Tech companies have a Baby Boomer problem

diversity

All the recent focus on sexism and gender discrimination in Silicon Valley has obscured another long-festering diversity problem for the tech industry: ageism.

Now job hiring website Indeed is shining a spotlight on the issue. The company recently conducted a survey of 1,011 currently employed US tech workers. The survey results indicate how little age diversity there is in tech and how little tech companies are doing to change the situation.

One glaring finding: 46% of respondents said that the average employee age at their company was between 20 and 35.

Here's some of what Indeed found and how the industry is approaching the issue of age discrimination:

Survey respondents said they mostly work with younger workers.

Only 26% of respondents to Indeed's survey said that the average employee at their firm was over 40.

That's not surprising given findings of other studies. According to data from 2014 collected by PayScale, a salary analysis company, the median age at Facebook is 28, and 30 at Google.

By contrast, the median age of members of the American labor force as a whole is 41.9, according to US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Employees generally aren't worried about the paucity of older co-workers.

Only a fifth of survey respondents think the Baby Boomer generation is underrepresented at their company.

Older tech workers are more likely to look for jobs outside of Silicon Valley.

San Jose and San Francisco are the top two places tech workers of all ages seek to work. But Baby Boomers are much more likely than younger workers to look elsewhere for employment opportunities, Indeed found. And Boomers are more likely to seek employment in places younger workers shun.

For example, Huntsville, Alabama, ranked third on Boomer techies' list of most desired places to work in Indeed's study. Raleigh and Durham, North Carolina, ranked seventh and ninth, respectively. None of those cities made the top 10 list for either Millennial or Gen X tech workers.

Meanwhile, for younger tech workers, Austin, Texas, ranked number four after Seattle, but it didn't make the Boomers' list at all.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider