Getting hired after fifty
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This comes from a man who does not like exercise, and has a genetic tendency to severe obesity (if family is any indication).
Five days a week you will find me sprinting up hills around my neighborhood, using bands and weights for resistant training, and doing breathing exercises. I eat one or two meals a day.
I'm lean, toned, and walk with speed, energy and purpose.
I'm not exactly good looking, and I can occasionally be socially awkward - but I'm fit, respectful and wear tasteful attire.
Personally, I think this gives me a giant advantage in my age cohort where most men waddle around like they are 11 months pregnant and you can hear their breathing from 60 feet away. I hear a lot of guys in this category counting down the days till retirement.
I dislike exercise but have practiced fitness training for decades. The physical and mental benefits are well known. I think the impression it makes is off the charts when you present as an older man with discipline and intellect.
I have an aunt who is deeply concerned for my health because I'm too small in her opinion (food = love). Yet her son, my cousin (who she considers a strapping example of manhood), just went on SS disability after being a tow truck driver for decades. He just got too fat to do the job. Nobody would hire him - they just see a giant medical liability.
We have control over fitness regardless of looks, and it can make a difference.
Of course you do. We all tend to think that we're living the right way (obviously, else we'd change). It's not really possible to evaluate whether you are actually living the right way by looking at things from your own reference frame though.
For what it's worth, I'm a bit overweight, I don't exercise much, and yet I don't seem to have trouble finding a job. In my current role I've never met anyone in the company I work for except over video calls. They have no idea what my level of fitness is, or how fat I am, or even how tall I am. Maybe I'd be better off if I went for a run more than three times a year, but I'm unlikely to ever find out.
Do you think so? I'd imagine most people are like me and echo St Paul's position of (paraphrasing) "I do what I wish I didn't and don't do what I wish I did".
I guess you're able to always summon the motivation to make for any activity you wish, but I suspect that is very rare.
Many people live with restrictive medical conditions that limit or prevent any level of "hard" exercise. Those conditions are certainly not of their choosing, and the underlying implication that those people are "guilty" of a lack of "discipline and intellect" is offensive and deprecating. The unfortunate fact is that such conditions become increasingly likely as we all age, becoming a near certainty for most people as they approach and pass 60.
That the parent commenter has evidently managed to avoid (thus far) that sort of misfortune is wonderful for them. But it shouldn't be used to demean or belittle those who have not enjoyed that good fortune.
He's saying to exercise and eat healthy. He's not saying run a marathon every month.
I see your comment as doing way more assuming. You’re policing the most basic health advice on account that it might not apply to everyone. Obviously.
Also, the fact that you’re typing is ableist - think of the poor people without fingers that are also mute so they can’t use text to speech.
If we can’t talk in generalities then we can’t talk at all.
The average IT office is really not a sporty place, and people also really don't like if you dress well either. It makes people feel threatened and annoyed.
What people like is for you to be a partner in crime in neglecting your health, having no self control, making self deprecating jokes and join them in unhealthy activities so they can feel less responsible for it.
People save their best self for free time and social life, where it actually scores some points, and show their less positive side in the workplace, and that's a bit of an unspoken rule that you're supposed to really relax at work.
Of course some people are unable to remain fit, but many more simply choose not to prioritize it. I suspect it the vitality you demonstrate helps sell your "brand", and also just helps you to be better than you would be otherwise.
I’ve seen another do basically an entire session in the parking lot on a beautiful fall day. It was clear she wouldn’t be up for going on even a mild hike to the prettier locations.
I stay in shape with a standing desk snd walking treadmill. Editing photos isn’t exactly mentally taxing so it’s pretty damned easy to do.
I guess I'd want to know where you live. Weight has turned into something of a class marker in the modern US.
I am 66, I could stand to lose maybe ten pounds, but am not overweight on the BMI scale. I run on the weekend, walk then and otherwise a fair bit. Most of the men in my neighborhood that I suppose to be of roughly my age seem to be in fair condition.
Thanks to remote work. I have switched few jobs during covid. WFH interviews are awesome.
There are two points I'd like to add:
My brain isn't as elastic as a younger programmer's. My brother, a software developer close to my age, once said, "It's as if I used to have 20 registers, and now I'm down to 12". I can't keep as much in my head as once. My twenty-something co-worker, Belinda, once remarked, "It takes you a while to read code & understand what it's doing". She was right. Using solely that metric (elasticity), I'd have to say that the forty-year-old version of myself was faster than the fifty-eight-year-old version.
The other point I'd like to make is that there's a certain class of developer who has grown tired of developing & learning new skills, but doesn't want to retire. I remember my co-worker Larry would spend far too much time reminiscing about 640k computers and showing pictures of his grand kids. He didn't seem to want to work much. They let him go, and though I liked him personally, I think management made the right decision.
Maybe I'm at a disadvantage to a young dev in some greenfield on a fresh stack. But I've been in a lot of greenfields and fresh stacks too, and the patterns repeat.
That said someday my utility will drop below my cost. I may not _want_ to notice, but my compiler will tell me. I can't lie to the compiler. When my brain can't build any more my commits won't build anymore, it isn't very subtle.
The bit about the existential shift in priorities rings true to me. At 20 you dream about mastering the future, at 40 you couldn't care less.
