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>Besides skills, I think it comes down to your attitude and how you relate to your younger co-workers Also an engineer in my mid-40's. This is key. You need to

>Besides skills, I think it comes down to your attitude and how you relate to your younger co-workers Also an engineer in my mid-40's. This is key. You need to be the "cool" dad in the room, and someone people can go to for hard/difficult problems. You also have to stay relevant and keep your skills up to date. Talk about the great ramen place near your house, not how you had to solve Y2K problems with COBOL 20 years ago. The worst case scenario is if you're a bootcamp grad at 40+, you're gonna have all the problems of ageism without any of the experience to counteract it.

meowzero 6y ago
I agree. You need to be the cool uncle or older brother who shows them new tricks and cool stuff. You need to have a mentor like quality for their career growth yet still talk about the latest movies, technologies, games, memes, random geeky stuff, etc. to them
bilbo0s 6y ago
I don't know man? Game theoretically speaking, if a tech worker is older it's best to know what younger workers do not. For instance, an older worker is a good deal more likely to be hired if s/he is able to write the firmware for ray tracing video card hardware than s/he is to be hired for knowing how to write web apps in "cool language of the week". In fact, I'd argue that most of the older tech workers in the situation of being discriminated against, are the workers who spent their careers learning "cool language of the week". A few of them may get lucky and get a job doing something that a 22 year old new college grad can do, but what's the likelihood? Should you bet your family's future on those odds? Even if you get the job, what's the pay likely to be like? I feel like a lot of tech workers never ask themselves these questions. It's never too early to ask them either, in fact you should ask them early in your career. Getting too comfortable doing things everyone knows how to do will make you decidedly uncomfortable once you hit 35 or 40.
- drchopchop 6y ago
  Perhaps. But it's rare that an industry just sits around and stagnates to the extent that 20+ year old knowledge is applicable to current day problems. Even in the graphics industry, 20 years ago we were still discovering perspective correction and shaders were but a pipe dream. The problem set keeps evolving, and the tools we use to solve those problems keep evolving as well. Handwritten HTML -> vanilla JS -> jQuery -> Angular -> React, etc. It's not just the languages, it's major paradigm shifts in solving problems. If you want to get out of that rat race, then jump on the management track and stay there. Even then, though, you need some familiarity with what your team will be working on.

meowzero 6y ago

I agree. You need to be the cool uncle or older brother who shows them new tricks and cool stuff. You need to have a mentor like quality for their career growth yet still talk about the latest movies, technologies, games, memes, random geeky stuff, etc. to them

bilbo0s 6y ago

I don't know man? Game theoretically speaking, if a tech worker is older it's best to know what younger workers do not. For instance, an older worker is a good deal more likely to be hired if s/he is able to write the firmware for ray tracing video card hardware than s/he is to be hired for knowing how to write web apps in "cool language of the week". In fact, I'd argue that most of the older tech workers in the situation of being discriminated against, are the workers who spent their careers learning "cool language of the week". A few of them may get lucky and get a job doing something that a 22 year old new college grad can do, but what's the likelihood? Should you bet your family's future on those odds? Even if you get the job, what's the pay likely to be like? I feel like a lot of tech workers never ask themselves these questions. It's never too early to ask them either, in fact you should ask them early in your career. Getting too comfortable doing things everyone knows how to do will make you decidedly uncomfortable once you hit 35 or 40.

drchopchop 6y ago
Perhaps. But it's rare that an industry just sits around and stagnates to the extent that 20+ year old knowledge is applicable to current day problems. Even in the graphics industry, 20 years ago we were still discovering perspective correction and shaders were but a pipe dream. The problem set keeps evolving, and the tools we use to solve those problems keep evolving as well. Handwritten HTML -> vanilla JS -> jQuery -> Angular -> React, etc. It's not just the languages, it's major paradigm shifts in solving problems. If you want to get out of that rat race, then jump on the management track and stay there. Even then, though, you need some familiarity with what your team will be working on.