Learning Curve, Earning Curve

Read an article today in Infoworld titled "Are you too old to be a techie?" The gist of it was about age discrimination in IT. In the 25 years I have been recruiting in the IT arena, I have never run into overt discrimination based on gender or race, but I regularly run into age discrimination. You rarely hear a direct request for under 30, but I often hear feedback about a candidate along the lines of "too experienced", or "not enough runway". There are a million code words that basically say the same thing.

We value youth over experience. Why?

• Cheaper (in the short term)
  
• Able to work longer hours (in the short term)
  
• More likely to be fully absorbed by their professional development (less likely to have outside obligations that would limit becoming fully enmeshed in technology)
  

How can the older worker combat some of these biases? As workers mature in the marketplace, their earnings curve generally continues to ascend, while often their learning curve flattens out. When the gap between the learning curve and the earning curve is large, the very real potential for pain (layoffs, stuck in dead end job, etc.) is at its greatest.

One way the older worker can combat that is to make ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that their learning curve keeps pace with their earnings curve. The older worker MUST combine their depth of experience (invaluable) with a constant refresh of what is valid in the marketplace. If they do not, they run the very real risk of becoming "unemployable" in the industry.