But, um, could y'all stop changing the procedures on me every week? I ain't got time for that...
I felt the same process creeping on me in my late 30s. Since then, I started experimenting with some OTC drugs (to be concrete: Nicotinamide Riboside, Pterostilbene and Spermidine). It is my impression that the effect has largely gone away. People that I meet after a long time tend to remark that I am noticeably more energetic, too.
A combination of NR and Pterostilbene under the name EH301 was recently trialled in Spain for treatment of ALS (yes, that ALS) with remarkably good results [0], though the study was small. A much bigger study is now underway in Norway [1]. If this combo can influence a neurodegenerative disease positively, it may help the brain in general.
But I do not want to sound as a huckster for both. This is a huge if and it is possible that I am just another case of a placebo effect.
[0] https://www.alzforum.org/news/research-news/small-trial-eh30...
By "most players" you mean excluding the very top, right?
Spermidine is so cheap and easy to manufacture that I doubt that there are fake products out there; yet another German company (Green Naturals.)
As for NR, I chose Tru Niagen (ChromaDex), a well-known brand. It is expensive, though. By far the most expensive of the three supplements.
It's great that you guys are being honest. But it's a shame that the top of the thread is dominated by comments that reinforce ageism.
(Also late 40s)
I tend to find it more of a mental stretch to understand what the young ones don’t yet understand and can’t see clearly.
It’s e.g. quite satisfying seeing someone has a bit of a blind spot with understanding handling async code and then being able to point him to the direction to mastering it.
It feels a bit like having on-script glasses in a world where everyone is myopic to some degree.
That said, I’m probably working with too many juniors - a stint with more intermediate/seniors might give me a more humble/humbling report.
And how long did you do it to notice effects?
What if you are 60 and want to have the muscle strength, metabolism and/or mental acuity of a 40 year old? Turns out, it's possible! You just use the same hormones (or analogues) from external sources.
The downside seems to be a shorter lifespan, but there's been no major studies on it. However, it makes sense - you push your body harder.
I think quality of life:length of life should be left up to the individual. I'm sure many will choose a more active life up to 75-80 years than a slower one up to 90+.
My grandparents and their brothers/sisters basically did nothing after 70ish. Just literally waited to die, too bored and/or tired to do anything more. One of my grandfathers just drank for 15 years until he died. My remaining grandmother is 84 and still doing gardenwork, but otherwise she says "eh, I'm ready anytime".
Length of life should not be as important as it seems to be today. Quality matters, too, for some people - even more.
We're trying to do a lot of this about this, all the time. There's a ton of research into aging.
But we can't just do what politicians do and do stuff, nilly-willy, hoping something sticks. In many cases the cure is worse than the disease.
It's not just my brain that's not as elastic - my body isn't so elastic anymore either. I can't sit for more than an hour or so before I've gotta get up and take a foam-roller break. Lots of aches and pains that I'm finding are causing me to lose focus.
After ~2 years of not working I found that I didn't much care for it - I needed more purpose or something. Just felt like I was floating along not going anywhere. I think the happy medium would be to work 3 days/week. I could do that indefinitely. Not really be retired and not really be working full time. It would work monetarily as well since the house is nearly paid off and we have no other debt. But software development gigs where you only work 24hrs/week seem to be quite rare.
He said it took him 6 months to realize that he didn't have to work anymore. After about two years he ended up getting married and starting a family and can't see himself ever going back to working.
My dad on the other hand worked a normal job and retired at 60, told me it took him about 6 months to accept that he didn't have to work anymore either. As funny as it sounds, I think it just takes time to get used to not working.
- Purpose (do something good in the world)
- Mental challenge
- Physical challenge
- Meet people
- Earn money
- Daily routine
- etc.
Full-time employment is a popular way to get these desires satisfied, but it's far from the only way.
For example, if I would take a sabbatical right now, earning money or meeting people would not be an immediate problem. However, I would miss the mental challenge and doing something good for the world. So I'd likely take up open source contribution. I'd probably do quite a lot of it -- several hours per day. Is it work? No, I don't think people would call it that. Does it do for me many of the things work does for me? Yeah.
This was right at the start of 2020, and only working 3 days a week definitely helped me avoid pandemic burnout. But unfortunately I ended up working the 3 days that had the most meetings (this was a double-sided effect - it made sense to work those days else I'd miss important meetings, and then important meetings that included me gravitated to those days). So I ended up with 3 days that were stuffed full of meetings.
This was unpleasant enough that when the division was sold to another company, I opted not to take the transfer (and staying with the old company wasn't an option, as part of the terms of the acquisition deal). I'm now doing some flexi-time consulting that, while not as lucrative, gives a lot more latitude for scheduling my time.
I am doing well in the job and, due to a long career, have experience in a lot of the things they need. I am also still excited about learning new skills and toolsets and I'm in the right place for it.
But I do feel that the brain depletion, it feels like I have used something up - glycogen or something, is noticeable.
Any OTC recommendations would be appreciated.
It gives your working memory and symbol manipulation a workout. Coding uses these facilities, but might not work them directly enough to be as good at training them. That's my theory so far.
I wish people would stop pandering in this thread. It is reinforcing ageist stereotypes.
Just use a normal structured note-taking process in a text file, and review it periodically (start of day, end of day), and you will have a superhero memory better than anyone on the team.
