Robert Desprez Communications

The perils of ageism in high-tech

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Have you ever gone through a job inter­view on the phone that seems to have gone well and then it falls flat when the hir­ing team meets you in person?

What hap­pened? Per­haps you did­n’t sell your­self well? Were your salary expec­ta­tions too high? Or was the team most­ly in their twen­ties and did­n’t think you’d be a “good fit” because of your age?

I haven’t expe­ri­enced ageism first-hand but Sil­i­con Val­ley is infa­mous for its dis­crim­i­na­tion of old­er work­ers. In a New Repub­lic arti­cle called “The Bru­tal Ageism of Tech,” author Noam Scheiber writes: “Sil­i­con Val­ley has become one of the most ageist places in Amer­i­ca. Tech lumi­nar­ies who oth­er­wise pride them­selves on their ded­i­ca­tion to mer­i­toc­ra­cy don’t think twice about derid­ing the not-actu­al­ly-old. ‘Young peo­ple are just smarter,’ Face­book CEO Mark Zucker­berg told an audi­ence at Stan­ford back in 2007.”

Andrew Davis, a recruiter of tech­ni­cal writ­ers and train­ers, sees age-relat­ed dis­crim­i­na­tion first-hand and helps job can­di­dates resolve these issues. In a recent webi­nar, he said that hir­ing teams and man­agers may be con­cerned about hir­ing work­ers for the fol­low­ing reasons:

  • Cul­tur­al fit: Man­agers and teams want work­ers to share the same work styles.  “They (the hir­ing team) works long hours. They don’t have lives or bal­anced lives. And they often want you to drink the Kool-Aid,” said Davis, who runs Syn­er­gis­tech Com­mu­ni­ca­tions in California.
  • Health: Orga­ni­za­tions in the U.S. may wor­ry about the health costs for insur­ing an old­er work­er. In Cana­da, hir­ing man­agers and teams may be sim­i­lar­ly con­cerned about the health and the ener­gy lev­el of an old­er candidate.
  • Tol­er­ance for chaos: Some teams love the adren­a­line rush of not decid­ing on a giv­en path, whether it’s the name of a prod­uct, a tech­nol­o­gy to use, or a user inter­face to select. In con­trast, old­er tech­ni­cal writ­ers may not enjoy the pro­longed ambi­gu­i­ty. Some­times jus­ti­fi­ably, expe­ri­enced writ­ers may feel that the inde­ci­sion ham­pers their abil­i­ty to meet deadlines.
  • Flex­i­bil­i­ty: Mem­bers of start-ups enter­tain the cheap­er tools such as wikis and open source con­tent man­age­ment sys­tems. Old­er work­ers may bris­tle at the idea of using these tools when, in their view, there are supe­ri­or and well-estab­lished (but more expen­sive) tools avail­able.  In addi­tion, teams at start-ups may want a new hire to wear many hats, such as tech­ni­cal writer, mar­ket­ing writer, and e‑learner spe­cial­ist. Old­er work­ers may not embrace being a gen­er­al­ist. In my expe­ri­ence, find­ing a niche is a bet­ter career strategy.
  • Open seat­ing par­a­digm: If the orga­ni­za­tion uses an open-con­cept seat­ing mod­el, the team may see this as a way to increase spon­tane­ity and fos­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion. For the old­er can­di­date, all this spon­tane­ity feels like end­less inter­rup­tions that thwarts one’s abil­i­ty to write.

Also, I would add to Davis’s list “com­pla­cen­cy.” I have known col­leagues who chal­lenge them­selves in their careers and nab a desir­able job with a sought-after title. Maybe the job is a Tech­ni­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ager role. Per­haps it’s a Senior Tech­ni­cal Writer posi­tion. After they set­tle into the new role and demon­strate suc­cess for some peri­od of time, they appear to stop learn­ing. It’s as if they’ve reached their goal and don’t want to push them­selves any­more. I wrote a blog entry about com­pla­cen­cy.

