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United States IT Technology

US Tech Sector Skews Younger Than the Workforce As a Whole, Study Finds (wsj.com) 118

Posted by BeauHD from the tech-sector-trends dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: Older information-technology professionals are being passed over by employers, even as IT job openings soar to record highs and employers say recruiting tech talent is a challenge. The IT workforce in the U.S. skews young: Workers aged 22 to 44 account for 61% of the IT sector, but only 49% of the workforce across all occupations, according to 2019 data compiled by IT trade group CompTIA. On the other side, workers aged 45 and older represent 38% of all IT employees at U.S. companies, while the comparable figure for all occupations is 44%, CompTIA said. The largest gap occurs among workers ages 35 to 44. They make up 29% of the IT workforce, but just 21% of the overall national workforce, said Tim Herbert, CompTIA's senior vice president for research and market intelligence. One problem is that some older IT workers who get too comfortable with their skills risk falling behind, says Michael Solomon, an advisory firm for senior technology job seekers. Another issue is cost.

"By the time many tech workers are in their 50s and 60s, they often have top-level compensation packages," the report says. "The age imbalance between IT and the overall U.S. workforce began roughly a decade ago and has grown over the years, researchers have found."
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US Tech Sector Skews Younger Than the Workforce As a Whole, Study Finds More

US Tech Sector Skews Younger Than the Workforce As a Whole, Study Finds

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  • Wrong diagnosis (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Monday November 25, 2019 @11:53PM (#59455384)

    The tech workforce skews young because it has expanded by a huge factor over a generation.

    When I was young, far fewer people worked in tech, and when I started college, CS wasn't even an available major. So, of course, there are fewer old tech workers, not because they were squeezed out by ageist policies, but because all those excess old tech workers didn't exist in the first place.

    • Re:Wrong diagnosis (Score:5, Insightful)

      by epiphani ( 254981 ) <epiphani@@@dal...net> on Tuesday November 26, 2019 @12:11AM (#59455440)

      Don't know why this is marked troll - it's a very valid point.

      Workers aged 22 to 44 account for 61% of the IT sector

      Someone 44 would have turned 18 around 1995... or, they would have been a teen when computers in homes started to become common. Of course there's a huge age split difference. Prior to the 90s, computing was inaccessible to the large majority of the population.

      I'm 38, and when I was in highschool, there were "computer" courses on touch typing. The large majority of the population couldn't type- it was an actual, marketable skill. Typing. Now the average 10 year old can type 50wpm. Of course the workforce is skewed to those under 44.

      • It was modded down because we want to whine about ageism (again).

      • When I was in highschool in the from 1977-1982 on I took typing. I was the only male in that class.

        • I used to choose classes for that very reason because I figured it would be a good way to meet women. It didn't work, but it was totally worth it.

        • I took home-ec in junior high. The other guys all took wood working. They got a really nice treehouse by the end of the year. In my class? Girls. Baking cookies. Girls. Cooking. Girls. Baking cake. Girls. Some other stuff I don't remember. And oh yeah, girls.

        • My state required typing so everyone, in theory, had a skill to fall back on for a job.

          Ironically they got rid of it with the coming of computers, making modern kids be hunters and peckers. Stupid.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jbengt ( 874751 )
          When I was in high school, from 69 thru 73, I never took typing. But I did learn how to type in college just because I had to type papers. Knowing how to play the piano helped a little. Can't imagine typing 50 words a minute, though.
          I've been using word processors since the early 80s, and I've gotten so used to be able to easily correct typos, cut and paste, rearrange, and edit along the way, I wonder how I managed to do it in college with just a pen and a manual typewriter.

        • When I was in highschool in the from 1977-1982 on I took typing. I was the only male in that class.

          Weird. I graduated from high school only five years after you did and in my state typing was a mandatory course, for everyone. Not in high school, but in junior high.

      • Someone 44 would have turned 18 around 1995

        44 year old tech worker here. I turned 18 in 1993. Because I was born in 1975.
        This math brought to you by an elderly tech worker.

      • "there were "computer" courses on touch typing". I wish schools still had those. Learning how to touch type correctly using all your hand fingers requires proper training and lots of practice. Is such a shame that most new grads have no bad habits typing. I'm 46. I started programming when I was 12 years old on a Commodore 16. Commodore and Atari ST were readily available and cheap; Kids with more money learned in Apples II. At 15. I switched to a "real" computer 8080 with 640mb ram and 500mb HDD.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 )

        Prior to the 90s, computing was inaccessible to the large majority of the population.