I review the scrum board before daily, and I review the backlog before planning meetings, and people are super impressed with how I remember every detail about everything.
I also knew I wanted to make more money. I did a slight pivot. But for all intents and purposes, I’m still a “developer” just with a fancier title.
2. "My brain feels slow; I'm lost; must be that I'm getting old. Yes, that's it. Nothing to do." Lets go of themself; hello mental muscle loss.
3. "I bombed the exam. I'm just bad at [math, physics, foreign languages, writing, ...], but hey that's life!" Talks themself out of improvement and into a self-image that biases to failure.
4. "I bombed the exam. I'm over the hill so my brain isn't good enough. Oh well, but hey that's life!" Result: ditto.
5. "I bombed on the exam. I'm older, so I've forgotten how to try as hard as I used to. Time to get scrappy." Result: improvement and self-mastery.
Now add society. In the younger person a host of coaches, cheerleaders, friends and the dominant social narratives are telling urging them to push themselves further than they knew they could. "You can do it!" And with the old? "Hey, take it easy! Relax. We have low expectations for you--you can't do it--, and anyway we feel uncomfortable telling you what to do so we'll often just ignore you."
Without saying there's no such thing as age-related mental decline, I'm just about certain, seeing many older folks, that's it's abused, a self-fulfilling excuse, while in reality the truly age-related decline (as opposed to habit-related) is less important than it's made out to be, and can be deferred a decade or two beyond what many let themselves believe.
Similar to a person who can't give up the nice cars, house, clothes, vacations, dinners, in order to start all over again on a new adventure, too many older people have relied for too long on--grown addicted to--the luxuries of accumulated knowledge or seniority that allow them to operate at a broader, more conceptual level. Then, having to return to the pain of detail-oriented, working memory-related tasks feels as challenging as it did when they were youngsters. They were perhaps fresher, also typically more disheveled. Now they've lost the coaches and cheerleaders of youth and gained excuses--"I'm over the hill!"; "I require the dignity of age"--that cripple them. More exercise, healthy lifestyle, consistent effort, trying as hard at self-mastery as they did when they were young strivers and pushed themselves beyond their limits, and not listening to ageist arguments should make up for the lion's share of whatever mental decline is common in older people. They just need to be older strivers.
But the studies... Yes, well the studies record people who enjoy the flabby habits of seniority and the results of social bias. Far better to take control of the bias... to have the better, helpful bias.
One thing I'll note, is that coding has always been a way for me to solve personal entrepreneurial problems. I get an idea, I want to make it happen, I'll use/learn the best tech to make it a reality. So I use the madness to fuel the learning.
I guess there's always the chance it was never elastic to begin with!
I think some of this is generational -- the under 30 crowd seems especially hyper-kinetc, almost as if they grew up on a diet of overstimulating media competing viciously for slivers of attention from teenagers addled with drugs to help them cram a bit of marketable information into their saturated brains (er, sorry, to treat their ADHD...)
But I've already gone on too long on my personal hobby horse, as we elder fogies are prone to do.
Also, get off my lawn
It's Management's job to manage. It doesn't say much about them that they couldn't find a way to motivate Larry, or to make use of his skills without firing him.
Workers aren't going to be as productive when they are pregnant, have young kids, are chronically ill, experience bereavement etc etc
Cutting people loose as soon as they are less than optimal is brutal.
It makes me very glad that I live somewhere where employment rights (because of a long history of worker's struggles) are a bit more civilised.
The book Memory Craft by Lynne Kelly proposes that cultures that value and practice mnemonics, like storytelling, has less incidence of this and even often lack the idea that growing old means becoming duller. I've found that my memory is actually very lazy and practicing mnemonics has taken a lot of work, but I've also seen noticeable differences in my trained memory and recall in other areas of life.
When I was 25, I had a small number of heuristics and gotchas to look for, now I have thousands, it takes longer to consider them. Also, when I was 25 I would make the smallest change I could, now I tidy up the file and do a bit of light refactoring where I can make the code simpler. I serve a different purpose in the code now and I think it’s a more valuable one.
Exactly! You have a much more advanced thinking process, that will let you avoid a lot of mistakes, and let you be much faster in the long run/on average, only seemingly slow and sluggish at the beginning, because you don't jump to conclusions anymore.
Yeah but the young inexperienced people are also overconfident and assume they understand things, when they actually don't, jump to conclusions and waste a lot of time coding themselves into a corner, before they realise: AH! Now I actually understand what the problem is! Back to square one.
A more experienced person has made this mistake enough times, to understand that it's worth spending the time it takes to actually understand something, before making changes, and stroking your ego by pretending to be fast, is really counterproductive.
To be honest, the old people who are obviously fading might be an easier sell to bosses than the ones who are 50, 60, 70+ and still rock solid, because with them, you really have to wonder what went wrong that they're still in the running for subordinate positions. (I mean, there could be—often are—a million reasons why an excellent person's career might go sideways, but bosses aren't usually the forgiving type. They still want to believe the system works, because they are the system.)
Bosses want to feel young again, but they also know that workplace subordination is humiliating and that older people are likely to have figured this fact out, while young people still think they're going to be invited to join the execs within 3 years (which the vast majority of them won't).
