Age discrimination in the workplace is all too common. This article discusses why we need to eradicate age discrimination, especially when there is a need to accumulate a larger net worth and work longer now that interest rates have fallen so much in 2020+.
Every large corporation has some type of annual “Diversity Training” course where we learn not to harass colleagues, send out crude jokes over e-mail, and discriminate against those unlike ourselves.
Everything generally makes sense except for one rule that I once read: “One shall not discriminate against someone over 40.” I thought about this for a second, and I began to wonder if they had made a typo.
At age 40, one will have worked for 18 years out of college or 15 years out of graduate school on average. If the accepted age of retirement is 65, or 25 years away from 40, then the rule is implying that age discrimination starts before you are even half way through your average 40 year long career!
The other interesting fact is that most people are living longer nowadays. Forties are the new thirties as they say. People are looking younger and younger at various age milestones. Hence the question, why 40? Let’s explore the various reasons.
Overcoming Negative Perceptions About Older Workers
Age discrimination exists because there are some negative perceptions about older workers. They might include:
1) Slower and less adaptable to change. In the age of the internet, if you don’t know how to write html code, or work your way around a Powerpoint or Excel spreadsheet, you might as well be a dinosaur.
2) Less loyal to the job due to family. Families result in more vacation time and sick days, and less desire to work weekends and put in the extra effort.
3) Less malleable for a mentor to mold. Instilling work culture is more difficult, and therefore older workers will have a harder time fitting in.
4) More expensive and therefore squeezes margins more intensely during downturns. Due to the lack of flexibility in pay, there is less maneuverability.
5) Uncomfortable working for someone younger than them. Younger managers feel their discomfort and therefore naturally tend to shy away.
Positive Perceptions About Older Workers
However, the reality is that older workers are a tremendous asset to organizations because they can be:
1) More knowledgeable and experienced where no amount of smarts can match.
2) More patient and mature. They bring different insights to solve difficult problems.
3) More dedicated to their jobs because they are not just providing for themselves, but for their own family and perhaps even their parents.
4) Have more savings and therefore are more flexible to take pay cuts during downturns.
5) Work well with younger co-workers because there is a natural tendency for older people to help mentor younger workers even if they are more senior.
Age Could Be Just An Excuse
If you let yourself feel discriminated against due to age, it may be your fault for letting it get to you. We start blaming exogenous variables that should have very little to do with whether we succeed or fail.
Yes, if you are working at a company where the average age is 30 and you’re 50, maybe you will feel the young guns are out to get you. Or rather, since you’re the minority, you’ll feel special due to your valuable insights. It’s really what you make of the situation.
You can argue either way whether older workers are better or worse employees. It doesn’t really matter because you’ll never convince the world conclusively that you are right.
One can always find the positives and negatives in any type of person because our perceptions are all different. We just need to focus on what we can control, which is our attitude, presentation, and work skills.
Perhaps the reason why so many of us, including Lyndon and I would like to have the option of retiring by our early 40s is because we unconsciously don’t want to face potential age discrimination. We’re given subtle, hard-to-notice messages telling us that we have at most 20 years in our careers to be someone before others start taking our place.
We all have latent biases that cannot be clearly proven. Rather than dwell on exogenous variables which cannot be helped, let’s work on making ourselves invaluable so that even when we’re 80, we’ll be able to make a difference if we want to.
If You Want To Quit Your Job
If you want to leave a job because you are facing age discrimination, I recommend negotiating a severance instead of quitting. If you negotiate a severance like I did back in 2012, you not only get a severance check, but potentially subsidized healthcare, deferred compensation, and worker training.
When you get laid off, you’re also eligible for up to roughly 27 weeks of unemployment benefits. Having a financial runway is huge during your transition period.
Conversely, if you quit your job you get nothing. Check out the book How To Engineer Your Layoff: Make A Small Fortune By Saying Goodbye.
It’s the only book that teaches you how to negotiate a severance. In addition, it was recently updated and expanded thanks to tremendous reader feedback and successful case studies.
Be Your Own Boss: If you feel you’re not getting paid what you’re worth and want to boost your income, start your own business online on the side! It used to cost a fortune and a lot of employees to start your business. Now you can start it for next to nothing with a hosting company like Bluehost for under $4/month and they’ll give you a free domain for a year to boot.
