It's interesting that places value seniority and experience so much more in medicine vs tech. Things change daily in both fields--new procedures, new findings--yet tech seems to have far more ageism. Why is an older doctor so much more valuable than an older developer?
I wouldn't say they're valued, the compensation is (with some nuance) based on a work-unit/fee-code which is the same for all of us. The academic component goes up for relevant physicians like it does for any professor-type role.
Doctors work longer mostly because you can't fire them unless they're negligent/incompetent (for various reasons including that most are self-employed/contractors either individually or as a group).
The only value the hospital places on seniority is that you know the local practice patterns so there's less of a learning curve as compared to someone ewer.
> Things change daily in both fields--new procedures, new findings--yet tech seems to have far more ageism.
We have continuing medical education requirements but the reality is most of medicine is designed to be easy and guideline based. Weird and wonderful stuff benefits from experience.
> Why is an older doctor so much more valuable than an older developer?
A 60 year old surgeon is still taking out an appendix, just with newer tools than when they were 30, for the same amount of money as a newer one. I would imagine an older developer would want to be more well-compensated and have career growth focusing on things like architecture or having a team but I defer to practicing developers for their input on why they're not valued.
When it comes to value, when my wife interviews for a job (she’s a physician) they fly her out and spend a day taking her to see the sights, so they convince here how great the city is. Then they take her out to a fancy dinner and woo her some more.
When I interview at a new job as a very senior engineer (and relatively well known I in my area), I get to jump through 7 rounds of interviews where someone asks me the equivalent of medschool exam questions.
If I’m lucky my connections might let me whittle the interview rounds down to 5.
There may be 20 people in any given tech stack/industry who are valued the way my wife is by employers.
> When it comes to value, when my wife interviews for a job (she’s a physician) they fly her out and spend a day taking her to see the sights, so they convince here how great the city is. Then they take her out to a fancy dinner and woo her some more.
Interesting, are these in underserved areas? I just went through interviewing for a new job and despite being in an in-demand subspecialty with desperate employers the most I got was a dinner after the 2nd round interview but no one covered my travel. Do you mind if I ask what kind of physician she is? I clearly picked incorrectly.
> When I interview at a new job as a very senior engineer (and relatively well known I in my area), I get to jump through 7 rounds of interviews where someone asks me the equivalent of medschool exam questions.
> If I’m lucky my connections might let me whittle the interview rounds down to 5.
Why do you think that's the case? Is it a compensation issue or is there age-ism/an assumption that only a 25 y/o engineer can be "10x". I periodically see posts about the challenges facing older developers on HN but I didn't last long enough in tech to understand it.
>Interesting, are these in underserved areas? I just went through interviewing for a new job and despite being in an in-demand subspecialty with desperate employers the most I got was a dinner after the 2nd round interview but no one covered my travel. Do you mind if I ask what kind of physician she is? I clearly picked incorrectly.
Pediatric Emergency Medicine. All in cities large enough to have a children’s hospital, so basically minimum metro populations of 500k or so.
>is there age-ism
I’m sure there is, but not really at the principal engineer level from what I’ve seen. Mostly there’s an assumption that staff plus engineers will skew a good bit older.
I think the issue is that everyone cargo cults FAANG interviews. They get so many applicants that they can afford to treat very senior people like new grads, and that attitude trickles down to most other companies.
From what I observed early in my career, there was definitely a time when higher level engineers escaped the FAANG style hazing process. But slowly more and more companies have started putting everyone through the whole thing.
I’ve been at companies where leadership tried to force very well known engineers with decades of experience, hugely popular open source projects, multiple famous talks/blogs/podcasts etc… to do weed out take home assignments.
> Pediatric Emergency Medicine. All in cities large enough to have a children’s hospital, so basically minimum metro populations of 500k or so.
Interesting, pediatrics is so underfunded and poorly respected in Canada that I'm genuinely shocked (and pleasantly surprised) to read about a paediatrician not being treated like refuse.
Kudos to your wife though, that's a very challenging field and anecdotally my interactions with peds ER physicians have been overwhelmingly positive. They all seem to have a very well-developed sixth sense about when something is "off" despite many of their patients not being able to talk.
> They get so many applicants that they can afford to treat very senior people like new grads, and that attitude trickles down to most other companies.
Is it just during the interview process or do you find bias against older engineers in hiring decisions and the work environment as well?
Because technology has no educational pathway. Sure, you can go to a college and study algorithms or math for a while, but plenty of people with "good degrees" can't code. Plenty of people with no degree can.
It's also kind of challenging to tell an eye surgeon whom you are interviewing to do an eye surgery if you're really not sure he knows how to do it or not.
In the corporate world it's routine for employers to cover travel expenses for job applicants coming to interviews that farther than driving distance. Did you ask about that? Sometimes if you don't ask, you don't get.
> Did you ask about that? Sometimes if you don't ask, you don't get.
I did not. I think I'm so conditioned to being treated poorly by hospitals I just assume I'm going to be taken advantage of but you're probably right and I should have asked.
> Why is an older doctor so much more valuable than an older developer?
which would you take with you on a one way trip to a desert island?
that’s a meaningless question, it assumes their jobs are their siloed experience, and that nothing outside of job is real.
training. licensing. you can’t just go become a doctor. yes, there can be new doctors, cheaper, maybe better, maybe not. but the funnel is finite.
got a computer? or a smartphone? device with screen and input? with a little work, you’re gonna be writing code in no time. call yourself an engineer and mostly nobody gets mad that you have no license, no certification, possibly no degree. because none of that matters.
no, that isn’t capturing nuance, context, or detail. just the macro. it’s enough.
I've heard of the "tech bro" stereotype (and seen it many times first hand), but struggle to recall a "doc bro" or equivalent one. I've also never heard of the term "culture fit" when discussing a potential hire in the medical industry like I do tech, software specifically. I wonder if the majority of the types of people who go into tech are different than the majority that go into medicine.
> It's interesting that places value seniority and experience so much more in medicine vs tech
I don't think the tech world devalues seniority as much as they despise people older than them and not of the same generation(ish).
All big generalities and of course don't fit every situation/company/person.
“When you hear hoof beats think of horses – not zebras”. Old doctors won't catastophize and scare you as much but are in my opinion more likely to misdiagnose a rare disease.
