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Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

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Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#151

Post by groby_b »

initram wrote: post #123
robohamburger wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even without the legality, it is super weird. If someone told me I was old at 30 I would laugh :)

My spouse is a dancer. They generally retire at around 30 yrs. old. (And by retire, I mean find a different job because you aren't going to retire on a dancer's salary.)

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Or leotard, really :)

It's amazing if you can even live as a dancer. Usually, there's a second job. (I worked in CS in parallel to the dance thing. And at some point looked at the pay checks :)

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#152

Post by 20yrs_no_equity »

Unlike most engineers I want to be a manager. But it seems there is no opportunity for that. It seems that the non-engineers who are in the executive positions want non-engineers to manager engineers perpetuating the problems startups have.

There are few engineering management positions listed. The few I saw in the bay area resulted in excluding me because of my age (Stripe, I'm looking at you.)

It's frustrating to keep being pushed into individual contributor roles and then have low quality engineering managers hired in above you. (And I know I can do it because I end up leading teams all the time, they naturally form a round me. The members of the team are very happy with me- I have no authority but I end up leading them anyway.)

So I think the route for "old" folks is blocked also by the desire of non-engineers to make engineering management be done by non-engineers.

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#153

Post by marmot777 »

wyager wrote: post #79
tjic wrote: post #2

I think that the "Bay Area scene" is different from much of the world. I think that part of human nature is that people like people who are like themselves, so you sometimes get these insular / discriminatory sub cultures that judge people on superficial traits instead of the quality of their minds. From both this article and the tales of many friends, San Francisco strikes as one of these low-tolerance / high-discri…

Absolutely agreed. Having lived all over the US, it seems to me that the places that are the most discriminatory and insular in practice are those that pride themselves on being inclusive in theory. NYC and SF have huge cultures of identity politics, with the end result that it's very clique-dominated and exclusive. NYC also has a very money-oriented social stratification. On the other hand, if you go to rural Montan…

Sad but true.

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#154

Post by lloyd-christmas »

nekopa wrote: post #135
lloyd-christmas wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://trends.builtwith.com/javascript/Angular-JS That's a pretty big chunk of the internet for a "new trend". My boss is in his 50s and he was the one who started us using node. Every month without fail, he repeats the words of his manager in the 90s: "Java is a fad. We'll all be using c++ again in a year". Don't be that guy.

Not too sure of the numbers on that site. It says AngularJS runs 1.5% of the Internet - 435,718 of 363,398,504 sites, but I thought that we are now over 1 billion websites according to some stats. Another Stat said about 890 million active sites. Although 435K is nothing to sniff at, wordpress runs over 15 million sites.

> I thought that we are now over 1 billion websites according to some stats.

Accounting for the last 3 quarters, 363m seems accurate[1]. Even if it's not 100% accurate, it's still a good gist.

> wordpress runs over 15 million sites.

Keep in mind that Wordpress is a CMS, and it's older than jQuery. You can also use Wordpress and Angular in parallel, so it's not as if people choose it INSTEAD of angular.

[1] https://investor.verisign.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=96...

EDIT: I was also referring more towards the top-10k/100k, given that those are ACTUAL websites. I try to avoid stats that include "hello, world. This is my angular2 todo".

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#155

Post by protomyth »

Torgo wrote: post #104
rdtsc wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally, I dislike places where people are provincial and close-minded, so I'll stick to the rural countryside and leave SF to the bigots. I like that quote. Copied it to my notes for future reference. To expand more on the topic, I wonder if remote workers are a good way to bring some revival for smaller rural communities. I visit some of those places and many have a beautiful setting, everyone knows each other…

It's still hard to get good Internet in many rural-ish areas, which makes this really hard. I tried, multiple times. We were supposed to get a modern "rural electrification project" in the 90s for broadband, but cable companies stole the money, aided and abetted by Congress.

> It's still hard to get good Internet in many rural-ish areas, which makes this really hard. I tried, multiple times.

Depends, REI has better internet for ND than anything I've seen elsewhere. Some of the rural telephone companies do quite well. Its really luck of the draw.

> We were supposed to get a modern "rural electrification project" in the 90s for broadband, but cable companies stole the money, aided and abetted by Congress.

The key part of the last bill that killed it was the requirement that "broadband speeds" were not available in an area. The bill didn't specify a minimum price or that its was universal to the area. So, it pretty much killed a lot of attempts because broadband is available for $1,000 a month.

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#156

Post by bdunbar »

mhurron wrote: post #39
bdunbar wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone knows someone. Build on that. You work with people. Those people know people. They know other people. Someone says 'I need a good PHP guy' and a guy in the network replies 'I know a guy, SadWebDeveloper - here is his email address'. Boom: you have made contact with someone who wants to hire you. Join the Whatever User Group in your area. Go to the meetings - introduce yourself. Be a presence on their mail li…

> Everyone knows someone No they don't. And your solution to not being stuck with closed and insular groups is join some closed and insular groups so that your name can be passed around as one of the group.

> > Everyone knows someone

> No they don't.

Could be you are a deaf and mute yak herder in Outer Mongolia and suffer the heartbreak of psoriasis. Your situation is unique and you have my pity.

For those of us in the mart of competitive commerce there is no possible way a person can exist in this economy without knowing people.

> join some closed and insular groups

You have no idea what you are talking about.

You have my pity.

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#157

Post by marmot777 »

alex-yo wrote: post #26

Well, a funny thing, I'm not old, I'm just 37. In my country I need to work for the next 30 years to retire. However companies don't want to talk with me about getting a job regardless my 14 year of commercial experience. Sometimes I hear during an interview "oh, you did so many things, I wish I could have the same experience". And then I don't get this job. And no, I'm not expensive. I usually don't get to the point…

The funny thing is that in most industries and in most parts of the country, 37 is pretty young.

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#158

Post by bdunbar »

drdeadringer wrote: post #96
tjic wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to be miserable and ineffective, you can be. All you have to do is set your mind to it. ...and you're doing a great job so far!

mhurron has a valid point and it is worth considering beyond him//her "doing a great job so far" being "miserable and ineffective".

No, he does not have a valid point.

He's merely enjoying the persona of 'miserable prick'.

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#159

Post by marmot777 »

alex-yo wrote: post #26

Well, a funny thing, I'm not old, I'm just 37. In my country I need to work for the next 30 years to retire. However companies don't want to talk with me about getting a job regardless my 14 year of commercial experience. Sometimes I hear during an interview "oh, you did so many things, I wish I could have the same experience". And then I don't get this job. And no, I'm not expensive. I usually don't get to the point…

And there are some professions where someone has only recently started being truly useful in their '30s. I'm not in Silicon Valley but it sounds like a warped, sad place.

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#160

Post by rdtsc »

bdavisx wrote: post #111
rdtsc wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally, I dislike places where people are provincial and close-minded, so I'll stick to the rural countryside and leave SF to the bigots. I like that quote. Copied it to my notes for future reference. To expand more on the topic, I wonder if remote workers are a good way to bring some revival for smaller rural communities. I visit some of those places and many have a beautiful setting, everyone knows each other…

>> Personally, I dislike places where people are provincial and close-minded, so I'll stick to the rural countryside and leave SF to the bigots. >I visit some of those places and many have a beautiful setting, everyone knows each other, there is a sense of a community. It is quiet. Depending on what part of the country you're talking about, many of those beautiful small communities are very bigoted also -- and not ju…

Agreed. That's a good point. Quite often poverty makes the situation worse, it radicalizes people and enhances the bigotry.
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