
Over 30? Too Old for Tech Jobs in China - Apocryphon
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-02/china-s-tech-industry-wants-youth-not-experience
======
eksemplar
Ethics aside I wonder if it’s a good for efficiency. I mean, sure they can
work the young guys harder, but is the work they are getting good?

I know I prefer to hire people with experience because they deliver better
work, faster. Part of that comes from managing their work/life balance better,
but maturity in general have almost no downsides in the thinking business.
Older workers are typically better at analyzing situations and also at telling
me truths that they think I don’t want to hear, which is immensely valuable in
decision making.

Not that you’ll want only experience. A balanced work force is the best in my
opinion. Get your experienced staff to mentor your hires fresh out of school,
and they’ll teach each other.

I know ageism is a thing in tech, and probably especially in startups which is
mostly people in their twenties, but wasn’t there recently an article on how
the most successful startups are actually started by someone aged 35-45?

I wonder if the Chinese ageism is because China is approaching tech as a
factory line? Which would be a radically different approach than we have in
Scandinavia, where we want our engineers to be well educated and capable of
self-management and teamwork.

~~~
kartan
> sure they can work the young guys harder,

If you are NOT a good manager, that is all that you care about.

Did you fail to plan the rest release? Developers will do extra hours.

Did you miss understood the requirements? Developers will fix it with extra
hours.

Did you decide to use the wrong technology for the project? Developers will
work extra hours.

A company that hires only people that does what is told and stays longer hours
have incompetent management.

> I wonder if it’s a good for efficiency.

Companies that value diversity (age, gender, nationality, etc.) are the ones
looking for that high-quality output that makes products work in the long
term.

Sweden is as successful as China when it comes to software, even that there
are orders of magnitude of the difference of population. The main reason is
the respect for family and employees. Even that Sweden also is far from
perfect.

~~~
gruez
>Companies that value diversity (age, gender, nationality, etc.) are the ones
looking for that high-quality output that makes products work in the long
term.

What’s the evidence behind this assertion?

~~~
soundwave106
Googling to me suggests its not as well studied as it could be; there are
papers out there (eg:
[https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/63581/Thesisxx...](https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/63581/Thesisxx.pdf)
and
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221256711...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212567114001786))
but I'm not seeing anything with a lot of solid data out there (though this
probably is a hard subject to quantify in such terms).

Intuitively though this position makes sense to me that, as long as the
various issues surrounding natural human tribalism are managed, diversity is
generally helpful -- as each "tribe" may offer a unique perspective towards
problems and solutions.

Having said that, a lot of articles on "ageism in tech" more or less seem to
focus on cultures of work that promote "long hours" for long hours sake, over
something more balanced (and, in the end, productive and efficient). There's
_plenty_ of evidence out there that shows how wrong-headed of an approach
"long hours" cultures are, this is not hard information to look up.

~~~
aurailious
> may offer a unique perspective towards problems and solutions

This is my impression on why diversity generally works well. Unique
perspectives and experiences often generate more original and creative
approaches to some problem which in turn is much more valuable. Additionally,
and especially for FAANGs, having the organizational awareness of a diverse
set of perspectives allows you to create solutions that are broad and can
adequately meet the inherent diversity in the world.

People often want to look at software engineering as this super technical line
of work, but in practice it really isn't. How, What, and Why to engineer
something varies significantly. Everyone will probably have a different
approach to solving a problem. More diversity means a greater net to catch
which one might be the most optimal.

Plus, you might want to create services or apps that specifically target a
need. I would honestly question how well an app for women might be if is made
by all men. I would question how well a app for rural living might be if it
was made by people who only lived in a city. I would question how well an app
designed for use in America might be for use in Africa. There are cultural
differences and use differences, needs and wants, infrastructure, etc.

It would be assumed a highly diverse team would be much more suited to trying
to solve those problems. And I would also believe that a highly diverse team
would be the result of authentic merit based system anyways.

------
thisisit
A friend of mine was trying to upskill himself and learn AI/ML. He had
10+years in IT and well paid . But on approaching his manager, the upskilling
request was denied.

The manager said that he could "gather a bunch graduates" to build an AI/ML
platform. There was no need to experiment and bet on someone with that much
salary and experience.

