8 ms·

This kind of ageism isn't really visible to you unless you're the subject of it. Yes, it's real.

by zik 8y ago

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ianai 8y ago
Society in general is pretty hard on older people and it increases with age. Think of the way older women are treated as “grandmas”. They can be shoehorned into a role they may not want to play.
- Alex3917 8y ago
  > Think of the way older women are treated as "grandmas". They can be shoehorned into a role they may not want to play. The (American) Jewish term of endearment for a female baby is bubbeleh, which translates roughly as "tiny future grandmother." On the surface it might look like shoehorning, but I think it's meant to be aspirational more than limiting. There may (or may not) be something similar at play here.
  - ianai 8y ago
    I had a specific response to the stereotypical grandma role. I heard it somewhere too long ago to justly represent. But I think it was that grandmothers can be treated like revered figures but generally not taken seriously when they voice concerns or opinions. I wish I had a clearer memory of this point of view...
- Consultant32452 8y ago
  For men and women it tends to be equal and opposite. Young men are at their lowest social value when young, they're disposable, expected to destroy their bodies to make a living, etc. As they get older their social value goes up. It's the opposite for women whose social value peaks at 18 and declines over the years with a significant drop in the 30s when fertility wanes.
  - mcguire 8y ago
    I suspect the (young, male) workers at the FAANG and the (older, male) workers in this thread would be counterexamples.
    - ianai 8y ago
      They're the exception that "proves" the rule, really. There's a quote from someone that goes along the lines "Young women are generally the most valued people by society. The people least valued by society are young men." That's probably what the previous comment was rephrasing. I experienced this first hand, as a man, after graduating from college at the start of the great recession and not having any luck finding work for years thereafter. Having said that, the economy has been very different for this cycle than it was when I was fresh out of college. It clearly varies inside and outside SV, and all the other usual caveats.
humanrebar 8y ago
For example, I find that technical interviews for experienced developers tend to be harder, which makes me infer an "up or out" culture. A dev with 20 years of experience isn't even evaluated for normal individual contributor roles, instead they are chief code wizard or unqualified. Younger devs, especially college hires, are given more leeway to train on the job and grow into their level of aptitude and interest. A similarly intelligent and driven middle aged dev won't be offered the same chances.
- user5994461 8y ago
  What do you recommend to handle that? I find it difficult to hire senior developers for junior positions with the salary that goes with it. The biggest obstacle to middle age workers who are shifting career is to be unable or unwilling to take the paycut and downsides that come with a fresh start.
  - ben_w 8y ago
    Ironically I would be fine with that but the recruitment agents (and everyone else) kept telling me to aim high.
    - mtnGoat 8y ago
      The higher offer you get, the more the recruiter gets paid. Consider the interests of the advice giver.
      - user5994461 8y ago
        It's a strong red flag that you are seriously underpaid if the recruiter is insisting on asking for more. The recruiter has little interest in you being paid more. He's strongly incentivized to push candidates toward the average of the company. Going over average is risking the company to bail out, too expensive. Going under average is undermining your credibility and leaving commission on the table.
  - humanrebar 8y ago
brian_cunnie 8y ago
I'm 54 and have been working in Silicon Valley/SF since '96. Ageism: One way to combat it is to have a good network. Of the 7 jobs I've had in the last 20 years, 6 of them were from personal reference (schoolmate, co-worker, friend). You don't need to be a badass, just dependable. Work around your limitations: I'm not as sharp as I was in my forties, and this is especially apparent when I pair-program with someone half my age. Younger developers have an astounding short-term memory (or, as my brother likes to phrase it, "they have a much larger register set"). As a simple example, we have 3 environments at work, and at any given moment they're being used for different purposes. I write their purposes down on a scrap of paper to keep it straight, but my twenty-six-year-old pair keeps it in his head. Stay fresh: I know a 69-year-old developer/contractor say to me, "2000 was pretty good but after that the work dried up — I guess they didn't need COBOL programmers anymore". He had never bothered to stay current. Make no mistake: picking up new skills can be hard. I remember in '86 when a developer in his 50's turned to me and said, "Brian, I'm tired of learning new things." He really liked to bartend though, so I hope that career worked out for him. And some developers aren't interested in working anymore (I think this can strike at any age). I remember five years ago pair-programming with a developer my age who wanted to reminisce ("Remember when 640kB was a lot of memory?") and show pictures of his grandkids. I felt bad when they let him go, but it was hard getting work done while I was pairing with him.
- Kalium 8y ago
  > Stay fresh: I know a 69-year-old developer/contractor say to me, "2000 was pretty good but after that the work dried up — I guess they didn't need COBOL programmers anymore". He had never bothered to stay current. This is one that a lot of people have trouble with. One of the best engineers I ever worked with was in his 60s at the time, and seems to have stopped learning new organizational systems sometime in the 1980s. Agile development processes were just newfangled bullshit to him. He was hot shit at anything that required fine attention to detail, and implemented a distributed task system after I gave him a verbal thumbnail sketch. Correctly. The first time. But I could see that his refusal to learn new things was interfering with his career all the same.
  - 8y ago

This kind of ageism isn't really visible to you unless you're the subject of it. Yes, it's real.

by zik 8y ago

This kind of ageism isn't really visible to you unless you're the subject of it. Yes, it's real.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

ianai 8y ago

Society in general is pretty hard on older people and it increases with age. Think of the way older women are treated as “grandmas”. They can be shoehorned into a role they may not want to play.

