101–110 of 219 posts
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Dunno where you've worked but up-or-out ejects most people destined for "out" long, long before they reach the point where ageism is even a consideration.
Are you saying that no company has ever fired an experienced engineer?
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Do you have any reputable research that shows people produce better-quality work in their 20s vs say, their 40s or 50s?
Virtually every genius is most productive before 40, usually before 30. Counterexamples exist but are rare.
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AI changes the landscape alot. Even as an experienced engineer the sheer amount of knowledge you get access to from a single prompt without having to read any tutorial or book can change a Junior into Senior very quickly. I just hope it wont face the same issue google had: - starting with good answers and evolving into mud
For now, my feelings are that AI can be really helpful if you know the field. You need to be senior to know how to ask things and to understand the answers. For anyone not understanding the domain, AI is just a glorified stack overflow but with hallucinations. Hallucinations can be fought but you need to suggest that you got the wrong answer and why. And that requires a deep understanding of the domain. Honestly I’m…
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Any suggestions on how to actually do this? How do I get started? Do I moonlight?
I'd suggest starting with being around the interfaces between orgs.. Anywhere you can put your head down and work for days without talking to other companies is a luxury to indulge in sparingly if you are insuring for future employment as not the cheapest labor in not the cheapest land.
I did feel a disadvantage myself when I was job searching a few months ago, but for me it was my personal attitude coming through more than anyone judging me by my age. I felt that I just cannot get excited anymore about some of the bullshit the company leadership is throwing around, and neither could I overlook the massive mistakes the companies are making based on my own interview questions. But I do understand tha…
I say this as a greybeard myself, but as someone who been on the interviewer/hiring manager side of quite a few interviews with older candidates, it's a lot more common than they realize that they're just *bad*. Yes, there are many good ones, and yes the wisdom they have is a huge benefit. But plenty of them think this applies to them when it does not. The most common issue is they've long since let themselves go tec…
I mean, that makes sense? I would be just as defensive about racism or sexism if the vibe came off in an interview.
>They haven't been staying abreast of current changes, and by that I don't mean jumping on the latest fad but rather knowing that the fads exist.
I guess it depends on the domain. Sure, I can see web moving fast and the someone who focused on at best JQuery may not be needed for a company on Vue or React or whatever. Other domains don't change as radically though, or the tools are usually not as hard to transfer to as some think. People can underestimate the fundamentals at times as they try to expect 10 years of Swift experience out of a candidate.
Ageism is pretty much only talked about when it affects older people. Younger people - broadly millenials and younger - have just had to make piece with the ageism they've faced their entire lives and continue to face. I understand that one day I'll be old too, but my sympathies are limited and it'll be nothing truly new for us when people start dismissing us for being old, since people have been dismissing us for be…
Facing that again when at your most experienced and valuable makes a lot less sense.
I did feel a disadvantage myself when I was job searching a few months ago, but for me it was my personal attitude coming through more than anyone judging me by my age. I felt that I just cannot get excited anymore about some of the bullshit the company leadership is throwing around, and neither could I overlook the massive mistakes the companies are making based on my own interview questions. But I do understand tha…
Yeah - I have 40+ yoe, and I could see a lot of places don't need a 'senior'.. they just need a couple more junior coders. Also, you tend to get a bit jaded - I basically ignore companies that are going 'to change the world!!!' :-P I broke my own rule and went to a startup that actually seems to have a useful product, rather then just big dreams...
I guess it works, or the cost to do all that is low, otherwise so many places wouldn't do it.
When I was coming up a long while back, there were exciting employers that filled their ranks with ambitious recent grads and lavished them with ping pong tables and soda fountains in the "war room" full of knock-off Aeron chairs and various configurations of conference tables. We'd work crazy hours and move fast with tools we didn't really understand. Most of us would get laid off multiple times as the companies we…
aka, seemingly boring enterprise software is the place to go. Some of them are actually very good places.
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AI changes the landscape alot. Even as an experienced engineer the sheer amount of knowledge you get access to from a single prompt without having to read any tutorial or book can change a Junior into Senior very quickly. I just hope it wont face the same issue google had: - starting with good answers and evolving into mud
AI won't be as impactful in generating good results (though it may result in middle management firing devs/admins since they think they're easily replaceable). As an example, I asked claude.ai to generate an ansible playbook for patching a Docker cluster. It created one, something I'd expect a junior admin to be able to whip up pretty easily. Then I noticed something funky. The playbook was OS agnostic, just using so…
Sounds like a healthy tradeoff to me.
I feel this. I got the "you look older than your profile pic" comment during an interview last year. That one was fun. Dude wanted to know if I could even code anymore.
I need to find a lawyer and see how much a conversation like that is worth.