Over 50, Female and Jobless | Hacker News Reader

Over 50, Female and Jobless

nytimes.com

86 pointswallflower107 comments

I always had the struggles of the slightly older job seekers close to my heart. It's just something that employment policy doesn't address adequately.

My father is in that situation - which is why, obviously, I feel it so close. He's slightly above 50, with qualifications (B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering) and a lot of experience. However, he has been jobless since his last company closed, 6 years ago.

It's really a perfect shitstorm for people in his situation. He has a lot of experience, but in the manufacturing industry which, as we know, is being dislocated elsewhere (we live in Portugal). There's the competition of younger graduates, which are also unemployed. Of course, he's too young to retire. And he's been unemployed long enough, so state benefits expired; the last resort state benefit - for poverty, really - doesn't apply because my parents have a house (so, he'd have to sell the house to get the state benefit).

Luckily he has some money set aside, but - again - this is Portugal. You can save some money with our wages, but not nearly enough to support such a tremendous amount of time unemployed. And, well, luckily I'm employed but the same reasoning applies: I'm able (and happy) to help, but I don't make nearly enough to be able to do so and still save for a rainy day.

PT employment laws are not helping either. I had a company there with employees and it all just is too protective of them. So you rather not employ someone. I thought the Netherlands was bad but PT and ES are far worse. And that is definitely hurting hiring.

That's something employers usually complain about. Portuguese legislation was mostly written in a socialist-led post-revolution period, so you certainly have a point.

But what was your biggest issue with employment laws, here? The compensation you'd eventually have to pay when firing someone?

If someone is really bad you have issues firing them. I mean if someone watches pr0n all day in NL you just collect proof and that's; in PT we had to pay for the guy even then. That is a perverse incentive for employees; just get through the trial and then jerk off. I am a left wing voter and I am for employee protection but you need to be able to punish abuse and as far as we found we could not in PT nor in ES.

Edit: and to make sure; if an employee is good we will do anything we can afford to keep her/him; we are not the employer frauders like Oracle is in Malaga you also encounter...

I agree. I haven't met such extreme cases, but I've seen situations where the employee simply did not have the competence nor the will to acquire it. Lack of a given competence is tolerable, but not trying to address that limitation, for me, is a big issue. In such cases, employee protection will certainly result in rather perverse effects - not only for the employer, but for all the other employees (which will have to deal with less than acceptable output from the problematic one). Even socially, it grinds my gears to know that someone like that is employed when there are some many people which truly want to work.

That being said, the employer still has some protection. You can hire someone for 3 or 6 months and then decide not to renew his contract. You can also use the experimental period clause to void the contract in the first two weeks up to three months, according to the contract duration. The latter is sometimes abused here: hire someone with a long-duration contract and then, just before the experimental period ends, send him away.

These were extreme cases we had in NL and PT. But also incompetence; that was an hiring snafu ofcourse but yes we had our fair share of people working hard during trial and then sitting back and basically drop the ball. No one was asking them to work like animals; 5-6 hrs a day. But we had many good experiences as well esp in Portugal. It is just the bad ones that make you scared...

I'm sorry you had to handle such situations. I always had the feeling that we (Portugal) are very good at producing engineers, but not so good at producing citizens.

I work for a rather big german company and they dislocated some stuff (software development, mostly) here. They're very happy with the overall result, but you can easily tell that there are guys which work around 1-2hrs per day. For the company it's OK-ish, they're still paying way below what they paid elsewhere. But for the other employees, it's somewhat shitty.

In general in the big part of WE countries (except UK) there were, luckily, everywhere protective laws towards employees.

It is a matter of preference, you have to decide if is better to protect the employer the most or the employees the most. Considering employees are the bigger part of the population, for me that I grown in this area, it seems most logic to protect them first.

Also consider in the last 3-4 years almost all countries had weakened them in part, hoping it would change the work crisis situation (short answer, it changed nothing at all... except now workers are even more in danger to lose their jobs).

I mean, luckily we have no madness like the "Fire at will" I heard a lot talking about in US, but the situation right now is starting to get unbalanced in favor of the employer, and I don't like that.

So you're not concerned about the possibility that more companies could afford to hire right now but won't for fear they will not be able to afford the employee in the future?

I am an employer (manufacturing) in Arizona USA, a "Fire-at-will" state. If I did not have this privilege, I would not take the risk hiring job candidates who interview poorly. I would be compelled to take the obvious best choice every time, and to never take a risk. Risks are too costly.

With Fire-at-Will I can take a chance on anyone. This is especially useful with lower lever, entry positions where they learn on the job. I have tried hiring all types; the results have been surprising. The sure thing employees aren't always, and the WTF employees sometimes surprise you.

The woman in charge of my accounting, was an 18 year old goth cosplayer, moved from the warehouse to the office as helper during a layoff. She is now 22 (still goth/cosplayer) and does her job like she has 20 years experience. I would never ever have hired her for that job if I could not fire her easily. But she is great.

This is the positive side of Fire-at-will. In practice, you never fire anyone on a whim because it destabilizes the rest of the employees. I only fire the people who need it, and by then most of the staff probably wants them gone anyway.

