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Why Ageism Never Gets Old

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Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#181

Post by lovich »

legohead wrote: post #147
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…

I wish companies saw it this way. My company is downsizing and I've been interviewing like crazy. 5 years ago when my tech stack was hot I had to fight off companies, now I feel they are just humoring me. I make it clear in my cover letter that I am capable of picking up new technologies and languages with ease, which if you look at my resume and my personal projects on github is pretty plain and obvious -- I have 15…

I'm under 30 and I've had the same experience. Every place I've applied to felt like they had a checklist of hundreds of items and a no on any of them was an instant disqualification. Even at places where I had a friend recommend me and could find out their reason for not giving me an offer, there was no consistent reason and it was usually just one person saying no so their team sat for 6-12 months looking for people.

It's like every business is now completely terrified by a wrong hire and will only take the "perfect candidate" but at market rate

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#182

Post by gaius »

Harvey-Specter wrote: post #62
jlebrech wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

does the ethics test preclude doing work on rayguns? asking for a friend.

Probably, engineers are required to adhere to a strict code of ethics that puts the public interested first. Rayguns tend to be developed by people with evil ambitions. If I were a professional engineer and my boss asked me to work on a raygun, I would be ethically required to refuse and potentially to report him to the relevant authorities.

my boss asked me to work on a raygun, I would be ethically required to refuse and potentially to report him to the relevant authorities

So Canada has no arms industry? I call shenanigans.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#184

Post by jbooth »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #149
maccard wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read your post, and I try to empathise, but at the same time I can't help but feel you were naive in thinking you could take on a web development job without having any of the skills required, even a very basic level of them. If a 20 year old applied for a job that involved writing SQL queries, and couldn't, I'd expect him to be rejected. There's a world of difference between low level C/C++ style programming, a…

If a 20 year old applied for a job that involved writing SQL queries, and couldn't, I'd expect him to be rejected. I've been a webdev now for some time, and I've written zero SQL queries. Firebase is nice. So is Mongoose. And yes, I can structure it as a traditional SQL relational database with proper indices if needed. I'm not choosing technologies that cause technical debt or problems down the road. If you think th…

Respectfully, if you're going to play the "I'm a back-end systems guy but I can learn this front-end JS stuff" card, you can't choke on some SQL queries.

We're all here stroking our gray beards about how kids these days don't even understand the tools they're using, and then you turn around and say "i dunno, the ORM handled it for me"?

SQL hasn't appreciably changed in 40 years. I'll take your word that you really know your C/Unix stuff, and I get that gamedev is it's own niche, but I'd expect most senior devs to have developed a rock-solid grasp of SQL just by osmosis over their years.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#185

Post by watwut »

throwanem wrote: post #99
watwut wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, as the older engineer, I can say with conviction that it is simply taking advantage of younger colleagues. Older engineer is using his connections, status in group or friendship with decision makers to avoid uncomfortable shift. There is no other point. Occasions to find out whether you work hard tend to arise naturally, without putting all weekends on younger colleagues. Also, while mentoring is important part…

Paid time and effort that could be better spent than on mentoring someone who'll make no good use of the knowledge you're trying to impart, then. Part of learning your craft is learning how not to get owned, too.

What does someone not using knowledge have to do with younger employees having to do all the weekends due to hazing and "unspoken rules"? Anyway, if you are not willing to explain, then your senior salary is deathweight to company.

Another part of learning craft is to recognize when someone else is being owned. It is a bit harder.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#186

Post by throwanem »

matt4077 wrote: post #169
throwanem wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd think someone who writes for such an august publication would be a little less of a chump, wouldn't you? (ETA: Unless you're familiar with the output of such publications, I suppose, at least enough so to validate the "Gell-Mann amnesia" concept firsthand. I can't say they serve no useful purpose - one doesn't care to contemplate packs of feral journalists roaming the streets, shaking down sundry passersby for…

One would expect people to have some familiarity with the concept of "half-life" before accusing others of being chumps.

