Silicon Valley's dirty secret - age bias

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/27/us-valley-ageism-idUSBRE8AQ0JK20121127

by ssclafani • 14 years ago

207 241 14 years ago

holograham2• 14 years ago

would love to hear pg weigh in on this...

seiji9• 14 years ago

Let me ragechannel pg for a minute: People are not created equal. Some are much smarter and much more capable than others. Once you reach a certain age, if you haven't "made it," you aren't one of the smarter and much more capable people. Being younger, you both don't know what you don't know and you haven't become set in unchangeable broken ways yet. Google likes to hire young so they can brainwash you into being "googly." Same with other companies. Once your brain thinks you need six TPS reports every day, it's not worth fixing you when we can hire younger, unbroken people. VCs love 'em young. Sequoia bluntly states they prefer to fund two guys working from a dorm room.

These days,"young people" are part of the technology. It's not something they learn as abstract concepts. They are it and it is them. You wouldn't expect a 50 year old Elbonian mud farmer to go to school and learn to be a world class electric car designer. But, you would expect a 50 year old world class electric car designer to still be hot shit.

Or, in song lyrics: maybe I should learn to shut my mouth -- I am over 25 and I can't make a name for myself; some nights I break down and cry.

The brilliance of our current situation is what "they" think of you is more and more irrelevant. Just make something people want. People have unlimited wants after all.

pfortuny2• 14 years ago

"Once you reach a certain age, if you haven't "made it," you aren't one of the smarter and much more capable people."

Do try not to believe in myths. Especially in 2012: people are young way longer than before and 'smarter and more capable' is quite relative.

smacktoward2• 14 years ago

Google likes to hire young so they can brainwash you into being "googly." Same with other companies. Once your brain thinks you need six TPS reports every day, it's not worth fixing you when we can hire younger, unbroken people. VCs love 'em young. Sequoia bluntly states they prefer to fund two guys working from a dorm room.

The flip side of this analysis would be: YC and Sequoia prefer to fund kids because kids are easier to manipulate. Kids don't know how to read a contract or a term sheet. Kids don't know how to protect their own interests in their business when accepting funding. Kids don't know how to play hardball in negotiations.

Kids, in other words, are very easy to use as disposable resources.

(Indeed, with appropriate conditioning you can even convince them to believe that becoming a disposable resource is a sign of their Epic Founderhood.)

Someone who's seen peers get screwed over in previous gigs, or who's been screwed over themselves, is going to have learned a few things about how not to get screwed over the next time. So it's more profitable to deal with people who haven't learned those lessons yet. And once they have learned those lessons, you throw them overboard and replace them with the next batch of dewey-eyed innocents.

chubot3• 14 years ago

So I'm not a fan of ageism and I wouldn't ascribe it to pg without evidence...

But given the "startup = growth" essay, where he says that only 1 company per cycle makes any difference to YC's returns, I can see the logic behind ageism.

Young people (I'm not one of them anymore) just have more unpredictable outcomes. They are the Black Swans.

The Black Swan theory is that the outliers shape our world. And that has been true in tech for sure -- Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc. are all anomalies. These companies grew enormously quickly and were all started by very young and inexperienced men. The two YC success stories that get pointed to -- AirBNB and DropBox -- were also started by the very young and inexperienced.

Older people are perhaps more likely to be successful. But there is less variance in their outcomes. There's the logic in investing -- once you're making money, you're less valuable. Because people know what you're worth. Before you make any money, people can ascribe crazy valuations to you. It will be wrong a lot of the time, but it doesn't matter because the one Black Swan event is what you're looking for. You only have to be right once.

rayiner5• 14 years ago

> Once you reach a certain age, if you haven't "made it," you aren't one of the smarter and much more capable people.

This is premised on the assumption that everyone was trying to "make it" at 22. Outside the little SV social network bubble, founders are generally older with a deep well of experience in a problem domain. I worked at two companies run by their original founders. The founders at both companies were in their late 30's or 40's when they started the companies. They had PhD's, years of experience in the field, numerous papers to their name, and extensive professional networks. They weren't trying to "make it" at 22--they were working in the industry building up a solid foundation for starting a business.

kami88452• 14 years ago

He probably doesn't have an opinion on this. Then if you accuse him of being ageist he will just push the problem to his applicant pool like he did with women. That's perfectly fine, I just don't think this is a very interesting issue to discuss with him.

seiji9• 14 years ago

It's pretty evident from His recent writings. The pg's opinions on the matter used to be more subtle, but I think in the recent few writings it's more overt. At one point, saying "young, unattached people are better than old people at technology startups" went from a What You Can't Say to something you can wink wink nudge nudge we all know it's true.

yaks_hairbrush• 14 years ago

Well, pg didn't found the company that made him a millionaire until he was thirty years old...

guyzero• 14 years ago

Because clearly no other industries or regions in the US are biased against older workers.

girlvinyl• 14 years ago

Actually, no, not as much. That's the point of the article. Age bias is cited significantly more frequently in California. That's why the article is news. The first 1/3 of the article provides a few paragraphs worth of hard numbers and statistics.

azakai2• 14 years ago

California != Silicon Valley, though. It also includes the LA area, for example.

stcredzero6• 14 years ago

I've had someone in a YC funded company flat-out tell me that it was going to be a problem for me. (43, and no, he wasn't in the process of hiring me.)

seiji9• 14 years ago

This is America. Get litigious! Things are illegal for a reason. They can't ask about your age or family status.

When your CEO gets up and says "We don't hire anybody over 28 years old," a dozen lawsuits should be filed within a week. It's amazing people let other people get away with ruling the world this way.

*edit: I had over/under switched in the CEO quote. Fixed.

aaronblohowiak• 14 years ago

Most states' (and federal) law protects older, not younger, workers... in many jurisdictions that means being over 40.

cookiecaper2• 14 years ago

What's "family status"? AFAIK there is no protected "family status". The typical protected classes are race, sex, religion, age, and in some places, sexual orientation.

mrkurt• 14 years ago

For what it's worth, it wouldn't be a problem for you at all here (MongoHQ). Anecdotally, I don't think it would be a problem at the more desirable YC companies either.

smacktoward2• 14 years ago

I had someone look me in the eye and tell me that at age 32 I was "over the hill." (Wasn't at a YC company, though.)

That was five years ago, so I can only assume that now I'm completely useless for anything beyond gumming food into a paste-like consistency.

mahyarm3• 14 years ago

There are companies that are the opposite in the Bay Area. Almost everyone where I work is over 30, with a median age around 40. These companies tend to be in the suburban south bay and the peninsula although vs SF & Berkeley.

stcredzero6• 14 years ago

Which company/companies, if I may ask?

diego• 14 years ago

It's not clear from your comment if it was an interview situation, or if it was casual conversation. If the latter, you should call them out.