Techniques to land the job

Despite some of the per­ceived short­com­ings of being old­er, an expe­ri­enced work­er adds val­ue to an orga­ni­za­tion in a myr­i­ad of ways. Here are some qual­i­ties that Davis mentioned:

  • Effi­cien­cy and focus: Expe­ri­enced work­ers know what method­olo­gies and tech­niques work and when to apply them.
  • Pac­ing: Sea­soned work­ers know how to pace them­selves with­out burn­ing out.
  • Self-aware­ness: Vet­er­ans under­stand their strengths and weak­ness­es and when to seek help.
  • Clar­i­ty: Expe­ri­enced work­ers know when and how to set clear expectations.

If you are an old­er work­er and feel that ageism may be a fac­tor in the hir­ing deci­sion, Davis rec­om­mends that you put the needs of the hir­ing teams first, don’t lec­ture or bul­ly with expe­ri­ence, earn trust, make the hir­ing teams look good, and find ways to become indis­pens­able. A few years ago, I read mar­ket­ing guru Seth God­in’s book Linch­pin: Are You Indis­pens­able? Well worth the read.

Have you expe­ri­enced ageism? Were you able to over­come the hir­ing team’s objections?

Improve your training with practice and feedback

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Have you ever attend­ed a course or train­ing ses­sion that missed its mark?

Most of the cours­es that I have tak­en haven’t met my expec­ta­tions for dif­fer­ent rea­sons. In uni­ver­si­ty, there was the pro­fes­sor who’d lec­ture for an hour, lulling stu­dents to sleep. There was the work­place train­er who focused on how the soft­ware worked but not the tasks that stu­dents (or learn­ers) required. There was the employ­ee who was threat­ened about shar­ing too much for fear of los­ing her job so she with­held knowl­edge, ren­der­ing the train­ing almost use­less. I could go on.

In my expe­ri­ence, senior man­age­ment holds the belief that any­one can train. But few peo­ple do it well.

Too often train­ing is just a “pletho­ra of regur­gi­tat­ed knowl­edge,” said Jim Tall­man, pres­i­dent of North Pacif­ic Train­ing & Per­for­mance Inc. Tall­man spoke at the Cana­da West Chap­ter of the Soci­ety for Tech­ni­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion for a pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment ses­sion on Sep­tem­ber 13th.

Train­ing that focus­es on rehash­ing knowl­edge doesn’t help learn­ers per­form their jobs bet­ter and pro­vides incon­sis­tent results, he said.  Some exam­ples of inef­fec­tive train­ing include:

  • The cur­ricu­lum fol­lows the­o­ry, not skills or tasks that one per­forms on the job.
  • Con­tent fol­lows course design, not a task analysis.
  • Exam­ples focus on sys­tem fea­tures, not work­place processes.
  • The course high­lights the knowl­edge of the sys­tem, not improved performance.
  • The instruc­tor nev­er stops talking.

A better way to train

An alter­na­tive method of train­ing focus­es on improv­ing the learn­ers’ skills. Some ele­ments of effec­tive training:

  • Task analy­sis dri­ves course design.
  • Cur­ricu­lum reflects the job.
  • Con­tent is prac­tice-based and learn­er paced.
  • Course results in improved job performance.

He said: “This is the pre­ferred way…that train­ing should be designed to give learn­ers what they need and clients their money’s worth. Instruc­tion is based on how learn­ers learn and not on how much the train­er can demo his or her prowess in the field.”

Train­ing should be ide­al­ly 30 per­cent pre­sen­ta­tion or lec­ture and 60 per­cent hands-on (such as exer­cis­es or activ­i­ties), said Tall­man. The final 10 per­cent of the course should be allo­cat­ed on feed­back so that learn­ers can improve. Most tra­di­tion­al train­ing is reversed with the instruc­tor talk­ing most of the time and learn­ers’ eyes glaz­ing over after 20 min­utes of lec­ture, he said.

In addi­tion, effec­tive train­ing should be also mean­ing­ful, mem­o­rable, moti­va­tion­al, and mea­sur­able, Tall­man said.

  • Mean­ing­ful: Train­ing should be rel­e­vant for learn­ers so they can per­form key tasks rel­e­vant to their jobs.
  • Mem­o­rable: Learn­ers need to remem­ber their train­ing after the course. Job aids, hand­outs, and quick ref­er­ence cards may be able to assist.
  • Moti­va­tion­al: Train­ing should moti­vate learn­ers in the class­room so that they want to apply the new skills.
  • Mea­sur­able: Effec­tive train­ing teach­es new skills that can be observed. “Good learn­ing events stress observ­able behav­iors, give learn­ers suf­fi­cient prac­tice over time, and pro­vide per­for­mance feedback.”