You wouldn't hire someone solely because of a nerdy hobby?

I would, I am in a "fire-at-will" state in the USA.

If the laws were written so that I could not fire that person, then I would be forced to hire the person that interviewed the best. The woman I mentioned above would have interviewed terribly, she is very shy. It turns out that this is her first job too, so she has almost zero interview experience.

I would do what any other rational person would do - look at all the candidates and pick the one I thought would be best. As for her nerdy hobbies, I included the description to paint a mental picture. I am fairly nerdy myself, cosplay would be a plus to me.

In Portugal you get 6 months where you can fire at will.

What happens later if the company is doing poorly and they need to reduce the workforce?

That will depend on how long the game has been rolling, workforce-wise.

For permanent employees, there's severance payment when firing someone. The amount depends on how long the employee has been in the company, as well as when the contract was signed (the legislation has changed and doesn't apply retroactively). This means paying the dismissed employee something between 12 to 30 days wages per each full year of service. Bear in mind that the value is capped via multiple factors, e.g. it can't be bigger than X times the minimum wage, it can't be bigger than Y times the monthly wage.

However, most contracts are fixed-term: for those, the company simply has to inform the employee that they don't intend to renew. There are also many, many people illegally hired as independent contractors, but working full-time on company premises; those are "fire at will".

There are alternatives [1], however:

* A collective dismissal procedure;

* Dismissal due to the termination of a job position;

* Dismissal due to the employee's incapability to adapt.

[1] http://us.practicallaw.com/6-503-4030?source=relatedcontent#...

Still possible but much harder.

For the first six months of a permanent contract you can for anyone at any time for no reason.

I agree with you on most counts; I believe in employee protection but again not without limits. If you have a video of an employee sleeping or watching porn or facebooking most of the time for a month you should be able to fire without benefits if you have a dossier. In that case the state should pick up the bill to takw care of the person not the company. In general I think the state should pick up the tab from our tax money anyway, not the company as it does prevent people from hiring. It did not actually help much weakening the laws because they are still way too strong. If the state would just pick up the tab it is solved on all counts. But then again I am for basic income.

Edit: and I just do not buy it... I would hire in Spain right now if the laws were more like the US. I cannot afford to risk hiring and getting a bad apple or not being able to afford her later on. I know many startups in PT/ES with that attitude. So maybe the NL system were a dossier will allow you to fire or just have the state pay from the taxes the company pays per employee anyway.

"It is a matter of preference"

As the previous comment points out, too much employee protection means no employee, not protected employee. You're suggesting the choice is secure employee vs insecure employee, whereas it seems it's actually insecure employee vs unemployed. If you make conditions unfavourable for employers, there won't be employers. I'm an employee, so I'd like protection, but it seems that's only possible to a degree, and when competing with other countries I guess it's a race to the bottom, until employees start leaving the country instead of the employers.

It's not a matter of protecting employers or employees "more" (and how would you directly compare? you would need to convert all policies to some sort of "protection unit").

It's a matter of protecting people who currently have a job or those who don't (including those who recently did). If you make it impossible to get rid of problematic employees, you make hiring new employees too risky. That in turn makes it so you can't get hired unless you have a perfect resume, with proper education and grades, and no gaps in employment, as that could indicate a risk, and the employer just can't take any chances, they need to reduce risk to the greatest extent possible.

The net result is less employment, and more workers who would do a fine job but just can't get hired anywhere.

I don't like extremes, both in protecting the employers or the employees.

It is not only ok but also fundamental, for me, to have the right to fire someone for low output or for bad behaviors (Except if it is right after a illness, a childbirth, put here any major stressful event in the life of someone) and it is also ok to give a period (in my state is now 6/12 months depending on the position) in which you can hire someone and evaluate him, deciding then to fire him if he is no good enough for you.

But to have a "fire at will" policy lasting forever? No way.

If you want to provide support for people during a "major stressful event in life", have the government provide that support (paid for by taxes of course). If you try to force private businesses to do that on their own, they will find ways not to, you'll have lots of expensive lawsuits, you'll be adding lots of crazy laws.

It's worse to force companies to employ someone for forever. That's a great reason to hire as little as possible, and fire within the trial period even if the employee did well, so you're not on the hook forever. Best case you end up "too big to just fail" like GM, worst case you die in just a year or two because you got unlucky with one turned-useless employee which your small business just can't afford. Those people will end up unemployed anyway when the business fails.

If you want to give people money because you feel bad for them, just (have the government) give it to them, that's the least adverse-incentive-prone way to do it.

My first thought was: What is the education system like in Portugal? Your father has good maths and knowledge at a problem solving level of applied science, and the kind of communication skills that come in middle management/technical jobs.

Are there exams that teenagers have to take?

Do those exams include mathematics/science content?

Is there a market for 'coaches'? People who coach students in their home at an hourly rate?

Context: I'm a teacher in the UK where we have quite an industry in private tutoring. Needs patience, readiness to read the textbooks and think how to explain the content, and ability to work with teenagers (a skill set that successful parents may have mastered:)

My other thought was: how much do they actually need per month? Have they done a budget?

