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It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

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Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#331
post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that the IPA fandom hasn't diminished (especially out west), but other things have arisen alongside it. On the east coast, I see an impressive number of sours and dubbels coming out of craft shops, and the midwest is big on bold, malty offerings like ambers and oatmeal stouts.

I haven't seen IPAs drop in popularity (I much prefer darker, maltier beers), but I do feel like more recently IPAs have tried to use hops in more interesting ways instead of just going for XIPA/DIPA. I hope if hops stay around this trend continues. I would have thought the hops shortage of 2008 would have forced breweries to try something else, so by now it's probably demand driven. I hear there's a new hops shortag…

Yeah, I don't know that I've seen an actual drop, but there definitely seems to be more development in other areas. Craft beer aisles keep growing, and a good chunk of what gets added isn't IPAs. Still not enough porters and dark ales for my taste, but I'll take what I can get.

I'm definitely glad to see the push into more interesting IPAs. I'm seeing more whites, doubles, and other exotic stuff. Plus people finally seem to be learning that 80 IBUs demands some malt and complexity to make something drinkable.

(For some reason, the Wyoming/Idaho region is awesome for dark beers. Something practical, or just a regional fascination? Try some Wake Up Call or 3 Picket Porter if you can find 'em.)

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#332
post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's too primitive an abstraction. It was great when you were just fiddling a few little ajax widgets on a static page, but it doesn't scale.

That's what I meant by low level. Frankly, I disagree about scalability - that's up to the program's architect.

So, how would you go about altering all large numbers of page sections in realtime, without suffering the performance hit of serial page repaints, using jquery?

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're young and single I'm guessing. What you say seems logical. However, saving enough money for yourself to retire (I have) is one thing, but then when the kids come and need braces, school stuff, extracurriculars, college, health insurance, etc., they're pretty well screwed if their parents can't find a job. Especially these days with people waiting longer to have kids, the 40-year-old employability cutoff is a p…

I'm in my 30's, married, have a son, and a mortgage. But I also have enough savings to pay off my mortgage in full today if it was an urgent need.

Okay sorry I rushed to judgement. We're in the same boat then. Except I just lost a job and am on the verge of having to dip into savings for the first time ever. Very disturbing feeling. Immediately changes a lot of opinions.

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#334
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of bowties I've seen recently has increased dramatically...among younger workers. This is in a research focused environment, so there's a little more fashion leeway. Things are cyclical. For better or worse, I think we're on the rising edge of a rebellion against the nerd-frump affect. Thank you Matt Smith!

I hope the ruff comes back!

Powdered wigs and codpieces.

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#335
post #181

One thing that I'm really surprised about is the lack of empathy that companies and teams feel with this. I've been hiring engineers for a few years now and from _my_ perspective, age has never been a consideration. That does not mean other interviewers did not include age bias which influenced the overall decision. I'm around 30 currently, and I'm terrified as I get older that this will happen to me and my friends.…

They're probably not being intentionally ageist. My guess is that the differences in sense of humor, lack of desire to hang out with coworkers, and other social differences just make them seem like unappealing "culture" fits. And it's true, if you're just hiring for people you can also hang out with and you're in your 20's, of course you won't like them. At some point you get the revelation that people have their own…

Add the salary on top of that.

Higher experience commands higher salary and no company has an unlimited cash flow, even among the ones who are truly interested in the rare experiences and skills.

On the other hand, the world is full of companies and industries who are basing their business on cheap employees and lowballing.

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So true. Something diversity advocates conveniently forget and omit.

Some diversity advocates forget, so other diversity advocates point it out to them. Don't paint this as diversity advocates being the bad guys somehow.

I was actually thinking of the press coverage. Advocates can advocate all they want but if they are not covered by the press, no one knows about it.

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#337
post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I meant by low level. Frankly, I disagree about scalability - that's up to the program's architect.

So, how would you go about altering all large numbers of page sections in realtime, without suffering the performance hit of serial page repaints, using jquery?

Haven't run into that need, I doubt most sites have, so I don't have a ready answer for you. We typically only change the parts of the page that have data that has actually changed, so DOM rendering performance hasn't been a difficult problem for us.

I thought you meant scalability in terms of code size, or number of people working on it, or number of users.

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#338
post #315
post #79

"Michael Peredo, a 55-year-old auto engineer dismissed from Mercedes-Benz in February 2015, says he had trouble giving up his bow ties for T-shirts, as some he met at ProMatch suggested. ‘I feel like myself wearing them,’ he says." Yeah, you're going to have a really hard time getting a programming job in Silicon Valley if you show up in looking like a security guard in a tie, let alone looking like a waiter in a bow…

our meritocratic hacker values place no value on surface appearances Geeks care FAR more that you conform to their "hoodie and jeans" dresscode than managers care that you wear a tie.

Depends on the geeks and the managers. (A hoodie is it, now?)

But what I was saying there is not about what values we practice but about what values we aspire to practice. We aspire to understand things as they are, seeing past mere appearances. Whenever we assume that someone is nontechnical because they're wearing a tie, are female, or are black, we're failing at that.

Re: It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley

#340

I don't know about the Silicon Valley, but I'm in the Silicon Forest (Hillsboro/Portland Oregon) and this market seems to be very merit driven. You can be 80 years old and get a job if you can do work. Maybe you can't get a job at fart.IO building an API for some craft beer BS but at many mid to large companies 40 is still an average. The last 4-5 companies I've been at value bullet points over anything else (for wha…

coming in showing off your PHP skills, JQuery or WinForms experience you'll get dumped

This sounds odd to me. I don't doubt it happens, but why? PHP roles are still going strong, and there's a ton of PHP work that is not legacy code.

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