Posted by andsoitis 2 days ago
Nevermind that work has become significantly more precarious, the cost of living higher, the wages lower.
Ageism is just a dick move in general. It's gotten to the point where job candidates in their 30s and early 40s are dropping work history and education to appear as if they're in their 20s to potential employers - and even considering plastic surgery[1]. It's gotten completely out of control, but I'm quite glad to see more of my peers and younger colleagues taking a firm stance against it in any form.
As long as the work gets done, everything else is irrelevant. As long as the idea is successful, it doesn't matter the age of the person who surfaced it.
Stereotyping just gets your ass into legal trouble, and the easiest solution is to just not do it in the first place.
[1]https://www.businessinsider.com/resume-botox-lying-millennia...
It's also self-defeating. Yes, there are greybeards who are stuck in their ways and refuse to learn anything new. But more often than not, the greybeards are super good team members in ways that the younger employees can't hope to compete with, because all that experience has taught them a ton about what works and what doesn't. But rather than trying to harness that valuable knowledge, companies shoot themselves in the foot by ignoring it. It's ridiculous.
I've been pretty successful but my advice is almost always ignored. Where it matters is the stuff I do or the stuff I have control over (e.g. teams I lead).
People with deep industry knowledge who were trained up to be decent programmers (middling, but serious, consistent, and quality focused), setting the direction. Those domain experts were working with young dumbasses who would burn 60+ hour weeks to make sales deadlines and keep current with ever shifting platform tech that breaks all the time. SMEs baked into the core development loop, DDD-made-flesh essentially, with cheaper more junior devs supporting scale for less money and maximizing the SMEs vision/contributions.
It’s an obvious and effective strategy. I’d speculate the management skills it takes to setup are what keep it as a rarity.
What is the alternative ?
Now they're ~47%. Which is great! But it also hints that society doesn't need most of the labor for the system to still function.
There's a vast continuum between grossly-unequal homeless everywhere like many corrupt, third-world countries with masked, paramilitary disappearance squads and a large, happy middle-class paid well that can afford to buy things, take vacations, and enjoy life where corruption is lesser.
How does a society that allows not working function? How does it defend itself against attacking societies?
The current allocation of who does and who does not have to work and how much they have to work is suboptimal, and one of the reasons for societal decay.
>And the 2nd question looks like American propaganda where if you don’t spend trillions and trillions on defense, the Chinese, Russian, whatever boogeyman will get you.
There are multiple examples of the Chinese, Russian, Americans, and other boogeymen "getting" others in my short lifetime of 40 years.
Either way, there's highly undesirable work that has to be done for many societies, whether it be cleaning sewers, farming in humid, hot weather, and educating one's self for 30 years just to do surgery at 2AM, and clean up the fluids and mess of that surgery. If only some people have to do that and not others, it obviously brings up questions of fairness, so the fair alternative is everyone has to work for a certain quality of life (which is not currently true for those with >$x assets).
Funny thing is I got the job because of my experience with CSS. All the young kids couldn't center a div as the saying goes.
anyone hiring such? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46873028
[1] https://en.svilendobrev.com/1/MeetingtheSpecandOtherSoftware... (a copy because it's gone from web)
Giving a safe, inclusive place where old people can still be productive and feel like they matter is important.
I think the article is correct in that older people can still be productive even at 60+ and it’s a pity that we let them retire. Retiring is not the most healthy option for people!
"Science moves forward one funeral at a time" - Max Planck