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Why Ageism Never Gets Old

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Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#221

Post by garfij »

Noos wrote: post #195

It sounds like we are seeing work become sport, with all the positives and negatives sport has. Maybe seeing it as ageism isn't helpful. Ageism doesn't exist in sport because the abilities you need can and do decline with age. I wonder for all the talk about "I'm just as good" if people really are; it's honestly ridiculous to assume a forty year old is as elastic or is possessed of the resiliency or endurance to keep…

It's been said elsewhere in this thread, but there is a distinct difference between the knowledge you accumulate in years of engineering and the constant cycle of learning the new framework.

Anyone can learn a new framework. Making good architectural and design decisions generally takes experience.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#222

Post by cmrdporcupine »

lovich wrote: post #190
bitcrusher wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been my experience as well; It's as if every company is looking for a unicorn programmer... when their domain isn't any more or less unique than any other domain. One of the "interesting" side effects is that it seems like interviewers are starting with the assumption that the person interviewing is an idiot who knows nothing and then works from there. So any slight misstep or misremembering of something put…

Exactly, my favorite flavor of those are the ones where the interviewer appears to not stop until they find what you cannot solve, which is perfectly fine for an interview, but they still seem to treat that failure as an inability to program. One place I interviewed at wasn't doing much more than crud, and we got into our 4th cs question of that day, and my 6th with the company so far after their phone screen. They g…

Ugh. I have a pretty decent job, and about 20 years of experience, so I have no need to job hunt. But if/when I do, I fully intend to adopt the policy that I will get up and walk out of interviews that do whiteboard coding puzzle tests. Having been trained to conduct such interviews at Google, I have no desire to participate in them. I can see their use for large companies like Google or Amazon that get thousands of resumes a day and can afford the false negatives if it means fewer false positives. But I can't see their utility at all for small companies hungry for good talent.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#223

Post by throwanem »

watwut wrote: post #185
throwanem wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paid time and effort that could be better spent than on mentoring someone who'll make no good use of the knowledge you're trying to impart, then. Part of learning your craft is learning how not to get owned, too.

What does someone not using knowledge have to do with younger employees having to do all the weekends due to hazing and "unspoken rules"? Anyway, if you are not willing to explain, then your senior salary is deathweight to company. Another part of learning craft is to recognize when someone else is being owned. It is a bit harder.

One wonders whether a senior engineer who does so recognize has put a word in the ears of the juniors involved, if he feels they are indeed so hardly used.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#224

Post by randcraw »

CaptSpify wrote: post #134
eicossa wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't have any numbers on this and would welcome any, but it seems true. How many young people are willing to sign up for $how_new_website_of_the_week vs older people? My personal experience is that older people realize that the website will likely disappear within the next 2-3 years, so they ignore it until it actually catches on. Younger people seem willing to sign up for anything new. How many young vs old peopl…

As you age, you become less motivated by trends and fads. The more seasons of fashion nouvelle you've seen, the more you recognize the Next Big Thing as being mere Pied Piper ephemera.

Soon enough, the major cultural inflection points of leaving elementary, HS, and college will fall behind you. Your job and family take center stage, and your free time shrinks along with the positive reinforcement you get from lightweight social immersion. Then the bloom is off the rose of those latest startups as your net-social focus shifts into more of a spectator mode, posting family photos on Facebook for those now distant friends of yore while caring for your kids, and then caring for your parents. Before you know it, 30 years have passed since you were tuned in and turned on by your last net pet rock.

In many ways, SV startups are truly a young person's game.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#225

Post by jasode »

mbesto wrote: post #146
jasode wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>median age of an American is 41. That we're discussing people in that age range as counterexamples kind of proves the point. Don't take my previous post as a complete dataset. It was only coincidence that I happen to list programmers in their 40s off the top of my head. Here are some more in their 60s: - Google also hired Vint Cerf (TCPIP) at age 62. - Amazon AWS recently hired James Gosling (Java) age ~62. - PayPal…

> will actually discriminate against the young 20-somethings for certain roles. Uhh that's not age discrimination, that's creating a job role "Chief Internet Evanglist" and hiring the best person for the job, "Vint Cerf". Do you think anyone other than the creator of the TCPIP protocol could fill that role regardless of age? Also, isn't there also an implicit age discrimination against younger people in any job spec…

>Do you think anyone other than the creator of the TCPIP protocol could fill that role regardless of age?

Not to argue with you but if we want to have fun with question... it's not "Chief TCPIP Evangelist" but "Chief _Internet_ Evangelist".

If "internet" is the key word, we don't have to be limited to an arbitrary point in the network stack and pick a person from it. If we go lower and more foundational to the "internet" which is "packet switching", maybe Leonard Kleinrock[1] is more appropriate "Internet Evangelist". If we go higher in the stack to http, maybe Tim Berners-Lee is the better fit for "Internet Evangelist".

If we really embrace "internet evangelist", maybe the best person is none of the technical guys but a 19-year old college dropout from Africa. Conceivably, that type of person would have more to gain from a better internet so his brand of "evangelism" for internet's future growth would be more effective than any of the older white guys from 1st world countries.

>Also, isn't there also an implicit age discrimination against younger people in any job spec when you say "X years experience"?

Sure. One could also argue that there's stealth age discrimination when your job requirements list "Rust programming language experience" since more 20-year olds than 50-year olds will learn that language.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRlZcKUp2vo

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#226

Post by rhizome »

jerf wrote: post #105
ams6110 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yes, but when Framework B goes sweeping through the world, Framework A doesn't actually go anywhere. People keep working with it. If software engineers actually burned down all the old code every three years and literally everybody had to learn this new thing in order to do anything at all, this claim would make sense. But it's all additive. Even as we here on HN are shrieking and hooting about Framework B and the wa…

Not to mention how much Java is written in Ruby, C written in Perl, and so on. Where the round-hole syntax of one language/framework can be hammered into the square-hole of another, it will be.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#228

Post by kafkaesq »

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.

Unfortunately it's partially valid. Job ads in particular are (presumably for a want of some other way to whittle down the pile of incoming resumes) considerably biased towards frameworks and gizmos that have been around 3 years or less.

Yes there are new languages and frameworks we have to learn, but if we apply any effort ...

You'd think a lot of these places assuming we're all utterly incapable of "learning", they way they phrase some of these requirement lists.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#229

Post by mcguire »

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…

As long as the market has been sufficiently de-skilled, by the belief that it can be taught by weeks-long bootcamps alone and a 25 year old has seen enough crap to be called "senior", that will be a valid view.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#230

Post by sliverstorm »

irrational wrote: post #163

The code I wrote in my 20s was pure garbage. The code I wrote in my 30s was embarrassing. The code I'm writing in my 40s is perhaps passable. I'm hoping that by the time I get to my 60s I will be able to write good code. I'll probably retire just as I'm hitting my peak as a programmer.

A challenge of our increasingly advanced technologies.

Some of this we can work around with abstraction, but sometimes I wonder if an extension to productive working years will be a critical step to keep advancing science and technology. The more the existing body of knowledge grows, the longer it takes to study & train up to the forefront of development.

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