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Overt bigotry against older workers — we’re talking about anyone over 30 here — has been baked into the Valley’s infantile attitudes since the dot-com crash 14 years ago.
The tone is set by the industry’s top CEOs. “When Mark Zuckerberg was 22, he said five words that might haunt him forever. ‘Younger people are just smarter,’ the Facebook wunderkind told his audience at a Y Combinator event at Stanford University in 2007. If the merits of youth were celebrated in Silicon Valley at the time, they have become even more enshrined since,” Alison Griswold writes in Slate.
As I write, the website of ServiceNow, a large Santa Clara–based I.T. services company, features the following advisory in large letters atop its “careers” page: “We Want People Who Have Their Best Work Ahead of Them, Not Behind Them.”
And that’s just what gets said in public. An engineer in his forties recently told me about meeting a tech CEO who was trying to acquire his company. “You must be the token graybeard,” said the CEO, who was in his late twenties or early thirties. “I looked at him and said, ‘No, I’m the token grown-up.’ ”
I was talking to someone who works in San Jose CA and has worked for a number of tech companies. He says once you are 35 or so, employers in Silicon Valley will look for reasons to get rid of you. You are no longer a good fit and you are made to feel like an outcast. If you don't get the hint, your supervisors will set impossible standards for you, which of course you will fail at- because they are impossible.
This sounds so bizarre and 35 seems so young. It can't be true, can it?
At your employer, if you work in tech, does this happen and if so how do they get rid of people who are old? (35+)
Nothing is further from the truth. I have been in SV tech companies since the 1980s and have worked with the 20-somethings up to many over 60. Just think, if Steve Jobs was alive today, he would be past the "push out the old people" rule. And Larry Ellison, how dare he continued to work past retirement (he's pushing 70). And Meg Whitman is well over 50 (heads HP after a successful run leading ebay). How about John Chambers of Cisco? There are hundreds of tech workers in their 50s and 60s (even at Google). Most of the top VC firms consist of age 50+ professionals. (VCs back the start-up companies.)
Anyway, from whom would the kids learn? One doesn't magically come out of school knowing it all (even though many think they do).
This continual bashing of "old people" is really indicative of the OP's insecurity as he inches toward - gasp! - half a century.
Nothing is further from the truth. I have been in SV tech companies since the 1980s and have worked with the 20-somethings up to many over 60. Just think, if Steve Jobs was alive today, he would be past the "push out the old people" rule. And Larry Ellison, how dare he continued to work past retirement (he's pushing 70). And Meg Whitman is well over 50 (heads HP after a successful run leading ebay). How about John Chambers of Cisco? There are hundreds of tech workers in their 50s and 60s (even at Google). Most of the top VC firms consist of age 50+ professionals. (VCs back the start-up companies.)
Anyway, from whom would the kids learn? One doesn't magically come out of school knowing it all (even though many think they do).
This continual bashing of "old people" is really indicative of the OP's insecurity as he inches toward - gasp! - half a century.
Yes, but that doesn't address the fact that there is an entrenched culture of age discrimination in places like Silicon Valley. Your good experiences doesn't change that fact, as evidenced by the linked articles above.
Those companies doing software that appeals especially to kids and twenty-somethings such as social media and (google) do like to have younger people working there. On the other hand, in our business we require a lot of experience, and rarely hire people under 30 in IT. In fact we have some that should be retiring soon, and the average age is probably mid-40s.
There's a big difference than IT and Silicon Valley. An IT user's value is more from institutional knowledge and less from technology and creativity.
Location: "Silicon Valley" (part of San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA)
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Yeah I think if you're the software developer, they want youth for the high degree of creativity that typically comes with it.
On the other hand if you're in system administration or other jobs relating to integrating and maintaining existing software, they need experience, so there will be older people doing that.
I've never worked in IT, yet (I would like to...done a few interviews). But this is my opinion based on having grown up here in Silicon Valley.
I'm sure it's true, not always but in general 35 may already be considered too old for that industry.