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, Tall­man’s train­ing focused on prac­tice and feed­back so that learn­ers could improve. This was an excel­lent presentation!

Managing risk in your career

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Many Cana­di­ans are not risk tak­ers. We are a nation of home buy­ers (homes are per­ceived as safe and secure by many) and we grav­i­tate towards sta­ble jobs, ide­al­ly with full ben­e­fits and pensions.

In the book Start-up of You, LinkedIn co-founder and author Reid Hoff­man argues that overt­ly pur­su­ing safe­ty and secu­ri­ty in your career can leave you “…exposed to a huge blow-up in the future.”

Think of gov­ern­ment work­ers. They typ­i­cal­ly don’t take huge risks along the way in their careers. For their loy­al­ty, they receive incre­men­tal pay increas­es, good ben­e­fits, and a gen­er­ous pen­sion. For many peo­ple, this is utopia.

Com­pare these gov­ern­ment work­ers to real-estate agents, who need to hus­tle to find their work. Occa­sion­al­ly, they sell an expen­sive home and col­lect a lucra­tive com­mis­sion. The next month, how­ev­er, they may not sell any­thing. Their incomes are great some times, fol­lowed by lean periods.

Hoff­man writes: “He [the gov­ern­ment work­er] always eats well…until the day comes that gov­ern­ment pen­sions explode or aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures wipe out his depart­ment. Now he’s screwed. He will starve because, unlike the real estate agent, he has no idea how to deal with the downs…” A cen­tral theme of Hoff­man’s chap­ter on risk is that work­ers should take cal­cu­lat­ed risks in their careers to make them­selves more resilient when some­thing unex­pect­ed happens.

Title wave

Peo­ple don’t just per­ceive gov­ern­ment to be low risk. In the late 1990s, Nor­tel could do no wrong—it was seen as a great place to work and its CEO was her­ald­ed as a cap­i­tal­ist hero. At the time, employ­ees were envied. A few short years lat­er, after the dot-com bub­ble burst, Nor­tel laid off 60,000 employ­ees. In 2009, the com­pa­ny filed for bank­rupt­cy and now its pen­sion is in tat­ters. Long-term employ­ees must have been stunned.

Taking intelligent risks

If you lived on an African savan­nah in cen­turies past, avoid­ing risk—like com­ing face to face with a lion—made per­fect sense. Today, in the devel­oped world, most of us don’t need to wor­ry about get­ting eat­en alive. Hoff­man writes: “Over­es­ti­mat­ing risks and avoid­ing loss­es is a fine strat­e­gy for sur­viv­ing dan­ger­ous envi­ron­ments, but not for thriv­ing in a mod­ern career. When risks aren’t life-threat­en­ing, you have to over­come your brain’s dis­po­si­tion to avoid sur­viv­able risks.”

Hoff­man does not advo­cate tak­ing stu­pid risks. He argues that tak­ing risks makes sense when there’s a promise of a reward.

Here are some exam­ples of tak­ing risks in your career:

Risk Pos­si­ble reward
Work­ing on contract. Earn more income.
Improve the diver­si­ty of your work.
Increase your network.
Mov­ing to anoth­er country. Immerse your­self in anoth­er culture.
Learn anoth­er language.
Increase your net­work abroad.
Learn­ing on the job, even if it for less money. Learn new tech­nolo­gies or skills could that open doors down the road.
Return­ing to school. Learn new skills and knowledge.
Increase your net­work with peers.

Oth­er than con­tract­ing, I some­times take a cal­cu­lat­ed risk by pre­sent­ing a top­ic at an upcom­ing tech­ni­cal writ­ing con­fer­ence. How is that a risk? Because I don’t always know every­thing about the sub­ject. In some cas­es, I’ve just scratched the sur­face of a top­ic and I need to research the con­tent, cre­ate and prac­tice the pre­sen­ta­tion, and deliv­er it to a crowd of peers in a rel­a­tive­ly short time. This forces me to learn a lot about a sub­ject quick­ly and there is always a pos­si­bil­i­ty of fail­ure. Of course, there are ben­e­fits too. I learn new skills and I present my new knowl­edge to a crowd, which increas­es my vis­i­bil­i­ty. I also can use that research to present at oth­er events and writes arti­cles for mag­a­zines, such as the Soci­ety for Tech­ni­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion’s Inter­com magazine.

