Why Ageism Never Gets Old • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#121

Post by skrebbel » Thu, Nov 16, 2017, 3:51 PM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #78

jonahx wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This sort of mythology is NOT helping. An experienced Software Engineer has valuable skills that do not age at all. Not only is the claim "now it’s five years at most, and, for a software engineer, less than three" an unhelpful mythology, it's laughably incorrect to the point that I can't imagine anyone knowledgable espousing the view with a straight face. It stems from, on the one hand, "software as popular cultur…

> Not only is the claim "now it’s five years at most, and, for a software engineer, less than three" an unhelpful mythology, it's laughably incorrect It's narrowly referring to the "framework fads" that do seem to sweep through our profession on about a three-to-five-year cycle.

Going off topic fast, but I've felt recently that this speed has slowed again.

On the frontend, React has been king for quite a long time now, with no obvious contender in sight. Of course there's stuff like Vue but the difference isn't so big that people are throwing away their gigantic React codebases to restart anew with Vue (things that did happen a lot with jquery, bootstrap and even angular based frontends). The new kids on the block may be better, but only by a relatively small margin.

Similarly on the backend, Rails has been unfashionable for quite a while now, but there's no obvious single new framework that people are flocking to. Sure, there's many hip options, like Elixir/Phoenix, vanilla Go, and bunch of "serverless" frameworks, but just as many people just start their new projects on Rails, Laravel, and ExpressJS, because that shit is productive and it just works.

I feel like, decades after the desktop UI world, the web as a platform has pretty much matured. The core concepts aren't changing that much anymore. I think that maybe something fundamentally new has to happen again for this cycle to truly restart - just like the web as a software platform was once fundamentally new. We'll get new programmers who can reinvent all these ideas again in confusingly subtly different ways. It'll be fun!

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#122

Post by acuozzo » Thu, Nov 16, 2017, 3:56 PM UTC

YeeHawGeddyUp wrote: post #13

Well, I am 37 and in my Junior year of a Computer Science degree. I'm not gonna lie, this freaks me out a bit. I do live on the east coast though, hopefully that will help some.

I'm not kidding here…

If you're eligible for a clearance, move to MD or VA and work for a DoD contracting company.

I'm 29, but most of the people I work with are 40-60+. Ageism simply doesn't exist here and the salaries (6+ figures for new grads) and benefits are excellent.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#123

Post by moduspol » Thu, Nov 16, 2017, 4:01 PM UTC

Swinx43 wrote: post #111

moduspol wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's ageism if one person is selected based on being willing to work more for less money. That's just a labor market. There's an argument to be made that 20-somethings shouldn't work more than 40 hours a week or should require higher pay. Or that employers should place more value on the work of more experienced developers. Or both. But I don't think experienced developers should be exempt from keeping w…

> I don't think it's ageism if one person is selected based on being willing to work more for less money. That's just a labor market. Agreed, however very few ever come out and says that so directly. In a lot of cases the reasons are given as not having the right "cultural fit", or being "over qualified" or some other excuse because the person hiring cannot stomach it to simply say "we want cheap resources that we ca…

Agreed on all points, but we're going down a dark road when any measurable disparity is assumed to be an unfair "-ism" without evidence, that must be corrected because clearly the decisionmaking gatekeepers are "-ists."

It's possible the problem (at a macro level) is caused by other correlating factors, such as differing salary expectations and how up-to-date skillsets are.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#124

Post by kurthr » Thu, Nov 16, 2017, 4:08 PM UTC

moduspol wrote: post #93

sidlls wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think it's ageism if one person is selected based on being willing to work more for less money. That's just a labor market. All sorts of discrimination exists still because "perfectly rational" arguments like yours ignore underlying reasons. For example: it's the same justification racists used for intelligence tests for voting not too long ago.

Yes, and all sorts of underlying reasons are hidden by assuming "-isms" and victimhood at the first sign of disparate outcomes. But trying to address perceived ageism doesn't solve the problem. Being aware of contributing factors and correcting for them on an individual level does.

How do you individually address an issue where the hiring manager is making a generic decision based on age unrelated to your individual performance (especially in hiring where they have no idea how many hours you personally work)?

Why should dying your hair and wearing skinny jeans affect your hire rate?

"-isms" don't work because they are rational individually, although they might work because they are stereotypically true. Or are you saying that the hiring manager should work on this individually... which would be actually just following the law.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#125

Post by hawkice » Thu, Nov 16, 2017, 4:08 PM UTC

zbentley wrote: post #100

hawkice wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also draws a poor comparison between e.g. a 20-years-experience coder who was writing C++ until a year ago and someone fresh out of college whose been writing node.js nonstop in the three years since getting their degree. There may be one you have more fun playing ping pong with, but (and I say this as a youngster myself) the professional choice is the one where the value for dollar is best and the code is something…

> the professional choice is the one where the value for dollar is best and the code is something you won't dread maintaining. That's very true, but might not necessarily favor either of your two examples. The choice between "20yr C++ veteran and 3yr node coder" is not always obvious or clear-cut, and the quality differential does not, in my experience, clearly favor either side based on that information alone. I've…

To clarify: yes. I've seen veteran coders produces piles of C++ templates of templates and Java reflection and configuration nonsense that seemed to solve no problem I've ever been aware of. I've seen technical leads write code where every single field in a class has a one-letter name. And I've seen clear, thoughtful code from people not too experienced (although never a total novice).

