Over 30? Too Old for Tech Jobs in China

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-02/china-s-tech-industry-wants-youth-not-experience

by Apocryphon • 8 years ago

306 230 8 years ago

This is good news for us in the whole supposed Bay Area / China rivalry. Young people are stupid. Old programers are very wise. (I am 25).

sabujp• 8 years ago

huh

georgebarnett• 8 years ago

On the whole, I agree. This trend will severely hinder the ability of companies engaging in this practice and somehow they won't know it. On the surface, to the people engaging in it they see it as a win. Over time though, they'll build experience eventually come to realise they've placed an incredible stealth tax on themselves.

That said, I wouldn't go so far as to say young people are stupid. I'd be more inclined to say that it takes a long time to get enough experience. When I was much younger, I vastly underestimated the value of this experience. Over time, I've come to see it as critical.

docker_up• 8 years ago

I'm an old programmer (almost 50). I completely disagree with you.

Young people are very, very smart. I hate old programmers that think they have an edge over young people. I've worked with kids who could be my children, and they are mature and smart and hardworking. Once young people hit about 10 years experience, they are as good as anyone with 25 years experience, because most of the first 10 years isn't as relevant anymore.

Sure, I bring some maturity to the table, and a bunch of war stories. I also believe I know how to program to avoid most bugs, so I take pride in having very low-defect, excellent code. But it is daunting competing against someone who could be your daughter and who can compete neck-and-neck with me.

WalterBright• 8 years ago

Smart isn't the same thing as wise. Wisdom is smart combined with experience/knowledge. Smart says implicitly defined variables is cool. Wisdom says it's a bad idea because you tried it when you were young and smart and now know the unanticipated consequences.

There's an awful lot about good software engineering that is not taught in any CS program I've heard of. This information is acquired via time in the trenches and older folks on the team mentoring you.

An example is that certain kinds bugs tend to emanate a characteristic smell. Experienced programmers can discern those smells and hone in on its source a lot faster. Certain kinds of code also have a bad smell, even if they work correctly, that experience will detect.

throwaway84742• 8 years ago

Code is costly, high maintenance, and it has high cognitive overhead. When possible one should avoid writing code.

But if you do decide to write it, not wasting time on shit that’s not going to work anyway can be much more valuable than code per se. Lacking experience, junior devs often try to boil the ocean where a cup of tea would be better.

mikekchar2• 8 years ago

Most of the young people I work with are quicker witted than I am (I'm 50). However, I have an edge over most of them (IMHO). I have good work habits. I'm organised at work (though hopeless at home). I have good communication skills (strengthened by years of practice). I have compassion for my coworkers, having experienced the same things they are going through. I understand very well what my strengths are and I know how to lean on my comrades when I need to. Most importantly, when writing code, I have judgement based on experience (not blog posts), I don't freak out when someone changes my code, and I don't panic when we make mistakes. Finally I know how to hedge poor management decisions to limit downside without materially impacting productivity.

Also, I don't know about you, but I'm still learning important new things even at my age (and experience level). I don't see an end in sight, so either I'm a very slow learner, or there is more than 10 years worth of things to learn/experience.

radicalbyte• 8 years ago

I'm 37 and have yet to meet a "younger" programmer who could get anywhere near me. I know plenty of older (40+) coders who are much better than I am.

EDIT: a lot of this is due to being location constrained (well, me wife is, and she makes more than I can make in the Valley) so I can't go and work with brilliant teams in Amsterdam/Berlin/London/USA.

It's down to the pool being bigger (development pays well so career chasers do it) and survivor bias for old developers. The "bad" younger people either get found out our talk their way into management, or they find a niche and becoming unmissable in their company (and can never leave).

I'm right at the lower bounds of people who learnt their craft on the 8-bits coding pretty close to the metal.

gaius3• 8 years ago

because most of the first 10 years isn't as relevant anymore

Maybe in JavaScript-land. But in C/C++, major databases, Unix at scale... laughably mistaken.

baron816• 8 years ago

I wonder how much of discrimination is based on demographics. Surely there is a large bulge in young engineers as the tech industry only became cool in about the last 10 years. There are at least 2-3 times as many 30 year old software engineers as there are 40 year old software engineers. I doubt that when Millennials are in their 40s the industry will have expanded as fast as it has been to make them a minority.

The culture shift is the other element I’m curious about. Software engineering becoming cool means that the industry is not just dorky men who were always into computers and electronics. Someone with the social skills to become an engineering manager might be resistant to hiring someone with the social skills that are stereotypical of those dorky men who were here first.

ryl00• 8 years ago

I think cool tech stretches farther back than that. Sure us Gen X engineers didn't have the Internet growing up, but we had Star Trek, Star Wars, the space shuttle, arcades, Apple II's, etc to inspire us to become engineers. And don't forget the Internet bubble of the late 90's; that surely would have brought a lot of fresh faces into tech.

