The Joel on Software Discussion Group (CLOSED)

Every few threads I hear complaints about rampant age discrimination.

Suppose you're hiring for a company, and most of your programmers are in their mid twenties. In that case, hiring somebody in their twenties makes sense, as people from the same age group tend to communicate more easily. Also, young people tend not to stand up for their rights as much as older people do, they are less likely to have families, and they are more likely to keep up with the technology du jour. And older candidates expect to earn more, often much more, than the younger candidates (who are often okay with being underpaid). So all other things being equal, can you blame a company for employing the younger candidate?

In most fields, experience makes up for the downsides. Training an M.D. to the level where he's most effective is very costly. With programmers... not so much. A lot of young people program all day and are generally "good enough" to get the job done.

To make it looks like companies have no choice but to consider age as part of the hiring criteria. Even if there is only a slight correlation between age and the suitability of an applicant, why should the hiring company ignore that data point?

Companies are always looking for naive young people they can underpay, mold (to the employer's benefit), and push around.

That is the primary reason why they prefer the young.

Companies want young people because they won't complain about the programming language or the tool or the framework or the chair or his back or dual monitors and won't make sarcastic remarks.

"In that case, hiring somebody in their twenties makes sense, as people from the same age group tend to communicate more easily."

If you ran a business should want to hire the smartest and most experience person.  Making assumptions based on something you can't test is dangerous.

"young people tend not to stand up for their rights as much as older people do"

Not from my experience.  Younger guys tend to know less about what is going on.  Especially when it comes to the business side of things.  This is one reason why some managers like to hire young people...they are easier to manipulate.

"less likely to have families"

And?  It depends on the current management trend or mythology.  It used to be that companies wanted to hire married men because they were considered to be more stable.  Think about it a married worker is going to want to do what it takes to provide for their family.

If one doesn't have a family they might feel like they can blow off certain aspects of work.  They are not concerned with providing stability after all.

"they are more likely to keep up with the technology du jour"

I don't think this is true.  If anything the younger guys have less experience to know which new technologies they should really invest their time in.  Only someone with some experience is going to recognize that 95% of the "new" tech we see today is just old tech with Christmas ornaments hanging off them.

"older candidates expect to earn more"

If they bring useful experience to the job then they should be able to ask for more.  That is how EVERY other professional endeavor works.  Besides, I find it hard to believe that every young person out there has no interest in maximizing what they earn?  Come on, lets not be disingenuous.

"A lot of young people program all day and are generally 'good enough' to get the job done."

A lot?  What percentage of young people would that be?  The fact is when you are a newbie you have to program all day because you don't have a clue about what you are doing.  We all had to do that.  Younger programmers have to stay at work longer because it a) takes them longer to get work done and b) they have to fix a higher percentage of bugs that they have created.  Sorry, but this is one part of your argument you can't win unless you have been there and done it for years.

"why should the hiring company ignore that data point?"

Possibly because it has too many false assumptions to be true?

Young'un,

As someone with industry experience your argument makes it sound like you haven't worked in the software industry or haven't done so for very long.  The industry is a much larger universe and you thinking in myopic.

I've only been out of college for 5 years and I'd never make the assumptions you have after my experience.

Either age discrimination is real, or it doesn't.

If age discrimination is not real - why does it keep coming up? Because all the older people who have trouble finding jobs are poor software developers? Especially since they remember getting hired when they were younger - hence they can reliably compare the two scenarios. So age discrimination probably is real.

If age discrimination is real, either the companies are acting against their own interests, or they're discriminating on age because they benefit from it. Since companies have no reason to conciously act against their own interest, they must do so because of a (perceived) benefit. I mentioned a couple of (perceived) benefits of hiring younger people. And so my main point remains the same: companies must benefit from hiring younger people. And if that's the case, then age discrimination makes sense.

