Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Ageism Never Gets Old

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 272 posts

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#71

Post by gadders »

Harvey-Specter wrote: post #31
Swinx43 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This mythology leads directly to horribly created software that will either ensure many terrible security breaches in the future or the continued proliferation of "magic" throughout a product. One of the issues is using the word "engineer" for any of the brogrammer types. an engineer in any other proper engineering discipline does not become worthless with age, their experience actually counts for something. Somehow…

> One of the issues is using the word "engineer" for any of the brogrammer types In Canada the term 'engineer' is regulated at the provincial level, and a person can be prosecuted for labeling themselves as an engineer if they are not registered and licensed with their province's engineering association. For example in Ontario in order to join Professional Engineers Ontario and call yourself an engineer you must meet…

Ethics exams are the stupidest kinds of exam. If you have no ethics, you'd have no problem and cheating to pass.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#72

Post by Harvey-Specter »

pc86 wrote: post #64
wyager wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example in Ontario in order to join Professional Engineers Ontario and call yourself an engineer you must meet strict academic and work experience requirements[1], pass an ethics exam, and pay a yearly membership fee. Sounds like a racket, especially given that the PEO is a private organization. I’m not sure why this is supposed to be a good thing. > Everyone who graduates from an accredited engineering program…

You can become a software PE in the United States, but it is absolutely a racket. One of the requirements for a PE is you need to work for another PE. This leads to a situation where new exams, like the software discipline, have 20 people sit for an exam in one year. The transportation discipline had 1,800.

> One of the requirements for a PE is you need to work for another PE.

That's also a requirement in Canada (Ontario at least). Work experience has to be completed while working under a P.Eng.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#73

Post by slavik81 »

jasode wrote: post #29

First, ageism is not just a SV phenomenon. For example, see the very young White House aides in Clinton, Bush, & Obama administrations.[1] Second, the tech companies that have a reputation for favoring 20-somethings will still hire older workers for certain positions. - Even though Mark Zuckerberg said, "younger people are just smarter" , he hired an "old" person like Sheryl Sandberg to be COO at age ~38. - Bill Gate…

> First, ageism is not just a SV phenomenon. For example, see the White House aides in Clinton, Bush, & Obama administrations.

And the office of the president itself. The minimum age is 35.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#74

Post by emidln »

jeremyjh wrote: post #3

> In the nineteen-twenties, an engineer’s “half life of knowledge”—the time it took for half of his expertise to become obsolete—was thirty-five years. In the nineteen-sixties, it was a decade. Now it’s five years at most, and, for a software engineer, less than three. This sort of mythology is NOT helping. An experienced Software Engineer has valuable skills that do not age at all. Yes there are new languages and fr…

I'm 31 and I've been hacking software professionally for 15 years. I've debugged issues in the last month that I couldn't have done 5 years ago with 10 years experience, let alone when I was 21. As I grow more experienced my responsibilities increase in both breadth and depth.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#75

Post by Chris2048 »

ryandrake wrote: post #47
dogruck wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting ageism aside (which is certainly real), perhaps it’s also related to what the company is optimizing for. For example, it’s now clear that companies like Twitter only optimized for number of supposed real users. I’m sure they had no appetite for to hear lessons from an experienced engineer. “Hey, what if this platform becomes a cesspool — a potent vector for hate and fraud, infested with fake accounts?” “Shut…

"You'll be working here to build a massive, deliberately addictive, privacy invading societal ill full of fake news and skinner-box games." 20-something: "Sign me up, bro! This entry-level salary is more than twice what my parents make combined!" 30-something: "I'm torn, but I still have student loans to pay off..." 40-something: "Will I be proud to tell my kids I built this?"

the young have student loans, but the old don't have, say, mortgages or medical bills?

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#76

Post by eicossa »

ryandrake wrote: post #51
barrkel wrote: post #12

As the bulge in older people progresses and ageism becomes worse in an irrational way, it may make sense for older people to come together and form companies of their own, focused on selling to older people, who, of course, have the wealth (if not always the income).

You bring up a good point: Despite older people having all of the wealth in the world (and likely a great deal of the income), few startups seem to be courting them as customers. Everyone's target end-user seems to be that mythical 15-25 year old middle class Ideal Consumer.

