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> If age discrimination is real, that means that people are not valuing older people properly - they're undervaluing them While age discrimination is certainly
by Alex3917 5y ago
> If age discrimination is real, that means that people are not valuing older people properly - they're undervaluing them
While age discrimination is certainly real, I think it's also conflated with the fact that there just isn't a lot of demand for people who are good at their jobs in general.
I'd liken it to how, if you take up baking, then on pretty much your first try you can make a pie that's better than the pie from almost every commercial bakery. The reason for that isn't because home bakers have more knowledge of baking techniques than professional bakers -- they don't, not by a long shot. It's because if only 1 in 100 people is willing to actually pay enough to make it profitable to make properly made baked good, then there just aren't many situations where you can build a business around doing that.
In other words, older people might not be less employable in spite of the fact that they're better at their jobs, but because they're better at their jobs.
- MattGaiser 5y agoYep. I had to demonstrate competence in system design and scaling for my current role. We haven't touched that stuff at all as nobody has wanted to pay for that upfront and when scale has been needed, they have just added compute.
- Alex3917 5y agoRight, and that's not even the difficult part of doing a startup. I did a software dev interview where they asked me if I had any questions, and I said something along the lines of "I notice that if you look at Mark Zuckerberg's reading list, he's reading books about things like the history of the Islamic golden age, whereas you're asking me questions about javascript syntax. Do you actually think the latter is more important?" And then they kicked me out halfway through the interview.
- MattGaiser 5y agoDO they really want the opinions of developers for anything non-technical? My current startup hired me partially on account of product experience. I’ve been an exclusively technical resource.
- jfengel 5y agoI think you chose a slightly funny example. Pie crust is a bit of a challenge to get right. Your first one is definitely going to be ugly, and there's a very good chance that it will be tough. Filling is easy, but crusts require experience to know how much is the right amount (of water, of kneading, of rolling). Most home bakers get better results with frozen pie crust. A great home baker can do better, but not on the first try. Cookies, on the other hand... yeah, if you can read and follow instructions at the level of a third grader, you can make great cookies.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]