151–160 of 219 posts
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.
we are looking for recent graduates
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…
Millenials are themselves oldish
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You don't get anywhere faster "learning" from something that lies to you 20% of the time. It's a bit like working with a bad colleague who is very fast, but very arrogant. You can't trust what they say because they're wrong often enough to make costly mistakes common. But you can't fight them on every little thing, either. The only solution is to already be an expert, and ignore them when they're wrong. I honestly be…
My entire formal education and subsequent career stands in opposition to this statement. Unless you mean that learning requires being lied to more than 20% of the time.
My statement applies only to the experience of working with the things, and relates not at all to "formal education". If I have to learn the subject to debug what they're putting out, then the rate-limiting step of using them is...learning the subject. Same as it ever was.
Having a stochastic parrot spit a stream of 20% nonsense at me doesn't make learning go faster -- it definitely does make work go faster if I'm already an expert, however.
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1 senior for 10 juniors is not a sustainable ratio unless the average person is a senior for 10x as long as they were a junior -- meaning, I guess, that in a 30 year career, you are "junior" for three years on average. I understand that this has been "sustainable" in the past because the industry was expanding, but can that continue forever?
I always figured 3-5 years to become a 'senior' (generally 5 but I've had some really sharp juniors too)
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…
One of the more subtle ways this is exhibited is by only preferring certain recent tech stacks, or orienting interview questions around computer science concepts that are only quite modern - especially if either of these have nothing to do with the toolset actually used. (or, asking for a recent transcript!). I've seen ALL of this in the time I've been looking for work, repeatedly. It's very annoying, but most can be…
>asking for a recent transcript What does this mean?
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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…
Anecdote about older folks not staying abreast of the latest: A few years ago, I was being interviewed by a programmer far my senior (in both experience and age). I have my github link on my resume, and the interviewer noticed and asked "What's GitHub?"
One of the more subtle ways this is exhibited is by only preferring certain recent tech stacks, or orienting interview questions around computer science concepts that are only quite modern - especially if either of these have nothing to do with the toolset actually used. (or, asking for a recent transcript!). I've seen ALL of this in the time I've been looking for work, repeatedly. It's very annoying, but most can be…
Don't forget the "culture fit" interview.
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>asking for a recent transcript What does this mean?
One employer asked for my high school graduation transcript! Another was clearer and wanted university transcript - in essence, grades and grade point average. (the actual terms might be a Canadian thing, I'm not sure what "list of courses and grades" works out to elsewhere)
I've been asked for transcripts all the way to primary school. Ages 6 to 10.
I took that as an opportunity to even get those documents that I didn't have.
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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…
Because it wrote 90% of the code and you had two quick things to inspect and fix? Sounds like a healthy tradeoff to me.