Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
IT

Study: Older LinkedIn Users Get Fewer Job Offers, But a Younger Picture Helps (psychnewsdaily.com) 92

Posted by EditorDavid from the old-news dept.
Slashdot reader tinkers writes: A new study has found that older job seekers on LinkedIn receive fewer job offers than younger ones. But using a profile photo with a younger appearance reduces this effect...

The study's authors say these results reconfirm why photographs are usually absent from traditional resumes or CVs. As such, they suggest that removing photos from LinkedIn might make job-seeking fairer. The lack of photos might cause recruiters to focus more on information that is more relevant to the job.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Study: Older LinkedIn Users Get Fewer Job Offers, But a Younger Picture Helps More

Study: Older LinkedIn Users Get Fewer Job Offers, But a Younger Picture Helps

Comments Filter:

  • Zoom interviews have bascially wrecked this (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday July 11, 2021 @03:59PM (#61572993)
    they can see you after all. You get weeded out early in the interview process as a result.

    Gen X is going to get crushed by age discrimination. They're already getting passed over for younger millennials as the boomers retire. It's going to be a lost generation.

    • Why blame Zoom? You're saying you can't gauge a person's age in an in-person interview? Or, by factors like length of work experience or graduation date? If someone has work experience going back to the 1990s, they are probably into their 40s.

    • Re:Zoom interviews have bascially wrecked this (Score:4, Informative)

      by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Sunday July 11, 2021 @04:42PM (#61573103)

      Gen X is going to get crushed by age discrimination. They're already getting passed over for younger millennials as the boomers retire.

      Are these the same millenials who don't want to hustle and pile up money and paid overtime. They value their time and well-being much more than their employer's office [slashdot.org]. This article [usnews.com] lays out what I'm experiencing with one millenial who is under me. A whiner, thinks they shouldn't have to work much to get paid, lies, then complains when I call him out for his laziness. From what I'm seeing, large portions of millenials will only get promotions when boomers and Gen X retire. Not through hard work or perseverance.

      As for Gen X being a lost generation, this was foretold as such 20 years ago [awakeat2oclock.com]. In fact, I remember hearing the same thing while growing up in the 80s. My generation was screwed because of circumstance. Doesn't mean all of us, but being caught in the middle isn't a good thing. At least I survived the Bush (first one) recession so knew what to do when the Bush (second one) implosion happened.

      • Yes, because you are describing millennials as a population. Under 20% of them will be up for the great jobs and under 2% of them will get the awesome jobs.

        I assure you, 20% of millennials are go getters, talented, smart, and highly trained.

        Many millenials who are not go getters, don't recognize a particular talent in themselves, who are not as smart (not saying stupid- just not top tier), and may lack training (since they are expected so self-train with no real OJT) are simply recognizing reality and not trying as hard because they see the game is not in their favor at best and may be actively rigged against them at worst ( i.e. employers want to use them up like batteries and then toss them aside with long hours, failed promises of promotions and raises, followed by layoffs).

        And a fair portion *could* do better if they had more hope and tried harder. But they play video games on $85 a month internet and drink $4 coffee not realizing these wastes of time and money are adding up. But I'd put it under 30%.

        So 20% of high qualified + young vs genX who were denied advancement who are now being bypassed.
        Another 50% who realistically see that short of incredible luck, they have no chance.
        Another 30% who could do better but think they are in that second group or never got a break or had a bad break.

      • ays out what I'm experiencing with one millenial who is under me.

        What a great sociology study!

      • You need to go easy on the Fox News (Score:2)

        by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Monday July 12, 2021 @12:00PM (#61575389)
        and OAN. My Millennial Kid is currently putting in 50-60 hour work weeks. Most are when they can find work. You can find plenty of stories that show they want the same things Gen X and the Boomers have, but that those things are unobtainable to most of them.