I'll be retiring sometime next year and my occupational pension isn't huge. I'll need to make around 7 to 8 thousand pounds on top of it. I have some plans to generate income around that figure while also having some time.

My father actually started his career as a math teacher, but he could also (obviously) teach chemistry. But private tutoring here is hell. Teachers are probably the most unemployed skilled professionals in Portugal. As you can imagine, one of the results (besides huge emigration) is a huge supply of private tutors and tutoring centres.

About your other question, they (both my parents) probably could live off € 700,00 per month. It doesn't sound like much, but with the wages here it's very hard to put aside enough money to keep you going for years without a job (even with the low-ish cost of life here)

Maybe I should give him a Breaking Bad box set :)

I suspected the situation you describe might be the case based on what we read here about Europe in the UK.

OK: my only other thought is perhaps a bit odd: are there other manufacturing/ science based companies that are closing down/disintegrating? If so some part time work staying with them until they close and managing all the health and safety, asset disposal and equipment sales might be viable.

I know a chap who did that in and around the Black Country (Midlands industrial belt near Birmingham and Wolverhampton) in the UK in the 80s when all the foundries were closing down and being sold to Bihar in India. I have no direct experience of that myself.

I'm not really well informed about this, but here - when a company "closes" - they're assigned (by the state) a insolvency manager. From that point on, the manager will hire whoever he sees fit to handle the spoils, so to speak. From what I know, the process is rather obscure (as in, corrupt). It typically ends up with employers pillaging the spoils before the insolvency guys come in. Very third-world, I know - I have a pocket microscope from the spoils, actually.

>what we read here about Europe in the UK.

Just out of curiosity, I get the vibe you don't consider the UK part of Europe, is this true?

Agghhhh ok I should have said "what we read here in the UK about the rest of Europe".

Best of luck to all in this situation.

No worries. I just asked because Brits have weird attitudes towards the mainland.

Thanks. I'm in that situation (kind of) though somewhat by choice.

Its usually just the politicians and the ones that have never left the country that have the wierd attitude.

It's odd that the article avoids presenting data that would directly show the extent of the problem.

It does show that older women are at higher risk of long-term unemployment, but only compared to other women. It never compares older women to similarly aged men. The best it does is quote people saying that older women have it harder, but never with actual numbers.

We are therefore unable to estimate how big the problem is. Are older women 1% more at risk than older men? 300%? No idea.

From TFA:

"A new study on long-term unemployment from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis [1] found that the prospects for women over 50 darkened after the Great RecesAge and Gender Differences in Long-Term Unemployment: Before and After the Great Recessionsion. In 2006-7, before the downturn hit, less than a quarter of the unemployed in this group had been out of work for more than six months. By 2012-13, older jobless women accounted for half of the long-term unemployed."

From the study itself [1]:

"In sum, men and women of all ages experienced a rise in [long-term unemployment (LTU)] after the Great Recession. In this essay, we document the lesser-known fact that LTU affected older women more strongly. This group experienced a remarkable change: from a low pre-recession LTU-to-unemployment ratio of 14 percent to a post-recession rate of 50 percent."

[1] "Age and Gender Differences in Long-Term Unemployment: Before and After the Great Recession" https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/economic-synops...

But that still doesn't answer the question, because it doesn't state anything about older men.

Yes, in 2012-2013 older women accounted for around half of long-term unemployed. Perhaps older men accounted for around half as well, which would show that the problem is primarily one of age?

And it doesn't need to be so extreme. For example, if older women are 50%, older men are 40%, and younger people are 10%, then age is still the main factor. It would also make sense to see women slightly higher than men, since at older ages, women start to significantly outnumber men.

But, on the other hand, if it's 50% older women, 10% older men, and 40% young people, then the article would be spot on.

It seems very odd that the article wouldn't just present those figures, so we could tell.

edit: In other responses, the proper data was found, and this is indeed an issue of age, for the most part, so sadly the article is misleading.

Here's the data:

https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/economic-synops...

Men have the exact same long-term unemployment share (50%) in the 50-64 range. So, it's an equally large problem for older men. I 'm baffled by the chauvinism of the author.

Thank you for finding that.

It does look that the article has hugely overstated the issue. But there are still two interesting findings, that the article doesn't quite say properly because it hides the numbers, which is a shame:

* Older women's long-term unemployment is now on par with older men. The interesting thing is that earlier, it was much lower. Now, it has reached parity, and fairly quickly. So in terms of the change, there has been a significant change, but in terms of where things stand, this isn't a gender issue.

* The main issue is one of age - older people are at much higher risk of long-term unemployment. Looking at the long-term unemployed, we can see that they are becoming mostly older people. And because in the group of older people, women significantly outnumber men (because women live longer), the group of older women becomes significant.

In other words, older women are a very big proportion of the long-term unemployed not necessarily because of gender issues (which the article focuses on, like taking time off to care for children 20 years earlier - which seems like a stretch anyhow), but rather because older people are most of the long-term unemployed, and there are just a lot more older women than older men.

"New York Times". Should say it all.

