I read thisA report a few weeks ago and its finding was interesting but I am concerned with the interpretationclaiming that older individuals were not appreciated at technology firms.
The authors (I wish I had a link) look at how age is appreciated in the technology sector. This isThey studied a great question since the labour market is aging. The authors use the contextdozen factory locations of onea tech firm where employees could (across a dozen locationsanonymously) where employees propose asuggest process improvement that is postedimprovements on thea bulletin board. People for in the next week canhallway. Others could walk by and votesign their name if they like the improvement. No negative voting is allowedagreed.
The authors find that process improvements suggested by older employees (those less than 35 are considered young) are endorsed 8% less than younger employees and that it is highly significant. The people voting have no idea whoresearchers knew which employee suggested what so they could study the effect of age seems real. They control many variables like location of plant, week of the year, and what categoryA dichotomous measure that is unity if a suggestion was written by an employee over the process improvement falls inage of 35.
They don't know how many people could have voted, so they cant do a ratio, butfind that does not bother me too muchsuggestions by older employees received 8% fewer endorsements. What I don't understand
My concern is that they reportalso state that 80% of the employees are considered youngunder 35, and that 71%a similar proportion (71%) of processthe suggested improvements are suggested by youngerfrom young employees.
Don't So, don't they have to show that the number of endorsements is fewer than what we would expect given the age ratio atfact that the majority of employees are young? I feel like the result is being driven by the makeup of the firm, the board on any given day is dominated by young employee suggestions. On the other hand, it is not like employees are picking their favorite and then we could expect the proportion to matter.
I am not just that older people get less? The authors don't discuss thissure so maybeI would like to know if it ismatters and if not an issue, but iswhy doesn't it? If it is wrong,does how would you do the analysis to showthey fix it? And, if it does is there an example of a study that the older employees are getting less than we would expect given their proportion at the firmdoes it right?