Why Ageism Never Gets Old • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#251

Post by brian_cunnie » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 4:15 AM UTC

loup-vaillant wrote: post #211

moduspol wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing this--and sorry in advance if I came off abrasive. I just think the key difference in our industry is that it's far more punishing than others if you're not keeping up to date with relevant skills. I'm 29 and my last search was two years ago. My last job had me primarily doing ColdFusion-based web development and occasionally iOS development. A big part of the reason I left was specifically to avoi…

Your comment highlights more problems than just ageism. First, what's the deal with passion ? Can't land a job if you're not passionate about whatever the prospective employer wants you to work on? Replace that word by "enthusiasm" and it'll be more acceptable. Sorry for singly you out, it's the zeitgeist I'm after. Second, the "relevant skills" bullshit. Sillysaurus3 had relevant skills for a wide range of jobs. The…

I used to be passionate about computers, but it's hard to sustain passion after 35 years — these days I'm merely affectionate.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#252

Post by phil21 » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 4:36 AM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #249

phil21 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't give a crap if you've already used React, Redux, Express, whatever new flavor of the months are coming. If you're 23 and actively using them, odds are you're still going to be worth much less to my team than someone 40 who has to pick them up their first couple months but can immediately contribute valuable, hard-earned broadly-applicable timeless lessons about how to build and operate software. Just as the…

>>I would say the majority of 40 year old programmers are just as useless in the other direction. This has nothing to do with age. In most people's case swim lanes are set early in life. If you weren't good enough at 23, unless some major incident in your life changed you, chances are you will be the same at 40. This has largely been a problem- most people feel with this popular phenomenon called 'Nerd culture'. Some…

I largely agree, I think it's almost always individualistic. I know many 40+ guys who's combination of experience and passion will nearly always trump a similar guy in his 20's. Then it's a "simple" RoI calculation of if you need experience in that position or not.

I was mostly trying to provide a counterbalance to the "older is always better" opinion I've seen as well. I was lucky enough early in my career to have a myriad of stellar mentors - both old and young, and learned to simply listen to what folks have to say.

As I get older I do understand how hard it is to keep up with the latest thing in tech, while also handling other responsibilities in life. I almost always tend towards the grumpy guy ranting about the latest fad, so this comment is largely out of character!

I thought I'd toss it in my earlier comment - but it's also selection bias at play here. The guys in their 40's looking for work are likely of a different type than those in their 20's. The stellar candidates who have decades of career behind them typically have a strong social network that places them before they even look at a job board. This is an area where I feel ageism is very real, and kind of terrifies me a little should I find myself in that position.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#253

Post by kamaal » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 5:14 AM UTC

phil21 wrote: post #252

kamaal wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I would say the majority of 40 year old programmers are just as useless in the other direction. This has nothing to do with age. In most people's case swim lanes are set early in life. If you weren't good enough at 23, unless some major incident in your life changed you, chances are you will be the same at 40. This has largely been a problem- most people feel with this popular phenomenon called 'Nerd culture'. Some…

I largely agree, I think it's almost always individualistic. I know many 40+ guys who's combination of experience and passion will nearly always trump a similar guy in his 20's. Then it's a "simple" RoI calculation of if you need experience in that position or not. I was mostly trying to provide a counterbalance to the "older is always better" opinion I've seen as well. I was lucky enough early in my career to have a…

>>I was mostly trying to provide a counterbalance to the "older is always better" opinion I've seen as well.

Older isn't always better, simply because older isn't a separate species or class of humans. Put simply young people eventually become old. If you had major human enterprise issues while you were young, chances are those will remain when you get old.

This extends to other things too.

Why do you think retirement is so hard for people who didn't save well enough in 20s and 30s? Nobody can wake up one day, and run a ultra marathon. Processes for making something like this happen start way early in life.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#254

Post by brooklyn_ashey » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 7:19 AM UTC

billmalarky wrote: post #151

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but you'll know enough to pass a job interview. Unfortunately not. I believed it myself, until it became obvious it was a myth: One interview went like this: They sat me down, opened up postgres, and said "Accomplish these goals." The goals were simple things like write SQL statements to query for certain types of users, or join data together. I never had any reason to learn any of that. I knew that I could learn it…

That's my point though. You say you don't know the job skills that you need for you to hit the ground running (which is what pretty much every employers expects these days unfortunately) and what I'm saying to you is you could develop a good understanding of these skills rapidly because of your background vs the years it takes if you have zero tech background. You could spend nights and weekends learning postgresql/S…

can we please be honest here? Is anyone who's claiming it's all about "staying hip with the skillset" actually over 40? Because if you are, and if your skillset totally matches what the job asks for, and especially if you are nimble and quick to boot, then I promise you have heard "overqualified" and "culture fit" many sad times, most often after you nail the first sixteen (i kid, but only a little) interviews in record time and find yourself at the sunny end of a kick-butt onsite at which your facial lines can be seen. Then what was once "the team loves your passion and personality" becomes "we just don't think it's a culture fit". I'm going to have to start sending in a body double. It's that bad/sad/stupid.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#255

Post by brooklyn_ashey » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 7:26 AM UTC

Swinx43 wrote: post #130

moduspol wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

we need a #metoo movement for ageist experiences in the interview process and beyond! This antiquated EEOC complaint business needs a "disruption" by a more "agile" and effective approach.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#256

Post by throwanem » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 7:33 AM UTC

matt4077 wrote: post #172

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 belief that sentence to be broadly correct. First and foremost, it is making a comparison more than an absolute statement of fact. And (without having first-hand experience), it doesn't seem obviously wrong to say that someone who left for an extended vacation in 2014 would have more surprises waiting for him today than a mechanical engineer who did the same from 1926 to 1929. Note also that the statement is also t…

It wouldn't be wrong to say that I took an extended vacation from early 2015 to mid-2017, if not from the industry entire, then certainly from modern fullstack dev - spent the time working with best-of-2008 because reasons.

Coming back, there weren't all that many surprises. I went from first exposure to ES6, Babel, Webpack, protobuf RPC, and Kubernetes, to shipping, inside a month. And I am not in any way special. So I hope I might be excused for feeling I have some basis for the statement that I think you're vastly overestimating the scale of the issue here.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#257

Post by brooklyn_ashey » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 7:33 AM UTC

moduspol wrote: post #131

kurthr wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 stereotypica…

> 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)? There isn't evidence of this, but even if you believed that were the case, you combat it the same way you would any other weak point of your value proposition. You address it head on in…

True. What we need is a"not hotdog" style app for tech interviews. Simply photograph the face of the candidate and wait for the app to tell you if they are too old for the job. It needs a hip name. Suggestions? (this was a bit of light humor about a serious and important issue)

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#258

Post by brooklyn_ashey » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 7:38 AM UTC

moduspol wrote: post #117

sidlls wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, and all sorts of underlying reasons are hidden by assuming "-isms" and victimhood at the first sign of disparate outcomes. This is a loaded and contentious statement ("assuming...victimhood at the first sign"). And trying to address ageism is trying to solve the problem; the problem is ageism. In your particular example, ageism is manifest because older workers tend to have families and financial obligations (…

It is assuming victimhood, because it is presumed immoral (or illegal) activity for what could at least as reasonably be totally moral and legal decisionmaking as a result of other factors. If you choose not to work as much as someone else or made choices that require higher compensation, it is not an "-ism" for your employer to choose another candidate on that basis alone. We're going down a dark road claiming victi…

no one claims ageism at the first sign of it... you typically spend the years between 35 and 45 thinking... "no way! that's so stupid!" until it finally hits you, and you still can't believe it's really a thing. It's a lot like racism or sexism, except it's a bit more comforting to know that it will come to its perpetrator with a swiftness that will blow their mind.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#259

Post by brooklyn_ashey » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 7:49 AM UTC

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…

True. And it doesn't make sense given "at will" contracts everywhere.

Re: Why Ageism Never Gets Old

#260

Post by maccard » Fri, Nov 17, 2017, 8:58 AM UTC

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…

Honestly, I think your attitude towards this is incredibly dismissive. Hiring people with experience is good, but not if that experience is at the expense of some of the fundamentals. Imagine hiring a graphics programmer because they had 10 years experience in front end web development, only to find out they can’t write any shaders, don’t understand any of the theory, and you turned down someone with 5 years graphics programming experience to hire this person instead? Or perhaps more similarly, taking a backend web developer with a decades experience, and putting them in an engine developer role. Then on their first day they ask you why you only use ‘new’ sometimes.