Alex3917 8y ago
> Think of the way older women are treated as "grandmas". They can be shoehorned into a role they may not want to play. The (American) Jewish term of endearment for a female baby is bubbeleh, which translates roughly as "tiny future grandmother." On the surface it might look like shoehorning, but I think it's meant to be aspirational more than limiting. There may (or may not) be something similar at play here.
- ianai 8y ago
  I had a specific response to the stereotypical grandma role. I heard it somewhere too long ago to justly represent. But I think it was that grandmothers can be treated like revered figures but generally not taken seriously when they voice concerns or opinions. I wish I had a clearer memory of this point of view...
Consultant32452 8y ago
For men and women it tends to be equal and opposite. Young men are at their lowest social value when young, they're disposable, expected to destroy their bodies to make a living, etc. As they get older their social value goes up. It's the opposite for women whose social value peaks at 18 and declines over the years with a significant drop in the 30s when fertility wanes.
- mcguire 8y ago
  I suspect the (young, male) workers at the FAANG and the (older, male) workers in this thread would be counterexamples.
  - ianai 8y ago
    They're the exception that "proves" the rule, really. There's a quote from someone that goes along the lines "Young women are generally the most valued people by society. The people least valued by society are young men." That's probably what the previous comment was rephrasing. I experienced this first hand, as a man, after graduating from college at the start of the great recession and not having any luck finding work for years thereafter. Having said that, the economy has been very different for this cycle than it was when I was fresh out of college. It clearly varies inside and outside SV, and all the other usual caveats.

humanrebar 8y ago

For example, I find that technical interviews for experienced developers tend to be harder, which makes me infer an "up or out" culture. A dev with 20 years of experience isn't even evaluated for normal individual contributor roles, instead they are chief code wizard or unqualified. Younger devs, especially college hires, are given more leeway to train on the job and grow into their level of aptitude and interest. A similarly intelligent and driven middle aged dev won't be offered the same chances.

user5994461 8y ago
What do you recommend to handle that? I find it difficult to hire senior developers for junior positions with the salary that goes with it. The biggest obstacle to middle age workers who are shifting career is to be unable or unwilling to take the paycut and downsides that come with a fresh start.
- ben_w 8y ago
  Ironically I would be fine with that but the recruitment agents (and everyone else) kept telling me to aim high.
  - mtnGoat 8y ago
    The higher offer you get, the more the recruiter gets paid. Consider the interests of the advice giver.
    - user5994461 8y ago
      It's a strong red flag that you are seriously underpaid if the recruiter is insisting on asking for more. The recruiter has little interest in you being paid more. He's strongly incentivized to push candidates toward the average of the company. Going over average is risking the company to bail out, too expensive. Going under average is undermining your credibility and leaving commission on the table.
- humanrebar 8y ago

brian_cunnie 8y ago

I'm 54 and have been working in Silicon Valley/SF since '96. Ageism: One way to combat it is to have a good network. Of the 7 jobs I've had in the last 20 years, 6 of them were from personal reference (schoolmate, co-worker, friend). You don't need to be a badass, just dependable. Work around your limitations: I'm not as sharp as I was in my forties, and this is especially apparent when I pair-program with someone half my age. Younger developers have an astounding short-term memory (or, as my brother likes to phrase it, "they have a much larger register set"). As a simple example, we have 3 environments at work, and at any given moment they're being used for different purposes. I write their purposes down on a scrap of paper to keep it straight, but my twenty-six-year-old pair keeps it in his head. Stay fresh: I know a 69-year-old developer/contractor say to me, "2000 was pretty good but after that the work dried up — I guess they didn't need COBOL programmers anymore". He had never bothered to stay current. Make no mistake: picking up new skills can be hard. I remember in '86 when a developer in his 50's turned to me and said, "Brian, I'm tired of learning new things." He really liked to bartend though, so I hope that career worked out for him. And some developers aren't interested in working anymore (I think this can strike at any age). I remember five years ago pair-programming with a developer my age who wanted to reminisce ("Remember when 640kB was a lot of memory?") and show pictures of his grandkids. I felt bad when they let him go, but it was hard getting work done while I was pairing with him.

Kalium 8y ago
> Stay fresh: I know a 69-year-old developer/contractor say to me, "2000 was pretty good but after that the work dried up — I guess they didn't need COBOL programmers anymore". He had never bothered to stay current. This is one that a lot of people have trouble with. One of the best engineers I ever worked with was in his 60s at the time, and seems to have stopped learning new organizational systems sometime in the 1980s. Agile development processes were just newfangled bullshit to him. He was hot shit at anything that required fine attention to detail, and implemented a distributed task system after I gave him a verbal thumbnail sketch. Correctly. The first time. But I could see that his refusal to learn new things was interfering with his career all the same.
- 8y ago