Age Bias In IT: the Reality Behind the Rumors 582
CWmike writes "Is high tech really that tough on older workers, or are they simply not pulling their weight in an industry that never stops innovating? Age bias: Some consider it IT's dirty little secret, or even IT's big open secret. Older workers have been hit harder by the recession. '[Age bias is] something that no [employer] talks about. But it's a reality in tech that if you're 45 years of age and still writing C code or Cobol code and making $150,000 a year, the likelihood is that you won't be employed very long,' says Vivek Wadhwa, who currently holds academic positions at several universities, including UC Berkeley, Duke and Harvard. Wadhwa's observation indicates that age bias is a simplistic label for a complicated set of factors that influence the job prospects for senior tech employees."
Define "not pulling their weight" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:$150k per year!? (Score:4, Insightful)
$150k clearly goes a lot farther in your fantasy world than in reality.
Different World? (Score:5, Insightful)
We would kill for more Cobol programmers. Many of our big iron people have retired and we need to replace them. None of the younger applicants have the experience that we need to maintain our mainframe systems... and they don't want to learn. These systems are not going away but the human resources are.
Yup, thats certainly true (Score:5, Insightful)
Especially since a lot of IT managers in their 20s are usually the ones who arn't so great at producing actual software so are slowly moving sideways into project management before they get found out and don't like being picked up on stupid technical decisions by someone old enough to be their dad. I speak from personal experience.
Age bias = loss of experience (Score:4, Insightful)
There is an age bias in IT, always has been. It is my observation that this engenders a younger, and therefore, less experienced staff who have no access to older people who have a lot to offer in terms of their experience and developed skills. And so one sees these younger developers struggle with issues that an elder would have a ready solution to. In the development shop I work in it constantly amazes and frustrates me to see the inexperience manifest itself in the functional code delivered. FRs and NFRs that I take for granted are missed completely, requiring a return to the codebase to implement later, if at all.
It is not a matter of pulling weight. More, it is a different weight that the elder will pull, and that is not measured in sheer volume of code, but in quality and the reduction not only in gaps and defects, but also improved long-term productivity. Intangibles in a project-led culture that IT has become, where the load is transferred to in-production where disproportionate levels of human support are required to keep systems and services running.
soon they will want a post doc for help desk L1 (Score:4, Insightful)
soon they will want a post doc for help desk Level 1 and then can you a few year later.
Re:$150k per year!? (Score:5, Insightful)
$150k a year goes very far where I live. Correspondingly, though, there are no jobs which pay $150k a year here so the point is moot.
Re:C programmers? Wanted! (Score:5, Insightful)
I had an interview yesterday, in fact. first one in months (been out of work a while...)
they didn't even let me finish the interview.
I've been writing C since the mid 80's. and while I don't know every corner of C (and certainly not c++), I do get my job done and my code does tend to run and run well. many shipping networking boxes have my code inside them.
but I can't find a C programming job.
and I'm 50. in the bay area.
I also hate to say it, but there is racism, too. I look around and find the indian guys trying to thumbs-down the westerners. makes me sick to even say such things but I'm finding its true. I enjoy working with indian guys but I am very much turned off by the 'take-over' that I'm seeing right before my eyes. over the last 10 years, the tech industry is flushing out western guys and making it an 'import only' field.
its not just age. its 'reverse racism' too and I wish I was kidding!
Symptom of a bigger issue.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Age is a minor issue if you ask me. A larger issue is that you tend to hit a wall on compensation around your early 30's. Meaning, my experience is that around $130K consistantly is about the best you can do working for someone. Once you reach that barrier, the logical next step is to start building/marketing your own products/services. Personally, I am not a big fan of services because you have to keep your work performance at such a rate that burnout because a big issue. Also, being an older developer, the advantage you have over younger developers is that hopefully you have saved a good part of that high salary rather than blowing it on fast cars and houses so that it opens up options for you...
In short... As a developer, you need to either grow or dwindle. Some do not have the skills/desire to move forward. For those, the decline in wages and stagnation of performance is clearly going to be a problem over the long haul.
