Was it really necessary to treat this as a binary choice? This comment and the one above it seem latent with severe blowhard sentiment, where one declares that

Was it really necessary to treat this as a binary choice? This comment and the one above it seem latent with severe blowhard sentiment, where one declares that x sucks, and the other declares things other than x that suck more. It takes some of the wind out of the argument they are trying to make, which maybe are worth exploring further. Is there age discrimination in programming? Probably, although I've had at least one manager assert to me, with some plausible evidence, that reverse age discrimination also exists. But, unfortunately, that conversation gets drowned out in cynicism and hyperbole, and oneupsmanship by additional cynicism. It is tiring, because all it succeeds in doing is creating additional angst and frustration. In the people who believe what is being said, they now believe they are now facing down a life consisting of death marches and idiocy, with the other option being indefinite unemployment. It creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, where they will engender that kind of attitude in the places they work and live; with some regularity, what they expect a place to be like is what it will become. For the people who try to fight against that sentiment but find their thoughts, however reasonable, drowned out in the sea of people who claim that they lack sufficient context simply because they lack the requisite cynicism, they'll eventually give up and either succumb to the prophecy or just leave the community to its own misery. To this I ask, do we really need more cynicism, and is it really deserved? Are we certain this hasn't gone past discussing things reasonably, into the realm where people attempt to out-gloom one another in hopes that it justifies them tolerating their own plight? When do we stop admitting the inevitability of this and start taking action to change that, or at least investigating deeper what action can be taken? How are we so certain that all of these crappy programming jobs that we look at with disdain aren't the product of the cynicism of people, perhaps like us, who currently work in them and make them and the rest of the culture that way? It is, to me, increasingly hard to tell where things honestly suck, and where people make them suck for the sake of producing drama and fulfilling their own expectations of misery. I agree with Joel; this is the textbook definition (if there were a textbook) of a mutual self-confirmation club, and I worry that it exists even here on HN.