
Age Discrimination in Silicon Valley - robmarkg
http://world-startups.com/report/the-cover-up-age-discrimination-in-silicon-valley/
======
mm_throwaway
Anecdata: I'm over 40. I interviewed with a well known VR company which, aside
from the dev manager, was staffed by 20 somethings. I've been doing that kind
of work for my entire career and have written a number of multi-million seller
games as a lead programmer. Still, they didn't want me. It was 7 hours of
mostly rapid fire technical questions, which aside from one whiteboard problem
that I didn't really understand what they were asking, I felt I did pretty
good at. Obviously they felt different. I did go into the interview telling
them that given my experience and record of shipping quality titles I expected
a higher level of salary. Maybe that did me in, I don't know. But I did sniff
that they thought of me as the old guy, and why would I still want to be
coding & not in management at my age?

The upside is that by not getting/taking that job my current job bumped my
salary by 50%. I was already making a bunch before, now I'm retiring even
earlier! So I guess it all worked out in the end.

------
sxp
>This latest report by Linkedin is where it hit me – something smells fishy
about this. It is just too much of a coincidence that three of the major tech
companies have issued almost identical “diversity” reports, and all three have
been missing something screamingly obvious – any mention at all of age, or
even an explanation as to why it is missing. This almost seems like collusion,
it is almost certainly a cover up.

Someone needs to do more research before jumping to conclusions about motive.
Age isn't reported in the US EEO-1 Survey [1] which is the basis of the
diversity reports that various companies have recently published [2]. That's
why the reports are nearly identical.

[1]
[http://www.eeoc.gov/employers/eeo1survey/index.cfm](http://www.eeoc.gov/employers/eeo1survey/index.cfm)
&
[http://www.eeoc.gov/employers/eeo1survey/ee1_datafile_2013.c...](http://www.eeoc.gov/employers/eeo1survey/ee1_datafile_2013.cfm)

[2]
[http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en/...](http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en/us/diversity/2013-EEO-1-consolidated-
report.pdf)

~~~
enraged_camel
I don't understand your comment. The survey may have formed the basis for the
diversity reports, but it shouldn't be difficult to supplement them with age
data, since the companies already have the information.

~~~
robmarkg
Thanks EC - I didn't understand his point either but I expected it - that a
self appointed spokesperson for these huge tech companies will try to invent
some reason why they cant get this data. Of course they can - that data is
readily available. The "someone who needs to do more research" it the person
who made the comment - because his "research" attempt to find a reason to
discredit this failed, though I am sure there will be more by apologists for
this kind of behavior. If there really is some legal reason why summary
statistics on employee age data can't be released, I still have never heard of
it.

~~~
sxp
I'm not trying to justify the companies' decision to not release the age data.
I'm just pointing out that there is no collusion as originally claimed. All
the companies disclosed data based on the government survey which is why their
reporting categories look so similar.

------
geebee
Honestly, much of this wouldn't irritate me so much if silicon valley weren't
so emphatic that there is a critical shortage of software engineers that
requires special consideration.

Could it be that one of the many reasons that other segments of the economy
aren't experiencing a labor shortage is that they don't discard people at age
35?

------
jiggy2011
It's worth remembering that many other industries have the opposite problem.
Lots of the best jobs being occupied by baby boomers who are taking longer to
retire, leading to a lack of opportunity for younger people to get on the
ladder.

So we have a large number of smart younger people who are underemployed, are
google etc simply innovating by exploiting this undertapped talent pool?

------
brightsize
I have no experience with big-name tech megacorps, my career has been with
startups and small companies mostly. As a non-young person who's looking for
something new at a small startup, my feeling is that age discrimination is
clearly a thing, but it's not (just) a function of expected compensation,
skillset, or willingness to work insane hours. My feeling is that, while
you're expected to fit the profile in those areas, most of the discrimination
is based on what startups would call "cultural fit". Specifically, being "like
them" in having an enthusiasm for a dorm culture atmosphere. Yes, Work is
Play! It's All About Having Fun(!) here at our hipster office. We have
fussball tables. A fridge packed with beer! Group outings to clubs (to hear
bands that are popular among the just-graduated set, don't expect a night at
the symphony)! Food from the food trucks. Nerf fights! Why oh why would you
_ever_ go home??

I frequently see this sort of work environment publicly glorified on the "come
work with us!" pages of startup websites, often accompanied by a self-
congratulatory statement such as "of course, we wouldn't be a real
{SF|NYC|Berlin|...} start-up if we didn't have all this _and_ an office in the
coolest part of the city" and so forth. The implied message being that if
you're not likewise enthusiastic about a "work is socializing and play with
some coding mixed in followed by socializing and play" atmosphere, if you
don't share the non-work-related values and interests of "the team" (i.e.
things 23 year olds care about), then clearly you're not startup material. You
won't be _fun_ to have around, won't be fun to hang out with, you should
probably go work for an insurance company, somewhere boring where you'll fit
right in.