Re:unrealistic expectations (Score:5, Insightful)
you're an idiot.
you cannot see that your company is burning YOU and others out.
but you can call it 'pace' all you want. but its the company LAUGHING at you. you will be disposed of soon enough. so save me a laugh at your expense when you get your pink slip.
Cobol, Snobol, and low-ball [Re:Different World?] (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I think that that statement if you're still writing Cobol code the likelihood is that you won't be employed very long was just a quip-- the author of the article was trying to be funny, and that was the oldest language he could think of. I expect that the workers who can maintain Cobol probably aren't likely to be laid off without warning, because they can't be replaced by twenty-one-year-old coders who are willing to work for ramen noodles and a vague promise of a stake in some future IPO.
Re:C programmers? Wanted! (Score:3, Insightful)
but I can't find a C programming job.
Then you're exactly the sort of person the article is talking about - a curmudgeon who wants to keep on doing exactly what he was doing in the 1980s.
A youngster would have a hard time finding a C programming job, too.
Re:C programmers? Wanted! (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually for embedded work there is still a lot of C coding going on, and it's not all that easy to find qualified people in that area. Of course - if you do embedded work you also need to have decent understanding of hardware, just coding is not sufficient.
Re:The bottom line (Score:3, Insightful)
I wish I could be there when you reach retirement and realize that you bent most, if not all, of your life around staying employable. You are correct. For-profit corporations are chartered with the highest goal being making a profit. Which means they don't care about your family life, your health, or your particular aspirations beyond what is required by law. You might think those things are less important than being employed right now but I guarantee that you won't think that later on. Having a work/life balance isn't just bullshit that lazy people come up with. Keeping that balance is getting harder and harder but it's the difference between a fulfilled life and a life filled with regrets.
Re:C programmers? Wanted! (Score:5, Insightful)
Disagree.
Writing a GUI in C, maybe. Writing an embedded controller, not a problem.
Re:Is Slashdot really that tough on older posts? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, and how the heck do you expect me to if everyone keeps asking exactly that question.
Seriously. I've been sitting in too many job interviews (as the interviewer, or actually, as the guy who assesses the person being interviewed by HR because HR knows pretty much NOTHING what I can use, hence I demanded to sit in there for the interview. I got kinda tired of the "javascript experts" they sent me for work that requires intimate knowledge of x86 assembler). And whenever we're hiring for a "junior" something (i.e. entry level, assistant position) and I hear HR ask exactly this question I feel like jumping at her throat. NO, of course he did NOT do this job before. Why the hell would someone with previous experience apply for a junior/apprentice level position at all?
Re:C programmers? Wanted! (Score:4, Insightful)
Your post is absurd, and displays the narrow mindedness that is pointed out in the article as a weakness of older workers.
C++ is an extrememly powerful tool.
Powerful tools can cut off your fingers... but they can also allow a skilled work to create something incredible.
Re:Japanese company (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems to be. While working for a Japanese customer, they didn't take me serious 'til I brought our utility man along who was close to retirement and told them he's my superior. Everything went fine from that moment onwards. He didn't know anything about the matter at hand, but all he really had to do was to nod from time to time.
Re:Define "not pulling their weight" (Score:5, Insightful)
We still have systems that run Cobol... but we're not doing anything new with them, and if fact planning on replacing them in a few years.
I suspect you guys have been saying that for a few years now? ;)
Horse Hocky (Score:5, Insightful)
This is so much horse hockey. I’m a 44 year old software architect and have no trouble make a 6 figure salary. As a consultant I change the company I’m working for regularly and don’t see any age bias. What I do see is a work environment that many over 40 workers do not like.
1) It is a learning business. The day you are not willing to learn the newest technology or language you are going to lose your job. Many over 40 workers get complacent and stop learning.
2) You must earn your salary. You can’t work as a programmer and expect 10% raises every year if you are not adding value. If you have been promoted to senior developer because you’ve been there that long but, can’t really do the job you are likely to be laid off.
3) Most new developers are crap. They might know the language but, they don’t have real world experience building applications that meet requirements, scale, are well documented and engineered for change. Older developers that have learned the hard lessons and can demonstrate that experience are well compensated.
