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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

#311

Post by jondubois »

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…

I'm 27 now. My biggest fear is to not succeed in my career by the time I turn 40.

The idea of having to give up working on my startup goals after 20 years of continuous failure is in itself terrifying enough - But combine that with the fact that I might be penniless; forced to join a mega-corporation to become corporate cattle.

... In a company filled with arrogant lucky people in their 20s bossing me around. I couldn't take it.

I fear the next generation. I think MY generation is already so arrogant - We severely underestimate the value of experience.

I was one of the few people lucky enough to learn that lesson early though.

I once worked with a lady (a software engineer) who was in her early 40s and she always said that she never really cared much about her work. She always left work on the dot.

I was 21 at the time and I had been working like crazy since I was 14 but even back then it was clear that she was a much better software engineer than I was. For me, my career was the center of my life; for her, it was just a way to pay the mortgage.

In spite of what the media tries to tell us; 7 years of obsessive, passionate labour is not more valuable 22 years of 'bare minimum' labour. That's how valuable time is.

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

#312

Post by brlewis »

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…

Could it simply be that we hear the most tech career horror stories from the Bay Area because that's the place with the most tech careers? I'd be as hesitant to make generalizations about a place as I would be to make generalizations about an age bracket.

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

#313

Post by vikiomega9 »

stcredzero wrote: post #168
vonmoltke wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just took the TripleByte assessment for Mixpanel and over half of it was this kind of shit. Worse, they threw in multiple-choice design questions . No, I would not use any of the complicated sets of things you presented me in this case, and do not think any of them is the right answer.

I love this one: Once I was asked a design question. I presented three answers. Then the interviewer says, "Well, here's how I would do it!" (unspoken: you idiot) He then proceeds to write out my second option. (The takeaway: If you don't understand someone's jargon, you need to be curious and ask, don't just gloss over it.)

> If you don't understand someone's jargon, you need to be curious and ask, don't just gloss over it.

Quite frankly understated.

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

#314

Post by zaidf »

oldmanjay wrote: post #247
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…

I'm always amused when I have a polar opposite experience to someone's virulent assertions, which is definitely the case here. Edit: in a further comment, you assert an unspoken insult being communicated in a perfectly neutral sentence. I guess what I'm saying is I bet you bring quite a bit of the negativity you experience to your interactions.

I concur with you. People who have a super negative impression of SF nerds should re-consider their choice of nerds they are finding themselves around.

My own experiences in SF has been positive. I've found people are generally very excited about what they are doing in life, optimistic about the future and most importantly, willing to lend a hand. (This is in huge contrast to the cut throat image of the valley in the media; while individual startups and industries within tech may be cut throat, I wouldn't describe SF tech world as "generally cut throat")

One thing to keep in mind is SF has a fair share of folks who move here for their first job. These people are just entering the workforce and are maturing more, not less, each day. I've seen some pretty radical transformations of the same people over 1-3 years. A lot of the portrayal of the Valley in the media is of a fixed non-evolving mindset, which again, is the opposite of my experience.

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

#315

Post by commandar »

chetanahuja wrote: post #278
commandar wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the south isn't bigoted in the ways many people assume. There are absolutely small towns where open discrimination is a problem. And there are absolutely small minded jerks that have a problem with people of color. But what I've observed personally living in the south and travelling the country is that the south is often less functionally segregated than other areas of the country. It's sheer demographics if noth…

"And the south isn't bigoted in the ways many people assume." Only if there was some sort of a "survey" on people's attitudes in different parts of the country. Perhaps people with competing ideologies would represent one side or another and then the general public would decide to pick one of those choices to represent the majority view from that area. This way we'd actually know what a majority of the population in…

You've pretty much entirely missed my point.

I explicitly acknowledged that there are absolutely still real problems with race in the south. Things like the state of Alabama implementing voter ID laws and then shutting down DMV offices in poor black counties absolutely happen.

But what I was talking about was functional racism in terms of daily life. While many southerners absolutely say and support shitty things, it's not on the level of mid 20th century Jim Crow and other parts of the country aren't the relative panacea they perceive themselves to be. In completely functional terms, many of those areas are more racially segregated and/or isolated than the south.

Again, when demographically many cities are majority minority, there's more of an intermixing by necessity. That leads to blindspot in perspective of people that don't live in those environments that they don't even realize they have.

It's not limited to race; there's a similar very real problem in the media business where there's an inherent bias toward jobs going to the children of already affluent families that academically understand poverty, but don't fully understand how poverty functionally affects people because it's never been an inherent part of their lives.

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

#316

Post by mixmastamyk »

dragonwriter wrote: post #272
mixmastamyk wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rotary phones are from the 70's and earlier.

> Rotary phones are from the 70's and earlier. The last rotary phone I saw for sale was, I think, in the 1980s, the last one I saw in use was in the 2000s. Its quite possible that someone could be a millennial and have used one (IIRC, we used one in my house until 1986 -- the other phones in the house were touch tone -- and only ditched it because we happened to move.)

Sure, I remember rotaries hanging out for a while after that, but they were gone most places by the mid-80's in the US. Not to mention those in museums.

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

#318

Post by happychappy »

fredgrott wrote: post #279
gozur88 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the company's perspective the job has to be one for which the company can reliably measure your output. If you're doing data entry for medical records the company can easily count the number of patients you've finished, the number of pages, even the number of keystrokes. But for a developer working from home the company can't tell the difference between a bug that took three days of plugging away to find and one…

BULLSHIT! I can damn well see when a issue has been entered in a bug tracker and when the bug has finally been marked fixed with the commit listed in the bug tracker.. So can everyone else including managers

Assign bug to me... Fix bug in 20 minutes... wait 3 days (binge watching netflix)... Commit fix, mark bug as fixed...

Relying too much on commits / tracking tools is a red flag of poor management.

If any of my team reported "still working on bug X" in the standup 3 days in row, without any significantly interesting details, I'd have assigned a few more people to help out.

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

#319

Post by emodendroket »

tn13 wrote: post #200

I am 30 and I recently changed my apartment because there were simply too many old people in the complex. I want to live in apartments where there are plenty of girls who just crossed the legal age limit to drink. We all love youth and there is a good reason for why so. But at the same time because we are older and we tend to have more money and control more stuff. Most of the 30 something coders will rise up to the…

> I am 30 and I recently changed my apartment because there were simply too many old people in the complex. I want to live in apartments where there are plenty of girls who just crossed the legal age limit to drink.

That sounds like the opposite of what I want so I'd say we don't "all love youth."

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

#320

Post by alttab »

chetanahuja wrote: post #278
commandar wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the south isn't bigoted in the ways many people assume. There are absolutely small towns where open discrimination is a problem. And there are absolutely small minded jerks that have a problem with people of color. But what I've observed personally living in the south and travelling the country is that the south is often less functionally segregated than other areas of the country. It's sheer demographics if noth…

"And the south isn't bigoted in the ways many people assume." Only if there was some sort of a "survey" on people's attitudes in different parts of the country. Perhaps people with competing ideologies would represent one side or another and then the general public would decide to pick one of those choices to represent the majority view from that area. This way we'd actually know what a majority of the population in…

What people believe isn't always what people DO. When I lived in Texas for 7 years I was surprised to find that Texans can make fun of "beaners" and then respect their work ethic and hire them over "lazy white people who want to get paid more."

It's a mix that requires. A different lense that most don't have.

I grew up in liberal DC, and then went to texas. I'm now up north again, but my view of the south has changed dramatically.

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