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Ask HN: Is ageism in tech still a problem?

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Re: Ask HN: Is ageism in tech still a problem?

#121

Post by carlosjobim »

adamredwoods wrote: post #101
carlosjobim wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your kids school is more important than your job is, that only means your job is extremely unimportant. Like my job. Your kid is better off not going to school for a day, or arriving late. They're not doing anything important in school. Depending on company, maybe they need to hire people to do important things and have responsibility for important things. Somebody who would prioritize things like driving their ki…

I'm sorry you think this way. The entire human foundation is based upon passed knowledge by means of reading and writing. I feel it's essential. Schooling is one way to do this, and also a means of learning and practicing social skills. As far as being on-call goes, there are many different ways to be a part of support without a brute-force approach. For example, create a more robust QA process. Another is to create…

Missing one day of school in your life because your mother or father had something very important to take care of will not have any impact on your education. And the people who pretend that this is the case are just the kind of dishonest people that you don't want to hire. Hackers can down vote me as much as they please, that's not going to change how businesses think about hiring.

And now we're reaching the core of the "ageism" discussion. Every person will have some things that they consider more important than work; their health for example. But as people get older, the more things get added to that list, because they are more established in life. But do you want to hire a person which considers everything more important than their job? Something which businesses value highly is when people are reliable. If the boss can rely on that a certain employee can be counted on to take care of things, that means that the boss can also work to 100% of his potential where they are needed.

A good run company will make sure to hire enough people, or in other ways make sure that emergency situations don't become something frequent. But we can never get away from the fact that the earth spins around the sun, meaning everything in the economy experiences the ebb and flow of seasonal demand. Even Hank Hill has to take care of propane emergencies at times.

>As far as being on-call goes, there are many different ways to be a part of support without a brute-force approach. For example, create a more robust QA process. Another is to create actionable alerts. There are many ways workers can work peacefully and meet director goals.

I completely agree with this.

Re: Ask HN: Is ageism in tech still a problem?

#122

Post by OutOfHere »

carlosjobim wrote: post #76
abeppu wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one seriously broken thing is that every company seems convinced their work is important, and scales their sense of how important work items are relative to the company as a whole. Orgs and teams do the same. You can be on a team that runs a service that's a small part of the overall company product offering, which may be a convenience rather than mission-critical to its clients, who themselves may be doing s…

All of us here have been to school and know how utterly unimportant it is. If not, that is a serious case of amnesia. It's a storage unit for kids, guarded by the most dim-witted people from the community. So when somebody says they can't work because of their kid's school, then either that person does not care about their job, or the company is asking for something out of line. It's either of those two options, depe…

> All of us here have been to school and know how utterly unimportant it is.

I think the same can be said for companies. All of us here worked at companies and know how utterly unimportant most of them, or at least most of their projects, are.

> If I had an important job

They don't exist for the most part, at least 90% of them in our line of work aren't.

Re: Ask HN: Is ageism in tech still a problem?

#123

Post by OutOfHere »

carlosjobim wrote: post #91
tuyguntn wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your kid is better off not going to school for a day, or arriving late. They're not doing anything important in school. Not sure, if you are serious. Maybe we should become slaves of corporations? Should we divorce maybe with our partners because sometimes we go dining and on-call is more important than me having a dinner with my partner?

Don't you remember school? > Maybe we should become slaves of corporations? That's why school exists in the first place, because parents are stuck at their jobs and new corporate/government slaves and cannon fodder have to be indoctrinated.

A corporation that wakes you up at 3 am is dysfunctional by definition. It exists only to waste investor funds and burn people out while producing nothing of lasting value. There is no reason why it should be actively allowed to harm one's health too.

Re: Ask HN: Is ageism in tech still a problem?

#124

Post by [deleted] »

ilc wrote: post #73
jimt1234 wrote: post #35

I used to work with a guy that was known for dressing nice, very formal. Back in the 2000s, he would wear button-down shirts, slacks, nice shoes; he stood out for a software nerd. Anyway, when I saw him recently, he was dressed in jeans and flip-flops, wearing a t-shirt. I asked him what's with the casual attire. He just said, "Trying to keep my job." Being an older dude in this field as well, I know what he's talkin…

I call this "Wearing your uniform." You need to look like you are a person who would be doing the job. You wouldn't hire a gardner with smooth hands, clean shoes, and no dirt under their nails would you? Car mechanics, you can see it in their hands, and the way they act around cars. Every profession has its tells, from what we wear, to our physical traits etc. After a while, you know if someone adds up or not. But pa…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Is ageism in tech still a problem?

#125

Post by kathir05 »

some say "wisdom comes with age".

Though I don't completely agree but won't completely ignore.

I see this applies to tech as well.

