
Silicon Valley's dirty secret - age bias - ssclafani
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/27/us-valley-ageism-idUSBRE8AQ0JK20121127
======
codewright
Dirty yes, secret no.

Straight talk:

I'm the CTO at a startup and I _often_ have to call out the founders and
employees for ageism. I resent that they say things that make me think they
wouldn't take hiring an experienced engineer seriously.

I resent that they think my profession is best served by dumb happy newbies
with no private life.

I refuse to tolerate this in any company I work for and I will ceaselessly
call them out for this ageism.

I'm 24 years old and I will not stop programming just because I eventually
grow a unix beard.

~~~
nasalgoat
I'm in my 40s now, and the number of times I've been brought into a startup
suffering under the plague of 20-something founder's grandiose ideas of how
things should be done vs. the nearly 20 years of real world experience that
says otherwise would surprise you.

Youth might fuel the launch of your product, but experience will help it keep
flying.

~~~
codewright
I know the value of experience because I know what my code looked like 5 and
10 years ago. I also know how incredibly poor my judgment was back then
compared to now.

I can only imagine what 20 years will do for me. That's why I actively seek
out more experience in candidates because I believe it'll make them more
competent and sharp at what they do.

Somebody with battle-scars is something a startup could really use. Most of my
pre-startup experience is as a contractor/consultant.

~~~
krakensden
I've worked with developers in their fifties- they're scary good.

~~~
jsaxton86
I've also worked with developers in their fifties who are awful.

Age bias is awful, and I have worked with a lot of older developers who know
their stuff and are extremely competent, but the idea that 25 years of
experience automatically makes you a better programmer is wrong. Good
developers are able to learn and adapt quickly, and often older developers
can't do that.

~~~
adrianhoward
_I've also worked with developers in their fifties who are awful._

Me to.

And I've worked with devs in the 20s who are awful. And their 30s. And their
40s. And their 60s.

I've also worked with great devs in all those age ranges.

Proportions seem about the same to me.

 _Good developers are able to learn and adapt quickly, and often older
developers can't do that._

I've not noticed a difference.

I have noticed that it's harder to spot the folk in their 20s who don't learn
and adapt quickly since folk in their 20s _have_ to learn something to make
any progress at all. Once that pressure is off and they've become fixated on
Rails / C# / whatever they seem just as unlikely to change as any other age
range. They just get fixated on the "cool" thing - so it takes longer to spot.

~~~
krishnakv
> Proportions seem about the same to me.

Are you sure the proportion was the same? Reason I am asking is because for
people who are bad at programming, there are various process/ management roles
available that might better suit.

It seems rather impossible to me that someone would voluntarily continue
programming for a couple of decades and not be excellent.

Beyond the 30's, I imagine people would be passionate about it to continue
taking up programming roles. And this passion should translate into
excellence.

Happy to be corrected if you have any data-points.

~~~
adrianhoward
_It seems rather impossible to me that someone would voluntarily continue
programming for a couple of decades and not be excellent._

I don't have any hard data I'm afraid - just my fallible recollections ;-)

Some of ways of getting non-excellent old developers that I've observed:

* Not all old developers have been programming for a couple of decades. People can and do come into development late - and suffer all the normal problems of newbie developers.

* You'll be amazed at how little work you can get away with in some large organisations. When you have a couple of hundred people on a project you will find one or two Wallys from Dilbert.

* The devs who have sunk deep into some gnarly legacy system or language. Being the person who knows the right bit to tweak in the middle of a 1500 line procedure in the middle of a big-ball-of-mud project might be stupidly valuable to a company - but produce a lousy developer in any other context.

* The "senior" developer / architect / lead who has been Peter Principled to their level of incompetence, but whose team is good enough to cover up the deficit in leadership ability.

* The large chunk of bad developers (of all ages) who _don't realise they're bad developers_. Folk can't improve until they understand where they suck.

------
gfodor
When you get older, several things work against you to jump into SV culture:

\- You are not as easily impressed by or eager to try new technologies. (many
of which are new spins on old ideas you've seen before.)

\- You fail to see the appeal of the types of technology younger people are
using. Or, you see the switching costs as too high to move away from what you
are using now.

\- Your lack of ignorance leads you to (often correctly) identify that an idea
will lead nowhere. The problem is sometimes you are wrong.

I think the best way to fight against ageism is to make an effort to retain an
open mind and curiosity. Try new things, even if you think they are going not
be worth your time. Try to see the novelty in things that may seem to be a
rehash of old ideas. Realize that no matter how stupid an idea sounds,
sometimes it's worth trying, because you can't always predict the future, no
matter how much you've seen.

Just think of the number of people on HN who have posted about how they don't
understand Facebook, Twitter, or shoot down some whiz bang new technology.
I've done it sometimes myself. Engineers are naturally skeptical, but this
skepticism can grow out of control. It's fine in moderation but there's a
tendency for this type of perspective to grow with age naturally, and that can
ultimately undermine your ability to recognize and execute on genuinely novel,
good ideas.

If I could hire someone who had both extensive experience but did not have a
chip on their shoulder and lived on the edge of the curve like a 20 year old
I'd do it. But it's pretty hard to not have a chip on your shoulder in this
industry after a decade or two, and it's hard to continue to adopt the latest
technology and not just settle in at some point along the way.

~~~
adrianhoward
_I think the best way to fight against ageism is to make an effort to retain
an open mind and curiosity._

The problem is that doesn't fight ageism. It panders to it.

Ageism is when you don't get treated fairly just because of your age - no
matter how curious and open minded you may or may not be.

