[ashwinaj]

Well there goes another person who is "offended". Is there age discrimination? Possibly, but at my workplace there are a lot of slackers and you guessed it, they're usually (emphasis on "usually", stop trolling) older, paper pushers, "Let's have a meeting to talk about changing a line of code" people, etc. Needless to say, I work in a big company.

The best way to avoid discrimination of any kind is to continuously update your skills (technical, social, inter-personal etc.). If you have nothing to show for working X number of years, then why would people hire you? They'd rather have someone who can put in an insane amount of hours. I'm not supporting companies who do this, but I'm rather stating the stark reality of Silicon Valley. It's unfortunate, but it is what it is.

Edit: I should've expected these responses; I've said explicitly I do not support this. But at the same time instead of complaining, invest in your skill set.

[kasey_junk]

And conversely, I've worked on teams where most of the developers were "inexperienced" and didn't have the skills necessary to do a good job.

No one is worried about a bias against "bad" developers. The problem is that the same companies that are crying the most about a lack of available developers are (potentially) explicitly not hiring older developers. The cynical amongst us assume this is another tactic to keep employee costs down.

[cheepin]

Well, it's not a big jump if they are willing to collude illegally to depress wages.

[chimeracoder]

> The best way to avoid discrimination of any kind is to continuously update your skills (technical, social, inter-personal etc.)

That may be a way to respond to discrimination, but it's not a way to avoid it.

Discrimination, by its definition, refers to what happens after one's skills and qualifications are sufficient and comparable to other candidates, and yet other candidates are systematically shown preference.

[ashwinaj]

Yup, I agree. I'm not disputing this fact, discrimination happens everywhere. I'm merely pointing out what I think we should do as individuals, because let's face it, legislation is not going to work (passing it is one major hurdle, implementation is another)

[lotsofmangos]

You are getting old.

Day by day, all-nighter by all-nighter.

The more hours you put in, the faster you will burn.

But that's ok, your company will not mind. There's a sucker born every minute.

[fleitz]

Their company is a family... one of those cannibalistic ones that eats their ancestors.

[lotsofmangos]

Not necessarily.

It is amusing that after observing that older folk employed at the same company seem to be taking it easier compared to the average, ashwinaj uses this observation to partially justify age discrimination on the basis that the older people look like they are putting in less effort, when these are the same set of people who have been successful at staying with the company.

Perhaps the company actually values more relaxed people and doesn't encourage the perpetually rushed to stick around.

edit - Something that did occur to me after reading this -

there are a lot of slackers and you guessed it, they're usually (emphasis on "usually", stop trolling) older, paper pushers, "Let's have a meeting to talk about changing a line of code" people

- was to think about how much money could have been saved globally by someone like that being in the loop on the openSSL source code. It has to be in the billions by now.

[ashwinaj]

Well, you can nitpick my comment, pick outliers and twist my words (I never said I justify age discrimination - I merely said it is a fact of life) but readers here are smarter than that :)

[lotsofmangos]

You do not need to explicitly say that you support a given position to be able to make a statement that supports a given position.

The statement - "there are a lot of slackers and you guessed it, they're usually (emphasis on "usually", stop trolling) older, paper pushers" - clearly, in the plain meaning of the words, supports age discrimination without requiring any further clarification on your part, and does so even if you did not mean it to.

[ashwinaj]

Explicitly stating != implying Oh BTW, I learned this from the older folks in my company :)