
Ageism in the Game Industry - Red_Tarsius
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DavidMullich/20140822/223945/No_Consoles_For_Old_Men_Ageism_In_The_Game_Industry.php
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skrebbel
It's crude, but prevailing ageism makes a big opportunity for non-moronic
employers. Basically, there's a giant talent pool right there for you to hire
from, _no matter your location_ , as long as you don't insist people are 22
and willing to sell all waking hours to your business.

Increasing the average age of your employees is a much smaller change to make
to your company than, for example, hiring remote people (assuming you aren't
already doing that). Even if you're currently the all-work-no-life 80-hours-a-
week always-crunch-time kind of company, if you really have trouble finding
the right talent, there's an option right there for you. It requires more sane
working hours, yes, but maybe that's not a horribly bad idea anyway.

People not even considering this are doing themselves a disservice.

Anecdotally, I have found the argument that not-super-young people are somehow
less smart or less eager to be entirely false.

~~~
ubershmekel
I wonder if increasing the average age of your employees could cause younger
candidates to be less eager to join.

~~~
skrebbel
Not the younger folks I'd want on my team. Note, I said "older", not "boring".

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mark_l_watson
I felt like I experienced some age related bias about ten years ago. I had
been working mostly on Nintendo and Disney projects in California - a great
experience. After my wife and I moved to Arizona, I kept getting calls from
Electronic Arts HR people. After a year or so of getting emails and a few
phone calls from them I said that I would fly to Vancouver for an interview.

I had probably four or five people during the interview process nervously
laugh or giggle when they first saw me. The receptionist who initially showed
me the the interview conference room rolled her eyes at the interviewers while
nodding in my direction. The technical interviewers seemed really weak, as far
as the questions and our interactions. Not very professional.

The good part of the interview was that EA flew me up a day early, and I also
had the morning after the interview to enjoy Vancouver, so it was not a waste
of time. I appreciated a free trip.

I had a very different experience working at Google last year: there was not
any feeling of ageism, at least none that I noticed.

~~~
raverbashing
Didn't EA get the hints of your age? Like graduation year, year of first
projects?

Looks like they're not the brightest bunch

~~~
mark_l_watson
Great point!

I graduated from college in 1973 and that was on my resume. Also, on the phone
I had mentioned that I had mostly retired except for small consulting jobs.

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ejr
"You don’t fit in with our culture"

I've seen similar sentiment in many other places in tech, applied to ageism,
sexism etc. Maybe I'm naïve, but I fail to see this in any way other than
discrimination by proxy.

~~~
Turing_Machine
Whenever I see this I wonder if getting sued for age, sex, or racial
discrimination, and losing, does fit in with the company's "culture". That can
be expensive. Very.

~~~
ejr
The percentage of people who would take that route is very small, I'm afraid.
There are countless little insults and grievances that simply get shrugged off
as the cost of living in society. It shouldn't be that way, but the punishment
for bravery is just too severe.

~~~
Turing_Machine
If no one is hiring them anyway they have nothing to lose, and the payoff can
be quite large.

[http://www.dailynews.com/general-news/20140227/66-year-
old-m...](http://www.dailynews.com/general-news/20140227/66-year-old-man-
awarded-26-million-in-age-discrimination-lawsuit-against-staples)

Note that insulting "jokes" were a factor.

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paul9290
Ageism, sexism, racism, you don't look like me/model(ism) I would say runs
rampant in many industries that are fueled by egos and trying to out do each
other.

I have had more negative experiences dealing with tech douchebags at meetups
and in tech communities in general then say attending hiking meetups via
meetup.com. Everyone at a hiking meetup is there to make friends/not try to
out do each other.

Not to say I havent met some nice people who are not douchebags, but you don't
expect to have to deal with dBags in tech communities whose age range from 20
to 45.

I attend and have attended tech events to meet similar nice people and share
interests, but half the time or more you run into Dbags who aren't genuine,
friendly and make you feel like it's high school all over again.

~~~
Roboprog
I'm happy that this is NOT the case at the monthly SacJUG meetup I attend. I
think there is a "hump" of 40-ish +/\- attendees, but the age ranges from
20-ish to retired, and it's an enthusiastic, friendly, group. Even though the
core Java topics are very "ordinary" and work-related, aimed at the Sacramento
job market, people are always exploring the peripheries for interesting
libraries, new databases and related platforms or alternate JVM compatible
languages. Anyway, it's a friendly group, and we usually go out for a good
long BS/dinner/drink session afterward at one of the local bar & grills.

Of course, Sacramento is not Silicon Valley, and we're just working stiffs,
not maneuvering to make our next million.

~~~
paul9290
Oh I live on the east coast and experienced this from DC to Baltimore to
Philadelphia to New York.

Again, not everyone in the "scene," is a dBag, it's just jarring to meet and
encounter a large percentage of them!

It makes starting up and doing a start up a whole lot tougher, but whatever
you just do it because you are driven no matter how you are treated.

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loydb
It's not just the game industry -- it's high-tech in general. As a 50-year-old
programmer with zero desire to manage people, I am in the same boat.