I do, but I have to confess I'm not all that much seeing the degree of applicability that would seem commensurate with such a trenchant response.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#187

Post by bitcrusher »

lovich wrote: post #181
legohead wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish companies saw it this way. My company is downsizing and I've been interviewing like crazy. 5 years ago when my tech stack was hot I had to fight off companies, now I feel they are just humoring me. I make it clear in my cover letter that I am capable of picking up new technologies and languages with ease, which if you look at my resume and my personal projects on github is pretty plain and obvious -- I have 15…

I'm under 30 and I've had the same experience. Every place I've applied to felt like they had a checklist of hundreds of items and a no on any of them was an instant disqualification. Even at places where I had a friend recommend me and could find out their reason for not giving me an offer, there was no consistent reason and it was usually just one person saying no so their team sat for 6-12 months looking for peopl…

This has been my experience as well; It's as if every company is looking for a unicorn programmer... when their domain isn't any more or less unique than any other domain.

One of the "interesting" side effects is that it seems like interviewers are starting with the assumption that the person interviewing is an idiot who knows nothing and then works from there. So any slight misstep or misremembering of something puts you the fail box immediately.

My theory is that part of this is the broken culture of interviewing that we have as an industry. This "tricky CS puzzle" crap that originated at GOOG and MSFT is so prevalent that it's nigh impossible to actually succeed. More than once, it's obvious to me that the people DOING the interviewing couldn't pass their own interview...

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#188

Post by jzebedee »

stcredzero wrote: post #176
Swinx43 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This mythology leads directly to horribly created software that will either ensure many terrible security breaches in the future or the continued proliferation of "magic" throughout a product. One of the issues is using the word "engineer" for any of the brogrammer types. an engineer in any other proper engineering discipline does not become worthless with age, their experience actually counts for something. Somehow…

One of the issues is using the word "engineer" for any of the brogrammer types. an engineer in any other proper engineering discipline does not become worthless with age, their experience actually counts for something. My fiancee who is a commercial bank loan underwriter made this observation: There are some people who have been in her industry for decades, but effectively have little experience, because they don't e…

It goes with the adage: "Some people have 20 years of experience; some have one year of experience repeated 20 times."

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#189

Post by maxxxxx »

humanrebar wrote: post #90
tyingq wrote: post #24

A good way to counter this is to become an expert in some combination of "something old + something (somewhat) new". Like knowing bog standard java well, but also knowing how to deploy/use it in AWS well. Or being a C expert that also understands git in a deep way.

Or just pick a good technology going forward. Experts in C and Java are still in demand. There's no urgent need to branch out from those core competencies (well, C devs should probably have some C++ skills too). Old+New is an interesting and likely beneficial career plan, though.

"pick a good technology going forward"

That's hard to pull off though. Who knows which technology will go out of fashion in a few years? It may become fashionable again a few years later but int he meantime you will have a hard time.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#190

Post by lovich »

bitcrusher wrote: post #187
lovich wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm under 30 and I've had the same experience. Every place I've applied to felt like they had a checklist of hundreds of items and a no on any of them was an instant disqualification. Even at places where I had a friend recommend me and could find out their reason for not giving me an offer, there was no consistent reason and it was usually just one person saying no so their team sat for 6-12 months looking for peopl…

This has been my experience as well; It's as if every company is looking for a unicorn programmer... when their domain isn't any more or less unique than any other domain. One of the "interesting" side effects is that it seems like interviewers are starting with the assumption that the person interviewing is an idiot who knows nothing and then works from there. So any slight misstep or misremembering of something put…

Exactly, my favorite flavor of those are the ones where the interviewer appears to not stop until they find what you cannot solve, which is perfectly fine for an interview, but they still seem to treat that failure as an inability to program. One place I interviewed at wasn't doing much more than crud, and we got into our 4th cs question of that day, and my 6th with the company so far after their phone screen. They gave me some question that was solved with a flood fill. I admitted I had never encountered that before and muddled through it getting an answer that could not handle a few edge cases which I pointed out before they even brought it up. After that point they cut that phase of the interview short and the next guy asked me some things that were answered off my resume and they said they'd call me back which of course they didnt.

I could easily have been denied for other reasons but it's one of numerous interviews where I go through 1-n cs questions and whenever I get to the first one I can't solve the interview is cut short. It's just a giant waste of everyone's time

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