If somebody things I'm closed minded and incurious because I'm in my forties
they are being ageist. They are the one with a problem. Simples.

You fight ageism by pointing out bigoted asshattery when you encounter it. You
fight it by not staying quiet. You fight it by lobbying to make it illegal.
You fight it by giving people concrete advice on how to deal with it in the
workplace.

You don't fight it by trying _extra hard_ to demonstrate that their bigotry
doesn't apply to you. That's a _coping_ strategy. Not a _fighting_ strategy.

~~~
wbharding
I dunno if "pandering" is the word I'd use to describe those who intentionally
take on an attitude of openness and curiosity.

The fact is, most of the older people I know (my parents, grandparents, etc)
still listen to the music they were listening to at age 25. Many of them (such
as my aunt) are still working at jobs that use technologies they learned 30
years ago. It's not because they are incapable of evolving. I think it is
because they never made it a point to sharpen their openness & curiosity.

If I saw a 55 yo engineer with a Github portfolio of Ruby and Python projects,
hell yes I would interview that candidate. But the reality is that when I've
interviewed older candidates in the past, they are in general more likely to
be behind the curve when it comes to speaking the language of the latest tech
and developments. My hunch is that complacency breeds this attitude. It is
hard to constantly learn new tech for 40+ years, because so much of the
learning process is about being wrong repeatedly.

My solution personally is to try to constantly force myself to understand and
appreciate the zeitgeist of music, programming, and design as I age. In terms
of personal empowerment, it seems to me one of the most sensible routes to
fight ageism.

Calling out others who promote ageism is good too, but it doesn't directly
address the fact that someday we will all be old, and we'll need an actionable
strategy to succeed in spite of that.

~~~
adrianhoward
_I dunno if "pandering" is the word I'd use to describe those who
intentionally take on an attitude of openness and curiosity._

Intentionally taking on an attitude of openness and curiosity is, of course, a
good thing at any age. I read (possibly misread) it in this context as meaning
that you have to demonstrate this in some more extreme way if you're old.
That, to me, is pandering to bigotry.

 _The fact is, most of the older people I know (my parents, grandparents, etc)
still listen to the music they were listening to at age 25. Many of them (such
as my aunt) are still working at jobs that use technologies they learned 30
years ago. It's not because they are incapable of evolving. I think it is
because they never made it a point to sharpen their openness & curiosity._

I know people like that. My experience has been though that those people are
just as inflexible in their 20s as they are in their 50s. It's just that it's
trickier to spot - because they've been stuck for a shorter period of time.

If you're in your twenties and look around your peers now I bet you'll find
some folk who are still really into the same bands they were into when they
were in their teens. They'll still be into those bands in 30 years time.

 _My solution personally is to try to constantly force myself to understand
and appreciate the zeitgeist of music, programming, and design as I age. In
terms of personal empowerment, it seems to me one of the most sensible routes
to fight ageism._

That's a fantastic approach to living an interesting and fulfilling life.

It's a lousy strategy to fight ageism.

Ageism is what _others_ do to you. It's bigotry. It's not looking at you
because of your age, not because of how open minded (or not) you are.

Being open minded doesn't help you since the person on the other side of the
table doesn't see an open minded person. They see an old one. And they assume.

------
grellas
I'm not sure why it should be a "dirty secret" that the tech world is
predominantly driven by younger people who may at times be wont to push older
people aside as suits their needs. Welcome to our capacity to be jerks if we
indulge ourselves in that direction, as many will. It works the other way too,
as all too many younger people can attest as they have occasionally been
treated like dirt by those who are older.

Is this good or fair when it does happen? No.

Is it illegal? Sometimes, but making formal proof is daunting at best and
usually not possible.

Thus, it comes down to this: treat others as you yourself would want to be
treated. If a workplace reflects that ethic, it will be a place where old and
young alike will want to work and where older workers will receive their due
as befits their experience, skills, and performance, good or bad; if it does
not reflect that ethic, it is a place to avoid if at all possible.

While Silicon Valley may represent the ageism problem in a particularly acute
way owing to its youth culture, it really is no different from anywhere else.
There is the good and the bad, and we each need to do what we can to uphold a
high standard of common decency for ourselves and to make sure others do the
same. It may not be a complete answer but it can help a lot in our immediate
work environments and that will go a lot farther toward solving the problem
than the law ever can.

~~~
DocSavage
It always confused me that some really bright young people (e.g., Zuckerberg)
can't grasp this: the variation in intelligence and capability due to non-age
factors >>> the variation in intelligence and capability due to age factors.

Put another way, I'd take Einstein in his 40s over a thousand other randomly-
chosen physicists in their 20s

~~~
erydo
> I'd take Einstein in his 40s over a thousand other randomly-chosen
> physicists in their 20s

(I don't think I've seen a more clear example of a false dichotomy.)

I agree that age is rarely the determining factor for someone's general
competence: someone who's competent young is going to be competent when
they're older. Their strengths do shift slightly, though.

Depending on the mission, experience may extremely valuable; when breaking new
ground, sometimes creativity and energy are more important. It's hard to argue
that there's no correlation with age there over a person's life, even if it's
relatively minor.

Ageism to me seems a lot like sexism, racism, and every other -ism. The error
is to use those characteristics as false metrics for someone's competence:
e.g. "you're old, therefore you're slow" or "you're young, therefore you don't
know what you're talking about". Let their work speak for itself and see if
they're the right fit for the job at hand. The fact that there are age biases
due to the type of work isn't always indicative of discrimination, though it
often is.

