
Claims of Age Bias Rise, but Standards of Proof Are High - DaveWalk
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/19/your-money/trying-to-make-a-case-for-age-discrimination.html?em_pos=large&emc=edit_nn_20160322&nl=morning-briefing&nlid=70045141&ref=todayspaper
======
huherto
I am 47. 27 years of professional experience. Got hooked in Basic. Fell in
love with Pascal, C, C++, Smalltalk, Perl, and Java. Most new technologies are
a re-encarnation of something that I did already the first time or second time
around. I don't think my resume looks trendy. Still, I feel my skills are
better than almost all of my friends and coworkers. They are 21-35. But, I see
things that they don't. Subtle things like code organization, error handling,
readability. I have a better CS background (compilers, networking,theory of
languages,operating systems, relational theory, machine language). I know 100
ways in which a project can fail. My code is terse, I have been working on it
for a long time.

Yet, I am scared to loose my job. I don't know if the recruiter will look past
my age and lack of trendy technologies in my resume.

~~~
zippergz
This is one of the reasons I spend time on the weekends doing projects in new
technologies. I can put Rails, React, Angular, Swift, etc. on my resume and
answer questions about them (and point to projects I've used them on). I see
keeping up with new technologies as an important part of my career
development. If someone is truly biased against me because of my age, there's
not much I can do about that. But I definitely have control over whether
someone is biased against me because I haven't kept up with technical
developments.

~~~
halite
> I spend time on the weekends doing projects in new technologies.

Is that weekends are for? I do that too but do wonder at times...

~~~
enraged_camel
My parents are doctors. They are in their 60s. And guess what: they still
spend evenings and weekends reading medical journals, attending conferences
(around the globe) and doing whatever else is necessary to keep up with new
developments in their specialties. That's just what it takes to remain
relevant in fast-moving fields.

I think what software developers need is some perspective. We aren't the only
ones who have to spend time outside of work on keeping our skills sharp and
learning new stuff.

~~~
edwinnathaniel
I see this all the time but you can't compare apple (doctor) to orange
(software developer).

Doctor is more "trustworthy" (perception-wise) as they get older while
Developer is more in-demand when they're younger.

Doctor also technically made way more money than Developer (in general though,
the statement may not stand if you compare Silicon Valley but you get the
idea, even in other countries, Doctor probably made more than Developer).

Doctor also keep their job longer than Developer.

Doctor can read but does not necessarily have to demonstrate that to their
prospective employers while Developer can't just say "I read Objective-C for
Dummies therefore I am an expert of Objective-C".

These were just ones of many things that I can think of.

~~~
ryandrake
You forgot: Doctors have a strong professional organization that works for
them, handles things like certification, keeps the labor supply favorable and
wages high. Developers, on the other hand, swallow the "unions are bad"
mentality and compete with each other in the usual "labor race to the bottom".

~~~
gozur88
I don't think the AMA has much affect on employment of older doctors. He's
right - older doctors are in demand because they're assumed to have acquired
some wisdom along the way. The same is not true of software developers.

------
mark_l_watson
I am in my mid-60s and I don't feel like I have suffered any age bias either
at large companies like Google or small startups I have helped.

I sort of grew up with computers. My older brother and I got a mini version of
a mechanical difference engine when I was a kid. When I was about 11 my Dad
got me occasional use of a time sharing system, so that planted some desire in
my brain for using computers. In high school I took a class at a local
university.

It disturbs me to hear younger people talking pessimistically about their
future careers. I advise them to keep learning and working on things that are
useful and that they enjoy working on.

Edit: I did run into age bias, or at least I think it was: I had done a
homework interview assignment and phone interviews for a back end job for
Wikipedia and it seemed like they very much liked what I offered. Then, 1
minute into a video conference interview, I was brushed aside. So, I should
have said that I have never had on the job age bias.

~~~
mixmastamyk
I've noticed that whether you are/were interested in management is a factor.
Younger managers can imagine hiring older managers, but rarely engineers.

