Ask HN: Is ageism in tech still a problem?

Changing a culture's norms is incredibly difficult. The only way I've heard about it happening is through massive pressure, from either a large social group vocally pushing against an issue (with consequences), or a large industry spending millions of dollars to advertise something (diamonds, washing machines) and exploiting some other cultural bias to do so. Cultural norms can also change temporarily (we all worked remote during a pandemic and productivity went up, but after that it would seem our productivity went down? and women became industrial workers during WW2, but after that apparently they weren't good enough?).

So even if the norm did change temporarily, you need continued pressure to make it stick. I have not heard of any massive cultural pressure to end ageism, so I would not expect it to end.

Is the company that much more likely to blow up and go out of business due to inexperience of the younger guys at the helm? Perhaps, but it's their company and that's how you gain experience in the first place. And IF it blows up in their face they'll learn (hopefully) and their 2nd, 3rd, 4th shots will be so much better.

50yo+ just need to stay away from these places to avoid becoming collateral damage. We don't have our entire lives ahead of us to make up for the lost time and wages. So not getting hired there is not really a problem.

Of course it leaves 50yo+ with fewer places to work and earn salary. Sucks, believe me, I know.

1) Your salary demands exceed the budgeted amount for the position

2) You probably aren't willing to work insane hours any more

Even if your skill set vastly exceeds that of a wet-behind-the-ears engineer and can work at a far higher level, be more productive, and produce higher quality work, it's almost impossible to make that apparent when interviewing, especially when those doing the interviews are much younger.

I wear shorts and a t-shirt (often a DEFCON or BSidesPDX shirt) usually, so I'd wear jeans and a solid color t-shirt or possibly a polo to an interview, though I haven't done an in-person interview for a job since 2016. For remote interviews, I'm in sweatpants and a polo.

In the early 2000s, I wasn't a tech worker yet, but I always assumed engineers were wearing khakis and a polo, so I would have shown up to an interview with black slacks and a button-up shirt, maybe even a tie.

However are you sure you want to take the cut in prestige/pay?

In the medtech space there's a huge need for project mangers, etc wish medical experience. So knowing how to code and how to query databases along with all that medical knowledge would be a super power.

However, I can't imagine you'd be happy as a junior engineer churning out react code but maybe?