~~~
dfxm12
When I go on a job interview, I'm interviewing the company as much as they are
interviewing me. I've turned down a handful of job offers because their
"workplace culture" wasn't what I was looking for. Some were way too dry, some
were too much like what you describe above.

Of course, I'm not near an SF/NYC/Berlin type of "scene" though. Is the
problem that _every_ good job opening in these hotbeds is with a start up that
has this type of culture?

~~~
brightsize
I can't of course say that _every_ startup company has this sort of culture,
but my impression is that most small tech companies in startup hotbeds lean in
the direction I describe. The sort of startups that catch my attention seem
either to have such cultures or be straining to have them. They seem to think
that hipster/dorm atmosphere is important for recruiting (the kind of people
they want – 23 year-olds) and actively strive to create, maintain, and
advertise it.

------
endergen
Im surprised that every comment so far basically leans towards age
discrimination not being a wide spread thing. Its definitely a thing,
especially in startups, incubators, and definitely companies already mostly
staffed with young workers.

Disclosure: I'm 35 and have been CTO at my ladt 3 companies. I've certainly
have been biased myself worrying that older candidates I'm interviewing wont
have the same hustle, want a higher salary than the value they would
contribute, and might be more stubborn and resistant to leadership.

Age should definitely be included in these reports.

~~~
enraged_camel
>> might be more stubborn and resistant to leadership.

If you mean "stubborn and resistant to bullshit" then yes.

Older employees are much less likely to be deceived, because they've seen
enough of the working world to notice common patterns and pitfalls.

Tell a 23 year old that you're going to disrupt an industry and need some
rockstars to pull it off, and they might jump onboard. Tell the same thing to
a 35 year old and they will just laugh at you.

------
steven777400
How much of the "ageism" is actual discrimination and how much is "we have a
small budget and need 80 hour weeks" that older workers won't accept?

I received an offer from a very interesting startup in southern California
(down between LA and San Diego, not SF). The offer was $30K/year (with
increases as revenue increased), with minimum 80 hours a week expected. As
cool as the projects were... There's no way I at my current age and life
situation could possibly make that work. Ten years ago? Maybe. Fifteen years
ago? You bet!

~~~
cunac
30000/(80*48) --> whopping 7.8125/hr really ??

~~~
VLM
That shows a little problem, in that its probably not terribly difficult to
find a "real employer" or some contract work paying over $16/hr 40 hrs/wk and
then do something even cooler than the startup during your 40 hours "off".

If the startup is only looking for $7/hr caliber of employee, if you're
worried about them making it big and missing out, get a "real" $30/hr job 40
hrs a week and out of that income hire a $7/hr noob to keep the startup
entertained while you're at your real job. Essentially, subcontract your job.

------
ashwinaj
Well there goes another person who is "offended". Is there age discrimination?
Possibly, but at my workplace there are a lot of slackers and you guessed it,
they're usually (emphasis on "usually", stop trolling) older, paper pushers,
"Let's have a meeting to talk about changing a line of code" people, etc.
Needless to say, I work in a big company.

The best way to avoid discrimination of any kind is to continuously update
your skills (technical, social, inter-personal etc.). If you have nothing to
show for working X number of years, then why would people hire you? They'd
rather have someone who can put in an insane amount of hours. I'm not
supporting companies who do this, but I'm rather stating the stark reality of
Silicon Valley. It's unfortunate, but it is what it is.

Edit: I should've expected these responses; I've said explicitly I do not
support this. But at the same time instead of complaining, invest in your
skill set.

~~~
kasey_junk
And conversely, I've worked on teams where most of the developers were
"inexperienced" and didn't have the skills necessary to do a good job.

No one is worried about a bias against "bad" developers. The problem is that
the same companies that are crying the most about a lack of available
developers are (potentially) explicitly not hiring older developers. The
cynical amongst us assume this is another tactic to keep employee costs down.