~~~
wheaties
Guess I'm an outlier. I like people with experience more than not. I respect
more older devs than I do younger. The older devs tend to have the best
projects on Github.

Then again, I don't allow stupid data structures or algorithms questions in
interviews. I can pretty much tell someone's experience level by the types of
interview questions they ask.

------
rdl
I still maintain there's age-cohort bias (anti boomer, etc.), not strictly age
bias.

In 2000, I remember most people over 30 being clueless about the Internet
(given that the population who were familiar with the Internet in the 80swas
so small...that core group was of course super clueful, but was of measure
zero vs. people who were learning about it in college every year.)

Now, it's largely been the case that anyone in engineering/tech has had
extensive contact with the Internet, even if not a CS person, since the 90s.
30s/40s today are a lot different from 15 years ago.

In 10-20y, there will be plenty of 50/60 year olds who had grown up with the
Internet.

So while this might be a problem now, it's correcting itself with time.

~~~
vox_mollis
I'd hazard a guess that there is some appearance bias involved, as well.

Older people tend toward higher BMI, and younger overweight people "carry"
their weight better.

Discrimination on appearance is already well-documented.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
Should appearance be a protected class? One often has more control over their
religion than their appearance, especially in certain areas, so I can't see
why no.

------
kilroy123
Personally, I worry about this in our industry. I plan to save, invest, and
diversify my income. That way I can get out of the sooner, rather than later.
I don't want to end up being a 50+ year old who can no longer get a job.

~~~
Swizec
> I don't want to end up being a 50+ year old who can no longer get a job

So just stay relevant? I'm 28, been coding for 19 years. What was relevant to
learn when I was in middle and high school is completely useless now. All
those endless hours spent learning how to make games in Pascal, irrelevant
technologies. All those endless hours spent learning PHP3/4 and cobbling
together websites and crude frameworks, irrelevant tech.

But on a higher level, all of that has proven useful. Technologies change,
syntax evolves, semantics improve, but your deep understanding of how to ask
just the right question of a business person that turns a mathematically
unsolvable problem, into something you can build in three days. _That_ is
always going to stay relevant.

Keep improving. Be an engineer, not just a coder.

~~~
kasey_junk
> So just stay relevant?

The point of age bias isn't bias against people without relevant skills, its
an actual bias against person of certain ages.

Our industry is ripe with stories of folks with extremely relevant skill sets
not getting jobs after a certain age (50 seems to be common).

There is some (unintentional I'm sure) age bias even in the response of "stay
relevant" as if the implication is that older devs don't do that as a matter
of course while younger ones do.

~~~
fecak
I don't believe that most anecdotal claims of age bias are truly a bias
against someone's age, but rather a bias against someone who had a long tenure
at a single company perhaps with a single technology on a single product
development effort. It _looks_ like age bias because you may be 50, but you
worked on the same thing for 25 years.

I don't think the industry is nearly as ripe with unemployed and relevant
50+'ers as you might think. I know many over 50 (I'm mid 40s) that have never
and will never have any difficulty finding jobs for the foreseeable future
because they've stayed relevant.

The main thing I would avoid is long tenures at employers where you are not
working with newer technologies, not producing tangible accomplishments, or
not challenged to learn on a regular basis. If you've been at the same thing
for many years, it's difficult to differentiate age bias from a bias against
someone who hasn't learned much or kept up with the industry.

Older devs that work for (or consult to) employers that use newer tech have no
choice but to stay relevant.

~~~
pc86
Always happy to see your username on threads discussing these matters!

I think you bring up an important point - your average 50 year old developer
is much more likely to have spent the last 10 years at the same company,
working with the same technology, maybe even with the same title, than the 35
year old developer.

Most of my experience has been .Net web application development in the
northeast/mid-Atlantic. I think it'd be damn near impossible for me to get a
job writing Ruby or Go for a startup at this point unless I made it a goal
(it's definitely not) and spent considerable effort in my spare time working
on projects. I'm only 29.

If you're a 52 year old developer who has spent 22 years writing RPG reports
for AS/400s and you get laid off, you're either going to end up in doing the
exact same job for another company, or you're going to be retiring.