        Automation & process improvements killed about 70% of middle class jobs [businessinsider.com]. Millennials aren't being lazy, there's just plain less work to do. They can break their bodies making jack shit in crappy restaurants or they can pay Uber & Lyft to work. Those aren't sustainable options. They've got enough education to know that, but not enough to know what to do about it...

        It would be nice if instead of looking down on them and shitting all over them you, as their seniors, would help them out. But that's the point. We're all supposed to be at each other's throats while Mark Zuckerberg & Jeff Bezos laugh at us all the way to the bank. Christ, why doesn't humanity learn?

        • Re:You need to go easy on the Fox News (Score:2)

          by Kitkoan ( 1719118 ) on Monday July 12, 2021 @12:34PM (#61575529)
          As one of "their seniors", I have tried to help many different millennials. Issue is, while maybe your millennial kid is a unique, hard working individual, most millennials really are lazy and spoiled and are the reason their generation got such a reputation.

          We aren't trying to make them "be at each other's throats", we tried to teach them morals, the abilities and rewards of hard work, and understanding that working as a team is needed in the real world. Millennial's just tell us to shut it, and give them more money and give them less working hours. I've seen it time and time again.

          The biggest issue I've noticed with millennials (in the concepts of making money), is too many of them leave their parents house and seem to expect that they should have the exact same living standards that their parents worked for over 20 years. Their parents worked, and worked hard to get what they had over many years/decades, and yet millennials seem to feel that life owes them everything their parents have minus the hard work it takes to get it.

          Gen Z is so far being a better generation as a whole and willing to understand that not everything will be handed to them and that they actually have to put some effort into life. So at least there seems to be some hope for the future..

    • Really? That FP is pending insightful? Like the employers don't have 27 other ways to spot the old fogies? And 37 ways to bit bucket most of the resumes? Not 47% of the resumes for the series, but more like 97% go directly to the trash. At least for any job that gets 57 applicants. (Which must be my 67th joke to byte the dust.)

      Anyway, I'll pose my usual question: Does anyone know of a job-search website with a mutual financial model? BOTH the wannabe employees and the companies should be funding the website. Roughly equally so the website is actually earning money by making BOTH sides happy. (Obvious glitch: It takes a while to fully assess a job or an employee. Payment would have to be delayed until both sides know the job actually is mutually good or the website needs a strong money-back guarantee.)

      I do not know of any such website, though I acknowledge I gave up looking some years back. I found out that being retired is much more interesting that I'd expected after too many years of working too hard for too much money. Not really about the money, but mark it as the 68th failed joke. Actually, I just adjusted my expectations to match my income, though that's apparently hard for most people (and even though the research says it's the easiest way to get happy).

      Just in case it isn't obvious, when the employers are paying for the website, the website is going to do what the employers want. Which is to find the cheapest round peg for the round hole, and if one peg gets uppity and wants more money, time for another peg. There are exceptions, but the exceptional employees are NOT looking for jobs on LinkedIn. At the extreme top, the companies come after the person and fit the hole to the person. Just below that there are people who can contact the companies they want to work for and things will be worked out. Not where LinkedIn gets the traffic. The heavy traffic is the 87% (or higher) who have to accept any job offer they can get and who are the first people to get walking papers when there's a hiccup in the economy...

      By the way, LinkedIn pretends to care about the employees' side with the premium memberships. But if that side was generating a significant chunk of their revenue they would have no reason to hide it. I read it as a kind of scam targeted at the suckers who believe "You gotta spend money to make money." My guess would be less than 7%? (Flog that dead horse, eh?)

    • Re:Zoom interviews have bascially wrecked this (Score:3, Insightful)

      by sinkskinkshrieks ( 6952954 ) on Sunday July 11, 2021 @05:13PM (#61573169)

      There ought to be a Zoom "Snap" filter that youngin's you up and sheds 30 lbs. Let's call it "Interview Equalizer."

      It's true that youth and physical fitness are nonverbal biases that get people hired, while being overweight or old is a nix to that.