~~~
cheepin
Well, it's not a big jump if they are willing to collude illegally to depress
wages.

------
wcummings
It seems equally likely age isn't included because widespread discrimination
based on age hasn't been a historical norm (and arguably isn't now) the way
discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion etc. has. One "high level
google employee" declining to answer such a loaded question in a
social/unofficial context is definitely not a strong indictment of their
culture.

There could be something to this (younger workers don't have families, work
longer, cheaper, fresher skills, to rehash some common points), but this
article feels really contrived.

------
adambratt
I've worked in a few different industries that are traditionally a lot more
corporate than most startups. Most notably, finance.

What I've noticed is that while these companies tend to have older tech guys
than you'll find at a lot of startups, it's still a lot younger age-wise than
the rest of the business.

I think part of it is that the number of young people who were in tech 20
years ago compared to now was much smaller. This is a new industry and it's
not completely far fetched to think that part of the reason why we are missing
a lot of grey hairs is that there's simply not as many of them. It's also
pretty well known that a lot of older programmers move out of full-time coding
roles and into management positions. Granted this isn't universal across the
board but it's been proven true in my anecdotal experiences.

Personally, I absolutely love it when I get an applicant who graduated college
before 2000. No matter what their skill as a developer, I know they have way
more life experience than me. Someone with experience will usually beat out
the guy working more hours so for me, it's a no-brainer to hire the older guy
who's done it all than a young whipper snapper who's super ambitious but has a
massive ego.

~~~
collyw
I am just about to turn 40. Been developing software for 11 and a half years
professionally. I realise that I am a lot better developer than I was a while
ago. Actually I have seen a lot more problems, and I have a good idea what
will work two months down the line, and what will be a constant fire fighting
exercise due to a half though through design.

How do I get this across to employers? All they seem interested is if I have
experience in MongoDB (which in 9 out of 10 cases seems to be a crap choice).

~~~
adambratt
Come work with us! We're growing fast and love people with lots of experience.

careers@benzinga.com

~~~
collyw
Would you consider remote? I am a Django dev (at the moment) and have
experience in the financial sector, but I am based in Barcelona.

~~~
adambratt
We do!

Barcelona is awesome. Our COO is actually from there originally

------
JabavuAdams
You should hire young ... but not to get the best technical ability. You
should hire young because we older developers, while being technically
superior to our younger colleagues, don't want to put up with your bullshit.

I've been on enough projects that can best be described as rearranging deck
chairs on the Titanic that I don't put up with management dropping the ball.
The challenge for more experienced developers is to recognize when some extra
individual effort would actually save the project and also be compensated,
without getting burned on another fucked project.

In every software company I've worked at there's been no feedback loop for
poor management tighter than project failure, or ultimately company failure --
but that takes a long time. Also, it can be attributed to many confounding
factors by bosses who are less than self-aware.

~~~
fleitz
It's deck chairs all the way down.

You rearrange them to the best of ability, get some commendations on how well
the chairs are arranged, and get promoted to the next sinking ship before the
current one sinks.

If you're lucky you'll become an expert deck chair arranger and get lucrative
consulting gigs on how a different arrangement of chairs could have saved the
ship.

~~~
JabavuAdams
Bingo. Every so often, you _do_ ship something and _gasp_ people like it and
pay money for it, though. That keeps me on the ship. The moment that becomes
institutionally unlikely, I'm gone.

------
incision
I would certainly like to see the data, but I'm not sure what I think about
the topic.

Age discrimination feels like it could be the other side of the coin that
presents so much opportunity in this field to begin with - a system that
values intelligence, willingness to learn and work hard on par with or lieu of
experience.

I jumped into tech without a degree or much in the way of experience. Now that
I'm established can I reasonably expect that the situation should reverse to
suit me?

I just turned 35, young by most standards yet older to old by seeming tech
standards. After 17 years working full-time, I'm a better asset than I was 15,
10 or 5 years ago in every way, but I can think of plenty of reasons why
someone would understandably prefer to hire young me versus old me.

It's the difference between a guy who will work 65+ hours a week year round
and someone who wants to spend every hour possible with his child. It's also
the difference between a guy who is learning certain things and one who has
fully automated those things a dozen times over.

That's an oversimplification on both fronts, but hopefully you get the idea.

