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Why Ageism Never Gets Old

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Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#111

Post by Swinx43 »

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…

> 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.

Agreed, however very few ever come out and says that so directly. In a lot of cases the reasons are given as not having the right "cultural fit", or being "over qualified" or some other excuse because the person hiring cannot stomach it to simply say "we want cheap resources that we can work to the bone".

No one should feel like they need to perform the equivalent of slave labour in order to get a job. 20-somethings should not have to work 80 hour weeks. Allowing them the free time to pursue their interests will make them better employees.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#112

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

>> With the advent of the cloud and off-the-shelf A.P.I.s—the building blocks of sites and apps—all you really need to launch a startup is a bold idea. Silicon Valley believes that bold ideas are the province of the young.

Well, right now I don't see any "bold" ideas coming out of SV. What I see is everyone doing "X with deep learning", or "Facebook for Y", or "Uber for Z but with deep learning"). That's, like, the opposite of bold. It's everyone trying to milk the same cow before its teats fall off.

But even so- there's an obvious survivorship fallacy at work here. If SV is throwing a ton of money at graduates and school leavers to come and work for it in their startups, it kind of makes sense that the successful startups -few and far between as they may be- will be made up by younger programmers.

Anyway, older programmers don't have to go to SV and join a startup. There must be millions of companies in the world that use software, most of it legacy- from big corporations to small mom-and-pop shops. Anyone who knows how to debug and refactor can make a comfortable living these days.

In fact, "Pourvu que ça dure".

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#113

Post by sidlls »

moduspol wrote: post #93
sidlls wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. All sorts of discrimination exists still because "perfectly rational" arguments like yours ignore underlying reasons. For example: it's the same justification racists used for intelligence tests for voting not too long ago.

Yes, and all sorts of underlying reasons are hidden by assuming "-isms" and victimhood at the first sign of disparate outcomes. But trying to address perceived ageism doesn't solve the problem. Being aware of contributing factors and correcting for them on an individual level does.

> Yes, and all sorts of underlying reasons are hidden by assuming "-isms" and victimhood at the first sign of disparate outcomes.

This is a loaded and contentious statement ("assuming...victimhood at the first sign").

And trying to address ageism is trying to solve the problem; the problem is ageism.

In your particular example, ageism is manifest because older workers tend to have families and financial obligations (both of which, by the way, contribute to society). That's not "perceived" ageism. It's simply ageism.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#114

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

>> Zuckerberg once observed, “Young people are just smarter,”

When he's old that will change to "older people are just more experienced".

I mean "it will change" as the Seven Commandments changed in the Animal Farm: you won't be able to find the original quote anywhere on the internet, anymore; only the retconned one. Zuck will always have been wise beyond his years.

You wait and see.

(I exaggerate)

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#115

Post by sidlls »

moduspol wrote: post #98
jpindar wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's predjudice if you pre-judge how much people are willing to work or how much money they want based on their demographics.

It is, but parent comment stated it as fact--not a prejudgment. If you are avoiding older candidates because of presumptions about them in terms of work ethic or compensation expectations, you are wrong. If you are advertising below-market salaries and expecting >40 hr work weeks and only attract younger people, there is nothing wrong with that. Older candidates are not entitled to employment in the positions they wa…

> If you are avoiding older candidates because of presumptions about them in terms of work ethic or compensation expectations, you are wrong. If you are advertising below-market salaries and expecting >40 hr work weeks and only attract younger people, there is nothing wrong with that.

You don't seem to understand how discrimination works: the advertisement you describe discriminates against older workers because of how lives typically evolve with age (e.g. ability to sustain long hours, family or other obligations, etc.). The two scenarios you describe aren't objectively independent or even clearly separable.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#116

Post by nonamechicken »

ddorian43 wrote: post #32
nonamechicken wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish this was true in India. In India, we love to parade around saying respect our elders. But when it comes to Indian IT companies, it literally is a pyramid. I used to and still wonder where does all the 10+ year experienced guys go. In almost every team I have been, its predominantly freshers. In India, once you have 8+ years, I have heard the number of calls one get from recruiters is far less. And if you are n…

Maybe they have too many people ?

Its true that too many people gives the companies an advantage. I think the below reasons also contribute:

1. Good chunk of outsourced work doesn't need much knowledge or experience.

2. Customers who outsource outsource because they want to save money. This means they will say they cannot pay more than x dollars per hour per resource. This will automatically eliminate experienced guys because they would expect more salary.