        Um, no.

        TRS-80s were in schools in the 70s.

        I had a Vic-20 and an Atari 600XL as a kid, before the Commodore 64 and the IBM PC.

        People were typing in BASIC programs and writing their own programs long before the 90s.

        Sneer if you like, but figuring out how to make those machines do things was valuable experience, due to their limitations.

        And that's not even counting nerds who tinkered with electronics and stuff before that.

        • Um...yes. The GP (included in your own quote) clearly stated a majority didn't have access to computers which is 100% true. Through the 80s and most of the 90s most households did not have home computers. When schools had them it was one to dozens if not hundreds of students.

          The kids writing BASIC or assembly on their home 8-bit were the extreme minority. The number of kids tinkering with electronics was even smaller.

        • I had a TRS-80 in 1978. (4K RAM baby!)
          I was pretty much a weirdo. There were less than a dozen people in my freshman HS class (of over 800 people) who had computers.
          I think it was 3 TRS-80s, 2 Commodore PETs and a few TI-99As

          We were a definite minority, even though we were in one of the most high-tech schools around. My high school was literally down the road from NASA JSC, maybe 3 miles away. Almost everyone's dad was an engineer or technician at NASA.

          So yes, while computers existed and were available

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Hasaf ( 3744357 )
          When I was in High School, around 1983, the school got Apple II computers. However, they had no idea what to do with them. However, considering that a computer was viewed as a super calculator, it was a no brainer to assign them to the math teachers. Thus, a student needed to be in calculus in order to be able to use them.

          Fortunately, there was an accountant in town that allowed us to use his computers after hours at his office. I ended up getting a Radio Shack Colour Computer, it had a great set of "lea

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jbengt ( 874751 )

        I'm 38, and when I was in highschool, there were "computer" courses on touch typing. The large majority of the population couldn't type- it was an actual, marketable skill. Typing. Now the average 10 year old can type 50wpm.

        I'm 63 and when I was in high school, they took 4 weeks out of geometry to teach us rudimentary Fortran programming. (and yes, I did drop my stack of punch cards and had to sort them out). I never took typing. Typing is still a marketable skill, but with word processing power so read

    • Re:Wrong diagnosis (Score:5, Informative)

      by magzteel ( 5013587 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2019 @12:39AM (#59455530)

      The tech workforce skews young because it has expanded by a huge factor over a generation.

      When I was young, far fewer people worked in tech, and when I started college, CS wasn't even an available major. So, of course, there are fewer old tech workers, not because they were squeezed out by ageist policies, but because all those excess old tech workers didn't exist in the first place.

      You didn't read the article. From TFAYDR:
      " 2017 study by Visier Inc., a cloud-based analytics platform for human resources professionals, found that IT job seekers aged 34 to 51 made up 41% of the available enterprise tech talent, but only 27% of new hires. Millennials, aged 20 to 33 at the time the study was conducted, were nearly 50% more likely to land an IT job than their older counterparts, it found. The study was based on an analysis of 330,000 employees from 43 large U.S. enterprises."

    • That's true.

      Also, TFS points out:

      "By the time many tech workers are in their 50s and 60s, they often have top-level compensation packages," the report says.

      If you have many years of experience but you aren't learning about cool new shit that interests you, you're leaving a lot of money on the table, and possibly getting bored. Decades pf experience with DOS won't get you that far, decades of being on the leading edge of Linux development will let you name your price.

      When a hiring manager asks "do you have

      • I hope ftp wasn't your fault. Someone was smoking hard on that one.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Cederic ( 9623 )

          FTP is awesome.

          I mean, it's flawed to hell and entirely insecure, but it mostly just works. Fast. Simple.

          I like FTP.

      • Not always (Score:5, Informative)

        by dtmos ( 447842 ) * on Tuesday November 26, 2019 @07:15AM (#59456240)

        The problem is, one can't have 30 years of experience with a technology that's only 2 years old, and it's cheaper to hire a 20-year-old with 2 years' experience in the technology than it is to hire a 50-year-old with 2 years' experience in the technology. The tricky part isn't keeping up with the latest technology; it's staying in situations where your 30 years of learning before you learned the latest technology is valued.

