The engineering team for the product I work on, Google Play Music, is roughly 15% older engineers (rough guess, because I don't actually know how old everyone is)
I'm 41, work at an investment bank as a software engineer and I think I'm probably one of the youngest people in IT here.
Having an IT work force with only 15% of people above 40 doesn't happen by accident and in my 20 year career in IT, it's not the norm of most companies.
the vast majority of hires come straight out of college.
You realize that happens because of policies that make that happen, right?
Umm, no. Competition for experienced engineers in Silicon Valley is incredibly fierce - I get probably a couple dozen cold recruitment pitches every week, from startups and big companies alike. Any decent engineer with 10+ years of experience can write their own ticket pretty much anywhere they want, and many choose do so at startups where the potential rewards are higher.
On the other hand, most new grads would kill for a job at google, which is one of the best high tech companies to work for (if not the best). And most new grads don't want to take the risk and lower pay of a startup (not with all those student loans to pay off).
More supply == more employees. No sinister policies needed.
Edit: appended clarifying sentence to first paragraph
Umm, no. Competition for experienced engineers in Silicon Valley is incredibly fierce - I get probably a couple dozen cold recruitment pitches every week, from startups and big companies alike.
Cold recruitment pitches aren't job offers. They're also typically made with no idea how old the person they're speaking to is.
More supply == more employees. No sinister policies needed.
I would say it's more a matter of when you specifically target recent graduates for hiring, you tend to hire a lot of recent graduates. Are you disputing that Google specifically targets recent graduates for hire?
Of course I'm not disputing that. Google absolutely targets new graduates, very aggressively. We also target experienced engineers, very aggressively. As @mark_l_watson said in another comment: "Google is hungry for good people, and they are casting a wide net". Experienced employees are, in fact, valued far more than new grads, since they've proven themselves in industry, and because of that google gives employees substantial referral bonuses for bringing in good people.
As for cold recruitment pitches, they typically come from recruiters on linkedin. And its very easy to tell roughly how old I am from my linkedin profile. But you make a fair point about recruitment pitches not being the same as job offers.
You say you work in IT - am I guessing correctly when I say you don't work in the Bay Area or Seattle? Because it really is a crazy job market right now, and its probably hard to believe how much so if you don't experience it yourself. Its hugely different from how things were in 2008, when I got laid off by Adobe and had to take a less than ideal job to pay the bills. Today I am very confident that I could get a new job by making a few phone calls, but I choose to stay at google because I'm working on a great product with a great team, at a company that spoils me to a point I actually find embarrassing.
I'm 41, work at an investment bank as a software engineer and I think I'm probably one of the youngest people in IT here.
Having an IT work force with only 15% of people above 40 doesn't happen by accident and in my 20 year career in IT, it's not the norm of most companies.
the vast majority of hires come straight out of college.
You realize that happens because of policies that make that happen, right?