(In Zuckerberg's case, I would be unsurprised to hear about discrimination
given his YC07 talk about "hiring young").

~~~
tripzilch
It should be easy to tell the difference:

If it's mainly selection based on metrics of certain types of competence and
strengths that _may_ correlate with age, then we shouldn't be hearing stories
about people having to shave or dye their hair, get a hipster-wardrobe, just
to have a chance at getting a second interview. (or plastic surgery ...)

------
Todd
There are two countervailing trends here: one is the increasing level of
experience and the other is the decreasing level of hipness (hear me out,
please). As an older engineer (early 40's), I speak from experience.

When I was young, I thought my designs were excellent, because they were the
best things I had done so far. I was able to look around at amazing code (NT
kernel, for example; open source was much less prevalent back then) so I
realized there was a continuum of excellence. After five years, I looked back
as some of my earlier code and it looked bad. I did the same five years later
and had a similar experience. After that, improvement came by degrees and was
more related to breadth of experience in different domains. So it's clear to
me that "older" people, in my profession, at least, are usually more capable
than a younger person at this particular skill.

That said, there is the "hipness" factor, for lack of a better word, and it's
very real. Older people tend to get set in their ways and do what they do. If
they like watching TV, they'll keep up with their favorite shows. If they like
sports, they'll keep up with their teams. They are unlikely to know the
hottest bands or Internet memes. They just don't keep up with current culture,
which happens to be largely youth culture. They might like their iPhone or
Android and know how to use it. But the fact is, that most older people merely
use technology. They don't bury themselves in it every day. So when they talk
to someone younger about culture or technology, they seem out of touch.

As someone who follows technology, it's pretty lonely in my cohort. There's
literally nothing to talk about in the area that holds a large part of my
interest.

I think the people under consideration here are biasing against the experience
factor in favor of the hipness factor because it's just so apparent. It
literally takes a couple of minutes of conversation before determining that
the older person is "clueless".

If a person want's to work in technology (e.g., in a Bay Area startup) and
they don't keep up with technology and/or culture, they are going to have a
hard time.

~~~
marshray
Bay Area technology startups are notoriously hard for just about anybody!
Perhaps older people are just becoming more normal and balanced.

Thankfully, I have not encountered this problem yet :-)

------
radicalbyte
The thing is, Randy did get hired once he shaved his head and started dressing
down.

This isn't ageism, it's a filter against older people who are unable to adapt
themselves to the changing environment. It's like classic cars: no-one is
going to buy a neglected rust bucket that hasn't been serviced since the
1960s. Yet if the car is loved and cared for it can be worth millions
([http://www.topgear.com/uk/car-news/ferrari-250-GTO-sells-
for...](http://www.topgear.com/uk/car-news/ferrari-250-GTO-sells-
for-35-million-dollars-2012-06-06)).

Startups.. the web.. the valley.. they all thrive on new ideas. On people who
keep their mind open to new ideas. Older people who are both relevant and
still have "that".. are rare. Very rare. But if you can find one, they're
priceless.

~~~
samspot
What I'm hearing from many posters in these comments is my level of fashion-
conciousness indicates how innovative I am. I think it's a big mistake to
judge a candidate's aptitude for the work by how hip they look. This is the
last industry I thought we'd have to face this kind of thing in.

~~~
embwbam
Well, wait. I've always said this too: it shouldn't matter how I dress. But
the truth is that dress is very frequently an indicator of how aware one is.
It's a social consciousness that is sometimes reflected in other things (like
being able to adapt to a new technology).

Look at this comic: <http://xkcd.com/1139/> \- the playground jerks call the
guy a loser because he isn't playing the social game. They are right that he
is "losing" the social playground game. He doesn't care, but that's kind of
what these startups are looking for.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Are you seriously saying that keeping up with fashion is an indicator of being
able to adapt to new tech?

~~~
AerieC
They're not so different these days, especially in SV, I think. Apple, for
one, has made itself on being a fashionable product. If one of a company's
goals is to be fashionable, does it make sense to hire people who don't care
about a core portion of the company's vision?

~~~
001sky
there's a correlation causation issue to consider.

jobs wore black-t-necks to be anti-fashion

ives is a designer, fan of colour etc.

people that make fasion != people that follow it (or: victims, slaves, etc)

------
southphillyman
Is this essentially a Web 2.0/Bay Area issue? I recently went to a Java User
Group meeting on the east coast where the presenter and about 60% of the
audience....had grey hair. I think I may have been the 2nd or 3rd youngest
person at the meeting and I'm 30.... I'm the 2nd youngest person at my current
place of employment in the finance domain. I'm hoping that means by 40 yrs old
there will be lot's of work and I can contract for $150/hr or whatever by then
as a lot of the brick and mortars are heavily entrenched in the JEE stack and
if this board is any indication there will be a dearth of JEE talent . Even in
the Java space I can’t say I’ve seen too many 80yr old developers. But at
least your career is not dead at 40. I’ve developed in Python professionally
in the past and am teaching myself RoR now for both personal use and I have to
admit I like _writing_ in those languages more. But after reading articles
like this and going out to San Francisco seeing the environment first hand I
have to be honest when saying that I would be a little tentative jumping out
there feet first.

~~~
zevyoura
I would expect Java User Groups to skew much older than the average HN'er or
start-up employee, or probably programmers in general.

~~~
mynameishere
Replace "Java" with "enterprise" and you're correct. As for COBOL, you're
looking at some real geezers pulling in huge consulting fees. 20 years from
now when RoR is _passe_ , expect the same for that.