So, I somehow feel ageism in tech is the result of everyone thinking tech is
easy to build. A 15+years JAVA guy has similar output to say 5-6 years or for
some extreme managers even 2-3 years.

~~~
afpx
I’m slightly over 40. Recently, I’ve been interviewing, and almost all of the
focus has been on how I solve their ‘coding challenge’. Few questions about
software engineering practices, algorithms or data structures, about how to
approach challenging problems, make trade offs, or ship software.

It all comes down to if I can solve a problem like “Given an NxM matrix of
integer strings, print true if any row, column, or diagnonal contains only
palindromic numbers that can be written as the sum of consecutive squares.“
Oh, and on some random guy’s laptop, with a panel of 4 people watching me type
as they sit in silence, and with 20 minutes remaining.

When I look back at all of my career successes (leading engineering teams
through 10 successful commercial products, 4 startups, 3 acquisitions,
millions of users, etc.), coding was hardly important.

I guess it’s time to retire.

~~~
perfunctory
> “Given an NxM matrix of integer strings, print true if any row, column, or
> diagnonal contains only palindromic numbers that can be written as the sum
> of consecutive squares.“

Ok, but this is not really a puzzle. It looks like a rather trivial exercise
just to see if you can write nested loops. I guess an average software
engineer shouldn't have problems with this. Or I am missing something.

~~~
afpx
Well, I failed this one and similar problems going on 5-6 times now.

I don’t know why I can’t do it. I freeze up with analysis paralysis, or stage
fright, or something. Maybe it’s because I have no clue what they’re looking
for, and I’m so used to simplifying problems based on business cases and
stakeholder feedback. Maybe it’s because I’m always thinking about production-
grade code (I do try to avoid nested loops!). Maybe because I assume that the
problem requires a specialized data structure, and so try to invent it on the
spot. Or, it could be that I am old-school and like to solve problems on paper
first before coding.

You may not believe me, but I code everyday. At every job I’ve held, I’ve been
complimented as one of the best programmers. So, maybe I’ve only ever worked
with C-grade developers? But, I’ve worked with 100s of people. How can that
be?

But, let’s say that I really do suck at coding. Are all my other attributes,
skills, and experiences valueless? Seems like such a waste.

Years ago, relatively early in my career, I went into management. But, I only
did it for 2 years before going technical again. It just didn’t make sense at
that time. Senior developers then made more than managers, and I enjoyed
building things. Now, I really regret that decision.

Anyway ... I clearly can’t get a job. Anyone have any career ideas for a
washed up software engineer?

~~~
throwawayjava
Sitting here, in your chair, you can definitely do this no problem, right? So
find a group of people who will simulate the interview environment for you.

Also, there are strategies for managing the time problem. 20 minutes is a bit
fast for understand => ask questions => implement => test on this problem. But
you can organize the code so that if you run out of time it's still clear you
knew how to solve the problem and can code your way out of a wet paper bag.
E.g., I would pass an answer that got everything correct but didn't get around
to implementing isPalindrome() or isSoCS() before the 20 minutes was up,
especially if the candidate could give a ~1 minute description of how to
implement those functions. (I would also give more than 20 minutes.)

~~~
perl4ever
I interviewed at a place that started by having me do a HackerRank test
online, and complimented me on my code and comments. Then the in person
interview ended with a coding test involving a much simpler problem which I
assume I failed, from my perspective due to the pressure of limited time and
people talking at me. It's hard for me to figure out what was going on, unless
they basically thought they were testing to see if I cheated on the first
test.

However, I haven't experienced repeated failure of a consistent type, so I'm
not particularly motivated to worry about this sort of thing. I do know that
different companies have radically different processes, so if someone tells
you "you're not a good fit" it may be completely true and not a negative
judgement at all (even if that's how they mean it).

It so happens that I got my undergraduate degree about ten years later than is
typical, and thus I can pass for someone that much younger than me, at
present. So in an interview, it is tempting for me to give away my age by
reminiscing about computing in the 80s, and that could have caused me to be
rejected a couple times but I will never know for sure...

------
vinceyuan
In late 2015 (maybe early 2016), I was interviewed by the engineering manager
of a 20-to-50-person tech company for a iOS engineer role in Hong Kong. I
answered all tech questions well. But when I heard his last question, I knew I
would not get this job. The last question is "how old are you?". I hesitated
but still told him "35". He did not say anything. I know it is illegal in the
US. But I was not in the US.

~~~
idra
Hong Kong is not China

~~~
amrx101
Will be in future.