~~~
fecak
Thanks! And I think your point is pretty well made. Because of how attitudes
towards job change have developed over time from being negatively labeled a
'job hopper' to now having it accepted (and somewhat expected), older devs
tend to have longer tenures in one place.

Now that even the youngest of the first dotcom engineers are probably hitting
their 40s, it will be interesting to see whether ageism will still be a factor
in hiring for the industry.

~~~
pc86
I've definitely seen the effect of that "job hopper" mentality - I left my
first development job ca. 2010 after a year and a half. My parents were
terrified I'd never find another job because it'd look bad not having been
there for "4 or 5 years at least." Since, I've had more than one person
surprised that I've stayed at places longer than 2 years.

~~~
fecak
Much of the career advice I provide serves to counteract poor advice given by
parents or university career counselors. Even most general career advice
doesn't apply to the industry.

------
disposeofnick9
In the Standford med school, an IT admin named Can______ was pushed out for
the treacherous crime of being older, and no pretext was used to pretend it
was anything else because their supervisor admitted it openly.

People have to realize this will be them, and that normalized hate is
unacceptable and speak up against it.

~~~
gaius
They will wish that they'd started the fight back against it, when they were
in their 20s themselves...

------
AnimalMuppet
I'm 54. I have just over 30 years of experience.

I don't see "ageism", exactly. I see the experience bar being set very low.
When "senior software engineer" means 5-7 years of experience, then what are
you with 30 years? You're completely outside the comprehension of most hiring
managers.

If you want to be regarded as more than "old person with a bit more than 5-7
years of experience", then you need to use those years to learn how to do
harder things than most people with 5-7 years of experience know how to do.

Keep asking yourself "What's the next thing I need to learn to advance my
career?" That probably isn't the next web framework (learning that just lets
you tread water). It might be Android or iOS, though.

------
6d6b73
I recently realized that when my son in my age (37) I will be 67 years old,
and getting (hopefully) ready to retire. This made me realize that in 30 years
there is no way that I will be able to stay competitive in this field, and be
able to find a decent job.

~~~
outside1234
Why? What is the logic behind that? You will have 30 years more experience
than him.

~~~
kamaal
And less 30 years worth energy, enthusiasm and liabilities. What is knowledge
worth in the era where any algorithm can be looked up in a google search.

Young people work for longer hours, don't fall sick often, come in on weekends
and are more productive.

