In 2022, I interviewed with a company... in crypto.

I was the oldest in the company by a decade at least. They kept telling me they wanted experience. I have plenty, of experience. I was cautiously optimistic.

They eventually failed me on a test of reactJS. The funniest part was when I asked for feedback, the reason they gave me, were showing poor engineering technique on their end; a lack of understanding of what makes it down the wire.

So they wanted experience, but not the experience that prevents them from making mistakes of their own; not an experience that threatened their views. I realised this later. Young rock-star developers want experienced people around them, maybe, but they want to be free to reinvent the wheel on a whim.

Now when I interview some place and I eerily feel old, I just bow out respectfully. No point wasting everyone's time.

Also the bit about companies with more older workers performing better, and the bit about older people often losing jobs due to layoffs, sound like they could also fit together as high firm performance permitting long tenure rather than having to show only that experienced employees cause higher firm performance (although of course the examples demonstrate the latter via other means, so it can't be that it doesn't happen at all).

I work in academia and the breadth of knowledge on how to get things done by the older workers in a bureaucracy is just astonishing. Lose them at your peril!

Somehow it's consistently no drama and no nonsense place. Compared to the frat house atmosphere of the usual tech startup, it's really different.

As an IC, all of my designs just simply work without any drama. What happens in this scenario is that as soon as they learn what they needed to learn from me I am usually out. Also there seems to be some concept of drama and running around like a chicken with your head cut off is "fun" and I am a buzz kill in this situation.

As a manager I spend a lot of my time just making sure that everybody is set up for success as nobody seems to be able to advocate for themselves. Their communication is lacking they don't understand their audience or how to delegate. In these roles I am retained as long as I wish.

Smart doesn't equal knowledgeable and smart doesn't equal efficient. It's that simple. These are things best taught through experience.

Only keeping, or hiring too? Need a job HN. Though I don't do MS Teams, haha.

Nevermind that work has become significantly more precarious, the cost of living higher, the wages lower.

Ageism is just a dick move in general. It's gotten to the point where job candidates in their 30s and early 40s are dropping work history and education to appear as if they're in their 20s to potential employers - and even considering plastic surgery[1]. It's gotten completely out of control, but I'm quite glad to see more of my peers and younger colleagues taking a firm stance against it in any form.

As long as the work gets done, everything else is irrelevant. As long as the idea is successful, it doesn't matter the age of the person who surfaced it.

Stereotyping just gets your ass into legal trouble, and the easiest solution is to just not do it in the first place.

[1]https://www.businessinsider.com/resume-botox-lying-millennia...

I think the idea of making physical workplaces better accessible for older people also benefits the young as well. So many companies just assume “oh hey our factory workers/laborers are strong dudes they can handle XYZ repetitive task no problem.”

But really, you’re just making everyone less productive.

I also think that companies underestimate the quality loss they get when they refuse to cultivate an environment that employees who have the wisdom of older age and perhaps more options to go elsewhere will tolerate.

9/9/6 burnout shops chase away families with kids and older employees who know the value of time and bias themselves toward inexperience, working harder not smarter, and a general lack of diversity in life experience.

Giving a safe, inclusive place where old people can still be productive and feel like they matter is important.

I think the article is correct in that older people can still be productive even at 60+ and it’s a pity that we let them retire. Retiring is not the most healthy option for people!

"Science moves forward one funeral at a time" - Max Planck

anyone hiring such? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46873028

[1] https://en.svilendobrev.com/1/MeetingtheSpecandOtherSoftware... (a copy because it's gone from web)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribal_knowledge

- Old people to stabilise and ensure sustainability

Fire one group and you get problems on the long run.

The hard part is to keep the balance between each group's influence. They don't have the same needs, desires, agendas, and flaws.

You can teach things to an unexperienced person, but you cannot unteach an experienced person. What experience an older person has greatly varies, and this experience could be very useful or useless, depending on what the person has done in life.

Unfortunately there is one experience/wisdom which almost all people learn with age, and that is being a knave. Just as our bodies and our minds generally deteriorate with age, so does the soul and the moral fibre - unfortunately. People seem to think that they have to fight the younger generations with deceit and manipulation. And employers aren't too keen to deal with such persons.

But things might also be changing. The people aging right now are of a higher quality than the current generation of old.

Also, many times your best employees will be old people. But they're harder to find.

I just went to a tech social event last week here in Seattle and there were so may older men and women desperately looking for new positions after having been brutally cut by Microsoft and Amazon

Also the calculus that older employees cost companies more in salary and benefits is usually ruthlessly applied

In the tech / startup world I have to lie about my age or hide it as an over 50 year old..

I mean you don’t see any AI commercials with gray haired people do you

Ageism and Sexism is rampant in tech - not to mention the practice or hiring folks of one age , sex and ethnicity or another as culture ‘fit’

It sucks because so many older tech experts with years of good experience have been thrown by the wayside.. to the point where its a cliche

The other side of this is old people desperately hanging onto jobs because they can't afford to retire. So slots are not opening up for young people.