Actually, it doesn't. I may not hang around the same group of people as you which may explain why I have no biasses towards the NYTs. Please explain what you mean.

If you were to mention Fox News I would get the referene since Fox News is mostly a racist, sexist, xenophobe pile of dung. I'm of course exagerating for dramatic effect. They are still quite bad on the things they say(twist) though.

I don't really "hang out" with NYT readers, so I can't tell you the group consensus.

But my experience has been that NYT frequently fails to report meaningful data. For example a few days ago, they compared the propensity of people to marry others of similar income to "eugenics". http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/12/27/upshot/marriages-of-pow... But then totally and completely failed to show that income level transfers generations, which is crucial for eugenics. They also failed to look at it even mention confounding variables.

Age discrimination is not only wrong, it's illegal.

The woman in the article said she was told 'they want someone younger'. Anyone who can prove they did not get a job cause of their age may want to check with the EEOC and potentially a lawyer.

Exactly. Show us the data or the summary of it, adjusted for the education and work experience.

The article doesn't even mention what the first two women's education is (Chettie McAfee, Lynn Colafrancesco), it just complains that they can't find a job. VP title in the past means nothing, some companies give out VP title to thousands of employees to save the money, it's just cheaper than giving a raise.

Heading to the Bureau of Labor Statistics at (http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat03.htm) to get the most obviously relevant numbers:

    Unemployment, men 50-54: 4.3%
    Unemployment, women 50-54: 4.4%
    Unemployment, men 55-64: 4.5%
    Unemployment, women 55-64: 4.2%

These do not seem to indicate a difference between genders.

I have been told to be very careful when interpreting this kind of number. There is political pressure to keep these numbers low, so only if it is really unavoidable, you'll be counted.

I am speculating here, but maybe, if a woman's spouse happens to be working, the woman will not be counted. Or who could be counted as having an early pension? Who is registered to receive benefits from the state under which conditions? Does voluntary work make one disappear from these lists?

The definitions for "unemployed" are very well defined. This is the standard "U3" unemployment number. You count as unemployed if you do not have a job and have looked for work within the last 4 weeks.

There are other unemployment numbers that include people who would work if offered a job but aren't actually looking for one, but that's not the main measure that BLS uses. People that wouldn't take a job even if you offered one to them (like students and early retirees) don't count at all- they don't even show up in the denominator of any of these measures. BLS has the summary of all 6 measures of unemployment at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm but I don't think they have the detailed breakdown of any of the other measures.

The integrity of those numbers is pretty good actually. You need to understand what they mean.

You have to be in the workforce to be reflected in them. Voluntary work doesn't count -- and in many cases women are caregivers for grandchildren, spouses, older parents, etc.

According to the BLS (which is the data they cite), the unemployment rates are [1]:

Women

  25-54: 5.3%
  50-54: 4.4%
  55-59: 4.2%
  60-64: 4.1%
  65+  : 4.7%

Men

  25-54: 5.2%
  50-54: 4.3%
  55-59: 4.4%
  60-64: 4.6%
  65+  : 4.6%

There doesn't seem to be much difference in the overall unemployment rate. However, maybe the unemployment is cycling between many different men for shorter periods of time. If women who were employed kept their jobs, it could lead to a stable set of women who are employed while the unemployed women are unemployed for longer - which is worse for those unemployed individuals than having the same number unemployed, but that unemployment cycling between individuals. For example, if we have 10 people and 2 are going to be unemployed, if Sara and Josh are just always unemployed, it sucks to be Sara or Josh. If everyone takes their turn and is unemployed 20% of the time, that sucks for everyone, but sucks substantially less.

But looking at the BLS long term unemployment statistics, that doesn't seem to be indicated more for women than men [2]. Looking at the rise in long term unemployment from 2008-2013:

Women

  45-54: 222% (of 2008 long-term unemployment)
  55-64: 284%

Men

  45-54: 218%
  55-64: 341%

It seems like the number of long-term unemployed has increased around the same over the period used by the article regardless of gender.

But what if the labor force participation rate dropped hugely for women and so they're not showing up as long-term unemployed since they aren't considered part of the labor force anymore? http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_303.htm

I'm not going to copy all the data in from that link, but women 55+ increased participation by 14.4% from 2004-2014 while men 55+ increased participation by 6.25%. That's not something I want to draw a great conclusion from since women born closer to the present are more likely to have jobs than women born farther in the past (ie. a 55 year old in 2014 is more likely to have had a career than a 55 year old in 2004 because the past sucked and whatnot). Given that men 25-54 decreased participation by 2.5% while women 25-54 decreased participation by 1.9%, I think it's fair to say that the 14.4% increase isn't just due to more women 10 years ahead in time having careers.

I have to say, this just looks like shoddy reporting. Based on the numbers, the article seems more clickbait than reporting. It's crappy that some people who are skilled are having trouble finding jobs. We're talking about people's lives here and it sucks to be out of a livelihood. But the thesis of the article - that women over 50 are specifically having a problem - doesn't seem to be borne out by the numbers that they in fact cite. The numbers do show long term unemployment up for those over 50, but even there it's up similar amounts overall (total long-term unemployment for those 16 and over is 245% of 2008 levels). Eye-balling it, it doesn't look like there's a spared group besides 16-19 year olds.