    • Then don't compete against younger candidates (Score:2, Insightful)

      by jmcbain ( 1233044 ) on Sunday July 11, 2021 @05:33PM (#61573221)
      I agree with you that older people will lose out against younger candidates. The obvious solution is to not apply for jobs where you are in direct competition against hundreds of younger folks. At some point, you'll need to become a principal software engineer, an architect, or a manager (or higher). Those are potential roles in the software field. Other fields have analogous ladders.

      • Re:Then don't compete against younger candidates (Score:4, Interesting)

        by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Sunday July 11, 2021 @06:01PM (#61573273) Journal

        I agree, except in the system admin/support side of IT, there's not always really a good career ladder like that in place. With many companies, they need some computer support people and the next more "senior" position above that is the ONE guy managing that group, followed by the company's CIO or even the CEO he/she answers to.

        The idea that a highly experienced technical person in IT has to "become a manager" at some point to advance is often true, but it's unfortunate. The skills needed to be a good manager don't have that much intersection with the technical skills needed to support/administer a computer network. And with many of these small or mid-sized businesses in America, the guy who IS the I.T. manager has held onto that position for many years and intends to be a "lifer" with the company.

        Where I work now, they're just starting to wrestle with this reality and they're trying to break out the support roles into multiple "levels", within the existing "tiers". (We always had "tier 1" help desk people manning the phones and so forth, and "tier 2" handling the escalations and more complex requests coming down from management. Tier 3 would be the guys who constructed the whole LAN/WAN and server environments and who maintain and expand it as needed.) But really, the guys who are good at the basic phone support deserve a way to advance in the company while continuing to do that, as do the guys handling the escalations and more complex issues. It doesn't necessarily make sense they'd need to wait for a position to open up as a network or server engineer (which again, would require a different skill set than the one they've honed to do their existing job role), in order to advance.

        • The bummer is that helpdesk/phone support is absolutely necessary and being good at it is a skill unto itself that is neither completely technical nor completely human relations, it's a complex mix of both. Yet it is a job that doesn't get much, if any, credit or even very good pay.

          I've seen tons of people who were really good at it leave an MSP I worked at. Part of it is the bottom of the barrel salary, part of is the lack of recognition, and part of it is the lack of any reasonable advancement path. A big part of it are the ambitious douchebags hired as "managers" who care nothing about the actual quality help desk delivers, they just look to manipulate bogus stats around tickets.

          It's really America's larger labor problem, more or less. Jobs that get zero respect and low wages, even though they are jobs that need to be done and that everyone benefits from being done well. America may not have a peerage and aristocratic titles, but we love to underpay jobs and devalue employees.

        • At a certain large employer that you've heard of, getting an internal grade bump is nearly impossible. It's more common to leave then come back a grade or two higher. This is an employer that loves them some contractors too, 80% of which are honestly worthless to net liabilities. Once you get to a grade 12 or higher, though, your bonus target climbs to 25% and the RSUs flow like water used to.

      • Re:Then don't compete against younger candidates (Score:-1)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 11, 2021 @06:08PM (#61573283)

        > The obvious solution is to not apply for jobs where you are in direct competition against hundreds of younger folks.

        Yes, you're exactly right.

        The way to do this is to not get to the age of 40 and have been so fucking lazy that you're still competing against graduates for graduate level jobs. If you're that shit of course no one will hire you, it's not ageism though beyond the fact you've simply proven you have enough years of experience to have gone anywhere to prove you're inept or lazy.

        Seriously, ageism in tech isn't a thing. Shit people who expect to do and learn nothing for their entire careers being out-hired by young people who work hard and have already achieved more in a few short years than a 40 year old layabout is a thing though.

        I'm in my 40s and I don't remotely struggle to get employment in tech against younger people. Why? Because I have 20 odd years of experience that I actually did something meaningful with and tossed it off, no 20-something can ever compete with me through simple virtue of the fact I've got more years of actual, real, meaningful experience than them.

        Anyone who thinks ageism in tech is a thing needs to take a good long hard look at themselves and up their game; you can't blame ageism for your own failure to keep upto standards.

