In the united states, it is unlawful for employers to discriminate for reasons of age against people over forty. Even so, software engineers become unemployable in their late thirties.

I am fifty-one.

Also in the united states, it is illegal for employers to discriminate against the mentally ill, as well as those who are simply perceived as mentally ill.

I have quite sever bipolar-type schizoaffective disorder. I link to my essays "Living with Schizoaffective Disorder" and "My Deepest Fear" at the top of every single page of my website, including my resume:

http://www.warplife.com/mdc/books/schizoaffective-disorder/

http://www.warplife.com/mdc/books/vancouver-diaries/thought-...

"My Deepest Fear" concerns my vividly paranoid visual hallucinations. The specific reason I work as a coder rather than as a physicist is that I still write good code when I am hallucinating. I first realized that to be the case in 1988, I wrote LwSD in 2003 and now I can't get a job.

How often do discussions of diversity include the mentally ill or the middle-aged?

Among my deepest concerns is that I see many younger engineers - startup founders are the worst, as well as the people who they employ - making many of the same stupid mistake I did when I was their age, or the mistakes of my young colleagues.

My aim these days is to find a job where I can teach the children not to fuck up. Unfortunately I cannot get a job because all the young people think I am incapable of writing code.

I did the storage and firewire for a wireless audio recorder that won a technical academy award.