You’ll never know if you’re being discriminated against due to age. Not here in Australia anyway, no one would ever say out loud. You just don’t get selected.
I did go for a job recently where we had a great phone interview and the guy essentially said “everything looks great we just need to meet in person” and when we met in person I visibly saw his expression change. Something about my appearance, either age or weight or both. He emailed no thanks after.
We (at Apple) interviewed a guy who was about my age (and I was already in my 50's at that time, ha ha). The interview(s) went great as far as I could suss but when we, the interviewers, met to go around and give the potential hire a thumbs up or thumbs down — one guy on our team was decidedly thumbs down.
Why was he thumbs down? "I don't think he's a good fit for the team." When pressed for what that means he simply repeated it.
You know what japan always does though? They always respond to applications. Theres no instant automated rejection email. Theres no getting ghosted by 90% of companies.
That's not true. YC startup Tailor, the first (and only?) Japan startup that YC funded, left me on read on LinkedIn. They ignored my application without a response, too. Pretty confident this company discriminates against non-Japanese.
To be fair, the whole American tech culture of inclusitivity is not really a thing in Japan or most Asian countries. My freind works as a designer at a bank's tech arm, and told me wild stories of coworkers parading their sex videos around the office. Her boss straight up told her she was hired because she pretty, and that he was proud of forming a team of models (both male and female). I talked to other people who worked in East Asia, and they found these stories to be unsurprising.
The pay (for tech jobs) isn't that bad compared to other peer nations. It's bad everywhere, compared to the US, where salaries are much, much higher than pretty much everyplace else, except possibly Switzerland.
However, the cost of living is much lower in Japan than in the large tech-hub cities in the US (and probably even mid-tier cities). Life in the US is really expensive these days.
In the next 10 to 15 years, tech is going to have a lot of millennial who reach 50+. We'll have a similar challenge in the US where tech culture leans towards hyping youth, and the new reality.
If the AI progress in the next 10 to 15 years will be like the AI progress in the last 10 to 15 years, tech culture will no longer hype youth anyway, or human employees in general.
In the company I worked for, it actually went the other way, from the US.
There were levels and positions that were only available to employees of certain chronological ages (or above). I remember doing some fancy footwork, trying to get particularly bright younger engineers into positions of greater responsibility.
They did force you to retire at 60, though. I suspect that is an artifact of their "full employment" stance. I’ll bet they are revisiting that, now, as the population is actually declining.
If we're working on a serious project(not tinder for dogs), I want to staff my senior positions with people that have tons of experience, not someone super bright.
More broadly, I think the problem with age discrimination is a problem with engineers that have 30 years of experience doing unimpressive things. For an IC code monkey I would definitely prefer someone younger with a lot of energy and potential to grow.
Not saying that I think age discrimination is okay, but that's too the reality of how people feel.
Interviewing continues while on the job. People have been put on layoff lists, "encouraged" to quit, and passed over for promotion based on age, too. People have take these cases to court but it's not easy to prove.
Hmm, I’ve had fresh people hired into management positions because that was age appropriate, never mind that those people were not interested in managing and had only one or two token reports.
On age discrimination closer to home for US techbros...
Pretty early in one warm-fuzzy FAANG, around the time a friend of mine finished a big-name CS-ish advanced degree, and he was at an event where the FAANG was recruiting. It might've been a campus event.
At the event, he happened to overhear some of the 20-something recruiting representatives of the FAANG, making fun of a candidate they'd interviewed for being "old".
I didn't ask, but, based on the way he said it, he might've been the one they were making fun of. (Then again, he's always defending others, and might've just been very upset on someone else's behalf. Though, if he'd been defending someone else, he probably would've ripped those representatives a new one, at least three different ways.)
I think he was still in his 30s, despite two successful earlier careers (one as an old school tech-ish entrepreneur). He went to the gym and was fit, but he looked like what he was: a kid from humble upbringings, who'd seen some rough situations, including being gay when and where that was not OK, and had pulled himself up by his bootstraps, to success despite all that. And while also doing a lot of activism to help some of the most disadvantaged and persecuted, when it was unfashionable.
He showed some of that weathering, and -- I suspect this might've been a barrier with that group -- didn't look like an affluent Palo Alto recent-grad. So, "old". Or, if those airhead representatives had had HR training, they would've called it "culture fit".
Which is doubly ironic in his case, since, in principle, he was pretty much a poster-child for the warm-fuzzy FAANG's PR: socioeconomically-diverse, cross-disciplinary, whole-self, make-the-world-better, with LGBTQ+ sprinkles on top.
He seemed very disappointed in those representatives of the FAANG, and had some choice words about who that FAANG "was hiring now". And in the couple decades since, he never did go there, even though, on paper, it would've been the obvious choice at multiple points of his career accomplishments.
Japan requires photos of woman on their resumes, and their age. Japanese employers don't like hiring women who are in their child-bearing ages because they might get pregnant.
Say what you want about the US, but the level of protection workers have is so much better than most other countries.