Everyone would like the person doing the above to be someone intimately familiar with and good at the work they're managing, or else everyone is pointy haired boss and we all have to complain about how MBAs are ruining our lives...
I agree that those tasks are important, but none of them require being a manager who is formally someone's boss (hires, fires, does performance reviews, deals with HR issues, etc.). I didn't like being peoples' boss, so I stepped down from my management job years ago to become a developer again. But as a very senior developer, I've done all of those other things (mentoring, coordination, cooperation, etc.).
Actually, you're engaging in the bias right now. I don't ever plan on getting out of IC/Engineering. Stop assuming that's something everyone wants to do.
The world is big, and the chances that you happen to be in the optimal role at the optimal company are vanishingly small. In my book, a category of management failure is letting someone doggedly clutch on to something that's hard on both themselves and those around them.
Honestly that’s why a lot of people do consulting gigs. It’s a lot easier to say it was a choice than to explain how you’re a 54 year old AVP.
I think that statement does a disservice to being a software engineer, and is off the mark as well.
At my company (VMware), I know at least one Senior Director and three other Directors (Matthew K., David S., Rajan A., and Ryan R.)who abdicated their managerial role in favor of being an individual contributor for the simple reason that it was much more enjoyable, not because they're "embittered" or "anti-authoritarian".
For a more high-profile example, Mitch Hashimoto of Hashicorp went back to being an indicvidual contributor.
And, on a personal note, I'm 58 & I love engineering — it's fun. I like software, and I'm happy being a developer. I don't think I'd enjoy being a manager, and am not interested in finding out.
unlike younger people who don’t and thus are more vulnerable to corporate exploitation
just a theory
Old man, over 50. I still write code. Still getting paid. It's not a subordinate position. It's my thing that I do.
This is a really weird take. It's not harder to get hired as a manager somewhere than it is as a SWE. Different skill-sets.
Of late, I’m beginning to suspect that there are basically two camps in this whole game.
1. The optimistic one that believes rigorous evaluations and screening are worth the effort. They may even accept some of the failures, but basically believe we’re still getting there, we’ll figure this out. It’s better than doing nothing.
2. The near nihilistic group that basically worries the whole process creates a lot of heat but sheds very little light. That often these choices backfire on us, that our prejudices are our own worst enemies, that while we have some wins in steering the “right” choice, taken overall as a net, it’s not really any better than just random luck of the draw.
For many years I think I was camp 1. I worry of late that camp 2 is looking more and more like the reality. Maybe I’m just down about this whole process today.
This didn't work out very well in practice. The efforts of one bad programmer's output can easily max out two people to clean it up. So the Bank had mostly given up on producing its own code and tried to outsource or buy everything it could.
When the project or product has the capacity, then when I hire folks I am way less concerned with what they can do immediately today and more interested in what they can do after 3 to 6 months of consistent, earnest growth. If they have critical skillsets and capabilities that are crucial and needed immediately, that's a wonderful thing too, but cross-skilling and training are really needed to prevent those kinds of situations from occuring generally.
The issue with leetcode is a lot like the issue of GMAT/GRE/SAT/ACT. It can be used to remove candidates from the pool, but it is a really poor indicator of general success overall. All it does is make the candidate pool a bit more manageable at the expense of people who have other skillsets.
Skillsets that are selected against by leetcode are tip-of-the-spear adopters and other innovators (broad thinkers), communication skillsets, and often UX understanding/projection.
As an employer, I have used Hackerrank for a specific skillset and role we needed (deep SQL experience), but that is the only type of testing we used for selection processing.
This happens, in particular, when hiring technical middle management at "second tier but still amazing" employers. Outside of FAANG, but definitely household names. The unique characteristic is that their "ideal candidate" will almost certainly interview and is almost certainly unaffordable.
At lower tier employers, it's safe to tell yourself "we hire the best" because the best almost never apply (and, when they do, they're doing so for a very good reason and probably understand your constraints).
Also, for fungible roles, you always say "we hire the best" because you don't actually care about hiring the best but telling everyone that you did is good for morale because that means they're the best.
It often feels awkward to directly ask someone for work. So instead, ask if they can refer you to their friends, and you may be surprised how many volunteer a leg up on a position to work directly with them instead.
Being a SWE is completely, utterly different in different roles, industries, and even teams. I could give you honest advice based on my 25 years in embedded/systems programming and it would be completely inappropriate if you were looking to write JS at a SF unicorn.
Having said that, I for one welcome our rust/clojure overlords and humbly submit that I am but a lowly react developer.
They're all technical and bored at retirement, I feel they're like those college professors that are old but capable, so they can be employed, some are actually sought after.
sure it's challenging to get into FAANG(due to their leetcode barrier) but there are many other companies 50s/60s can work for.
I know another guy who is a top C++ developer (books, conference talks) who started at Google when he was around 45. Similar story. He hated it, left after a couple of years and is now Chief Scientist at a much smaller software company - a gig he seems to relish.
So you could try to get in in your 40s or 50s, but it's likely that the culture will not agree with you.
OTOH, agree with other posters there is ageism for sure, but there is also the luck of the draw as to who you work for. Again, acquisition _may_ mean your team stays intact - but that depends on the success of the product/service/tech that drove the deal in the first place.
