Hacker News Reader

Comment by kayoone | Hacker News Reader

I feel this might change when more of the current young generation of engineers are getting older since there just weren't as many tech workers 20 years ago, so it's still relatively rare to see 50 year old developers. Besides there are many places outside of Silicon Valley or the US were experienced engineers are very welcome.

View on HN

I agree. My experience has been that ageist views (just like sexism, racism, homophobia, etc) are more often expressed by people of previous generations and that millennials are actually more flexible and open to the idea that they would work with someone older (or of another gender, different skin colour, etc).

Millenials express a level of hate towards the previous generations that I never witnessed before (apart from the usual teenage rebellion times). Some of the stuff I read or hear honestly scares the shit out of me, some of them would throw people like my folks or older (or younger) in a dumpster if they had the occasion.

Some of them bought into the libertarian craze, so they consider older people useless, and anyone useless is garbage that can be tossed away; but it does not only come from that side: other ones consider the previous generations responsible for anything bad (and for a wide definition of 'bad') that happens to them, and those guilty people (indistinctly guilty) should be punished.

Are these extreme cases? Probably. I hope so. But I do not remember such a trend in previous generations.

To go back to the point about work, I have never witnessed or read the previous generations express any problem working with people older than them, on the contrary, they showed (some) respect and expected some knowledge to be gained from them. I also think that the age stratification in jobs is higher now than ever. The workplace is less and less varied over the years (I do not give a damn about skin colour, I am concerned about age and social origin), and tolerance (and simply knowledge) of people with a different social background goes down.

From that perspective I'm mostly hopeful, but I find less tolerance in millennials in other ways. There seems to be less willingness or ability to put political or ideological differences aside when it's appropriate. Maybe in a more long-tail world, there's less practice in compartmentalizing and tolerance (i.e., putting up with things you don't like).

"I agree. My experience has been that ageist views (just like sexism, racism, homophobia, etc) are more often expressed by people of previous generations and that millennials are actually more flexible and open to the idea that they would work with someone older (or of another gender, different skin colour, etc)."

I think millennials are far more open when it comes to sexism, racism, homophobia, etc by far. However, when it comes to ageism not so much.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com