
Older Workers Challenge Firms’ Aggressive Pursuit of the Young - petethomas
https://www.wsj.com/articles/older-workers-challenge-firms-aggressive-pursuit-of-the-young-1492340404
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zipwitch
The big problem with hiring older workers is that they're better at knowing
what they're actually worth. They also tend to avoid personal sacrifices
(mainly time and health) that are of net benefit to the company but not to
themselves.

~~~
danieltillett
As an employer I do not care how old you are or if you know your "true" worth
or not. All I care about is how you are going to contribute to my bottom line
with the minimum of fuss. If you can do this at 100 I will hire you.

My experience is older workers are much better (and more productive) than
young workers if you can provide them a stable work environment. If the nature
of your business is such that this is impossible, then most older workers will
struggle and blame the boss for everything. This does not make for a fun time
if you are the manager.

~~~
mistermann
If only all people with hiring responsibility were devoted to the bottom line
of the business, as opposed to the bottom line of their personal careers.

~~~
danieltillett
Well I have a massive advantage in being the sole owner as well as boss of my
business. This does tend to change your perspective on what is important.

You do raise why most manager are not so devoted to the bottom line - it is
not their business. Who do you hire - the older employee that will make the
business a ton of money, or the young employee who will do as they are told
and make the manager's life easy?

~~~
mistermann
In my experience, not only is it not their business, many middle managers are
actively hostile to anyone who is working in the the best interests of the
business, as that interferes with their ability to extract value from the
business and put it into their own pockets in various different ways.

~~~
danieltillett
Yes the principle-agent problem has yet to be solved [1]. I wish I had a
solution other than keeping the company small and the shareholders involved as
managers.

1\.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal–agent_problem](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal–agent_problem)

~~~
Arizhel
Wouldn't having regular communications between workers and the manager's boss
help here? If the manager's boss is only hearing from the managers directly
below him, obviously he's going to get a skewed perspective.

------
lkrubner
I recently had an idea for a startup, related to the mis-use of the old.

I have been working with startups that are using a hybrid approach to data
gathering, using both Natural Language Processing (NLP) and also humans. The
NLP works best as a lead-generator for the humans, the NLP can pick out
sentences that we are 95% sure have the information we need. Then we have
humans read over the data to look for bits that should actually go in the
database.

One evening I watched a fellow on the data team as he read through a dozen
newspapers, looking for any clues that we might have missed. He is part of an
8 person team, and they are all in their 20s.

That weekend I went to visit my mom, who has been retired for more than 15
years. As is normal for her, she was reading over The New York Times, The Wall
Street Journal and a few business magazines. She majored in history, at Hunter
College, back in the 1950s, then she did her masters degree in economics.

The week before last, Hunter College had its reunion for alumni. More than
2,000 women showed up. I met my mom outside as the event was ending. I saw the
thousands of smart, retired women, and it occurred to me: why don't we use
these women to read through all the data fetched by the NLP scripts? Why do we
rely on people in their 20s? These women are smart, well trained, highly
educated, many of them are looking for part-time work with flexible hours,
something they could do from home. Most of them have the life long habit of
looking through newspapers for interesting data. Most are willing to work very
cheap. Most are eager to be in the workforce, most are sad about being out of
the workforce.

There is, in fact, a whole category of startups that are opening in this area,
using the hybrid approach of both NLP and also humans. And it would be an
ideal place to use retired people. Only stupid bias keeps startups from
pursuing this.

~~~
greenyoda
_" These women are smart, well trained, highly educated, many of them are
looking for part-time work with flexible hours, something they could do from
home. Most of them have the life long habit of looking through newspapers for
interesting data. Most are willing to work very cheap. Most are eager to be in
the workforce, most are sad about being out of the workforce."_

If they actually need the money to survive, why would they work very cheap if
they're well trained and highly educated? There's freelance work out there
that pays better than "very cheap", e.g., editing or translation. Retired
professionals such as lawyers or CPAs can also probably find freelance work in
their fields.

If they don't need the money (they have enough savings for retirement) and are
just looking for something to do, they'd have the option of doing volunteer
work for charitable organizations that are probably more fulfilling to work
for than some random startup.

~~~
lkrubner
They don't need money to survive, but they don't want to do volunteer work.
They want to be in the workforce. Being given money carries meaning for them
that goes well beyond the value of the dollar. Just talk to them and this is a
theme they repeat over and over again.

------
unabridged
I think this is a perfect example to test the theory they bring up about the
gender pay gap. If so much value is being left on the table ignoring older
workers, gather them all up into a company and beat the market.

~~~
rl3
> _If so much value is being left on the table ignoring older workers, gather
> them all up into a company and beat the market._

That's actually exactly my plan should my startup receive funding. I'd say of
the first 30 people I'd hire, most are probably above the age of 30. Most have
families. All are at the top of their fields. In the Bay Area, those factors
probably translate to an average salary of at least $250k, which is roughly
double what a typical startup pays in its early days.

~~~
danieltillett
I tried this. Older workers are great if you have a stable problem (better
than young workers on average), but are terrible if the job requires a lot of
context shifting. Startups and stable problems are rarely found in the same
room.

~~~
bootload
Dan, what do you mean by ^context shifting?^ Switching from one problem in a
different area to another problem?

~~~
danieltillett
Yes. As you get older this gets much harder (I know from personal experience).
I wish it were otherwise, but like grey hair and wrinkles it seems just part
of getting older.

~~~
ams6110
Well I'm 50 and my job involves a lot of context shifting, solving sudden
problems with systems I'm not an expert at (thus requiring research) and
generally being a jack of all trades.

I find it easier to do now than I did when I was younger, I see it as just
what the job is. When I was younger, a sudden demand to do something different
would have me annoyed because it was distracting me from what I really wanted
to be working on.

Now I know that everything will be different in 5 or 10 years, so it doesn't
really matter what I'm working on as it will be irrelevant soon.