        This includes paying attention to the profitability of the business division you are in (or cash flow, if it is a small company), as your personal skills or experience will count for almost nil if the division is closed. (I say "almost" nil, because one's reputation is one's most valuable asset, and it's possible that one can get a job elsewhere -- but that's not the way to bet.)

        I'm several years older than dirt myself and, when I speak to high school or college students interested in engineering I always emphasize the need to pay attention to your career, especially as you pass 50. The penalty is being viewed as an especially expensive worker, being the first on the layoff (redundancy) list just as you are trying to finalize your retirement plan, take care of elderly parents, put kids through school, etc. Oh, and don't forget the loss of employer-contributed health care (in the US) -- often the cruelest blow of all.

        To be honest, I spent 20 years in IETF and IEEE standards development, and it was the biggest mistake of my career. Being known as "the standards guy", instead of someone directly associated with getting a product out the door that quarter, can be a liability, not an asset, during a business downturn, even if one has knowledge valuable in the long term.

        • > when I speak to high school or college students interested in engineering I always emphasize the need to pay attention to your career, especially as you pass 50

          Good point! You need to be intentional about your career. Decide where you want to be 5-10 years from now, what you want to be doing. Volunteer for projects that take you in that direction.

          > I spent 20 years in IETF and IEEE standards development

          I wonder if DJB has STFU up yet :D

        • The problem is, one can't have 30 years of experience with a technology that's only 2 years old, and it's cheaper to hire a 20-year-old with 2 years' experience in the technology than it is to hire a 50-year-old with 2 years' experience in the technology. The tricky part isn't keeping up with the latest technology; it's staying in situations where your 30 years of learning before you learned the latest technology is valued.

          A lot of companies have fallen for the idea that you pay for the cheapest help possible.

          It is the idea that a brand new worker is superior to an older one. It turns out that is a great way to destroy a project.

        • The problem is, one can't have 30 years of experience with a technology that's only 2 years old, and it's cheaper to hire a 20-year-old with 2 years' experience in the technology than it is to hire a 50-year-old with 2 years' experience in the technology.

          The thing is, the 2 year old "technology" is usually just a retread of old ideas, dressed up in new buzzwords.

          Oh, you've reinvented functions again, giving them a new name? That's nice.

        • Be in management or start your own company by 50.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Bengie ( 1121981 )
          Depends on what you mean by "technology". All technology that I work with is 60+ years old, like pretty much all of AWS services. Just new shiny coats over old concepts. Trivial to learn.

      • That's true.

        Also, TFS points out:

        "By the time many tech workers are in their 50s and 60s, they often have top-level compensation packages," the report says.

        If you have many years of experience but you aren't learning about cool new shit that interests you, you're leaving a lot of money on the table, and possibly getting bored.

        It is amusing that so many younger people simply assume that because someone in their 50's and 60's has fallen behind though. There are some people who rest on their earlier education, and no doubt, but most of those have long transitioned to management.

        Most of the younger crowd in my place came into work full of the knowledge that they knew more than anyone else there. Yet they didn't, and I know it was tough on them to have old Ol school them. When a worker keeps up, they are incredibly valuable. And

    • I think your point is indeed one aspect that impacts things. However I don't think that comes close to explaining places like Google or Facebook where their workforce average age is somewhere under 30. Places like Silicon Valley laid off workers by the tens of thousands and many of them had trouble find jobs again. Where did they all go?

      https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/1... [cnbc.com]

      I have seen rampant ageism in technology for too many years. Anecdotally I have seen too many times where I was one of the oldest person aro

  • Get a government IT job... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Politicians have spent decades demonizing public service that young people avoid government jobs like the plague. Government IT jobs in particular skews toward older workers as there is no mandatory retirement age. Many of my coworkers are in their 50s, 60s and 70s.

    • Well more to the point there are a lot of important and fulfilling tech jobs in non-tech sectors.
      Government, Healthcare, Agriculture, manufacturing... you will be surprised that in these non-tech sectors that a lot of the new fancy tech out of Silicon Valley has been in play for years. The age of the staff is much older, but they are just as good often much better then the new whipper snappers who jump in and make the mistakes we old guys haven’t done in decades.
      Occasionally we get a kid out of thes

  • "a challenge" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by astrofurter ( 5464356 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2019 @12:24AM (#59455492)

    employers say recruiting tech talent is a challenge

    Maybe that's because they're offering shitty wages, mandatory unpaid overtime, unethical business models, no remote work, know-nothing managers, and miserable open plan office space? Recruiting is actually pretty easy if you can offer superior pay and an interesting project.