I'm a fellow 43-year-old. I invest in early-stage startups, and that includes YC companies. I wouldn't invest in a company with that attitude for a very simple reason: they are handicapping themselves. I know what I'm capable of doing right now compared to when I was 25. Maybe I would be a great complement to my 25-year-old self.

The attitude reminds me of this:

"Bill Gates recalls once being invited to speak in Saudi Arabia and finding himself facing a segregated audience. Four-fifths of the listeners were men, on the left. The remaining one-fifth were women, all covered in black cloaks and veils, on the right. A partition separated the two groups. Toward the end, in the question-and-answer session, a member of the audience noted that Saudi Arabia aimed to be one of the Top 10 countries in the world in technology by 2010 and asked if that was realistic. “Well, if you’re not fully utilizing half the talent in the country,” Gates said, “you’re not going to get too close to the Top 10.” The small group on the right erupted in wild cheering."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23Women-t.html?pa...

stcredzero6• 14 years ago

It's not clear from your comment if it was an interview situation

It was not. Added one word to clarify.

dpratt• 14 years ago

I'm 37, and honestly this has started to scare me over the past couple years.

kami88452• 14 years ago

Just get an eyelift surgery and a pair of Converse and you'll be golden!

pfortuny2• 14 years ago

And you should be even more scared.

callmeed• 14 years ago

Ditto (also 37)

ShabbyDoo3• 14 years ago

I'm 37 and have not been concerned. If I compare my current work to that I did a decade ago, it's obvious to me how much better I am -- faster, better at design, fewer bugs, etc. AFAIK, no one has turned me down for work because I'm too old. Perhaps they've chosen someone younger and less expensive, but that's fine by me -- maybe not a rational choice, but not one based on discrimination.

Other than code quality, how was I different as a 25 year-old? Much more likely to adopt new technologies, libraries, etc. because they were shiny and hyped. Did this serve me well? Sometimes I got lucky, but I also wasted a lot of time figuring out the hard way that Technology X was way too bleeding edge for production. I was way too willing to go along with (or even suggest!), massive, all-things-to-all-people architectures which looked great as block diagrams but didn't match up with timelines, project risk, etc. Now, I push for incremental change over big bang projects.

One way I've regressed in the eyes of an employer: I'm no longer willing to put in long hours in exchange for vague promises of future pay-outs (bonus, promotion, whatever).

adrianhoward11• 14 years ago

I'm 37, and honestly this has started to scare me over the past couple years.

This is a coping strategy - not a fighting strategy - but think about options for working by/for yourself.

Playing the grizzled consultant rich in lessons learned can play well. You're, unfortunately, working with the opposite age bias that anybody under 30 doesn't know what they're talking about.

Ageism wasn't a major factor - but it was a minor one - when I decided to start my own company up again when I hit forty.

I figure that I'm not going to discriminate against myself ;-)

balakk• 14 years ago

I'm inclined to think 47% of Hacker News is 37.

keiferski• 14 years ago

Two points:

1. There's a big difference between job-searching at 40 and job-searching at 60. At 60, you're potentially 5 years away from retirement, so it's not surprising that companies are hesitant to hire.

2. Depending on the specific startup, younger people really may be more effective, at least in certain areas. For example, something like Facebook (during its early days), which targeted college students. A twenty-something will have much more insight into the mind of a college student than a 60-something. This obviously doesn't apply to areas of the company that don't relate directly to the end users.

Edit: I don't agree with the logic of companies, I was just playing devil's advocate.

timClicks• 14 years ago

I don't know why you wouldn't hire someone if 5 years is all you could expect. Do you seriously believe that your retention rates will be higher for someone under 30? Also, why would someone in technology need to retire at 65?

nasalgoat2• 14 years ago

Yes, but that 55-year-old engineer will code it far better, what with his 20 years of experience and all...

MatthewPhillips• 14 years ago

I don't know what industry you work in, but 5 years in software is a lifetime.

Spooky23• 14 years ago

A real issue, but lame scope. 50 is really a wall... you run into all sorts of 50-somethings who are basically wandering souls doing random consulting things after they get RIF'ed from some big corporation.

It's not a phenomenon specific to Silicon Valley. But insular culture of SV is more well known, but exists anywhere there is a cluster of particular types of business.

codewright5• 14 years ago

Dirty yes, secret no.

Straight talk:

I'm the CTO at a startup and I often have to call out the founders and employees for ageism. I resent that they say things that make me think they wouldn't take hiring an experienced engineer seriously.

I resent that they think my profession is best served by dumb happy newbies with no private life.

I refuse to tolerate this in any company I work for and I will ceaselessly call them out for this ageism.

I'm 24 years old and I will not stop programming just because I eventually grow a unix beard.

nasalgoat2• 14 years ago

I'm in my 40s now, and the number of times I've been brought into a startup suffering under the plague of 20-something founder's grandiose ideas of how things should be done vs. the nearly 20 years of real world experience that says otherwise would surprise you.

Youth might fuel the launch of your product, but experience will help it keep flying.

codewright5• 14 years ago

I know the value of experience because I know what my code looked like 5 and 10 years ago. I also know how incredibly poor my judgment was back then compared to now.

I can only imagine what 20 years will do for me. That's why I actively seek out more experience in candidates because I believe it'll make them more competent and sharp at what they do.

Somebody with battle-scars is something a startup could really use. Most of my pre-startup experience is as a contractor/consultant.

mortenjorck• 14 years ago

I've been meaning to write an article on this for awhile, but there's really no substitute for age diversity on a team. Having worked for the past year at a place with a fairly smooth gradient from just-out-of-school to used-COBOL-professionally, I can say from experience that it has been a benefit for both the older and younger employees.

Of course, the key is still, as always, cultural fit. You have to have youngsters who are willing to take to heart a hard-learned lesson from a graybeard, and veteran devs who are willing to keep an open mind to a new technology espoused by the younger generation.

reinhardt4• 14 years ago

"... by dumb happy newbies with no private life."

Interesting choice of words to attack ageism :)

codewright5• 14 years ago

I know plenty of 20-somethings that are married (I'm from the midwest) and relatively experienced in their work. (6+ years professional experience)

I also know yuppies angling for a "big win" whose only joy in life is playing Xbox at work and getting drunk. Who at the age of ~26 only have a couple years experience because they were too busy partying in college and didn't build anything while in school.

But they totally know how to run a company because they 'get' product and engagement and read Hacker News.

People come in all shapes and sizes.

It's not about the age, it's about wisdom and where you are in life.

You could be 26 or 56. I don't care as long as you care about your work and what you do.

freyr3• 14 years ago

> I refuse to tolerate this in any company I work for and I will ceaselessly call them out for this ageism.

