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Ask HN: What Happens to Older Designers?

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Re: Ask HN: What Happens to Older Designers?

#21

Post by vogt »

Many go into management, as you say. In my experience the best managers were never even remotely the best designers in terms of pure raw talent. That is sorta secondary to your question, and just kinda my own personal inject. At the same time though, I think it supports the idea that staff/principal/"Distinguished whatever" titles for design serve a use case. In fact, some BigCos have adopted that model similar to Staff Software Engineer, etc. FAANG/FAANG-adjacent types. I think Amazon, Slack, Discord have staff+ level designers. I don't know the official job requirements, but I'd assume 7-10+ years of real actual digital product design work.

I imagine we will see more of that. People like me who have been around a while or longer are getting older, and not all of us want to pivot to management. Can't even imagine doing it!

I've been in this industry for ~10 years, and am getting pretty burnt out on it. Lately though things have been better. If you stick around in the field and find an answer to this question...reach out and let me know? :) Best of luck!

Re: Ask HN: What Happens to Older Designers?

#22

Post by gaadd33 »

brudgers wrote: post #8
usea wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an older designer should have a rolladex full of people who they worked below, beside, and above over the course of their career As a non-traditional professional in a lot of ways, I've found these kinds of assumptions at the core of a lot of discrimination (age and otherwise). A person should be judged based on their skills/value, not based on where someone thinks they "should" be in their life based on stereotype…

I don’t expect an older designer to have that Rolodex because I am an older designer and don’t have one. I just understand that that is a problem that wishing the world was fair in ways that benefited me won’t solve. If the OP doesn’t have the Rolodex of people who would work with them again - like me - then it is a problem. Or possibly a symptom of a deeper issue of why people don’t want to work with them. Or possib…

I'm curious, do you really not stay in contact with anyone you have worked with in the past in any capacity? Or is it more that they wouldn't work with you again?

Just curious since even as someone who sucks at "networking" and that sort of thing, I feel like I've worked with people that we mutually respect each other's skill regardless if it's direct reporting lines.

Re: Ask HN: What Happens to Older Designers?

#23

Post by lornemalvo »

awestroke wrote: post #18
keyle wrote: post #5

It depends what you compare it against. Software development changes all the time, developers constantly have to upskill. Trends drive demand and NIH runs strong in the industry. There is nothing we're doing today that couldn't be done with Java for example. Design on the other hand is interfacing with humans. Humans are meat sacks who hardly evolve or change, in fact, you might argue, they regress. For this reason,…

> There is nothing we're doing today that couldn't be done with Java for example. Wow. Strongly disagree.

Example?

Re: Ask HN: What Happens to Older Designers?

#25

Post by mrxd »

naet wrote: post #13
mrxd wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is untrue for the simple reason that your friends’ employers wouldn’t allow it. Hiring practices based on personal references opens the door to discrimination lawsuits, so every HR department creates objective interview processes that remove such advantages.

I disagree strongly. Personal referrals are one of the most effective ways to get a job, and also one of the most effective ways to increase hiring quality. At the very least a personal reference will fast track you into an interview stage ahead of most other cold applications.

There are edge cases where a personal reference is valuable. If you’re inexperienced, it can get you an interview. Or it can get you a job at a small company without a real HR department.

But outside of that, a hiring decision made based on a personal relationship is considered cronyism. It isn’t always illegal, but most HR departments go out of their way to prevent it.

“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” is terrible career advice in general. It can be incredibly seductive because it promises people an advantage over competition. But it’s wrong. It’s a waste of time and in my experience, the people who follow it tend to interview poorly because they come off as arrogant and complacent.

Re: Ask HN: What Happens to Older Designers?

#26

Post by theoa »

I'm 75. You will pull the keyboard out of my cold, dead hands.

"Nobody knows you are a dog on the internet" Ditto being aged ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_...

Most of the technologies I play with - HTML5, webGL, Three.js etc - did not exist ten years ago. So it's a level playing field.

There's more open source stuff on GitHub that needs help and mentoring than you can shake a keyboard, er, stick at.

My digital afterlife is destined to be a thought-leader for generations to come. Fingers crossed.

As I started to understand that I am a designer, I came to realize that my own life is open to being designed. Day in and day out.

It turns out that that my design of my own life is one of my better efforts. ;-)

Re: Ask HN: What Happens to Older Designers?

#27

Post by ativzzz »

lornemalvo wrote: post #23
awestroke wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is nothing we're doing today that couldn't be done with Java for example. Wow. Strongly disagree.

Example?

Creating a web SAAS product quick and cheap - rails / django/ JS eat Java's lunch in terms of speed of development and iteration - the amount of productivity a small team of 1-3 devs can have is insane for small companies

Re: Ask HN: What Happens to Older Designers?

#29

Post by wiseowise »

theoa wrote: post #26

I'm 75. You will pull the keyboard out of my cold, dead hands. "Nobody knows you are a dog on the internet" Ditto being aged ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_... Most of the technologies I play with - HTML5, webGL, Three.js etc - did not exist ten years ago. So it's a level playing field. There's more open source stuff on GitHub that needs help and mentoring than you can shake a keyboard,…

I wish I’ll have your passion at such age. Kudos to you, old man.

Re: Ask HN: What Happens to Older Designers?

#30

Post by mrxd »

gaadd33 wrote: post #20
mrxd wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is untrue for the simple reason that your friends’ employers wouldn’t allow it. Hiring practices based on personal references opens the door to discrimination lawsuits, so every HR department creates objective interview processes that remove such advantages.

Can you cite a lawsuit over discrimination when someone referred the candidate and that's the aspect in contention?

https://www.hrdive.com/news/employer-settles-dol-claim-it-fi...
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