Clubber2• 8 years ago

Yes, it was the dot com bubble when being a tech person was cool. Before that, we were dorks.

pjmlp3• 8 years ago

Not only in China, after a while it appears the only way is either management, architecture (as synonym for management in many companies) or just go freelancing if wanting to stay technical.

anoplus• 8 years ago

I predict the age limited hiring trend will foster a larger freelance market.

dx0344• 8 years ago

Which is also shown in titles at many companies. If you can be a senior programmer/consultant/whatever with 5-6 years of experience, the only way in your 30s is becoming a manager.

I just noticed that for Data Scientists (one of the more en-vogue jobs at the moment). You start as Data Scientist after University and can have a Senior Data Scientist role with 5-6 years of experience. All those that have more experience (of which there are a lot, most of the jobs aren't that novel) have to go into a manager role, even if it's just for the title without any additional repsonsibility. Or accept that with 20 years of experience you don't get paid more than someone at the end of their 20s.

pjmlp3• 8 years ago

The problem with accepting to get paid as such, is that you also have to find someone willing to pay you.

Which many don't, because they know 30+ aren't easy to fool with equity and "live our dream" kind of stuff, and they also have other priorities in life besides 24h coding.

So it is easier just to get cheaper naive devs out of university.

eksemplar• 8 years ago

Ethics aside I wonder if it’s a good for efficiency. I mean, sure they can work the young guys harder, but is the work they are getting good?

I know I prefer to hire people with experience because they deliver better work, faster. Part of that comes from managing their work/life balance better, but maturity in general have almost no downsides in the thinking business. Older workers are typically better at analyzing situations and also at telling me truths that they think I don’t want to hear, which is immensely valuable in decision making.

Not that you’ll want only experience. A balanced work force is the best in my opinion. Get your experienced staff to mentor your hires fresh out of school, and they’ll teach each other.

I know ageism is a thing in tech, and probably especially in startups which is mostly people in their twenties, but wasn’t there recently an article on how the most successful startups are actually started by someone aged 35-45?

I wonder if the Chinese ageism is because China is approaching tech as a factory line? Which would be a radically different approach than we have in Scandinavia, where we want our engineers to be well educated and capable of self-management and teamwork.

ggg9990• 8 years ago

I know that without engineers over 30 Amazon Google Facebook etc. would have imploded by now

raverbashing• 8 years ago

It's the eternal September with some members of the younger generation.

kartan2• 8 years ago

sure they can work the young guys harder,

If you are NOT a good manager, that is all that you care about.

Did you fail to plan the rest release? Developers will do extra hours.

Did you miss understood the requirements? Developers will fix it with extra hours.

Did you decide to use the wrong technology for the project? Developers will work extra hours.

A company that hires only people that does what is told and stays longer hours have incompetent management.

I wonder if it’s a good for efficiency.

Companies that value diversity (age, gender, nationality, etc.) are the ones looking for that high-quality output that makes products work in the long term.

Sweden is as successful as China when it comes to software, even that there are orders of magnitude of the difference of population. The main reason is the respect for family and employees. Even that Sweden also is far from perfect.

dx0344• 8 years ago

Maybe software for international markets. But there's a lot of software produced in China for the huge domestic market. I doubt Sweden has the same software output as China.

apta• 8 years ago

Sounds like the TSB way to manage things :-P

coldtea2• 8 years ago

A company that hires only people that does what is told and stays longer hours have incompetent management.

Only when quality of end product / developer hapiness is concerned.

Which, lip service aside, are not metrics that managers are usually measured buy.

Do they bring in profit?

gruez• 8 years ago

Companies that value diversity (age, gender, nationality, etc.) are the ones looking for that high-quality output that makes products work in the long term.

What’s the evidence behind this assertion?

innagadadavida• 8 years ago

Many management issues you mention are not cut and dry. The fact is early stages of a product development tends to be experimentation and fast iteration. Experienced, heavy hitters don’t work well in this situation, they are great when the product has matured and you need stability and need to fix the last 10% of the issues. Hiring new grads who can code certainly helps in man many situations, but not all.

batter• 8 years ago

It's exactly about the company i currently work. They're just adding more and more developers.

drvdevd• 8 years ago

I believe it’s simply easier to manipulate younger devs into taking lower salaries, in general. So the tech companies (and apparently in China as well), reinforce this ageism.

nailer5• 8 years ago

I believe it’s simply easier to manipulate younger devs into taking lower salaries

I agree with this, but just wanted to add how interesting it is that it occurs in a country ostensibly run by a system which is ostensibly about the power of labour.

wonton2• 8 years ago

Just imagine the sheer difference in size, there are millions every year finishing their higher education in china, chinese cities are bigger than scandinavian countries. When you have this many people labor is cheaper and you have more employees in the big companies. The way og managing people in scandinavia simply cannot happen there. It is like the only thing that can manage such big companies are policies and the chain of command. So for example i imagine if you told your managers to tell their sub-managers to hire senior staff all you would get is higher salaries because people get to where they are not based on merit but because how good they are at politics. So then the only rational choice would be to get naive young people who will believe what the boss say without questioning and cost less.

oblio• 8 years ago

There are plenty of big companies outside of China that are both big and don't follow military practices for management. You scale big companies like you scale anything: you break down the problem into smaller subproblems and solve those.

