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Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

oldgeekjobs.com

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

#231

Post by pjlegato »

serge2k wrote: post #226
makecheck wrote: post #56

I think that age is correlation, not causation. What’s really happening is two things. First, companies typically don’t like paying people lots of money (even if they are great at blowing millions on other mindless things). Second, these companies do not understand that their unwillingness to hire expensive people is causing months of bug-chasing and monkey-patching in their products. When your organization is under…

> new college grads willing to work for peanuts are very attractive. Peanuts being a ways north of 100k a year at the bigger companies. > advanced degree really is worth a lot more money, and not just in the long run. Are we talking PhD?

New grads only get more than 100k at a tiny group of elite companies. Almost all new grads lack the credentials to get into those places.

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

#232

Post by serge2k »

damaru wrote: post #179

But don't ageism always happened to be reverse? I still roll my eyes when a early 20's try to sells me idea of marketing - and although you can have a lot of good ideas at that age, you still don't have life and work experience that is needed to go trough massive amount of stress or unknown situations. I think it's fine that kids who run new business don't want old folks in there. It's a bit of a return of the balanc…

> I still roll my eyes when a early 20's try to sells me idea of marketing

Why should I hire someone who would treat other employees this way?

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

#233

Post by SyneRyder »

mhurron wrote: post #209
SyneRyder wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I downvoted mhurron, I found it a fatalistic response that isn't constructive or helpful. Even if you feel you don't know anyone, you have to put effort in to meeting people. Here's three ways I got remote work before I knew anyone: * I emailed a band I liked whose song was featured as Demo Of The Month in a magazine, asking to buy all their CDs. We kept in touch, and months later they asked me for some (free) advice…

> That's what worked for me anyway. Therefore it works for everyone. There are lots of people that do not make friends easily. There are lots of people that do not have friends in the industry that they work in. There are lots of people that have moved very far away from any friends once or many times in the past few years and have either completely lost contact or don't have friends that would be in any position to…

I added "that's what worked for me anyway" as a disclaimer that maybe it won't necessarily work for you. But they are some tactics you can try. The general idea was to try lots of tactics, assume 99% of them won't work, but maybe 1% of the time you'll discover something that works for you.

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

#234

Post by ori_b »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #137
stcredzero wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

San Francisco strikes as one of these low-tolerance / high-discrimination places. The rapidity with which people flip the idiot bit on you, due to puddle-shallow signalling in the Bay Area really takes my breath away. - The sound of keys clicking in a phone interview automatically means you are Googling the answer in an interview. Never mind that you are a dynamic language programmer and you are writing a 10 second s…

> "You must be able to mad-libs complete the paraphrase of recent CS textbooks" This kind of thing is the worst in interviews. Like getting asked some fill-in-the-blanks question on the pillars of OOP or to define some random bit of jargon or what-have-you. That coupled with the "have you seen this question before" interviewing is just infuriating.

> That coupled with the "have you seen this question before" interviewing is just infuriating.

When I interview someone, I will usually ask if they've seen the question before, so that I can skip it -- is there something wrong with that?

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

#235

Post by Applejinx »

vemv wrote: post #11

You don't want to be coding by age 50 anyway. Sooner or later it has to end. If you are a young programmer and your salary merely covers your costs of living (including leisure etc), it seems to me that you need a plan.

My God. Really?

It's very strange reading this. I'm 48 and it blows my mind to hear that 38-year-olds are unemployable as coders.

I ran airwindows.com for nearly a decade as a traditional product-selling business and brought in about a quarter of a million dollars all told, and then when my payment processor went out of business, I took it to patreon.com/airwindows and started putting my products out for free to get them in the hands of people who can no longer afford $50 a plugin. I'm going to be open-sourcing stuff, too, and continue to develop new concepts.

'coder' as a salaried drudge sounds like you just do what you're told. A person like that cannot run an independent business for ten years, and perhaps shouldn't be 'coding'.

For some of us, for me, it's like saying 'you don't want to be guitar playing (or singing, drumming, etc) by age 50'. It just highlights a really profound disparity in viewpoint there.

I can imagine young slave labor stacking the market against me (this is part of why I went to a patronage model, new as it is to me) but don't tell me not to code. That's crazy talk :)

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

#236

Post by biocomputation »

blakeyrat wrote: post #181
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…

The "Bay Area scene" is also pretty bad at figuring out that a lot of their problems only exist in the Bay Area . Although they're doing a heck of a job importing their horrible toxic culture up here to Seattle.

I wish I could upvote this 1,000,000 times. This is absolute truth!

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

#237

Post by heartsucker »

ori_b wrote: post #234
InclinedPlane wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "You must be able to mad-libs complete the paraphrase of recent CS textbooks" This kind of thing is the worst in interviews. Like getting asked some fill-in-the-blanks question on the pillars of OOP or to define some random bit of jargon or what-have-you. That coupled with the "have you seen this question before" interviewing is just infuriating.

> That coupled with the "have you seen this question before" interviewing is just infuriating. When I interview someone, I will usually ask if they've seen the question before, so that I can skip it -- is there something wrong with that?

Yes, because this gives them the chance to say no and pretend to walk through it slowly showing how "smart" they are.

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

#238

Post by biocomputation »

johnwheeler wrote: post #3

Hi Everybody, I'm the creator of the site the down blog in the OP links to https://oldgeekjobs.com . I developed it as an MVP last night in one hour. The blog looks like it's getting crushed under load, so here's the content of the post: Check out https://oldgeekjobs.com/ if you’re over 30. In the software development industry it’s hard to get hired when you get past 35 and are still “just a developer”. Employers loo…

I'm not sure if you're religious, but God bless you if you are! If you're not, then many thanks for doing this. I've already shared this with at least six friends.

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

#239

Post by Applejinx »

vemv wrote: post #24
santaclaus wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't want to be coding by age 50 anyway. Sooner or later it has to end. Why not? One of my favorite coworkers ever was over 50 and he still seemed to very much enjoy coding.

I'm pleased to read all the replies to my post - of course there are no universal truths! From my side I love programming per se (logical/creative thinking, etc), but programming as a profession is stressful: deadlines, unsatisfied clients, changing technologies... At age 50 I'd rather give my body and mind a rest, and focus in my family or whatnot. One thing is sure for me: I didn't come to this universe to spend it…

Oh, indeed it is. I posted upthread, I'm a sort of indie developer, and you're absolutely right: I had to force myself to take Saturdays off, otherwise I would strive every waking hour and the exhaustion is real.

The thing is, though… if you have a purpose, that changes things. I'm an audio DSP guy, not much use at other things, but my purpose from when I was very young was to get my personal recording studio to be as awesome as the ones shown on my favorite vinyl records. This entailed making some real progress on the weaknesses of digital audio, and over the years I have made plenty. That's MY personal windmill.

If you don't have that Don Quixote thing, the stress will grind you down. Money's not enough (hey, I'm in the music business, there IS no money there now whether it's devs or musicians). There has to be some less tangible goal to move towards, because the things you cite are indeed a problem. Apple migrated Audio Units to 64-bit and I updated my entire userbase, including legacy plugins, for free because I knew that they would eventually throw out any support for the original 32-bit format…

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

#240

Post by djrogers »

heartsucker wrote: post #237
ori_b wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That coupled with the "have you seen this question before" interviewing is just infuriating. When I interview someone, I will usually ask if they've seen the question before, so that I can skip it -- is there something wrong with that?

Yes, because this gives them the chance to say no and pretend to walk through it slowly showing how "smart" they are.

How is that any different from the potential behavior if one didn't ask?
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