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Comment by baggachipz | Hacker News Reader

Age discrimination is a huge issue and I've experienced it firsthand. Places want to hire younger people because they're more apt to work longer hours for less pay. It's going to get worse as people who got into the web tech industry early on are still in the workforce, yet more and more young people are entering the workforce because "learning to code" was the perceived path to prosperity half a decade ago.

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> Places want to hire younger people because they're more apt to work longer hours for less pay.

This is the best light you can shine on the discrimination. Most often it really is managers taking their “seniority” literally. As in, they don’t want to take the risk their reports are smarter, more experienced or capable of replacing them, so they discriminate on the basis of age. It’s counterintuitive, but this feels truest from my historical observation.

I wonder if this is really true or just an off-the-cuff comment (no disrespect). I have worked for a number of major tech companies and have never seen this in practice. Some managers were older, some were younger, some the same age. In most/all cases, people were hired based on their technical skills not because they fell into some magical age gap.

Idk, it’s what I observed over many years in many scenarios. It’s the better fit for explaining why some clearly motivated candidates run into headwinds as “overqualified.”

Big organizations have done better, and maybe the view is a bit stale and who knows.

> Places want to hire younger people because they're more apt to work longer hours for less pay.

If you take age out of the equation, is there supposed to be something wrong with preferring to hire people who are willing to work longer for less pay over people who aren't willing to work as long who want more pay?

Single people usually have more time on their hands, so they may be willing to work longer too. Is there something wrong with only wanting to hire single people?

Depending on why you do it, yes. Believe it or not intent matters.

And I also generally believe it's bad, because it breeds a toxic and self-eating culture.

Experienced people might produce better results? Have a greater understanding of the larger picture that makes a business? And people with kids were shown to have higher retention. If the youngsters move on with the tribal knowledge, what was the point? My .02, no proof that we should respect our elders.

I've experienced the opposite where some smaller companies won't even look at a resume for someone under 30. One of the owners admitted it to me later on. :(

This should also be illegal in the US.

40 and over is a “protected group” in US employment law. 30 year old people are not protected.

Really? The US only protects age discrimination of some ages not all?

Only older people are deserving of equal protection, because they reliably vote. Young people get screwed over for everything else.

It's illegal in Canada, but how do you prove it if they don't admin it to you.

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