You make it sound like only way to scale is by having a dictatorship and a strong chain of command. Historically the more power the peons had, as long as they didn't completely disregard the chain of command, the stronger the organization was.

Also, despite China having 1 billion people, you don't need 1 billion employees to turn a profit. Even the biggest Chinese companies, outside of state owned ones (which have different, more social, objectives) aren't much bigger than other big companies worldwide.

lordnacho• 8 years ago

Ethics aside I wonder if it’s a good for efficiency. I mean, sure they can work the young guys harder, but is the work they are getting good?

Especially with software, which is a creative business. Your first hour of a day is probably a lot more productive than your 12th. That last hour might even be counterproductive, when you create bugs and extra complication that needs to be sorted out later.

a_bonobo• 8 years ago

I have received results from BGI (Beijing Genomics Institute), which is the biggest genomics company in the world by now which does a lot of genome sequencing and assembly on demand.

They employ a massive amount of undergrad and postgrad students to do their work with a high turnover, complete with living areas right next to the building, since that's cheaper than having people with experience.

BGI in Shenzhen has a staff of nearly 2700: scientists, lab workers and clerks. The average age is 27, and the atmosphere is university/YWCA/science club. Two-thirds of the employees live in sex-segregated dormitories near the BGI building [...]
Some geneticists have raised an eyebrow at BGI: noting this army of young and often not formally qualified workers

Source: https://www.smh.com.au/technology/chinese-genome-mappers-bgi...

Somewhat mirrored in the Glassdoor reviews: https://www.glassdoor.com.au/Reviews/BGI-Shenzhen-Reviews-E5...

This is noticeable from the results I've received, as in the quality being all over the shop. Sometimes the results are documented nicely, sometimes there's no documentation. Sometimes a different genome assembler was used, but it's not in the documentation. Sometimes it's really good, sometimes it's complete crap. We've stopped doing business with them as it's simply not reliable.

branko_d• 8 years ago

Makes me glad I ordered prenatal genetic test for my daughter from Roche (Harmony) and not BGI (Nifty).

yesforwhat3• 8 years ago

>BGI in Shenzhen has a staff of nearly 2700: scientists, lab workers and clerks. The average age is 27, and the atmosphere is university/YWCA/science club. Two-thirds of the employees live in sex-segregated dormitories near the BGI building [...]

Sounds like a nightmare.

thevardanian• 8 years ago

Well if that's the case Tech companies in China are going to have to learn to adapt, and start hiring older people considering the coming steep decline in the working age population of China. Millions of people are going to be vanishing out of the work force, because of the imbalance that was created by the one child policy. In 2018 alone China's workforce decline is expected by nearly 4 millions people, and this trend will only continue.

https://imgur.com/a/KC2LtLR

dnomad• 8 years ago

I think you would be very, very surprised at the quality, quantity and cost of engineering talent in China. This sort of ageism is awful but there's no doubt that China is still very much coming online with its engineering workforce. Moreso than in the West landing a good engineering job can be like winning the lottery. It's a prestigious title that can deliver more than just money... heck, in some regions engineers are more desirable than doctors when it comes to marriage. Combine this with significant state support and a huge internal and competitive market and it'll produce a ready, eager and willing workforce. This is all part of the master plan of the CPC to produce a viable middle class and a consumer-driven economy.

nopinsight• 8 years ago

Do you refer to just software engineers being more desirable than doctors for marriage in some regions, or all kinds of engineers?

I thought that the bar to enter the engineering profession overall (except in some areas of software development) is still lower than medical. Wondering what the current situation in China is.

coldtea2• 8 years ago

Ethics aside I wonder if it’s a good for efficiency. I mean, sure they can work the young guys harder, but is the work they are getting good?

That would matter if their success was tied to the quality of the work -- not just rushing it to market, promoting it, and so on.

Which is not usually the case, either in China or here...

d-sc• 8 years ago

Not that you’ll want only experience. A balanced work force is the best in my opinion.

Can confirm. I(college student) work in small remote product development lab with a guy in his 30s and one in his 70s. The rest of the team is 1,000 miles away in San Diego. It’s beeen one of the best learning experiences I’ve had. And they pay generously on to :)

dep_b2• 8 years ago

I guess if you have well-behaved and disciplined people below 30 things might work in favor of them, but the majority of developers I meet in daily life refuse to grow up any time before their 30s. Long days? Sure. Get the product shipped within spec and on time? If they don't get distracted.