Am I hugely missing something?

[1] http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat03.pdf

[2] http://www.bls.gov/bls/cps_fact_sheets/ltu_mock.htm

> Am I hugely missing something?

You may have missed the nytimes.com domain. :)

It's incredible that a HN comment has better reporting than a whole professionally written New York Times article.

Are you implying that the media obfuscates reality with selective reporting to push a politically correct/leftist narrative that implicitly demonizes white men? Why, that's absurd! #BlackLivesMatter

It never compares older women to similarly aged men.

I did a skim of the article yesterday. I think you are looking for an apples to apples comparison that doesn't exist. From what I saw, I felt it was trying to explain the apples to oranges comparison that does exist. For example, it notes that women are more likely to simply give up than men. Unemployment statistics stop counting you if you outright give up, thus it is not really useful to look at "unemployment" stats for both genders to understand the problem.

I am a 50 year old woman who was a military wife and homeschooling mom. I was one of the top 3 students of my graduating class, yet ended up being a homemaker for about 2 decades. I find it enormously frustrating to try to explain to people how that impacts my life. Men very often just do not understand how taking time off from career to raise kids or support a spouse's career, etc, impacts your life and your prospects for earning an income on par with similarly aged and similarly educated, competent men.

So a) you aren't going to find a meaningful apples to apples comparison and b) any attempt to compare a woman's life to a man's in an apples to apples manner essentially denies that women are different from men and our lives are different from those of men. It tends to be very meaningful information.

> Ms. Colafrancesco, now 59 and divorced, started determinedly looking for a full-time job three years ago. As soon as she mentioned that she had taken off time to care for two children, she could see in the interviewer’s face that she had been summarily dismissed.

Anybody has a clue why having taken time off to care for her children is relevant for a potential employer now that she is 59 years old, and the likelihood of her having more children fairly low?

More explicitly stated, "Put your best foot forward in a job interview. Don't give anyone any reason to think you might know less than the next candidate."

Also, lying through omission is more acceptable in some places than others.

could it be because, in their eyes, she showed lack of commitment to her job?

It feels awful just thinking it in those terms but I can see how that can be used against parents that decide to stay home to take care of their children

It could also be that she has missed out on relevant experience due to the time spent child-rearing.

This argument is reasonable on the surface, but when you think about it a bit more, it seems quite unlikely that missing 2 years of work 20 years ago would result in lack of relevant experience... Most people never have 20 years of experience (more like 20 times 1 year of experience); furthermore, whatever experience another person might have had 20 years ago is most likely either forgotten or completely irrelevant by now.

> This argument is reasonable on the surface, but when you think about it a bit more, it seems quite unlikely that missing 2 years of work 20 years ago would result in lack of relevant experience...

I don't think the article states precisely how much time, whether 2 years or 20, Colafrancesco took off from work to raise her children.

However, that's not to justify unequal hiring practices if and where such details keep employers from hiring Colafrancesco and women in similar positions.

Trying to match her linkedin profile [1] to the article, it sounds like she worked in reinsurance from 1980-2003 (age 23-46), took time off to care for kids, and started substitute teaching a few days a week in 2007 (age 50). Not working within your field for the last 13 years does seem like it would have a large effect on experience; this is getting close to your "whatever experience another person might have had 20 years ago is most likely either forgotten or completely irrelevant by now".

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/in/lynn-colafrancesco-5800163

I don't necessarily agree with the argument, but I do see where employers might be coming from.

She likely took off a lot more than 2 years (cbr says 13). Not working in your field for 13 years is a pretty easy way to fall out of touch with the latest practices.

Employers should treat her fairly, which would probably be treating her like a slightly above entry level candidate, since so much of her experience is so dated. If they're refusing to hire her at all, that's a problem. But if they're not valuing her experience from 13 years ago as equal to experience from last year, I understand.

It seems like pure speculation on the part of the author of the article. Maybe these words basically write themselves in any article containing the words "women" and "jobs".

I would say that here are so many qualified candidates that look virtually identical on the surface that employers can feel justified to "play it safe" and pass on any semblance of even a slight possible negative in a candidate.

Can you tell how much did she take off the job to raise her kids?

How many years we're talking about here and was she able to stay up to date with the latest developments and trends in her profession or industry?

Also, did she feel really "dismissed" after sharing this piece of info at interviews or just "disqualified" because "dismissed" is a strong word and entails humiliation and lack of respect unlike the other one?

In my experience, over-50 employees are easy to work with, knowledgeable, experienced and flexible. They bring a lot less personal drama because they have things pretty much figured out in their personal lives. They are often anxious to learn and have lots of time still left to contribute. Obviously these are some generalizations, but I have found them to be true for many I work with. It is sad they are being left out of the workforce when they can provide so much of the leadership and stability companies are looking for.

I love how at the end of the article, Ms. McAfee says "I did everything you’re supposed to do". This little bit of information pretty much encapsulates the entire point of the article:

Either Ms. McAfee didn't do everything you're supposed to do, or everything you're supposed to do is wrong.