    Or maybe it's just an outright lie, to drum up political support for yet more H1B unwelcome-guest workers. The inbred aristocrats who own Silicon Valley have a real hard-on for replacing the indigenous workforce with imported helots.

    • Maybe that's because they're offering shitty wages

      Are you saying that there are millions of capable but idle tech workers just waiting to be offered higher wages before they will accept a job?

      • I know a lot of guys who got out of the software business because of the stagnant wages and shitty work conditions.

        Moreover, many companies are quite stupid with their personnel decisions. Couple years ago I was doing some work for a VC-backed company in the Bay. Most of their codebase was an unholy mess of spaghetti and dog turds. But there were a few parts that were really nice - clean, clear, tested, etc. All written by the same guy.

        So I asked the bosses, who is this guy Peter? (Not his real name.)

      • As some who has been on many interviews on the recruiting side. I have seen many of my co-workers trying to make the applicant fail. Somehow they want to be smarter. In every case, we did need the talent and had serious trouble hiring. But the panel keep rejecting for the most minute errors. Typical having a dude asks you for a programming question, of course, he already has a solution path in his/her mind and almost anything you come up with will be deemed subpar in other occasions we give 2 hours to write
        • So true. A lot of this is just formality disputes over "best practices" like keeping your pinky up when you type.

          Also, requiring implementation detail knowledge about how maps/dictionaries work seems like overkill to me.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by ranton ( 36917 )

        Are you saying that there are millions of capable but idle tech workers just waiting to be offered higher wages before they will accept a job?

        No, unless you are trying to set up some kind of straw man argument I cannot see why you would think he was saying that. He appears to be making the claim that highly skilled tech workers are undervalued on average, so companies which realize this can easily hire quality tech talent because the price for these workers is low compared to their value to the business.

        I agree with him if that is indeed the point he is trying to make.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Not many people want to work for an ad company on the systems to get around ad blockers :)
      For projects in Communist China?

    • I have no doubt that some people have ahars time finding a good job with a good company. I know that many of the resumes I've looked at are people I'm not going to hire.

      For example, I didn't hire the guy who said he can code C, C+, and C++.*

      I didn't hire the "security guy" who doesn't know the basic terminology you learn in Security 101.

      I didn't hire the guy who was an asshole to the lady who answered the door when he arrived, and not much better in the interview.

      The people I did hire make quite a nice liv

      • * For readers who aren't programmers, there is no language called C+. ++ Means ""add one" or "next", so C++ means "the next C".

        Ha. I misread and my eyes skipped over the C+. Even with that I get plenty of people who list C++ as the top skill on their resume and in the initial phone screen it turns out they can't write C++ or have some excuse like "I haven't done any for 10 years".

        My phone screens are a basic pulse test: there's a low bar for passing and anyone crossing the bar passes. It's basically a check

      • For example, I didn't hire the guy who said he can code C, C+, and C++.*

        Actually C+ is a thing... at least according to Quantum Leaps, LLC:

        "C+"—Object Oriented Programming in C
        Warning: PDF download link: https://www.state-machine.com/... [state-machine.com]

        From the C+ manual:

        OOP in an object-oriented language is straightforward, because such a language natively supports the three fundamental meta-patterns. However, you can also implement these patterns in other languages, such as C, as sets of conventions and idioms. I call my set of such conventions and idioms “C+” [Samek 02]. The main objective of “C+” is to achieve performance and maintainability equivalent to the C++ object model. In fact, “C+” is, to a large degree, an explicit re-implementation of the C++ object model...

        Stumbled across that a few days ago before reading here. Maybe your candidate thought "C+" on a resume would be provocative enough to trigger a discussion at interview?

        P.S. Hello world, Slashdot! :)

        • That's interesting, thanks. Where I could see some use for this is learning. Most languages make objects "magic" - the programmer doesn't know how they work. That leads to the need to memorize things, and confusion when things are as you guessed they might be.