Ask me how I know…
BTW: I was member of AARP until last year, in the US. Wasted money + junk mail every once in a while...
You missed the joke, I think :-)
As an employer I have been in a situation where we had 3 perfectly good candidates for s position, any of the 3 would have been fine at the job, but there's only one post. There was no reason for rejecting 2 of them other than there was only one post to fill.
While we didn't have discrimination issues to deal with there, it would be hard to show (if there had been) that we were being ageist or whatever.
I can completely see though that hiring someone at say 30 may be more attractive than hiring a 58 year old. I might feel that a 58 year old will retire soon (so I have to hire all over again), or that they might have a "don't tell me how to do it, I've been doing this for 30 years" attitude, which can be unhelpful. That's balanced against greater experience meaning they should be better at the actual job.
I can certainly see how over 55 makes you less attractive than compeditors for the spot.
I have been comfortable being useful doing remote work for a SV client for close to 4 years. But do worry a lot recently about ageism etc. So this page article and discussion is very useful for me.
In some months, I will try to share my experience of 'how it went'. It will take that much time, as I would devote 6 weeks at least for learning, and then try to go through 2-3 tech companies in parallel, as per the common advise I have seen.
Once they hire you, they're actually committed.
(Almost) All's fair in love and interviewing.
Dye your hair to your old natural hair color, nothing exotic.
Wear a bit of makeup to hide wrinkles and other artifacts of aging.
I think the next job board we'll see is "hiring anonymous". Still remains to resolve the legal part, perhaps some intermediary company can handle the anonymization(verify identity and credentials and handle govt paperwork). I think there will be corporate incentive to do this as it completely gives companies plausible deniability around their hiring practices.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-04-27/don-t-...
Some of the advice also seems odd: "For instance, if your résumé still includes your street address or an older email account (such as AOL or Yahoo)." Yahoo is the second-most popular email provider and I doubt it would really send off an alarm bell for a recruiter. Why not include your street address on a formal document like a résumé, anyway?
Sadly we live in a world where people still run the risk of being judged on the basis of the neighbourhood they live in, rather than the skills they can bring to a job. By including a street address or postcode in our résumés, we invite people (or more often, nowadays, ML-based algorithms) to make sweeping judgements about us before we even reach the first stage of the hiring process.
* Stay up-to-date on the latest tech
* Stay curious
* Keep working with colleagues of all ages, from interns to older colleagues.
* Be open and admit the areas you’re expert in even if they’re not popular - Java and COBOL still get hired
I work for a fairly well-known and successful tech company that's only about 10 years old, and Java is the main language for the company's flagship product. It's strange to me to see it lumped together with COBOL.
This might be good advice, but it’s absolutely terrible that it’s required.
I’m really starting to think we should do voice only interviews, maybe even with voice changers (or maybe slack only interviews).
Many orchestras switched to blind auditions, and it drastically increased the number of female musicians.
https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impac...
To Make Orchestras More Diverse, End Blind Auditions
If ensembles are to reflect the communities they serve, the audition process should take into account race, gender and other factors.
Of course, you would know all this if you read the article instead of using it as some kind of "gotcha" that minorities aren't up to snuff musically.
If you happen to be unfamiliar with this argument, I'd recommend this: https://tarahenley.substack.com/p/bad-news
I think he was saying that the top tier of current trained talent isn't equally diverse as the underlying population because of past biases in selection, and that making a blind selection from that pool likely perpetuates some of these biases. E.g. kids who grow up seeing symphonies that exclude people that look like them are less likely to pursue paths that lead toward them being in this pool.
I'm not arguing in favor of affirmative action or a purposeful selection bias to fix this. It's a messy problem but it deserves thought and consideration.
For me inspiration comes from people, and when I think about whether they're similar to me mostly I find they're not at all.
Clearly inspiration must work entirely differently for you as you say physical similarity is vital. Can you explain that? Is it prejudice?
And, if you're privileged-- society has given you the message you can do whatever you want-- that's OK.
If you're in a system with racism embedded into various parts-- one rationally wonders: is there no one like me up there because there's racism filtering it? Is someone at a music school, competition, or academy, somewhere along the way going to decide that I don't really look like someone who's a top-tier violinist and going to exclude me (based on this same logic, in part)? If so, it might be better to select myself out before dedicating a whole lot of resources.
The article says that blind auditions dramatically increased the proportion of women players. It does not explain why this effect wouldn't apply to other "under-represented" groups.
Clearly some applicants are _not_ "virtually identical in ability" with other applicants.
See, the parents of white (and Asian) kids have, or can buy, access to social networks that underrepresented groups (particularly black and indigenous) are systematically excluded from. That gets the white and Asian kids into better music schools and affords them more opportunities to get good enough to audition to major orchestras, as well as exposure within the classical-music world so people know who they are. This has the effect of reinforcing a certain racial profile for classical musicians.
The solution to this problem has been known since the initial civil rights movement in the USA at least: affirmative action. Unfortunately that means denying really talented white and Asian musicians orchestra seats, so that talented people of other communities have a shot at the levels of achievement and recognition whites have taken for granted. But ultimately, it's for the greater good.
There might be a push, but its success is doubtful. Too many entrenched interests and theories that back them (glass ceiling, gender gap) would be threatened by such development.
