carmenbr

Last month we launched our website/job board to fight ageism in tech

we had a huge response launching here on HN and I believe it’s a hidden problem we need to tackle.

https://noageismintech.com

Yes. I don’t know how to announce an update as I already have launched the website here and if I link to the front page, there will be no new post

Hi all, we have updated the website, adding what matters in companies' culture from experienced professionals point-of-view. Some of them also have age chart, as Monzo and Bulb

https://noageismintech.com - Job board focused on over 35s in tech Launched last week on HN and generated a massive discussion around the subject. We're now working to get more companies onboard and make their profile sharable.

I hope that will bring consistent users to the website

Hi all, I posted the image on NoAgeismInTech, as the original content is behind the paywall (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2019/06/29/forever-yo...)

Yes, unfortunately it is. Shall I remove the post?

That's the hardest of having a two-sided marketplace. The famous "chicken and egg" problem.

The beginning is difficult and for that reason, we're trying to focus on companies with D&I department. Companies wanting to diversify their staff have many option when it comes to gender but not many job boards focused on ageism

Some companies have a Head of D&I specifically to promote it within the company. Yes, you are in the right direction.

Happy to share more details about your company?

We believe if any company is ageist and don't want the more experienced ones working with them, the would have no benefits joining our job board. We can be wrong though

This is awesome! What a diverse team. I wish it was a reality for everyone in this industry but unfortunately is far from.

I hope you're right and most of the companies change their mind

unfortunately is not a reality just in the Bay Area. We found it here in London as well, in huge companies and startups. That’s why we had the idea, to alert companies that this is actually happening everywhere and they should pay more attention to older professionals, not only gender and race. Diverse teams are proved to be more effective than others.

Sorry to hear that but think that’s more a problem of commitment instead of age

Many thanks for the support and hope we can help her to find a new position

The point here is that the senior professionals don’t have the option to choose as employers are not recruiting more senior professionals, not just because of their salary expectations. They are not even attracting them to their open roles.

That’s exactly the point, apart from what you have chosen (keep coding and work in tech), you don’t have the option to choose as the companies have been recruiting only youngest professionals and all environment is focused on the youngest people. There is space for everyone and it’s a fact that diverse teams are more effective than others.

The point here is the kind of benefits and how companies are advertising their roles more focused on the youngest professionals and forgetting the more experienced ones. ie pets and cool offices with video-games. That’s definitely not attractive for “older” professionals.

I'd say we are having a pretty good response. The website itself will not sort the ageism out. Companies first need to realise how important is to have a diversity staff not only because they are being forced to diversify but, as McKinsey and other researchers found out, diversity makes organisations "more effective, more successful, more profitable."

At the moment, what we ask is just 4 things and then, we ask the company 4 or 5 different open opportunities to include on the website. We then include those by hand, linking to the original company's job post.

Agreed this is annoying for job posters and we can discuss more how we could help you on that as well

Yes, that's an idea the could be explored.

Some countries age discrimination is not even considered a crime.

The problem detected is: in tech, the age discrimination starts earlier than 40, but at 36. What companies need to realise is a diversity staff can generate more money and produce more

Hi all Carmen here. A bit of my story below:

my husband (leonagano) had faced ageism in his job hunting journey, especially because the tech environment sometimes attracts young people and the more experienced professionals are being left behind. Wearing my journalist hat, I started looking for ways to help and fight ageism.

After further research, I realised this is actually a common problem among the IT industry as stated in some articles from the likes of The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/careers/2017/aug/14/women-ageism...), Wired (https://www.wired.com/story/surviving-as-an-old-in-the-tech-...), Forbes (https://www.forbes.com/sites/marenbannon/2019/04/10/the-bigg...), Bloomberg (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-17/75-year-o...)

That's when I decided to start this job board and hopefully, try to reduce this problem to the minimum possible

Sometimes, the problem happens during the job description, where the "older" professionals feel excluded when words like tech-native, ninja, etc are used, according to Dice (https://insights.dice.com/2018/02/28/employers-welcome-tech-...)

Hi, I included "diversity link" where companies explicitly publish some articles about how D&I plays its part within the company

fixed, sorry...we had some problems with the hosting

We're fixing the glitch