But that might only be problem in the West.

the_watcher• 8 years ago

Personally, I definitely worked longer hours when I was younger, and was generally more available on weekends, evenings, etc. Now, I'm substantially more productive during the hours I do work. Overall, I'd say my output has increased and improved in quality, but ad hoc, after hours requests (nights, weekends when I'd have dropped what I'm doing to take care of them) take longer.

milesvp• 8 years ago

I don't know about the startup study you're thinking of, but I've seen studies that suggest the main difference between under 30 and over 30 in the workplace is that the over 30 crowd simply spend less effort. That is to say, they both output the same amount, but the older folks don't spin their wheels as much. I'm not sure how much of this is experience at a task, since I'd expect a more experienced worker to need less effort at a given task, and how much of this is physiological. My personal experience is that 20 somethings waste a lot of time on shit that doesn't matter in general, but, again, that could just be that I've wasted enough of my own time to have a better sense as to what's wasted energy.

Where it gets murky for me, is that by 30, the majority of brain matter is now grey, which is great if you're dealing with things that don't change quickly, cause grey matter is smoking fast, but not so good for fast moving areas like tech, because it's not as plastic. I could see a slight argument for ageism in tech, for this reason, but I've been doing it so long, that I'm finally starting to see history repeat itself, and it's really easy to see past the hype of most 'new' technologies, given that they're often just repackaging of some idea from a decade ago, and it's a big mistake not to have someone on the team who can recognize these trends.

Personally I really think it's a mistake in general to avoid diversity though. There are so many diverse tasks in software, that you really need people who are happy doing different things. Also getting different viewpoints and concerns can really round out a product, and can make finding bugs easier.

freetime2• 8 years ago

If true, it seems like it would be a good opportunity for Chinese companies to hire some experienced engineers at a discount.

vinceyuan• 8 years ago

In late 2015 (maybe early 2016), I was interviewed by the engineering manager of a 20-to-50-person tech company for a iOS engineer role in Hong Kong. I answered all tech questions well. But when I heard his last question, I knew I would not get this job. The last question is "how old are you?". I hesitated but still told him "35". He did not say anything. I know it is illegal in the US. But I was not in the US.

idra• 8 years ago

Hong Kong is not China

est• 8 years ago

In OP's case it looks pretty Chinar to me.

vkou• 8 years ago

Hong Kong is most definitely China. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_of_sovereignty_over_H...

amrx101• 8 years ago

Will be in future.

gcb0• 8 years ago

its only slowing being invaded by china

josh_fyi• 8 years ago

That is quite legal in the US. Discrimination from age 40 is illegal. Firing every employee at age 39 (Logan's Run!) is totally within the law.

EgoIncarnate• 8 years ago

Many startups are exempt from even that. The Federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act applies to companies with 20 or more employees. Some states have stricter rules (5 employees or more for the California Fair Employment and Housing Act).

icebraining3• 8 years ago

I'm no lawyer, but couldn't one allege that policy has a disparate impact on older workers?

geomark2• 8 years ago

Only slightly related...well OT as heck: VP of Sales at a tech company in San Jose was interviewing me for a field technical management job. The final question he asked was "Do you play golf?" I answered truthfully "No" and thought to myself, that is illegal as hell but it looks like I'm not getting the job. He replied "Learn!".

Trundle• 8 years ago

Huh? Where is golf status a protected class?

bdowling• 8 years ago

There’s nothing illegal about only hiring people who like to play golf. (Unless you think that’s a proxy for being white or male or Protestant.)

jedberg• 8 years ago

The way some of these companies are solving this problem is by hiring old engineers here in the states. I went to give a talk at the Silicon Valley office of a very large Chinese company that you've heard of, and almost everyone in the room was over 30 (and Chinese). The few white guys in the room were mostly over 40 (probably over 50 even).

There was one woman, who was a young Chinese lady, and no one of any other color. This was in a group of about 100 engineers.

Oh and at the end they offered me a job. I was 38 at the time.

thisisit• 8 years ago

A friend of mine was trying to upskill himself and learn AI/ML. He had 10+years in IT and well paid . But on approaching his manager, the upskilling request was denied.

The manager said that he could "gather a bunch graduates" to build an AI/ML platform. There was no need to experiment and bet on someone with that much salary and experience.

So, I somehow feel ageism in tech is the result of everyone thinking tech is easy to build. A 15+years JAVA guy has similar output to say 5-6 years or for some extreme managers even 2-3 years.

Double_a_922• 8 years ago

A 15+years JAVA guy has similar output to say 5-6 years or for some extreme managers even 2-3 years.

I'd expect the output to be logarithmic.

chaosite• 8 years ago

Define output. Once you get to a certain level of competence, you can easily produce lines of codes, so if that's your metric then the output plateaus after some years.

A developer can only type so much each day, after all.

erikb3• 8 years ago

I totally understand where that's coming from. A guy doing the same tasks/processes for 15+ years will get less and less from additional experience.

However, he will not do exactly the same thing. For instance a 10+ years guy might realize that instead of investigating a topic for 3 workdays, he can ask the colleague from another team he worked with 2 years ago, and get the answer in 20 mins. His processes will change a lot, so his output can increase exponentially even. Of course it's limited by his intelligence, i.e. his ability to learn from his experience. And it's likely to happen in steps. So a quite smooth line for a few months, then an aha-moment where he bumps his output drastically, then another smooth line.

snarfy• 8 years ago

Somewhere along the line you learn it's better to write a couple lines of shell script than 20,000 lines of Java.

erikb3• 8 years ago

The difference is between companies who want to use technology to really gain influence in the world (Amazon, Alibaba etc) and companies that just try to get by creating some fluff so the next paid version of their product keeps customers paying.

