October 9, 2000

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Older IT Professionals Struggle With Age Bias

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There's also evidence that some companies are reluctant to train older workers on new technologies. Instead, they're more likely to go out and find new blood for what can sometimes be the most interesting and business-critical IT jobs.

In a study published last year, the Computing Research Association determined that "companies are forced by short product life and short product-development cycles to hire new employees or reassign existing employees in ways that don't require a lot of break-in training before they can be productive."

But many argue that it's a mistake to assume older workers aren't retrainable. Thor Bradsher, a 60-year-old computer programmer with more than 20 years of experience, struggled for more than a year to find a job. During interviews, he was amazed that companies would only consider him if he was up to date with current versions of a specific software package, even though he had years of experience working with that software. "One manager was concerned that I didn't have experience in the right version of Crystal Reports" reporting and analysis software, he says. "Crystal Reports! That's like asking someone what version of a toaster he was running in the kitchen."

Says Jeffrey Heath, 49, and president of recruiting firm the Landstone Group, "If you started a school for 65-year-olds, teaching them programming, I'd think you would have a wonderful audience." Some organizations have taken such steps--in 1999, the IEEE-USA began its Older Professional Initiative to offer training and job development for experienced workers. Green Thumb Inc., a nonprofit company in Arlington, Va., four years ago established the Got/IT program, offering classes and certification courses in Microsoft help desk and networking administration for older workers nationwide.

But even those efforts have been wrought with challenges. Green Thumb, for example, says it experienced growing pains when implementing the program. Initially, only companies that partnered with the organization to create the program would hire the newly trained graduates. Other businesses passed, citing lack of experience among the graduates as the reason for their disinterest.

In his report to Congress, Matloff said evidence exists to indicate that retraining alone wouldn't provide older workers with the opportunity for new employment: "Even if a programmer takes a course in, say, the new Java programming language and then applies for a job requiring Java, employers will not hire him or her, because the employer insists on actual work experience when hiring older workers."

The reason older workers are passed over is often related to money. A newly trained young employee will typically demand far less in compensation than a newly trained older worker with years of work experience. Senior Staff's Payson says tech companies have indicated to him that older workers have "an inflated sense of worth," and they use that reasoning as an excuse not to hire older professionals.

There's no question that older, experienced IT workers earn more than those who haven't been in the job market for long. InformationWeek's salary survey of more than 17,000 IT professionals, conducted in April, found that people age 25 or younger earn at least $20,000 a year less than workers age 55 and older.

It's also clear that those in IT usually represent a youth-oriented culture. From upper management on down, workers in IT are traditionally younger than their peers in other careers. Allan Wilson, a 65-year-old programmer working as a contractor at the San Francisco office of Charles Schwab & Co., says older workers must learn to adapt to the younger culture. "What really matters is whether you fit in and the other employees like you, and whether you can do the job," he says.

Matloff suspects that many cases of age discrimination result when employers don't think they're discriminating, yet suffer from what he calls the "I only hire those who look like me" syndrome. "Many of the hiring managers are young and are either consciously or unconsciously uncomfortable with hiring older workers," he says.

Wendy Siebert, 57, who works in software sales for a Silicon Valley company, says young managers often suffer from what she calls the "Oh, my God, I have to manage my mother" syndrome. Most managers in their 20s and 30s don't understand the value of experience, she says.

Recruiters and human-resources professionals can glance at resumés and make a good guess about the age of the applicant, Matloff says. "They look at applicants with resumés only in the frame of three to seven years of experience," which indicates a young worker who will demand a lower salary, he says. That's why many older workers, including Siebert and Linn, deliberately cut experience or years off their resumés, believing that less is sometimes more.

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Illustration by Jordan Isip
Photo of Payson by Gary Parker

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