Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Asks: Have You Experienced Ageism? (observer.com)
Friday the Huffington Post wrote that "Ageism runs rampant through Silicon Valley, where older workers are frequently overlooked for jobs." They ran tips from the man who recruited Tim Cook for Apple, who pointed out that it's difficult and expensive to recruit new talent, urging businesses to "stop seeing workforce diversity as a good deed; it's good business."
And earlier this month The Observer ran an article by Dan Lyons, a writer for HBO's "Silicon Valley," who shared his perspective on ageism from his time at HubSpot. Their CEO actively cultivated an age imbalance, bragging that he was "trying to build a culture specifically to attract and retain Gen Y'ers," because, "in the tech world, gray hair and experience are really overrated."
Meanwhile, Slashdot reader OffTheLip writes: Information technology is a young business in comparison to many other industries but one of the few where older workers are not valued for their institutional knowledge... As a recently retired techie I experienced this firsthand, both as an older worker, and earlier in my career [as] one who didn't see the value in older workers. As Lyons states, older workers are good business.
What are your thoughts? And have you experienced ageism?
Meanwhile, Slashdot reader OffTheLip writes: Information technology is a young business in comparison to many other industries but one of the few where older workers are not valued for their institutional knowledge... As a recently retired techie I experienced this firsthand, both as an older worker, and earlier in my career [as] one who didn't see the value in older workers. As Lyons states, older workers are good business.
What are your thoughts? And have you experienced ageism?
With the amount of angry whitebeards inhabiting /., we can expect a totally calm and reasonable discussion of the topic.
It's a shit deal for workers if you find yourself unable to find a job for something as stupid as age. And if "companies can be free to do what they want" is going to let them continue to get away with abusing workers - then they shouldn't feign surprise when those workers join together and fight back.
we all KNOW this is a problem.
we all know h1b is a problem.
but the place where it needs to be discussed - the national stage of public opinion, perhaps prompted by news coverage (crickets chirping sound heard) - it is NOT discussed. its swept under the rug.
I'm in the bay area, I'm over 50 and I've been a sw/hw guy since my teens. I'm currently out of work, looking, and its been dead for months, for me, so far. this is typical and usual, sad to say, and I have a little more time left before I'm empty and near bankruptcy again. yet again. I don't know if I'll ever see reliable employment in tech ever again.
I have tons of experience and a great resume. but I'm older, white, male, independant and aware of management's BS; and I guess ALL of that is out of favor for hiring prospects.
I really wish this was made more visible to non-geeks. taking to geeks is not useful, about this, as we all know about it already.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
While I'm sure some small number of companies may in fact try to hire a younger crowd, why would I want to work there anyway? A big part of the reason a company is usually doing that is either to pay less or work people much more, or a combination of both...
The large majority of companies I've seen have older workers, are totally fine with middle age and older technical staff. So a few companies who take age into account do not hurt job prospects.
A big pat of success for me personally has been keeping ahead of technical trends, and making sure not to fall into some pit of technology you cannot escape from and do not enjoy. if you enjoy technical work the keeping up to date is fun and the enthusiasm for your work shows. It also helps a lot to respect co-workers and be someone others enjoy working with, instead of just tolerating.
Another reason why it should be LESS hard as an older worker to find work is the connections and friends you make over the years. That's by far the best way to find jobs anyway, and building up good connections over years is less hard for traditionally more withdrawn technical people than cold-starting a relationship with someone in a company you are trying to hire into.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have hired over-40 programmers who were rockstars, and some over-40 workers who just could not deliver.
Age is just one variable among many, but people obsess over it because it is easier to ballpark someone's age in an interview than it is to get a read on other indicators of talent.
The biggest problem is that over-40 workers are universally more expensive than the 20's workers. They all want to jump in at the senior level, and feel justified in this based on their experience. This makes them a bigger risk to take, and ultimately more expensive if they don't pan out.
On the other hand, too much investment in kids results in software that works upfront but absolutely does not scale, and winds up full of ticking time bombs.
well, my friend
(turns on yoda voice)
you will be. you *WILL* be.
(/voice)
think long and hard about it. while you dance today, tomorrow will be different.
and that thought actually gives me delight. the SOB bastards that are fucking me and my kind over right now; they'll soon experience it and while I won't be there to laugh, I'll laugh now in advance.