I wonder how much of a barrier this is when a woman over 50 has specific, up to date, hard skills like those discussed on HN.

In other words, how much is discrimination and how much is investing in and managing an up to date skill set.

The short answer is almost certainly that it still is. Obviously, specific marketable skills are almost always going to be better than just a more generic administrative/business background. However, age discrimination is absolutely a thing and you can't chalk it all up to not being willing to put in the hours or having obsolete skills.

Age discrimination is a thing but the idea that you work for a company to benefit them and not yourself is something that's taking a painfully long time to sink in for a lot of people. Perhaps for older people they were brought up to think you just work all the time, in one company perhaps, because...its just something you do. The idea that you only work because someone finds what you do economically advantageous is lost on some people. I often hear people complaining that they're not "getting training" at work (for free, on their employer's time). Well, yeah, that costs them a bunch of money and benefits you. Yes, you could argue it benefits them too, but not as much as them simply firing you and hiring someone who already has the skills.

And to double down on this, people expect to have things just because. If one doesn't negotiate training hours in writing on their contract, then it has no reason to expect anything from the employer.

Why people don't ask to put on paper what they expect is beyond me. And if asking such things during negotiation put you at disadvantage compared to other hires, so be it. You can't have the cake and eat it too.

Say you are a 35 year old manager. All else equal who do you hire; a 25 year old or a 50 year old? Is it age discrimination to hire an individual that you think you'd be better able to manage?

not sure what exactly you are implying, but in my limited experience, I'd take the 50 year old over the 25 yr old in a heartbeat. you say all else equal. thats a dream world. the 50 yr old will have, very likely, a vast range of valuable life experiences (unless theyve been living in a proverbial cave all their life).. and yeah im 37 and i lead a team with a variety of ages. age is not an important factor, like at all. enthusiasm and genuine-ness is.

You're the minority.

also 37 which is youth-speak for "old", their opinion doesn't matter anymore :-(

>>the 50 yr old will have, very likely, a vast range of valuable life experiences

And therefore be a lot less likely to recognize and take seriously the authority of a 25-year-old manager. In fact, in their mind they will probably think they should be the manager.

I've seen it happen and it wasn't pretty.

As a 44 year old programmer myself I wouldn't say a 25-year old manager would be the problem but rather dealing with a manager with maybe 3 years of real experience. Good managers, like good programmers, are a mix of ability and experience and many inexperienced managers haven't taken the lesson from _Space Camp_ to heart: being boss and being bossy aren't the same.

If the 50 year old has the same amount of experience that the 25 year old has, they have been doing something seriously wrong. That is reality, if people want to keep working at a given position they need to constantly develop and improve to remain competitive, all else should not be equal when the older candidate has been working for 25 extra years.

Real skills transcend whatever language is trendy today. A 50 year old with 25 years experience including 5 years Node.js trumps a 25 year old with 5 years Node.js and nothing else. In a sane world, anyway.

Job ads ask for experience in whatever is "hot" just now though.

I worked with an older engineer (late 40s) when I was 21 (and with a bunch of young SDEs) and he was proficient, intelligent. His downfall was his ego and inability to make trade offs. He beat every decision, design, code review to death and couldn't see the forest for the trees. Writing in Java, he would use byte arrays or unfold loops for unnecessary performance gains. He sabotaged meetings because he would derail for such a long time on minor issues. He was only there for 6 months and jumped ship to Google.

Are you saying all older engineers are raging egomaniacs? Because that sounds pretty ageist to me.

> If the 50 year old has the same amount of experience that the 25 year old has, they have been doing something seriously wrong.

I think this is the crux of it. When most people hire someone straight out of college they're looking for someone with the potential to do great things. Whereas when they hire someone who's 50, they're looking for someone who has done great things. But since a lot of people reach 50 without having done anything especially impressive, applying what hiring managers perceive as being the same set of standards to both age groups leaves older folks less likely to get hired even without any conscious discrimination.

in your scenario, replace "50 year old" with "black" and "25 year old" with "white". Is it race discrimination to hire an individual that you think you'd be better able to manage?

its age discrimination to imagine a bunch of traits that come with a hypothetical 50 year old that don't come up with a hypothetical 25 year old and then make a hiring decision based on those traits.

replace "25 year old" with "hot". Is it discrimination to hire someone you'd rather look at all day and possibly have drinks with after work? Just sayin, it happens

BTW, I'm not condoning this situation, I think it is bad. But unfortunately, this is still a very real situation that does influence people's decisions.

This is why you have diversity in hiring to avoid this level of bias. Otherwise bros are going to hire bros.

(And if all the people who are interviewing you are younger than you probably aren't getting the job no matter how well you do)

> Is it age discrimination to hire an individual that you think you'd be better able to manage?

If you can't hire and manage people who are better than you at something (doesn't even have to be life experience or anything else age-related), you'll fail as a manager.

It's risky to ignore the real drawbacks of age though: health issues, less mental and physical fitness and flexibility and a theoretically shorter future in the company. In my former company, the best programmer had several strokes in his 50's. He's recovering, but it's a difficult situation.