How much 'done it before' value can there be in the context of growing
companies which are creating things which don't yet exist or are constructed
with tools that are <5 years old? How many opportunities are there for people
whose most effective position would leadership or strategic?

------
brightsize
I'm reminded of an amusing encounter in Berlin. I went to meet a seemingly
promising proto-startup, one associated with a prominent accelerator, at their
well-known coworking space. I was interested in their CTO spot and had plenty
of relevant experience. I could tell from the first handshake that my
potential non-tech counterpart was not exactly amused by my lack of youth,
which, as everyone knows, is crucial to CTO success. I was dressed the part -
the standard-issue German uniform of polo shirt & jeans, nothing off-putting
there. At some point not far into the meeting, he asked me what my GPA was. I
kid you not. I graduated from a well-respected school, decades ago, have a
long track record with startups, keep up to date on tech, but he emphatically
wanted to know my GPA. I scratched my head and guessed, upon which he asked if
that put me in the top 5% of graduates at the school. Color me mystified: not
only did they not tell us that sort of thing upon graduation, I could not
imagine why he would think it important. Not only did he think it important,
he informed me, gesturing through the glass partition at the worker bees,
"most of the people we hire are in the top 5% of their classes", and that was
just something I should know. It seemed obvious that knowing one's GPA and
class standing was a gating factor: it screened out both those who could not
claim to be “elite”, but also those with enough age and experience for whom
school performance had long ago become irrelevant.

I found it disturbing how much the Berlin startup community deifies SV,
attempts to ape it, and maybe this encounter was just one facet of that. In
general my impression was that Berlin companies seemed to be _less_ inclined
toward age discrimination than US ones, but I would be interested in hearing
other opinions on that.

Edit: typo

------
robmarkg
Wow - these are wonderful comments everyone - even the ones I don't agree with
all that much. This post has had almost 4000 views since this morning - that
is huge for me. The point I really want to drive home here though, is that
even if you think there are "issues" with older workers, do you also believe
these companies should be suppressing this data? As I said, it seems to me to
be too much of a coincidence that three different tech companies would
independently decide to leave this data out, unless they were hiding
something. I think "transparency" is a base value among members of Hacker
News, and I appreciate the support I have gotten for writing this.

------
JabavuAdams
Fundamentally, it's better to be an owner than a worker.

Sometimes it takes decades to realize this. It's easier to sucker young people
who have lots of free time into working crazy hours under _avoidable_ stupid
conditions with a few cheap perks.

------
taylodl
A good company balances the overzealous enthusiasm of youth with the
practicality of the wisdom that can only be attained through years, possibly
decades, of work. The problem is a lot of people get jaded over time and
forget what it was like to be young and excited to work on new (usually to
them) projects. The older people tend to become downers if allowed to.
Companies that can foster mutual respect between workers spanning multiple
generations are the best. If everyone, old and young alike, can focus on
continual growth and realizing we can all learn from one another then much can
be achieved.

------
mrbird
Is there any published research on what CS majors or people working as
software engineers in their 20s are doing at age 30, 40, 50, 60?

As many has observed, the numbers don't make sense for everyone to be a
manager or CTO.

I definitely sense anxiety when people talk about their future - "I know I
don't want to still be coding in 10 years" \- but I wonder if that's partly an
incomplete picture of what others are doing.

~~~
collyw
I do want to be coding in ten years, but I realise I also want to be respected
for my experience. At the moment, despite having designed and implemented the
database and front end that my entire organisation runs on, they decide that I
ought to be fixing dumb excel errors, rather than writing an interface that
would rid them of all the problems they get from using Excel in the first
place.

------
fleitz
The key with ageism in tech is to move into mgmt. You're not supposed to be a
code monkey at 30. And especially not having 10 years of experience in a
technology 10 years old.

Also as you said, young people put up with shit no one over 30 would ever put
up with. $30k for 80 hour weeks? No thanks, I'd rather flip burgers because it
pays more than $7.50/hr, McDonalds also has free soda.

~~~
blutoot
But a lot of people finish their PhD in their early 30s and becoming a code
monkey is one of the foot-in-the-door ways to get into the tech industry.

~~~
VLM
If the employer only wants one year of experience or less noobs and excludes
anyone experienced as out of date or too expensive, then the recent PHD grad
is by definition excluded unless the PHD took less than a year.

~~~
blutoot
But I have seen many recruiters/companies treat a 5-6 year PhD as the
equivalent of 1-2 years of industry experience.

