U.C. Students 'Outraged' by Ageism in High Tech, Professor Says

A University of California professor who taught ethics in computer science one semester generated lively discussions after assigning news articles that revealed ageism in the high tech field, he said on his blog.

Norm Matloff of U.C. Davis taught an accreditation-required ethics course in 2014 and assigned:

• a 2012 article on older workers perceived as "less innovative" from Reuters (then Associated Press)
• a 2011 article series of older workers hit harder by the 2008 recession from Computerworld
• a 2011 article on a shortage of python workers from New York Times
• attending a lecture of author, "STEM worker shortage skeptic" and Harvard labor worklife researcher Michael Teitelbaum

Teitelbaum, the Harvard researcher, startled the students when he revealed how many applicants Microsoft auto-rejects, Matloff said in his blog post:

Among other things, the students were startled to hear from Michael that Microsoft automatically rejects half of its job applicants by computer algorithm, unseen by human eyes. I believe it’s a safe bet that a major portion of those rejected in this way are older, which as many readers will recall I define as being over age 35.

Matloff neutralized the "all professions struggle with age bias" trope in one passage:

One of my course’s reading items, from a 2011 Computerworld series, is titled, “Recession Hit Older Tech Workers Harder, Labor Data Shows,” concisely summarizing the data compiled by the Computerworld reporters. One quick point to make on this is that it counters a commonly heard assertion, that “Yes, there is age discrimination in tech, but hey, that’s a problem in any profession.” No, it IS worse in tech, specifically in the computer fields, which I’ve shown before have careers are much shorter than in say, civil engineering.

Professor Matloff documented strong student reaction to the Associated Press article, that older workers are "perceived" less innovative. His students likened it to racism:

We then discussed a remarkable point that to my knowledge has never been raised in discussion of the age issue: What if the AP article, instead of quoting and making assertions that older workers are less innovative, had discussed similar assertions for specific racial or cultural groups? There would have been an uproar! Or actually, the AP would simply not run such a piece in the first place.

In other words, why is age fair game but not race? A case could be made that on average, East Asians are less innovative — there is research along these lines, and all East Asian governments have tried to remedy the problem — but no AP article would defend the blanket rejection by employers of East Asian applicants. Not only would this be counter to American racial sensitivity (including my own), but also it would — just as my students pointed out in the case of age discrimination — result in missed opportunities for employers. Whatever the average level of innovation among East Asians is, there are many who are quite talented in that regard.

Matloff blames the press for gullibility, and the tech companies' public relations workers for "mesmerizing the press into giving credence to the Youth Culture notion in tech."

Matloff's students reacted more strongly to the New York Times article on a shortage of Python workers than any other assigned reading:

Well, my students were outraged that employers would reject an otherwise high-quality applicant simply because he/she didn’t have experience with Python. A typical student comment was, “Python is such a simple language, something you can pick up really quickly. What’s the big deal?”

The reality, of course, is that employers are willing to hire YOUNG applicants who lack Python background, whereas the older ones will be ignored unless they have actual work experience (not just coursework or self study) in the language. Python etc. are largely just pretexts for rejecting the older workers. But the fact is that my students, all of them Computer Science majors who have learned a number of programming languages, were shocked that employers would screen so stringently on such things (or at least claim to do so).

Matloff puts the blame where it belongs: the press, and PR, "'Python programmer shortage' claims sell," Matloff says.

And the industry has been so effective in shopping around this celebration of “innovation” — President Obama uses the word often in his speeches — that reporters can give credence to industry claims that age discrimination is justified on innovation grounds.

Reporters need to be confronted directly via tweet or article comment or letters to the editor or re-blogging, when this happens.

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Further Reading:

"Investors, in contrast to employers, are not subject to discrimination laws when deciding whom to fund. And they are among the most outspoken in declaring their age preferences" in Special Report: Silicon Valley's dirty secret - age bias (2012):   reuters.com







This work by AJ Fish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.