I would look at my team. If I already have lots of 25 year olds, I would choose the candidate with 50 years of age.

You can't substitute experience with intelligence and youth. And people always look at the diversity debate through the lens of the individual (is it fair to the individual?), when diversity could be really beneficial to the team.

I'd hire the one with the most I could learn from. That may be the 25 year old or the 50 year old. It could be either.

>Better able to manage Managing someone older than one's self isn't hard as long as one's management is competent. They've likely seen a lot before. But it's easy to fool someone younger that they're being managed well. It should be a highlight for a manager that they've been able to manage and retain, even inspire, those older than themselves.

I expect a lot of it is that they had a decent job for many years that gave them regular pay rises, but probably above their value. If they wanted another job now they'd have to take a pay cut, and nobody wants that.

There's a guy at my work like that. 50s, lab technician. Very good at what he does, but he's been with the company for maybe 15 years and no doubt has a very good salary for a lab technician. He wants to leave but basically can't because there's no chance anyone will pay his salary for a new lab technician.

"no chance anyone will pay his salary for a new lab technician."

Except... he's not a new lab technician. He's a technician in a new lab, perhaps, but the technical differences can't be THAT great to justify starting him at a massively reduced salary.

Bigger issue is just how much value he can justify in a new employment situation in general. :/

Let's guess: the gentleman is very capable, but most candidates are not. Any potential replacement hire would need a reference from a colleague whom you trust just because the pool is so awful, and even then the new guy would need extensive training to be up to snuff. Old guy can't leave because at any potential new place the people making the hiring decision don't trust your reference because they don't know you. Sounds all very familiar.

This article just made me realize that me, my wife, and my mother are all now unemployed and over 35. It does contradict the current economic wisdom doesn't it? Luckily I've got plenty of savings and always lived beneath my means.

In my own case I find companies want to play games in interviews and are not particularly interested in hiring, even though I've twenty years experience in the tech industry and am an "expert" in Python and Javascript. Being interested in fitness also, I'm often in better shape than the pudgy, pale, late-twenties types I have to interview with, haha.

This strikes me as a huge issue, which I've also seen:

“I have been told in interviews that they want somebody younger,” said Karen Lamkin, a lawyer with 25 years of experience who lives outside Boston and has been out of work for three years. “It does not matter that I would be satisfied with the salary for a junior position.”

I have seen that many times. Managers will want someone younger. Pay has nothing to do with it. Rather, managers believe that someone younger will be willing to work longer hours, and will also be easier to manipulate.

The unemployment rate would have to go extremely low before businesses began hiring the unwanteds. It is worth noting that in the USA male participation in the economy peaked in the late 1950s, and has since declined. Much of this was racial: blacks were barred from getting good jobs, so they were overly concentrated in textiles and agriculture. Then a combination of automation and outsourcing reduced employment in textiles and agriculture. 60 years later, and the USA has still failed to recover.

How low would unemployment have to be before USA businesses would hire so many men that labor participation rates would go back to the rates of the 1950s? Clearly, the USA would need a long labor shortage before businesses would give up on their biases and hire all of the willing workers.

I started my 'career' as a dishwasher at 13. I worked my way up to chef and then got into IT. Kitchens are ALWAYS hiring. When I hear people complain that they have been looking for x years I always wonder why they don't get a job like that. Is it that they believe it is too good for them? The market seems to disagree.

It could be about opportunity cost.

If they could make x guaranteed in a kitchen, but have a 20% chance of making 10x at another job (if/when they land it), then they should keep looking.

That said, at some point you just want income, so I get your point.

As someone who has been in this position, as a matter of fact I do feel that I am too experienced for it. The years of college, 30 years of professional development experience, kinda makes you not want to start from the bottom again. Finally found a company that values my skills, but it took a few years (yeah years!).

The New York times has been very sexist for as long as I can recall. If you have any doubts, search Google against New York Times on general terms like men, women - see a trend of extreme sexism? It's hard to miss.

As has been pointed out by many other posters, there is no difference in the figures of unemployment for older men/women.

I honestly believe society is far more sexist today than it has ever been in at least 50 years. In my lifetime, no one would ever do a code.org by saying on the front page that (only) girls are welcome, or in Australia, we now have minimum quotas for police based on gender.. They must hire women regardless of who applies or their experience.

The sexism and misrepresentation of this article should not be a surprise to any intelligent person.

Upon skim: I think it has some good points to make. Women are more likely to take time off for family obligations. If women do just give up more than men, they stop counting you as unemployed when you stop bothering to try. So the statistics would not show those women.

From what I could gather from the multitude of articles that I read about the US job market following the 2008 economic crisis, I noticed an interesting trend or pattern where US workers are interested in getting jobs exclusively in the US and not anywhere else. I am not talking here about unskilled or low-skilled labor, I'm talking about individuals who possess marketable skill set who could prove beneficial for any business abroad and yet they limit their job search to their home country.

I couldn't find an explanation for this.

Is it the expected lower pay? Is it having to live in a foreign country and assimilating to other cultures? What's it exactly?

Because If were one of them, I'd take any reasonable job offer abroad than staying unemployed draining my savings and having wide gaps on my resume that would complicate the matter even further.