The first kind of company will not underestimate certain workloads and pays experts very high salaries. The second company really doesn't need to succeed technology wise, so they use the cheapest way possible to create their fluff.

And one tip that always applies: Never tell your manager about your ambitions. Never! A middle manager is certainly someone who is more about the fluff+constant pay type of person, a rent seeker. He doesn't like people showing true effort and actually gaining leverage for raises and maybe even take over his position. Especially the last point is very important to him. For him his position is the most valuable thing in the world so it is natural from his point of view that everybody below him wants to steal it from him. And it's also not totally wrong since he probably got his position just in this way. So even if you work for Amazon who really want to compete for AI leadership don't tell your manager. Maybe talk with HR or do it in private, and then apply for another team when you got the skills.

Lendal3• 8 years ago

If you showed the ability to steal his position, that means he made a good hire which means he's going to move up himself. So why would he care if you had ambitions on his position or not? All the better if you did. Your working harder makes him look good.

Gustomaximus• 8 years ago

I believe your 'one tip that always applies' is horrible advice. And if this is the mentality someone approaches management it doesn't surprise me they have bad relationships.

For me I'm open and direct with managers. I've had some good ones and bad ones. Id say 70/30 ratio in favour of good. And when a manger is bad the adage plays true, 'People do not leave bad companies, they leave bad bosses'.

probablybroken• 8 years ago

Wouldn't he also have to learn a lot of advanced mathematics? I'd imagine the bunch of graduates in this case would be math majors. Obviously I don't know the specific requirements of your organisation, but this re-skilling might take up to five years ( if the requirements were R&D focused... Maybe the situation is different if it's more about applying pre-existing sofware. )

mattmanser5• 8 years ago

Does ML really need advanced maths? I think you're under-estimating how the fundamentals are pretty simple really. What we were previously lacking was raw processing power to get good results.

mikkom• 8 years ago

he could "gather a bunch graduates" to build an AI/ML platform

I would claim that the more general and reusable the tool ("AI platform") is, the more experience is needed to build it.

afpx2• 8 years ago

I’m slightly over 40. Recently, I’ve been interviewing, and almost all of the focus has been on how I solve their ‘coding challenge’. Few questions about software engineering practices, algorithms or data structures, about how to approach challenging problems, make trade offs, or ship software.

It all comes down to if I can solve a problem like “Given an NxM matrix of integer strings, print true if any row, column, or diagnonal contains only palindromic numbers that can be written as the sum of consecutive squares.“ Oh, and on some random guy’s laptop, with a panel of 4 people watching me type as they sit in silence, and with 20 minutes remaining.

When I look back at all of my career successes (leading engineering teams through 10 successful commercial products, 4 startups, 3 acquisitions, millions of users, etc.), coding was hardly important.

I guess it’s time to retire.

Lendal3• 8 years ago

Fist, I don't want to work with a group of people who have only been selected by their ability to solve stupid, meaningless puzzles. That's something you do in college, which I hated.

Second, once you get past a minimum level of intelligence a lot of success in software development is based on motivation. It's hard to be motivated by a made-up problem where all your hard work is going to be thrown away and not used by anyone for anything, and my first step in solving it is to involuntarily roll my eyes and groan. That starts the project off on a bad foot to begin with.

tcbawo• 8 years ago

Seeing whether someone can code has to be part of the recipe. It's surprising how many candidates can't demonstrate basic coding ability. The coding component is better if it requires the candidate to ask questions about what is required, where they can demonstrate their thought process and approach to the problem at hand. Anything that requires more than 15 minutes on a whiteboard is probably overkill. Brainteasers and the like are mostly a waste of time.

perfunctory• 8 years ago

“Given an NxM matrix of integer strings, print true if any row, column, or diagnonal contains only palindromic numbers that can be written as the sum of consecutive squares.“

Ok, but this is not really a puzzle. It looks like a rather trivial exercise just to see if you can write nested loops. I guess an average software engineer shouldn't have problems with this. Or I am missing something.

dlandis• 8 years ago

Oh, and on some random guy’s laptop, with a panel of 4 people watching me type as they sit in silence, and with 20 minutes remaining.

That part, to me, is worse then the question. Are you exaggerating, or did the panel really just sit there and watch you? If so, can you say which company so people know to avoid?

raducu• 8 years ago

I'm pretty sure I can have the same output as a chess grand master, even though I haven't played it in decades.

kodablah2• 8 years ago

But on approaching his manager, the upskilling request was denied.

