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Comment by drchewbacca | Hacker News Reader

One thing I'm a bit confused about is why doesn't salary bidding fix this?

For example if a 25 yr old coder is $X per year surely, even if you have terrible age discrimination, there must be some salary level, say $0.75*X where having the older worker is preferable?

Is it that older workers are much more expensive and are bidding themselves out the market? Is it that people value youth so much they will pay a 3x markup for it or something?

If there's a large pool of super skilled people begging for work I don't quite understand why someone wouldn't want to leverage that. I get why maybe you pay older workers less if you discriminate, but to not hire them at all seems strange.

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The assumption that there exists some price at which the older worker is preferable is assuming that all software workers have a positive contribution and the only task is to value and compensate it roughly in proportion.

My experience suggests that a fair chunk of the population of software developers are incapable of sustainably creating positive business value overall (even if they were paid nothing). If that model is the correct one, part of what you're paying for in a younger applicant is they might be good, whereas with an experienced yet unskilled applicant, they might already be the equivalent of a scratched-off lottery ticket that isn't a winner. (There's no price at which you would buy it.)

Note that I'm well into the age range where I would be discriminated against if age discrimination were rampant. I'm also not claiming that experienced workers are more likely than younger workers to have a negative value. I'm merely claiming that their value is more likely to be determined and less likely to change in the future.

So you're saying that older workers being in the position of looking for a job are signaling that they're a scratched off lottery ticket for which the expected value of a jackpot is zero?

I’m saying that employers might be making that judgment when deciding not to hire a more experienced worker who interviews/tests the same as a less experienced worker. Same way a ballclub might invest in a rookie OF hitting 0.225 where a veteran with the same stats would be passed over.

I’ve not found age to be a good proxy for capacity or capability; I know exceptionally good (and many poor) coders at every age range I’ve seen in our field.

As for “looking for a job”, that’s a normal thing. Most experienced candidates will have a network to help, but moving to a new area or new field is also normal and hurts networking effectiveness.

A common objection is that they will leave as soon as they can find a 'better' (higher-paying) job. So not worth it to invest in them.

This sucks, but it definitely explains a lot of discrimination at the higher-end of the scale. The OP has a 71-year-old who couldn't find work. It must be very difficult for an employer to agree to hire this person, get them trained up on their specific business processes, only for them to have a serious health issue (and/or die) inside of a year. I get that this can happen to anyone, but the likelihood is of course greater the older you get. Maybe employers could take out some kind of insurance on their employees, with the cost based on the actuarial tables and taken out of the employees' salaries (kind of what you suggest).

> Is it that older workers are much more expensive and are bidding themselves out the market?

On one cost issue. Let's say you're in a city other than SEA, LA, SF, NYC and Boston. A 55 year old on a good insurance plan will often cost you anywhere from $6,000 to $10,000 more per year in healthcare benefits versus a 20-25 year old. The cost of a 45 year old employee further increases with time due to that (over 10 years, from 45 to 55, an employee's health benefits cost can easily climb by an additional $5k-$6k per year). So if the salary in question is $90,000 (again, outside the elite tech cities), that bumps the cost of the employee considerably as they age. Some states - such as NY - have laws that alter this equation though. When an employee goes from eg 20 to 35 years old, there's a far more modest healthcare benefits cost increase (30%-40% increase would be more typical, starting from a lower base cost versus the 45 year old; from 40 to 55 the cost can easily double, from a higher starting point).

This is another serious issue that people frequently run into with the US healthcare system.

> A 55 year old on a good insurance plan will often cost you anywhere from $6,000 to $10,000 more per year in healthcare benefits versus a 20-25 year old.

Jesus freaking christ I never realised that being European. This is a game changer for older folks, I guess I'm out of luck if I ever want to move to the US and I'm already over 30, ha :/

As things are now, with US healthcare being out of control on costs, it depends heavily on your salary and employment context.

If you're making eg $150,000 or $200,000 in SF or NYC and working for a stable company, an additional $500-$600 per month for the company isn't nearly the concern versus if you're working in Cleveland earning $75,000.

If you're with a decent company with good benefits, it's also not an unusual situation more generally speaking. Half the country receives its healthcare benefits from an employer. Companies in the US are used to forking over very high costs for healthcare benefits. It's an accepted cost of employing people here. Being unemployed at 55 in the US, with weak savings (can't bridge yourself to the next job) and struggling job prospects, is a very serious problem however. That's the sort of situation you want to avoid in the US.

If you're self-employed the healthcare costs can be a real killer also, obviously unless you earn enough to offset it properly. As a very young entrepreneur I simply went without healthcare coverage. I was fortunate to not have any meaningful health problems in those years, it's blatantly a serious risk to take.

I'm not sure that's how employer-based group health plans work, but regardless, the gaping flaw in this theory is that a typical Recruiter and Hiring Manager wouldn't have the first clue about their employer's cost of benefits.

I know this is just personnel experience so don't take it for much but I had to share an office with a 70 year old "programmer" who made three times my salary. I know this because my supervisor got drunk on a business trip and told me the day after he fired the guy. He was constantly asking everyone how to do the simplest of tasks and complaining about being under payed and discriminated against because of his age and was extremely condescending to anyone who tried to help him. He never finished any assignment even after a year and a half. The led developer who has been coding for 15 years took over his last project and had to throw out all the code because it was basically just copied and pasted from stackover flow. I don't think this guy ever really knew how to code well and had got into the industry in a time where programmers where rare. Honestly, for what I've seen all the over 40 crowd in the industry moves into management positions.

I’ve seen many younger folks who couldn’t code their way out of a paper bag. Both anecdotes useless.

Once you’re old, you typically don’t get to the negotiating salary stage.

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