------
stcredzero
I've had someone in a YC funded company flat-out tell me that it was going to
be a problem for me. (43, and no, he wasn't in the process of hiring me.)

~~~
seiji
This is America. Get litigious! Things are illegal for a reason. They can't
ask about your age or family status.

When your CEO gets up and says "We don't hire anybody over 28 years old," a
dozen lawsuits should be filed within a week. It's amazing people let other
people get away with ruling the world this way.

*edit: I had over/under switched in the CEO quote. Fixed.

~~~
cookiecaper
What's "family status"? AFAIK there is no protected "family status". The
typical protected classes are race, sex, religion, age, and in some places,
sexual orientation.

~~~
raldi
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class>

Bullet point #7.

See also:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_discrimination_law_i...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_discrimination_law_in_the_United_States#State_law)

~~~
sbov
Note that bullet point #7 only seems to apply to housing.

For the second link, it seems like most include protection for marriage
status, but almost none for familial status. I'm not sure how that translates
in this scenario.

------
LastManStanding
They are calling this "a secret"? - more like overt bigotry from what I have
seen. Isn't Y-Combinator one of the worst offenders? From what I have read
Paul Graham brags actually about his age discrimination.

~~~
jpdoctor
Eventually, some enterprising law firm is going to make a bundle. The legal
culture in SV (WSGR and their ilk) are not steeped in class-action suits,
several folks are going to get their asses kicked from the legal defense, if
nothing else.

~~~
LastManStanding
This should have happened long ago, and from what I have heard, Y-Combinator
would be the best place to start.

~~~
debacle
You're making serious accusations against an individual and a company based
solely on things you have read about on the Internet or heard anecdotally.

Wake up. Discrimination is not cut and dry, law is not cut and dry, and
reality is not cut and dry.

~~~
LastManStanding
I am not making any accusations against anyone - it is obvious that Paul
Graham has an age bias - he says so all over the place, but there is no law
against having a bias. Age discrimination is almost impossible to prove, but
if it is being used in the decisions of who gets into Y-Combinator someone
should look into it.

~~~
jiggy2011
where has he said he has an age bias?

~~~
LastManStanding
He does.

~~~
jiggy2011
Has he said so in an essay? On a HN post? To YC founders in person?

~~~
LastManStanding
See comment above. There was another interview or blog post where he talked
about his preference for young people more extensively, but I can't find it.
Do you happen to know how many people over 50 have been accepted into
Y-Combinator?

~~~
jiggy2011
I wonder how many people over 50 would apply? IIRC the seed capital they
provide is probably small enough that a 50 year old would likely have that in
their savings and possibly enough contacts/credit rating to get other funding
directly.

The closest I could find was this: <http://www.paulgraham.com/mit.html>

But all he really says there is that younger founders have an advantage that
they can live on less money.

------
dpratt
I'm 37, and honestly this has started to scare me over the past couple years.

~~~
ShabbyDoo
I'm 37 and have not been concerned. If I compare my current work to that I did
a decade ago, it's obvious to me how much better I am -- faster, better at
design, fewer bugs, etc. AFAIK, no one has turned me down for work because I'm
too old. Perhaps they've chosen someone younger and less expensive, but that's
fine by me -- maybe not a rational choice, but not one based on
discrimination.

Other than code quality, how was I different as a 25 year-old? Much more
likely to adopt new technologies, libraries, etc. because they were shiny and
hyped. Did this serve me well? Sometimes I got lucky, but I also wasted a lot
of time figuring out the hard way that Technology X was way too bleeding edge
for production. I was way too willing to go along with (or even suggest!),
massive, all-things-to-all-people architectures which looked great as block
diagrams but didn't match up with timelines, project risk, etc. Now, I push
for incremental change over big bang projects.

One way I've regressed in the eyes of an employer: I'm no longer willing to
put in long hours in exchange for vague promises of future pay-outs (bonus,
promotion, whatever).

------
chernevik
I bet many of these hiring managers don't really know what they're doing, so
they're doing what everyone else is doing. This protects them from looking
stupid, which many people fear more than actual failure. Some of these
businesses will succeed but in general failure to get hired by someone who
doesn't know what they are doing is, for the truly qualified, a good outcome.

I doubt that truly qualified people are being turned away for age. I doubt
that really capable companies are that hung up on age. I do believe that there
is discrimination among _under_ qualified people. Given the importance of
learning experiences and networking and luck, this is probably a serious
disadvantage to older under-qualified people. It certainly isn't fair. But
anyone who is under-qualified really should think more about making themselves
more qualified than looking around for someone to make things fair.

(That needn't be extended to race or gender discrimination law. Those are
targeting structural disadvantages thought to be outside the control of the
discriminated, e.g. they lack the same opportunity to improve their own
qualifications. And they are often intended to make it more clear that the
economy offers opportunities to all comers, in the face of a variety of
perceptions. Whether you agree with those arguments or not, I don't see how
they apply to people getting older.)

~~~
adrianhoward
_I doubt that truly qualified people are being turned away for age. I doubt
that really capable companies are that hung up on age._

I don't. Not even a little bit.

I saw it fifteen years ago when I was able to snap up amazingly talented
developers that were piteously grateful for the opportunity after being turned
down for similar positions elsewhere due to their age.

I see it now where every decent developer I know past 35 I've discussed it
with has some variation of the "I'm not ageist - it's just that old developers
are inflexible blah blah etc." story to tell and are noticing it becoming more
of a problem as the years go by.

Saw it earlier this week when a conversation with a potential client
completely derailed after they found out I was 42.

This shit happens all the time.

------
rayiner
As Silicon Valley matures, I think age bias will become less prevalent. I
think there will be an inflection point where novelty is going to have to give
way to quality. Facebook is illustrative. Facebook is exactly what you'd
expect to get if you hired a bunch of recent college graduates to build
something: creative, but otherwise utter crap. It's not what you would get if
you hired a team of seasoned professionals to build a product with well-
defined requirements. At some point, I think in the near future, you'll see
Facebook (and the other companies like it) transition from the former into the
latter.

------
RandallBrown
It's not exactly an "age" bias, it's a bias against people that aren't like
them.

If I was hiring a CEO, someone who would be my boss, I'm definitely going to
pick someone that seems like a person I could get along with. If a guy walks
into the interview with a suit on and I'm wearing jeans and a hoodie, it could
be a sign that we aren't going to get along all that well.

If the old guy came in and seemed like he could relate to me though, I
wouldn't have a problem at all hiring him.