        So again yes, you're exactly right - don't go competing for graduate jobs when you're 40, you should be far beyond that by now.

      • Re: Then don't compete against younger candidates (Score:3)

        by jlowery ( 47102 ) on Sunday July 11, 2021 @06:13PM (#61573289)

        If one manager manages 10 young programmers, then what do the other 9 older programmers do?

    • Re:Zoom interviews? Nah.... (Score:2)

      by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Sunday July 11, 2021 @05:51PM (#61573257) Journal

      I moved back to the midwest at the end of 2020, after my job ended out in Maryland. (I'd relocated out there years prior, just for that job -- and wasn't really liking the job options + cost of living to stay out there, doing something else.)

      I had 3 interviews within weeks of moving back .... all of which required phone and Zoom interviews. I'm almost 50 and clearly look like I'm well into the "Gen X" age group. There's a lot of age discrimination out there, especially with I.T. jobs. But I really didn't feel like it was an issue at all with these interviews. What really seemed more important to some of the interviewers was keeping up that "happy, up-beat" attitude the whole time with a smile on your face and a funny story or two, ready to tell when appropriate.

      I think where Zoom interviews kill things for a lot of candidates is lacking the ability to come across as enthusiastic enough. I'm generally a hard worker but quiet, and prefer not to do much socializing except with selected co-workers who truly interest me with what they like to talk about. A phone interview tends to be pretty easy to get through since nobody can see your facial expressions or any of that. And usually, they're not really asking the tough questions anyway, at that stage of the process. When they go to Zoom, especially with multiple people in the interview? There's a need to kind of "read the room", seeing what non-verbal cues you pick up in response to what you say. Are you giving too much detail or are they expecting you to go into a little bit more? But you also have to make sure you don't give a disinterested or bored look in the camera, and make sure your camera placement and lighting is good. Make sure your audio is coming across clearly, and you're not too loud or too soft. Especially if you're an older guy, you have to appear "high energy" (even if that's not quite your style), because you might be unintentionally reinforcing a stereotype that you're going to work slower since you're older.

    • You need a shittier webcam. Or a better soft-focus filter.

      C'mon, we're living in a time when everyone has access to crappy equipment, you just have to invest in a 5 dollar camera if you don't want your opponent to know what you really look like.

    • Or maybe it's because older people generally won't work for just over minimum wage, or take crap from idiot managers?

      If you are doing things right, you learn lessons as you grow older. You should be advancing in your career to more senior positions. The down side is, there are fewer of these senior positions available, because each team only needs one leader.

      I don't think this is about discrimination, exactly. It's more about the odds thinning out for the better jobs at the top.

    • Even before Zoom interviews, in person too!

  • Photos are also good for racism (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Sunday July 11, 2021 @04:02PM (#61572999)

    As a white kid in a region with a large white majority, I was told it might be a good idea to put my photo on my resume so people would know I wasn't an immigrant.

    I never did it. Not as a moral issue - I was too young to consider those at the time unless they directly affected me - but because I'm too private.

    Of course, that just gets you into the interview room anyway. If you're going to be discarded by ethnicity, sex, or age, they'll have no trouble doing that after seeing your face.

    • Re:Photos are also good for racism (Score:2)

      by tomhath ( 637240 ) on Sunday July 11, 2021 @04:19PM (#61573043)
      Pendulum swung the other way a long time ago.

    • Re:Photos are also good for racism (Score:2, Informative)

      by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Sunday July 11, 2021 @10:52PM (#61573807) Journal

      As a white kid in a region with a large white majority, I was told it might be a good idea to put my photo on my resume so people would know I wasn't an immigrant.

      I never did it. Not as a moral issue - I was too young to consider those at the time unless they directly affected me - but because I'm too private.

      Of course, that just gets you into the interview room anyway. If you're going to be discarded by ethnicity, sex, or age, they'll have no trouble doing that after seeing your face.

