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Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

oldgeekjobs.com

291–300 of 391 posts

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#291
post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and people born in the 70s aren't millenials. Really, the oldest are mid 30s, and I think even that is a stretch.

Yet rotary phones were still very common in the 80s, and my grandparents still had one in the early 90s. So people born in the early 80s, which qualifies as millennial, very likely used them.

Yep, my grandma had a rotary phone until well into the 90s. She was still paying the phone company to rent it as well.

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#292
post #268
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconded. I operate out of rural Arizona and travel to California (where my business is located) as needed. Thirty second commute, time with my family, and the opportunity to interact with people whose lifestyle concerns actually seem grounded in reality. You couldn't pay me enough to live in a place like SF.

Ditto that. I also live in AZ. I'm curious; where in rural Arizona are you based off ?

I am in Apache County.

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#293
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except old people are objectively better off in the US. It must be such a hard life, not having huge student debt and already having equity in a house so you can afford to turn down the 60 hour jobs. If only everyone understood how much you deserve it better than those young people.

Yeah, this. There is ageism out there, and it happens younger in tech than in other industries, but it's far less of an issue than all other forms of hiring discrimination I can think of. I've been a part of hundreds of interviews for dozens of engineering positions at a variety of companies and organizations. While I have witnessed clear-cut ageism with qualified older candidates, it's with the distinct minority of…

I know that women have many problems working in tech. But are you sure they have a harder problem interviewing in tech overall? I'm absolutely sure there are engineers who will overscrutinize their interview solutions, but there are also many companies who have initiatives targeted specially at hiring more women. I've even heard first hand of companies specifically hiring women to train in order to boost the number of female engineers.

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone that also works in Boulder, is your compensation enough to allow you to actually live in Boulder?

I recently moved back to the area from NorCal. Initially, 40% of my income was going to rent for a studio on the outskirts of Boulder. It's insane. Now I live with my SO and thankfully that's down to around 15%. I can't even imagine finding a place to buy now.

Someone call the CDC. Whatever California's got appears to be contagious.

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference (both in terms of perceived and actual value) between "never stop learning" and constantly being on the language/framework-of-the-year treadmill.

It's funny, I've been in the industry so long and I usually stay at places 5+ years, so I've been able to skip quite a few trends. When new guys come in, I'll ask about the stuff I've skipped wondering if they are still relevant. Sometimes they are and sometimes I hear things like, "oh, that's so old, this is the new thing."

Yup, I lucked out by hitching my horse to C++ and Linux early in my career. The need for either of them never seems to go away. Also bet on a few technologies that kind of petered out, like OpenGL, and there were a few I'm glad I didn't waste time on.

You can always catch-up and learn something that becomes important/mainstream, but you can't un-waste your time deep diving on a dead-end technology.

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean we're not talking about Baby Boomers here, chief. There are millennials staring 40 in the face right now. People who graduated college in the late 90s/early 2000s are in their mid- to late-30s. The guy who posted this site is one of those people (though I think he misses the "millennial" cut off by 1 year). Those of us in this age bracket are "old" by startup standards/stereotypes. I promise you college and ho…

> There are millennials staring 40 in the face right now. i'm one of these, and i don't consider myself a millennial. anyone who's legitimately used a rotary phone (or even just seen one in use) in a non-ironic way should not be considered a millennial.

My parents still have a rotary phone (because it still works even when the power goes out)... I get what you're saying, but in areas with tetchy power, most homes have kept old phones.

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#297
post #2

I think that the "Bay Area scene" is different from much of the world. I think that part of human nature is that people like people who are like themselves, so you sometimes get these insular / discriminatory sub cultures that judge people on superficial traits instead of the quality of their minds. From both this article and the tales of many friends, San Francisco strikes as one of these low-tolerance / high-discri…

It's the rural countryside around here that put up gigantic Trump posters on their farms, so unless you're talking about some other definition of bigotry, I don't you can generalize "rural" as "not bigoted."

Also: I have never had trouble getting jobs in the Bay Area, though I moved before I turned 45. I did however work with people who were late 40s/early 50s and engineers, so I didn't see a huge age prejudice.

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Personally, I dislike places where people are provincial and close-minded, so I'll stick to the rural countryside and leave SF to the bigots. >I visit some of those places and many have a beautiful setting, everyone knows each other, there is a sense of a community. It is quiet. Depending on what part of the country you're talking about, many of those beautiful small communities are very bigoted also -- and not ju…

And the south isn't bigoted in the ways many people assume. There are absolutely small towns where open discrimination is a problem. And there are absolutely small minded jerks that have a problem with people of color. But what I've observed personally living in the south and travelling the country is that the south is often less functionally segregated than other areas of the country. It's sheer demographics if noth…

>There are absolutely small towns where open discrimination is a problem. And there are absolutely small minded jerks that have a problem with people of color. Eh, IMO it's still more palatable than a whole metropolitan area that prides itself on superficial diversity PCism.

>But what I've observed personally living in the south and travelling the country is that the south is often less functionally segregated than other areas of the country. It's sheer demographics if nothing else; when the population of many major southern cities are majority minority, then it's difficult for people to avoid living and working next to each other.

Functional racism (or any other "ism" tends to follow groups with enough wealth to insulate themselves from people who are different and people who have so little that they need to be reassured that no matter how little they have they're always better than someone.

>Where the dynamic gets really interesting because of all this is with people that want to fight inequality, but don't realize that they have a massive blindspot when it comes to what functional racism looks like because they don't actually live in functionally diverse environments.

This. It's like a bunch of 5th graders debating foreign policy.

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#299
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. That's a good point. Quite often poverty makes the situation worse, it radicalizes people and enhances the bigotry.

Poverty isn't tied directly to bigotry. Rather, a lack of new ideas and mindsets in close proximity can present an environment conducive to the development of bigotry (or its less malicious cousin, ignorance).

Believing that no matter how bad your life is you're still better than someone else by virtue of race becomes more tempting the closer you are to rock bottom.

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#300
post #2

I think that the "Bay Area scene" is different from much of the world. I think that part of human nature is that people like people who are like themselves, so you sometimes get these insular / discriminatory sub cultures that judge people on superficial traits instead of the quality of their minds. From both this article and the tales of many friends, San Francisco strikes as one of these low-tolerance / high-discri…

The "Bay Area scene" is also pretty bad at figuring out that a lot of their problems only exist in the Bay Area . Although they're doing a heck of a job importing their horrible toxic culture up here to Seattle.

Don't forget Colorado. Texas is taking longer but obviously a larger area will take longer to pollute if you do it at a fixed rate.
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