Brand yourself online, connect with like-minded people, find new consulting gigs, and potentially make a good amount of income online one day by selling your product or recommending other great products. Not a day goes by where I’m not thankful for starting Financial Samurai in 2009. Here is my step-by-step tutorial guide on how to start.
Updated for 2020 and beyond. I’m 43 now. When I first wrote this post I was 33. I’m thankful I don’t have to face any work place discrimination because both my wife and I retired early and are stay at home parents. Owning your own online lifestyle business is the best thing ever.
Comments
Trackbacks
-
[…] Remove your graduation dates from your resume. Age discrimination is real folks! Why else do employees have to attend mandatory “age discrimination” and […]
Millineals are selfish. Baby boomers find ways to take it out on people younger than them. Truth is Generation X er’s are the most skilled psychologically. Nasty is as Nasty does. Karma will come back. We’ve learned nothing from healing about 9/11
Ok boomer you why mollusks cannot get job you steal them and steal housing from us your the ones are selfish ageist assigned deserve nothing but hateful hope you for choke on your diapers you stupid fuck ass old farts. We right to be ageist it YOUR fault we cannot get the live we deserve. Go do world a favor die world be better place without your geezers in it ageist racist assholes fuck you fuck old people i not paying you geezers a fucking dime.
Age discrimination always stuck me as dumb. Everyone gets older and you will eventually have the tables turned on you. How about we just hire people on ability and qualifications, and leave our narrow minded prejudices at the door?
59 and out of work for 5 years
Age discrimination, and particularly for women, and particularly in the IT field is very real. And pisses me off. I have tons of experience and education but NEVER get an offer. Yes, age discrimination is very real and very wrong.
I think everyone should zip it.
The aging population and health care is THE JOB !!!
If you’re not receiving it you should be working in it.
That’s the future..
Get it?
If you value your life, realize your headed to “OLD” too.
Treat others as one day you will want to be treated.
What do you mean by “If you let yourself feel discriminated against due to age, it’s your fault for letting it get to you.” That is ridiculous advice. Discrimination is not just perception, it is a negative action and/or comment brought about by the person who is doing the discriminating action. This is useless and ridiculous advice – why did you bother writing this article only to say “it’s your fault for letting it get to you.” Shame on you! I suppose you would say other people struggling with other forms of discrimination, such as sexism, homophobia, racism, should just not let it get to them either and that it’s just an issue of perception. By that strategy, perhaps women never would have fought for and won the right to vote or try to begin to have a comparable salary to men. LGBT would just put up with being beaten to within an inch of their lives since it was just their imagination anyway. Those in Ferguson, those killed, jailed or discriminated against unfairly due to their race should just put up with it. Why do you perpetuate the idea that we should, then PUT UP with age-based discrimination and just change our internal attitude? Ridiculous! You do not change discrimination by changing your internal attitude, which does not change the offenders behavior or the injustice at all! You change it through action, communication, awareness, and advocacy for real change. Do not write an article so vacuous that this is your central piece of advice, which makes those experiencing this issue feel even more powerless and without the right to be pissed off. Which they have a right to be, thank you.
I think people over the age of 40-65 or even older have a lot to contribute. People are more youth oriented these days and up to date on new tecnology. It does depend on the individual person of course. I think having all ages working together is great, it offers more diversity. If the person is qualified for the job, give them a chance whatever their age is!
The most important skill is overall knowledge and communication, not computer software skills.
Last year my business went bust, so I’m training to be a teacher at the age of 43. There seems to be loads of ageism in teaching, but not from the kids, they’re great and say I’m a ‘really cool teacher’, they don’t care whether their teacher is 25, 45 or 65 – I’m not even sure they would notice to be honest, adults are all ‘old’ when you’re 12. My specific problem are three young (22-25) female teachers who are being total bitches about my age and at the same time sexist (manist?), openly and behind my back and it’s making me want to quit. I’m really easy going and I’ve always enjoyed working with people of different ages/sex/race – I don’t think you can judge a book by it’s cover and you need to give everyone a chance on their own merits. I’ve never treated these ‘girls’ with anything other than the kind of courtesy you’d expect from a co-worker, so I don’t understand what they’ve got against me – other than I’m a bit older than them and a guy. Co-workers (younger and older than me) have told the girls to lay off with no result, and I don’t want to complain about it to my boss, because I know he’ll just treat it as a joke. Now I’m looking for a job/workplace where I’ll be working with people my own age (or older).