~~~
codeonfire
The results of this are blatantly clear when you view any company's "what's it
like to work here". Video. It's embarrassing to see companies trying to
recruit and having their prejudices on full display. what is worse, is they
are not smart enough to even realize that they made a video of 30 white male
24 year olds.

------
xradionut
I find it amusing that today I took 14 pages of code from a 20-something
developer and reduced to it to a single query and a one line function.

------
yters
Young people are naive and unencumbered, so a few older VCs can use their
cheap and highly skilled labor to make a lot of money. Older people aren't
such suckers.

~~~
pacaro
This. Many startups claim to offer "competitive" salaries, but really only
mean "competitive for someone with little experience".

Now here's the question, if I'm asking for twice what a company claims that
they can afford, are they better off employing me, or two (or three) engineers
with little experience?

More and cheaper may be better, YMMV

------
jiggy2011
It's interesting to compare with other professions.

I was out for drinks recently with some people who were programmers as well as
others some of whom were doctors.

The mean age was probably about 27. A 27 year old developer is a grizzled vet
whereas a 27 year old doctor is considered a noob at the start of their
career.

~~~
dsymonds
The 27 year old developers probably only _thought_ they were grizzled
veterans.

------
Spooky23
A real issue, but lame scope. 50 is really a wall... you run into all sorts of
50-somethings who are basically wandering souls doing random consulting things
after they get RIF'ed from some big corporation.

It's not a phenomenon specific to Silicon Valley. But insular culture of SV is
more well known, but exists anywhere there is a cluster of particular types of
business.

------
salimmadjd
Even YC application asks for age! This is no secret. If you're not an investor
past your mid 30s you are pretty much over in the valley.

------
neya
It's not just old guys, you know. 8 years ago, I was able to design the same
quality of websites, yet no one gave a fuck because I was 'too young'
according to them. Today, they are ready to pay me thousands of dollars
because I have the age factor and a couple of white hairs. Many people are
under the wrong notion that age = experience. While it may be partially true,
it isn't all the time. When you're young, you have the urge (and the energy)
to make some really bold choices, which you will think twice to make when you
reach a certain age (especially when you're married, have kids, etc..). So
yeah....age bias sucks!!

~~~
heyrhett
You're still designing websites that look like they were made before YouTube
existed?

~~~
neya
It's a very good joke, but obviously no. I designed what looked good for 8
years ago. Now I design what looks good for 2012. That's what I _actually_
meant! :D

------
jiggy2011
Isn't this partly because SV is most interested in developing social apps for
hip teenagers?

It's probably difficult for a 40 something year old to know how to design an
application for this crowd.

~~~
eshvk
I am not convinced that there is something inherently special with the ways
young people consume technology that only other young people have mystical
insight towards. There are people in their fifties on HN, tweeting away before
twitter was cool and avidly using Pinterest. I think it is more about what you
find interesting rather than how old you are.

After all, I would think that 80-90% of toys are designed by people who are
not between the ages of 3-9. I am fairly certain these toys are profitable.

~~~
jiggy2011
Well the canonical example would be facebook, designed by a young guy
specifically for young people.

I'm not sure what the mean age of the early adopters of stuff like pinterest
is but I'm guessing under 30.

~~~
randomdata
The vast majority of Pinterest users are over 35 and the average age is 40.
Roughly 80% of the users are also female. Given that, I would be surprised if
the early adopter of Pinterest was your stereotypical 25 year old male
developer that these companies look for.

------
Zenst
When I started in IT I found that it had alot of skilled people, though the
bias was against younger people. As I grew older I saw the levels of talent
drop and the age lower with a bias towards younger people. The real crux is
not the ability to do the job but the HR cock-blocking of anybody who has more
skills than the job at hand, which is in general older people. This and the
mentality of dumbing down wages also bias towards getting younger people in.

The whole situation has now got to the stage that companies shun talent if it
is over a certain age over getting somebody younger for a cheaper price. They
then find it hard to find somebody with the skillset who will take the job for
the wage they offer and then cry skill shortage.

There are exceptions, as with any rule but you will notice alot of talented
mid-life IT professionals changing career just becasue they are sick of the
office politics.

I have worked with old and young managers, both good and bad but the real
difference was the good ones knew or had done the job they are managing and
the ones not so good had as much IT skill as most school leavers but are great
at dealing with HR and in that HR love them.

Only real way is to start your own company, your own rules and with that age
is what you make it.

------
hornbaker
A data point: according to my quick eyeball count, only around 25% of these
founders are "young" - <http://www.sequoiacap.com/us/early>

[Disclaimer: I'm an EIR at Sequoia at the ripe old age of 46]

------
ryguytilidie
To be fair, when I'm 40 I can't imagine still wanting to work 12+ hours a day.
I'd like to see my family. This alone makes me feel like the age bias is
caused more by people realizing the work won't work with their goals. The
article itself seems a bit off since it doesn't deal with data so much as a
single anecdote.

