Silicon Valley's dark secret - it's all about age, young inexperienced engineers preferred

[Liberal_in_LA]

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


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.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

1. Well, author Vivek Wadhwa may consider that to be a dramatic title, but...

...as someone who has lived and worked in Silicon Valley for decades, all I can say is "dark secret my ASS."

How the fuck is something that is discussed frequently and openly a "secret?"

There isn't an ounce of "news" in this article...unless someone;s reading it in Boise Idaho.

[area51]

2. As if older workers can't learn?

Also, businesses have painted themselves into a corner, by not fighting for single-payer. As the "leaders" and business owners in this country want to keep our current business-access to health care, it'll always be too expensive to hire older workers.

[JCMach1]

3. It is also called job churning... the young will work cheap

[DJ13]

4. And tech companies wonder why the quality of their product has declined

".....companies prefer to hire young, inexperienced , engineers."

[Evasporque]

5. Also why there is a lot of crappy "all in one" coding

Young developers get to make all the same mistakes over again...and won't listen until you are beating them over the head with shitty code that is blowing up the server.

Then they say...they don't have time to fix it now, management agrees...

They get rid of the system admin. Hire a newbie and put in a new server....

So they just spent ten times as much on a new server as a old experienced software engineer.

that is modern IT.

[MajorChode]

6. That might be true for some companies

When a technology company is looking for an engineer, they are generally looking for one of three levels of experience. One is an entry level position, the other would be an established PE with experience in the area desired, the other would be someone with engineering management experience. For many companies, the technology is changing so rapidly that few are going to have the desired skill set, so that company has to develop that experience. Based on my experience, there's plenty of engineers who just graduated and are lazy and there are plenty of more experience engineers who have a good solid work ethic and are very capable of learning new skills, and the reverse can be true for both age groups. The right approach is to have a probationary period and make that well understood to new employees. It doesn't take long to figure out if someone is going to work out or not.

[SoCalDem]

7. It's not surprising.

Younger people might be more likely to "think outside the box"., and have fewer family obligations.

They also might tend to be more eager to please their bosses, since they are at thew beginning of their work-lives.

The computing world is especially suited for younger people, since so many of us "dinosaurs" did not grow up with the technology like the younger ones did.

[Xithras]

8. A lot of it has to do with changing skillsets.

Every try to find a Ruby, Thrift, or FML developer over the age of 40? Next to impossible. Older PHP developers? Rare as hens teeth.

Modern application development is charging headlong into a world of dynamic web 2.0 and 3.0 apps, and the era of the stodgy client-side application is slowly winding down. Even Java, the industries most beloved platform only 10 years ago, is rapidly becoming a dated skillset in many circles.

This has always been the reality of the Silicon Valley. You either keep your skillsets current, or you watch your career die.