I’ve seen lots of people young and old fired from this business. Mostly because for some reason people believe that just anybody can pick up a book and be a developer in 21 days. If you aren’t adding value commiserate with your salary you should not be making your salary and that is true for the young and old in every job.
Stupid dipshit. (Score:3, Insightful)
if you're 45 years of age and still writing C code or Cobol code and making $150,000 a year, the likelihood is that you won't be employed very long,' says Vivek Wadhwa, who currently holds academic positions at several universities, including UC Berkeley, Duke and Harvard.
The fact that this dipshit [wadhwa.com] conflates C and Cobol, pretty much invalidates everything he can say on the subject.
Re:Is Slashdot really that tough on older posts? (Score:3, Insightful)
Only those that know they don't know shit and are in management precisely because they don't know shit. Which is, like, 100% in management, else they'd do something productive.
I've taken the technical management position when I've looked around at the who else they would've put in that position and said "Oh, God! No!!" I usually wait until some other qualified person can take it over and go back to design and coding.
I've had hideous managers who thought that who ever the data entry clerk is on MS Project must be the technical lead.
Good management is every bit as daunting as good coding -- and a stellar manager is every bit as rare as a stellar developer. I still miss working for Sandy who realized that the best thing a manager could do was protect his people from other managers. His team was the most productive.
Re:The bottom line (Score:4, Insightful)
Like it or not, I can get those a dime a dozen overseas.
And get them to do what, exactly?
The overhead needed to maintain requirements documentation, change processes and all the contractual garbage that goes along with outsourcing is often higher than just writing the damned code yourself. Management loves to take a systems architecture/coding job that has a 50/50 resource split and tell the systems guy to drop the coding half. They figure it will save them 50%. Never mind that the poor bastard (which I've been on numerous occasions) that has to incur the additional tasks of contract management, dealing with corporate business and legal departments. Then there's implementing additional QA that will stand up to legal challenges when your contractor f*cks up. Because now its off to court or mediation to figure out who's fault it was and who pays. We never used to sue the people in the next cubicle when there was an error in the requirements or implementation. We just grabbed a conference room and fixed it.
Re:In the UK, it's the agencies that are the probl (Score:4, Insightful)
If you do leave your age off your CV, or "mistype" it down by 10 or 15 years, you'll get interviews but no offers on the basis that you lied on your application. If you put in a tru age of 40+ you won't even get an acknowledgement email - and if you phone up, you'll be fobbed off.
It may different in the UK, but in the US you should absolutely not put your age in your CV (unless you are a baby auditioning for diaper commercials).
Only list positions from the last 15 or so years, not every job you've ever held. If you did relevant work in those older positions, you can have a "skills" section that isn't tied to an employer or time period.
For education, list school and concentration, but not graduating year.
And don't lie. Especially about something like your age. The UK may be different, but in the US at some point you will have give your employer your date of birth, even if it's just on your ID establishing you can legally work in the US.
Ageism in IT -- Why not? However... (Score:4, Insightful)
As a sysadmin, in most of the places I've worked, particularly in the larger organizations that have been around for a while, the ages of the employees have been about the same: there are some younger ones, some older ones and a bunch in between. The young ones get paid less, while the old ones tend to have a better idea of how the organization works overall. Therefore, management will try to get rid of, or avoid, the older ones when they can simply because they are more expensive, but not that much more valuable. That's one way to look at it.
There's also another way to look at employees. On the one hand there are the dime-a-dozen types who are always needed for mundane tasks, but who are not good at working independently, solving difficult problems, recovering crashed systems, working in an organized fashion, writing coherent reports, etc. These people never constitute the brains of an organization's IT department. On the other hand there are the relatively rare people who actually do have good brains, are interested in the various technical challenges, solve difficult problems all the time, who write all the detailed reports and can be counted on when disaster strikes no matter when it does.
IMO, older IT people of the first type are much more likely to suffer from age-related discrimination than older IT people of the second type. In my experience, upper management always finds out who the really important people are in the IT department -- the people they know can be counted on to get things running again following a major incident.
The main problem for (prospective) employees of the second type is how to get recognized as such. Indeed, for an employer it's the much same: how to find these people and then how to retain their services.