      When exactly was this? Having a non-white face is an advantage in hiring now. HR departments openly talk about how they go out of their way to find non-white faces.

    • Of course, that just gets you into the interview room anyway. If you're going to be discarded by ethnicity, sex, or age, they'll have no trouble doing that after seeing your face.

      Except at the CV stage, they have lots of applicants they have to reject. If they can reject you because you're the wrong skin color, all the much easier. Remember, they're whittling down a pile of resumes down to maybe 10 or so.

      Those 10 will then get to a phone screening to be whittled down to 3 or 4. At that time, if they don't like your skin color, they're potentially discarding a worthy candidate and may end up with no candidates at the end of the interviews. This is a problem because it means having to re-advertise for the position again which means another 3 month or longer delay in filling a position.

      They say you have 5 seconds for your CV to be rejected, and the goal is to make it so you make it to the second stage.

  • Where in the process do they not get offers? (Score:3, Informative)

    by pieisgood ( 841871 ) on Sunday July 11, 2021 @04:18PM (#61573037) Journal

    Where I work (in a web SaaS company) we do not look at age as a factor. One thing I have seen though is that older software developers sit in two different camps, they are either awesome and still excel at programming and problem solving or they have stagnated in that department and have been in management for far too long. We have lots of openings for Software Engineer and Senior Software Engineer but no openings for managers as we use self organization and try to avoid layers of management. So the number of openings for older individuals seems lower at my place of work, specifically for those older candidates that have moved on to management positions.

    • Re:Where in the process do they not get offers? (Score:0, Flamebait)

      by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Sunday July 11, 2021 @04:28PM (#61573075) Homepage

      Almost no body thinks they look at age as a factor. Same thing with race.

      They just want out of the box thinkers, and clearly the old guys don't qualify.

    • Re:Where in the process do they not get offers? (Score:2)

      by jmcbain ( 1233044 ) on Sunday July 11, 2021 @05:45PM (#61573245)
      How old are you? If you're under 40 then of course you haven't seen age discrimination. You asked: "where in the process do they not get offers"? I'll tell you where: after all the technical rounds are done, where you've aced every single question, the recruiter will come back to say : "Sorry, the team felt like it wouldn't be a good fit."

      • Except I'm not seeing older individuals ace our technical rounds at all. We have hired two 50+ engineers over the last two years (of 40 hired) and engineers in that age range applying are very low to begin with. We are a startup that is growing which may reduce the likelihood of an older individual applying (why get into a startup late with low options when you can apply somewhere else?). I just haven't seen a bunch of older individuals crushing our technical assessments, again they language and technologies they use are up to them so it's not a lack of knowledge of "modern" languages or front end html frameworks (vue, react, angular).

        We have two senior software engineers proctor our final technical interview process, which involves asking the candidate to describe the code they had written and then make changes that we request at the time of the interview. That being said the success rate for anyone applying is at or below 1% . Doesn't matter the education level either. Bachelors, Masters or PHD the success rate is similar.

      • I don't know about the poster, but I'm 55, and I haven't seen any slowdown in job prospects. I got a new job a year ago, and can code circles around the younger developers I work with. Most older developers, though, probably don't. I've seen too many who are still doing VB.NET, and have never moved on. Those of us who have kept up with technology haven't been struggling.

      • How relevant is being a good fit? I've worked at a place where I was older than most of my peers by 15 years and honestly I think it did hurt the overall team aspect. I was not that interested in 20-somethings workplace shenanigans (Nerf guns...).

        In many ways, age is a significant cultural factor. If you can't relate well to your co-worker because they have a cultural gap, it's going to effect team cohesiveness.

        Now, this doesn't mean that work life can't adapt, but for low-effort corporations they will not do much to adapt and will prefer the path of least resistance.

    • So the number of openings for older individuals seems lower at my place of work, specifically for those older candidates that have moved on to management positions.