~~~
rdl
When I'm 40, I hope I have my life structured so I _can_ work 12+ hours a day
-- enough resources to automate or outsource the tasks I don't enjoy, no need
to commute, etc.

------
robomartin
Tough topic. Experience vs. Youth.

Does bias exist? Absolutely.

I often tell people that being an engineer in certain fields (like software)
can be very much like being a supermodel. Not one of them will reach fifty and
stay in the Victoria's Secret catalog. In fact, when it comes to VS,
30-something and you are pushing it.

Is this wise? (back to CS now, not VS). Nope. People should be hired based on
what they are able to do. What they can contribute to the company's mission.
Often-times a more experienced developer just knows the path to a solution, if
I may say, instinctively. And, yes, it is about making a bunch of mistakes and
learning from them.

This, in my eyes at least, is no different than gender discrimination which
also exists in CS.

------
danbmil99
OK Ok, I will bow to the pressure and shave my head if I get offered a $350K +
options CEO spot. There it is, you win, ageist SV founders!

------
jarjoura
Would a 60 year old really want to work 18 hour days with a bunch of
20-somethings crammed into a San Francisco studio converted office?

A Silicon Valley startup is just one type, but there are infinite businesses
out there to start and grow at any age in your life.

~~~
adrianhoward
_Would a 60 year old really want to work 18 hour days with a bunch of
20-somethings crammed into a San Francisco studio converted office?_

Nope.. the 60 year old would want them to succeed rather than working 18 hours
a day ;-)

------
jacalata
_I don't think in the outside world, outside tech, anyone in their 40s would
think age discrimination was happening to them," says blahblah_

That's so unbelievably untrue that I wonder if he cringed when he saw it in
print. My father is completely untechnical and works in government policy. 12
years ago, when he started looking for a new job (aged ~45), he went to a
recruiter who told him to shave his (grey) beard and maybe dye his hair.

While I am sure that Silicon Valley and tech in general does have a more
pronounced age-ism problem than everywhere else, it does nobody any favours to
repeat this kind of hyperbolic bullshit that 'everywhere else is amazing! We
suck!'.

------
keiferski
Two points:

1\. There's a big difference between job-searching at 40 and job-searching at
60. At 60, you're potentially 5 years away from retirement, so it's not
surprising that companies are hesitant to hire.

2\. Depending on the specific startup, younger people really may be more
effective, at least in certain areas. For example, something like Facebook
(during its early days), which targeted college students. A twenty-something
will have much more insight into the mind of a college student than a
60-something. This obviously doesn't apply to areas of the company that don't
relate directly to the end users.

Edit: I don't agree with the logic of companies, I was just playing devil's
advocate.

~~~
timClicks
I don't know why you wouldn't hire someone if 5 years is all you could expect.
Do you seriously believe that your retention rates will be higher for someone
under 30? Also, why would someone in technology need to retire at 65?

------
latraveler
I've been telling people this for years. It needs to be cut out of the SV
culture because if not most of us young guys (27 here) will be suffering from
it on the backend of our careers.

------
bippi
How much of this is age bias, and how much of this is looking for the likely
candidate to work for no money for 80 hours a week like this might turn into
something huge?

------
klochner
The flip side is that you can out-compete by hiring the underpriced developers
with experience.

As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, hiring for experience doesn't make as
much sense if your company is the next iteration on mobile/social with an
uncertain business plan.

In the B2B/enterprise space this makes more sense, and anecdotally I've heard
of great results from hiring people over 40 that can crank out tons of high-
quality code while working sane hours.

------
stevenameyer
I think this bias stems from the perception that people who are older are more
established in life and their ability to support themselves and possibly their
family is not dependent on the success or failure of the company.

I think the model that most people, including investors, see when they picture
early stage start-ups is a small team that is so connected to the success of
the company that they are willing to work themselves to unhealthy lengths if
need be to succeed. That image is often associated with young recent grads or
drop outs because they have student debts, are less likely to be able to find
another job, and don't have any substantial savings to fall back on if the
company goes under.

On some level this does make sense, if you are relying on this company
succeeding to be able to earn a living then you probably want to be looking at
the guy next to you and see a guy in the same boat. However it fails to take
into account the experience or expertise that may be brought into the company
by someone who is older and has proven the ability to succeed in this
industry, which may lead to the success that will earn everyone in the company
a living.

------
minibus
Silicon Valley has got to be crawling with older, talented-as-hell developers.
People (or at least some people) remain awesome with age. I'd hire 'em.

~~~
ShabbyDoo
Does the cost of housing in the Bay Area coupled with older people's need to
provide bedrooms for their children cause them to move to other parts of the
country even if they've spent their 20's in The Valley?

------
namank
A forty year old has an inclination for success and is therefore suited best
for companies in the growth phase.

Twenty year olds seem to be naive enough to go for the impossible.

Or at least that's the mass perception. I think this also might be the reason
for this pseudo-agism. (of course Elon Musk if the perfect counter example)

I equate 20 vs. 40 with Entrepreneur vs. MBA. Same perceptions, similar
stereotypes, same utility.

That said, I love it when a person 20 years older than me actively guides my
inclination towards "big" without stifling it, regarding it as idiotic, or
being indifferent to it. I LOVE partnering up with older folks - they are
professional in the true sense of the word - they can do what they do even
when they are having a bad day. And they like partnering withe me because, I
think, in me they see themselves when they were this old. It's amazing how
much you can learn from people who've been there, done that!

------
adrianhoward
Y'know. In a perverted sort of way the bogus assumptions about age the OP
talks about, further demonstrated in some of the comments here, actually cheer
me up.

More than occasionally I've found an advantage in being underestimated and
then over delivering ;-)

------
holograham
would love to hear pg weigh in on this...

