Young people are generally more willing to work long hours and long shifts, and generally are less skilled at negotiating their salary. Companies see more value in someone who may be less skilled overall, but is more willing to devote themselves to the cause, so to speak. Older programmers tend to have families and other interesting hobbies, as well as more experience at the salary negotiation stage, so companies would oftentimes rather not bother with them.
I remember listening to an interview with PG many years ago. The one thing that still stands out, because it irked me no end, was PG and the interviewer laughing over the reason you hired younglings for the companies you invest in. Sure, the younglings weren't as good as elders, but they were naive enough to work longer hours for less pay and put up with more crap.
Also some young people who are in tech seem to be both hypersensitive while also suffering from know-it-all syndrome. They don't like moments when their personal curtain is pulled back by people with experience. Well, that has been my experience with the few juniors I have worked with anyway.
Many people have children in their 20s. Maybe they even met their spouse in school. And younger people can be quite savvy in negotiating salary, even fresh college grads if they've received advice from more experienced folks. I'm astounded by the offers some of them receive.
I personally never had children, and I naturally sleep fewer hours per day now than when I was younger, so I have plenty of time to work.
The average age of first child has been increasing but is still relatively low at 26 for women and 31 for men. How many over 50 people have young children at home? Maybe they had children, but at a certain point those children leave the home. And even while at home, teenagers need much less supervision than babies. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleystahl/2020/05/01/new-stud...
If children are the reason, it would be really strange and anti-empirical to discriminate against 50+ developers instead of discriminating against 30something developers. Statistically, the 30s are the prime child-having years.
> The average age of first child has been increasing but is still relatively low at 26 for women and 31 for men.
That's for the US as a whole. It seems to be higher in the cities one usually associates with tech.
The average age of first child for women in San Francisco and New York is 31-32 [1] [2].
I couldn't find the average for Seattle, but I did find that 57% of first time mothers in Seattle's county are 30+ in 2016, compared to around 33% nationwide. In San Francisco 76% of first time mothers are 30+. Boston, DC, Portland, and Denver also had majority 30+ first time mothers. [3]
Age of first time mothers tends to correlate well with education and wealth, which also tend to correlate well where tech companies are located. Women with college degrees on average are 7 years old than those without when they have their first child.
I suspect the high cost of living in those cities plays a role too. Try buying a house in SF to raise kids. :-)
But raising the average 5-7 years doesn't really substantially change the argument when we're talking about discriminating against people in their 50s and 60s, who mostly don't have babies or young children at all. It just makes no sense.
If anything, employers should be seeking out employees in their 50s and 60s, who are least likely of the age groups to have young children at home. If a primary reason for age discrimination is "having children", that is. But I don't believe this is true, and the whole having children thing is just an ex post facto excuse for discriminating against older people. An irrational prejudice can't be explained rationally.
Yeah I mentioned that younger people are less likely to have children, so they have more time to be devoted to work. I'm not sure why you are taking so much issue with what I said. Perhaps you misunderstood what I wrote.
> I mentioned that younger people are less likely to have children, so they have more time to be devoted to work. I'm not sure why you are taking so much issue with what I said.
Because it's false?
This submission is about so-called "greybeards", i.e., people over 50. They are more likely to have had children at some point in their lives (perhaps 20 years earlier!) but actually less likely to have young children at home that would interfere with work time.
A 25 year old developer is much more likely to have a baby than a 55 year old developer, correct?
They may not have younger children at home, but they still have children/families (I live in an area where extended families tend to stay together, so that might be what's causing the confusion here), and they are more likely to have other family commitments than younger people. I also included other reasons why tech companies tend to hire younger people, because I don't think children are the only reason. It's mainly because younger people are generally more willing to work longer hours for less pay, for a multitude of reasons which include less familial responsibilities and less leverage for salary and workload negotiations.
That and the vision of the almighty hip tech startup with booch on tap, free GrubHub, a slide, nerf guns, and a stripper pole (to be ironic) doesn't include an old person in it.
