Forget gender, what about age bias in IT? 8

[rosieb]

OK, so gender bias has generated a lot of discussion, but what about age bias?

In the UK, at least, age discrimination is still legal.

According to the agencies (at least they’re honest), at my advanced age, I am:

Incapable of learning
Unable to accept change
Unable to relate to younger co-workers
Unadventurous

(This, notwithstanding that I’ve just completed a masters degree, taken up dog-sledding and travelled independently round Lebanon, Vietnam & Laos.)

Apparently, anyone over 30 is past it in an IT environment!

I’ve been refused interviews where I know I was eminently qualified for the job. (age/gender/combination of the two?)

Maybe I should just retire to a dark corner and get on with my knitting.

(Not bitter, I eventually got a great job in local government where the recruitment process is pretty much bias-free.)

Any thoughts?

Rosie

 

[SQLSister]

I don't rememeber that experiment, but I agree that humans do seem to be hard-wired to differentiate between them and us. It is probably a survival skill. The trick is to expand the definintion of us. Sometimes I dispair of this ever being possible. On the other hand for many of us, the definition does seem to be broader now than when I was a child.

 

[rosieb]

It was Zimbardo (1973) at Stanford U.

A few years ago I was on a course where we were split into two groups and told to "negotiate" an exchange of observers to see how each group managed its decision making.

Guess what, 4 hours later, no agreement. Each side saw the other as totally unreasonable.

The trigger seemed to be the word negotiate. It did bring home how easy it is to divide a group of "Us" into "Us" and "Them". Something I always try to remember.

 

[Kavius]

Thank-you rosieb,

Just for the record:
Zimbardo's Homepage:

http://www.zimbardo.com/zimbardo.html

Linked to off his website:

http://www.prisonexp.org/

 

[flyboytim]

There is an economic factor to ageism in the UK. It has to do with pensions, not salaries. An employee taken on at 50 at the same salary as someone at 30 is much more expensive with most salary-related pension schemes, since there are fewer years of contribution to the scheme to build up the interest to pay the pension.
Until in 2005, when legislation is due to replace voluntary codes on age discrimination, those of us who are over the hill, at even 35 and over will be at a severe disadvantage. This will not stop age discrimination though, because it is so difficult to prove, unless companies are going to be made to audit their recruitment records and keep their unsuccessful applications on file to prove their records are not unbiased. This would have to go for all forms of discrimination, not just age, of course.
With most UK organisations not accepting resumes and CVs there is often little chance to avoid not mentioning age related facts on an application forms. Add to that a low level of official unemployment, due to punitive means testing rules, and lowering the age to 60 at which income support is recommended rather than applying for Jobseekers allowance (there is a notice to this effect in my local jobcentre, believe me), and an ageing population and the outcome is not difficult to see.
The skilled, specialised and experienced workers are being pensioned off early, and forced to live on their savings until they reach benefit levels, with no hope of regaining suitable or profitable employment commensurate with their experience, skills and training. Otherwise they are encouraged to start up their own businesses or to take low paid, unskilled work to survive. My advice: If you are not at the top of your tree by 40, start learning to write novels, before it is too late.

 

[lionelhill]

Forget writing novels. You won't get them published unless you are a celebrity, know someone in a publishing house, or are genuinely really stunningly good-looking (helps the publicity, looks good on the cover!)

Let's just face it: prejudice exists, and you can't even legislate against it, because it just means personnel people have to spend more time constructing an audit trail to justify a decision that was basically taken on grounds of age (or just "eegit, I didn't like him/her very much!&quot

This is all a real pity, and in the long run deprives the world of some of its most skilled people. Tragic. Utterly tragic.

 

[Stella740pl]

Can anyone give an advice, starting what age it is appropriate to substitute actual years by "extensive experience"? 30, 35, 40, more? Is there a starting point at all? Wouldn't this phrase create an impression that a person actually some 15-25 years older than actually is and trying hard to hide it?

 

[BruceReed]

Stella
It's all about marketing yourself, not the number of years. Number of years in a business is not always a great sign how well you perform. Just ask the Eaton's company in Canada, a large retailer that was well over 120 years old & they went belly up several years ago- they did not perform. Much younger companies are going strong.

So if you saw a resume that the person had 30 years in accounting does that mean they were the junior junior bookkeeper for all of those years? If they had said they had extensive experience in accounting and tax law, it would put a postive spin on the fact they had been doing the job for a little while.

My 2 cents to this
Bruce

 

[Stella740pl]

Bruce,

Thanks for the response. What I meant is, in the times of age bias, if an older person (let's say, 50+) puts the phrase "extensive experience" on the resume, he/she is doing it to avoid dating him/herself and to create some marketing advantage. But if a younger person (say, 30+) puts the same expression on the resume, wouldn't he/she, in fact, put him/herself in a disadvantaged (age-wisely) position, creating an impression, that this "extensive experiense", is, in fact, could amount to some 20-30 years, instead of actual, say, 10-15?