In the short term, avoid­ing risk seems like a good path for­ward. But over the long-haul, Hoff­man writes “low volatil­i­ty leads to increased vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty because it ren­ders the sys­tem [and your career] less resilient to unthink­able exter­nal shocks…If you don’t find risk, risk will find you.”

Do you agree? If so, how do you take risks at your work?

Ways to keep your skills sharp

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There’s no short­age of con­fer­ences, train­ing web sites, and webi­na­rs to keep your skills sharp.

As I stat­ed in an ear­li­er blog entry, I believe it’s up to you to keep your­self mar­ketable and cre­ate your own train­ing plan. I like this quote from a recruiter: “You can’t rely on a com­pa­ny for your growth and train­ing anymore…Except for a few enlight­ened com­pa­nies, if they’re train­ing you at all, they’re train­ing you for what they need, not nec­es­sar­i­ly train­ing for what you need to devel­op your tech­ni­cal skills over the long run.”

My pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment plan includ­ing attend­ing a con­fer­ence every two to three years, aug­ment­ed with reg­u­lar self-direct­ed learn­ing. The last few years I’ve attend­ed and pre­sent­ed at two Writ­er­sUA con­fer­ences. Between con­fer­ences, I sign up for tech­ni­cal writ­ing webi­na­rs and read busi­ness and tech­nol­o­gy books. I also sub­scribe to Wired. Last year, I signed up for a mem­ber­ship to Lynda.com.

Lynda.com

Lynda.com teach­es com­put­er skills in video for­mat to mem­bers through month­ly and annu­al sub­scrip­tion-based plans. I’ve found it help­ful for learn­ing how to cre­ate EPUBs and brush­ing up on Robo­Help, FrameMak­er, Microsoft Office pro­grams, Cas­cad­ing Style Sheets (CSS), and Search Engine Opti­miza­tion for web sites.  One glar­ing exception—Lynda.com does not offer train­ing for Mad­Cap Flare.

Recorded webinars

I reg­u­lar­ly watch record­ed webinars.

Adobe offers free record­ed videos for tech­ni­cal writers:

http://tinyurl.com/y3j72x

Mad­Cap also offers free webinars:

http://tinyurl.com/lv8vrcq

Scrip­to­ri­um Pub­lish­ing offers time­ly and insight­ful thoughts on tech­ni­cal writ­ing trends:

http://tinyurl.com/kxa67qn

The Soci­ety for Tech­ni­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion also offers webi­na­rs for a fee:

http://tinyurl.com/mhvkg8a

Conferences

Here’s a sum­ma­ry of upcom­ing con­fer­ences this year.

Mad­World 2014 World­wide Learn­ing Con­fer­ence, April 13–15, San Diego
http://www.madcapsoftware.com/events/madworld/

Con­tent Man­age­ment Strategies/DITA North Amer­i­ca 2014, April 28–30, Seattle
http://www.cm-strategies.com/2014/index.htm

STC annu­al con­fer­ence, May 18–21, Phoenix
http://summit.stc.org/program-info/program-overview/

Lava­con, Octo­ber 13–15, 2014, Portland
http://lavacon.org/2014/about-portland/

How do you keep your skills current?

Does job security exist anymore?

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Every few months, I have a con­ver­sa­tion with some­one who argues that work­ing as an employ­ee is more secure than a con­trac­tor. I disagree.

The idea that work­ing as an employ­ee offers any job secu­ri­ty is an old par­a­digm. In the 1950s and 1960s, com­pa­nies took care of employ­ees and it was­n’t unusu­al for peo­ple to work for one orga­ni­za­tion for decades. These days, it feels like com­pa­nies fre­quent­ly restruc­ture, declare bank­rupt­cy, and hire and fire employ­ees on a whim. I fig­ure that if you man­age to eke out a job as an employ­ee at one com­pa­ny  for three years in today’s econ­o­my, you’ve done well (espe­cial­ly in high-tech).