And yet they appointed a 24 year old as CTO. Better pack up your stuff, since you refuse to tolerate it.

stevewillows• 14 years ago

Just because he's young doesn't mean it's ageism.

neya2• 14 years ago

It's not just old guys, you know. 8 years ago, I was able to design the same quality of websites, yet no one gave a fuck because I was 'too young' according to them. Today, they are ready to pay me thousands of dollars because I have the age factor and a couple of white hairs. Many people are under the wrong notion that age = experience. While it may be partially true, it isn't all the time. When you're young, you have the urge (and the energy) to make some really bold choices, which you will think twice to make when you reach a certain age (especially when you're married, have kids, etc..). So yeah....age bias sucks!!

heyrhett• 14 years ago

You're still designing websites that look like they were made before YouTube existed?

neya2• 14 years ago

It's a very good joke, but obviously no. I designed what looked good for 8 years ago. Now I design what looks good for 2012. That's what I actually meant! :D

cookiecaper2• 14 years ago

The thing is, children say this all the time whilst getting scolded/warned/informed too. While I agree one shouldn't be written off immediately due to age, my experience is that in the case of younger people, they actually are inexperienced and naive and simply pitch a fit, blaming discrimination and everything/anything else, because they fail to recognize that about themselves.

adrianhoward11• 14 years ago

Yes - it does run both ways ;-)

Back in the distant past when I was in my 20's I was the Technical Director of a company (kinda-sorta CTOish equivalent). One of the guys I hired in ops was in his late forties, early fifties.

We worked in the same office.

We regularly got great entertainment value from people who had come to talk to me naturally walked over to the nicely dressed distinguished looking guy at the large desk (needed for building new kit) rather than the pony tailed youth in the corner ;)

jiggy20117• 14 years ago

Isn't this partly because SV is most interested in developing social apps for hip teenagers?

It's probably difficult for a 40 something year old to know how to design an application for this crowd.

mattdeboard2• 14 years ago

This line of thought doesn't make sense to me, because marketers are in the same business of getting into the heads of the 18-25 demographic and they seem to do pretty well at it despite not being 18-25-year-olds themselves.

ksaitor• 14 years ago

Where did you get the stats that majority of successful marketers are not within 18-25 age range?

waterlesscloud2• 14 years ago

I suspect the most successful companies have user bases with a very significant portion of users in their 30s and 40s. If not an actual majority.

EDIT: Some stats here - http://venturebeat.com/2012/08/22/social-media-demographics-...

Worth noting that on that chart, HN has the second lowest avg age.

eshvk5• 14 years ago

I am not convinced that there is something inherently special with the ways young people consume technology that only other young people have mystical insight towards. There are people in their fifties on HN, tweeting away before twitter was cool and avidly using Pinterest. I think it is more about what you find interesting rather than how old you are.

After all, I would think that 80-90% of toys are designed by people who are not between the ages of 3-9. I am fairly certain these toys are profitable.

jiggy20117• 14 years ago

Well the canonical example would be facebook, designed by a young guy specifically for young people.

I'm not sure what the mean age of the early adopters of stuff like pinterest is but I'm guessing under 30.

michaelochurch2• 14 years ago

My first thought: narcissism. Narcissists hate being around older people because it reminds them that, some day, they'll be old and unable to do the sorts of things that narcissists tend to do on the weekend. I don't think that all founders are narcissists, but if you want to be able to hire narcissists (which 75% of execs are, let's be honest) then ageism becomes practical, sadly.

Then again, I think some of it is subconscious and unintentional: unreasonably harsh age-grading, coming from an inexperienced and privileged set of people who've never had to do grunt work and therefore have slack-free careers. People who are young and have high career efficiency ratios expect a linear trend-- consistently improving projects-- but the reality for most people (save privileged 22-year-olds) is that they have to take the work they get, rather than being able to focus on their passion or highly-visible (e.g. open source) work. I, personally, would love to hire someone in his 60s with no slack in his career-- I'd make him my personal mentor and figure out how he did it-- but it's quite rare to find such a person.

The reason ageism exists is that most people have to take low-quality, career-toxic work to (a) avoid income volatility that becomes more unacceptable with age, (b) evade the "job hopper" stigma, and (c) remain employable without moving to another city every 3 years, and this creates a world in which premature decline is far more common than it should be.

sdoowpilihp• 14 years ago

What kind of things do narcissists do on the weekend that would be specifically limited by age?

mahyarm3• 14 years ago

Late night clubbing and extreme sports?

seiji9• 14 years ago

Many SV startups are proxies for being a close knit frat. Hiring for "cultural fit" has gone way off the wacko deep end. (Did google start this? "Oh, you don't have a degree? We won't hire you. Oh, but you do make your own beer and wear funny shoes? Cultural fit! Hired!")

Your job description skills matter, but only if you also are a functional alcoholic who is addicted to playing online games for 30+ hours a week in addition to working 60+ hours a week.*

Startup is Mother. Startup is Father.

* I write this out of bitterness because I don't drink or play video games, which oddly I feel disqualifies me from working many places. "Oh, you don't play xbox? That's okay, I guess. The entire company gets together for six hours on Friday to drink and play marathon games though."

louhike• 14 years ago

There are less chances that they have children and a serious relationship so they are supposed to have more freedom to do what they want. This isn't of course a general assumption. I know married persons with children who spend way more time than me on personal projects the week end.

jgon• 14 years ago

Narcissism doesn't seem to me to be a life sentence sort of thing, although it can be. I think that the general point being made is that narcissists tend to be younger, and then many of us grow out of it. Whether it's the realization of my own mortality, being in a serious relationship, or (just even thinking about) having a child, I definitely can feel my perspective broadening as I get older, growing from the laser-like focus I used to have solely on myself, to now encompass the happiness and well-being of those around me.

So maybe it's not the narcissists are limited by age, but rather that age limits narcissism.

moocow01• 14 years ago

There is also a story that goes the other way... that as you grow older you realize its not worth working with those types of people. The last place I want to work personally is at a place stacked with narcissists all trying to figure out how they can prop up their own egos (while this does not define many startups it also unfortunately from my experience does define quite a few).

Life is too short to not be working with decent people.

That being said if you have the opportunity to work with some people who have been in tech for 20 or 30 years - become their buddy - you're more than likely to find out they are some of the smartest out there. When I was first out of college I worked at a place where the 2 guys I sat next to were 40 and 50 years old - they still are the best mentors/collaborators Ive ever had.

reinhardt4• 14 years ago

The narcissism theory sounds like an arbitrary rationalization. The following would sound just as plausible, if not more:

"Narcissists hate being around young people because it reminds them that, once upon a time, they used to be young and able to do the sorts of things that narcissists cannot do on the weekend anymore."

magicalist2• 14 years ago

er, ignoring the narcissism thing, which is bizarre (you want to hire narcissists, so better not hire old|ugly|disabled people!) your post seems to be arguing for the assumptions that the article is about: we can assume old people had to take shitty work in the past, therefore they are probably going to appear to be a poor candidate.

This completely ignores the evidence directly in front of us that all good engineers will one day start looking older and start having a lot more trouble finding job offers.