The only thing that could actually move the needle is the fact that with a highly skewed sex ratio on campus, female students will find their dating experience unsatisfactory. People place high premium on finding a suitable mate.
It is amazing how progressives assume the problem is the ignorance and stupidity of their opponents.
But, it is good to get the real argument out in the open.
It might work, it may be needed, but it’s embarrassing if so.
The sad reality is that if you’re over 50 you need to be applying to positions that are “age appropriate” which usually implies management.
That’s not really fair (and largely not true.)
What it’s saying is that appearances matter - they’re an important non-verbal signaling channel, and to the extent to which one can control the way you present, you should, and secondly, dress for the job you want.
For both men and women that does not mean dress like you’re going to a club. It is also an admission that even the best of us subconsciously treat attractive people as more competent.
I’m old enough to have worked during an era when you wore a suit and a tie to an interview for any position. If I showed up for a senior role at a startup wearing a suit and tie I would be telling them from the get go that I’m either I’m out of touch with the culture of the org (not good) or I choose to differentiate myself (maybe I’m a lawyer or an accountant.)
Finally, as an example in my case - I am over fifty and overweight, but I am tall. I know (from mirrors) that I look better standing than sitting, so when in person interviewing I try to be standing when people enter the room simply because I get the difference between “former football player” and “fat slob”. Does it bother me? Yes and no. Ultimately I need to be able to deliver the goods, it’s nice not to have to fight through preconceptions.
People who clearly spend/spent a lot of time on their appearance suggests to me that they're trying to use some sort of "trick" to get ahead and that this probably means they're less competent than their peers.
It's like charities that give you a pen, or small quantity of money (bear with me) ... Yes, I know that psychological trick and it strictly suggests to me that yours is a charity I should not donate to.
The whole "dress for the job you want", for example, is really "use people's prejudices to trick them into unconsciously overestimating your competence".
Sadly, marketing tricks (ie the hostile use of psychology) work on all of us, even sometimes when we know we're being tricked. Participating in that kind of thing is a red flag to me.
The "former football player" vs "fat slob" part of your comment suggests you view [or are accommodating others that view] unrelated externalities as more important than intrinsic qualities related directly to the work. That's not uncommon, but it seems like something we need to mature beyond.
>I’m out of touch with the culture of the org (not good) or I choose to differentiate myself //
This seems really sad to me, like a person likes to wear a tie and that's so out there you'd consider you can't work with them? Like, what if they were actually different: came from a different place, spoke different languages, had different body parts? Especially if you're coding, what's it matter if you like to wear a formal thawb (Middle-eastern robe) and they wear Hawaiian shirts and board shorts?
I'm not saying people won't judge you, just that it's wrong.
How can you trust their code, maybe, look at their code?
Don’t look at the fancy clothes(or whatever you think is silly games), look at the code.
Yes, the people that choose based on it are stupid, and it's a good reason for rejecting the places (and you may refuse just to run the test). But you personally isn't losing anything by looking more "whatever those people are selecting for (not competence, that's for sure)", so it is good advice.
Wishful thinking won't help in real life, though.
We should:
* stop drinking alcohol
* stop smoking tobacco
* stop consuming any kind of addictive and harmful substance, such as: hard drugs, light drugs, caffeine, massive quantities of sugar, etc
* start sleeping more
* start working out more
* stop using fossil fuels
* stop using plastics
...
This is BS advice - the appropriate position is one that you like and you have the skills for. I mean, rephrase that and you can see just how discriminatory it is - “women should apply to gender appropriate positions, not programmers”. You see how terrible that sounds.
Which can be somewhat countered by having a solid network by that time rolls around.
There are and always have been many many ICs over 50, what a ridiculous stereotype to propagate.
Nope. My LinkedIn dates me by college graduation date, but it still generates 2-3 inquiries a day for engineering roles. My background has certain trendy buzzwords and the recruiters are interested.
As far I can tell, employers are looking for skills and attitude, and don't much care about anything else.
Would a startup want me? Dunno, haven't tried in a while.
Anecdote: I’ve gotten messages from internal recruiters twice on LinkedIn from Amazon Retail about “exiting opportunities” - while working at AWS. It’s clearly stated on my profile where I work.
Wouldn’t this be like misogynisticly saying:
“The sad reality is that if you’re female you need to be applying to positions that are “gender appropriate” which usually implies clerical/secretary.” ?
Apologies if I didn’t understand what you were really trying to convey. The opening argument was non-sequitur with your closing statement.
Fortunately, the company I work for recognizes that people can take their careers in either a vertical (management) or horizontal (increasing skill set and depth of knowledge) direction and are okay with everyone choosing the direction that best fits their interests, personalities, goals, etc.
Looks/hygiene/culture fit is important and there isn't a single field where it isn't.
If you can be bothered to try to fit in a little bit, it goes a long way. Otherwise, feel free to be unemployed and bitch about it in your basement while the world moves on.
Showing up not looking like this, can also cause you to not get hired. Discrimination on non-performance factors is real on all sides of the fence.
Anyway this isn’t the point; the point was that it’s sad you need to hide your age using clothing.
Clothes are always a uniform and a social signal, whether or not they're formally labelled as such.
