Over 30? Reach for your cane and sign up for nursing home insurance. You are over the hill.
Well, maybe not over the hill, but certainly reaching the crest. At least, that’s the case if your field of choice is technology. According to Seattle-based company PayScale, companies with the median age of employees under 30 are all in the high tech industry. The youngest workers – ranging in median age from 26 to 29 – are found in Epic Games, Facebook, Zynga, and Google.
Four other companies – AOL, Blizzard Entertainment, InfoSys, and Monster.com – all have workers with a median age of 30.
That’s pretty significant, given the fact that the median age for all workers in America is 42.3 years.
Technology companies that have been around a while tend to have more older workers. Not surprising, since many people pick a company and stay with it over a number of years as their careers progress. And older companies may be using the older technologies that older workers are more familiar with. A 40-year old IT professional may know C# and SQL, but not Python. And he might not be as comfortable with the social media tools that are second nature to younger techies.
Also not surprising, these statistics refer to men. So what about women? Well, sadly, you’re not going to find many of them of any age in high tech professions. Women make up less than 30 percent of the high tech workforce. But that’s a subject for another discussion.