For those who haven't yet experienced ageism, it often starts for you when the hiring manager/director is younger than you are. Beware of the age of the bosses when surveilling a potential new gig.
If everybody went to the same handful of colleges, is roughly the same age, and lives in the same trendy suburb, it doesn't matter what color they are. That "diversity" is literally skin-deep.
Thankfully, there are companies out there which do value older workers and will make the effort to encourage a more diverse/inclusive working atmosphere.
And when a woman joined the team, well, there wasn't any sexual harassment or sexism. But don't turn your back on her when she's got a nerf gun...
automate whenever possible.
It's also a lot easier to get hired by people who are older than you as they don't have the same biases against older devs... but at my age there are getting to be fewer and fewer folks older than me as they're retiring at a good clip.
This is also a form of ageism. Ask questions to find out how people act rather than relying on their age as a signal.
Don't dismiss a younger person's ideas as naive without consideration, just like you shouldn't dismiss an older person's ideas as outdated without consideration.
Being older doesn't automatically make you correct, but neither does being young.
“They” want very cookie cutter people. The more you try to control things, the fewer pleasant surprises you get.
‘I have a family, how do you guys adjust cadence for people with outside commitments - eg let’s say I need to leave every day at 5’.
Gah, there’s no way to ask without setting off the alarm bells with these bastards.
I can't say for certain whether that's cost me a job before, but I'm also probably not missing much if that's the case.
This is actually the problematic mindset I'm trying to avoid. I don't want to work at a place where leaving at 5 is "adjusting cadence." I want to work at a place where management sets appropriate timelines, and we work hard to meet those timelines -- during the work day. The company I work for right now has a culture of work hard 9-5 then disappear. It's great.
The key thing is really BATNA because that gives you the confidence to say what you've gotta say.
That strikes me as a good indicator that you probably don't want to work there. Why is it unreasonable to ask if you are regularly expected to work more than 40 hours per week?