[tatx]

While most of us are pointing fingers at the fast-changing nature of and innovation-craziness in the tech industry, I think the core reason may be quite the opposite.

It seems plausible that the tech industry, innovation-wise, is actually in a rut where companies are forced to cut costs and survive by hiring young people whom they have to pay less. The changes happening in the industry today are of a fickle and shallow kind, not fundamental and lasting. And in an evolution-like process the older amongst us, who are the only ones with enough experience to really innovate, are being driven out of the ecosystem and forced to disrupt an industry going stale.

[pjc50]

  > companies are forced to cut costs and survive by hiring young people whom they have to pay less

.. and yet still starts up in Silicon Valley, among the highest salaries and real-estate prices in the world.

[kagamine]

Silicon Valley startups are to investment what a day at the races is to a broker. You hope you'll pick a winner but ultimately those horses are not where the majority of the population's investment goes.

[fweespeech]

Age discrimination seems to be a significantly smaller problem outside of Silicon Valley. [e.g. Finance, Retail] So its quite possible they are sacrificing experience for other things they think are worth it in SV.

[jegutman]

It's a little bit of a mis-measurement of things though. I'm not sure quality software engineers make so much more on average, it's just that the percentage of the population that are quality software engineers is much higher. It's a pretty forced selection bias since if you're just mediocre you might self-select out (note: this is just one of many reasons you might self-select out).

[wellsjohnston]

What's your point?

[mikekchar]

The salary for any given employee is not a limiting factor. I think this is true. Even when you have a very limited budget, many places will prefer to be under head count with a higher performing team. If you can get that guy who is going to let you avoid running down rabbit holes all day, every day, they are worth the extra bucks.

I think the problem is that these people are hard to find -- whether young or old.

[VLM]

"I think the problem is that these people are hard to find -- whether young or old."

Find as employees, and its harder to find them as they get old. I've already found myself, my family and I have a high standard of living without having to put up with open offices, long commutes, cult like office culture, more than 80 hours a week, or less than six month runway till we're all unemployed. Maybe I could be convinced to consult? The odds of this being the situation at 42 are a bit higher than at 22 and the odds rise over time.

Life is different now, WRT culture fit, for example, a quarter century ago employers didn't care about my religion or lack thereof, or my reading matter or hobbies, but now its all about everyone trying to fake that they're the same 22 year old kid, which is really weird. I think I'm a pretty good actor and if I got accepted into a cult like environment, it would be really weird for everyone when I stopped acting, so I'm not sure hiring people based on acting skills is necessarily producing culture fit to begin with.

Strangely, I'm told that the best work teams have great interview actors and/or really are groupthinkers of the highest (lowest?) caliber, yet observation and experience show the most productive teams I've seen have been fairly diverse. Maybe they're trying to select for the best liars in interviews. (Yeah boss, just like you said, groupthink is awesome!)

[FussyZeus]

That is an excellent point. Well done. That being said, speaking as someone who regularly complains about old people in just about every capacity, I think good old fashioned prejudice is playing the biggest role.

[pm90]

Except that they call it experience for a reason. I know of 2 kinds of people: one who keep doing the same things over and over again and don't learn new skills; and the other who constantly improve over what they know currently. The latter builds up the kind of experience that is immensely helpful in many technologies, and deserve the higher salaries.

I suspect a lot of companies try to save money on the short term by hiring inexperienced developers and then have to deal with the long term pains of supporting that code.

[vonmoltke]

A lot of companies also try to save money in the short term by hiring experienced people from the first group who happen to align with whatever their stack is today. Then they whine and bitch about "older developers" when they try to change the stack three months later and this person can't keep up.

[0x49]

I would be wondering why a company is completely changing their stack after 3 months. Im in my late 30s and 9/10 times, my experience is that its for the wrong reasons.

Older and more experienced devs have a hard time seeing poor decision after poor decision being made and just following the path to failure.

Why? Weve seen it too many times and also have seen too many companies go under as a result.

[vonmoltke]

I almost said "three weeks", but decided to back off on the hyperbole.

Yes, resistance to "flavor of the week" stack changes is definitely something that would turn poorly-managed companies off experienced devs. Companies still tend to be short-sighted on their experience requirements, though.

[pm90]

A company is only as good as its leaders. When the senior engineer in the team is knowledgeable and trusted by others in the team, it is a lot more likely that such futile efforts will not be undertaken.