> Age discrimination has been one of the few successful discrimination based lawsuits that have been brought against companies in the tech world.
Rarely. A quick search indicates that only 3% of older employees file complaints, and, out of that, less than 1% result in lawsuits.
And that is pertaining to people who are already employed somewhere. What we are talking about here is finding a job. In that case the situation is likely far worse and also likely unknowable (in terms of stats).
This is why I say it feels like society discards you as useless after a certain fuzzy point in time.
This has to be a cultural change over time. I say this because, as a young engineer, I wanted to work with older, more experienced, engineers. In fact, I seriously benefitted from many mentors who were ten to twenty years older than me --lessons that have stayed with me to this day.
Not so today. I have been at companies where you might as well be at a college campus. I'll name one: SpaceX. I don't know the stats, but I remember going through there and thinking that the ratio of 20-somethings to older engineers has to be in a range between 50:1 and 100:1. The only way that happens is if you actively reject older candidates. I cannot dispute their success rate and what they have accomplished. I am just using this as a real example of just how bad it can be out there for older technologists.
Note that I am not proposing forced diversity of any kind. I think that is wrong. However, work and opportunities should be available based on experience, merit and capabilities and not at the exclusion of older candidates because they are not frat boys.
Once again, I will point at least one finger squarely at YC. I think they blatantly practice age discrimination. There is no fucking way older, experienced and capable engineers and scientists cannot innovate and launch successful startups. There's so much talent and potential out there being discarded. And, of course, there is no such thing as filing a lawsuit against an investor for age discrimination.
On my end, once I understood this reality I chose to exit the race and run my own business. Here I get to use my skills and experience to plot my own future, with the help of those who join me. And I most definitely appreciate the value of experience. There's nothing better than working with people who are better than you are and bring enough insight and experience to the table to help you steer clear of a long list of things you should not do.
Not sure if many folks remember this video or have seen it at all but this is what Mark Zuckerberg had a say on young vs experienced engineers. This is I believe from 2011 and I think it perfectly portrays the majority of SV companies to this day and of course their recruitment practices.
00:03 The two most important things that I look for are number one is just raw intelligence, right? Because you can hire someone who is a software engineer and he's been doing it for 10 years and if they're doing it for 10 years that's probably what they're doing for their life, you know, and I mean that's cool. But there's some things that that person can do and they're definitely useful in an organization and can do a lot of stuff. But if you find someone who is raw in intelligence exceeds theirs but has 10 years lots of experience
00:31 then they can probably adopt and learn way quicker. You know, and within a very short amount of time be able to do a lot of things that that person may never be able to do. And so, I think that's the most important thing that I look for. And the second is just alignment with what we're trying to do. So I mean, people can be really smart or have skills that are directly applicable but if they don't really believe in it, then they're not going to really work hard and they're not going to even if they're smart guy who doesn't have the relevant experience,
01:01 they're not going to care enough to develop the relevant experience in order to succeed. So I think that the best people who I've hired so far have been people who didn't really have that much engineering experience. I hired a couple of electrical engineers out of Stanford's new programming staff and they had very little programming experience going in but just really smart, really willing to go at it, and the guy who just work photos was one of those guys, and if you're willing to just go and do
01:40 whatever it takes to get photos out, then you're probably more valuable than someone who's just a career software engineer. So those are the things that I'm looking for and why I would rather look for people like...
Rarely. A quick search indicates that only 3% of older employees file complaints, and, out of that, less than 1% result in lawsuits.
And that is pertaining to people who are already employed somewhere. What we are talking about here is finding a job. In that case the situation is likely far worse and also likely unknowable (in terms of stats).
This is why I say it feels like society discards you as useless after a certain fuzzy point in time.
This has to be a cultural change over time. I say this because, as a young engineer, I wanted to work with older, more experienced, engineers. In fact, I seriously benefitted from many mentors who were ten to twenty years older than me --lessons that have stayed with me to this day.
Not so today. I have been at companies where you might as well be at a college campus. I'll name one: SpaceX. I don't know the stats, but I remember going through there and thinking that the ratio of 20-somethings to older engineers has to be in a range between 50:1 and 100:1. The only way that happens is if you actively reject older candidates. I cannot dispute their success rate and what they have accomplished. I am just using this as a real example of just how bad it can be out there for older technologists.
Note that I am not proposing forced diversity of any kind. I think that is wrong. However, work and opportunities should be available based on experience, merit and capabilities and not at the exclusion of older candidates because they are not frat boys.
Once again, I will point at least one finger squarely at YC. I think they blatantly practice age discrimination. There is no fucking way older, experienced and capable engineers and scientists cannot innovate and launch successful startups. There's so much talent and potential out there being discarded. And, of course, there is no such thing as filing a lawsuit against an investor for age discrimination.
On my end, once I understood this reality I chose to exit the race and run my own business. Here I get to use my skills and experience to plot my own future, with the help of those who join me. And I most definitely appreciate the value of experience. There's nothing better than working with people who are better than you are and bring enough insight and experience to the table to help you steer clear of a long list of things you should not do.