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Comment by brudgers | Hacker News Reader

Good designers design irrespective of age.

I mean an older designer should have a rolladex full of people who they worked below, beside, and above over the course of their career to break out when they are looking for something interesting to do.

A career is an ecosystem that grows or atrophies based on the careers that surround it. The most important connection to the rest of the ecosystem is will-they-go-out-of-their-way-to-work-with-you-again.

That's true whether a potential move is up or sideways.

Good luck.

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> an older designer should have a rolladex full of people who they worked below, beside, and above over the course of their career

As a non-traditional professional in a lot of ways, I've found these kinds of assumptions at the core of a lot of discrimination (age and otherwise). A person should be judged based on their skills/value, not based on where someone thinks they "should" be in their life based on stereotypes and bias.

Expecting a person to be a certain way due to their age is harmful to them.

You should always be networking over your career, regardless of who you are…

Really? What if you take a few year break from contracting? (a mini-startup, personal projects, perhaps you just get a regular job for few years to sort out your finances or build a house). Are you supposed to keep networking with your previous clients during this time when you know well enough you'll not want to take any jobs they may want to give you?

Then there are all those people that transition between technology stacks. I did that few times so far (Linux to Windows, then Windows to Linux, vmware to aws). Your past clients will most likely want you for the stuff you worked on in the past. Also some people relocate internationally, perhaps to different time zones. Among people I came to know over the years many did that.

So I find this idea of "constant networking" work in a very narrow set of circumstances.

Took a few years off and need to get back into the industry? Use the network you build while you were working.

I don’t expect an older designer to have that Rolodex because I am an older designer and don’t have one.

I just understand that that is a problem that wishing the world was fair in ways that benefited me won’t solve.

If the OP doesn’t have the Rolodex of people who would work with them again - like me - then it is a problem.

Or possibly a symptom of a deeper issue of why people don’t want to work with them.

Or possibly the result of bad luck.

Or some combination of all that.

None of which “it ain’t fair” changes. Either a person is so good they can’t be ignored or they aren’t. And sometimes what can’t be ignored is a chip on the shoulder.

[edit]

The comment points to reasons a younger designer may tend to be a better hire.

A younger designer might ask “what’s a Rolodex?” and then start filling theirs up instead of arguing about it.

It is easy to work with someone who is still learning. It is unpleasant to work with someone argumentative.

Came to understand that the hard way.

You're going in a tangential direction. GP wasn't complaining about an unfairness, but explaining that an attitude was harmful. You misinterpreted them and then came to an ageist conclusion based on that misunderstanding, really making their case for them.

I'm curious, do you really not stay in contact with anyone you have worked with in the past in any capacity? Or is it more that they wouldn't work with you again?

Just curious since even as someone who sucks at "networking" and that sort of thing, I feel like I've worked with people that we mutually respect each other's skill regardless if it's direct reporting lines.

To paraphrase Peter Thiel paraphrasing Anna Karina, happy careers are all alike, every unhappy career is unhappy in its own way.

Not that I am unhappy.

Rather that instead of having delusions about a professional career, I have a day job and pursue artistic practice and live in paradise.

I go with the luck I have and don’t waste energy over the luck I don’t.

This is untrue for the simple reason that your friends’ employers wouldn’t allow it. Hiring practices based on personal references opens the door to discrimination lawsuits, so every HR department creates objective interview processes that remove such advantages.

Spoken like a true optimist.

I disagree strongly. Personal referrals are one of the most effective ways to get a job, and also one of the most effective ways to increase hiring quality. At the very least a personal reference will fast track you into an interview stage ahead of most other cold applications.

There are edge cases where a personal reference is valuable. If you’re inexperienced, it can get you an interview. Or it can get you a job at a small company without a real HR department.

But outside of that, a hiring decision made based on a personal relationship is considered cronyism. It isn’t always illegal, but most HR departments go out of their way to prevent it.

“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” is terrible career advice in general. It can be incredibly seductive because it promises people an advantage over competition. But it’s wrong. It’s a waste of time and in my experience, the people who follow it tend to interview poorly because they come off as arrogant and complacent.

What you're saying here sounds, to me, like the sort of thing someone who's only worked in a very narrow and constrained corporate environment would think.

Of course, if that sort of environment is all that one's interested in, then it's possibly entirely true.

It just isn't, at all, for someone like me who's not existed in that sort of environment for over twwnty years... .

Its easy to slip this past HR. The hiring manager picks the interview panel and sets expectations about the skills they should look for. These are targeted at what you already know the candidate is good at. They pass the committee due to great feedback.

I don't think not-your-friend counts as a protected class quite yet. But considering how outraged people get when they interview for a job but the offer goes to someone's buddy, maybe it will be outlawed sooner or later.

Can you cite a lawsuit over discrimination when someone referred the candidate and that's the aspect in contention?

https://www.hrdive.com/news/employer-settles-dol-claim-it-fi...

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