It's also one of the covert reasons age is an issue. It's not about competence, it's about the fact that it's very difficult to have equal relationships with people who are the same age as your parents or kids. An age gap that wide goes with a generation gap in expected behaviours, cultural references, implied ethics - and more, including default problem solving habits.
It would be good if this wasn't true, but it's hard to see how it can be avoided. It would take extremely unusual maturity and self-awareness not to be influenced by it in either direction.
It's not that it can't be made to work, but I don't think it can be made to work easily. It's an extra level of friction, which is why it's an unpopular option when hiring teams.
TBH I suspect that anyone over - say - 40 is probably best off hiring themselves out as a consultant rather than trying to find work as a full-timer on a relatively young team. Consultancy isn't just professionally distinct, it creates a different social dynamic which seems to be easier for everyone.
As for friction, that diversity should be actively saught, not allowed through blindness.
That friction and diversity of approach and standards and reasoning is a good thing. I'm over 50 now so now I'm almost not allowed to express such reasoning because it is taken as self serving, but when I was 30 the old-timers in my shop were the people I admired the most, still do. Even though yes there were a few differences of opinion and approach that never really went away. I picked my battles instead of being a baby about every single thing, and they in turn actually respected my input when I decided to take stance on something, state my case, and force us both to explain and defend the different positions and hash it out. Either I convinced them or they convinced me, and whichever way that went, we did that.
There were a few things where neither convinced the other, but, really very few. It's tolerable and worth it. I got way more out of working with these people, and so did the company and our customers.
I don't think I was a incredibly mature 30 year old. I mean, I've seen some of my old newsgroup posts. I really wasn't :)
As a product of the 1960s there was a reaction by lefty columnist Paul Krassner, IIRC. He referred (if it wasn't someone else who popularized this) to grey flannel sandals. A take-off on the standard criticism of "grey flannel suits.
+1 to the general idea that the interview process should remove as much unconscious bias as possible.
[1] If I recall correctly the researchers submitted the exact same resume to many companies. The only variable was the name. E.g. "John Franklin" versus "Imani Jordan".
When did this become an accepted term? I didn't know our science had advanced enough to explain how unconscious bias happens. AFAIK we can run some experiments and observe results, but can't explain the underlying biology as to why we observed those results.
Dress and appearance convey information about attitude and orientation. Who wants to hire someone who will constantly complain about the 80-character-per-line coding standard because they like 100 characters? Any team has all sorts of subtle norms, and wants someone who will adapt themselves to such things. If someone can't be bothered to dress properly, why would they bother to conform with any other workplace norm?
I wouldn't try to be "current", I'd end up looking like an idiot. But I'd appear in a decent pair of pants and nice blue shirt and proper shoes. I'm very aware that much of my wardrobe would make me look out of touch and stubborn, and no, I don't think it unfair for an interviewer to notice such things.
Really this is basic professionalism.
> Really this is basic professionalism.
Hmmmmmmmm.
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000011.h...
> My gym just fired the opening gun in a new skirmish, by posting dozens of signs reading "All lockers must be emptied of its contents by August 22 at 5:00 p.m."
> Someone has learned, from the "singular their" fuss, a lesson that no one wanted to teach: Universally quantified ancedents should get singular pronouns. Or something like that.
> This is clearly a case of hypercorrection. However, it's not clear which side has gained: the prescriptivists can claim (correctly?) that even their opponents surely agree that THIS is a mistake; the anti-prescriptivists can counter that pedantry is the root cause of the error.
> It's interesting that everyone, prescriptivists and anti-prescriptivists alike, seems to think that hypercorrection is wrong, morally as well as logically. For the prescriptivists, any form that deviates from a postulated universal standard is wrong.. For (at least some of) their opponents, use makes right, as long as you conform to your own group's norms -- but it's a sin to imitate the norms of a more prestigious group, if you get it wrong. On this point, the prescriptivists seem to me to be fairer and more democratic in their attitudes, even if their particular prescriptions are often foolish.
I once read an article breaking the hard-hitting (and outrageous!) news that the Dallas Cowboys provide their cheerleaders with a handbook on how to dress appropriately, groom appropriately, and maintain a standard of personal hygiene that is adequate for "polite company". I had a similar reaction to that as Mark Liberman had to the descriptivist attitude toward hypercorrection.
Do you want to judge your candidates by how willing and able they are to conform to workplace dress norms? Then include an attachment when you invite them for an interview specifying how you want them to dress.
Or is it more that you're uncomfortable with the idea of hiring someone who doesn't know -- as they obviously should -- what you feel is appropriate in your employees' dress?
Casual IS the office wear at FAANGs.
Business is very much NOT hip, and you'll get to notice that.
For me it means show up on time. If it is an online interview, one or two minutes late is ok because sometimes Zoom/Google Meet/etc behave weirdly. As for dress code, it just mean not showing up in pijama or similar. If the clothes are socially acceptable to wear in public, that’s enough professionalism. Style is just personal preference, not professionalism.
So you're saying that you're over 50, so you can't look "current", and it's fine for companies to discriminate based on that?
The advice in the article is literally "look current". The advice isn't "wear proper shoes", it's wear shoes that make you look younger.
My point was, it is reasonable for an interviewer to notice my dress and what it says about me. Dress reasonably professionally and appropriately and it won't be a problem.