~~~
chaostheory
Yes it's already a part of China. However like Taiwan, the culture is
different. While HK shares a lot of traits with the mainland, it's culturally
still closer to the West. That said things change over time.

------
kaptain
I spoke to a friend (recent college grad) about expectations about work. He
said that pre-marriage, he expected to work every day, as many hours a day as
possible to build up his skill set. As he acquired more skills and
responsibilities, he expected that he was going to do less coding and more
managing others to code. A lot of the challenge of software development is not
in the actual coding itself but rather in architecting the infrastructure and
processes that make a product successful. He expected that by the time he hit
30, he would be working a more reasonable 9-5 because he would be in a
administrative/managerial position.

Culturally, China is about fitting in. It's a difficult place to live if
you're older and single, if you're married with no children, etc. This grates
against Western values. Starting a tech job (i.e. programming/coding) over 30
is not the norm so it is avoided.

~~~
sametmax
It's weird given that genius aside, most programmers I know only became good
around 30 :)

~~~
joncampbelldev
As a programmer approaching 30 I can confirm this for me. I am horrified that
a company would prefer the long hours / low quality output of my earlier years
compared to my current fewer hours / more thinking / higher quality output. I
can only hope that I will improve a bit more as I cross over 30.

Who knows, perhaps I will immediately plateau and never learn or improve after
30 ;)

~~~
lmm
I'm 30 and feel like I've been in decline for at least 6 years. I used to be
open to new ideas and techniques; now I'm so confident I know what works that
I usually can't even bring myself to consider the alternatives. I used to be
able to hold the whole system in my head and change things fearlessly; now I
rely on the types to do that for me and check in an embarrassingly high number
of errors whenever I try to work in Python (a language I used to be very
productive in).

Perhaps our industry moves so fast that experience genuinely is a net
negative?

~~~
mythrwy
Hahaha. At 30-32 I felt I was getting old.

Looking back I believe the reason was there is a subtle physical slowdown
between late 20's early 30's, you are indeed slightly past your physical
prime.

Then I hit 40 and felt young again.

But really, one shouldn't feel they are mentally slowing down at 30 or even
39. If that's the case you might need to check environment or what you are
doing or some external factors.

------
baron816
I wonder how much of discrimination is based on demographics. Surely there is
a large bulge in young engineers as the tech industry only became cool in
about the last 10 years. There are at least 2-3 times as many 30 year old
software engineers as there are 40 year old software engineers. I doubt that
when Millennials are in their 40s the industry will have expanded as fast as
it has been to make them a minority.

The culture shift is the other element I’m curious about. Software engineering
becoming cool means that the industry is not _just_ dorky men who were always
into computers and electronics. Someone with the social skills to become an
engineering manager might be resistant to hiring someone with the social
skills that are stereotypical of those dorky men who were here first.

~~~
ryl00
I think cool tech stretches farther back than that. Sure us Gen X engineers
didn't have the Internet growing up, but we had Star Trek, Star Wars, the
space shuttle, arcades, Apple II's, etc to inspire us to become engineers. And
don't forget the Internet bubble of the late 90's; that surely would have
brought a lot of fresh faces into tech.

~~~
Clubber
Yes, it was the dot com bubble when being a tech person was cool. Before that,
we were dorks.

~~~
mythrwy
Dorks until there was money in being a dork than dork isn't dork anymore, it's
cool.

When the money goes away it will probably go back to being plain old dorks and
here we'll still be dorking along.

------
rahimnathwani
Many (not all) tech companies in China expect people to work 9-9-6 (9am to
9pm, 6 days per week).

Most professional people in China over 30 are married, and many have a child.
It's tough to raise a child if you spend 30% of your time sleeping, 45% at the
office, 10% commuting, and 10% doing chores/admin.

Also, people under 30 are more likely to over-estimate the value of their
stock option package, so will also, on average, work for less.

~~~
nnq
You can also take it as a "the disease is its own cure" situation:

Overpopulation => Ageism => Overworked people => Less children => Less
overpopulation

That "one child policy" was the solution. People should get it in their damn
heads that _they don 't really want more economic growth for their country_ at
all costs, as this will _decrease_ their _quality of life_ by getting them
_overworked to death._

It's 2018... _nobody_ should work more than 4-6 hrs a day, that the fucking
reason we invented all this technology and economic machinery!

~~~
netheril96
> It's 2018... nobody should work more than 4-6 hrs a day

While 996 is too much, 4-6 hrs work per day is too few for a developing
country, which by definition needs a lot of more development.