      One is generally told to move into management as they age because programming is statistically a dead-end career. For one, it wears out your fingers; and second, it's more subject to fads than clothing is. Stuff is tossed out for the latest and greatest instead of being perfected, and the new stuff reinvents many mistakes that the tossed stuff already solved. I spend more time and code to do the same CRUD things than in the past. KISS and YAGNI stacks appear dead. Software is a Sisyphusian scam for job security and selling new wares using Fear of Obsolescence. Oh, and git off my formerly productive lawn! And, I so want to shoot Bootstrap and buggy conflicting JavaScript libraries between the eyes and watch them scream and choke into a deathly blood bath.

  • What???? (Score:2)

    by SlashbotAgent ( 6477336 ) on Sunday July 11, 2021 @04:27PM (#61573073)

    Ageism in hiring? Ageism in tech hiring?

    Nah. Not in today's age of en-woke-nment.

    • Re:What???? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Dusanyu ( 675778 ) on Sunday July 11, 2021 @04:53PM (#61573121)
      The "woke" are some of the worst people for being discriminatory, if you're a guy or white or god forbid both you're automatically a racist oik to them (experienced one of these assumptions myself the other day it was not enjoyable) and apparently It's OK to be anti-Semitic to them as well as long as you're saying it in a pro-Palestinian stance. Some of the stuff that comes out of them would make Adolf proud, for example the Google "Diversity officer" who step down for being an ass but was not fire like he would have been if you said the same thing about any other group of people https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]

    • Re:What???? (Score:2)

      by LostMyAccount ( 5587552 ) on Monday July 12, 2021 @07:54AM (#61574611)

      Today's 20-somethings are definitely some of the first to shout out "OK, Boomer" and blame literally everything wrong on people over 50. Climate change. Racism. Housing prices.

      They use the slogan, but they don't actually just dislike boomers specifically, it's literally anyone who is old enough to somehow be a symbol of their parents' generation.

      I actually think housing prices drives a lot of it. Anyone who owns a home in an area with rising rents is part of the problem. As a 54 year old homeowner, I'm somehow responsible for the "root causes" of housing costs. Zoning restrictions which have kept tens of thousands of rent-reducing apartments from being built in the last 50 years. Redlining which created ghettos.

      If you took away a lot of the housing cost increases, that alone would reduce the intergenerational hostility.

  • Just a thought: Maybe if the company's policy is to discriminate people based on their age, skin brightness / shade / tone / hue, physical disabilities, or various other stuff that's unrelated to your job capabilities, you shouldn't work there in the first place. You know, having values, not working with total assholes, realizing that your life is not gonna be over if you don't get accepted to the asshole company, because you can (yes, you can, I believe in you) find a non-asshole company that values people, etc. Well just a thought.

  • No point of photos (Score:1)

    by cygnusvis ( 6168614 ) on Sunday July 11, 2021 @04:44PM (#61573107)
    Remove photos and youâ(TM)ll find that there is less racism, sexism, beautyism, and fatism too

    • Doctor your face (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Monday July 12, 2021 @01:52PM (#61575857) Journal

      I agree requiring/expecting photos is dumb, but it is what it is.

      Use Snapchat filters and/or Photoshop/Gimp to youngify our portrait. Make it reasonably close so you are not accused of doctoring. If they later ask why it changed, just say something like "oh, I recently stopped using hair dye and Propecia because it had side-effects" or the like.

      Maybe there's money in a youngification service.

  • Not for everyone ... (Score:2)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Sunday July 11, 2021 @04:48PM (#61573113)

    I imagine this would pose a problem for Dorian Gray [wikipedia.org] ...

  • How can I get paid (Score:1)

    by pierceelevated ( 5484374 ) on Sunday July 11, 2021 @05:06PM (#61573159)

    to do studies like this?

  • Okay, but I have the solution (Score:3)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday July 11, 2021 @05:10PM (#61573163)

    My LinkedIn profile picture is an oil painting of myself... by Picasso!

