6 ms·

One of the biggest indirect causes of ageism I've seen is the traditional career path forced many engineers out of engineering - there is/was an attitude at pla

by jowiar 13y ago

One of the biggest indirect causes of ageism I've seen is the traditional career path forced many engineers out of engineering - there is/was an attitude at places like IBM of: "If you want to make bank, you need to go into management or sales". Years later, an engineering crunch makes engineering into "where the money is", but you largely lost a generation of technical experience that took a break of a decade or two. My father got lucky in that he was successful in his transition out of engineering, and was 67 by the time his position went extinct, but there are a whole bunch of folks who would rather have been engineers than otherwise, but ended up missing out on a couple decades where the daily tasks of building software changed dramatically so gained less in technical expertise than they should have, and were left hanging around age 50. I have a ton of cultural criticisms of the current tech industry, but the one thing that it is absolutely getting right is valuing creation. The damage that could have been caused by the Google/Apple cartel has been limited largely by the startup industry that, for all its faults, has as a crucial belief that the act of building things is valuable, and that people who make things are the ones who create the most value.

Fr0styMatt 13y ago
This makes a lot of sense. It's something that I feel is changing nowadays thankfully.
Zenst 13y ago
You mention IBM, one aspect that always bugged me was upto the mid 80's they had a thing about people with beards and was some sort of unwitten policey (never worked for them) that nobody could have a beard and any intervewing with them entailed making sure you had a good shave. I worked with a chap at RAND who went onto work for IBM porting AIX onto the mainframe (least that was the initial project he was joing for) and was somewhat begrudged that he would have to shave his beard of just to get the job irespective of his ability. That has all changed and yet back then was accepted standards from what I could tell. More a insight into culture change but I have not heard of any agisim culture inside IBM before or now, just a beard thing, which has passed. With that anybody have any insight as to any agisim aspects inside IBM past or present?
- jmspring 13y ago
  At some point, IBM decided catering to wall street was more important than doing real work. Take a look at Cringely's articles on IBM. I've known people that worked as contractors at IBM Almaden and as the transition was occurring, they went out of their way to not end up on the radar -- the impression I got was that management being aware of your project was a risk for being cut. This was even worse for the rank and file full timers. IBM used to invest in it's employees. My advisor was of a generation where if you saved IBM X dollars in terms of research patents, etc, you were well supported as time went on. Additionally, they had a culture of investing in their employees. I don't know when the change happened... I want to say sometime in the mid/late 90s things shifted and have since.
  - Zenst 13y ago
    Sounds about right, yes IBM did also change when they focused more in offering services. Became slower in there replies too issues but still got there. One project I came across was issue with SAMBA and logging around the year 2001 and quickly knocked up a wrapper for the SAMBA code to trap and log what was needed to be logged. Took IBM a week to confirm my 30 minute solution would work and was the right approach and then they only ended up at that conclusion after talking to Jeremy Allison.
  - Consultant32452 13y ago
    I worked for a company once that had a suggestion box. If you made a non-anonymous suggestion that wound up saving the company money you got 10% of the savings over 2 years. While I was there no one got rich off of it but a few people got some nice bonuses. I don't understand why more people don't do this.
- Taek 13y ago
  I worked as an intern at IBM last summer. It seemed like my entire team was a stagnant pool from the 70's. The languages were C and HLASM, 'high level assembler.' None of my managers knew anything about newer languages like Golang or Haskell. We built hash tables by converting strings to integers and then using modulus. They laughed at the idea of a Linux machine being useful as a server. That said, most of the new hires were under 25, and most of the older people had been employees since the age of 25. But definitely the older people got all the respect. IBM's full time offer to me was a solid 1/2 of Google's offer after stock and bonuses (over 2 years), with no room for negotiation.
ChuckMcM 13y ago
I think this is a huge part of it, folks who stop "keeping up" with the technology eventually find there is a huge amount of catching up to do. When that happens, especially if there isn't a lot of runway, it can be difficult. I remark to folks all the time that you can take someone right out of high school, and have them spend about 2000 hrs learning about "computers" and now they are 'hot shot programmers' that are in demand. 2000 hours is a bit more than a year at 5 hours a day factor in that the math, and intro classes aren't necessary for someone who has both done the degree before and spent some years working in the field, and I suspect that any engineer taking a 6 month sabbatical could be right back to current. And completely current with the wisdom of organizational dynamics, work habits honed by years of what worked and what didn't, that person should be like gold. The place where I feel sad is when someone says "I've been unemployed and spent the last 6 months sending out resumes and no one will call me because I'm old." Had they instead spent that six months re-tuning old talents, sending out the occasional resume, and building stuff, that seems to get people hired regardless of age.
- tsotha 13y ago
  >Had they instead spent that six months re-tuning old talents, sending out the occasional resume, and building stuff, that seems to get people hired regardless of age. There are two problems with that logic. The first is if you have only six months of experience doing something your pay is likely to reflect that. Second, look at it from an employer's perspective. You can hire a twenty year old or a fifty year old. They have the same experience with whatever the latest thing is. The twenty year old has the energy of youth. No wife or children. He may come in hungover occasionally but with enough Red Bull he'll bounce back by noon. The fifty year old is slowing down. He takes drugs for his blood pressure that make him tired. He has ailing parents and teenagers at home. Who do you think is going to be more productive? Who's going to put in 16 hour days at crunch time? You can't play to a young man's strengths if you want to compete with young men when you're over forty. IMO you'd be better off as the last guy who knows COBOL than just like every other mobile programmer with six months of experience except older and slower.
  - ChuckMcM 13y ago

by jowiar 13y ago

Fr0styMatt 13y ago

This makes a lot of sense. It's something that I feel is changing nowadays thankfully.

Zenst 13y ago

You mention IBM, one aspect that always bugged me was upto the mid 80's they had a thing about people with beards and was some sort of unwitten policey (never worked for them) that nobody could have a beard and any intervewing with them entailed making sure you had a good shave. I worked with a chap at RAND who went onto work for IBM porting AIX onto the mainframe (least that was the initial project he was joing for) and was somewhat begrudged that he would have to shave his beard of just to get the job irespective of his ability. That has all changed and yet back then was accepted standards from what I could tell. More a insight into culture change but I have not heard of any agisim culture inside IBM before or now, just a beard thing, which has passed. With that anybody have any insight as to any agisim aspects inside IBM past or present?

jmspring 13y ago
At some point, IBM decided catering to wall street was more important than doing real work. Take a look at Cringely's articles on IBM. I've known people that worked as contractors at IBM Almaden and as the transition was occurring, they went out of their way to not end up on the radar -- the impression I got was that management being aware of your project was a risk for being cut. This was even worse for the rank and file full timers. IBM used to invest in it's employees. My advisor was of a generation where if you saved IBM X dollars in terms of research patents, etc, you were well supported as time went on. Additionally, they had a culture of investing in their employees. I don't know when the change happened... I want to say sometime in the mid/late 90s things shifted and have since.
- Zenst 13y ago
  Sounds about right, yes IBM did also change when they focused more in offering services. Became slower in there replies too issues but still got there. One project I came across was issue with SAMBA and logging around the year 2001 and quickly knocked up a wrapper for the SAMBA code to trap and log what was needed to be logged. Took IBM a week to confirm my 30 minute solution would work and was the right approach and then they only ended up at that conclusion after talking to Jeremy Allison.
- Consultant32452 13y ago
  I worked for a company once that had a suggestion box. If you made a non-anonymous suggestion that wound up saving the company money you got 10% of the savings over 2 years. While I was there no one got rich off of it but a few people got some nice bonuses. I don't understand why more people don't do this.
Taek 13y ago
I worked as an intern at IBM last summer. It seemed like my entire team was a stagnant pool from the 70's. The languages were C and HLASM, 'high level assembler.' None of my managers knew anything about newer languages like Golang or Haskell. We built hash tables by converting strings to integers and then using modulus. They laughed at the idea of a Linux machine being useful as a server. That said, most of the new hires were under 25, and most of the older people had been employees since the age of 25. But definitely the older people got all the respect. IBM's full time offer to me was a solid 1/2 of Google's offer after stock and bonuses (over 2 years), with no room for negotiation.

ChuckMcM 13y ago

I think this is a huge part of it, folks who stop "keeping up" with the technology eventually find there is a huge amount of catching up to do. When that happens, especially if there isn't a lot of runway, it can be difficult. I remark to folks all the time that you can take someone right out of high school, and have them spend about 2000 hrs learning about "computers" and now they are 'hot shot programmers' that are in demand. 2000 hours is a bit more than a year at 5 hours a day factor in that the math, and intro classes aren't necessary for someone who has both done the degree before and spent some years working in the field, and I suspect that any engineer taking a 6 month sabbatical could be right back to current. And completely current with the wisdom of organizational dynamics, work habits honed by years of what worked and what didn't, that person should be like gold. The place where I feel sad is when someone says "I've been unemployed and spent the last 6 months sending out resumes and no one will call me because I'm old." Had they instead spent that six months re-tuning old talents, sending out the occasional resume, and building stuff, that seems to get people hired regardless of age.

tsotha 13y ago
>Had they instead spent that six months re-tuning old talents, sending out the occasional resume, and building stuff, that seems to get people hired regardless of age. There are two problems with that logic. The first is if you have only six months of experience doing something your pay is likely to reflect that. Second, look at it from an employer's perspective. You can hire a twenty year old or a fifty year old. They have the same experience with whatever the latest thing is. The twenty year old has the energy of youth. No wife or children. He may come in hungover occasionally but with enough Red Bull he'll bounce back by noon. The fifty year old is slowing down. He takes drugs for his blood pressure that make him tired. He has ailing parents and teenagers at home. Who do you think is going to be more productive? Who's going to put in 16 hour days at crunch time? You can't play to a young man's strengths if you want to compete with young men when you're over forty. IMO you'd be better off as the last guy who knows COBOL than just like every other mobile programmer with six months of experience except older and slower.
- ChuckMcM 13y ago