. At some point, it doesn't matter. I don't want people that don't do either. if you suddenly decide, after 45 years of stagnation, you want to grow in your career, you can't expect everyone else to believe it is going to happen.
Let's say it was neither, and it was because they had a sick child for 45 years they needed to care for. I still can't hire them at a level the other people with 45 years of experience have. I can't know this, either. I can only make risk calculations based on the data i have. Your argument is "we shouldn't be allowed to make calculations about people". Which would make hiring essentially random.
If i can't hire them at the level they belong, i have to compare them against lower levels i could hire them at based on their current and future predicted competence. When you do this calculation, it does not come out in favor of the guy with 45 years experience.
"In fact, it's perfectly equivalent to say "I don't hire women in their 30s because they'll want to have children". "
This is a 100% non-responsive, emotional swipe for no reason. it's completely and utterly false in every way, and honestly, it makes me simply not want to have a discussion with you. So i'm out on this part of the thread.
What? You can't actively avoid interviewing people because they belong to a protected class. That is very much still discriminating.
It's so often forgotten that the intent of the law vs its actual effect could be in conflict.
Let's hold our judgement, okay?
Google's interview process is a magical opaque box. You have no idea what happened. All kinds of people who seem like an excellent fit somehow end up getting rejected multiple times. And I mean excellent fit in the most cynical worse-case way possible. The "right gender", "right race", "right age", "right school". I interviewed at the big G back in 2012, did 2 phone screens, made it to the on-site, thought I did well... but no dice. It's like an f(x,y) then divide by z algorithm. X = You, Y=Them, but Z is generated by a random number depending on the zodiac sign of yourself and 2 random people somewhere on earth. You can do everything right, Z = 0 and segfault you're disqualified. Just gotta try again. Not excusing Google per se, but I doubt age-discrimination. They're just crazy like that.
Of course, I don't know all the facts and it would probably make a lot of people happy if Google made their interview process more understandable. Maybe G's HR should stop getting people's hopes up saying "“embarking on its largest recruiting / hiring campaign in its history,” and “you would be a great candidate to come work at Google.”
Just tell them the truth. "We're gonna interview you, then at the end you're gonna pull this slot machine and you better hope it comes up 7-7-7. Because that's basically what we do after you leave the building."
Though now that I think about it, the other day someone on the phone asked me if I was over 21. When I said I was 32 she was like "oh, I'm sorry, you sound so young."
He's saying that people complain about being turned down by Google after phone screens and say that the interviewer never even read their resume. For example maybe they applied for a sysadmin position and their resume was full of relevant experience and no college, and the phone screen leads off with a hardcore CS theory question.
So if it's the case the interviewers don't read resumes prior to phone screens, then the odds are low that they discriminated against this guy for age-related reasons.
However I suspect the truth lies somewhere in between - e.g. sometimes interviewers don't read resumes. I doubt it's an all or never situation.
Even the pioneers of web development are getting on in years. If your job was doing web development 20 years ago in 1995, you're probably in your 40s now. (I'm in my 50s, and I got to work with the first IBM PCs and then years later with the first web software.)
We're a colonized culture (see: https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/vc-istan-8-t...). There's ageism in the mainstream business culture that is sometimes called "MBA culture". Among them, it's generally assumed that if you're not an executive by age 40, you've failed.
True technologists don't think this way, because we know how skill-intensive programming is and how long it takes to get good at it. But as a colonized people, we don't get to call the shots. 40-year-old VCs fund 35-year-old founders (or younger) who hire 30-year-old executives and they bring in 25-year-old engineers.
Tech is different because the abilities involved peak, for most people, between 40 and 65. (There are outliers who peak as early as 20 or as late as 70+.) In fact, the bizarre cruelty of tech's age discrimination is that people get pushed out of this game as soon as they're any good at it.
I have experienced it elsewhere though. This case was at Electronic Arts. They called me several times over a one year period (I must have received a fine recommendation from someone :-) and I talked on the phone to some of their tech staff - really fun conversations. I arrive in their Vancouver offices looking forward to my interview and it started right away when I identified myself to the receptionist, she looked at my greying hair and literally started to giggle. She showed me into a conference room with three developers and their jaws dropped when they saw me. Their interview process was the rudest behavior I had ever seen in a work environment. The interview, technically, was fairly easy. I had a fair amount of experience in game AI which is what they were interested in. I did enjoy a free trip to Vancouver. From my experience, if any company deserves to be sued for age discrimination it is EA.
It is obvious how old I am from my resume and consulting web site. (This occurred many years ago when I was in my mid 50s).
I have never complained before publicly about this - it felt good :-)
1. A recruiter thought he would be a good fit
2. Working at several well-known companies (IBM, Compaq, and General Dynamics)
3. Only receiving a single phone interview
None of those seem like they'd be at all indicators of discrimination. Recruiters often say anything they can to get candidates through the door, companies regularly fail people at the first phone interview, and none of those companies are ones I'd necessarily associate with high-quality developers.
So, I look forward to seeing what else comes out of this story, since I can't imagine a decent law firm would go this far without some more damning evidence that will be forthcoming.
I really hope the lawsuit doesn't go forward on the basis of a recruiter saying "you would be a great candidate to come work at Google", mostly because if you can get sued for not hiring someone after you say that then pretty much every single company on the face of the earth can be sued.
who hasn't used language like that when trying to recruit someone?
These developers have programming paradigms + design patterns down pat, after years of experience. Don't expect that with your 20-something programmer.
i think you've just tried to gravely offend us, the "older developers". :)
And while comments like "men are just smarter" or "whites are just smarter" are quite rightly unthinkable, ageist comments by major tech figures are not unheard of. Which actually amount to judging people by their appearance with some post hoc justification coming out of pop science.
But if I'm wrong, it could be demonstrated here. ycombinator makes wonderful efforts to counter obviously skewed demographics on other fronts. Perhaps ycombinator makes a similar effort to attract founders over 40?
Alas though I fear that this conversation will somehow prove too controversial to remain visible for long enough to discuss.
On the other hand, as a 31 year old in a company of mostly 20 somethings and only 1 or 2 40 year olds, I welcome a discussion about age related issues.
Worker Visa wouldn't be needed as much if older workers were given a fair chance in recruitment process.
I am sick of hearing tech industry boasting about their diversity. They mean diversity in color and culture. But when it comes to age, it's not a diverse environment.
