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By Martin Brampton, 18 May 2004 08:30

COMMENT Age plays a role in IT - but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The problem, says Martin Brampton, is when prejudices prevent us from accurately assessing an individual's abilities.

Ageism occurs in IT. That seems to be the point at which agreement stops. We are not really clear what we mean by ageism, nor are we clear what should be done about it. Perhaps that is always the case for complex and difficult issues.

When it comes to certain other personal factors such as race or sex, there is widespread agreement that they should, in most circumstances, simply be disregarded. That we should treat age in the same way is less persuasive. People's characteristics undoubtedly change with age, in such fundamental ways that it would be perverse to attempt to ignore it completely.

When we are young, awareness of mortality is largely theoretical. In practice, life seems to stretch out indefinitely. There is still plenty of time to make mistakes and overcome them with fresh starts or new directions. The only talents that seem relevant are youthful vigour and intellectual edge.

Much later, the limited span of human life becomes far more relevant, leading people to be cautious about risking what has already been achieved and reluctant to spend time in ways that offer little reward. Vigour and intellect may be somewhat dimmed, but older people are aware that experience can often more than compensate for this.

Experience is naturally undervalued by young people, who lack it. Yet working through the many problematic situations that occur throughout life does provide a wider repertoire of responses to new challenges. It also allows a quicker assessment of situations. To take a simple example, car drivers are at their safest in their fifties and sixties. Reactions are slower, but judgement is better.

Now these are real considerations for employment. The workplace is a complex social setting, in which people are expected to play appropriate roles. What counts as an appropriate role is often disputed, but a characteristic as fundamental as age can hardly be ignored. So simply throwing a veil over the age of applicants seems perverse.

The problem is the use of stereotypes to make easy assumptions about individual people. Two things are wrong with this. One is that the stereotypes are often quite wrong and based on prejudice rather than knowledge. The other is that the variation between individuals is very great, quite often greater than the differences between the stereotyped groups.

Ironically, this is especially so in IT, a sector acknowledged to be afflicted by ageism. It has long been known that the productivity of software developers varies by a factor of at least 10 to 1 between the best and the worst. And length of experience with a particular technology is no guide to whatever skill it is that produces this huge difference. All the evidence suggests that this skill is readily transferable across different technologies, but not easily identifiable by any kind of test.

Enlightened employers have sometimes benefited from talented developers who have decided to step back from management roles. They have recognised that rising through levels of management is not the only way to develop a career. Some have even accepted that financial rewards should not always reflect such a view.

But usually, recruitment has signally failed to find any way to discern these fundamental differences in skill. Frequently, it also fails to build teams that function well as social organisations. This matters both because social interactions are fundamental to success and because people have values that are not all reducible to economic factors. One reflection of this is the inability to attract women into IT, despite many proven examples of outstanding talent.

Another is the monotonous litany of failed projects in IT. What is depressing about them is that the reasons for failure are often so obvious and so often the same. Or the problem, apparently only recently recognised, that software that contains faults can be exceedingly costly.

So ageism, as a prejudice that one age group is preferable to another, is very much to be deplored. We should not be ignoring age, but instead celebrating the different skills that people bring as they age. We should also recognise that most people are remarkably adaptable, and respond to the environment in which they are placed. Finally, we should pay more attention to the fact that economic success is by no means the only determinant of a happy and fulfilled life.

Editor's note: See our full coverage of ageism in IT. Have you been affected by ageism in the tech industry? Please email your stories to editorial@silicon.com.