<p>“There’s age discrimination in every field.”</p>
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<p>True, but evidence says that it is MUCH more comon in tech. There is crime in every neighborhood. But that does not justify living in a dangerous area over a safer one.</p>
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<p>Tech encompasses a wide variety of majors, skills and skill levels. What I see in Software Engineering is a lot of older workers. I do know a guy at Microsoft that left in his early 50s. He retired with many, many, many millions of dollars.</p>
<p>Well, I respect your opinions and I believe you. But how can the opinions of just 1 person over-ride scientific studies that have been conducted over a much larger sampling of people than the older engineers you know?</p>
<p>Those studies are of IT workers, not software engineers. They seem to be pretty casual in mixing a wide variety of majors along with a wide variety of jobs. It’s similar to the PayScale articles talking about the relative worth of university degrees from self-reported information. Most here consider those studies to be worthless. They are cheap to do but good studies are expensive to do.</p>
<p>Well, Matloff’s study focused on computer science majors. Don’t the majority of CS majors become software engineers? Don’t those in IT typically have IT/ information systems degrees as opposed to CS ones? Here’s the study again:</p>
<p>"One of the things I’ve done in my research on this topic is to compare career longevity of [computer science] grads and civil engineering grads. I found that the [computer science] grads had much shorter careers than the civil engineers, even though the two fields arguably utilize similar skill sets, etc. Why the difference? I’ve long maintained that IT employers use the alleged fast pace of technological change in IT as an excuse to justify shunning older workers, an excuse that would not fly well in civil engineering.”</p>
<p>A little analysis of the paragraph shows that Matloff is obviously confused. He mixes CS grads with IT employers.</p>
<p>In this law review article, Matloff goes into further detail bout his study (article starts on page 5)</p>
<p>"My focus is on the computer fields, i.e., the job titles Computer Programmer,
Software Engineer, Computer Engineer and Electrical Engineer.</p>
<p>My own study found that the attrition
rates are striking. Five years after finishing
college, about 57 percent of
computer science graduates were working
as programmers; at 15 years the figure
dropped to 34 percent, and at 20 years—
when most were still only age 42 or so—it
was down to 19 percent. By contrast, six
years after graduation, 61 percent of civil
engineering graduates were working in
the field, and 20 years after graduation
the rate was still 52 percent."</p>
<p><a href=“http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/CLER.pdf[/url]”>http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/CLER.pdf</a> </p>
<p>So unless I am mistaken, Matloff is referring to high tech jobs that a CS major would do, not the lower tech IT ones. Also, Matloff is a professor of computer science so I am sure he knows the difference between CS grads and IT employers.</p>
<p>CS isn’t only programmers, its possibly they moved on to management positions.</p>
<p>So all 81% moved into management?</p>
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<p>Electrical Engineer: you wouldn’t hire a CS major to do EE work. You’d
hire an EE major.</p>
<p>Computer Engineer: you’d hire a CE or EE major.</p>
<p>Computer Programmer: you could hire a CS major but it would be overkill.
You could hire a CIS or possibly an IT major depending on the level of
programming that you want.</p>
<p>Software Engineer: you’d hire a CS major. You could also hire a CIS
major if the work didn’t involve a lot of theory. You could also hire
a CE major if appropriate.</p>
<p>None of these are IT. So he seems quite confused.</p>
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<p>I had a CS professor at Boston College for a class a long time ago and
I wasn’t terribly impressed with his knowledge of the subject or his
teaching ability. He called me up a few years later looking for a job.</p>
<p>We hire Phds and professors leaving academia. Professors are people
too; they aren’t gods. A look at the publication and the author’s bio
shows an obvious bias. No job is perfect. Well the vast majority
aren’t. But I guess lawyers have to keep stirring the pot to find
someone to sue.</p>
<p>12.3 percent of the older workers
had been laid off, compared to only
10.6 percent of the younger ones;
• The mean number of weeks to reemployment
was 13.5 for the older
workers, compared to only 11.1 for
the younger ones;
• Upon re-employment, the older
workers experienced an average pay
cut of 13.7 percent, while the
younger workers enjoyed a pay raise
of 6.6 percent.</p>
<p>Sounds like those older workers found jobs. Maybe not as good as what they had before but take a look at today’s new unemployment claims number - you could do a lot worse.</p>
<p>“A look at the publication and the author’s bio
shows an obvious bias.”</p>
<p>I don’t see a bias.</p>
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<p>Then you are unaware of what constitutes bias.</p>
<p>The guy was fired once and is also a union rep. Both of those lead to bias. Then again, not much doesn’t lead to some sort of bias, but unions are well known to take some pretty extreme positions.</p>
<p>Here is a survey conducted of engineers by IEEE. There are more recent ones available, but they are not free:</p>
<p>"Respondents were asked what they saw as major personal barriers to their employment or re-employment. Age was the most common response: Sixty-seven percent of respondents listed age as a barrier.</p>
<p>Older engineers are not more likely to report that their job search is very difficult than younger engineers. Specifically, when asked whether the search was difficult, the mean age of those who chose that response (48) is not significantly different than those who did not (49). However, when asked if the search was easy, the mean age of those who said “yes” was 43, while the mean age of those who did not chose this response was 48. Although few respondents report an easy search (17 out of 988), this difference is significant, beyond the conventional .05 level. So, it would appear that younger engineers find it easier than average or older engineers to get a new job."</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.ieeeusa.org/careers/pdf/employmentsurvey2004report.pdf[/url]”>http://www.ieeeusa.org/careers/pdf/employmentsurvey2004report.pdf</a></p>
<p>Well, others hae done similar surveys and found the same results (National Research Council and professor Laura Langebin), both of which are mentoned in the article.</p>
<p>Where’s the CS breakdown? After all, that’s in the title of the post.</p>
<p>Sorry that you can’t see the bias. Don’t they teach this in English Comp 101?</p>
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<p>heh! Give the guy a break! He went to some lame school in Washington.</p>
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<p>Don’t forget that he dropped out of said program as well.</p>
<p>nope, didn’t drop out. Just changed my major.</p>
<p>Why are you guys so hard on Homer?</p>
<p>He is known for pulling out statistics. He might spend his entire night just to find out these numbers and fact.</p>