I don't really understand how you go directly from saying that it's unintentional and is "unreasonably harsh age-grading, coming from an inexperienced and privileged set of people who've never had to do grunt work" but then proceed to (try to) explain how it's perfectly logical that you can have a positive outlook of the future of your career, but actually you're going to have to take what you can get, which is the reason why "premature decline is far more common than it should be".

Maybe I'm missing the gist of your argument here? Are you suggesting we should be doing job interviews on a curve, excusing 20 years as a code monkey at some place you've never heard of because they probably had a mortgage? I don't know if that's your point, but it is definitely off base here: those 20 years might have created a middle-manager toady or they might have honed razor-sharp gut instincts and experience with relevant languages and tools. Either way, walking in with the assumption that "premature decline is far more common than it should be" means you're probably going to miss the truth of the matter, which is the whole point. No one is suggesting affirmative action for greybeards, they're saying that the kinds of things many in tech assume because a person has grey in their hair means that they don't get a fair shot, even when their experience is extensive and applicable.

svachalek• 14 years ago

This article was focused more on the movie-villain version of ageism (Over 25! NO HIRE! MUHAHA!!) but the real-world version often goes something like, "look at this guy, he's like, 38! if he's applying for anything less than CEO he's obviously terribad!" That said, I also think the argument missed the mark.

chaostheory• 14 years ago

I disagree. As I get older and see my friends who are programmers, I see a key issue: Becoming set in your ways for better or worse, which leads to... not as willing to change or learn new stuff.

To be fair there are exceptions. There are people who just enjoy programming for the sake of programming and building stuff. These programmers will most likely never be out of date. If you're not one of those people, then you need to force yourself to step out of your comfort zone and try to use something new at least every year if not more often.

koko775• 14 years ago

> (a) avoid income volatility that becomes more unacceptable with age, (b) evade the "job hopper" stigma

(a) Ding! I had to drop out of college to support my parents.

(b) Ding! I stuck around with jobs that made my physically unstable and emotionally depressed because otherwise I would have been unemployable.

I was originally an iOS dev, which I love, and I hate Android programming, but I've been forced by circumstance to get reasonably good at it over the past two years. And yet to some of the people I know, I'm the "old" guy, and I haven't even hit my mid-twenties.

freyr3• 14 years ago

> yet to some of the people I know, I'm the "old" guy, and I haven't even hit my mid-twenties.

If that's the case, it speaks to the immaturity of some of the people you know.

LastManStanding8• 14 years ago

They are calling this "a secret"? - more like overt bigotry from what I have seen. Isn't Y-Combinator one of the worst offenders? From what I have read Paul Graham brags actually about his age discrimination.

jpdoctor2• 14 years ago

Eventually, some enterprising law firm is going to make a bundle. The legal culture in SV (WSGR and their ilk) are not steeped in class-action suits, several folks are going to get their asses kicked from the legal defense, if nothing else.

LastManStanding8• 14 years ago

This should have happened long ago, and from what I have heard, Y-Combinator would be the best place to start.

finnw• 14 years ago

You can get sued for firing someone, but I'm pretty sure you can't get sued for declining to invest in a company (that would be very scary indeed.)

rayiner5• 14 years ago

I'm already shocked Google, Apple, etc, haven't been slammed with class-action suits for their overt anti-competitive hiring practices re: non-poaching, etc.

radicalbyte2• 14 years ago

The thing is, Randy did get hired once he shaved his head and started dressing down.

This isn't ageism, it's a filter against older people who are unable to adapt themselves to the changing environment. It's like classic cars: no-one is going to buy a neglected rust bucket that hasn't been serviced since the 1960s. Yet if the car is loved and cared for it can be worth millions (http://www.topgear.com/uk/car-news/ferrari-250-GTO-sells-for...).

Startups.. the web.. the valley.. they all thrive on new ideas. On people who keep their mind open to new ideas. Older people who are both relevant and still have "that".. are rare. Very rare. But if you can find one, they're priceless.

samspot• 14 years ago

What I'm hearing from many posters in these comments is my level of fashion-conciousness indicates how innovative I am. I think it's a big mistake to judge a candidate's aptitude for the work by how hip they look. This is the last industry I thought we'd have to face this kind of thing in.

embwbam• 14 years ago

Well, wait. I've always said this too: it shouldn't matter how I dress. But the truth is that dress is very frequently an indicator of how aware one is. It's a social consciousness that is sometimes reflected in other things (like being able to adapt to a new technology).

Look at this comic: http://xkcd.com/1139/ - the playground jerks call the guy a loser because he isn't playing the social game. They are right that he is "losing" the social playground game. He doesn't care, but that's kind of what these startups are looking for.

eshvk5• 14 years ago

I think rules are the same everywhere for management. The guy was going in for a CEO position one where he has to at least have the perception that he was in sync with the brand. Going even further, I think fitting in is appreciated everywhere, even in tech.

A couple of examples: Look at the whole anti-brogrammer movement: There were people conflating being fit, wearing polo shirts and dressing preppy with being obnoxious, sexist assholes. I am fairly certain that there were examples of such people but that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone who tries to be fit or dresses preppy is one. Personally, I don't like ironic graphic t-shirts and dressing in Cargo shorts and looking like a slob but that doesn't necessarily mean that I would go to a startup interview in a 3-piece suit. This is mainly because while I try to make an effort to dissociate the image you present with who you are, it doesn't necessarily mean that I should expect everyone around me to do that.

JVIDEL• 14 years ago

Bad example, that's a Ferrari GTO, it would sell for hundreds of thousands even if it was at the bottom of a lake.

And fashion means nothing, just that you read fashion blogs. The guys who invented the internet in the late 1960s wore 1950 dork clothes.

It doesn't matters.

reinhardt4• 14 years ago

Most guys haven't invented anything though, let alone the internet. Fashion (or some other triviality) sometimes ends up being the tie breaker, all else being (or rather seeming to be) equal.

mamoswined• 14 years ago

It's not just about adaption, looking good/trendy is about first impressions and signaling that you'll fit in with the "cool" culture at a certain company. I've known young people who dressed badly not do well either, and I've often counseled them to make some effort with their appearance and it makes a huge difference, even very little things like buying shirts that fit or paying money for a real haircut. We'd love it to be a pure meritocracy, but at the end of the day what you look like matters to other humans.

eshvk5• 14 years ago

I completely agree with the thesis of the article but I want to nitpick with the first few lines: I am not sure whether the converse/shaving your head off thing is helping is due to the perception of being more in tune with your coworkers or whether it is because of the person appearing younger.

southphillyman• 14 years ago

Is this essentially a Web 2.0/Bay Area issue? I recently went to a Java User Group meeting on the east coast where the presenter and about 60% of the audience....had grey hair. I think I may have been the 2nd or 3rd youngest person at the meeting and I'm 30.... I'm the 2nd youngest person at my current place of employment in the finance domain. I'm hoping that means by 40 yrs old there will be lot's of work and I can contract for $150/hr or whatever by then as a lot of the brick and mortars are heavily entrenched in the JEE stack and if this board is any indication there will be a dearth of JEE talent . Even in the Java space I can’t say I’ve seen too many 80yr old developers. But at least your career is not dead at 40. I’ve developed in Python professionally in the past and am teaching myself RoR now for both personal use and I have to admit I like writing in those languages more. But after reading articles like this and going out to San Francisco seeing the environment first hand I have to be honest when saying that I would be a little tentative jumping out there feet first.

zevyoura• 14 years ago

I would expect Java User Groups to skew much older than the average HN'er or start-up employee, or probably programmers in general.

mynameishere• 14 years ago

Replace "Java" with "enterprise" and you're correct. As for COBOL, you're looking at some real geezers pulling in huge consulting fees. 20 years from now when RoR is passe, expect the same for that.