Is Ageism after 40 a problem? YES! When most of us can expect to retire at around 70 and live to over 80, ‘old age’ does not start at 40, 50, or even 60…
As for women in the arts and entertainment business being considered ‘too old’ after 28, I can’t believe how short sighted that is – as a guy of 43 I’d really like to see more attractive women in their late 30’s-mid 40’s on TV, there are plenty of them around and they’re the right age for me now – not 20 year olds. When I’m 73, it’ll be attractive over 60 year olds… Otherwise, considering the average age of the viewer is over 40, who are we catering too, dirty old men?
My friends who send their kid to Morristown Highschool in NJ say that they purged every teacher over 35. Not sure why they only want young teachers but it is the same in libraries. It used to be the one place you could go as a second career when you aged out of a youth oriented industry. Not so much anymore.
Wd be nice if you’d retract your statement that if you’re discriminated against it’s your own fault. Obviously, as a white male who quit working for other people b4 you hit 40 you haven’t experienced discrimination, right? So because it hasn’t happened to you, you feel free to judge other people?
Discrimination in the workplace is simply a way of preventing socio-economic mobility. For those of us who weren’t born w/money or connections it takes us a lot longer to succeed. Then by the time we do, we’re told we’re “too old.”
Employers like to hire younger employees so they can take advantage of them easier, i.e., pay them less than they’re worth, make them work long hours unpaid, not provide them w/benefits, etc. They’re so focused on maximizing their profits and, therefore, lowering salaries and benefits that they’ll hire people with no experience who’ll do a half-arsed job rather than hire an older employee whose work experience and skill would mandate a higher salary. Of course, in the long run, hiring more competent employees leads to better products and services, happier customers, and a sustainable business. But they’re only looking at their immediate bottom line. There’s a word for this: greed.
Greed is destroying the entire country and many people are suffering. But then we have people who’d rather blame the victim than work toward solving the problem. Just because you happen to be lucky enough to be doing well doesn’t mean the rest of us are doing something wrong. Many employers use that tactic to get away with discrimination, by the way. I’ve seen coworkers pushed out of their jobs simply because of the color of their skin, harassed by a racist supervisor until they quit. But the supervisor tried to make it appear the black employees were doing something wrong. They weren’t. In fact, they were practically model employees. That was the problem. The supervisor was afraid a black person might work her way up to management. And racist/sexist/ageist supervisors don’t want that.
Discrimination, whether by age, race or gender, is a reality. It holds people back and destroys some people’s lives. There’s absolutely nothing I can do about someone else’s prejudices (against me or anyone else.) Of course, as a society there’s plenty we can do but as an individual we can only control our own behavior, not the thoughts, actions or perceptions of others.
Thank you for writing this article and getting people to think about this issue, but shame on you for suggesting we blame the victim. An apology or retraction of that statement would be nice.
BTW, I worked in the arts and entertainment industry where women are over the hill at age 28. I looked younger than my age but then thanks to the Patriot Act we’ve had to start showing two forms of ID to employers so they could see our age right away. In that industry, age discrimination is HUGE, particularly against women. Doesn’t even matter if you’re attractive or look younger. They see your age and you’re out. End of story. I was considered to be a top employee until I reached a certain age then suddenly people less skilled and qualified than I was got the most attention, even when their lack of skill and experience was obvious.
But I guess it’s futile trying to explain discrimination to someone who’s never experienced it.
Is discrimination by looks and age legal in the arts and entertainment industry? I’ve seen some cases where it is with like news anchors and such.
Anyhoo, discrimination is very real.
It’s not just the arts and entertainment industry anymore, it’s necessary to look like a model to sweep up floors in a basement where you will never encounter another human being. Why you can’t have an ugly old crone in a position like that is beyond me, but that is where we are at (thanks to sites like Intellius that broadcast your name and age all over the world to anyone who wants it in seconds).