"Don't let companies abuse you",

Then what's your explanation? Are you saying age discrimination doesn't happen? Please share some of your vast experience.

business has no emotion; cares not for platitudes; therefore, those that descriminate, in lure of profit, will fail; or better yet, are on their way out.

My view is that age discrimination is very real, and it is actually detrimental to a business.  It is carried out based on old perceptions going back to the days when the majority of the work force were laborers.

The "factory" model was not always applied to highly skilled knowledge positions.  In fact decades ago if you had a college education and you worked in the "white collar" world there was very little age discrimination.  It was primarily the positions that required labor where age discrimination occurred.  This is part of the reason for the union movement.

Over time, as more and more people moved from labor to knowledge workers, the factory model began to be applied to knowledge workers also.  One thing led to another and today the old school mindset lives on, but now in knowledge work.

I firmly believe this is detrimental.  Just the fact that "kids" will bite at any and every supposedly new technology is a sign of this.  They wear technology as a fashion statement.  This is not efficient nor is it safe.  If something really significant comes along believe me business will jump on it.

" Also, young people tend not to stand up for their rights as much as older people do.."

Disagree.  I'm young and I wouldn't put up with being treated unfairly. 

" And older candidates expect to earn more, often much more, than the younger candidates (who are often okay with being underpaid)"

Nope.  I make a fair amount and wouldn't put up with being underpaid.

"In most fields, experience makes up for the downsides."

It does in this industry too.  I've helped multiple companies I've worked for in the hiring hiring process, and I would much rather higher an experienced, talented programmer in his 40s then a freshly minted CS grad.

"A lot of young people program all day and are generally "good enough" to get the job done."

If that was true it wouldn't be so hard to find a good programmer.

The reason people bitch about age discrimination is because they'd rather blame something else then themselves. Its the same reason new grads whine about not getting paid enough or why its hard to find a job.

" Since companies have no reason to conciously act against their own interest, they must do so because of a (perceived) benefit."

That is an incredibly optimistic view of the rationality and perceptiveness of humanity. In my experience people act against their own interests all the time, not to mention the inevitable conflicts that come from juggling short-term interests and long-term interests.

Think of all the decades that companies limited their hiring on the basis of gender and race. Some companies scored incredible bargains by scooping up the most talented women and minorities at cut-rate wages, but many other companies stuck strictly to notion of "appropriate" jobs for race and sex.

"In fact decades ago if you had a college education and you worked in the "white collar" world there was very little age discrimination."

In that time people didn't job-hop. People would stay at the same company for decades. Loyalty was much stronger on both sides. Firing people simply to improve the bottom line was considered "not done". Nowadays it's called "maximizing shareholder returns".

I think the white-collar versus blue-collar point of view is interesting. However, society has changed. Perhaps for the worse, but it has changed nonetheless. And when you don't hire employees for the long term you might as well go with cheap and expendable (blue-collar mindset).

Please play a little game for me folks...

Re-read a few of the above posts, but replace the word young/younger with the word "white" and the word old/older with "black". 

I think you'll find that your read of the original posts may give you very little pause and not really make you uncomfortable at all.  You may say to yourself .. "big deal" we have bigger fish to fry in this world.    I'll bet however, that your second read will make the post seem entirely offensive and give you mental picture of something that is clearly wrong.

Age discrimination is entirely real.

"or they're discriminating on age because they benefit from it"

Not really: it's classic short term thinking.

Hire the younger person and save on salary while being completely oblivious to the fact that it takes him more than 2x as long to get anything done.
Now, don't get me wrong: in many fields experience doesn't count for much because, well, it doesn't count for much. If someone with 1-2 years experience already has the knowledge to get the job done, why hire someone with 15 years exp and pay 2-3x what the younger person costs?

But in many other fields, a deep understanding of not only programming but the problem domain is critical to putting out a good product. And that only comes with experience (which correlates strongly with age). This is probably more important to product companies than places where IT is a cost center since it's easier to measure product sales than the "increased order-processing efficiency from the XXX project."

