Age Discrimination at Work
nytimes.com
Age Discrimination at Work
1–10 of 206 posts
Re: Age Discrimination at Work
#230 years ago the discrimination was firmly against young people, today it has flipped on its head. Yet we have larger HR departments, rules, etc etc. So some serious questions need to be asked.
But having felt the brunt of age discrimination when I was young and now older, I kinda angst. Kinda feel like generation discriminated sometimes having caught it at both ends.
Re: Age Discrimination at Work
#3I was applying to a job with a large game studio. The interview was going pretty well, I'd thought. We talked a bit about how we'd implement certain gameplay elements, the content of the projects we've worked on, and overall it just seemed good and we all seemed to get along pretty well.
Then they asked me how old I was. Their response to my age was, "Oh... maybe it's a little late then. You're not too old, but... kind of cutting it close by just a bit."
I was 26.
Re: Age Discrimination at Work
#4What profession is this article about? Surely age discrimination varies hugely depending on profession.
Re: Age Discrimination at Work
#5Allow me to provide a contrarian view. I'm not disagreeing that age-discrimination does not exist, however I must say it's not always the case.
I'm 35, so I wouldn't qualify as young but neither old.
Businesses tend to recruit younger devs for few reasons:
- They can be easily convinced to work longer hours
- They are typically paid much less
However there is one trait in older devs that make them undesirable:
- They tend to carry baggage from the past. This comes in various flavors, such as biases one has regarding the path of their careers, their interpersonal relationships (social and official), technology choices etc.
The thing about biases are that the mind that nurtures them can easily justify them, thus making the very biases appear rational and logical.
Furthermore not all biases are negative.
They are a useful piece of memory that comes with experience. The question is: Can you consciously choose when to apply the bias -or- Is your mind driven compulsively to apply them indiscriminately?
I would argue that victimhood about agism does not help anybody. If you are in a craft, where the barrier to entry is low, be prepared to compete with the fresh crop of talent coming in.
There's a lot more I could write about this. But I leave it for another time.
Re: Age Discrimination at Work
#6> At 66, I am in excellent health.... Then presume I’m Miranda Priestly... I do not want a childproof cap on anything that threatens to ruin my expensive manicure ... I do NOT have any children or grandchildren!
If you're 66 and you're still sitting around in a corporate job, and you have no children because you model yourself after a BS character from a BS movie then you're really just taking up space for someone who needs to feed their kids and family, has a potential to grow, and a better place to funnel the earned money than your "expensive manicure"
Giving a job to a younger person, unless you're irreplaceable and a "master" of your craft is not called age-discrimination, it's called "doing what's right for the society" even if it sucks.
Re: Age Discrimination at Work
#7One thing I don't like, which was present in this article, is throwing up our hands and saying "but there's nothing we can do". Of course there is. Nobody says that about racial discrimination. The simple truth is that age discrimination is not generally viewed as a problem. The attitude is that older workers aren't as productive, so let's let companies do what they want. In some states, the same argument used to be made about non-white workers, and the people that lived there had the same attitude.
Re: Age Discrimination at Work
#8> At 66, I am in excellent health.... Then presume I’m Miranda Priestly... I do not want a childproof cap on anything that threatens to ruin my expensive manicure ... I do NOT have any children or grandchildren! If you're 66 and you're still sitting around in a corporate job, and you have no children because you model yourself after a BS character from a BS movie then you're really just taking up space for someone wh…
So your preference over someone else’s?
Re: Age Discrimination at Work
#9> At 66, I am in excellent health.... Then presume I’m Miranda Priestly... I do not want a childproof cap on anything that threatens to ruin my expensive manicure ... I do NOT have any children or grandchildren! If you're 66 and you're still sitting around in a corporate job, and you have no children because you model yourself after a BS character from a BS movie then you're really just taking up space for someone wh…
> you're really just taking up space for someone who needs to feed their kids, has a potential to grow, and a better place to funnel the earned money than "expensive manicure"
That's a ridiculous assertion, if someone is physically well and wants to work it's nobody's business how they spent then spend the money they earn.
Choosing to have kids or not shouldn't give you any special status in the workforce at all (though in reality it often does).
Re: Age Discrimination at Work
#10> At 66, I am in excellent health.... Then presume I’m Miranda Priestly... I do not want a childproof cap on anything that threatens to ruin my expensive manicure ... I do NOT have any children or grandchildren! If you're 66 and you're still sitting around in a corporate job, and you have no children because you model yourself after a BS character from a BS movie then you're really just taking up space for someone wh…
> If you're 66 and you're still sitting around in a corporate job, and you have no children, 9/10 you're really just taking up space for someone who needs to feed their kids, has a potential to grow, and a better place to funnel the earned money than "expensive manicure"
That seems very judgmental to me.
I don't plan to have kids due to genetic conditions and other reasons, but by your reckoning, I don't deserve a job once I age because there are other people "more deserving."