RDDavies• 14 years ago

I think that's also a "Java" deal. You could go to a COBOL meetup and see the same thing, that doesn't make it the norm.

abolibibelot• 14 years ago

Because the norm is working at a startup in SV?

hga• 14 years ago

It's a problem in the D.C. Metro area as well.

My experience is interesting in that I'm blessed with genes that make me look decades younger than I am. And dress pretty much the way I did in my 20s, so everyone who initially looks at me thinks I'm somewhere in there.

After I hit 35 or so I increasingly found it difficult to find work ... until I scrubbed my resume of all evidence of exactly how old I was and then tried to be careful in interviews. I did this in the middle of one job search and the difference was like night and day.

And for a specific example, once I screwed up and mentioned working on PDP-11s, at which point my technical interviewer exclaimed "Just how old are you?!?!?!!!" Which is of course illegal, but in all fairness he'd just realized his model of me was seriously off. I said "Older than I look" and got the job, but it didn't end well....

gfodor6• 14 years ago

When you get older, several things work against you to jump into SV culture:

- You are not as easily impressed by or eager to try new technologies. (many of which are new spins on old ideas you've seen before.)

- You fail to see the appeal of the types of technology younger people are using. Or, you see the switching costs as too high to move away from what you are using now.

- Your lack of ignorance leads you to (often correctly) identify that an idea will lead nowhere. The problem is sometimes you are wrong.

I think the best way to fight against ageism is to make an effort to retain an open mind and curiosity. Try new things, even if you think they are going not be worth your time. Try to see the novelty in things that may seem to be a rehash of old ideas. Realize that no matter how stupid an idea sounds, sometimes it's worth trying, because you can't always predict the future, no matter how much you've seen.

Just think of the number of people on HN who have posted about how they don't understand Facebook, Twitter, or shoot down some whiz bang new technology. I've done it sometimes myself. Engineers are naturally skeptical, but this skepticism can grow out of control. It's fine in moderation but there's a tendency for this type of perspective to grow with age naturally, and that can ultimately undermine your ability to recognize and execute on genuinely novel, good ideas.

If I could hire someone who had both extensive experience but did not have a chip on their shoulder and lived on the edge of the curve like a 20 year old I'd do it. But it's pretty hard to not have a chip on your shoulder in this industry after a decade or two, and it's hard to continue to adopt the latest technology and not just settle in at some point along the way.

stcredzero6• 14 years ago

> Engineers are naturally skeptical, but this skepticism can grow out of control.

You've hit on one of the most important quality filters here. If someone is really, deeply intelligent, one of their analysis tasks will include a diligent try at making your idea work. The weirder your idea, the more curious about it they will be.

magicalist2• 14 years ago

As a person who doesn't really believe in the innately "deeply intelligent", I'll add that this is a skill that can be practiced, like any other, and the more curiosity you cultivate and act upon, the more you'll learn and get better at learning. You'll be much more pleasant to be around (instead of being known as a knee-jerk critic) and before you know it, they skills and insight you gain may have people calling you "deeply intelligent" :)

kemiller• 14 years ago

So my question is: why is this industry so prone to chips on shoulders? Might there not be a better way?

ryanmolden• 14 years ago

My personal read: there are lots of people that didn't "fit in" as a teen/young adult. Instead of learning that excluding people for being different is ignorant they learned that one day they would be the one doing the maltreatment, at which point it would be totally cool.

gfodor6• 14 years ago

I think part of the reason is because in software engineering there are several "big problems" that come up time and time again, but in different flavors. For example, when AJAX was the buzzword of the day, there were many engineers I knew who worked during the 90's cynically complaining about how we were just revisiting the "thin vs thick client" issue once again (much like their 'ancestors' felt like they were revisiting the "dumb vs smart terminal" debate in the 80s.)

The problem is when these problems re-appear, problems that you personally grappled with for many years, it's easy to just want to throw up your hands in frustration because you thought the issue was settled. But of course, in reality its not about the issue being settled or not, it's about the capability of technology evolving and macroscopic design patterns falling in and out of favor due to the particular tradeoffs available with the state-of-the-art. But it's hard to see this objectively when you had a lot of emotional investment into any problem, developed some expertise, and see your entire way of solving problems being thrown out for what you perceive as a fad.

A contemporary example that I've mentioned already is the recent abandonment of the relational model/ACID in databases. A cynic will tell you the people doing this are stupid because it's an inferior solution. But they fail to mention the reason people are doing this: it's because the relational technology has not caught up with the scalability requirements of many problems faced by engineers today. An experienced engineer with the right attitude can have an excellent perspective and hedge their technology bets accordingly: the people deploying NoSQL are not stupid, they are just getting their jobs done. But at the same time, this too shall pass, since the relational model and ACID are fundamentally good ideas, and eventually someone will swing the pendulum back that way once other problems are solved. So, for the experienced engineer who takes a longer view, certain types of NoSQL databases can serve a role but are likely going to be considered a transitional technology and systems should be architected accordingly. The inexperienced engineer will not recognize this and will go all-in with NoSQL and fall right into the traps that relational modelling and ACID are designed to solve. Lo and behold: Google Spanner paper is published -- but we're not on the other side of this cycle yet until this tech is commoditized.

This tendency of cynicism is particularly worsened because engineers are naturally repulsed by the idea of reinventing the wheel, particularly a wheel as giant as these "big problems I thought we solved already." It's also worsened by the fact that within any new technology cycle, there is often more noise than signal, and so it's easy to latch on to the noise as evidence that there is no signal if you're biased to believing it's all noise. It's also much easier to tell yourself that there is no new innovation happening, it's all noise, when the people building the new stuff are all younger than you and many seem to be unaware of history.

eshvk5• 14 years ago

> Just think of the number of people on HN who have posted about how they don't understand Facebook, Twitter, or shoot down some whiz bang new technology. I've done it sometimes myself. Engineers are naturally skeptical, but this skepticism can grow out of control. It's fine in moderation but there's a tendency for this type of perspective to grow with age naturally, and that can ultimately undermine your ability to recognize and execute on genuinely novel, good ideas.