  • "oh such terrible employee shortages!" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Maxo-Texas ( 864189 ) on Sunday July 11, 2021 @05:34PM (#61573223)

    Bullshit.. I have a friend laid off 2 years ago who doesn't even get callbacks. He's 63.

    I saw at age 33 that age discrimination starts at 45. That's down to 41 now.

    I saved hard and retired at 51. I was set to retire literally one day after they laid me off. They had no idea why I was so happy. Instead of 5 extra weeks of vacation, I got 12 weeks severance pay and cobra for 18 months.

    Assume you won't be able to find work after 55 if you are in tech (and many other fields). As a former manager, health care costs drive a lot of it. Insuring a 30 year old is about $2500. Insuring a 60 year old costs about $12,000. As a corporation, this is all averaged out ( so an older staff may cost $5000 to insure vs a younger staff taking $4000 to insure.).

    This is one of the great benefits of nationalized health care.
    * No wage slavery to keep your health insurance.
    * Lower costs for business since they don't have to cover insurance costs.
    * Much easier to start your own small business.

    • Re: "oh such terrible employee shortages!" (Score:4)

      by jlowery ( 47102 ) on Sunday July 11, 2021 @06:40PM (#61573335)

      Retired at 61. Before I did, I interviewed at some big, well-known places. Got a few six-hour interviews and several more lengthy phone interviews.

      This is what I learned: it's all about prep, not about job experience or proven career accomplishments. I could have done that, if I wanted to spend a month or two studying algorithms, Big-O, and reams of sample interview questions.

      But why? My job had became one of weaving together solutions built elsewhere to solve a bigger businees-specific problem. If I had to do some tricky array sorting in JS, I looked at Lodash. If I needed some better way of managing UI state, I implemented a React app, rather than stick with the awkward JQuery. Messy SQL everywhere? Isolate and contain it behind GraphQL.

      Sure, I did some state machines and optimized some poorly performing implementations, and that might require thinking about and relearning stuff for a couple of days. Big deal.

      Did I get lazy? Maybe. Or maybe I just realized I am coding to produce a product, not to impress other developers with my knowledge of arcanery.

      • Re: "oh such terrible employee shortages!" (Score:2)

        by sinij ( 911942 ) on Sunday July 11, 2021 @10:45PM (#61573799)

        Did I get lazy? Maybe. Or maybe I just realized I am coding to produce a product, not to impress other developers with my knowledge of arcanery.

        Extrapolate this to a population level and this is how you get nearly all the observable progress to be mostly about cloud and apps. Nobody wants to push the envelope.

        • Re: "oh such terrible employee shortages!" (Score:0)

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 11, 2021 @11:08PM (#61573831)
          Array hackery like in coding interviews isn't pushing the envelope. Plenty of people are out there doing it, it's just that those optimizations are KNOWN. They aren't the envelope to push... those were problems in 1950 haha. If you want to push you're in machine learning, robotics, medicine, etc. We've gone through a huge run of software gains and now I think it's starting to shift back to hardware. My phone hasn't done anything truly new in a long long time. It's just gotten cheaper and more bloated.

      • Re: "oh such terrible employee shortages!" (Score:1)

        by Maxo-Texas ( 864189 ) on Monday July 12, 2021 @04:27AM (#61574309)

        It's more often about "do you have a job now".

        Also known as "apply for a job while you have a job".

        Age Discrimination is measurable at the cohort level.

        Google got their asses sued off because their automated system repeatedly picked qualified candidates who the human managers rejected because the candidates were "too old" in their 40s. Even tho they had the skill sets required for the position. One 41 lady was automatically invited by the AI four times.

        Glad you had good luck. I know one guy who managed to work til 67 and one lady who has vital skills at a small company who is 65. But I know a dozen who have been laid off-- in many cases after years of superlative reviews.

        U.S. citizens only have very week protection against age discrimination any more. Most were ripped out by the supreme court back in 2009.

    • I'm 55, and not having any trouble finding jobs. I got hired at a great company just a year ago. Recruiters are constantly peppering me with leads, some of which are actually tempting.

