High-tech, higher barriers: age, education, skills, culture, and non-binary employment

This study analyzes data from over 70,000 respondents from the Stack Overflow developer survey to examine how gender, age, education, technical skills, and national cultural masculinity shape hiring outcomes in technology. Using mixed-effects models, we investigate the distribution of non-binary applicants and explore how Hofstede’s Masculinity Index moderates gendered employment disparities. We find age amplifies employment challenges for non-binary individuals and women over 35. Advanced degrees, particularly PhDs, do not protect women equally from hiring disadvantages relative to men, while broader computer skill portfolios are associated with improved prospects for women, consistent with the greater verifiability of technical signals relative to credentialed qualifications. For non-binary applicants, technical skill diversity produces no statistically significant leveling effect; this null finding may reflect structural and institutional barriers operating independently of skill evaluation, though limited statistical power due to the small non-binary subsample warrants caution. Cultural masculinity is positively associated with hiring outcomes for female and non-binary applicants, a counterintuitive pattern we tentatively interpret through surface meritocracy, whereby competitive, performance-oriented norms may generate temporarily equitable hiring signals while leaving deeper structural inequalities intact; this remains speculative pending further empirical verification. Grounded in intersectionality theory, this research highlights how gender, education, skills, and culture interact to shape hiring, offering cautious implications to reduce employment disparities in tech.