HA!
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Am 51, and for the last decade I've experience some, yes. The most overt was for a Bay Area startup position that was going swimmingly until I did a Skype with the (much younger) DoE, and he saw I was "old". (Guess he couldn't read a resume.) But the more annoying ageism is a general assumption by some of the kids that if there is a difference of opinion on an engineering question, it's because the old guy is clinging to his anachronistic ways. Version control? Testing? Even a one-page design doc? Don't be such an old fuddy duddy!! :-)
It has its plusses, though. As an old guy, you realize that there's serious money to be made cleaning up after the kids. And experience can often tell you which projects are sure failures, which can save working on something hopeless for a year.
Is it ageism when I turn down work because the company wants my experience but is only willing to pay the price of a someone straight out of college?
But yes ..I have experienced ageism in a former company. I once worked for a company that had a president like the mentioned HubSpot CEO. Me and 3 other middle career hires once sat around with dropped jaws during one company meeting when he gushed over hiring people straight out of college because then he could "shape" them into the perfect company workers. Where as he couldn't do that with older hires. Apparently us older workers with all our experience were outright trouble makers.
Fortunately I was only at that place for 6 months.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
I'll show you ageism, you little shits. If I have to get out of this chair, somebody's gonna cry.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I can see you are young. you think its about SPECIFIC SKILLS.
lol
its not. a good guy in C can get any job done, really. c++ guy, java guy, whatever. this insistance on specific domain knowledge IS THE PROBLEM!
we used to have people who knew how to code and would learn the specifics on the job. that worked and it can still work, but companies are spoiled fucking rotten and they have had too much specific selection for too long. they now only want narrow skills and you can't keep chasing that and stay employed. there are too many things that come and go for you to retrain on specifics like that and still be effective.
your view is part of the problem! you really do seem to think that its 'old skills' that is the problem. I guarantee you that even if I had the latest 'skilz' that the grads leave school with, today, that will still not be enough. I demand a salary that is higher than theirs and companies refuse to pay unless they absolutely have to. they generally talk themselves into paying younger kids, for all the reasons mentioned in all the threads, here.
its not about skills. that argument does not hold water if you have been in the industry long enough.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Discrimination on the basis of age is a federal crime. But just try to prove it. I once applied for a position as a design engineer. When the owner of the company came out of his office to interview me, the first words out of his mouth were "I advertised for an engineer, not an engineering manager!" I did not get the job. On the other hand, my resume is golden, at least in the area where I live. I still was hired by a company after I had turned 65. Six years later, I still get inquiries.
Not without being a mind-reader.
I do know that after a long and very successful career I took two years off to deal with health issues with one of my kids (now happily resolved) and thereafter as an over-50 engineer with an employment gap I was pretty much unemployable.
My experiences in the interviews I got suggest something subtly different than ageism -- at least of the sort that believes older engineers can't do the work. I'd meet with a bunch of people and everyone would seem excited and enthusiastic about my background... except the hiring manager. Whomever I was going to work for would seem distinctly colder, as if they'd decided I wasn't going to get the job before they even met me.
I think what's going on is that people don't like the idea of supervising someone who is older and highly experienced. Maybe they think a more experienced worker would be less cooperative. Or maybe they were afraid we'd be angling for their job. I don't think, given my resume, that anyone believed I couldn't do the work. They just doubted my word that I really wanted the job because of my experience.
Is that ageism?
I think it's very common for more experienced engineers who've reached the point where they've been doing engineering management to want to get back down and dirty, only to be frustrated by the fact that nobody wants you for that kind of work at your age. You hear it a lot -- I enjoyed being a project leader or program manager, it was rewarding and I'm glad I did it, but now I want to get back to the stuff that brought me into the field in the first place. Except once you've taken any kind of senior position nobody wants you for grunt work anymore, even if you've been armpit-deep in engineering on a day-to-day basis.
Is that ageism?