~~~
seiji
Let me ragechannel pg for a minute: People are not created equal. Some are
much smarter and much more capable than others. Once you reach a certain age,
if you haven't "made it," you aren't one of the smarter and much more capable
people. Being younger, you both don't know what you don't know and you haven't
become set in unchangeable broken ways yet. Google likes to hire young so they
can brainwash you into being "googly." Same with other companies. Once your
brain thinks you need six TPS reports every day, it's not worth fixing you
when we can hire younger, unbroken people. VCs love 'em young. Sequoia bluntly
states they prefer to fund two guys working from a dorm room.

These days,"young people" are part of the technology. It's not something they
learn as abstract concepts. They are it and it is them. You wouldn't expect a
50 year old Elbonian mud farmer to go to school and learn to be a world class
electric car designer. But, you would expect a 50 year old world class
electric car designer to still be hot shit.

Or, in song lyrics: _maybe I should learn to shut my mouth -- I am over 25 and
I can't make a name for myself; some nights I break down and cry._

The brilliance of our current situation is what "they" think of you is more
and more irrelevant. Just make something people want. People have unlimited
wants after all.

~~~
chubot
So I'm not a fan of ageism and I wouldn't ascribe it to pg without evidence...

But given the "startup = growth" essay, where he says that only 1 company per
cycle makes any difference to YC's returns, I can see the logic behind ageism.

Young people (I'm not one of them anymore) just have more unpredictable
outcomes. They are the Black Swans.

The Black Swan theory is that the outliers shape our world. And that has been
true in tech for sure -- Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc. are all anomalies.
These companies grew enormously quickly and were all started by very young and
inexperienced men. The two YC success stories that get pointed to -- AirBNB
and DropBox -- were also started by the very young and inexperienced.

Older people are perhaps more likely to be successful. But there is less
variance in their outcomes. There's the logic in investing -- once you're
making money, you're less valuable. Because people know what you're worth.
Before you make any money, people can ascribe crazy valuations to you. It will
be wrong a lot of the time, but it doesn't matter because the one Black Swan
event is what you're looking for. You only have to be right once.

~~~
michaelochurch
_Older people are perhaps more likely to be successful. But there is less
variance in their outcomes._

We _learn how to control our variance_ as we get older. (I'm 29, so I have no
idea if I'm "young" or "old" by SV standards.) High-variance life isn't fun
unless you hit an early home run. Otherwise, it's stressful and shitty.
Experiences like getting fired because you were better than your CTO's-friend
manager and made him insecure are pretty damaging, and they lead to self-
filtering and variance-reduction as a survival strategy.

Give us an R&D environment that doesn't beat the shit out of high-variance
people for 20 years, and you'll see a world where experience doesn't reduce
variance so sharply, but delivers increases on the whole distribution.

~~~
seiji
Can we anchor this comment to the top of the discussion? You've eloquently
characterized the entire problem and a potential solution.

So many current work environments have self defeating dynamics. You're not
allowed to be better than your boss. When that gets thrown away (e.g. startups
-- you have no boss) everybody can thrive. Well, they can thrive if they
haven't been trained over a lifetime to be risk averse due to shitty
management.

------
jaggederest
I think there's a fundamental divide between people who became adults before
the internet existed in the modern form (circa 1995 or so), and after.

I also think that there is effectively another break point at the advent of
the smart phone (circa 2007) - people who become adults after smart phones
were commonplace have an entirely different worldview.

I think that if your focus is narrowly on facility with technology at hand,
ageism is a natural consequence.

I also happen to think that's a bad idea - a diversity of viewpoints is a goal
to be pursued in and of itself.

~~~
quotemstr
> people who become adults after smart phones were commonplace have an
> entirely different worldview.

Care to elaborate?

~~~
jaggederest
As an example: It's entirely possible that they've never been lost. With a
gps-enabled smartphone and mapping, that whole concept goes away.

~~~
Pwnguinz
Anecdotally, I find myself now to be lost more often than prior to. Before
GPS/Mapping on smartphones became common place, I would acquaint myself very
well with where I was going, whereas now I'm much more care free about it--but
on the off chance my destination has no signal, or the phone's battery dies on
me, I'm much more screwed.

------
JEVLON
A couple of years ago I was eighteen, and I needed a job. So I went to a
grocery shop and asked if they were hiring, and I got the reply, "We only hire
15 year olds."

------
eshvk
I completely agree with the thesis of the article but I want to nitpick with
the first few lines: I am not sure whether the converse/shaving your head off
thing is helping is due to the perception of being more in tune with your
coworkers or whether it is because of the person appearing younger.

------
rileyt
Age based cultural separations aside, I think a lot of people, have a really
hard time grasping that experience isn't directly related with skill. There
are tons of 'veteran programmers' who are worse than the majority of 20 year
olds in the valley.

------
RexRollman
I have heard of this but I had assumed that this had to do with younger people
being willing to put into incredibily long hacking sessions; as people get
older they would not have to time or energy to do that.

------
holograham
if there is truly no difference in productivity from excellent programmers
over 40 and "young" programmers why wouldn't there be companies that take
advantage of this obvious bias and hire primarily older programmers? Wouldnt
the decrease in market demand for older developers drive their salary levels
down and thus provide a large market advantage to the company hiring them
exclusively? (obviously assuming equal or better creative and productive
output)

I know this is a classic laissez faire market argument.

Hypothesis: On the whole, older developers are not as productive.

------
hkmurakami
What I really want to know is whether this is a recent (last 15 years -- e.g.
the internet boom years) phenomenon or whether "Silicon Valley" has been this
way since, say, the 70's.