Bad way to go about it anyways. The best way is to change companies if possible (granted, one will have to put in their own time to learn or do it quietly at their current job). If the company is good about intra-company movement, it might be possible to do this within the company, but often the companies that can do this come off as too large to have the flexibility one needs to really dive in as opposed to getting lost in the fray (you'll feel like you're a junior all over again). Unfortunately, mobility is the antithesis of stability.

rahimnathwani3• 8 years ago

Many (not all) tech companies in China expect people to work 9-9-6 (9am to 9pm, 6 days per week).

Most professional people in China over 30 are married, and many have a child. It's tough to raise a child if you spend 30% of your time sleeping, 45% at the office, 10% commuting, and 10% doing chores/admin.

Also, people under 30 are more likely to over-estimate the value of their stock option package, so will also, on average, work for less.

49bc2• 8 years ago

Exactly this. There’s nothing special here, just a new generation that will learn a hard lesson.

icebraining3• 8 years ago

It's tough to raise a child if you spend 30% of your time sleeping, 45% at the office, 10% commuting, and 10% doing chores/admin.

Not if your spouse has enough time. This is less common in the West nowadays, but it was common in the past, e.g. fathers in the US in '65 reported fewer than 3h/week on child care and only 4h/week on household chores: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/15/fathers-day-...

rahimnathwani3• 8 years ago

We're talking about China, though. Among urban Chinese people I know, it's more common that grandparents take care of the child (perhaps back in the home village), than it is for only one spouse to work outside the home.

nnq2• 8 years ago

You can also take it as a "the disease is its own cure" situation:

Overpopulation => Ageism => Overworked people => Less children => Less overpopulation

That "one child policy" was the solution. People should get it in their damn heads that they don't really want more economic growth for their country at all costs, as this will decrease their quality of life by getting them overworked to death.

It's 2018... nobody should work more than 4-6 hrs a day, that the fucking reason we invented all this technology and economic machinery!

jacquesm• 8 years ago

This reasoning only holds for densely populated and preferably small countries. As soon as a country gets larger and less densely populated cost of infrastructure per capita rises very quickly.

netheril963• 8 years ago

It's 2018... nobody should work more than 4-6 hrs a day

While 996 is too much, 4-6 hrs work per day is too few for a developing country, which by definition needs a lot of more development.

williadc• 8 years ago

I wonder how much of this article was written by Bloomberg chasing clicks from those of us who are older than 30 and work in the tech industry who want to preserve our status.

dx0344• 8 years ago

Well they do need people to read their articles so that will have been a factor. But it doesn't make the story false.

TangoTrotFox2• 8 years ago

I hate the use of discrimination in things like this because it's not discrimination by any means of the word. Discrimination would be saying, "I do not want to hire older people, because I don't like older people." When you do not end up hiring older people because they disproportionately have characteristics that you do not want (or lack characteristics you do want) that is not discrimination.

For instance at the most basic level older individuals are going to have experience as well as a better understanding of their own value (high) and the value of equity options (low). They're going to generally want substantially more real compensation. We could debate how much experience should translate into, in a dollar amount, but for companies that prioritize labor costs, it makes little sense to hire older workers.

For instance IBM is the poster child here. At one time they had one of the highest median ages in tech, but they've been completely reshaping their company in a way that has resulted in numerous and ongoing age discrimination lawsuits, but I don't think it has anything to do with that. They've started hiring younger, firing older, and now the plurality of their workforce resides in India. They clearly are prioritizing the very quantifiable labor costs over the more difficult to quantify labor skill. This is not discrimination.

jamesmiller5• 8 years ago

They're going to generally want substantially more real compensation.

Can we always assume that's true? What if I'm a middle aged person who is interested in trying out a startup?

It seems like such a waste of potential talent by not bieng upfront with canidates on your hirring practices.

TangoTrotFox2• 8 years ago

I'd think definitely not. But these things will be true in most cases. So what that means is that even if a company is completely and absolutely open and invested in being as upfront and inviting to each and every single applicant, you'd still expect to see an employee base that has some groups overrepresented and some groups underrepresented.

vesak• 8 years ago

If that's true, it's the fault of everyone in their 20s who did jack shit in their youth to protect their future selves. Unions, guilds, worker protection laws. That sorta stuff.

But it's Communist China, so perhaps not.

kaptain• 8 years ago

I spoke to a friend (recent college grad) about expectations about work. He said that pre-marriage, he expected to work every day, as many hours a day as possible to build up his skill set. As he acquired more skills and responsibilities, he expected that he was going to do less coding and more managing others to code. A lot of the challenge of software development is not in the actual coding itself but rather in architecting the infrastructure and processes that make a product successful. He expected that by the time he hit 30, he would be working a more reasonable 9-5 because he would be in a administrative/managerial position.