I dunno. But it does suck.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I've experienced the bias against older tech workers. I've also seen the results of that bias: work that would've gotten a failing grade even in the college courses I took, let alone at some of my employers. There's a considerable advantage to having been there, done that, can see how current problems match previously encountered problems and what methods already exist to solve them. To give an extreme example, traditional Web applications (most logic on the server, Javascript in the client is used primarily for input validation and display formatting) mirror very closely the flow of ancient 3270 workstation "green-screen" applications: the server sends a block of display and validation instructions to the client, the user enters the data without interacting with the server, the client sends the completed form back to the server as a single block for processing. The same flow held for the forms applications I build for DEC VAX/VMS in the 80s. And many of the tricks developed to maintain session data across requests for web application are the same tricks we used for the same purpose way back when. I can see the same pendulum swing at work as well: 3270 workstations gave way to interactive terminals (where the application could directly interact with the user), which gave way to forms applications, which gave way to thick clients (PC applications that accessed remote servers via various protocols), which in turn gave way to Web applications, which are now giving way to thick clients again (this time Javascript framework applications running in the browser accessing remote servers via XML/JSON and RESTful interfaces). That perspective gives me a big advantage in knowing where to go for things that already exist and have had all the kinks thoroughly worked out that I can apply to the current problem, rather than having to work solutions out from first principles or copy-and-paste code from StackOverflow as a black box as many of the younger developers do.
Most of the bias I attribute to a mistaken belief that "old" = "unable/unwilling to learn". Some of that belief probably comes as a reaction to the normal skepticism older people have to the latest "silver bullet" sales hype. We've seen those fail to live up to the hype time and time again, someone who's only been in the business 5 years and who hasn't maintained a single application through many update cycles hasn't gotten the first-hand experience with the fallout. It's not that the shiny new tech isn't good, but the salesman is probably over-promising to try and seal the deal and I'd prefer to find the gotchas in a test project rather than by having production fall over.
I am over 50, I live and work in Silicon Valley, and I have never personally experienced ageism. By the time someone is my age, they should have plenty of experience, be able to apply old tricks to new technologies, and have deep and wide professional network. If I was looking for a new job (I am not), I could easily tap old friends and coworkers, and have several offers within a day or two. If an old person is trying to find a job using Craigslist, Dice, etc. then that means they have no network, or don't think their old coworkers would recommend them, because they are unproductive. That is not "ageism", it is "unproductivism".
serious money to be made cleaning up after the kids.
YES!!! There's also serious money to be made in the support of 40 year old technology running on critical systems whose documentation was lost years ago.`
Just look no further than slashdot. All these young whippersnappers with 7 digit slashdot user id numbers are taking over the place.
Yes, I have experienced it, and it's not just the tech field. ;)
A little ranting about the value of experience is below. Feel free to ignore it.
Though at my previous tech job, I was the secret asset. If a techie had a problem they couldn't solve, they were required to go to the help desk and were forbidden to the senior techs about it. (New and relatively young manager had foolish ideas.) After the helpdesk was unable to help, they'd come by my cube to 'chat'. Usually had an answer for them in a minute or two, or at least a few things to test out to isolate the issue. It's not just that I had more experience with the software than they did, but I also understood a LOT more of how the machine functions as I'd started fooling with computers all the way back in the early 80s. That's not to say that knowing machine language for a 6502 processor is directly applicable, but rather knowing the intimate details of how a computer actually does it's work will allow you a certain insight into the operations of any computer that someone who grew up in a gui world just doesn't get. The greater understanding and experience employing that allows for greatly enhanced options for approaching an issue. The others really didn't like it if I couldn't solve an issue because that almost always guaranteed it was getting kicked to the devs.
They are not the only friends I have. But yes in fact I DO want to the people I work with to be friends at some level. The people in the group I work with currently I spend almost zero time with outside of work yet I consider them friends on some level, and enjoy spending time with them - a good thing too as the people you work with you'll spend far more time with than most "real" friends.
Business today does hiring based on money.
HA HA HA HA HA HO HE HAHA HO....
That was hilarious. You should go on stage with that act. The things business does daily are so remote from real monetary concerns as to be laughable. It certainly does not come into play when hiring technical people as most businesses are simply DESPERATE (and I do not use that word lightly) to find someone responsible who knows what they are even doing.