~~~
Adamantcheese
I would hardly call China a developing country.

------
jedberg
The way some of these companies are solving this problem is by hiring old
engineers here in the states. I went to give a talk at the Silicon Valley
office of a very large Chinese company that you've heard of, and almost
everyone in the room was over 30 (and Chinese). The few white guys in the room
were mostly over 40 (probably over 50 even).

There was one woman, who was a young Chinese lady, and no one of any other
color. This was in a group of about 100 engineers.

Oh and at the end they offered me a job. I was 38 at the time.

------
TangoTrotFox
I hate the use of discrimination in things like this because it's not
discrimination by any means of the word. Discrimination would be saying, "I do
not want to hire older people, because I don't like older people." When you do
not end up hiring older people because they disproportionately have
characteristics that you do not want (or lack characteristics you do want)
that is not discrimination.

For instance at the most basic level older individuals are going to have
experience as well as a better understanding of their own value (high) and the
value of equity options (low). They're going to generally want substantially
more real compensation. We could debate how much experience should translate
into, in a dollar amount, but for companies that prioritize labor costs, it
makes little sense to hire older workers.

For instance IBM is the poster child here. At one time they had one of the
highest median ages in tech, but they've been completely reshaping their
company in a way that has resulted in numerous and ongoing age discrimination
lawsuits, but I don't think it has anything to do with that. They've started
hiring younger, firing older, and now the plurality of their workforce resides
in India. They clearly are prioritizing the very quantifiable labor costs over
the more difficult to quantify labor skill. This is not discrimination.

~~~
jamesmiller5
> They're going to generally want substantially more real compensation.

Can we always assume that's true? What if I'm a middle aged person who is
interested in trying out a startup?

It seems like such a waste of potential talent by not bieng upfront with
canidates on your hirring practices.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
I'd think definitely not. But these things will be true in _most_ cases. So
what that means is that even if a company is completely and absolutely open
and invested in being as upfront and inviting to each and every single
applicant, you'd still expect to see an employee base that has some groups
overrepresented and some groups underrepresented.

------
pjmlp
Not only in China, after a while it appears the only way is either management,
architecture (as synonym for management in many companies) or just go
freelancing if wanting to stay technical.

~~~
dx034
Which is also shown in titles at many companies. If you can be a senior
programmer/consultant/whatever with 5-6 years of experience, the only way in
your 30s is becoming a manager.

I just noticed that for Data Scientists (one of the more en-vogue jobs at the
moment). You start as Data Scientist after University and can have a Senior
Data Scientist role with 5-6 years of experience. All those that have more
experience (of which there are a lot, most of the jobs aren't that novel) have
to go into a manager role, even if it's just for the title without any
additional repsonsibility. Or accept that with 20 years of experience you
don't get paid more than someone at the end of their 20s.

~~~
pjmlp
The problem with accepting to get paid as such, is that you also have to find
someone willing to pay you.

Which many don't, because they know 30+ aren't easy to fool with equity and
"live our dream" kind of stuff, and they also have other priorities in life
besides 24h coding.

So it is easier just to get cheaper naive devs out of university.

------
tabtab
Young techies type faster, remember quicker, and have better eyesight. Older
techies use experience to design systems that _reduce the need_ for fast
typing, top memory, and top eyesight.

------
williadc
I wonder how much of this article was written by Bloomberg chasing clicks from
those of us who are older than 30 and work in the tech industry who want to
preserve our status.

~~~
dx034
Well they do need people to read their articles so that will have been a
factor. But it doesn't make the story false.

------
omarforgotpwd
This is good news for us in the whole supposed Bay Area / China rivalry. Young
people are stupid. Old programers are very wise. (I am 25).

~~~
docker_up
I'm an old programmer (almost 50). I completely disagree with you.

Young people are very, very smart. I hate old programmers that think they have
an edge over young people. I've worked with kids who could be my children, and
they are mature and smart and hardworking. Once young people hit about 10
years experience, they are as good as anyone with 25 years experience, because
most of the first 10 years isn't as relevant anymore.

Sure, I bring some maturity to the table, and a bunch of war stories. I also
believe I know how to program to avoid most bugs, so I take pride in having
very low-defect, excellent code. But it is daunting competing against someone
who could be your daughter and who can compete neck-and-neck with me.

