[gtsop]

> There is an assumption that "old" means "experienced" which is not necessarily true.

Agreed

> They should be judged by their skills, the same way the young ones are being judged.

Disagree, but this is my subjective opinion. Old people in general are not able to keep up with young people for many reasons. My personal stance is we shouldn't compare them as equals, but rather try to get the most out of everyone. The baseline for judging someone (to be hired or to stay in a job) should depend on the effort they put in. Actual performance should be taken into account when deciding on promotions and bonuses. This would create an environment safe for old people to keep their jobs until they retire, but also fair to people of any age to get higher salaries and roles based on their skills.

[EdSharkey]

It makes me happy to see folks not dogpiling on you. I'll try to be similarly gentle.

It seems to me maybe you've got the hero mentality. That sacrifice == hours spent grinding == commitment to the job. "Effort" to you is a measurement of love.

That totally described me in my 20's and 30's. One day, after acquiring the necessary skills, I woke up and learned that it didn't make sense to grind like that anymore. Also, long hours is bad for the mental health.

I switched to "work smarter, not harder" mode and learned about TDD and Agile. I got better at my craft and earned respect from my peers for encouraging them to get better too.

Finally, I had a really eye-opening experience with an older developer a few years ago. He was a contractor and owned a gym. He always took off at 3pm to go train his folks and work his other business without asking/telling anyone. He was gruff and a little bit intimidating physically. He even had terrible typing skills: he typed with two fingers like a kid! Not sure if that was a dexterity handicap or if he just never learned to type, probably the former, but it still pissed me off because he was SOOO SLOW!

It surprised me a bit when he rolled off that he lasted his whole contract and didn't wash out sooner. It surprised me at the time he had such deep networks in the company: VP's knew him and worked with him years earlier and they had lively random conversations. It surprises me now that his contributions to the codebase have endured - he just got a lot done in less lines of code. I think fondly now at the conversations we had, not just on coding, but on parenting, politics, physical health and strength training, military service, and just ... diverse, weird thoughts from my parent's generation.

Think of yourself and your beloved company as The Borg. Your job is to incorporate the technical distinctiveness of aliens into your collective. If people you run across are turds, and you have a culture of hard-charging success, they'll wash out pretty quickly. Just let go of effort and efficiency as metrics - beancounters can concern themselves with that. Focus on winning over the long term.

[gtsop]

Hey mate. Sorry for the missunderstanding. When I said effort I meant just ensuring we're not dealing with a lazy person who slacks having the safety of a job. By no means do I want people competing by putting in more hours.

I have learned that putting in more hours does not result in the benefits one would hope for very early on.

Thanks for your comment though, it made me understand why everyone is super freaking pissed about my comment. Have I understood that earlier I would have edited it to avoid all this mess

[maratumba]

Treating people differently based on the class they belong in, in this case age, is the definition of discrimination.

[gtsop]

Firstly I am all in for discrimination that results in positive effects for people in need (as long as it is reasonable and not blind benefits for the sake of suposedly helping minorities)

However, my solution does not judge people differently based on age. It judges everyone in a way that allows old people to fairly compete with young people on the basis of effort put in rather than pure skills/performance output.

[boomlinde]

> However, my solution does not judge people differently based on age. It judges everyone in a way that allows old people to fairly compete with young people on the basis of effort put in rather than pure skills/performance output.

Fairly compete in...making an effort? Would you like to get operated on by a surgeon that lacks the skill necessary to perform his job but tries damn hard? Would you want to go to a concert where the string section has been working real hard on learning the material but can't read sheet music and are tone deaf? Would you want to ride the bus where the driver has been practicing all his life but can't quite drive well enough to meet a reasonable standard based on skill? Do you want to follow a basketball tournament where the winner is determined by their effort rather than their score? Why should anyone respect a workplace that is effectively a daycare for try-hards? How can such a workplace result in a good product or service?

My most favorable take on your idea is that you simply can't have thought it through.

Frankly, the whole premise that old people need to be "allowed to compete fairly" by arbitrarily judging workers on some other merit than the quality of their work strikes me as incredibly patronizing. It's this attitude that leads to age discrimination in the first place, not that old people somehow can't produce quality work.

Instead of fucking up the workplace by introducing perverse incentives, consider socialized efforts that can maintain a sense of security for people that for one reason or another can't perform the work available to them to a reasonable standard. Pensions, unemployment insurance, disability insurance...that kind of thing.

[gtsop]

> Would you like to get operated on by a surgeon that lacks the skill necessary to perform his job but tries damn hard? [...] Would you want to ride the bus where the driver has been practicing all his life but can't quite drive well enough to meet a reasonable standard based on skill?

Breaking news, this is already happening. Actually, pure performance-based judgement drives incapable people to hide their inability to perform the task at hand leading to bad results (instead of facing the reality in a safe environment that would help them get better at what they do).

> Why should anyone respect a workplace that is effectively a daycare for try-hards? How can such a workplace result in a good product or service?

This sentence assumes the majority of workers are incapable try-hards which is plain false. A few less-skilled try-hards aren't going to ruin any service. Again, this is already the case in the world we live in.

> Frankly, the whole premise that old people need to be "allowed to compete fairly" by arbitrarily judging workers on some other merit than the quality of their work strikes me as incredibly patronizing.

I clearly stated two layers of judgement. A baseline for effort and a second layer for career progression based on lerformance, both age-agnostic. Never proposed a system discriminating against age. Get over it please.

> consider socialized efforts that can maintain a sense of security for people that for one reason or another can't perform the work available to them to a reasonable standard. Pensions, unemployment insurance, disability insurance...that kind of thing.

Ok so I proposed a system that would ensure someone has a job as long as they are not a lazy-a$$ (but probably wouldn't be able to climb up the career ladder if they don't have the skills), always age-agnostic, but that is somehow not a socialized effort to provide security? Ok.

[throwawayinfo]

Positive discrimination is just discrimination, in all contexts. Older engineers don't need your charity.

[gtsop]

Who said anything about charity? Why would you think I am charitable in this situation?

[reflectiv]

We are talking about technical abilities...if you discriminate outside of that, including age, I would whole heartedly call that the bad kind of discrimination.

[gtsop]

I am really not sure why my point isn't clear. I am not judging people differently based on age. I observe that skills/performance is not a fair metric for old people to compare against young ones. Thus, in order to create a field of fair competition I argue that for the baseline desicisons (getting and keeping a job) people of all ages should be judged on the effort they put in, a fair metric for all ages. Then comes the second layer of judgement based on skills which decides who gets promoted or gets performance bonuses. Old people would have less chances to win in this layer of judgement but at least they can keep their jobs safe as long as they put in effort.

[TheOtherHobbes]

There's a common trope about an established worker who works really, really hard at tasks - evenings, weekends, the whole deal.

Then they retire. Someone else takes over, and they do exactly the same work in $small_percentage of the time.

So no - effort is not a good metric. Why would you be paying someone who can't do the job - or at least can't do the job well, with enough spare capacity to deal with more complex work requirements?

Of course this is a parable, but I suspect a lot of people have seen something similar happen at work at least once.

[reflectiv]

By doing that you are hurting your business by not putting the best person in that position. Also, that better person can help bring up your younger less experienced staff.

Blindly saying 'ok you are technically better, but your also old and I want young people' is what you are arguing.

That is bad discrimination.

[boomlinde]

So if I make a huge effort yet manage to remain incompetent and underperforming for my role, I should be kept on the payroll as a sort of charity?

[the_gipsy]

Judge by effort? You gotta be kidding.