~~~
danieltillett
Do you find it easier than when you were young or are you just more accepting
now that it is required?

My job requires a ton of rapid context switching, but I do find it much harder
now than when I was younger (I am 46).

------
dghughes
After 33 years in my trade over 14 years at the most recent place I was let
go. Not fired not laid off just quietly let go. I suspect it is due to my age
I'm 48 and was told I wasn't being considered since I am " not the right fit".

~~~
santaclaus
> Not fired not laid off just quietly let go.

How does that work, logistically?

~~~
toomuchtodo
"Your last day will be X."

~~~
slededit
Isn't that getting fired?

~~~
toomuchtodo
Getting fired usually involves cause being shown.

------
sjg007
I mean it is a pyramid scheme in that you have a few partners at the top and
the bottom are the young PowerPoint analysts who grind out the work. Law
is/was the same way. Software can be as well. Grad school as well. The whole
thing is setup this way by design. Same with startups as well if you don't
guard against it.

~~~
mistermann
There are so many professions where you study/work extremely hard for say 10
to 15 years, and then just pump out the big bucks executing (aka "putting in
time") on what you've learned.

Are there many professions other than software where you have to work so hard
_continuously_ (because everything is always new and you are competing with
people with a fifth your experience) to make a good income?

------
anovikov
Well, i couldn't read article because it's behind paywall, but PwC is surely a
place for young people. It is a sweatshop where you get paid a pittance,
worked till you drop, but learn fast and earn a good line in resume, as well
as build industry contacts quickly. Great place to start but if you are stuck
there for long, something is wrong. If you are over 40 and under the partner
level, it makes no sense to stay there.

~~~
seibelj
I think a lot of on-site consultant roles are for young recent graduates. My
friend worked right out of college for Epic Software as a consultant managing
their medical software integrations. He was supposed to fly home once a month
for 3 days off (he had normal weekends off too, but stayed at the client's
location in a hotel) but often deadlines would cause him to have to stay. He
wound up drinking a lot, smoking way too much weed, and essentially had a
nervous breakdown after a year of doing this.

To add insult to injury, because he didn't make it long enough to fulfill his
contractual obligations, Epic made him pay back his signing bonus and moving
costs they reimbursed him for.

He then moved back home with his parents, got his shit together, and a few
months later got into IT project management at an eCommerce company. No
travel, normal weekends, normal hours. He's back to himself again.

The consultant life just seems so brutal, you don't make close friendships,
you're never home, difficult to have a romantic relationship, difficult to eat
healthy and exercise. No thanks!

~~~
toyg
But: very good money, and a lifestyle that can be pretty glamorous at times
(if you want it, of course).

I'm currently in the process of slowly moving away from it because of external
forces, and to be honest I know I'll miss it. The first couple of years were
as harsh as you describe, but then I learnt to pace myself (and VPNs got truly
mainstream so traveling decreased dramatically). Is still a pretty good life,
all considered; after all, any good career these days requires brutal hours
and lots of flying.

~~~
ghaff
A lot depends on the sort of consulting probably. There are some cannon fodder
sort of jobs certainly. There are others, as you say, where you learn to
create some semblance of balance even if you still live on planes. (Though I
would dispute that all good careers require both brutal hours and lots of
flying; some do some don't.)

Out of school I was supervising projects on-site and it was a really good out
of school job. Would I have been wanting to spend weeks in shipyards at 40 or
50? No way.

I do a lot of flying these days but I'm in control of my schedule to at least
a certain degree.

------
sxp
[https://www.propublica.org/article/is-it-age-
discrimination-...](https://www.propublica.org/article/is-it-age-
discrimination-if-you-dont-know-youre-being-discriminated-against) covers the
same set of discrimination lawsuits as this WSJ article without the paywall.
It also goes into more depth about the legal precedents involved.

The tl;dr: the companies argue that the discrimination laws only apply to
current employees and not applicants so it's OK for them to intentionally
discriminate against older applicants.

------
biztos
Serious question: Is any interesting software written in places like PWC?

~~~
houst0n_
Not really.

Mostly (when I was pimped out to them) they did almost exclusively "business
constantly" work (read: outsourcing blame and repaying favours, greasing the
revolving door, putting projects on a project code with an existing vendor
instead of hiring staff who come out of the overall budget etc etc), they made
tech stuff something to "throw in" as a bonus to some deals. Started out with
reporting (remember crystal reports and oracle appex?) but that grows with
kickbacks until they're subcontracting Fujitsu or CapGemini to manage desktops
as part of a deal.

After a while the tech bit ended up being one of the biggest money makers they
had, thanks to clever/corrupt SLA's which enabled them to have terrible staff
who got paid nothing, and pocket the difference.

They had an nice/huge domino setup in the 2000's though(sol/sparc), and some
of the excel macros the audit folks wrote and used allowed me to grow up from
thinking that working ksh perl and c made me "better" than the windows folks.

They would share these 10mb+ packages of excel macros which were all
compressed text, they extremely complicated and also controlled by various
regulatory bodies, it was harder than most of the code we were writing for
their backends...

Tl;dr -- nope, but if you ever see how some serious financial auditors code,
you might stop dismissing the MS crowd so readily.

~~~
biztos
I never have dismissed the MS crowd, in fact I was part of it for years.
Interestingly enough there's a lot of Excel-Macro wizardry in aerospace too.

Thanks for sharing your memories. Having known some people on the business
side of PWC I'm not surprised, but I am amused.

