DOES THE I.T. WORLD DISCRIMINATE against older workers? rodney struhs thinks so. Although he is almost two decades away from qualifying for full

Social Security retirement benefits, he thinks his age has kept him from finding full-time work for more than a year since his Y2K gig ended. In his first six months of job hunting, Struhs, 47, received only one or two calls, despite listing nearly two decades of experience as a project manager. Then he made some changes to his rŽsumŽ, opting to include only 10 years of experience. "As soon as I shaved off 10 years, I got seven or eight calls in the first week," he says. But the job hunt didn’t end. "The interview is pretty much done as soon as they see how old you are. They’ll come out with a great big smile, and as soon as they see you the smile disappears," says Struhs, who was willing to relocate from Salt Lake City. "The guys over 50 tell me it gets worse."

Countless IT veterans have written to CIO with tales similar to that of Struhs’s. One article on CIO.com brought out an army of them: Within days of being asked "Do CIOs Discriminate Against Older Workers?" about 200 readers had posted answers; a majority of them gave a resounding yes.

The IT industry has long been fighting such accusations in the court of public opinion. The stories make gripping headlines. Everyone worries about getting old, and everyone has read about Web divisions domineered by nose-ringed newbie programmers. Skills-hungry IT departments retort that with hundreds of thousands of IT jobs unfilled, no sane businessperson would discriminate; they fall back on legal ambiguities, blame the high-tech sector or dotcoms for the problem, and say to workers like Struhs, "Send me your rŽsumŽ!" But it’s naive to simply assume that age discrimination only happens elsewhere, and it’s bad business if any workers?especially those with years of experience?are getting left behind. CIOs need to take active steps to eliminate age discrimination and prevent the damage it can cause.

A Bad Reputation

The I.T. industry can’t cover its lack of gray hairs. According to the most recent numbers available from the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), a trade organization in Arlington, Va., workers age 55 and older make up only 6.8 percent of the IT workforce, compared to 11.7 percent of the workforce overall. Given the explosion of technology jobs in the past 20 years, some discrepancy is understandable, but the report also indicated that professionals may be leaving the field. Twenty years after graduation, only 19 percent of computer science graduates still work in IT. The question is, Are they choosing to leave?or are they forced out because of stereotypes and assumptions? (These people cost too much. These people don’t fit into corporate culture. They’re hard to manage. They lack energy. They don’t want to learn new skills; they can’t learn new skills.)