3 ms·

What you're missing is a time stamp. Discrimination follows a pattern. i) It's acceptable, ii) It's actively questioned and discussed and meets denial and resis

What you're missing is a time stamp. Discrimination follows a pattern. i) It's acceptable, ii) It's actively questioned and discussed and meets denial and resistance iii) it's broadly accepted as a problem and addressed (but who knows when it's fully resolved if ever) Discrimination against tech workers over 40 is a very newly discovered issue. So it's unfair to say he's on par with racial or other more thoroughly discussed areas of discrimination.

deleted 13y ago
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- jusben1369 13y ago
  Sigh Tech workers. And yes, there's always been some age discrimination. But the explosion of consumer and mobile apps in the last 5 - 10 years (vs B2B apps prior) has really created this issue at scale.
  - bpyne 13y ago
    Just to add to your point, having a fairly large culture of start up founders in their 20's nowadays adds to the problem (1). People gather around them people they can relate to - it's sub-conscious. A 20-something and a 40-something have few overlapping cultural references in entertainment, night life, flavor of the day programming languages/frameworks/build systems/etc., and problem domain. I see a number of social media sites/apps whose purpose I don't understand. I'm on FB and have Yelp'ed a few times but resist even Twitter because I'm on information overload all the time raising a child. Interviewing at a social media start up would become uncomfortable quickly as I pretend to understand what "itch they're trying to scratch". If more founders were in their 40's, would reverse discrimination happen? "So, you lack systems analysis and operations skills and you've only used one flavor of *nix...(phone reminder goes off)...Quite sorry, I have to end this interview early to pick up my daughter from daycare, she's vomiting. Oh, you'll go early to SXSW...is that a new airline?" Is it illegal for a start up to discriminate against me if I have the technical acumen? Sure. But the hiring person doesn't have to consciously discriminate. It can happen just by placing greater emphasis on the lack of experience in a particular framework when the real reason is that the hiring person just didn't relate to me as a 46 yo in any way. 1. I'm not implying that it's a problem having a large number of 20-something start up founders. People with time and energy to solve cool problems is only a social benefit. (EDIT: Changed asterisk to 1.)

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

jusben1369 13y ago
Sigh Tech workers. And yes, there's always been some age discrimination. But the explosion of consumer and mobile apps in the last 5 - 10 years (vs B2B apps prior) has really created this issue at scale.
- bpyne 13y ago
  Just to add to your point, having a fairly large culture of start up founders in their 20's nowadays adds to the problem (1). People gather around them people they can relate to - it's sub-conscious. A 20-something and a 40-something have few overlapping cultural references in entertainment, night life, flavor of the day programming languages/frameworks/build systems/etc., and problem domain. I see a number of social media sites/apps whose purpose I don't understand. I'm on FB and have Yelp'ed a few times but resist even Twitter because I'm on information overload all the time raising a child. Interviewing at a social media start up would become uncomfortable quickly as I pretend to understand what "itch they're trying to scratch". If more founders were in their 40's, would reverse discrimination happen? "So, you lack systems analysis and operations skills and you've only used one flavor of *nix...(phone reminder goes off)...Quite sorry, I have to end this interview early to pick up my daughter from daycare, she's vomiting. Oh, you'll go early to SXSW...is that a new airline?" Is it illegal for a start up to discriminate against me if I have the technical acumen? Sure. But the hiring person doesn't have to consciously discriminate. It can happen just by placing greater emphasis on the lack of experience in a particular framework when the real reason is that the hiring person just didn't relate to me as a 46 yo in any way. 1. I'm not implying that it's a problem having a large number of 20-something start up founders. People with time and energy to solve cool problems is only a social benefit. (EDIT: Changed asterisk to 1.)