Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age

[mike r]

http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/28/silicon-valley%E2%80%99s-dark-secret-it%E2%80%99s-all-about-age/

Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age
Vivek Wadhwa

An interesting paradox in the technology world is that there is both a shortage and a surplus of engineers in the United States. Talk to those working at any Silicon Valley company, and they will tell you how hard it is to find qualified talent. But listen to the heart-wrenching stories of unemployed engineers, and you will realize that there are tens of thousands who can’t get jobs. What gives? The harsh reality is that in the tech world, companies prefer to hire young, inexperienced, engineers.

And engineering is an “up or out” profession: you either move up the ladder or face unemployment. This is not something that tech executives publicly admit, because they fear being sued for age discrimination, but everyone knows that this is the way things are. Why would any company hire a computer programmer with the wrong skills for a salary of $150,000, when it can hire a fresh graduate—with no skills—for around $60,000? Even if it spends a month training the younger worker, the company is still far ahead. The young understand new technologies better than the old do, and are like a clean slate: they will rapidly learn the latest coding methods and techniques, and they don’t carry any “technology baggage”. As well, the older worker likely has a family and needs to leave by 6 pm, whereas the young can pull all-nighters. At least, that’s how the thinking goes in the tech industry.

In their book Chips and Change, Professors Clair Brown and Greg Linden, of the University of California, Berkeley, analyzed Bureau of Labor Statistics and census data for the semiconductor industry and found that salaries increased dramatically for engineers during their 30s but that these increases slowed after the age of 40. At greater ages still, salaries started dropping, dependent on the level of education. After 50, the mean salary of engineers was lower—by 17% for those with bachelors degrees, and by 14% for those with masters degrees and PhDs—than the salary of those younger than 50. Curiously, Brown and Linden also found that salary increases for holders of postgraduate degrees were always lower than increases for those with bachelor’s degrees (in other words, even PhD degrees didn’t provide long-term job protection). It’s not much different in the software/internet industry. If anything, things in these fast-moving industries are much worse for older workers.

For tech startups, it usually boils down to cost: most can’t even afford to pay $60K salaries, so they look for motivated, young software developers who will accept minimum wage in return for equity ownership and the opportunity to build their careers. Companies like Zoho can afford to pay market salaries, but can’t find the experienced workers they need. In 2006, Zoho’s CEO, Sridhar Vembu, initiated an experiment to hire 17-year-olds directly out of high school. He found that within two years, the work performance of these recruits was indistinguishable from that of their college-educated peers. Some ended up becoming superstar software developers...

[phantom power]

1. As a software engineer whose hair is going gray....

They're absolutely right: My day ends at 5 so I can take care of my family. I used to work 16 hour days for 1/3 of my current salary, and although my experience pays off in some scenarios, in the dark of night I know that may or may not really be Worth It.

Up or out.

:(

[KamaAina]

2. Google is about to get nailed for age discrimination

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_15691535

In a ruling that could have broad ramifications for workers who sue employers for age bias, the California Supreme Court has cleared the way for a former Google executive who was fired to move forward with a lawsuit accusing the company of age discrimination.

The justices on Thursday unanimously upheld a San Jose appeals court's earlier conclusion that Brian Reid, who was fired from his job as Google's engineering director in 2004, could take his case to trial because he'd presented enough evidence, including "stray comments" from co-workers and a supervisor mocking him for his age, to make a discrimination claim....

Google recruited Reid, who had managed the team that built one of the first Internet search engines at AltaVista and who has a doctorate in computer science, in the summer of 2002. But the company fired Reid, then 54, within two years, allegedly saying he was not a "cultural fit," after co-workers and a supervisor had described him as "an old man," "slow," "sluggish" and "an old fuddy-duddy," and made remarks such as that Reid's compact disc cases should be relabeled LPs, according to court documents. Reid's supervisor, Urs Hölzle, then 38, and currently a senior vice president and Google Fellow, regularly told Reid that his opinions and ideas were "too old to matter," according to the documents....

In recent years, Silicon Valley computer workers have tended to be much younger than the valley's overall work force. Data from the 2000 census, analyzed by the Mercury News, shows that while 21 percent of all workers at Santa Clara County companies were older than 50, 9 percent of computer workers were 50 or older. Data from the 2010 census is not yet available.

Imagine if an African American employee were labeled "lazy" and "shiftless"!

[msongs]

10. google is just another thieving corporate whore - its days of being special are long over nt

[Terry in Austin]

3. High tech: glamour industry of the 20th century

Now that the novelty of Being Digital has worn off, so has much of the industry's shine.

Where once trod fair-haired tech superstars, now lie cube farms worked by latter-day serfs. "Here kid, here's your workstation, your beanbag chair, your foosball table, and you can throw your sleeping bag over there."

So yeah, welcome to the future!


:evilgrin:

[RKP5637]

5. Exactly!!! Age discrimination is all over the place and generally hard to prove. n/t

[slackmaster]

4. Age discrimination is pervasive, and it's often very difficult to prove

I've been working in IT since 1983.

K&R

:kick:

[sendero]

7. A lot of companies..

... really think that younger programmers and such are more productive for less money. A few of them are, but not usually.

The typical tech employer wants to hire a geek with no life who will spend 80 hours a week doing their work because they have nothing better to do.

I'm lucky, I work at a company that gets the fact that many of the older workers are the most important contributors. Of course, that could change at at any time.

[leveymg]

6. It's exactly the same at big law firms. Make partner in 4 years, or move on down the road . . .

The fact is though, nothing is as useless for doing real legal work than a First Year Associate, or, more overpaid at $150,000 a year.

[Ron Green]

8. The lesson seems to be: Don't live beyond your means (or your future means.)

[Phlem]

9. Video Game Industry

white collar slavery.

-p

[Canuckistanian]

11. 7 years experience is what they want

It's not scientific, but it's just something I've learned in looking for engineering positions.

They don't want new grads and they definitely don't want 'veterans', no matter how current their knowledge is or what projects they've worked on.

It's odd that people with the best depth of knowledge in a subject are rejected. Often, an engineer with loads of experience can solve a lot of basic, simple problems BEFORE the main task can be dealt with.

I quickly learned that my proud declaration of "15+ years experience" wasn't getting me anywhere. And that young "know-nothings" were hired in a heartbeat.

Yeah, there's definitely an ageism problem with management types when it comes to engineering hires.

[pgodbold]

12. I've read that Intel is famous for chewing up engineers and sweeping them out the back door. nt