There are probably a few businesses that hire because "cheap labor" but as I said why would you even want to work there? Such businesses are no fun, and more importantly they will not be around that long anyway so you'd just have to find new work. That's why the few places that are so short sighted simply do not matter in terms of *my* ability to find work, which is what the main article is about (older experienced workers ability to find work).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Ageism doesn't exist? Bullshit
I'm in the bay area... I'm over 50 and I've been a sw/hw guy since my teens. I'm currently out of work
Get a grip on reality - that is to say, you are NOT LIVING IN IT.
Move anywhere outside and you can find work, and a good life...
The "Bay Area" is an aberration that wrongly colors of discussions around issues. It's a reason why theres such a furor over diversity in tech hiring, because the "Bay Area" is filled with a lot more drama than you will find in any workplace outside.
That said even in the "Bay Area" I know plenty of older SW workers who are quite happily working across a number of companies.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Recruiters like it when you shave you beard for interviews in the midwest. They do, they really like it. They prefer if you do it. They can't tell you that you have to do it anymore, but they still very strongly prefer it. I've always felt kind of awkward without a beard. So, one day, about five years ago, and just as my beard started going gray, I stopped doing it. It's idiotic to change your appearance in this way, especially when it's a dishonest representation of what you actually look like most of the time.
I've always had a good resume, I get compliments on it all the time from clients and recruiters alike. The only people that dislike the way I write a resume are college guidance counselors, and people poisoned by their terrible advice, but they're few and far between. So all things considered, that factor in this equation has not changed. But since I've been growing the beard both longer and grayer, the number of successful interviews I've had has gone up. And the way I've been treated on the job has changed, dramatically. Bear in mind that the type of roles I go for hasn't changed since I was 25. I like coding. I intend to continue doing it.
People are more respectful. They ask me for my insights more often. I'm treated like an eccentric code sage, and that's absolutely fine with me. Even when I fly out to work in places like California or Seattle, this does not seem to change. I can only think of one instance where this decision has worked against me. One interview for a very hostile publishing company a few years ago, where they made it a point to ask me how often I keep up with new things, where they refused to believe that I read more books every year than their CEO. That said, I think that one would probably have went poorly no matter what I looked like.
I don't mind being older than my coworkers or project managers.
I don't mind taking orders from people younger than me. This isn't my trip in life.
I'm just there to make better stuff, solve more interesting problems, and keep myself challenged intellectually.
My biggest problem is boredom, so I've learned to be pickier in selecting my assignments.
Getting older, and reaching middle age isn't a bad thing.
You just have to know how to sell it.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
Not at Google, Microsoft, FB, Amazon and other top tier companies. They hire so much, they can't afford to age-discriminate even if they wanted to. Which they don't.
It's a disaster waiting to happen.
I'm almost in my 50s and I've constantly experienced ageism. It's easy for people to point fingers and say if you're competent you'll get any job no matter what - that would come from people with endless network contacts, but if you're mobile - and have to find new networks all the time then it's not THAT easy because believe it or not - most HR and Recruitment centres ignore you if they see 40+ in your CV. They don't even bother to read it after that, you won't even be contacted.
And this is a freaking catastrophe - because at least Sweden (and Scandinavia) where I live, the government have decided that we're LIVING LONGER all the time and pushes the retirement age up towards 67 - 70yo because the society can't afford to support the pensioners that keep living longer and longer, we're expected to reach 100 nowadays, if your retirement happens when you're 60 years - this means we've got to support you for 40+ more years, no society can afford that.
But you do the Math: Ageism = companies want them younger and younger - Government expect us to live longer and longer = extreme poverty above 40 to you're 70 if you make it that far.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
That's basically my feeling on it also, and I'm mid-40's. Too many people stagnate naturally, or end up (or stay too long) in jobs that don't provide any avenue for technical growth. I built my skills on a foundation of solid Unix/Linux admin at financial places, but have also done 4 startups, picked up solid Network skills along the way, etc.
The biggest problem I've seen is young jocks wanting to use "buzzword technology" just for the sake of using them, even if it adds complexity for no gain, and then seasoned people get viewed as "old school" for using tried-and-true tech.