~~~
mikekchar
Most of the young people I work with are quicker witted than I am (I'm 50).
However, I have an edge over most of them (IMHO). I have good work habits. I'm
organised at work (though hopeless at home). I have good communication skills
(strengthened by years of practice). I have compassion for my coworkers,
having experienced the same things they are going through. I understand very
well what my strengths are and I know how to lean on my comrades when I need
to. Most importantly, when writing code, I have judgement based on experience
(not blog posts), I don't freak out when someone changes my code, and I don't
panic when we make mistakes. Finally I know how to hedge poor management
decisions to limit downside without materially impacting productivity.

Also, I don't know about you, but I'm _still_ learning important new things
even at my age (and experience level). I don't see an end in sight, so either
I'm a _very_ slow learner, or there is more than 10 years worth of things to
learn/experience.

~~~
pacomerh
I have a few coworkers who are in their 20s and are very mature, have good
work habits, are patient and smart. I'm constantly impressed with what they
bring to the table considering they're this young. Not sure if this is a
larger company thing, but yes they exist and it almost feels like its a new
generation of kids that grew up wasting less time.

~~~
mikekchar
Don't get confused between talent and experience. Experience is the thing you
wish you had just after you got it. Talent is kind of like the container for
experience. It governs how much you can use and how fast you can acquire it.

------
daxfohl
Where the hell _do_ software engineers go who quit in their 30s? It's
obviously a thing that happens, given the average age in the industry. But I
really have no idea what happens to them afterwards. If I were to leave
software, I'd have no idea what to do next. Anybody who has access to LinkedIn
analytics or something have any insight?

~~~
leothecool
We are all still programming. The ratio of young engineers to old engineers
can be completely attributed to growth in the field. The number of engineers
doubles every five years. So, it should come as no surprise that less than 25%
of engineers are over 30. Once you get to 40+, it drops to 6%. Again, not
surprising given a 5 year doubling time.

Uncle Bob blogged about this in 2014. [http://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-
bob/2014/06/20/MyLawn.html](http://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-
bob/2014/06/20/MyLawn.html)

~~~
daxfohl
Huh. That totally makes sense.

In fact I wonder if this whole article could be attributed equally. Certainly
china's tech sector has experienced even faster growth. The person in the
story central to the article was probably just caught having an affair or
something.

~~~
Noumenon72
Not to mention that people over 40 in China grew up in a much poorer and more
rural country than today's China. They probably had correspondingly less
chance to learn modern job skills, so are probably even less employable than
first world 40-year-olds.

------
netheril96
As a Chinese it is a bit of surreal to see this event discussed here, because
the story has already been too old (pun intended) on Chinese network. The
whole "too old for tech jobs" is now moot, at least for ZTE employees, since
the whole company may not exist anymore due to the American sanction. Now if
you search for 中兴, the Chinese name of ZTE, all you find will be discussions
about how China will fare in the upcoming trade war, and how China could have
its own semiconductor industry.

~~~
derwiki
Can you summarize specifically why the sanctions would force ZTE to shut down?
Thanks in advance.

~~~
netheril96
ZTE imports most of its chips from the United States and its allies. Without
these chips, it cannot manufacture the majority of its products. Its future is
now unknown, and the stocks have stopped being traded.

------
ePierre
Not only that, but in China, tech companies are blatantly sexist:

[http://laorencha.blogspot.com/2018/04/in-china-tech-
companie...](http://laorencha.blogspot.com/2018/04/in-china-tech-companies-
are-blatantly.html)

------
linkmotif
This is really strange for me. I’m working on a product, and if I ever get
funding and go out and recruit I will only seek out people over thirty. At
least not under 25. I’m 33 and I’d be looking for older, more experienced
people who can plan, write and deliver features. There is a ton of time
between 9 and 5 for an experienced, focused developer to bust out lots of code
before they have to go to their families. I’m not sure why anyone would want a
team of 20 year olds when you can have a team of 30 or 40 year old people. In
my experience, younger people are not only less experienced, but they’re also
less socially and emotionally mature, and generally less stable.

------
pupusito
And as the education tools become better and better (Youtube videos, free
online CS classes made by the best teachers in the world, high quality open
source projects) I am afraid this trend is going to continue.

------
EZ-E
Tech workers over there work themselves to exhaustion. 9AM to 10PM is the
standard. I would guess older people wouldn't sign on that. That's why
companies hire and overwork younger engineers.

------
MasterScrat
I would be curious to have the opinion of the community on a related topic:

I am a 29yo European software developer with 4 years of experience working in
Switzerland, with both startups and big companies.

My partner can't find a job in our current country but she has offers in China
(Guangzhou) and England (London).

What do you think would be more valuable for me career-wise? Does it make
sense to invest the energy learning the Chinese language and customs?