Ask any of the 40's and 50 year olds out there if they tried to apply to Google and the like.
Age doesn't matter at all in this industry. What matters is your skills and knowledge. I'm in my lower 40s and last year a Google recruiter contacted me to see if I'd be interested in working there. Same thing with the Amazon Web Services team, they contacted me out of the blue based on what they had read in my blog. If anything I know more about my job and how to do it better now than when I was in my 20s.
One of the quoted articles above mentions the company Service now. We'll, I've got a friend who's is 44yo and he was just hired by ServiceNow two months ago. I've got another friend, he's a Java developer, he's 50yo and he was just hired at Apple as a Principal Software Engineer.
I haven't seen any age discrimination whatsoever here in Silicon Valley.
Yeah I think if you're the software developer, they want youth for the high degree of creativity that typically comes with it.
On the other hand if you're in system administration or other jobs relating to integrating and maintaining existing software, they need experience, so there will be older people doing that.
I've never worked in IT, yet (I would like to...done a few interviews). But this is my opinion based on having grown up here in Silicon Valley.
Real world experience in the tech industry here:
At my silicon valley based tech employer(huge well known tech firm), the software architects/software developers/software engineers are the highly experienced folks(mainly middle aged..30s and up). It's the newbies that are doing the support. The experienced architects, engineers & developers design and create the product, and then they train the newbies to support the product. And when the product needs to be modified or enhanced, it goes back to the highly experienced software development team. When the newbies can't figure out why something is causing issues as part of their support tasks, they go to the experienced software developers/software engineers for help.
We just had an older guy retire - his choice. He was top notch - had lots of complex tech work and produced high quality work very quickly. His replacement has gray hair and he really knows his stuff.
The youngest guy on the team doesn't understand half of what's going on...he cannot keep up with conversations about complex technical things and he misses bits and pieces in everything he does. You have to check his work and it almost always require tweaking. And then you get into painful debates with him when trying to get him to fix stuff. He'll argue with you and refuse to do work and sometimes you have to go over his head to get it corrected.
Last edited by sware2cod; 03-01-2015 at 06:50 AM..
Age doesn't matter at all in this industry. What matters is your skills and knowledge. I'm in my lower 40s and last year a Google recruiter contacted me to see if I'd be interested in working there. Same thing with the Amazon Web Services team, they contacted me out of the blue based on what they had read in my blog. If anything I know more about my job and how to do it better now than when I was in my 20s.
One of the quoted articles above mentions the company Service now. We'll, I've got a friend who's is 44yo and he was just hired by ServiceNow two months ago. I've got another friend, he's a Java developer, he's 50yo and he was just hired at Apple as a Principal Software Engineer.
I haven't seen any age discrimination whatsoever here in Silicon Valley.
That's good to hear.
So am I just being swayed by negative propaganda? I find it hard to believe there's no age discrimination in the industry. Whenever your read comments from older workers from these articles, or other articles on age discrimination, it seems so very real.
Admittedly I don't work in the industry so I don't know. But surely many companies do discriminate? You and others may not have, but I assume many have.
I personally wouldn't hire a database developer under 30. It takes time to develop the level of expertise that good developers require in order to write solid, maintainable code.
so you would rather no one 20-30 are given the opportunity to learn it instead? Cerner in KC does the opposite, they hire college grads then mentors/grooms them into the roles the company needs, no bad skills to unlearn, does things how they want, etc. As they develop, get old, they become the next generation of mentors there as they move up. Pretty good way of running the company and everyone seems happy. They do work people hard but pay well in return.
so you would rather no one 20-30 are given the opportunity to learn it instead? Cerner in KC does the opposite, they hire college grads then mentors/grooms them into the roles the company needs, no bad skills to unlearn, does things how they want, etc. As they develop, get old, they become the next generation of mentors there as they move up. Pretty good way of running the company and everyone seems happy. They do work people hard but pay well in return.
If you're a small operation and only need one database developer (or whatever), you probably need an experienced one. If you're a large operation and need a lot of developers, you're better off hiring both experienced and inexperienced.
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