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Can Older IT Workers 'Navigate' Ageism? (cio.com)
Slashdot reader snydeq writes, "In an industry that favors youth over experience, the best defense against age discrimination may be avoiding becoming a victim in the first place, writes Bob Violino in a report on your rights and how to deal with ageism in IT." From the article:
That includes being a lifelong learner and staying on top of developments in your field at every stage of your career, and seeking out training at your workplace and on your own. Make sure your employer knows you're willing to undertake training to retain and gain knowledge and skills. It's also important to show current or potential employers that you bring value to the organization through experience and flexibility.
The article suggests bringing any concerns about ageism to your Human Resources department -- and documenting any age-related incidents. But it also quotes a labor attorney who argues "Many employers believe that older workers are reluctant to try new technologies," adding that age discrimination is more prevalent in specific industries including technology. Another labor attorney even suggests tech firms are hiring younger workers because they ask for lower salaries and less time off. He also points out that in the U.S. laid-off workers are actually entitled to a list showing the positions and ages of all other affected employees -- which in cases of age discrimination can provide grounds for a class action lawsuit.
The article suggests bringing any concerns about ageism to your Human Resources department -- and documenting any age-related incidents. But it also quotes a labor attorney who argues "Many employers believe that older workers are reluctant to try new technologies," adding that age discrimination is more prevalent in specific industries including technology. Another labor attorney even suggests tech firms are hiring younger workers because they ask for lower salaries and less time off. He also points out that in the U.S. laid-off workers are actually entitled to a list showing the positions and ages of all other affected employees -- which in cases of age discrimination can provide grounds for a class action lawsuit.
The work force still believes that simply getting a year older means they deserve a cushier job with more benefits and a higher salary, learning and experience not required.
This worked for a short time when the economy and population was growing exponentially, it still works for many who grow their skill set year in year out, but not so much any longer for your average Joe. In many cases it would make more sense to take a pay-cut every year. Since this concept is still so embedded in everyone's psyche, unfortunately, that is not what happens. companies just hold on to people until their salaries gets too unreasonable (or just never hire them full time) and then let them go.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
In an industry that favors cheap over good
Have gnu, will travel.
Or, alternatively, you can provide much better value than the young and inexperienced. Then you can ask for a significantly higher salary and more time off.
If you stopped learning at 25, that will not be an option though.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
IT industry favors low-cost instead of high-cost. It has nothing to do with age. It's money talk.
Experienced technicians and engineers are costly, but may well prove cheaper if job requires high specialization, know-how and fast deployment of solutions.
It's not like senior staff does not adapt to new techs. It does, and it does it well, but at a higher cost (and overall quality is much higher too).
Alvie
I will be 67 this year. Because of Perl, I still get quite a lot of well-paid niche work. Also, happily (or because I was a sensible freelancer) I don't need full time either, my health is not too bad and I'm in the UK (admittedly the Conservative party is doing its level best to ruin universal healthcare here).
However I've recently begun to talk with other older technical people about problems that affect 'us' and that we can solve. There are plenty, without thinking about internet connected juicers and multi-zillion funding rounds. In fact, I was just invited into a start-up hothouse (apparently I am a 'talented outlier', whatever that means, perhaps someone younger can youngsplain? haha, only serious) and turned them down. What I/we aim at is more modest, more open and will provide some geeky fun on the journey too.
Ok, that's a bit of a manifesto now too, you know where to find me, just click on some intertubey stuff. Incidentally, I've never had a problem with young bosses and still enjoy new tech (less so, hype-tech). But, I think the best liberation for the seriously old, is to fashion some sort of destiny for ourselves.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
Wow. Talk about an apologist for age discrimination based entirely on assumptions of creeping incompetence without evidence of same
Never go to human resources until you have another job offer. Period. If you are not operating from a position of strength you are simply viewed as a problem employee and they will work with your manager to get rid of you. If you have a job offer in hand, then your interactions with HR will be very different, you may even receive a raise and get changes you want. (But don't count on it) Human resources works for the company, they are not there to make you happy.
Had two young hotshots in from a consulting firm who worked on a problem for months. Got stuck.
Finally sent an old timer over to review work. He said he could not figure out what they were trying to do.
Asked for user requirements, designed solution in two days.
Gave it to a junior employee who had it coded and tested in 2 weeks.
Got a refund from the consulting company.
It is a lot easier to teach an old dog new development environments that to teach the business and tricks of the trade to hot shot college graduates.
Just ask the BBC.
When life ends at 30, you don't have to kill yourself. What you do is put on a white robe and a hockey mask and fly up into a giant bug-zapper while the young watch.
So this is your answer to lack of skilled high tech?
Move into management or be fired?
Same old MBA nonsense.
MOST techies are "Do'ers" instead of "people handlers" and your solution is retrain away from core competency or be fired
Talk about no clue.
"...Another labor attorney even suggests tech firms are hiring younger workers because they ask for lower salaries and less time off.
Kudos to TFS for cutting through the bullshit to identify the real reason ageism exists.
I grow tired of looking for other excuses when it's rather obvious what the cause is.
Greed.
And no, there does not appear to be an escape from that.
My experience as well.
The longer they are able to stay employed without learning they harder it is on them.
I have had co-workers doing the same tasks more or less unchanged in 20 years. I can't wait until they retire so they can be replaced with a cron job that doesn't need vacation.
I kept up with technology pretty much across the board, 10 years ago or so. But eventually you realize that
(a) this isn't part of your job - your employer only cares about particular things, which may or may not be modern
(b) you have a life, possibly a family, and that needs to be a priority as well
(c) there's too much to keep up with, and anyway, it's not possible to know what will stay important. Look ing only at programming languages: Java 8 was a big change, Javascript looks nothing like it did 10 years ago, is Ruby important? Rust? Scala?
Eventually you get tired of it. Yet another programming language, when you've used 20, and played with 20 more? It gets tiresome, and really, I haven't seen anything really innovative for ages, it's all just young folk reinventing old ideas.
I don't know the answer, but blithely saying you should keep up with the everything on your own time isn't very realistic.
Oh, and get off my lawn.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
You can't. Younger people can work much, much longer hours than you.
Which is only a plus if you ignore over a century of research showing diminishing and often negative productivity gains when working people too long.
People slow down as they age.
Citation needed. You're not even providing anecdotal evidence here - just an unfounded assumption.
Experience is overrated.
This can only come from someone without said experience. I'm not even that old, and I pretty regularly run across situations where I come up with better solutions to problems faster than less experienced individuals because of something related I've worked on.
Grow up.
It really depends. Small consulting businesses (say 2...20 employees) usually try very hard to send you the person you need, because they do not have a well-known name and need to compete on merit. Large consulting enterprises (IBM, etc.) send you however they have and often worse people than they could have sent because they will work more hours on a problem and hence bring in more money.
Caveat: I have experience with an IBM consulting team working for a large enterprise. "Incompetent and arrogant" sums it up pretty well. Initially I proposed to have regular meeting with them because I was working on something similar (I am from one of those small consulting companies) and I thought there could be synergies. We quietly decided to not have any meetings anymore after the first one after one of these pricks tried to explain to me how a web-server works and just managed to demonstrate his utter cluelessness. A few months later their project failed completely, because they could not deliver anything that worked within 4 years. For example, in all that time they never bothered to find out what load they needed to cope with (I know because I was asked for my numbers by the people that had to clean up that mess).
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.