When you start as junior you tinker with boilerplate code. everything seems magical. As you grow learn and becomes wiser, things what seemed magical before become logical

After 10 years, surface level saturates. You will start to dig deeper. Things will again start to become magical and then slowly fades into logical.

Then you go deeper and again process repeats.

More deeper you go, you will find the luxury to shake the surface level toys. Some innovation happens at surface level, but you are deep down still going.

There is not end line. You retire when you want to stop. Your choice!

But much more still to be explored! Humanity continues!

In short, As you grow, go deeper, become wiser, shake the status quo, innovate, repeat. Surface level people will Go gaga. But you don't react because you are still going deeper...

Re: Ask HN: Is ageism in tech still a problem?

#126

Post by msgodel »

ilc wrote: post #73
jimt1234 wrote: post #35

I used to work with a guy that was known for dressing nice, very formal. Back in the 2000s, he would wear button-down shirts, slacks, nice shoes; he stood out for a software nerd. Anyway, when I saw him recently, he was dressed in jeans and flip-flops, wearing a t-shirt. I asked him what's with the casual attire. He just said, "Trying to keep my job." Being an older dude in this field as well, I know what he's talkin…

I call this "Wearing your uniform." You need to look like you are a person who would be doing the job. You wouldn't hire a gardner with smooth hands, clean shoes, and no dirt under their nails would you? Car mechanics, you can see it in their hands, and the way they act around cars. Every profession has its tells, from what we wear, to our physical traits etc. After a while, you know if someone adds up or not. But pa…

Not an older person but I genuinely don't like wearing jeans and t shirts and I never have. t shirts make me feel like I'm trapped and jeans are stiff and unpleasant (and always feel shaped wrong.) Also wearing what are essentially corporate ads on my body just feels brain dead.

Shorts and a Hawaiian shirt are comfortable but I guess that's still not ok in the office even though everyone wants to pretend they don't care.

Whatever it's not like I'd accept a non-remote job these days anyway.

Re: Ask HN: Is ageism in tech still a problem?

#127

Post by carlosjobim »

OutOfHere wrote: post #123
carlosjobim wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you remember school? > Maybe we should become slaves of corporations? That's why school exists in the first place, because parents are stuck at their jobs and new corporate/government slaves and cannon fodder have to be indoctrinated.

A corporation that wakes you up at 3 am is dysfunctional by definition. It exists only to waste investor funds and burn people out while producing nothing of lasting value. There is no reason why it should be actively allowed to harm one's health too.

Expand your perspective. Things happen at 3AM in the real world. A tree falls over a power line in a storm, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Is ageism in tech still a problem?

#128

Post by OutOfHere »

carlosjobim wrote: post #127
OutOfHere wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A corporation that wakes you up at 3 am is dysfunctional by definition. It exists only to waste investor funds and burn people out while producing nothing of lasting value. There is no reason why it should be actively allowed to harm one's health too.

Expand your perspective. Things happen at 3AM in the real world. A tree falls over a power line in a storm, etc.

Indeed. Things happen, but in a well-functioning firm, they're supposed to be auto-handled by automated contingency processes that have already planned for it, with actions that are already in place. Alternatively, they have dedicated staff, possibly offshore, and onshore if needed. It is only at dysfunctional firms that one has to wake up for it.

Re: Ask HN: Is ageism in tech still a problem?

#129

Post by thomasanders0n »

[deleted] wrote: post #124
ilc wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I call this "Wearing your uniform." You need to look like you are a person who would be doing the job. You wouldn't hire a gardner with smooth hands, clean shoes, and no dirt under their nails would you? Car mechanics, you can see it in their hands, and the way they act around cars. Every profession has its tells, from what we wear, to our physical traits etc. After a while, you know if someone adds up or not. But pa…

[deleted]

[flagged]

Re: Ask HN: Is ageism in tech still a problem?

#130

Post by IAmBroom »

sokoloff wrote: post #17
IAmBroom wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can provide more than just one example to back up any prejudice you can think of. Treating a person as part of a group is the problem. And when you are trying to isolate one person out of many, like for a job hire, it's not easy to avoid mass-filtering to speed it up.

> Treating a person as part of a group is the problem. Yes, but it's efficient and effective in a large number of cases. Those with no programming experience is a group. Those who just graduated a CS program is a group. Fresh bootcamp grads are a group. People with 5+ years of experience with your tech stack are a group. Is there someone with no programming experience who would turn out to be great? Of course; none o…

Exactly true. But being hairless apes, we tend to overrely on our ability to group. "Smells like ___, must be bad at finding bananas in modern C++ product development process."

Where ___ is: "no formal education", the accuracy is possibly over 50%.

Where ___ is: "Dutch", the accuracy is below 50%

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