As I read once, "If you don't think age discrimination is a real issue - just wait, you will."

That said, there is real age discrimination out there. I had a friend (extremely competent technically, always keeping up to the point of working on Open source and his TiVo at night) who in his mid-40s said the same things echoed here - if you are older and cannot find a job, it is your own fault for not keeping up. In his 50s he changed his tune.

I would think it is easier for companies to push around older workers - much harder for them to leave than younger workers who have plenty of opportunity.

BionicHips

One reason age discrimination happens is that IT people are often directly involved in hiring other IT people.

If you are a 20-something project/IT manager do you have the confidence to handle managing a 40 year old? Or does it scare you so that you take the easy option of hiring someone younger and less experienced than yourself?

In the industry this is known as 'B's hire 'C's - it's worth avoiding if you ever hope to be an 'A'.

Are older people always so much better than someone younger? There are some really sharp kids who are a lot more productive and naturally smart than some of the average older coders.

People look for a crutch to lean on, and age is a perfect candidate.

One time I did work with this older programmer (some big Redmond software company). He managed the build system actually.  This guy would complain about the age discrimination he experienced during job interviews off and on.  He tried desperately to get out of the build job, and he was sure it was because he was 50 something. He ranted on and on to a group of us.

One thing he failed to realize was his skills were poor. He didn't know the difference between a linked list and array. Had no clue about a hash table. No idea what running-time of a function was. I remember asking him how he solved such and such coding problem in the interview loop, and then gave him advice on what to work on.  Sad for him that it was easier to lean on the age crutch than to take my advice.
 
Yep, poor guy.. if he were only 25 he'd have gotten than good development job.

Discrimination is here to stay. Just wait 5 years and we'll be offshored. Wait, I heard that 7 years ago. Never mind.

"Are older people always so much better than someone younger? There are some really sharp kids who are a lot more productive and naturally smart than some of the average older coders."

There's no link between age and development skills. Let me ask you this: do you think those sharp kids get stupid when they hit 40, 50, 60?  No, they now are really sharp, and experienced, developers.

"One thing he failed to realize was his skills were poor. He didn't know the difference between a linked list and array. Had no clue about a hash table. No idea what running-time of a function was. I remember asking him how he solved such and such coding problem in the interview loop, and then gave him advice on what to work on.  Sad for him that it was easier to lean on the age crutch than to take my advice."

So what?  I learned and forgot all that crap years ago.  My company is happy with my work and I saved the company hundreds of thousands of dollars last year.

"So what?  I learned and forgot all that crap years ago.  My company is happy with my work and I saved the company hundreds of thousands of dollars last year."

The implication of the post you're responding to is that the person was trying to get on in development at Microsoft. I don't doubt that you are entirely competent at your job, but if you want to work on the Windows OS, SQL Server, IIS, Office, or the like you are going to have hash tables, linked lists, and big-Oh, coming out your ears. On the flip side you might a wicked smart kernel developer but completely out of your element as a business analyst.

Is it so hard to understand that not all software jobs have the same requirements?

> Suppose you're hiring for a company, and most of your programmers are in their mid twenties.

Since you mention it, what if you're hiring for a company where most of your programmers have 20+ years of professional experience?

> In most fields, experience makes up for the downsides. Training an M.D. to the level where he's most effective is very costly. With programmers... not so much.

You're confusing "training" with "experience", by implying that a job which needs relatively little or relatively cheap training (e.g. programming) has little need for experience. You wouldn't say that though about musicians for example, would you?

> A lot of young people program all day and are generally "good enough" to get the job done.

It isn't only whether you're willing to code all day, all month, or all year: it's also how much you accomplish during that time, how much time you spend after that debugging or refactoring, how much help and supervision you need, and whether you contribute anything else as well as code.

> Even if there is only a slight correlation between age and the suitability of an applicant, why should the hiring company ignore that data point?