But, I agree, it's all about marketing. And the number of years doesn't actually say that much about a person, a person's skills, or ability to learn. But try to prove it first to an employer who already has a strong opinion on this.

Stella.

 

[Kavius]

I had an interesting discussion about this with my girlfriend. She is a project manager (not software development... thank god) and the first words out of her mouth were: "of course you don't want older people, they are resistive to change."

So I started questioning her on the balance between experience and youth. I get the impression that this caught her off guard (she started asking me a lot of questions). It seems to me that, from her companies perspective, experience does not factor into their decision (sp?) making process.

I can't leave this at that. It looks like I am ripping a strip out of her. In her defence, she was quick to admit that there is benefit in experience (first example being that while she could do her managers job, she could not do it as well as him due to lack of experience) and the rest of the discussion revolved around where the happy balance is. Her response seemed to be the result of corporate culture and too many textbooks (something we both suffer from).

We couldn't come to a definitive conclusion, but I think there will be some changes at the next hiring session that she is involved with.

What scares me the most is how true this thread is. Given the first opportunity to discuss this with someone who is in a hiring position, their first response indicated agism in the workplace.




Stop the ride... I want off.

 

[SQLSister]

The reallly scary part is at the same time that we don;t want to pay to hire experienced people, the population is living longer. If I follow my grandparent's pattern in terms of age, and retired at 65, I would be retired for 30+ years. This is obviously unsustainable for my personal financial situation as it was for both my grandmothers who lived on something less than $500 per month (this was in the early 19990's)after my grandfathers' deaths.

From my own perspective I think 30+ years of retirement is menatlly unhealthy too. But if people are facing job discrimanation at 30 for age reasons, how is some one 75 going to be able to make a living?

 

[lespaul]

That should give Wal-Mart incentive to build more! Think of all the greeters they will have to hire to keep the entire "older" generation employed (at minimum wage with no benefits!)

Leslie

 

[rosieb]

kavius
How’s your girlfriend going to feel in 5, 10, 15 years time, when she’s considered “past it”? (Sorry, cheap shot – I couldn’t resist, not really meant.)

I do think she’s suffering from too much “received wisdom”….

In my experience, some people are receptive to change, others aren’t – age is not really the key factor, though it does have an effect.

Younger people who are change-resistant are often in relatively junior posts, so are not in a position to cause major problems.

Older and, often, more senior staff may question change because of experience – we’ve seen similar initiatives fail (often multiple times) why is this time different? This tends to be seen as “negativity”, it’s not, it’s experience and pragmatism. Why should I spend my valuable time on a speculative initiative when I’ve got real work to do? The sad thing is that this question is actually a “buying” sign, it really says “convince me” but it is usually seen as being negative.

Of course most organisations have their “barnacles”, who got into their position by following the rules and waiting for “Buggin’s turn”, change is not in their interest.

I’ve just gone through an interesting process, we (the IT projects group, trying to promote a major set of changes) have analysed who are the significant people throughout the organisation, and then classified all of these individuals. We came up with a 5 level classification:

1. Those enthusiastically pro change.
2. Those generally positive but requiring convincing, but often too busy on day-to-day stuff to engage fully. Need an incentive.
3. Sheep – who will go with the flow.
4. Suspicious, but not actually a major problem.
5. Downright obstructive. Will have to be hauled, kicking and screaming…

(Plus a 6th special category, “loose cannons” those we want in the tent, looking out, rather than outside looking in. ie potential disaster areas.)

The results really didn’t show a strong age bias, a lot of the older staff fell into the first two categories. And a surprising number of younger ones fell into the last two!

Managing change is difficult and easy answers, such as “older people are resistant to change” are a distraction.

(If your girlfriend’s willing to rethink the proposition, then she’s probably pretty good at her job.)

Rosie
(PS If I’m not convinced of the need for change, I’ve got the experience to be a real pain.)

 

[Kavius]

I don't know if she's any good. And I never want to work for her to find out

 

[rosieb]

kavius
You're right, that would probably be a really bad idea. (But keep pushing her to rethink, there's a few crumblies around who can make a difference.)

 

[SQLSister]

kavius to challenge her assumption that age means resistance to change, you might have her do a simliar analysis of her office to what rosie's office did.

I think the point about organizations not noticing younger people's resistance to change as much because they don;t have the power to fight it that more senior people do is a particularly interesting one.

 

[wbg34]

In my experience the idea that older people are more resistant to change is a horrible miconception. I have found that time after time the amount of resistance to change that you receive is a direct correlation to the amount of time a person has been doing what is being changed. It is more of a "if it isn't broke, then don't fix it" mind set then it is an Age based thing. Unfortunately, the people who tend to have the most experience with any given product are the older people who have been there the longest.
The best example I have seen of this was when I was in the military. The Officers on base would usually cycle out every two years. And with every new commander alot of New and "Improved" procedures would be implimented. The people who had been on base the longest (whether they were 20 years old or 20 year veterans) would grumble much louder then people who were new to the base.