          That's why I like to show people objects I Perl - Peep makes the workings visible. For one class I taught, we first used non-OO Perl to implement our own object system. We then saw how Perl objects are just syntactic sugar for myFunction($array-that

    • Re:"a challenge" (Score:4, Interesting)

      by LatencyKills ( 1213908 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2019 @09:17AM (#59456466)
      There's a tech company near me that has hundreds of jobs listed on Indeed, and everyone you talk to who works there claims they are desperate to hire people, and yet when a friend of mine - a guy with 20 years of experience - applied for a job there, the offer they made him was $25k under what he's making now. Desperate perhaps to hire cheap people, but not desperate enough apparently.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by G00F ( 241765 )

        I'm in the same boat, got stuck someplace (bank) where I'm looking for new jobs, and everyone wants to pay 40-65k range(avg 1 bedroom apt are 1200/mo on up) and this for jobs with 10 years of experience as sys Admin plus lots all the latest stuff.

        Seams all the roles with linux in them are devops/SRE/developer now days anyways...

        • Go for a devops role. Ignore all the kooky "devops is a culture" bullcrap you see around. Devops is sysadmin with cloud & containers.

          When I'm hiring a devops guy, Linux sysadmin experience is the main thing I want. If you can program at all, you can easily learn Terraform, one of the more important tools. The syntax of its config language HCL is super duper obvious. Containers are just lightweight, more convenient VMs. If you can write out good step-by-step instructions to install an application, you ca

  • I do not live in the USA but in Europe.
    The problem I see is that there are very few skilled IT people under the age of 40. Not sure why the intelligent people who can deep dive Into a problem, and read documentation no longer is found so often in IT.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by NateFromMich ( 6359610 )

      I do not live in the USA but in Europe. The problem I see is that there are very few skilled IT people under the age of 40. Not sure why the intelligent people who can deep dive Into a problem, and read documentation no longer is found so often in IT.

      I would disagree with this based on my own experience. I've hired and worked with a lot of really good people in their 20s. Guys that can just dig right into code they've never seen before and tell people what the issue is.
      On the other hand, they've always left after a couple years to go make $20-$40k more per year.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Gr8Apes ( 679165 )
        Well I'll confirm the OP's POV. The reason being that most under 40s have never seen a dissembler, nor worked with a real debugger (that thing in your web browser is not a real debugger) nor have they dealt with the internals of data structures and pointers. In fact, I actually had to stop asking pointer questions when someone answered "I use a green laser" when asked "how do you use a pointer". If you don't understand pointers, how do you understand how multi-dimensional arrays and other data structures ar
      • You should consider that the sphere of activity matters here. IT can be very different. I can take the mobile app development company [coidea.agency] as an example. Specialists of different ages work here. The main selection criterion in such firms is creativity and a desire to study. It's impossible to maintain a leading position without these two factors in an industry that is changing very quickly. Age does not matter if you make a quality product.

  • Young IT workersknow the latest technology (Score:3)

    by CQDX ( 2720013 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2019 @01:06AM (#59455594)

    to solve many of the problems that crop up in IT and computer programming.

    The older IT workers know enough to avoid those problems in the first place. Or they know the problem has already been solved and they don't have to craft a new solution from whole cloth. Its "been there, done that".

    • If older workers are so much better, but are underemployed, then there is an obvious opportunity to hire them and run competitive circles around the foolish big tech companies that hire less capable younger workers.

      Why do you think no one is doing this?

      • Headcount and prestige. It's nice to have a big team and a "dedicated" IT person...

        My area isn't IT (it's acoustics hardware), but I know when I'm usually approached for a full-time position, and after talking with the company I tell them I will consult with them for 4-10 hours a week and get the job done. Most say "no thanks" and go on to continue to find someone full-time to hire. The rest take me up on the deal and get what they need.

        Of those that leave, I'd say about half come back in a year or so an

        • Im surprised they come back to you and request your assistance. Most managers wouldn't admit making a mistake of that type. You must impress them well in your interview and do a very good job of "leaving the door open for future work". My experience is that they feel older workers are more expensive, less flexible (on-call, family, kids etc) and consider the possibility of dealing with a protected class when they choose the employee. I also think experienced staff understand labor laws and are more like

      • Why do you think no one is doing this?

        I've heard rumors that AWS does hire many older workers. And, perhaps not a coincidence, they are in fact running circles around the competition.

        But, it's only a rumor...

        • I've heard rumors that AWS does hire many older workers.

          Here is a list of tech companies by median age [businessinsider.com]

          Amazon skews younger than most. So, no, the rumor is not true.