3. Freshers will literally spend all their time in office for really low pay.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#117

Post by moduspol »

sidlls wrote: post #113
moduspol wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and all sorts of underlying reasons are hidden by assuming "-isms" and victimhood at the first sign of disparate outcomes. But trying to address perceived ageism doesn't solve the problem. Being aware of contributing factors and correcting for them on an individual level does.

> Yes, and all sorts of underlying reasons are hidden by assuming "-isms" and victimhood at the first sign of disparate outcomes. This is a loaded and contentious statement ("assuming...victimhood at the first sign"). And trying to address ageism is trying to solve the problem; the problem is ageism. In your particular example, ageism is manifest because older workers tend to have families and financial obligations (…

It is assuming victimhood, because it is presumed immoral (or illegal) activity for what could at least as reasonably be totally moral and legal decisionmaking as a result of other factors.

If you choose not to work as much as someone else or made choices that require higher compensation, it is not an "-ism" for your employer to choose another candidate on that basis alone. We're going down a dark road claiming victimhood without evidence as quickly as people are.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#118

Post by discreditable »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #112

>> With the advent of the cloud and off-the-shelf A.P.I.s—the building blocks of sites and apps—all you really need to launch a startup is a bold idea. Silicon Valley believes that bold ideas are the province of the young. Well, right now I don't see any "bold" ideas coming out of SV. What I see is everyone doing "X with deep learning", or "Facebook for Y", or "Uber for Z but with deep learning"). That's, like, the o…

> What I see is everyone doing "X with deep learning"

Agreed. Even Google is guilty. Press releases from them that don't mention "Machine Learning" are becoming rare. "Machine Learning" is the new "cloud" buzzword.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#119

Post by moduspol »

sidlls wrote: post #115
moduspol wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is, but parent comment stated it as fact--not a prejudgment. If you are avoiding older candidates because of presumptions about them in terms of work ethic or compensation expectations, you are wrong. If you are advertising below-market salaries and expecting >40 hr work weeks and only attract younger people, there is nothing wrong with that. Older candidates are not entitled to employment in the positions they wa…

> If you are avoiding older candidates because of presumptions about them in terms of work ethic or compensation expectations, you are wrong. If you are advertising below-market salaries and expecting >40 hr work weeks and only attract younger people, there is nothing wrong with that. You don't seem to understand how discrimination works: the advertisement you describe discriminates against older workers because of h…

We're just getting into a pointless gray area when that argument is made. Doesn't having work hours that don't match with school hours discriminate against parents? Isn't a position with on-call responsibilities inherently discriminating against people with more familial commitments?

I don't think it's the employer's responsibility to tailor the job to match a candidate's chosen lifestyle, or that not doing so means you're discriminating. I think people need to be responsible for their own decisions, and if that means you're less competitive relative to another candidate, that is not the employer or the other candidate's fault.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#120

Post by dkarl »

Is it just me, or was there was a generation where it was hit or miss whether they regarded learning entirely new technologies as a routine part of the job? Among people who would be over, say, roughly 60-65 years old right now, it would be pretty cool to meet someone who kept abreast of developments in the field and were excited when they spotted something that could be an improvement on the tech they currently worked with. Those people were exceptional, and they were always pretty smart. The norm was to want to spend the next ten years working on the same thing you spent the last ten years on.

I think people younger than that (people under 60 now) have internalized the ethos of always being ready to roll with change. Who moved my cheese, all that stuff. Even if it's hard for them, they at least accept it as fact and give it lip service. It's been a huge cultural shift to an attitude that everyone has to spend their whole lives learning and adapting. That attitude is native for my generation; in school we read about the Rust Belt and the collapse of American manufacturing and we all said, "What was wrong with those people? Why didn't they adapt, move to a different economic sector, and move where the jobs were?" That's the way we were programmed to think. My father's generation understood the Rust Belt differently. They all hoped they would have done better, but failing to adapt was a normal response that they could easily sympathize with. That generation was not on notice to always be ready for change.

I think this cultural shift is going to result in a decline in ageism. The older engineers I've worked with in the last ten years have behaved like any other engineers, except they happen to have a lot of experience. Unlike many older people I worked with early in my career, they aren't cranky about their favorite tools declining in popularity. They don't drag their feet learning the team's new tech stack and rationalize their refusal by predicting widespread failure and a mass return to last decade's technology. There was a time when that was the way older people were supposed to act and there was no embarrassment about it. In a younger worker behavior like that could be treated as an attitude problem, but in an older worker, it was tricky, because social norms said they were entitled to act that way.

Now the expectations for older people have utterly changed. I can't imagine a 55-year-old engineer pulling that shit in 2017, so there's no reason to be afraid of hiring them.

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