~~~
ObviousScience
If it makes you feel any better, as someone in his late 20s that has led a
couple teams and is eyeing management, I can't think of any particular reason
not to hire you (except maybe that you'd demand more money than a recently
started programmer, but now we're just talking cost-benefit analysis, which
seems a fine basis for decisions) and several benefits, assuming you'd be okay
taking direction from someone that much younger than you.

Can you perhaps elaborate on the kind of responses you get or conjecture on
why you think people are making those kinds of choices?

I've heard similar stories from mentors and older friends who work in tech,
but I've never really gotten a chance to discuss it in detail. It's kind of an
awkward topic, so I won't take it badly if you decline, I'm just honestly
hoping to hear a view that I'm not exposed to, being young and fresh in the
market.

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kabdib
I review a lot of resumes. Age is _never_ a factor. It's all about experience;
basically, trying to figure out what value you bring.

If your resume is difficult to read, then that's a problem. I still try, but I
lean pretty heavily towards a "no".

If your resume doesn't contain any detail and I can't figure out what you've
actually done, then I stop. I'm done. Learn how to write a better resume.

If I still can't tell what you've done because your resume is littered with
phrases like "empowered the team..." and "synergized the product..." then it's
a pretty much total plonk. Feel free to rewrite.

A good resume tells me what you've done and doesn't contain unsupported stuff.
I can skip over obvious verbiage ("... team player ... fast learner..."), but
in the end it's what you've done and how you did it that matters.

How old are you? I don't care, I don't even want to know.

~~~
lostcolony
That's nice. Are you the only one involved in the hiring process? You receive
resumes directly, and make the call yourself without consulting and relying
upon the opinions of others who might be biased? If so, great! Too bad you're
working for such a small company that is hiring so comparatively few.

~~~
Roboprog
Indeed. The times here and there I've looked over resumes, they were the ones
that H/R and The Management saw fit to send to me.

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EliRivers
Cheap labour from kids too young to realise how much they're ripped off, and
how badly the company is treating them. The bizarre glamour of making games
attracts enough suckers to the big production-line, conveyor-belt studios that
there's no need to pay well or treat the staff well.

People with experience tend to know what their time is worth, and tend to tell
the boss to shove it when he's taking the piss, and can see past the glamour.

~~~
nilkn
I hear this sentiment a lot.

Honestly, I think young people in the technology industry generally are paid
very well and treated very respectfully as well, so I've never understood
where this notion comes from.

What other career options would come close without requiring significantly
more education? Finance maybe, but young people are definitely treated way
better in technology than in finance. Other engineering disciplines generally
can't keep up in pay with software development, with the one exception being
chemical engineering.

Practicing law is out without getting a law degree, passing the bar, taking
out a vast amount of debt, and then successfully getting a high-paying job
(which is _not_ easy in the current law market).

Practicing medicine is even harder. Medical school is 4 years and costs even
more than law school. Then you'll have a bare minimum of 3 years of residency,
during which time you will be a practicing doctor but will be paid less than a
freshly minted programmer (and you'll be treated like shit too, working 80
hours a week).

So, yeah, I think programmers, even young ones, have it pretty damn good right
now. As a career, it's pretty much "best in class," meaning that it's at least
as good as all of its peers in terms of entry requirements.

~~~
EliRivers
_Honestly, I think young people in the technology industry generally are paid
very well and treated very respectfully as well, so I 've never understood
where this notion comes from._

We're not talking about the technology industry generally. We're talking about
the games industry. The games industry, generally speaking, pays worse and
offers worse conditions. Because they can. People with more experience know
when they're being ripped off, and know when the working conditions are far
worse than they could get outside the games industry. Kids blinded by the
glamour of the games industry are cheap labour.

~~~
nilkn
My bad, I was too quick to respond to your comment. I was thrown off a bit by
the other discussions in this comment thread that seem to be discussing the
technology industry in general.

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walru
I'm 36 with seventeen years experience as a designer/creative director shipped
dozens of titles on all platforms since the PSX and no one will touch me. I've
long suspected that my age was partially to blame, but I also know it's
because most studios don't value design as a discipline.

~~~
Roboprog
If you started working at 19, you _might_ consider going to college and
getting some kind of degree, just in case.

List a recent AA in art (or whatever suits your tastes) and the most recent 10
years experience before that and be done with the rest of the list on your
resume.

The game platform you worked on in 1997 is probably about as significant for
most employers as the C code for batch processing I did around that time :-)

(I'm not implying that you didn't learn anything valuable - of course you did
- but trimming resumes to a Goldilocks size for the benefit of the reader is a
fine art)

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lostcolony
The fifty year old with ten years experience in X is identical to that thirty
year old with ten years experience in X, except with an extra twenty years of
other experiences to draw upon. Any other consideration you make based on
his/her age is pure unfounded assumption; age should be a -plus- when hiring,
not a detriment.

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joosters
It's notable that in all the recent 'diversity' announcements made by tech
companies, none of them (AFAIK) have studied the age range of their employees.
The subject seems to be ignored by them.

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raverbashing
You know what? Good

Older people have less patience for endless crunch time, BS management, new
overhyped fads (but that's more in Web development than game), unreal
deadlines, etc.