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
I am guilty of ageism: I prefer to work with older people.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I work for a university doing IT and as with most universities, you see a big mix of ages. We have everything from students up to people in their 80s (I'm 35). The most common problem I see with older workers is the lack of willingness to keep up with new tech. IT, development, or any computer field progresses fast, of course. If you are going to be effective, you have to be open to learning new things all the time and changing how you do things. Some older workers have a lot of trouble with that. They act like things should be how they were 10 or 20 years ago, and still try and do things the same way. It leads to inefficient solutions, and inability to effectively help users with problems they have with new tech.
While I'm sure there is legitimate ageism, since there are people who will discriminate, on purpose or not, against all kinds of things, I think some of it is just older workers having a common problem that doesn't gel well with technical work. I personally have zero care about someone's age, what I care about is when someone is trying to do stupid shit from 10 years ago and refusing to get with the times.
I think I read once where it takes about 20,000 hours to become an expert in a field. Some disciplines of engineering encompass more than one area of expertise. I remember one problem that was solved in two days by one of these 5k/day consultants that a dozen people hadn't solved in two months because they'd run across a similar problem a decades earlier while working on something completely unrelated.
I am 58, but look 15 years younger (partly genetics I guess, but I also lift weights and so am pretty buff - I can beat anyone in my company in push-ups and arm-wrestling). In my most recent job hunt (last year), I experienced what I think is age discrimination for the first time - having an interview with a start-up that went really well I thought, but then got an rejection with the explanation that I would not "fit into a start-up environment" (I had worked start-ups in the earlier tech boom though). But then I got an offer from a start-up a few weeks later, where I am currently working.
I dropped my first decade of experience off my resume years ago, as I thought it was not obviously relevant to the modern tech industry, and harmful in dating me, and so I also do not list my Bachelors graduation dates. I was fortunate to earn my Masters, and do PhD work, mid-career, so that I do list those dates on my resume, making me look more than a decade younger on paper (which is not then exposed upon meeting me since I look like my implied age).
I am concerned though, because I need to work until I am 70 to collect my full SS income, and build up a decent retirement account. The drain of a child with cancer for many years, before she died, and a wife that had serious health issues and an emotional breakdown during that same period set me well behind financially. (A lot of obviously young, and so far lucky, posters here make it sound like saving for retirement is always a piece of cake, and anyone who has trouble preparing is just stupid and lazy; but bad things can happen in life through no fault of yours that can really hurt your savings - there is no safety net to help you out). I am not sure how long my apparent youthfulness will hold out, and whether the industry will become even more intolerant of age. I just need 12 more years though.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
As an older worker with considerable skills, it was hard to even get an interview stateside, but overseas in Asia, they recognized my value and were more than willing to not only hire me, but pay well for what I brought to the table. In the US, older workers are made to feel like dirt. In Asia, they respect age.
Know this: If you make me a fair offer that matches the position and I do take it, I won't gripe about the wages I agree to and I will work hard so you will want to promote me to a position where you can take advantage of what I have to bring to the table.
Then you would like working for me...
Years ago, I had a bookkeeper, she was in her late 30s, she had about 15 years experience in bookkeeping, HR, payroll, etc. I didn't have tons of money, so offered her a job for $36K, which she took because she needed a job and I needed someone to fill that job.
Within 6 months she already had a raise to $40k. Why? Because she came in and worked hard, never complained, and took on many tasks without being asked to.
At her first annual review, I think she was expecting maybe $42-43k... I gave her a raise to $50k, she about fell out of her chair.
My comment was simply, "you have done far more in the past year than I expected, you have fixed many problems within the company and taken on an office manager's role, while keeping an eye on the overall business. I hired you for a basic bookkeeping and HR position and you've turned it into the officer manager's position while still taking care of the bookkeeping/HR/Payroll."
"If I had to replace you, I have no doubt it would cost me $50k, so you're worth every penny."
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If you pay people what they are worth to you, rather than the "least you can get away with", then you can have long term employees who grow with the company. Sadly too many companies have forgotten this lesson.
My Grandfather served in WWII, he left the military after that and started at the ground floor in the mailroom of an insurance company. He retired in the 1980s from that same company. His last position? CEO. That doesn't happen anymore, but it should...
By the time someone is my age, they should have plenty of experience, be able to apply old tricks to new technologies, and have deep and wide professional network
Unless you have stayed too long in the same vertical amongst the same small set of players. My problem now is most of the network of people I have worked with, those who I have impressed over the years, have retired or clocked out.