There may be correlation between age and the suitability of 'applicants in general': but given any specific applicant, there are much more reliable ways to assess his or her suitability.

> Age discrimination is here to stay

It's hard to be young. The most common form of age discrimination is probably, "I won't consider you for this job, you're obviously far too young and inexperienced."

On the subject of young vs. old, the main problem I've noticed with older, "experienced" developers in my tenure is that most of them seem to think that, because they were programming 10 years ago, they know about current technologies.  I cannot count the number of times I've been working under a developer who would routinely cite their years of experience, but knew absolutely nothing about anything that had been released in the past 5 years.  Yet all I would hear is "I've been in this field for 20 years" as a shield against knowing anything new.  I don't have  enough fingers/toes to count the number of times I've worked under a "senior developer" or "team lead" who had absolutely no idea what source control is or why it's a good idea, or who didn't understand basic design patterns, yet cited 10+ years experience and a comp sci degree (I don't have a CS degree, remember)

Experienced developers are good.  Experienced developers who haven't learned anything new since they started coding are bad.  A lot of the time, younger developers are more keen to pick up new technologies rather than muck about and stick with outdated, legacy tech because they're unwilling to advance their skillset.  The one constant in this industry is change, and if you don't adapt you should become extinct like the dinosaurs.

> knew absolutely nothing about anything that had been released in the past 5 years

Incidentally that's one of the reasons why I follow a board like this one: I'll see a wider range of technologies etc. being mentioned here, than at work. Sometimes there's one which I'll then investigate.

>>Companies want young people because they won't complain about the programming language or the tool or the framework or the chair or his back or dual monitors and won't make sarcastic remarks.<<

I know now that I have never officially been one of the 'young people'.

The interesting thing is that in the database world and in the systems administration world. there is bias the other way. There is a huge bias towards veterans.

I am typically on larger projects with more experienced teams. There are younger people on the team. Some out perform the veterans. Some do not. just depends.

however, on the administrative side, generally people want a minimum of 5 years experience and the new "senior" level mark is 10 years minimum.

it's a bit of a different world.

In my country until a couple of years ago you could read ads that say 'up to 35 yrs old'.

Now it's supposed to be forbidden, but as one fellow told me they say to him: Wow H. you're overqualified for this job... and don't call him back.

I agree with most of the reasons of the original post. We want to believe otherwise, but it's right.

regards

Just my 2 cents on this.  Whenever someone brings this topic up, I like to use this analogy:

Imagine a person, born and raised in Japan.  He learns English from middle school, goes to college there, and enters a white collar job where he uses English.  He has been working for 10 years, and now has over 20 years of English experience (6 years school, 4 years university, 10 years work).

Now imagine another person, born in Japan, but he moves to the states in the 7th grade.  He has now graduated from HS, and has only learned English for 6 years. 

Which one, do you think, has better English skills? 

My point is that the quality of experience is a HUGE factor in how good that person may or may not be, aside from his natural aptitude.  Personally, I've only worked in SW for 7 years now, but I've worked with people with 30+ years that I've managed.  One guy would tell me "I've done serial drivers for over 20 years.  Don't you think I can do them better than you?"

My reply?  "Dude, it only takes 1-2 years to really understand a serial driver.  If you've been working on them for 20 years, you obviously haven't gotten it yet."  And wouldn't you know?  He wanted to use a polling driven driver instead of interrupt based, because ISRs are too tricky!

To be honest, I think the OP hit a nerve.  I like how we've explored this topic as to why there would be age discrimination, from manipulating young people and stability of old people.  There isn't a single right answer, as there are tons of different companies and each is motivated in their own way. 

I like one anon's post which mentioned that the old guy couldn't answer basic interview questions properly.  When I interview an "experienced" candidate, I try to find the quality of that experience, instead of just how many years.  If he spent 10 years at a SW company doing the same thing over and over and over again, well, that's not 10 years of learning and growing;  that's about 2 years of learning and 8 years of being pigeon-holed.

