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Millennials facing ageism​

They used to be Big Tech's hottest hires. Now they're starting to be seen as old fogeys.

ThomasVogel/Getty, Tyler Le/BI

Amanda Hoover
Sep 23, 2024, 5:55 PM GMT+8
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Millennials in tech, your suspicions were right: Gen Z is starting to eat your lunch.

Newly released federal data shows the US tech workforce is younger than the workforce at large and getting younger still. Tech workers under 25 are becoming more common, while the proportion of workers older than 40 shrinks.

There's an age-old perception that tech workers should be young so they can move fast and break things. Job applicants are assessed on whether they're a "culture fit," and that culture often toasts youth.

"I want to stress the importance of being young and technical. Young people are just smarter," said a then-22-year-old Mark Zuckerberg (he turned 40 this year).

But when it comes to actually showing ageism, the problem has been there's more bad vibes than proof.

 

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A new report from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission released this month puts some numbers to those vibes.

The commission looked at more than 10 million workers employed in the tech workforce (which included workers across industries employed in 56 STEM-related roles) as of 2022 and found that nearly 41% were ages 25 to 39, an age group that made up just 33% of the overall US workforce.

Even younger workers were faring better in tech: The number of people under the age of 25 grew by about 9% each year from 2014 to 2022 and made up 7% of the tech workforce by 2022, more than 20 times the rate of growth for young workers across all industries.

One of the top qualifications to land a tech job, it seems, is to possess a birth certificate dated after 1990.

 

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The ranks of workers over 65 did also grow, but only to 4% — they're still by far the smallest age group working in tech, and far less represented compared with their ranks in other industries.

The EEOC's report, which for the first time looked at age discrimination, included an even more troubling finding: Charges of age discrimination are more prevalent among companies where STEM jobs are prominent.

Age complaints are found in nearly 20% of the charges filed to the EEOC at these companies, compared with 15% across other industries.

While none of it is good news, for many, it is validation. The report "finally brought to life that this is real," says Maureen Clough, who hosts the podcast "It Gets Late Early" about aging in the tech world. "We don't have to be gaslit anymore."

 

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Of course, age isn't the tech world's only workforce problem.

The EEOC also found that women and Black workers continue to be disproportionately underrepresented, and that discrimination in the industry is likely a contributor to age, gender, and racial disparities in the tech sector. Women make up just 22% of tech workers — the same proportion of jobs they held in 2005.

 

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Age is often bumped to a secondary consideration behind other demographics in the push for diversity.

That may be because many people don't really think ageism is wrong — even though US law has prohibited discrimination against workers over the age of 40 since 1967.

Stereotypes and complaints about both the young and old remain embedded in society, and are questioned less than preconceived notions about race, sexuality, and gender.

Certain behaviors, whether attempting to delay aging with antiaging serums or outright mocking older people with "OK, boomer" memes, have been seen largely as privileges of the young rather than antagonistic.

Ageism is associated with worsened physical and mental health, social isolation, loneliness, financial insecurity, and even early death.

Forty is the age typically pinpointed as older in Silicon Valley, but in China, the threat looms, too, and workers speak of a "curse of 35," fearful that even reaching that age could lead to diminished career opportunities in tech.

 

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Even with the new data, there's a lot we don't know. Joanna Lahey, a professor of public policy at Texas A&M University who studies age discrimination, says the report shows a correlation between youth and tech employment, but the exact cause is unclear.

A lagging representation of older workers could come from discrimination in hiring, training, or retention.

But it could also show that older workers are retiring while more young people are entering the workforce.

"We don't know the true extent of the problem, and importantly, if there is a problem we do not know how to fix it," Lahey wrote in an email.

 

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But recent layoffs have only heightened suspicions of ageism.

More than 130,000 tech workers have been laid off worldwide this year, continuing a trend that began in 2022, according to Layoffs.fyi, a site that tracks job cuts in the tech industry.

John Zeman, a former employee of X, then Twitter, is suing the company after he was laid off when Elon Musk, then 51, took over in November 2022 and gutted the staff.

Zeman was 63 at the time, and his suit claims that 60% of workers at Twitter older than 50 were cut in the layoffs, compared with 54% of workers under the age of 50.

In early September, a federal judge ruled the class-action lawsuit could move forward, finding that the allegations rose beyond "mere speculation."

 

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Attorneys for the plaintiffs and X did not respond to a request for comment. But these cases can be tricky; if the older workers were higher paid, for instance, the cuts might be defended with cost-saving reasons.

Former workers at IBM had also sued the company, alleging people over 40 were laid off at higher rates than younger workers, but IBM has been able to block some of those claims (the company has denied engaging in "systemic age discrimination").

Cases like these are massive gambles: They could be major wins for holding tech companies accountable for ageist practices, or create a chilling effect that stops others from fighting in the courts.

 

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Sometimes ageism is overt, and other times it just leaves workers with an inkling. John Rizzo, a 60-year-old, says he has spent the past two years applying for jobs in product management, but he feels his age is the reason he's still unemployed.

Rizzo says he has 450 versions of his résumé and has applied to more than 4,000 jobs. He does well on phone screens but says a recruiter's tone then seems to change once they get on a Zoom call and see his age.

It's a hurdle to finding a tech job that he didn't have in the past. "It's heartbreaking," Rizzo says.

"And for a long time, I thought it was me. I thought I was doing something wrong."

He's done some work for a startup he cofounded and as a contractor for other companies, but he says he is also making ends meet by working as a security guard.

Rizzo says the absence of experienced workers like him is a loss for tech companies. "Gen X built the tech industry," he says. "There's a ton of value there. There's a ton of experience there."

 

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The case for an intergenerational workforce isn't just moral — it's practical.

A recent study by The Inclusion Initiative at The London School of Economics examining roughly 1,500 UK and US workers in tech, finance, and professional services found that employees at companies with age-inclusive work practices were twice as likely to be satisfied with their job and less than half as likely to look for new roles.

These workers also reported feeling low levels of productivity less frequently.

Combining workers from generations brings together people with different knowledge, perspective, and social networks, said Daniel Jolles, a behavioral-science researcher who worked on the research.

"When we have good diversity, we can get more productive outcomes under the right conditions," Jolles said.

And that is the kind of argument that might catch the eye of business leaders. After all, they're not getting any younger, either.