Slashdot Mirror
Tech's Dark Secret, It's All About Age
theodp writes "Universities really should tell engineering students what to expect in the long term and how to manage their technical careers. Citing ex-Microsoft CTO David Vaskevitch's belief that younger workers have more energy and are sometimes more creative, Wadwha warns that reports of ageism's death have been greatly exaggerated. While encouraging managers to consider the value of the experience older techies bring, Wadwha also offers some get-real advice to those whose hair is beginning to grey: 1) Move up the ladder into management, architecture, or design; switch to sales or product management; jump ship and become an entrepreneur. 2) If you're going to stay in programming, realize that the deck is stacked against you, so be prepared to earn less as you gain experience. 3) Keep your skills current — to be coding for a living when you're 50, you'll need to be able to out-code the new kids on the block. Wadwha's piece strikes a chord with 50-something Dave Winer, who calls the rampant ageism 'really f***ed up,' adding that, 'It's probably the reason why we keep going around in the same loops over and over, because we chuck our experience, wholesale, every ten years or so.'"
Which is why you need to move your career to architecture, design, management. Those Whipper Snapers do have a lot to learn from you. However they have the energy to do it much faster and they are often quite good as well. Also they are quicker to learn the new stuff that is out there.
Even if you are good coder, if you stay in computer programming it is really a wast of your skills, you have learned a lot of best practices and good ideas that came and gone and you can bring them up from memory when a good idea of the past becomes useful again. But you are also held back by years of baggage of the old way of doing things. And just a reduced energy level makes it much harder to work as fast as you use to and with new Technology. You knowlege and wisdom really needs to be shared at some point and not just kept to yourself just so you can say those Whipper Snappers they do all the same stupid mistakes I did when I was their age.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Hell, it's almost impossible to prove you've been discriminated against/sexually harassed as a female, but that tends to fly through the doors pretty quickly due to cultural stigmas.
Try being sexually harassed and discriminated against as a white male. Good luck with that - I hope you enjoy having your ass grabbed. Make such a claim and you will have them make a rebuttal that gets accepted as gospel - or you'll just be ignored.
The legal game is seriously rigged against the white, middle class male at this point in our society. They've become easy fodder: it used to be blacks or women would be quickly let go for this or that, but now it's white men. In many cases, it seems worse than how it "used to be", because the provocation is so freaking negligible so as to not matter.
I'd bet there's a higher ratio of white men than black men being let for for age.
Hell, I've noticed the whole "ageist" thing myself in IT. A buddy of mine works in a different part of the country than I do (California), and he says they've got no IT employees over the age of 35 (it's a small company).
I can also see the justification in letting older people go from IT. The lower cogs in the wheels do not benefit much from experience, because none of that experience tends to be conceptual or technique related - it's just process. They learn it, and they get stuck on it. I've seen this a number of times, where older people working in IT flag at a certain point. It's not necessarily due to being bored or not wanting to learn, but it's along the lines how some older mechanics years ago didn't move to the "non American" vehicles too easily. They're in a process, and they've learned it thoroughly: they may even be good at it. But conceptually, they can't step outside that box too much.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Evidently they don't let you near the customers. I wouldn't, with spelling like that. Strictly an interchangeable code jockey, not someone whose contributions are going to be sufficiently valuable that I'd let my customers expect to see your face again.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Well, if someone is asking for a brick in the face when they troll, you sort of have to "go with the flow" if you know what I mean.
it is the leaving alone of companies such as BP that worries me.
If you believe that government protects you from corporate malfeasance, I have a bridge to sell you.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."