Ask HN: Developers aged 50, how have you gotten around age discrimination?

Embrace the gray beard, find one of those companies that welcomes us geezers, and clearly articulate how our decades of experience translates to business value.

I just posted a comment in another thread about burnout. It's very common in our industry. I believe it's due to the Coolidge Effect. Aka, the brains inherent search for novelty. It's a struggle to not look at almost all programming tasks as just some variation of the same problem, if you've been doing this long enough. How do you keep it interesting enough, to stay passionate?

There is ageism, yes, but I think a deeper problem is reaction to peoples appearance. If you are late twenties concerned about age, then hide it, starting now.

* Always wear sunscreen when you are outside, regardless of race. It prevents skin aging, and you'll still tan and get Vitamin D regardless.

* Work out: lifting weights and doing cardio have differing goals and match up in interesting ways. Learn them. I do almost 100% pure heavy weight lifting, and I'm actually very thin, despite what I toss around.

* Make sure your clothes fit and look good. Go to a tailor and get one outfit made nice a year for interviews/on-sites (if working remotely) etc.

Taking care of yourself physically might not seem related to a lot of this, but people discriminate in a number of ways, and the more you take away, the better you might do. In addition, two of the above are general health things that you should be doing anyhow.

I forgot about interpersonal skills when I first finished writing this:

* Practice getting people talking about themselves. It's the best way to get people to think that you are interesting. I would argue it's the most important tool in my interpersonal skillset and I've met a ton of interesting people using it.