Those jobs are far and few between, and not usually available to "foreigners" except in rare circumstances.

For example, when a guy here was advertising for jobs in Europe, I contacted him and was politely blown off when I said I was a US citizen. Yes a bit odd since this site is US centric, but there you go.

Many, many factors:

1) The average American lives 18 miles from his or her mother. Leaving one's hometown for a tech/finance/arts hub is for the upwardly mobile elites, not the masses. HN's demographic is extremely unrepresentative.

2) Foreign language education is poor. K12 schools generally make a token effort towards Spanish, French, and German. Asian language education is rare. Bilingual children are generally from immigrant families, or from very wealthy families who can afford good schools, study abroad programs, a gap year or summer for their teenager to wander around Europe with friends instead of working, etc.

3) International travel is extremely expensive and most people do not have that kind of cash lying around to cover necessities, let alone leisure travel. Most Americans live paycheck to paycheck. So going abroad is just not a familiar or natural experience to many people. Only 46% have passports.

I find this article a bit sexist, it assumes that women are only one who raises children. Plus 60 years old plumber with alimony has it pretty hard as well, and nobody will hire him as part time teacher.

it does not assume that.

Then they should change title from "female" to "parent".

Anyway it is typical rant disconnected from reality. Why nobody hires me with my doctorate from "communications"?

did you read the article? it uses words like "most" and "many". it talks about why older females have trouble finding jobs, but also about how older men have trouble finding jobs. its also an article about trends, not absolutes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income should fix it

While it may be upsetting for people I see nothing wrong with people over 50 having a harder time getting their foot trough the "front door" than young people.

You had over half of your working career to network, get contacts, recommendations, etc. - if you're still applying for public job ads like the people in 20s and 30s then sorry but this probably means you weren't really good enough at your previous jobs for people to notice you and recommend you.

A lot of senior hiring goes trough recommendations - if you aren't on anybody's "let's call this guy for X" and you spent 20+ work years on the job I'd rather gamble with unproven guy that has potential than someone with a disappointing track record.

And this is true even when assuming that age doesn't affect your job performance (which it does, and past 50s you're past your prime and as we've discussed before your experience isn't enough to put you on someones recommendation list then it probably isn't that valuable).

Naturally there will be exceptions to this but I have a feeling that this logic applies in the majority case.

What if "X" to call the guy for doesn't exist anymore?

Say for example (of course this could never occur) that a brand new web development paradigm came out and javascript died almost overnight. Say (in this hypothetical example) it was very easy and required almost no learning and anyone could do it almost right away. How is all the networking done with fellow javascript people going to help a web developer find a new job?

Networking doesn't really work like that from my experience, you show people that you're reliable and a good person to work with in some area they will assume you can transfer to Y even if you specialize in X, even senior positions hire people without direct experience and not only in software.

I've seen things like this happen in several jobs I've worked with - not all of which were programming (eg. at my first job CTP was replacing old printing plate development with manual film montage/exposure). People good enough at their work saw this sort of thing coming a long time ahead and start moving to the next thing way before it actually happened, people who got hit by it were people who barely knew their job to begin with and had no interest in keeping up to date - so I don't think this goes against my point.

And are you really surprised that people with no relevant experience get discriminated on age ? If your experience is completely irrelevant then you don't really have a lot to offer over a younger person (and younger in this context means <50 which is different from the classic software story of 20 yearolds vs 40 yearols where the differences are still debatable, there are undeniable differences in the below above 50 age groups, you're just past your prime at that point at least when it comes to adapting to new things).

that exact scenario happened to a good friend of mine. Automation took his specialty from a 6 figure income to $300/year in exactly five years. It took him 8 years to rebuild his business making custom tools.

>You had over half of your working career to network, get contacts, recommendations, etc. - if you're still applying for public job ads like the people in 20s and 30s then sorry but this probably means you weren't really good enough at your previous jobs for people to notice you and recommend you.

So? 200+ millions of Americans need to have a job to feed themselves. And several millions of programmers.

Not just the top 10% of them.

Just because you weren't good enough in "networking, recommendations" or some "super star" to have a nice looking resume to be auto-hirable etc, doesn't mean you should starve if you happen to get laid off your job after your fifties...

You are not top 10% if you have connections and recommendations past 50. I would say you are bottom 10-20% if you don't. I'm not talking auto-hire/top employees - just people who know who they could talk to if they lost their job and would get picked up in a reasonable amount of time. It's really not that high of a bar. It's very likely that a person past 50s stranded competing with 20/30 yearolds willing to take junior positions without references is the kind of person that you don't want to hire in the first place and that's not even taking age effects in to consideration

>You are not top 10% if you have connections and recommendations past 50. I would say you are bottom 10-20% if you don't.

Which would make it a problem "only" for about 30+ million people or so if they get fired...

That is, if the idea that "80% of people over 50 have recommendations/connections that can land them a job" is correct in the first place, which, hearing from people that age that have difficulty finding a job (in their field of course -- not getting a gig welcoming customers at McDonalds) when laid off, I don't think it is.

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