          The oldest workforces are HP, Oracle, and IBM.

          • Financial services IT (in London anyway) seems to be an ageing profession, judging by the number of grey heads I can see from my desk!
            Banks won't hire younger staff because they need to train them up, and then they just leave for more money. They seem to prefer paying good money to retain good older developers (thank goodness).
            .

          • It would be interesting to see the age breakdown for programmers in those companies. HP, Oracle, and IBM - the oldest workforces according to your link - all operate sales-heavy businesses. It would not be surprising if the average age of sales staff is higher than the average for tech staff.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Cederic ( 9623 )

              Plus Amazon employs an absolute shitload of warehouse workers, a job older people know better than to take.

              (Although I don't actually know average age of Amazon warehouse workers, so I'm just guessing)

        • There's also a WaPo article on terrible working conditions there. I've known an AWS architect and dev who seemed to agree.

          I don't know if everyone there is really crying at their desks a lot, bu tit gets portrayed that way.

      • Because founding a company from scratch is expensive, more so if you use expensive experienced workers ...

        If I was a multi billionair and wanted to found a new company, I would only take people with +10, preferable +20 years experience ...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mvdwege ( 243851 )

        Because there is no such thing as a perfectly spherical market of uniform density

    • You have to admit IT fads create unnecessary churn. Everyone is chasing the latest framework or language and drop the last one like a lava rock to avoid Being Left Behind. If you make IT like the fashion business, it will indeed favor the young. Road-tested and reliable ideas get burned and replaced instead of perfected.

      Fads are not being vetted well and tech co's have no incentive to vet them because buying new shit all the time is how they make money.

      Two recent examples: the NoSql and microservices movem

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by geggam ( 777689 )

        Hey now, I am an old guy who keeps up with the trends and I am making bank building complex k8s clusters for people who actually need a single autoscaling group.

        Dont be knocking the complexification strategy of more money.

  • The problem is sameism (Score:4, Insightful)

    by larryjoe ( 135075 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2019 @01:14AM (#59455610)

    The real problem is that hiring managers tend to hire people similar to themselves. This is true for race, ethnicity, gender, university, and age. The correlations between hiring managers and these factors are quite strong. Indians hire Indians, Chinese hire Chinese, whites hire whites, women hire women, young people hire young people. Tech companies aren't biased against old workers. Some tech companies appear to be biased against old workers, but in reality they're simply biased against old hiring managers, and young hiring managers are biased against people who aren't of similar age. Yes, there are ways to "explain" why the bias is logical and good for the company, e.g., the dissimilar people can't work as hard, aren't as dedicated, aren't socially compatible, are too distracted by hobbies and family, etc., but those "explanations" are also effective for explaining away hiring of women, blacks, Latinos, etc.

    • The problem is that tech work generally sucks. There is a mindset that you can farm the work out to 3rd world countries for peanuts, so why pay anyone a reasonable wage?

    • Just because you found an alternate way to phrase it that emphasizes a different aspect doesn't stop the original thing from still being true. If your Boolean logic was better you might recognize that in your examples the people doing this "sameism" are also doing a bunch of other -isms too, including ageism.

  • Easier to pay young people less (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SirAstral ( 1349985 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2019 @02:28AM (#59455792)

    It is just easier to use and abuse young people. Sure it's ultimately more expensive for businesses to pay less experienced people to do less over a far longer amount of time it takes an expensive high quality and experienced professional but the budget only accounts for the salary in most cases and therefore to the MBA cheap young labor looks less expensive. How does one quantify the value of experience?

    The world cannot help but cannibalize itself, the old feed on the young and the young rebel against the old. Power Structures flex their power and work tirelessly to maintain the old time honored caste system of the Rich and Poor. The poor will always create the rich by building for them a government which will be used to oppress the poor in exchange for false promises and faith in mankind. The rich will always create a reason for the poor to rise up and destroy them.

    We humans exist in this petri dish of greed and self afflicted misery. The poor do not hate the rich so much as they envy the rich. The crime is often not what the rich have done to the poor, but that the poor was not able to part take in the indulgences of the rich. Once the poor becomes rich they become what they hate and likewise so do the rich in their fall.

    We take advantage of the youth because they are much easier to abuse!

    • I don't see this as abuse. Google has a major problem with SJWs that don't realise they're not hired to evangelise and that Google is not their personal company.