Culturally, China is about fitting in. It's a difficult place to live if you're older and single, if you're married with no children, etc. This grates against Western values. Starting a tech job (i.e. programming/coding) over 30 is not the norm so it is avoided.

sametmax3• 8 years ago

It's weird given that genius aside, most programmers I know only became good around 30 :)

freekh• 8 years ago

Yeah, that ressonates with my thinking as well: it's around 30 for engineers at least cause it takes a couple of years to get your head around the business and then another couple of years to acquire the expertise.

joncampbelldev• 8 years ago

As a programmer approaching 30 I can confirm this for me. I am horrified that a company would prefer the long hours / low quality output of my earlier years compared to my current fewer hours / more thinking / higher quality output. I can only hope that I will improve a bit more as I cross over 30.

Who knows, perhaps I will immediately plateau and never learn or improve after 30 ;)

contingencies• 8 years ago

If you know any experienced engineers in China who need jobs, send me an email.

justinzollars• 8 years ago

This is the right response. Upvoted.

ePierre• 8 years ago

Not only that, but in China, tech companies are blatantly sexist:

http://laorencha.blogspot.com/2018/04/in-china-tech-companie...

oh-kumudo• 8 years ago

The only reason they can put that over, is because they can afford to do this. Chinese tech companies pays salary that is very much top-notch competitive, that they can afford to act like investment banks in US, where they only attract most young and talented, burn them out, then find the replacements.

EZ-E• 8 years ago

Tech workers over there work themselves to exhaustion. 9AM to 10PM is the standard. I would guess older people wouldn't sign on that. That's why companies hire and overwork younger engineers.

donttrack• 8 years ago

You cant make 40 year olds slave away all night to build your stupid hotdog app, which supposedly is going to make you all millionaires. That's the problem...

ksec2• 8 years ago

I would much rather have engineers that are over 30. Wisdom, sometimes comes with life and age. To solve problems, which is what really programming is all about, the wisdom not to over engineering it, not to over see tiny details, not to under estimate difficulties, not to follow the hype with stupid shiny new tech every 2 - 3 year.

They may not write as much code, they may be more reading and thoughtful rather then rushing it and start hacking. But they write much more quality code.

I wish I could start my start up someday, then I would actually want to hire age 30+.

yiyus• 8 years ago

I think you need both. Experienced engineers to teach the new people and serve as an example, and young engineers to keep up with the times, have more dynamism and, eventually, have a good next generation of experienced people.

ksec2• 8 years ago

Agreed.

pupusito• 8 years ago

And as the education tools become better and better (Youtube videos, free online CS classes made by the best teachers in the world, high quality open source projects) I am afraid this trend is going to continue.

MasterScrat• 8 years ago

I would be curious to have the opinion of the community on a related topic:

I am a 29yo European software developer with 4 years of experience working in Switzerland, with both startups and big companies.

My partner can't find a job in our current country but she has offers in China (Guangzhou) and England (London).

What do you think would be more valuable for me career-wise? Does it make sense to invest the energy learning the Chinese language and customs?

carlmr• 8 years ago

I've been learning Chinese off an on for a few years. It will take about 3-5 years of intense study to get to a level of Chinese where you can work in Chinese.

I'm actually interested in moving to China myself, but I'm not finding many offers in my field. Apparently I'm also too old according to this article (31). But it would be only for a few years anyway.

She might find a job in China where she speaks English. For learning Chinese you have to be really motivated.

majewsky2• 8 years ago

Since you're coming from the EEA, I'd be hesitant to take up employment in London before the Brexit negotiations are done, mostly because that uncertainty may cause a lot of emotional stress.

mseebach2• 8 years ago

If you're optimising for "emotional stress", London still wins over China, for someone who speaks English and not Mandarin, and is comfortable in Western culture.

The government has made pretty strongly phrased guarantees for EU nationals arriving before 29 March 2019. Sure, it's not the best time to plan to put down roots permanently, but nobody who just wants to work for a few years should be discouraged by Brexit at this point.

mseebach2• 8 years ago

Depends on what you want to do with your career. If you want to go to China and work, even a little, jump on it.

In terms of a "classic Western career", ie money and status, go to London. Brexit might still be uncertain, but the job market is hot.

anovikov• 8 years ago

After 30 you are indeed not good any more, because you are no longer so naive and easy to exploit, that's it.

vimcat• 8 years ago

This is for “jobs”, “worker” “emploee”. Nobody cares about “Entrepreneur”’s age.

netheril963• 8 years ago

As a Chinese it is a bit of surreal to see this event discussed here, because the story has already been too old (pun intended) on Chinese network. The whole "too old for tech jobs" is now moot, at least for ZTE employees, since the whole company may not exist anymore due to the American sanction. Now if you search for 中兴, the Chinese name of ZTE, all you find will be discussions about how China will fare in the upcoming trade war, and how China could have its own semiconductor industry.

derwiki• 8 years ago

Can you summarize specifically why the sanctions would force ZTE to shut down? Thanks in advance.

netheril963• 8 years ago

ZTE imports most of its chips from the United States and its allies. Without these chips, it cannot manufacture the majority of its products. Its future is now unknown, and the stocks have stopped being traded.