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claudiusd
I think many people cry "ageism" when there is in fact a legitimate reason not
to consider a vastly experienced person for a role: people with more
experience typically demand more pay for it, not to mention that taking a
significant salary cut is something few people can afford to do once they get
settled in to a lifestyle. If I don't need that much experience for the role
I'm hiring for then I'll take the less experienced person every time in order
to save cash.

Merely starting the interview process with someone who far exceeds the
requirements for the role is a risk... my employees and I may waste our time
interviewing this person just to find out their salary requirements are too
high. I would say "too experienced" is a legitimate reason to reject someone
from a role for this reason. This is especially true in the gaming industry,
which is extremely competitive and has no shortage of young talent with low
salary requirements that are appropriate for senior management.

~~~
nbm
Strangely, you're describing ageism. Replace older/more experienced with
women, and salary demands with pregnancy and family responsibilities, and
you're at sexism.

Older people tend to have more job experience. Not even starting the interview
process on someone because they have a lot of experience, means not starting
the interview process for older people, which is ageism.

Rather make the offer if they earn it, even if it isn't in the range the
person might seem to want. It's up to them to decide to accept it or not.

~~~
claudiusd
This is not ageism. I can judge a candidate based on her work experience. I
would be just as quick to reject a 20-something with too much experience as a
50-something, and I would absolutely hire a 50-something with the right level
of experience.

Don't get me wrong - there is an ageism problem in the tech community. If we
take these arguments at face value though and don't make an effort to
understand why a rational, unbiased person might appear to discriminate, then
cannot effectively address the problem.

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matheusbn
Quote: "After several phone and in-person interviews, the company flew him and
his wife to their location, put them up in an expensive hotel, and conducted a
final interview. However, in that interview he was finally introduced to the
person who would be his immediate supervisor, someone twenty years younger.
The next day, he was told that he was no longer a candidate."

Wait... they passed over all this to figure his age in person? His résumé
hadn't age?

~~~
lostcolony
You don't put age on a resume.

You may leave out earlier projects and graduation date on a resume; even if
you don't, speaking as someone who has interviewed, you don't really look at
the years. "Oh, they worked at X, Y, and Z", not "Oh wow, they've been doing
this professionally for twenty five years, they're at least in their mid 40s".
Especially if it's a newish technology. This person has ten years of
Javascript experience, two of that with Angular, awesome, we need a front end
dev familiar with Angular. Holy crap, they're in their fifties; they just
didn't list, or I didn't notice, all the non-relevant experience.

~~~
matheusbn
I see what you mean!

But in that case they should do a webcam interview first, before make someone
move around (even it's paid) to see he "doesn't" fit the "requirements".

~~~
lostcolony
Well, he wasn't moving, yet. Just he and his wife were flown out for the
interview; his wife was included so they could take a day or so to go look for
rental properties for the short term, I am guessing.

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jiggy2011
Why would you want to work in the game industry at 50? Poor pay, too many
hours and being managed by someone 20 years younger than you.

The only exception I can imagine is if you have already built enough of a
reputation to go and do your own thing via your own studio or kickstarter etc
in which case you don't need anyone's permission.

 _> According to data collected by the Entertainment Software Association, the
percentage of people over 50 years old playing games is slightly higher than
the percentage of people under 50 playing games. We ARE your audience._

It would be interesting to adjust that data for amount of time spent gaming
and amount of money spent on gaming related products.

Somehow I don't get the impression that COD servers at peak times are rammed
full of senior citizens.

~~~
w1ntermute
I've never understood why someone would _ever_ want to work in the game
industry, regardless of their age. It's full of people who are willing to make
absurd sacrifices just so they can make games.

It's a much more rational decision to write code for a "boring" industry.
You're still honing your software engineering prowess and gaining experience,
but you're getting paid a lot more and not being required to work ridiculous
hours - a win-win situation.

~~~
kabdib
I usually tell "kids" (I'm 53 and this describes a lot of you, okay? No
offense :-) ) not to get started in the games industry. I lucked out by
starting out writing game cartridges, then doing systems programming for the
next 25 years. Now I'm back to games (or rather, gaming platforms).

Remember who got rich in the California Gold Rush? Not the folks digging the
gold, but instead it was the shop-keepers, bankers, real-estate men and
similar infrastructure-like people. Be one of them. I don't mean go into
things expecting to be rich, but don't be a starry-eyed fool and start at
(say) EA just out of college, get burned-out and then expect to have anything
out of it. Make sure you can use other things than a shovel.

Get a grounding in systems. Do graphics, do networking, do LAMP, basically do
as much as you can "wide" and focus on some areas that interest you ("deep").
Then you can work on games (great!) or servers or UX or whatever you chose.
You can work at a games company (great!) or you can work some place else (also
highly recommended). Don't focus on games because they're cool, do the tech
behind them, with games as an incidental.

Don't get into games and expect that rewriting the same piece of code in the
same soccer game year after year is going to be fulfilling. You'll wish you
had the ability to go somewhere else, so ensure that you do.

And for God's sake, _never_ think that you're going to get a foot in the door
by starting out in Q/A. Just don't do that.