      These lot were bad for business trying to stop Google from doing business with border protection and it's not the business of employees to rally against the company they work for to demand they refuse to do business with entities they are ideologically opposed to.

      I'm an atheist and I absolutely abhor religion as is my right and as is my being.

  • The wages and perks for software engineers are phenomenal. The field continues to draw our best and brightest. Honestly, I haven't heard the bromide "we can't find people" for 2-3 years. Universities are spitting out brilliant devs. Even ASU produces smart devs! For the most part, they are making sick money.

    • Universities are spitting out beginners, not brilliant devs ...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geggam ( 777689 )

      Having interviewed quite a few people I would like to know what you consider best ?

      There are smart people who have degrees but most of what they know is obsolete by the time they get out of college. They also think their opinion carries weight. It is really hard to balance their emotions while telling them to sit down and be quiet. Assuming you even hire them.

    • Fresh grads may know how to code, but they know nothing about engineering or process. They don't know what pitfalls to avoid, or what fads are just fads. In the end, they cost companies more than they save in lower wages.

    • ASU = Azusa State University or Appalachian State University?

  • I wonder how skewed the market in the United Kingdom and the EU is?

    Just like in the USA, in the UK, it is a struggle to recruit experienced developers.
    I work for a very large global company (with a big presence in the USA) and the tech department where I'm based (in Oxford) is very proactive with an undergraduate scheme, which is fantastic. I've also noticed, thankfully, that there are plenty of older developers in their 50's and 60's.
    Some of them have moved to a more managerial role, but others have been g

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Cederic ( 9623 )

      Just like in the USA, in the UK, it is a struggle to recruit experienced developers.

      That's because the moment Y2K ended everybody got out of development and moved into jobs that wouldn't get outsourced to India.

      The UK IT industry killed its own future.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbengt ( 874751 )

      There is absolutely an inclination, as you get older, to get 'stuck in a pattern' and resist the urge to 'keep up'. You really have to push yourself.

      I haven't found that to be true, and I'm close to retirement.
      I am a mechanical engineer, not an 'Tech' worker per se, but I assume it's similar in any field. If you're curious, you will continue to learn and so, you will 'keep up'.
      However, in my old age I have gotten impatient with a lot of the bullshit - arbitrary deadlines popping up at the last minute, c

    • Congrats on doing programming into your 50's! Not an easy feat.

      I don't think of Oxford as being very tech friendly.

      I met my wife at Keble there, and was surprised there was so much less tech than what I heard about Cambridge.

      Currently doing Java/C# in the States at 38.
  • Another problem: age discrimination. The idea that someone with virtually no experience can conceivably be more knowledgeable than someone with decades of experience is umgh... laughable?

  • You mean people in their late 40s don't want to wear propeller hats and have meetings in rowboats or ball pits? Or that they prioritize going home to spend time with their families over staying at the office for a few more hours for free food? Shocking.

  • Doesn't help when they lay off 90% of everyone over 40 because they "lack modern skills" but have to train in the 10 or so H1Bs that are qualified to replace them.

  • You'd have to have three videos, and seven witnesses, of someone saying to you, "nyah, nyah, you're too old, so we won't hire you" before you can sue for agist discrimination.

    And, of course, older workers tend to be more highly experienced... and expect to be paid proportionately, and won't take burger-flipper wages.

    But we don't need unions, all tech people have real leverage with employers... (hah. Hah. Hah.)

  • Being old in the tech sector is awesome. (I turn 50 soon). Given just a little bit of extra study each day over a few years leads to a huge gain in skills. I have actively worked with 8/10 of the top languages. Web, Mobile, Cloud, Big Data, and ML - done it all. Managers don't always like a mean old curmudgeon like me who calls them out on their nonsense. However most of those managers are guys my age who are no longer technical. They became specialists with the last 10 years of experience being 1 ye

  • One problem is that some older IT workers who get too comfortable with their skills risk falling behind, says Michael Solomon, an advisory firm for senior technology job seekers. Another issue is cost.

    No older tech worker that I know is too comfortable with their skills and are falling behind. However, some are too busy doing their jobs to have the opportunity to jump on the latest bandwagon.

    The "older tech workers cost more" line is bunk as well. The ones that I know are getting paid less than less experienced workers who have the right buzzwords attached to their resume.

    The "hiring managers hire people like themselves" seems like a closer description to what is going on.

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