Some days I watch old sitcoms from the 1960s (the Mad Men era) and I am shocked to see middle aged women characters as secretaries in those shows. It’s shocking because I have not been interviewed by anyone older than 25 in more than 10 years. And these dumb broads think we have made progress. I say not.
I have never understood this. I am 39. I find older workers to have much better computer skills (regarding Microsoft office) than early twenty somethings. The younger crowd is usually exposed to a quick course which covers the basics. Older workers have been using the software daily since it first came out. I would put my $$ on a 50 year old executive assistant vs. a 25 year old. Younger workers (not all) tend to not be detailed and are sloppy with the work they produce.
I think this whole notion of young people being more tech savvy is bull. Why do you think so many teens get viruses on home computers? Because they don’t know what they are doing….just clicking on everything.
I can’t believe workers are expected to have earned their max salary by 40.
Nowadays the gov. does’t want us to retire at 70. Employers don’t want to hire you if they think you will want to get a better position in a couple of years. So you work your butt off for a few years in the same position. Then you try to apply for a position that makes more but that company doesn’t want to hire you due to lack of experience. So, just how does one move up in the work force within 17 years?
Employers are requesting past check stubs. They don’t want to make an offer more than a little above what you were earning. You’re only “worth” what the last employer paid. So if you were making $25,000 a year at an entry level job after college, you might be earning $40,000 by the time you are 40 (depending on the field). Now you are considered over the hill….that’s ridiculous.
A few years ago I picked up a part time job in a kitchen on the weekends. It was a nice restaurant but they only paid close to minimum wage for cooks. There were the late teen/early twenty somethings, me in my mid thirties, and several workers ranging from late forties to early sixties. Whenever I was paired with an older worker, our food presentation came out looking great, we could keep up with the food orders, servers were happy, etc. We all worked together as a team and would help each other out to ensure the “whole” kitchen was running smoothly.
This was not so when I was paired with younger workers. They were terrible at multi-tasking in a fast paced kitchen. They weren’t capable of assessing how much food to prep before the shift, or how to asses the cook time of getting an appetizer out long before the entree is cooked. The food was sloppy on the plate….etc. I was always over stressed with having to make sure I assessed for the both of us. Then I would start delegating to make sure things didn’t get too hairy. Some of the younger people were relieved and said the kitchen always ran smoother when I was around. Some had an attitude because I wasn’t their boss. In that case, the kitchen always crashed, and servers and customers were upset.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! Let us know if anything changes once you hit 4-0 next year :)
Perceptions take time to change. So with people like you showing how it’s done, things will change!
And by the way- for those who are at 40 -this generation of people grew up with computers, (games and programming) so what kind of useless and baseless excuse is it to say that people who are 40 cant use computers? WTF??? why are they trying to rewrite history? and make it sound as if people who are 40 now have a hard time with computers? that’s insane. we did not grow up in the 50s- we were born mid and late 70s and even early 80s for those in the mid 30s- we know computers, we grew up with computers, some of us are even programmers. just insane. stupid. unbelievable.
I have used computers for years and had to learn many many softwares and we used to have to fix the fax, photocopiers, printers etc when they were having issues. We are the resilents ones not the new generation they have to google to find out how to do everything and we already have this knowledge plus we are more dedicated, better with communication, more mature, have dealt with every situation, more reliable as our kids are grow if we have them, less likely to leave ( a 22 yr old can decide to move to europe, get married etc or have a baby). We wont waste time at work as we dont text while working, we are more creative. In my last jo I did 3 times the production of these young ones around me I am serious.
So if I am getting this right, 29 is still too young and 39 is approaching too old. So really you have 10 good years in the workforce where you are considered viable, but you have 40+ years to work in total. What is wrong with this picture? We are setting everyone up to have 30 years of failure. We have to be the generation that redefines ourselves. I see it everyday, the 40 somethings who don’t take care of themselves physically and publically complain about how old they feel. They blame it on age when it is lack of maintenance that got them there. Talk about bad PR for the middle-aged set. We do this to ourselves. Be the change you want to see in the world.