For me to try to figure out today's sneakers would just be a disaster. I have good business casual shoes and they'll do fine.
Given that age discrimination is real, blind interviews could potentially help reduce the effects.
"Blind" interviews would be bad for everybody. Zoom is already bad enough. There is an enormous amount of information conveyed by facial expression. I can tell by the look on your face if you aren't following me, or if you are super in-tune with it and I get more complicated still.
If we're going to generalize, I suspect that most older candidates would be better at reading and reacting to such nonverbal signals.
This is incorrect, see https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/05/11/did-blind-...
The conclusion of the unrefereed blog post is merely the much more equivocal:
" What about that much-publicized “50 percent” claim, or for that matter the not-so-well-publicized but even more dramatic “increases by severalfold”? I have no idea. I’ll reserve judgment until someone can show me where that result appears in the published paper. It’s gotta be there somewhere."
> I agree that blind auditions can make sense—even if they do not have the large effects claimed in that 2000 paper, or indeed even if they have no aggregate relative effects on men and women at all.
so, what the OP said
> Many orchestras switched to blind auditions, and it drastically increased the number of female musicians.
is incorrect because quoting again from the article:
> or indeed even if they have no aggregate relative effects on men and women at all.
The bit starting with "even if" is just saying that it doesn't matter to them: either way they're still in favor of blind auditions.
> https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impac...
That study made a big splash with a lot of claims that were unconnected to the data.
https://jsmp.dk/posts/2019-05-12-blindauditions/
The number of female musicians in orchestras increased, but we can't actually attribute that to the audition process.
Sadly, there's talk of going back to sighted auditions:
See: https://americanorchestras.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Re...
and https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-audition...
I found out that most non-Blacks have no idea how old a Black guy is that is cleaned shaven. I don’t have any of the signs when I keep my hair cut off - no gray hair or receding hair line.
It’s much more culturally acceptable for Black guys to shave their heads.
My best advice is to engage HR right away if you hear this kind of stuff. A fair amount of HR folks are older and will jump right on this kind of behavior.
Edit: these kinds of managers will always screw you one day; usually that day is a day when your interests aren't as useful to them. It's a mentality (and behavior pattern) that Succession does a fantastic job of roasting. The trick is to read the writing on the wall and the room, find a new job, and bring all the homies.
This is why I refer to software as a team sport.
But maybe you're right that it's ageism and I just assume the best in people.
I have lots of experience. I'd like to get paid accordingly, but
* my mortgage is long-since paid off
* my kids are grown and independant (no more school fees, university costs)
* my car is paid for
With lower expenses I can afford to accept less money, provided it means an interesting work opportunity.
So don't just assume that I'd demand more money. Ask. Maybe there's some middle ground where we can meet. Are you flexible enough?
I would happily consider an offer that matches my experience and aspirations from a job role perspective even if the pay doesn't match the currently overheated market.
a man is smiling while holding a box outside of an elevator
Either he is relieved and happy to go elsewhere or he is still shocked (as he seemingly forgot his jacket).
More seriously, while I can understand how to "fill" the page an image is sometimes needed, I seem to notice that lately a lot of pages sport these "vague" stock images that mean nothing or nothing connected to the actual article/theme discussed.
The odd bit was that they had used some data of my web browsing habits during this downtime as being against policy to cover their asses. So technically I was let go for 'doing math' at work found on Project Euler[0].
To me, leetcoding is just another one of those gatekeeping tactics employed by the industry to keep old folks out.
By 2014, I was talking to CxOs , directors etc at smaller companies who were looking for experienced individual contributors who could get things done through a combination of technical experience and soft skills.
I “put myself out of a job” at three companies once I brought in the process improvements and upskilked the department and then landed a job at BigTech in the cloud consulting department where I still consult/implement “cloud native applications”. I didn’t write a line of code during my loop. I spoke to the interviewers about my experience and we spoke like experienced professionals.
Like okay, you can’t really claim age discrimination when you spent the last 20 minutes railing against javascript and single page applications
1. Know Cobol
2. Know JCL
3. Know ISPF
4. Know Rexx
5. Know EZY
Oh, btw:
>> 5. Polish Up Your Appearance
Wahahahaha.
A joke, right?
- Deploy an enterprise Cobol banking application using Kubernetes and add support for bitcoin transactions
- Java Struts to support iOS/Android Mobile Apps for a Healthcare Insurance app
- Legacy Windows Apps to Azure
Particularly in the banking, finance and medical fields.
https://www.mo4tech.com/the-father-of-java-cant-escape-age-d...
"Woke" has nothing to do with it. That's a completely separate thing. Also, it doesn't exist. Black people don't use it anymore ("woke" came out of AAVE, before it became something for Tucker Carlson to trigger the right with) and most ardent leftists recognize that "woke capitalism" is strictly a performance.
Companies aren't going "woke" because they want to impose blue-state social justice on the population. They're doing this because (a) it's a way to make themselves look better in a country that is 2:1 against racism, sexism, transphobia, et al, without actually changing anything about how they operate, and (b) this "woke"/CRT bugbear is just another tool the very rich use to divide working people against each other.
Ageism is similar. Nothing makes capitalists happier than for us old working people and the young working people to hate each other. But we shouldn't. We're on the same team.
[0] https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-...