But that's my whole point. Age discrimination isn't the only reason 'technical half-life is 3 years' is bogus (not [only] morally outrageous but wasteful of the discrimator's own dollars) -- but also because we should have actual standards. And not just any standards! Things like code cost and quality vs price. I feel like we've gone a bit through the looking glass because explicit knowledge of how to program well is maybe 15% of the actual craft.

[Unrelated side note: I've heard of people using flash cards to try and learn programming. This is deeply weird to me! But I think it also reflects this 'half life of programming knowledge' way of thinking.]

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#126

Post by Bartweiss » Thu, Nov 16, 2017, 4:11 PM UTC

jonahx wrote: post #67

jeremyjh wrote: post #3

> In the nineteen-twenties, an engineer’s “half life of knowledge”—the time it took for half of his expertise to become obsolete—was thirty-five years. In the nineteen-sixties, it was a decade. Now it’s five years at most, and, for a software engineer, less than three. This sort of mythology is NOT helping. An experienced Software Engineer has valuable skills that do not age at all. Yes there are new languages and fr…

> This sort of mythology is NOT helping. An experienced Software Engineer has valuable skills that do not age at all. Not only is the claim "now it’s five years at most, and, for a software engineer, less than three" an unhelpful mythology, it's laughably incorrect to the point that I can't imagine anyone knowledgable espousing the view with a straight face. It stems from, on the one hand, "software as popular cultur…

I've certainly heard people toss around the myth of "expiring expertise", but even the people who believe that talk on the scale of decades. I honestly have no idea where Friend got "less than three", it's not a claim even the most ignorant ageists seem to make.

Sure, there are frameworks that turn over in I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, though, because the article also offers: "With the advent of the cloud and off-the-shelf A.P.I.s—the building blocks of sites and apps—all you really need to launch a startup is a bold idea." It feels like the only skill acknowledged in the entire article is putting a basic JS frontend on a website.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#127

Post by dsfyu404ed » Thu, Nov 16, 2017, 4:16 PM UTC

If the tech industry wasn't mostly located in SV with all it's housing problems it wouldn't have nearly as much ageism.

Of course the 20-something who's running a rat race to pay overpriced rent on a poorly maintained dump with no hope of ever owning real property resents the 50-something who owns the place. Of course that trickles down a little resentment for all "older" people.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#128

Post by davidgay » Thu, Nov 16, 2017, 4:16 PM UTC

notyourday wrote: post #104

jeremyjh wrote: post #3

> In the nineteen-twenties, an engineer’s “half life of knowledge”—the time it took for half of his expertise to become obsolete—was thirty-five years. In the nineteen-sixties, it was a decade. Now it’s five years at most, and, for a software engineer, less than three. This sort of mythology is NOT helping. An experienced Software Engineer has valuable skills that do not age at all. Yes there are new languages and fr…

If you are 40 and you are still thinking about your skills in terms of "i can code", then I have very bad news for you. There are hundreds of people who can code just as good as you who are younger which means that they are going to replace you because you are just not that good or that irreplaceable . Is there a way out? Sure: 1. If you actually are that good of a software engineer, start a My Code As Service compan…

If you are 60 and just won the Nobel prize and you are still thinking about your skills in terms of "I can win a Nobel prize", then I have very bad news for you. There are hundreds of people (https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/lists/age.html) who can win Nobel prizes at ages younger than you.

Or: this argument is meaningless because it's assuming more supply (of someone like you) than jobs (and perfectly informed employers for that matter).

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#129

Post by Bartweiss » Thu, Nov 16, 2017, 4:18 PM UTC

> “Those holding more negative age stereotypes earlier in life had significantly steeper hippocampal volume loss and significantly greater accumulation of neurofibrillary tangles and amyloid plaques."

I'm a bit disgusted that the article asserts this is somehow causative - that ageists age worse for some sort of karmic reason.

The screamingly-obvious interpretation of that data is that people who see bad examples of aging hold more negative stereotypes. If your whole family has a history of early-onset dementia, you'll probably view aging as a horrible process. And, surprise, you'll probably have rapid cognitive decline just like all the people who shaped your opinion. Just about every age-related form of decline has a major genetic component, and yet Friend insists that fear of aging is 'karma'.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#130

Post by Swinx43 » Thu, Nov 16, 2017, 4:21 PM UTC

moduspol wrote: post #123

Swinx43 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think it's ageism if one person is selected based on being willing to work more for less money. That's just a labor market. Agreed, however very few ever come out and says that so directly. In a lot of cases the reasons are given as not having the right "cultural fit", or being "over qualified" or some other excuse because the person hiring cannot stomach it to simply say "we want cheap resources that we ca…

Agreed on all points, but we're going down a dark road when any measurable disparity is assumed to be an unfair "-ism" without evidence, that must be corrected because clearly the decisionmaking gatekeepers are "-ists." It's possible the problem (at a macro level) is caused by other correlating factors, such as differing salary expectations and how up-to-date skillsets are.

I definitely agree with you and this particular dark road is best left untraveled.

It would be really great to get more data behind what is mostly anecdotal evidence. Also getting data from across the US and other countries would be very useful in understanding this better. Without the data it is too easy to go down the dark path.