Could it be because older people are also going to be much more unwilling to try something new ? Noophilia seems to be a feature of youth.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#77

Post by btilly »

wyager wrote: post #42
Harvey-Specter wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the issues is using the word "engineer" for any of the brogrammer types In Canada the term 'engineer' is regulated at the provincial level, and a person can be prosecuted for labeling themselves as an engineer if they are not registered and licensed with their province's engineering association. For example in Ontario in order to join Professional Engineers Ontario and call yourself an engineer you must meet…

> For example in Ontario in order to join Professional Engineers Ontario and call yourself an engineer you must meet strict academic and work experience requirements[1], pass an ethics exam, and pay a yearly membership fee. Sounds like a racket, especially given that the PEO is a private organization. I’m not sure why this is supposed to be a good thing. > Everyone who graduates from an accredited engineering program…

The value of the system shows up in things like civil engineering when it is required that an accredited engineer signs off on the design. That engineer has personal liability if the building fails. The engineer's boss cannot simply order the engineer to sign off on the design, if the engineer says that you must, it has real weight.

The US has the same basic system, all that is different is how strictly the word "engineer" is regulated. And that varies by state.

Before that system was adopted, bridges fell down an average of once a week in the USA. We have a lot more and bigger bridges now, but not nearly as many fall down.

Read https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Software-Development-Sch... for case for doing the same thing for software development.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#78

Post by ams6110 »

jonahx wrote: post #67
jeremyjh wrote: post #3

> In the nineteen-twenties, an engineer’s “half life of knowledge”—the time it took for half of his expertise to become obsolete—was thirty-five years. In the nineteen-sixties, it was a decade. Now it’s five years at most, and, for a software engineer, less than three. This sort of mythology is NOT helping. An experienced Software Engineer has valuable skills that do not age at all. Yes there are new languages and fr…

> This sort of mythology is NOT helping. An experienced Software Engineer has valuable skills that do not age at all. Not only is the claim "now it’s five years at most, and, for a software engineer, less than three" an unhelpful mythology, it's laughably incorrect to the point that I can't imagine anyone knowledgable espousing the view with a straight face. It stems from, on the one hand, "software as popular cultur…

> Not only is the claim "now it’s five years at most, and, for a software engineer, less than three" an unhelpful mythology, it's laughably incorrect

It's narrowly referring to the "framework fads" that do seem to sweep through our profession on about a three-to-five-year cycle.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#79

Post by balabaster »

moduspol wrote: post #34
Swinx43 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This mythology leads directly to horribly created software that will either ensure many terrible security breaches in the future or the continued proliferation of "magic" throughout a product. One of the issues is using the word "engineer" for any of the brogrammer types. an engineer in any other proper engineering discipline does not become worthless with age, their experience actually counts for something. Somehow…

I don't think it's ageism if one person is selected based on being willing to work more for less money. That's just a labor market. There's an argument to be made that 20-somethings shouldn't work more than 40 hours a week or should require higher pay. Or that employers should place more value on the work of more experienced developers. Or both. But I don't think experienced developers should be exempt from keeping w…

Never compete on price. Provide something that nobody else can and stick with it, otherwise it's a race to the bottom.

Those companies that hire the cheapest labour will get the quality they pay for. Let them, it's not your problem. There are enough who care about doing it right that they will eventually find you and will pay you according to the value you bring.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#80

Post by ams6110 »

icebraining wrote: post #9
jeremyjh wrote: post #3

> In the nineteen-twenties, an engineer’s “half life of knowledge”—the time it took for half of his expertise to become obsolete—was thirty-five years. In the nineteen-sixties, it was a decade. Now it’s five years at most, and, for a software engineer, less than three. This sort of mythology is NOT helping. An experienced Software Engineer has valuable skills that do not age at all. Yes there are new languages and fr…

Even languages and frameworks don't change that much outside of certain niches. Django and Rails have been around for over a decade. Go, a "new" language, is eight years old. I've been working for 5.5 years with a Python-based platform called Odoo (purely by chance of employment) and I don't see it going away any time soon. A colleague of mine also recently got a very good offer for helping maintain a codebase in Inf…

I think you have that backwards. It's inside certain niches that people are still building stuff in Rails and other decade(s)-old frameworks. Now it's node.js and react, to name a couple of examples. By 2020 something else will probably be the hotness. By 2025, those frameworks will still be around, running established systems, but won't be very interesting to any new developers.
Post reply on HN