91–100 of 206 posts
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When you are young and childless you get the difficult shift/all nighter/extra travel because the other guys have families. Then when you get older and the kids are gone you get the same screwing over because the other guys have family to feed. It's always something.
That's because people with kids have practically 2 jobs i.e. 2x as much workload and it will be those kids that will pay for your retirement.
Allow 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…
> The thing about biases are that the mind that nurtures them can easily justify them, thus making the very biases appear rational and logical. https://scottberkun.com/essays/40-why-smart-people-defend-ba...
Here I'm getting voted for saying people with experience tend to gather biases.
Of course I never denied that younger people don't have biases. And I conceded that not all biases are bad. :whatever:
I've effectively "fixed" a couple startups built by fresh college grads and interns and made a pretty penny doing it. I think some companies and some founders have thought engineering was an area where they could cut corners by not hiring experienced people, and they have learned this is a good way to fail. That being said, you want a mix - more seasoned people leading the direction, processes, and technology selecti…
This is actually an example of age discrimination. Young people can be in leadership too. I always see conversations about ageism in tech drift towards older workers but as someone who was precocious I was often denied opportunities I was ready for because I didn’t have “enough experience”.
Experience is a weird one in that it's what they've chosen to do (ok to use) but wanting to see more experience will either mean they had more time to do things (not ok to use) or didn't waste so much of the time they had (ok on the surface, but you'd need to know the person's age to calculate whether or not the amount of experience you desire was within the range of possibility for them).
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I wish it were. Google "lebenslauf muster" in image search to see it in full effect. > There are a few must-have personal details every Lebenslauf should include which you might not have on your original CV: a photo, your marital status and place of birth. https://www.thelocal.de/20130131/47649
This is the same in Sweden fwiw. I was agast when CVs started passing my desk with seemly random self-portraits on them. Why the hell do I care what you look like?
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> 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. No. It was part of the unwritten "societal contract" that old people retire to leave place for young people to rise. This worked for long times, but governments broke this contract decades ago by wrecking pension/retirement systems, and now the wannabe-pensioners have…
I have to wonder, when people used to think about medicine extending the human lifespan, did they realise it just meant another 10 years of work. What a horrible outcome. If the people who wanted to retire were allowed, then kids wouldn't struggle to find jobs. Even starter jobs are difficult to find. Anecdata, but when I was looking for a starter job the median age of a shop worker was nearly 30. All the higher up j…
I'm now over 50 years old, a full stack web developer, and I'm married and have two kids, an 8 year old and a 1 year old baby. I've been in this industry for a while. I started out as a system administrator writing a lot of bash and Perl scripts, taking care of mail servers and DNS, and doing a lot of corporate backups. That job is now called "DevOps", and I've made the transition. I now work in Python 3, Django, Rub…
I've never worked with a significantly older person (in tech anyways), but I would happily lean on them for sniffing out fads. Even in my 30's, it's kinda hard to tell what's a fad and what's not. I really don't understand why there is a bias against age. Programming, for me, is a daily exercise in epistemic humility, and I can't fathom having the kind of arrogance to discount the experience and wisdom that comes wit…
I've observed this first-hand while doing interviews. Even in companies that insist there's no bias against age, and even with people who insist they don't have any bias, there is nonetheless a preference for hiring:
* People who don't have a clear understanding of how much their work is worth and therefore have difficulties negotiating a high salary
* People who openly display enthusiasm -- and this is especially true among HR and higher-level managers, who can't really discern technical expertise so they look at things they can assess themselves. Enthusiasm is obviously good to have but it's no substitute for expertise, commitment and discipline, all of which are hard to evaluate if you have little or no technical experience.
* People who have no strong personal commitments and don't mind doing overtime on a short notice
* People who are enthusiastic about new technology, because they enable ambitious team leaders' and managers' experiments and pet projects instead of skeptically cautioning against them.
* People who have no trouble buying into a new company's culture, even when it's of questionable value (i.e. people who can quickly assimilate and integrate in even the most toxic working environments, as opposed to people who can recognize one, understand what kind of damage it does, and quickly go fsck it, this ain't worth it!)
Experienced programmers know their worth and aren't twenty year-olds that you can walk all over if you have a fancy title. So there are a lot of hiring managers who would be okay with hiring a 50-year old candidate, but have difficulty finding a 50-year old candidate that they'd be willing to hire.
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That's because people with kids have practically 2 jobs i.e. 2x as much workload and it will be those kids that will pay for your retirement.
We all know it's like having 2 jobs. But having kids is a choice. Don't do it if you can't pay for it or you have to keep leaning on colleagues to cover for you. As for the prospects of other people's kids paying for my retirement, that seems very low probability given the projections for the future of social security. When planning for retirement you should assume you receive zero from social security.
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I've never worked with a significantly older person (in tech anyways), but I would happily lean on them for sniffing out fads. Even in my 30's, it's kinda hard to tell what's a fad and what's not. I really don't understand why there is a bias against age. Programming, for me, is a daily exercise in epistemic humility, and I can't fathom having the kind of arrogance to discount the experience and wisdom that comes wit…
> I really don't understand why there is a bias against age. I've observed this first-hand while doing interviews. Even in companies that insist there's no bias against age, and even with people who insist they don't have any bias, there is nonetheless a preference for hiring: * People who don't have a clear understanding of how much their work is worth and therefore have difficulties negotiating a high salary * Peop…
I've seen and heard of age discrimination in non-tech industries, but in the tech industry I believe that age discrimination is often mistaken for skills obsolescence. As a software developer for as long as I can remember, I'm actually at the top of my game now in my 40s - I can software engineer (plan) off the top of my head, and my tenacity is balanced with a sense of direction I never had as a younger developer. I…