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Comment by torgian | Hacker News Reader

I’m afraid of ageism too, and I’m 39. I’m lucky to work for a company that looked beyond this and saw my skills as a self-taught programmer, and took me on with a freelance contract.

My main concern is continuing to find work whenever this current job ends. It’s a good field, and I enjoy it because it’s helpful to society ( nursing related software ) but I know I’m not the greatest programmer out there.

My current gig should last a few more years at least, and I have no plans on leaving this company. Still, ageism and staying current is always on the back of my mind, and a part of me wonders if there’s something I’m missing regarding my career

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Early 40’s and I feel very lucky to have a job. I feel certain that once I hit 50 I’ll be unable to get hired. I think the trick is to make sure the job you have by 45 is somewhere that will be willing to keep you as you age.

Honestly, I'm thinking about how to convincingly lie about my age when I'm that age. It's part of the reason why I don't smoke and don't do much alcohol.

And by the way, I hate lying. I know I can do it relatively well, but I almost never do it because I hate the ethical implications and the memory implications of it. The thing is though, when it comes to companies, they have warped things so much that I'm willing to not stand by my own principles. It really feels to me that they threw a backhanded punch first. Fine, they can do that, but then I can throw one back and encourage other people to do so as well.

Oh, and if I'd be in the interview chair as an interviewer, I'd rather look at someone's experience and transferable skills and throw the whole ageism thing out of the window.

There's two things, or their combination, that I find really confusing about ageism and it's apparent prevalence (I believe it, but no first-hand experience being in my 20s):

- 'nobody' stays at one company for decades or an entire career any more (perhaps in part because of the massive decline, at least in the UK, of defined-benefit pensions, so 'you' - employer - are not on the hook for that either), so the the 50yo just has potentially a lot more experience than the 30yo, and in reality no difference in how long they'll work there that's due to their ages

- it's widely known that this is the case, so there's surely a big under-tapped pool of older applicants, with fewer competing offers?

Honestly I think it'd be hard for me not to be ageist (if I were a hiring manager, and it weren't illegal to discriminate on the basis of certain 'protected characteristics' which include age) - I'd snap up that cheap experience!

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