This is so very true. I was pretty young when twitter first came but remember being incredibly skeptical about the idea. Although to be frank, the way twitter is being used to consume information (as a news feed) was not how it was being thought of then. However, the greater point still remains: If you are skeptical of nascent ideas, you will never let them grow or become mature.

adrianhoward11• 14 years ago

I think the best way to fight against ageism is to make an effort to retain an open mind and curiosity.

The problem is that doesn't fight ageism. It panders to it.

Ageism is when you don't get treated fairly just because of your age - no matter how curious and open minded you may or may not be.

If somebody things I'm closed minded and incurious because I'm in my forties they are being ageist. They are the one with a problem. Simples.

You fight ageism by pointing out bigoted asshattery when you encounter it. You fight it by not staying quiet. You fight it by lobbying to make it illegal. You fight it by giving people concrete advice on how to deal with it in the workplace.

You don't fight it by trying extra hard to demonstrate that their bigotry doesn't apply to you. That's a coping strategy. Not a fighting strategy.

wbharding• 14 years ago

I dunno if "pandering" is the word I'd use to describe those who intentionally take on an attitude of openness and curiosity.

The fact is, most of the older people I know (my parents, grandparents, etc) still listen to the music they were listening to at age 25. Many of them (such as my aunt) are still working at jobs that use technologies they learned 30 years ago. It's not because they are incapable of evolving. I think it is because they never made it a point to sharpen their openness & curiosity.

If I saw a 55 yo engineer with a Github portfolio of Ruby and Python projects, hell yes I would interview that candidate. But the reality is that when I've interviewed older candidates in the past, they are in general more likely to be behind the curve when it comes to speaking the language of the latest tech and developments. My hunch is that complacency breeds this attitude. It is hard to constantly learn new tech for 40+ years, because so much of the learning process is about being wrong repeatedly.

My solution personally is to try to constantly force myself to understand and appreciate the zeitgeist of music, programming, and design as I age. In terms of personal empowerment, it seems to me one of the most sensible routes to fight ageism.

Calling out others who promote ageism is good too, but it doesn't directly address the fact that someday we will all be old, and we'll need an actionable strategy to succeed in spite of that.

gfodor6• 14 years ago

Yeah sorry I worded that poorly. My point is that I'd guess most ageism is probably imaginary and is just older people not being hired by falling into the traps I mentioned above. I'm pretty skeptical that many startup entrepreneurs have a "if you're over 40 we don't want to talk to you policy" but instead decide based on 50 year olds coming into their door telling them in their interview how relational databases were figured out in the 70's and NoSQL is a fad. (Not that they're wrong :))

kolbe• 14 years ago

Can substantiate your three bullet points in any way or are you just listing some qualities of a few people you've observed?

gfodor6• 14 years ago

People I've observed (myself included.)

So yeah, it's an opinion. YMMV.

timjsv• 14 years ago

Older people are probably better at design than we are.

jarjoura• 14 years ago

Would a 60 year old really want to work 18 hour days with a bunch of 20-somethings crammed into a San Francisco studio converted office?

A Silicon Valley startup is just one type, but there are infinite businesses out there to start and grow at any age in your life.

adrianhoward11• 14 years ago

Would a 60 year old really want to work 18 hour days with a bunch of 20-somethings crammed into a San Francisco studio converted office?

Nope.. the 60 year old would want them to succeed rather than working 18 hours a day ;-)

minibus4• 14 years ago

Never change, California. Never change.

salimmadjd• 14 years ago

Even YC application asks for age! This is no secret. If you're not an investor past your mid 30s you are pretty much over in the valley.

minibus4• 14 years ago

Hollywood is biased, too. At least it's honest about it.

ShabbyDoo3• 14 years ago

Moviegoers are biased, and Hollywood wants to create products which sell. The people behind the cameras often are old even if the female stars on screen are barely out of high school. If I see ugly shirts in a store year after year, I don't blame the fashion house behind them, I blame the people who keep buying them.

minibus4• 14 years ago

Silicon Valley has got to be crawling with older, talented-as-hell developers. People (or at least some people) remain awesome with age. I'd hire 'em.

ShabbyDoo3• 14 years ago

Does the cost of housing in the Bay Area coupled with older people's need to provide bedrooms for their children cause them to move to other parts of the country even if they've spent their 20's in The Valley?

jiggy20117• 14 years ago

It's interesting to compare with other professions.

I was out for drinks recently with some people who were programmers as well as others some of whom were doctors.

The mean age was probably about 27. A 27 year old developer is a grizzled vet whereas a 27 year old doctor is considered a noob at the start of their career.

dsymonds• 14 years ago

The 27 year old developers probably only thought they were grizzled veterans.

klochner• 14 years ago

The flip side is that you can out-compete by hiring the underpriced developers with experience.

As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, hiring for experience doesn't make as much sense if your company is the next iteration on mobile/social with an uncertain business plan.

In the B2B/enterprise space this makes more sense, and anecdotally I've heard of great results from hiring people over 40 that can crank out tons of high-quality code while working sane hours.

RexRollman• 14 years ago

I have heard of this but I had assumed that this had to do with younger people being willing to put into incredibily long hacking sessions; as people get older they would not have to time or energy to do that.

robomartin• 14 years ago

Tough topic. Experience vs. Youth.

Does bias exist? Absolutely.

I often tell people that being an engineer in certain fields (like software) can be very much like being a supermodel. Not one of them will reach fifty and stay in the Victoria's Secret catalog. In fact, when it comes to VS, 30-something and you are pushing it.

Is this wise? (back to CS now, not VS). Nope. People should be hired based on what they are able to do. What they can contribute to the company's mission. Often-times a more experienced developer just knows the path to a solution, if I may say, instinctively. And, yes, it is about making a bunch of mistakes and learning from them.

This, in my eyes at least, is no different than gender discrimination which also exists in CS.

Todd• 14 years ago

There are two countervailing trends here: one is the increasing level of experience and the other is the decreasing level of hipness (hear me out, please). As an older engineer (early 40's), I speak from experience.

When I was young, I thought my designs were excellent, because they were the best things I had done so far. I was able to look around at amazing code (NT kernel, for example; open source was much less prevalent back then) so I realized there was a continuum of excellence. After five years, I looked back as some of my earlier code and it looked bad. I did the same five years later and had a similar experience. After that, improvement came by degrees and was more related to breadth of experience in different domains. So it's clear to me that "older" people, in my profession, at least, are usually more capable than a younger person at this particular skill.

