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Age Discrimination at Work

nytimes.com

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Re: Age Discrimination at Work

#171

Post by pimmen »

shams93 wrote: post #129
wyclif wrote: post #41

I'm now over 50 years old, a full stack web developer, and I'm married and have two kids, an 8 year old and a 1 year old baby. I've been in this industry for a while. I started out as a system administrator writing a lot of bash and Perl scripts, taking care of mail servers and DNS, and doing a lot of corporate backups. That job is now called "DevOps", and I've made the transition. I now work in Python 3, Django, Rub…

I'm pushing 50 the older I get the shorter the engagements get until I have lost everything and live with my mom with no income. Its really brutal I gave up on having relationships and family to do a couple decades worth of unpaid overtime and my payback is being thrown out of society.

That sounds really awful. I wish you well and hope you keep your head up. You never know if it could turn around.

Re: Age Discrimination at Work

#172

Post by PorterDuff »

68020 wrote: post #88
lapnitnelav wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry if what I'm about to say is rude, please file that under me being ignorant rather malicious. Given your struggles to get a job and your very valuable experience, what's holding you back from going as a contractor / setting up your own shop?

That is the route I am now going. Until my last breath I'm going to build a sw company and hire 100's of people. Like all companies I'll have a page on my site that says how moral and inclusive we are except that we won't be hypocrites like most (all?) other sw companies. This is my delusional dream.

I've always liked the idea of a consulting firm that specialized in hiring old people. I wonder if there's enough work to keep something like that fed if one were to specialize in 'obsolete' tech and market at a national level.

Heck, to the right client, that one i860 or C80 programmer might be worth gold. Either that, or just do a highly competent job at embedded programming generally.

Re: Age Discrimination at Work

#173

Post by klingonopera »

markdown wrote: post #50
tjungblut wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For that exact reason I'm rejecting everybody that puts a picture on a CV in Germany.

Well that's just silly. If it's the norm, why penalise people who're just doing it the way they think everyone else will. Better to specify in your job ad that you won't accept CV's with pics.

...I guess he's looking for people out-of-the-norm and willing/able to stand up to their convictions?

I wouldn't put a picture, but when I had to write some CVs here, I caved in and put a photo. I used to think it was a fault of mine to be so far off the norm, and I tried really hard to fit in. It just didn't work out for me. Today, I think I know that this is what can make me valuable.

EDIT: ...but it is kind of a play of statistics vs. faith, and I think that one shouldn't fault someone, if they can't pull the faith together for it. A comment on my parent comment tells about someone applying in the US with a comical picture. That person was able to afford applying in such a way, but when you really need a job, because money or family, would you really take that risk/leap of faith? EDIT2: ...or that could also be signalling, that someone is high-risk taker, which could also be an attribute an employer is looking for.

Re: Age Discrimination at Work

#174

Post by PorterDuff »

bilbo0s wrote: post #42
resoluteteeth wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever topics like this come up on HN, there are always tons of people in their 30s and 40s posting comments like this, which boil down to something like: "I'm not old enough to experience age discrimination yet, and I'm scared but I'm going to keep up with the latest languages/frameworks so I will be special and not be discriminated against like all the other developers, who allowed their skills to deteriorate whe…

My take is a bit different, and it may explain the phenomenon you've noticed on HN. TLDR; I believe a lot of people mistake price discrimination as age discrimination. Long version: Let's say you need some code monkey to slap together go or rust services. Well, sure, you get a lot of people applying with 25 years experience, you also get a lot of people applying with 5 years experience. Now here's the rub, it's highl…

"If I have a low level, quasi hardware layer service that I need coded in C or C++? Fine, yes, experience matters. It matters a lot in those instances, and I'd be foolish to hire some kid to do that. But there is less and less of that kind of work. "

You know, that could be. Dunno why you got the downvote so here's an up.

Offshoring of manufacture probably has something to do with the dearth of work. Development was bound to follow mass production.

Re: Age Discrimination at Work

#175

Post by scoobyyabbadoo »

shams93 wrote: post #129
wyclif wrote: post #41

I'm now over 50 years old, a full stack web developer, and I'm married and have two kids, an 8 year old and a 1 year old baby. I've been in this industry for a while. I started out as a system administrator writing a lot of bash and Perl scripts, taking care of mail servers and DNS, and doing a lot of corporate backups. That job is now called "DevOps", and I've made the transition. I now work in Python 3, Django, Rub…

I'm pushing 50 the older I get the shorter the engagements get until I have lost everything and live with my mom with no income. Its really brutal I gave up on having relationships and family to do a couple decades worth of unpaid overtime and my payback is being thrown out of society.

I'm glad your mom is still alive though

Re: Age Discrimination at Work

#176

Post by HillaryBriss »

The national political season so far has surprised me because, AFAIK, none of the presidential politicians has made a direct attack on age discrimination at work. It seems like the perfect combination of issues: a highly motivated voter segment and a pain point widely felt.

Re: Age Discrimination at Work

#177

Post by PorterDuff »

scarface74 wrote: post #113
commandlinefan wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be - but I’m positive that everybody with over 10 years experience is calling themselves a “senior developer” by now. There’s no level after that, so most everybody over 35 is a senior developer.

There are “principal developers” and architects, but just like with products and the “Innovator’s Dilemma” at some point, your skillset overserves the market. After a certain level of competence, experience doesn’t add value if you’re applying to be a developer for yet another software as a service crud app. Either be happy with salary stagnation and cost of living raises (if that) or move on to greener pastures.

If you make it to Senior Principal Staff Engineer they'll bring coffee to you.

Re: Age Discrimination at Work

#178

Post by 68020 »

PorterDuff wrote: post #168
68020 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 54. Have been in sw dev for 40 years. I have kept my skills (aws api / node.js / css / html5 / etc) up to the point were I am over qualified for many of the positions (laid off 3 years back from IBM) I apply for. Before I updated my LinkedIn profile pic I received many interview invites. Now I get none. Recently I started looking at the people that these sw dev companies _actually_ hire. They ask for 3/5/10 years…

"I'm 54. Have been in sw dev for 40 years.....Last year I applied for 300 positions,..." Being somewhat older than you, but bored, I think about taking up the oar again. My problem doubles down on yours in that my background is all in products with an expensive hardware component or workstation software, neither appears to be a growth industry. Aside from the inevitable well-meaning advice to become some sort of 'pro…

My last few years at IBM were as a project manager at big corp. Besides the outright corruption, the new problems were that I was now competing against 6'4" 22yo MBAs fresh out of modeling school. They taught me how to analyse the underside of a bus real quick.

Re: Age Discrimination at Work

#179

Post by scoobyyabbadoo »

bachmeier wrote: post #7

One thing I don't like, which was present in this article, is throwing up our hands and saying "but there's nothing we can do". Of course there is. Nobody says that about racial discrimination. The simple truth is that age discrimination is not generally viewed as a problem. The attitude is that older workers aren't as productive, so let's let companies do what they want. In some states, the same argument used to be…

It used to be made about plenty of white people too. If you're Italian-American, good luck being hired by a boss who favors Jews. But the progressive revolution has entirely skipped over the struggles of non-Jewish whites merely because of their skin color.

Re: Age Discrimination at Work

#180

Post by scoobyyabbadoo »

rco8786 wrote: post #116
mdorazio wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hahahaha, I see you've never been around startups. Try walking in the door of an SV tech startup in a few years and tell me there's no age discrimination going on. There's little evidence to suggest the trend is generation-dependent.

Startups represent a tiny fraction of the workforce.

Oh yeah? Next you'll be telling me video game studios make up a tiny fraction of the workforce!
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