If things have changed, then why?

------
minibus
Hollywood is biased, too. At least it's honest about it.

~~~
ShabbyDoo
Moviegoers are biased, and Hollywood wants to create products which sell. The
people behind the cameras often are old even if the female stars on screen are
barely out of high school. If I see ugly shirts in a store year after year, I
don't blame the fashion house behind them, I blame the people who keep buying
them.

------
spullara
Honestly I have never seen ageism. Only people that didn't continue to learn
everyday not getting hired. BTW, I am old.

------
rumcajz
That's interesting. How can one do that and still claim that "we are hiring
the best 1% of engineers"?

------
photorized
Shirts and sneakers are OK, but the eyelid lift part is a bit sad.

------
tsotha
Secret? When everyone knows something it isn't a secret.

------
abrahamepton
It's a secret?

------
mikecane
Steve Jobs was 56. Nuff said.

------
smeez
Um, this is no secret.

------
timjsv
Older people are probably better at design than we are.

------
michaelochurch
My first thought: _narcissism_. Narcissists hate being around older people
because it reminds them that, some day, they'll be old and unable to do the
sorts of things that narcissists tend to do on the weekend. I don't think that
all founders are narcissists, but if you want to be able to hire narcissists
(which 75% of execs are, let's be honest) then ageism becomes practical,
sadly.

Then again, I think some of it is subconscious and unintentional: unreasonably
harsh age-grading, coming from an inexperienced and privileged set of people
who've never had to do grunt work and therefore have slack-free careers.
People who are young and have high career efficiency ratios expect a linear
trend-- consistently improving projects-- but the reality for most people
(save privileged 22-year-olds) is that they have to take the work they get,
rather than being able to focus on their passion or highly-visible (e.g. open
source) work. I, personally, would love to hire someone in his 60s with no
slack in his career-- I'd make him my personal mentor and figure out how he
did it-- but it's quite rare to find such a person.

The reason ageism exists is that most people have to take low-quality, career-
toxic work to (a) avoid income volatility that becomes more unacceptable with
age, (b) evade the "job hopper" stigma, and (c) remain employable _without_
moving to another city every 3 years, and this creates a world in which
premature decline is far more common than it should be.

~~~
sdoowpilihp
What kind of things do narcissists do on the weekend that would be
specifically limited by age?

~~~
seiji
Many SV startups are proxies for being a close knit frat. Hiring for "cultural
fit" has gone way off the wacko deep end. (Did google start this? "Oh, you
don't have a degree? We won't hire you. Oh, but you do make your own beer and
wear funny shoes? Cultural fit! Hired!")

Your job description skills matter, but only if you also are a functional
alcoholic who is addicted to playing online games for 30+ hours a week in
addition to working 60+ hours a week.*

Startup is Mother. Startup is Father.

* I write this out of bitterness because I don't drink or play video games, which oddly I feel disqualifies me from working many places. "Oh, you don't play xbox? That's okay, I guess. The entire company gets together for six hours on Friday to drink and play marathon games though."

~~~
w1ntermute
I'm in the same category. I don't enjoy drinking and I _hate_ most video
games, especially console ones and _especially_ FPSes. The SV frat culture is
such a turnoff.

~~~
rayiner
What's absolutely hilarious about it is that it's not the same frat culture
that typifies Wall Street. It's the nerd frats.

~~~
jlgreco
Despite being a "nerd", I think the more traditional sort of 'frat' is
actually a lot more inviting. Without the video-game nonsense I think it is
actually more accepting of lifestyles that don't involve primarily a couch.
The thought of spending my own freetime playing video-games is revolting to
me, I associate it with depression and loneliness (yes, online or otherwise
multiplayer games too). It really seems like one of those all-or-nothing
activities where you either spend _hours_ a week doing it, _living_ it, or you
are forever the outsider.

Sure you can game in moderation, but if you do so you won't be a _gamer_. I
think I average _maybe_ a handful of hours a month playing games, and that is
as much as I will ever see myself caring to spend on them. There is no way for
me to relate to people who call themselves gamers.

~~~
w1ntermute
The problem for me is the time investment required to be any good at gaming.
When people say they want to play Super Smash Bros. or Halo or something, I
have no idea what I'm supposed to do, no one wants to show me what to do, and
so I lose interest very quickly. It's not like watching a movie, where you can
spend two hours on it and come out with a decent understanding of the movie,
even if you aren't a movie buff.

~~~
jlgreco
I think I know exactly what you mean. Super Smash Bros. is actually the exact
game that made me realize I was no longer going to pretend to be a gamer, for
exactly the reasons you explain.

------
minibus
Never change, California. Never change.

------
guyzero
Because clearly no other industries or regions in the US are biased against
older workers.

~~~
girlvinyl
Actually, no, not as much. That's the point of the article. Age bias is cited
significantly more frequently in California. That's why the article is news.
The first 1/3 of the article provides a few paragraphs worth of hard numbers
and statistics.

~~~
azakai
California != Silicon Valley, though. It also includes the LA area, for
example.

~~~
potatolicious
I'm not sure how scientific we really need to get about this. Go to San
Francisco, go to Palo Alto, go to Mountain View and hang out with startup
people. You will see this multiple times a day, and it will pervade your
entire impression of the industry.

This phenomenon is not a secret, nor is it obscure.

~~~
azakai
Oh, I am not disagreeing at all that this is a fact.

Just that the numbers they used to support it are a little weak (LA likely has
worse age discrimination for example). It would have been better to not state
numbers at all and stick to the rest of the details in the story.

