121–130 of 261 posts
Silicon Valley has got to be crawling with older, talented-as-hell developers. People (or at least some people) remain awesome with age. I'd hire 'em.
Hollywood is biased, too. At least it's honest about it.
Dirty yes, secret no. Straight talk: I'm the CTO at a startup and I often have to call out the founders and employees for ageism. I resent that they say things that make me think they wouldn't take hiring an experienced engineer seriously. I resent that they think my profession is best served by dumb happy newbies with no private life. I refuse to tolerate this in any company I work for and I will ceaselessly call th…
"... by dumb happy newbies with no private life." Interesting choice of words to attack ageism :)
I also know yuppies angling for a "big win" whose only joy in life is playing Xbox at work and getting drunk. Who at the age of ~26 only have a couple years experience because they were too busy partying in college and didn't build anything while in school.
But they totally know how to run a company because they 'get' product and engagement and read Hacker News.
People come in all shapes and sizes.
It's not about the age, it's about wisdom and where you are in life.
You could be 26 or 56. I don't care as long as you care about your work and what you do.
My first thought: narcissism . Narcissists hate being around older people because it reminds them that, some day, they'll be old and unable to do the sorts of things that narcissists tend to do on the weekend. I don't think that all founders are narcissists, but if you want to be able to hire narcissists (which 75% of execs are, let's be honest) then ageism becomes practical, sadly. Then again, I think some of it is…
(a) Ding! I had to drop out of college to support my parents.
(b) Ding! I stuck around with jobs that made my physically unstable and emotionally depressed because otherwise I would have been unemployable.
I was originally an iOS dev, which I love, and I hate Android programming, but I've been forced by circumstance to get reasonably good at it over the past two years. And yet to some of the people I know, I'm the "old" guy, and I haven't even hit my mid-twenties.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's "family status"? AFAIK there is no protected "family status". The typical protected classes are race, sex, religion, age, and in some places, sexual orientation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class Bullet point #7. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_discrimination_law_i...
For the second link, it seems like most include protection for marriage status, but almost none for familial status. I'm not sure how that translates in this scenario.
When you get older, several things work against you to jump into SV culture: - You are not as easily impressed by or eager to try new technologies. (many of which are new spins on old ideas you've seen before.) - You fail to see the appeal of the types of technology younger people are using. Or, you see the switching costs as too high to move away from what you are using now. - Your lack of ignorance leads you to (of…
> Engineers are naturally skeptical, but this skepticism can grow out of control. You've hit on one of the most important quality filters here. If someone is really, deeply intelligent, one of their analysis tasks will include a diligent try at making your idea work. The weirder your idea, the more curious about it they will be.
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I've worked with developers in their fifties- they're scary good.
I've also worked with developers in their fifties who are awful. Age bias is awful, and I have worked with a lot of older developers who know their stuff and are extremely competent, but the idea that 25 years of experience automatically makes you a better programmer is wrong. Good developers are able to learn and adapt quickly, and often older developers can't do that.
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I've worked with developers in their fifties- they're scary good.
I've also worked with developers in their fifties who are awful. Age bias is awful, and I have worked with a lot of older developers who know their stuff and are extremely competent, but the idea that 25 years of experience automatically makes you a better programmer is wrong. Good developers are able to learn and adapt quickly, and often older developers can't do that.
Me to.
And I've worked with devs in the 20s who are awful. And their 30s. And their 40s. And their 60s.
I've also worked with great devs in all those age ranges.
Proportions seem about the same to me.
Good developers are able to learn and adapt quickly, and often older developers can't do that.
I've not noticed a difference.
I have noticed that it's harder to spot the folk in their 20s who don't learn and adapt quickly since folk in their 20s have to learn something to make any progress at all. Once that pressure is off and they've become fixated on Rails / C# / whatever they seem just as unlikely to change as any other age range. They just get fixated on the "cool" thing - so it takes longer to spot.
I doubt that truly qualified people are being turned away for age. I doubt that really capable companies are that hung up on age. I do believe that there is discrimination among _under_ qualified people. Given the importance of learning experiences and networking and luck, this is probably a serious disadvantage to older under-qualified people. It certainly isn't fair. But anyone who is under-qualified really should think more about making themselves more qualified than looking around for someone to make things fair.
(That needn't be extended to race or gender discrimination law. Those are targeting structural disadvantages thought to be outside the control of the discriminated, e.g. they lack the same opportunity to improve their own qualifications. And they are often intended to make it more clear that the economy offers opportunities to all comers, in the face of a variety of perceptions. Whether you agree with those arguments or not, I don't see how they apply to people getting older.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've worked with developers in their fifties- they're scary good.
I've also worked with developers in their fifties who are awful. Age bias is awful, and I have worked with a lot of older developers who know their stuff and are extremely competent, but the idea that 25 years of experience automatically makes you a better programmer is wrong. Good developers are able to learn and adapt quickly, and often older developers can't do that.
Seriously? You think you can do something for 25 years without getting better at it?