21–30 of 341 posts
We should all be embarrassed by the working conditions and biases in our industry. It doesn't have to be this way, but we all keep playing along.
The rampant ageism in the industry is a real problem but everyone is focused on gender equality in tech right now. I really think both issues need serious attention.
The best explanation I've seen for this is when you're a young engineer with little experience showing knowledge of a framework or technique is a huge plus. For someone with a ton of experience not knowing something is shown as a minus. For interview processes trying to avoid false positives a negative mark will hurt you much more in the final sum. So the bar is set differently for two candidates applying to the same…
Well it might change a lot as suddenly number of coders in their 40s goes up.
Indeed! The primary reason for the median age in Google and Facebook being so low is that the median age for programmers is low [1]. The reason for this low median age? There are more young programmers than old because it's an expanding field! Though I must admit that the evidence points to current significant age biases in the hiring of these companies. The most successful older software developers I've come across…
Are you sure you have the cause and effect going in the right direction? It could be that the median age for programmers is low precisely because of ageism.
This is idiotic. People over 40 trade one set of skills for another (source: I'm over 40). You lose short-term memory, can't juggle too many things simultaneously, and aren't always up to date on every latest fad. But what you gain is fantastically valuable: intuition, abstract thinking, systems thinking, ability to detect patterns in large systems, ability to notice that certain problems have been solved in a differ…
Well it might change a lot as suddenly number of coders in their 40s goes up.
Do you have any data demonstrating this will happen?
This is idiotic. People over 40 trade one set of skills for another (source: I'm over 40). You lose short-term memory, can't juggle too many things simultaneously, and aren't always up to date on every latest fad. But what you gain is fantastically valuable: intuition, abstract thinking, systems thinking, ability to detect patterns in large systems, ability to notice that certain problems have been solved in a differ…
Basically, you become a pattern matching database of non-obvious cost/benefit trade-offs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have any data demonstrating this will happen?
I guess they assume, like I do, that the current set of coders will continue to age. Will the current 20 year old coders shun 40 year old candidates in 20 years?
We should all be embarrassed by the working conditions and biases in our industry. It doesn't have to be this way, but we all keep playing along.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have any data demonstrating this will happen?
Is the software development industry not bigger than it was twenty years ago? Developers still age. Ergo, as development as an industry grows, at a delayed rate, the number of aging developers will also grow.
I don't know about the Silicon Valley, but I'm in the Silicon Forest (Hillsboro/Portland Oregon) and this market seems to be very merit driven. You can be 80 years old and get a job if you can do work. Maybe you can't get a job at fart.IO building an API for some craft beer BS but at many mid to large companies 40 is still an average. The last 4-5 companies I've been at value bullet points over anything else (for wha…