It doesn't help that my skills are dependant on hands-on interaction with the data, code etc, and when it comes to a tag-team of interviewers quizzing me with stupid questions I go semi-autistic like a possum in headlights. Hopefully others who have stayed in IT into their 50's are a little better at giving good impressions and selling themselves. I never had to do the hard-sell before I got old.
If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.
The biggest problem I've seen is young jocks wanting to use "buzzword technology" just for the sake of using them
Free advice: Pick your battles carefully, and avoid being overly negative. Instead, point out the drawbacks of new-fangelism, and make constructive suggestions. If your organization is, say, going with JavaScript so everything will be "cross-platform", then go with the flow, but suggest a framework/library that is actually cross-platform, familiarize yourself with JS static analysis tools like JSHint and Closure, and become the expert in on-device debugging (notoriously hard with JS). You won't be the high-flying trapeze artist, but you will be the guy with the safety net.
More free advice: Don't ever, EVER say "I told you so", no matter how tempting it may be.
Posting AC. My current job doesn't care, because they just need people who know what they are doing.
However, I've had previous interviews where I was asked if I would grow a full beard and wear flannel so I can "fit in the team" (once I realized I can't stand the place, I mentioned that the reason I don't bother growing a full mane is that gas masks don't seal over facial hair, which befuddled them greatly), or have been overtly called a "fossil" because I didn't put my whole life on social media, or been told, "find a mainframe shop, pops" when I mentioned the security ramifications of "just put it in Docker", or "move it to OpenStack."
Ageism is out there. I would say post 40, you have to be -exceptional- to be able to find any work. A 20-something with far fewer skills will always get the position before you every time, especially if the person is an H-1B, because of the payroll tax advantage.
I'm going to assume you are willing to move.
I'm going to assume you are willing to pay for my relocation. If not, then you aren't serious.
As an old guy, you realize that there's serious money to be made cleaning up after the kids.
My first IT job was a Token Ring to Ethernet conversion project. A real simple job of removing the coaxial cable from between the Token Ring card and the wall plug, plugging in the Ethernet cable between the motherboard port and the wall, and testing the video app that required the extra bandwidth. We had 300 systems. I took 150 on one side, the two fresh out of high school kids took 150 on the other side. When I started overlapping the computers that they did and noticed that the video app didn't work, I checked the cable connection. The kids plugged the Ethernet cable into the Token Ring card that uses either coaxial or twisted pair cabling and not the motherboard port. Because they didn't test the video app, they never found their mistake. All the computers they touched were like that, and none of the computers in the offices were touched. The worse part was that the project let them go for the night without checking their work.
I made an extra four hours in OT that night for cleaning up after the kids. Whenever I get hired on a new job, I look for a mess to clean up. That's where the real money lies.
Is it ageism when the interviewer remarks "You're a little old" during the interview? This happened to me when I was 40 and still had hair, none of it gray. No offer was forthcoming, but the place didn't rate very highly from my perspective, either. And then there was the letter I received recently from EEO investigating a complaint about a company that hadn't bothered to have me come in after the phone interview despite my having all of the skills they seemed to be seeking.
Now I work for a small company where I am probably the oldest employee., but we all get along well, and I'm having the time of my life.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
Don't ever, EVER say "I told you so", no matter how tempting it may be.
At a large semiconductor company, where we are enjoying a huge layoff (the axe falls Monday, when you will know your employment status), lots of people are saying "I told you so". I told you so - for the management that thought skipping validation would draw TTM in. I told you so - for the architects who thought a home built internal bus standard would serve us well. I told you so - for the idjits who thought IP requirements flow from customer to IP creator, rather than from standard to both IP creator and IP customer. I told you so - for the management that thought they could save money by putting half a team on the other side of the world where pay is less.
I'm 40 which I can't decide if it's old or not in this industry. I generally feel quite young among my peers.
To be honest, I agree with you with the exception of with my Asbergers "friends". I have worked with some of the most exceptional minds in computational mathematics and physics over the years and to be fair, these guys are genuinely unmarketable. They are the best people at what they do and they work extremely hard and for the most part diligently and make miracles happen in code. Companies around the world are desperate for their skills and talents. But they need to work the job they got when they graduated the university until they retire or they're screwed.