They don't "require photos of woman", passport-style portrait photos are standard period. It's really no different from LinkedIn being the standard in Western countries where you're suspicious if you don't have a personal photo on your profile and where you can just as easily be discriminated against based on your looks or whatever other criteria you can think of. The only difference is that they'll use euphemisms or outright bullshit you, if they even bother getting back to you about your application.
andrewstuart|2 years ago
I did go for a job recently where we had a great phone interview and the guy essentially said “everything looks great we just need to meet in person” and when we met in person I visibly saw his expression change. Something about my appearance, either age or weight or both. He emailed no thanks after.
JKCalhoun|2 years ago
Why was he thumbs down? "I don't think he's a good fit for the team." When pressed for what that means he simply repeated it.
Make of that what you will.
alephnan|2 years ago
wegfawefgawefg|2 years ago
Pay is bad though.
alephnan|2 years ago
That's not true. YC startup Tailor, the first (and only?) Japan startup that YC funded, left me on read on LinkedIn. They ignored my application without a response, too. Pretty confident this company discriminates against non-Japanese.
To be fair, the whole American tech culture of inclusitivity is not really a thing in Japan or most Asian countries. My freind works as a designer at a bank's tech arm, and told me wild stories of coworkers parading their sex videos around the office. Her boss straight up told her she was hired because she pretty, and that he was proud of forming a team of models (both male and female). I talked to other people who worked in East Asia, and they found these stories to be unsurprising.
barbazoo|2 years ago
I wonder if that is in any way correlated to this:
> Gov't study finds only 3,065 homeless people in Japan
https://japantoday.com/category/national/gov%27t-study-finds...
bryanlarsen|2 years ago
shiroiuma|2 years ago
However, the cost of living is much lower in Japan than in the large tech-hub cities in the US (and probably even mid-tier cities). Life in the US is really expensive these days.
cscurmudgeon|2 years ago
tetrisgm|2 years ago
toomuchtodo|2 years ago
cubefox|2 years ago
ChrisMarshallNY|2 years ago
There were levels and positions that were only available to employees of certain chronological ages (or above). I remember doing some fancy footwork, trying to get particularly bright younger engineers into positions of greater responsibility.
They did force you to retire at 60, though. I suspect that is an artifact of their "full employment" stance. I’ll bet they are revisiting that, now, as the population is actually declining.
zeroCalories|2 years ago
More broadly, I think the problem with age discrimination is a problem with engineers that have 30 years of experience doing unimpressive things. For an IC code monkey I would definitely prefer someone younger with a lot of energy and potential to grow.
Not saying that I think age discrimination is okay, but that's too the reality of how people feel.
coldcode|2 years ago
jalapenos|2 years ago
Same as Spain and Jamaica, higher than China and Korea.
swader999|2 years ago
whatyesaid|2 years ago
phendrenad2|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
Aeolun|2 years ago
neilv|2 years ago
Pretty early in one warm-fuzzy FAANG, around the time a friend of mine finished a big-name CS-ish advanced degree, and he was at an event where the FAANG was recruiting. It might've been a campus event.
At the event, he happened to overhear some of the 20-something recruiting representatives of the FAANG, making fun of a candidate they'd interviewed for being "old".
I didn't ask, but, based on the way he said it, he might've been the one they were making fun of. (Then again, he's always defending others, and might've just been very upset on someone else's behalf. Though, if he'd been defending someone else, he probably would've ripped those representatives a new one, at least three different ways.)
I think he was still in his 30s, despite two successful earlier careers (one as an old school tech-ish entrepreneur). He went to the gym and was fit, but he looked like what he was: a kid from humble upbringings, who'd seen some rough situations, including being gay when and where that was not OK, and had pulled himself up by his bootstraps, to success despite all that. And while also doing a lot of activism to help some of the most disadvantaged and persecuted, when it was unfashionable.
He showed some of that weathering, and -- I suspect this might've been a barrier with that group -- didn't look like an affluent Palo Alto recent-grad. So, "old". Or, if those airhead representatives had had HR training, they would've called it "culture fit".
Which is doubly ironic in his case, since, in principle, he was pretty much a poster-child for the warm-fuzzy FAANG's PR: socioeconomically-diverse, cross-disciplinary, whole-self, make-the-world-better, with LGBTQ+ sprinkles on top.
He seemed very disappointed in those representatives of the FAANG, and had some choice words about who that FAANG "was hiring now". And in the couple decades since, he never did go there, even though, on paper, it would've been the obvious choice at multiple points of his career accomplishments.
blindriver|2 years ago
Say what you want about the US, but the level of protection workers have is so much better than most other countries.
slily|2 years ago
jalapenos|2 years ago
The US has summary firing. In Japan if you're a permanent employee you can reasonably expect to remain so.
From the people pissing in bottles at Amazon your protections don't sound any better.
Hiring discrimination against child bearing aged women is universal - it's just in the US they have to be more careful how they do it.
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]