> Since you mention it, what if you're hiring for a company where most of your programmers have 20+ years of professional experience?

If a company has mostly experienced (read: expensive) programmers it must be working on either really difficult or high-quality software. I'm assuming that these programmers are both skilled and experienced, because nobody wants to hire an unskilled but expensive programmer. The company may still prefer to hire young people though, to mold them and to get the more experienced people to train and tutor them for free.

> You're confusing "training" with "experience", by implying that a job which needs relatively little or relatively cheap training (e.g. programming) has little need for experience.

Not really. A 15 year old can have 3 years of real programming experience already. A 20 year old may have written 200.000 lines of code in his spare time. This kind of experience is impossible to get as an M.D., because he can only gain experience "on the job" (after 15 years of formal training). So M.D.s have a level playing field: you work and learn on the job, and that's mostly it. Programmers, and musicians, can train day and night. The difference between 15 and 20 years of programming experience is not all that significant, and programmers can get at 15 years of experience really quickly if they're obsessed about programming.

> It isn't only whether you're willing to code all day, all month, or all year: it's also how much you accomplish during that time, how much time you spend after that debugging or refactoring, how much help and supervision you need, and whether you contribute anything else as well as code.

True, but that is notoriously hard to measure.

> There may be correlation between age and the suitability of 'applicants in general': but given any specific applicant, there are much more reliable ways to assess his or her suitability.

Probably. But assessments take time and effort. Putting a CV on the deny pile takes no effort at all. Like the GPA, it's quick and sloppy method.

It's funny how different the responses are. It looks like those who are confident in their skills and their value as a programmer don't think ageism exists or is a big deal, and that those who are 'victimized' by age discrimination are just poor programmers with experience. But if that's the case, discarding those people is not ageism at all: it's simply good business sense.

Well, who said that age and experience have a direct relationship?

Thou speakest wiser than thou art 'ware of.

Oh, yeah - referring to "It looks like those who are confident in their skills and their value as a programmer don't think ageism exists or is a big deal, and that those who are 'victimized' by age discrimination are just poor programmers with experience."

I'm probably younger than most new grads, female, has English as my second language, and am a visible minority, but I never thought that the reason I was hired or not hired had anything to do with any of those things.

Young'un, if you really think that age is a problem, then that's not really a problem is it? Just improve to the point where you show up, shock them that you're young, then blow them away during the interview and get the job from the Old Dudes with their jaws on the floor.

Besides, you age. </quitYourWhining>

Dorothy, I think he's complaining about the opposite problem: businesses being unwilling to hire older programmers.

I might've misunderstood his "main point" as being that "age discrimination is here to stay", to which I have said it's "all in your head" and that one "grows in/out of it".

Or perhaps his "main point ...[is that] companies must benefit from hiring younger people."?

If that's true, why don't we see more ads that say "fresh grads welcome" than "5+ years minimum"? They must be really shootin' themselves in the foot by so often asking for experience and not cleverly tailor their ads to imply they are wanting new hires of the same age group or experience level as McD applicants. I just don't see how that could be true.

@diego: "Re-read a few of the above posts, but replace the word young/younger with the word "white" and the word old/older with "black"."

If you took a random sample of people of a given age, and gave them all some kind of standard test, you would be hard pressed to tell black from white based on the results.

If you took a random sample of people of any age, you would have a much better chance at telling which were young and which were old.

I'm not trying to justify age discrimination here, just pointing out that it's not at all the same thing as racial discrimination.  There are very few reasons that could ever justify hiring someone based on skin colour (or gender, or religion, or sexual orientation).  There are, however, occasionally valid reasons that could justify choosing to hire an older person or a younger person for a particular post.

"If you took a random sample of people of any age, you would have a much better chance at telling which were young and which were old."