      If you relax and sit on your 10-year-old technical knowledge, then yeah, you're in trouble. But if you keep up, it's not so hard to find work.

      • Re:"oh such terrible employee shortages!" (Score:1)

        by Maxo-Texas ( 864189 ) on Monday July 12, 2021 @04:36AM (#61574323)

        Lol. I know 3 or 4 guys who had your attitude until they were laid off.
        One rejected an offer to be director at another company 6 months before his division was shut down.
        As soon as he was laid off, every single lead dried up.

        You should be *very* watchful for layoffs and division closings. The market is glutted and plus there is a stigma with not having a job.

        Doesn't affect me. Retired at 51. Have gone skiing 20 days a year, write mods for minecraft (shockingly turning into a decent income stream which can almost all go to shiny new computer stuff (like my new monitor I'm using now), formed a close relationship with my grandsons (who will be here for another 4 days starting friday, learned how to grow tomatoes, and gamed my ass off.

        If you are 55 and don't have enough to retire on- you are taking a huge risk.

        At my last company- they laid off 400 people= all I.T. (standard SAP gameplan)- many of them had kids in college who had to drop out- many had houses they couldn't afford- cars they couldn't afford. My house and care were free and clear and I had a half million bucks in the bank plus a pension and social security coming in at age 64 and 67.

        You *may* remain employable. or you *might* be like the guy I knew when I was 33 and he was 45. He was an active programmer and then things changed and the next time I saw him- he was selling tickets at the movie theater. Demand dried up unexpectedly in an economic downturn. I lived on half of what I made after that. Still had a new car- paid for my house- etc. Even had a few $200 shirts. But I didn't have a dodge viper. I didnt' have a luxury house.

        Hope for the best... plan for the worst.

    • PHB definition of "shortage" (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Monday July 12, 2021 @01:39PM (#61575817) Journal

      When big co's say "shortage", they mean a shortage of those who fit their exact requirements and expectations. They don't want to go outside of their comfort zone in hiring; they want the "warm porridge" per Goldilocks. Too young or too old bothers them.

      health care costs drive a lot of it. Insuring a 30 year old is about $2500. Insuring a 60 year old costs about $12,000.

      The insurance price should be averaged out via law so that the co. is not paying per employee age but the same rate despite age or gender. This will reduce discrimination.

  • And the 2-1 bias AGAINST MALES for college jobs ?! (Score:1, Troll)

    by poptopdrop ( 6713596 ) on Sunday July 11, 2021 @05:36PM (#61573227)

    The media is clearly so dominated by feminaz1 man haters that they refuse to publish studies like this one.

    TWO TO ONE BIAS AGAINST MALES

    https://www.pnas.org/content/1... [pnas.org]

  • You know we are screwed when⦠(Score:2)

    by sonoronos ( 610381 ) on Sunday July 11, 2021 @11:58PM (#61573927)

    You know we are really screwed when Tinder starts a careers site and it takes off!

    Does Linkedin have âoeheightâ and âoebuildâ attributes yet?

    DM me for more pics. Professional ones, of course.

  • Thanks (Score:1)

    by fatih kuruoglu emlak ( 8359199 ) on Monday July 12, 2021 @02:46AM (#61574183) Homepage
    https://www.kuruoglugayrimenku... [kuruoglugayrimenkul.com]

  • Yes, I got old. I kept hearing advice that I even repeated, "Don't get old/" It seems this is something we're pretty much all stuck with. Someday we will be old. But, one thing you can be sure of. Even if you have been retired for 20 years Linked-In will still pester you with "XYZ corp and 20 others want to hire you."

    {+_+}

  • Or... (Score:2)

    by groobly ( 6155920 ) on Monday July 12, 2021 @12:36PM (#61575543)

    Or, showing cleavage.

  • Comment removed (Score:0)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday July 12, 2021 @01:06PM (#61575697)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

Slashdot Top Deals

Your files are now being encrypted and thrown into the bit bucket. EOF

Close