~~~
tetraodonpuffer
and how do you know =which= algorithm to look up in google for your particular
requirements? knowledge is not only knowing where the hammer is, knowledge is
also knowing when a screwdriver would be more appropriate.

~~~
kamaal
Well that is easy too. Even if you have cursory information about a problem
stating that in terms in which you could get an answer is very easy these
days.

You seem to be describing a situation which existed two decades back where a
person's only portal to information was a library.

------
ChemicalWarfare
Low 40s here.

So far the only kind of "age-related" "discrimination" (note the quotation
marks) that I faced that I know of have been the "you're too expensive for us,
we'll hire a junior engineer and train him" type deal.

I do prefer/tend to work for small companies and startups so even though I
have a reasonably decent "enterprise development" and "CS" type backgrounds
I'm more or less up to speed on (or at least aware of) the latest developments
in the industry so if a potential employer wants to see me hack some homework
CRUD assignment using whatever hot-shot stack they are looking to use it won't
take me long to set it up.

------
AcerbicZero
As someone who works at OSU I can confirm that this place is exceptionally
backwards, and change can bring people to tears. Due to the severely broken HR
system here young people generally leave within 2-5 years, and the older folks
are almost always just waiting out the clock on their retirement.

Age discrimination might be a serious problem elsewhere, but with OSU's
chronic issues I'd be hard pressed to believe these people were discriminated
against.

------
JoeAltmaier
I can tell age stories too. But lets get real: people change as they get old.
They have different experiences and different referents. They have seen both
more and less of the industry, since its been changing a long time but changes
faster these days.

Indeed, you get a different employee when you hire an older person. Sometimes
that's helpful; sometimes not. We can't wave a wand and make that go away.

------
mathattack
I've found that I've had the best luck interviewing with people +/\- 5 years
of me. This has trumped gender or ethnic differences. (Sample size of just me)

I'll also say that I only had a handful of non-college interviews before my
mid-30s, so I don't have a ton of data on if this were true when I was
younger.

------
louprado
In the OP, the manager is frustrated with the "extraordinarily change-averse"
employees over 50.

One of the reasons I love being in tech (I am 44) is that you become so
familiar with change your start seeing it as an inevitable force of continuous
opportunity, instead of something to fear. That mindset keeps you young at
heart.

I suspect that age discrimination lawsuits are more likely from slow moving
industries, like the academia example in the OP.

The only place where I felt concerned about age discrimination is at YC. "How
old are you?" is the third question on the application even before the
question "What will your company do".

Having been invited to YC HQ twice now (thank you), I don't think age
discrimination is an issue and I can't fault them for asking. But being asked
that question upfront still messes with my psychology.

------
danharaj
I think this is caused by how heavily age segregated our societies are, from
education and child care to nursing homes and elder care.

~~~
pc86
You're right this would be solved if we had babies in nursing homes and waited
until someone was 80 to teach them calculus!

~~~
true_religion
As an aside, I think that age-segregation in schooling results in behaviour
problems.

Teenagers _want_ to take their behavioural cues from older children and young
adults, but they simply don't have enough interaction with them so instead
take their cues from what they believe to be true via mass media.

Imagine how many fewer 15 year olds would ask "what can I do with calculus" if
they had to brush shoulders with 20 year old engineering students and could
visibly see what kind of projects you'd work on with a deeper mathematics
background?

Cross-polination programs do exist today, but its not the same thing as having
it be systemic.

~~~
Negitivefrags
I totally agree with this. When I was young I lived in a very rural area and
went to a school with only 20 children. It went from ages 5 to around 10.
There was only one teacher and one classroom.

I think a huge part of the advantage of a school like that is that the teacher
from the very beginning is in the mindset that every child is going to be at a
different stage and needs to be catered to individually. All the children were
taught at their own pace and at their own level of ability.

By the time I left that school I was happily doing work that was designed for
children 2-3 years older at a regular school. I also had not had the drive to
self-learn knocked out of me as seems to be common with kids from regular
schools.

------
mathgeek
> The email, from their boss to a colleague at another university, said Ms.
> Taaffe and her fellow teachers were “an extraordinarily change-averse
> population of people almost all of whom are over 50, contemplating
> retirement (or not), and it’s like herding hippos.”

This is simultaneously amusing and saddening.

------
thefastlane
it's particularly concerning to see this at a nonprofit, publicly funded
research university. we would expect something a bit nobler from an
institution of this category. the troubling transformation happening to the
american university landscape will, i predict, have significant effects on
society at large in the coming decades.

------
YuriNiyazov
A tech CEO in his mid-fifties once told me: "There is no ageism in the valley
- by the time you get to your forties and fifties, you are either a CTO, or
you weren't very good to begin with".

~~~
strasser
This is typical bullshit coming from some asshole manager. People who aspire
to be managers think they're God's gift and it's the ending point for your
career.

By definition, there will always be less numbers of managers than technicians.

Being a manager is a different skillset and not everyone WANTS to be a
manager.

Typical comment from a clueless pointy haired boss!

~~~
Grishnakh
Yes, but those are the people who run companies.