I know of at least three of these guys living on unemployment (maybe for the rest of their lives) because they are utterly unable to communicate with anyone with an IQ under 170 (I use the term IQ just to have some numerical reference... I just mean really really good at solving puzzles). It's not because they check IQ cards or they black list people because their IQs are too low. It's because they actually are medically incapable of being interested in holding an interest in communicating with anyone who doesn't provide "valuable input" to solving their puzzles. They have absolute focus on problem solving and have absolutely no interest in the outside world. These are real life Sheldons x10. I had a conversation with one the other night who displayed a very unusual level of emotion and excitement since his roommate (a girl with severe communication issues... crippled by fear of other people) had taught him to use a vacuum cleaner properly. He'll probably vacuum that apartment 16 times a day for three weeks.
I honestly never have any problems finding work in this business and my age has had absolutely no impact other than positive. I do recall having major problems with age when I was in my teens and early 20's. At 40, people simply assume that I know what I'm doing.
Networking is key (I'm in my late 40s). I changed jobs last year and went to work for someone that I've known for 20+ years now, working along side someone else that I've known for 15 years. When you can tap your network like that, you bypass HR and your resume (or LinkedIn profile) lands on the right desk to get you hired.
It's one of the things I tell young collage-age kids. They need to pay attention to their social networks in college and build them and continue to expand them into their 20s and 30s. Because those connections will be what gets you good job after good job in your 30s and 40s and 50s.
(I don't care if you do it by hand, or do it via a tool like LinkedIn. But you must cultivate those contacts unless you want to find yourself in a dead-end job in your 40s.)
Nobody will ever know if your suggestions would have led to a better situation or to a total nightmare. Unless you find a way to run parallel universes to compare the actual outcome of forks in the road, your "told you so" is worth nothing, it just makes you look shortsighted and petty.
Taking credit for "good decisions" that were not taken is like being proud of your daughter's Nobel Prize before you even fucked her mom for the first time.
lucm, indeed.
I have had a similar experience. First they asked a question way out of my domain, to see "how I thought" I have not been given too many problems to solve that I did not have a real good handle on how to approach, but, this one I did not have a clue. So I start to wrap my head around the problem, ops your 15 minute are up, its time for show and tell for another 15 minutes. If they had asked me to solve anything like a real world problem for the position I was applying for, I would have been fine
It doesn't help that my skills are dependant on hands-on interaction with the data, code etc, and when it comes to a tag-team of interviewers quizzing me with stupid questions I go semi-autistic like a possum in headlights.
I can help a bit in this department...
The good news is, at least in Portland they *do* usually have a hands-on portion of the interview process (mostly because most employers are sick of being burned by fresh-out-of-college kids who talk a good game, but cannot code their way out of a paper sack.)
But, when it comes to the tag-team interview, if I get hit with a stupid question, I usually answer it with a question expressly designed to show them how stupid their question was. Handle it the same way you'd handle a design session, and use it as a springboard to show them that you not only know the stupid stuff, but also know better ways to solve the stupid problem behind that stupid question.
Note that the point isn't to one-up them, but to show them that not only is there more than one way to, say, skin a cat, but that the other ways are more efficient and less messy when it comes to the art and techniques of cat-skinning.
It doesn't always work (I recall one company rejection that was, shall we say, rather hostile, but they don't exist any longer, so...), but in most cases if you handle it with humor and grace, it works exceedingly well, and even tends to impress them in a lot of instances.
PS: I'm halfway through my 40's, and have only seen 1 instance of ageism, period. Nothing openly hostile or actionable, but enough to give me pause, and to dump the contract as soon as I could (it was contract-to-hire, but I decided that I didn't feel much like continuing that relationship). I am happy to report though that there are more than enough good companies who don't shy from gray hair that I can (at least at the time being) ignore them.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Yeah this frustrates me too- when the real answer is 20 seconds with Google. I've said that in interviews and gotten weird looks like I am admitting to being a copy an paste coder or something. Who remembers all of this stuff-not to mention whatever you remember is outdated in a year or two.
love is just extroverted narcissism