RickJWagner• 8 years ago

The number of programmers who leave the ranks after age 30 is staggering. Some go to management, some leave for another career type, some are fired. For whatever reason, there's a sharp decline after the 20s and it only accelerates. Programmers retiring from the job at the normal age is a rarity. (It didn't used to be this way.)

bluedino• 8 years ago

Are there a lot of people over there with 20 years experience, as compared to the number of the people that have entered the market in the last 3-5 years? I'm thinking 20 years ago the tech market was pretty small.

latte• 8 years ago

Playing the devil’s advocate here:

Most of the commenters seem to ignore the fact that experience is not necessarily a good thing.

A person who has 10+ years of experience (be it programming, business or anything else that this person has done before) under their belt is likely to have their own opinions about how things are done. They will either suggest their own ideas (which may be incompatible with the rest of the team’s view and engage in arguments that distract the management’s attention from other issues) or, on the contrary, if they had a bad experience suggesting their own ideas, be apathetic and do their job mechanically adding little to the group’s discussion.

Also, if a person has been doing their job for many years, the employer can have a more or less definite idea of what kind of output they can expect from him or her. Sure, a person with a 10-year experience has a lower chance of being a non-performer, but you also have a much lower chance of discovering a rising star.

eeZah7Ux• 8 years ago

A person who has 10+ years of experience ... is likely to have their own opinions about how things are done

Yes, and that's why you want to hire them. That's the whole point of having experience.

RightMillennial• 8 years ago

A person who has 10+ years of experience (be it programming, business or anything else that this person has done before) under their belt is likely to have their own opinions about how things are done. They will either suggest their own ideas (which may be incompatible with the rest of the team’s view and engage in arguments that distract the management’s attention from other issues)

I sure hope so. Unless you're hiring for ditch digging or some other menial position, experience is essential because that person will likely have a better understanding of how to approach problems across various domains. Granted, different positions do have different requirements for expertise.

or, on the contrary, if they had a bad experience suggesting their own ideas, be apathetic and do their job mechanically adding little to the group’s discussion.

This could be a legitimate complaint, but I don't see how a novice know-it-all would behave any better.

Also, if a person has been doing their job for many years, the employer can have a more or less definite idea of what kind of output they can expect from him or her.

I don't see a downside to that.

Sure, a person with a 10-year experience has a lower chance of being a non-performer, but you also have a much lower chance of discovering a rising star.

Ah, the chance of missing out on that low cost programming ninja. No matter how good the rising star could be, if you need someone with experience, you're better off hiring someone with experience. If you're hiring for a junior position, sure, take a chance.

josephby• 8 years ago

How will this play out as the workforce ages? Will Chinese employers engage with older tech workers more effectively than their U.S. counterparts? Or will they continue to be ageist and complain loudly about a talent gap?

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/chinas-...

linkmotif• 8 years ago

This is really strange for me. I’m working on a product, and if I ever get funding and go out and recruit I will only seek out people over thirty. At least not under 25. I’m 33 and I’d be looking for older, more experienced people who can plan, write and deliver features. There is a ton of time between 9 and 5 for an experienced, focused developer to bust out lots of code before they have to go to their families. I’m not sure why anyone would want a team of 20 year olds when you can have a team of 30 or 40 year old people. In my experience, younger people are not only less experienced, but they’re also less socially and emotionally mature, and generally less stable.

daxfohl2• 8 years ago

Where the hell do software engineers go who quit in their 30s? It's obviously a thing that happens, given the average age in the industry. But I really have no idea what happens to them afterwards. If I were to leave software, I'd have no idea what to do next. Anybody who has access to LinkedIn analytics or something have any insight?

ryandrake• 8 years ago

Hi! Software engineer here, who left in his 30s. Mostly do a mix of product management and project management (for software companies) now. I still code, but at home as a hobby, and it’s by far my best work (code I’m most proud of). I’d love to go back to coding for a living but 1. Job market realities are contrary to that and 2. Most companies do not offer an upward career track as an individual engineer.

leothecool• 8 years ago

We are all still programming. The ratio of young engineers to old engineers can be completely attributed to growth in the field. The number of engineers doubles every five years. So, it should come as no surprise that less than 25% of engineers are over 30. Once you get to 40+, it drops to 6%. Again, not surprising given a 5 year doubling time.

Uncle Bob blogged about this in 2014. http://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2014/06/20/MyLawn.html

daxfohl2• 8 years ago

Huh. That totally makes sense.

In fact I wonder if this whole article could be attributed equally. Certainly china's tech sector has experienced even faster growth. The person in the story central to the article was probably just caught having an affair or something.

bbbobbb• 8 years ago

Can it though? This should be easy to prove simply by stating the totals by age instead (that are supposedly growing each year very fast), which has to be possible if we are confident in ratios. Is there any source for this?

phendrenad2• 8 years ago

I’m planning on flipping burgers when my Logan’s Developer Run ends.

tabtab• 8 years ago

Young techies type faster, remember quicker, and have better eyesight. Older techies use experience to design systems that reduce the need for fast typing, top memory, and top eyesight.

Over 30? Too Old for Tech Jobs in China

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