That said, there is the "hipness" factor, for lack of a better word, and it's very real. Older people tend to get set in their ways and do what they do. If they like watching TV, they'll keep up with their favorite shows. If they like sports, they'll keep up with their teams. They are unlikely to know the hottest bands or Internet memes. They just don't keep up with current culture, which happens to be largely youth culture. They might like their iPhone or Android and know how to use it. But the fact is, that most older people merely use technology. They don't bury themselves in it every day. So when they talk to someone younger about culture or technology, they seem out of touch.

As someone who follows technology, it's pretty lonely in my cohort. There's literally nothing to talk about in the area that holds a large part of my interest.

I think the people under consideration here are biasing against the experience factor in favor of the hipness factor because it's just so apparent. It literally takes a couple of minutes of conversation before determining that the older person is "clueless".

If a person want's to work in technology (e.g., in a Bay Area startup) and they don't keep up with technology and/or culture, they are going to have a hard time.

marshray• 14 years ago

Bay Area technology startups are notoriously hard for just about anybody! Perhaps older people are just becoming more normal and balanced.

Thankfully, I have not encountered this problem yet :-)

latraveler• 14 years ago

I've been telling people this for years. It needs to be cut out of the SV culture because if not most of us young guys (27 here) will be suffering from it on the backend of our careers.

adrianhoward11• 14 years ago

Y'know. In a perverted sort of way the bogus assumptions about age the OP talks about, further demonstrated in some of the comments here, actually cheer me up.

More than occasionally I've found an advantage in being underestimated and then over delivering ;-)

jaggederest2• 14 years ago

I think there's a fundamental divide between people who became adults before the internet existed in the modern form (circa 1995 or so), and after.

I also think that there is effectively another break point at the advent of the smart phone (circa 2007) - people who become adults after smart phones were commonplace have an entirely different worldview.

I think that if your focus is narrowly on facility with technology at hand, ageism is a natural consequence.

I also happen to think that's a bad idea - a diversity of viewpoints is a goal to be pursued in and of itself.

quotemstr• 14 years ago

> people who become adults after smart phones were commonplace have an entirely different worldview.

Care to elaborate?

jaggederest2• 14 years ago

As an example: It's entirely possible that they've never been lost. With a gps-enabled smartphone and mapping, that whole concept goes away.

chernevik• 14 years ago

I bet many of these hiring managers don't really know what they're doing, so they're doing what everyone else is doing. This protects them from looking stupid, which many people fear more than actual failure. Some of these businesses will succeed but in general failure to get hired by someone who doesn't know what they are doing is, for the truly qualified, a good outcome.

I doubt that truly qualified people are being turned away for age. I doubt that really capable companies are that hung up on age. I do believe that there is discrimination among _under_ qualified people. Given the importance of learning experiences and networking and luck, this is probably a serious disadvantage to older under-qualified people. It certainly isn't fair. But anyone who is under-qualified really should think more about making themselves more qualified than looking around for someone to make things fair.

(That needn't be extended to race or gender discrimination law. Those are targeting structural disadvantages thought to be outside the control of the discriminated, e.g. they lack the same opportunity to improve their own qualifications. And they are often intended to make it more clear that the economy offers opportunities to all comers, in the face of a variety of perceptions. Whether you agree with those arguments or not, I don't see how they apply to people getting older.)

adrianhoward11• 14 years ago

I doubt that truly qualified people are being turned away for age. I doubt that really capable companies are that hung up on age.

I don't. Not even a little bit.

I saw it fifteen years ago when I was able to snap up amazingly talented developers that were piteously grateful for the opportunity after being turned down for similar positions elsewhere due to their age.

I see it now where every decent developer I know past 35 I've discussed it with has some variation of the "I'm not ageist - it's just that old developers are inflexible blah blah etc." story to tell and are noticing it becoming more of a problem as the years go by.

Saw it earlier this week when a conversation with a potential client completely derailed after they found out I was 42.

This shit happens all the time.

stevenameyer• 14 years ago

I think this bias stems from the perception that people who are older are more established in life and their ability to support themselves and possibly their family is not dependent on the success or failure of the company.

I think the model that most people, including investors, see when they picture early stage start-ups is a small team that is so connected to the success of the company that they are willing to work themselves to unhealthy lengths if need be to succeed. That image is often associated with young recent grads or drop outs because they have student debts, are less likely to be able to find another job, and don't have any substantial savings to fall back on if the company goes under.

On some level this does make sense, if you are relying on this company succeeding to be able to earn a living then you probably want to be looking at the guy next to you and see a guy in the same boat. However it fails to take into account the experience or expertise that may be brought into the company by someone who is older and has proven the ability to succeed in this industry, which may lead to the success that will earn everyone in the company a living.

mikecane• 14 years ago

Steve Jobs was 56. Nuff said.

rayiner5• 14 years ago

As Silicon Valley matures, I think age bias will become less prevalent. I think there will be an inflection point where novelty is going to have to give way to quality. Facebook is illustrative. Facebook is exactly what you'd expect to get if you hired a bunch of recent college graduates to build something: creative, but otherwise utter crap. It's not what you would get if you hired a team of seasoned professionals to build a product with well-defined requirements. At some point, I think in the near future, you'll see Facebook (and the other companies like it) transition from the former into the latter.

abrahamepton• 14 years ago

It's a secret?

RandallBrown• 14 years ago

It's not exactly an "age" bias, it's a bias against people that aren't like them.

If I was hiring a CEO, someone who would be my boss, I'm definitely going to pick someone that seems like a person I could get along with. If a guy walks into the interview with a suit on and I'm wearing jeans and a hoodie, it could be a sign that we aren't going to get along all that well.

If the old guy came in and seemed like he could relate to me though, I wouldn't have a problem at all hiring him.

codeonfire• 14 years ago

The results of this are blatantly clear when you view any company's "what's it like to work here". Video. It's embarrassing to see companies trying to recruit and having their prejudices on full display. what is worse, is they are not smart enough to even realize that they made a video of 30 white male 24 year olds.

ryguytilidie• 14 years ago

To be fair, when I'm 40 I can't imagine still wanting to work 12+ hours a day. I'd like to see my family. This alone makes me feel like the age bias is caused more by people realizing the work won't work with their goals. The article itself seems a bit off since it doesn't deal with data so much as a single anecdote.

rdl3• 14 years ago

When I'm 40, I hope I have my life structured so I can work 12+ hours a day -- enough resources to automate or outsource the tasks I don't enjoy, no need to commute, etc.

namank• 14 years ago

A forty year old has an inclination for success and is therefore suited best for companies in the growth phase.

Twenty year olds seem to be naive enough to go for the impossible.

Or at least that's the mass perception. I think this also might be the reason for this pseudo-agism. (of course Elon Musk if the perfect counter example)

I equate 20 vs. 40 with Entrepreneur vs. MBA. Same perceptions, similar stereotypes, same utility.