I recent­ly worked with a woman who was ter­ri­fied of los­ing her job. She asked me about work­ing as a con­trac­tor. I explained some of the ben­e­fits but also the risks—namely, my job can be ter­mi­nat­ed with almost no notice and with­out sev­er­ance. She could­n’t com­pre­hend why I would choose work­ing as a con­trac­tor. She craved secu­ri­ty in a world that no longer offers any guar­an­tees to any work­er. After my con­tract fin­ished in the fall, the com­pa­ny’s man­age­ment prompt­ly declared they need­ed to cut costs. As an employ­ee, her posi­tion was elim­i­nat­ed and she was jet­ti­soned. So much for job security.

For the record, here are some of the rea­sons I contract:

  • Vari­ety of work: In Cana­da, con­tract work­ers typ­i­cal­ly work on a large project for six months to one year. That means I am exposed to a lot of inter­est­ing projects in a com­pressed peri­od. I’ve doc­u­ment­ed Share­Point imple­men­ta­tions, soft­ware roll-outs, and indus­tri­al equip­ment in one year. I believe that being exposed to dif­fer­ent projects, peo­ple, and tech­nolo­gies has made me a bet­ter writer. As a con­trac­tor, it’s sink or swim.
  • The adren­a­line rush. It’s stress­ful when you know your con­tract is com­ing to a close in four weeks and you have don’t have anoth­er lead. It’s also stress­ful when your client decides that it needs to cut costs and your ser­vices are no longer need­ed. But with that stress comes excite­ment. I’ve worked on con­tract for more than four years and have been work­ing con­sis­tent­ly, except for the occa­sion­al two- to three-week break.
  • High­er income. I don’t receive paid vaca­tion, health and den­tal ben­e­fits, or sev­er­ance pack­ages. Clients rec­og­nize this so are will­ing to pay more for my ser­vices. If you man­age your mon­ey well, you can cre­ate your own sev­er­ance pack­age (essen­tial­ly a finan­cial cush­ion if you are between con­tracts) and put aside mon­ey for your retire­ment. In Cana­da, health and den­tal ben­e­fits are sur­pris­ing­ly afford­able: I pur­chased a pri­vate health plan that cov­ered my fam­i­ly for about $150 per month—hardly cost pro­hib­i­tive. One caveat: I know that health plans in the U.S. are much more expensive.
  • Pre­ferred tax rates. As the own­er of an incor­po­rat­ed busi­ness in Cana­da, I pay the small busi­ness tax rate of 13.5 per­cent on earn­ings. That means if I earn $100,000, I could pay $13,500 in tax. But in real­i­ty, small busi­ness own­ers can also write off their car costs, a por­tion of their mort­gage, books and mag­a­zines, lunch­es and din­ners that are relat­ed to work, health plan costs, and much more. So in real­i­ty, the tax rate I pay is less than 13.5 per­cent. In con­trast, a Cana­di­an employ­ee can pay up to 38 per­cent in tax for the same $100,000.

On a relat­ed note, a report by Intu­it argues that full-time oppor­tu­ni­ties may be hard­er to find in the future as com­pa­nies rely more on “con­tin­gent work­ers.” Here’s an excerpt from the report: “Today, rough­ly 25–30 per­cent of the U.S. work­force is con­tin­gent, and more than 80 per­cent of large cor­po­ra­tions plan to sub­stan­tial­ly increase their use of a flex­i­ble work­force in com­ing years…In the U.S. alone, con­tin­gent work­ers will exceed 40 per­cent of the work­force by 2020.”

Con­tract­ing, though, is not for every­one. You need to net­work with oth­ers, pro­mote your­self, nego­ti­ate with clients, invoice, remit tax­es to the gov­ern­ment, and jug­gle the needs of mul­ti­ple clients. Con­trac­tors fre­quent­ly com­plain of anx­i­ety and fatigue.

Will I ever enter­tain work­ing as an employ­ee again? Yes, of course. But if I do work as an employ­ee again, it won’t be because of the promise of job security.

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About Me

Robert Desprez I have worked as a Vancouver technical writer for more than 20 years, working at Kodak, Boeing, Teck Resources, and FortisBC. In addition, I have worked as a writing instructor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.

Contact Me

Robert Desprez Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Inc.
North Van­cou­ver, British Columbia
Canada
Phone: 604–836-4290