~~~
majewsky
Since you're coming from the EEA, I'd be hesitant to take up employment in
London before the Brexit negotiations are done, mostly because that
uncertainty may cause a lot of emotional stress.

~~~
mseebach
If you're optimising for "emotional stress", London still wins over China, for
someone who speaks English and not Mandarin, and is comfortable in Western
culture.

The government has made pretty strongly phrased guarantees for EU nationals
arriving before 29 March 2019. Sure, it's not the best time to plan to put
down roots permanently, but nobody who just wants to work for a few years
should be discouraged by Brexit at this point.

------
contingencies
If you know any experienced engineers in China who need jobs, send me an
email.

~~~
justinzollars
This is the right response. Upvoted.

------
latte
Playing the devil’s advocate here:

Most of the commenters seem to ignore the fact that experience is not
necessarily a good thing.

A person who has 10+ years of experience (be it programming, business or
anything else that this person has done before) under their belt is likely to
have their own opinions about how things are done. They will either suggest
their own ideas (which may be incompatible with the rest of the team’s view
and engage in arguments that distract the management’s attention from other
issues) or, on the contrary, if they had a bad experience suggesting their own
ideas, be apathetic and do their job mechanically adding little to the group’s
discussion.

Also, if a person has been doing their job for many years, the employer can
have a more or less definite idea of what kind of output they can expect from
him or her. Sure, a person with a 10-year experience has a lower chance of
being a non-performer, but you also have a much lower chance of discovering a
rising star.

~~~
eeZah7Ux
> A person who has 10+ years of experience ... is likely to have their own
> opinions about how things are done

Yes, and that's why you want to hire them. That's the whole point of having
experience.

------
RickJWagner
The number of programmers who leave the ranks after age 30 is staggering. Some
go to management, some leave for another career type, some are fired. For
whatever reason, there's a sharp decline after the 20s and it only
accelerates. Programmers retiring from the job at the normal age is a rarity.
(It didn't used to be this way.)

------
oh-kumudo
The only reason they can put that over, is because they can afford to do this.
Chinese tech companies pays salary that is very much top-notch competitive,
that they can afford to act like investment banks in US, where they only
attract most young and talented, burn them out, then find the replacements.

------
ksec
I would much rather have engineers that are over 30. Wisdom, sometimes comes
with life and age. To solve problems, which is what really programming is all
about, the wisdom not to over engineering it, not to over see tiny details,
not to under estimate difficulties, not to follow the hype with stupid shiny
new tech every 2 - 3 year.

They may not write as much code, they may be more reading and thoughtful
rather then rushing it and start hacking. But they write much more quality
code.

I wish I could start my start up someday, then I would actually want to hire
age 30+.

~~~
yiyus
I think you need both. Experienced engineers to teach the new people and serve
as an example, and young engineers to keep up with the times, have more
dynamism and, eventually, have a good next generation of experienced people.

~~~
ksec
Agreed.

------
anovikov
After 30 you are indeed not good any more, because you are no longer so naive
and easy to exploit, that's it.

------
bluedino
Are there a lot of people over there with 20 years experience, as compared to
the number of the people that have entered the market in the last 3-5 years?
I'm thinking 20 years ago the tech market was pretty small.

------
freetime2
If true, it seems like it would be a good opportunity for Chinese companies to
hire some experienced engineers at a discount.

------
josephby
How will this play out as the workforce ages? Will Chinese employers engage
with older tech workers more effectively than their U.S. counterparts? Or will
they continue to be ageist and complain loudly about a talent gap?

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/chinas-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/chinas-
twilight-years/480768/)

------
donttrack
You cant make 40 year olds slave away all night to build your stupid hotdog
app, which supposedly is going to make you all millionaires. That's the
problem...

------
vesak
If that's true, it's the fault of everyone in their 20s who did jack shit in
their youth to protect their future selves. Unions, guilds, worker protection
laws. That sorta stuff.

But it's Communist China, so perhaps not.

------
vimcat
This is for “jobs”, “worker” “emploee”. Nobody cares about “Entrepreneur”’s
age.