That said, I love it when a person 20 years older than me actively guides my inclination towards "big" without stifling it, regarding it as idiotic, or being indifferent to it. I LOVE partnering up with older folks - they are professional in the true sense of the word - they can do what they do even when they are having a bad day. And they like partnering withe me because, I think, in me they see themselves when they were this old. It's amazing how much you can learn from people who've been there, done that!

Zenst• 14 years ago

When I started in IT I found that it had alot of skilled people, though the bias was against younger people. As I grew older I saw the levels of talent drop and the age lower with a bias towards younger people. The real crux is not the ability to do the job but the HR cock-blocking of anybody who has more skills than the job at hand, which is in general older people. This and the mentality of dumbing down wages also bias towards getting younger people in.

The whole situation has now got to the stage that companies shun talent if it is over a certain age over getting somebody younger for a cheaper price. They then find it hard to find somebody with the skillset who will take the job for the wage they offer and then cry skill shortage.

There are exceptions, as with any rule but you will notice alot of talented mid-life IT professionals changing career just becasue they are sick of the office politics.

I have worked with old and young managers, both good and bad but the real difference was the good ones knew or had done the job they are managing and the ones not so good had as much IT skill as most school leavers but are great at dealing with HR and in that HR love them.

Only real way is to start your own company, your own rules and with that age is what you make it.

bippi• 14 years ago

How much of this is age bias, and how much of this is looking for the likely candidate to work for no money for 80 hours a week like this might turn into something huge?

danbmil99• 14 years ago

OK Ok, I will bow to the pressure and shave my head if I get offered a $350K + options CEO spot. There it is, you win, ageist SV founders!

xradionut• 14 years ago

I find it amusing that today I took 14 pages of code from a 20-something developer and reduced to it to a single query and a one line function.

JEVLON• 14 years ago

A couple of years ago I was eighteen, and I needed a job. So I went to a grocery shop and asked if they were hiring, and I got the reply, "We only hire 15 year olds."

hkmurakami• 14 years ago

What I really want to know is whether this is a recent (last 15 years -- e.g. the internet boom years) phenomenon or whether "Silicon Valley" has been this way since, say, the 70's.

If things have changed, then why?

grellas• 14 years ago

I'm not sure why it should be a "dirty secret" that the tech world is predominantly driven by younger people who may at times be wont to push older people aside as suits their needs. Welcome to our capacity to be jerks if we indulge ourselves in that direction, as many will. It works the other way too, as all too many younger people can attest as they have occasionally been treated like dirt by those who are older.

Is this good or fair when it does happen? No.

Is it illegal? Sometimes, but making formal proof is daunting at best and usually not possible.

Thus, it comes down to this: treat others as you yourself would want to be treated. If a workplace reflects that ethic, it will be a place where old and young alike will want to work and where older workers will receive their due as befits their experience, skills, and performance, good or bad; if it does not reflect that ethic, it is a place to avoid if at all possible.

While Silicon Valley may represent the ageism problem in a particularly acute way owing to its youth culture, it really is no different from anywhere else. There is the good and the bad, and we each need to do what we can to uphold a high standard of common decency for ourselves and to make sure others do the same. It may not be a complete answer but it can help a lot in our immediate work environments and that will go a lot farther toward solving the problem than the law ever can.

DocSavage• 14 years ago

It always confused me that some really bright young people (e.g., Zuckerberg) can't grasp this: the variation in intelligence and capability due to non-age factors >>> the variation in intelligence and capability due to age factors.

Put another way, I'd take Einstein in his 40s over a thousand other randomly-chosen physicists in their 20s

erydo• 14 years ago

> I'd take Einstein in his 40s over a thousand other randomly-chosen physicists in their 20s

(I don't think I've seen a more clear example of a false dichotomy.)

I agree that age is rarely the determining factor for someone's general competence: someone who's competent young is going to be competent when they're older. Their strengths do shift slightly, though.

Depending on the mission, experience may extremely valuable; when breaking new ground, sometimes creativity and energy are more important. It's hard to argue that there's no correlation with age there over a person's life, even if it's relatively minor.

Ageism to me seems a lot like sexism, racism, and every other -ism. The error is to use those characteristics as false metrics for someone's competence: e.g. "you're old, therefore you're slow" or "you're young, therefore you don't know what you're talking about". Let their work speak for itself and see if they're the right fit for the job at hand. The fact that there are age biases due to the type of work isn't always indicative of discrimination, though it often is.

(In Zuckerberg's case, I would be unsurprised to hear about discrimination given his YC07 talk about "hiring young").

yters• 14 years ago

Young people are naive and unencumbered, so a few older VCs can use their cheap and highly skilled labor to make a lot of money. Older people aren't such suckers.

pacaro• 14 years ago

This. Many startups claim to offer "competitive" salaries, but really only mean "competitive for someone with little experience".

Now here's the question, if I'm asking for twice what a company claims that they can afford, are they better off employing me, or two (or three) engineers with little experience?

More and cheaper may be better, YMMV

smeez• 14 years ago

Um, this is no secret.

hornbaker• 14 years ago

A data point: according to my quick eyeball count, only around 25% of these founders are "young" - http://www.sequoiacap.com/us/early

[Disclaimer: I'm an EIR at Sequoia at the ripe old age of 46]

rileyt• 14 years ago

Age based cultural separations aside, I think a lot of people, have a really hard time grasping that experience isn't directly related with skill. There are tons of 'veteran programmers' who are worse than the majority of 20 year olds in the valley.

jacalata• 14 years ago

I don't think in the outside world, outside tech, anyone in their 40s would think age discrimination was happening to them," says blahblah

That's so unbelievably untrue that I wonder if he cringed when he saw it in print. My father is completely untechnical and works in government policy. 12 years ago, when he started looking for a new job (aged ~45), he went to a recruiter who told him to shave his (grey) beard and maybe dye his hair.

While I am sure that Silicon Valley and tech in general does have a more pronounced age-ism problem than everywhere else, it does nobody any favours to repeat this kind of hyperbolic bullshit that 'everywhere else is amazing! We suck!'.

tsotha• 14 years ago

Secret? When everyone knows something it isn't a secret.

holograham2• 14 years ago

if there is truly no difference in productivity from excellent programmers over 40 and "young" programmers why wouldn't there be companies that take advantage of this obvious bias and hire primarily older programmers? Wouldnt the decrease in market demand for older developers drive their salary levels down and thus provide a large market advantage to the company hiring them exclusively? (obviously assuming equal or better creative and productive output)

I know this is a classic laissez faire market argument.

Hypothesis: On the whole, older developers are not as productive.

photorized• 14 years ago

Shirts and sneakers are OK, but the eyelid lift part is a bit sad.

spullara• 14 years ago

Honestly I have never seen ageism. Only people that didn't continue to learn everyday not getting hired. BTW, I am old.

rumcajz• 14 years ago

That's interesting. How can one do that and still claim that "we are hiring the best 1% of engineers"?

Silicon Valley's dirty secret - age bias

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