Iago,

For my under grad I double majored in psychology and applied statistics.  I find your statement interesting.  Could you please explicitly state what you are trying to imply and cite your references.

60 years old.  Programming for 35 years.

Started at a semi-startup in January.  By semi-startup, I mean they are not quite profitable but are past the 100 a week stage.  I could not work that hard any more, but I certainly can put in a solid 50 hour week.

Linux/Apache/MySQL/Perl&Python is the LAMP that lights my way.

The guys my age who are complaining there isn't much PL/I work any more, well, they are just history.

If that's true, why don't we see more ads that say "fresh grads welcome" than "5+ years minimum"? They must be really shootin' themselves in the foot by so often asking for experience and not cleverly tailor their ads to imply they are wanting new hires of the same age group or experience level as McD applicants. I just don't see how that could be true

-----------

Pay attention youngun, I'll show you how this works:

Example add:

Relevant Work Experience: 5+ to 7 Years  <-- code slange for people in their mid-to late 20s while also providing a way out to not hire a wet behind the ears folks.  Why not just say 5+ years of experience ( as if 5+ years meant something where technology turns over every 3 years )

OR this gem:

5 to 10 years of experience in C#, ASP.Net, SQL Server 2000 & 2005, Transact SQL, SQL Administration


Now, ASP.NET came out in what 2000/2001 so 10 years is a stretch.  Again, does not say minimum 5 years experiences, just 5-10.

So how old are you when you leave college for 10 years :
32-33? 

There are subtle ways for HR to block you out of a job and this is one of them.

You constantly read in the news that companies can't find enough programmers so they need to import (cheap) H1B's or offshore to (cheap) locations.  Yet when someone with a BSCS and a MSCS and lots of solid experience presents themselves what do they here back?

HR: "I'm sorry you have more experience than our position requires.  We don't think you'd be happy with it."

"Companies want young people because they won't complain about the programming language or the tool or the framework or the chair or his back or dual monitors and won't make sarcastic remarks."

Oh, you wouldn't like to manage me and my peers. We're young, but complain and make sarcastic remarks which would make any old geezer proud.

>If age discrimination is not real - why does it keep >coming up? Because all the older people who have trouble >finding jobs are poor software developers? Especially >since they remember getting hired when they were younger >- hence they can reliably compare the two scenarios. So >age discrimination probably is real.

I believe age discrimination does exist, either directly or indirectly. By indirectly I mean via increased confidence levels, young managers being put off hiring someone with more experience than they have etc.

I have given up trying to get a job writing software. I run my own micro-ISV and pretty much every famous company in the world uses my software. Yet, I can't get hired. Even if I apply to a company using my software, I won't get an interview. If I get an interview typically I do well in the technical tests, but someone don't get the job.



>If age discrimination is real, either the companies are >acting against their own interests, or they're >discriminating on age because they benefit from it. Since

It doesn't work like this. People and companies have been doing daft things since the dawn of time.

>Now, ASP.NET came out in what 2000/2001 so 10 years is a stretch.  Again, does not say minimum 5 years experiences, just 5-10.

So how old are you when you leave college for 10 years :
32-33? 

Except you could be 72 and just started ASP programming 5 years ago.  Looking for 5 years X experience != Must have Only 5 years X experience, no Y/Z experience permitted.

As others have said do you have 30 years experience or do you have 2 years experience repeated 15 times.  If you aren't actively pursuing greatness then you aren't even mediocre.

Couldn't it be said that if most companies behave this way, and you're a skilled mature developer, then you don't want to work for most companies.

Just because the job exists, doesn't mean you want it.  Haven't we learned anything from Joel:

not only is 85% of the workforce mediocre, so aren't 85% of the jobs.

There is no problem if you accept this fact and that during the interview, you should be looking for a good job just as much as they are looking for a good candidate.  Companies usually don't pick the first guy, why should you pick the first job you're offered?