Age discrimination is definitely an issue in this industry. I encourage all the <40's to consider their position towards their elder peers in light of just how quickly 10 - 15 years can fly by when you spend a majority of it in front of a screen ..
> "Age discrimination is definitely an issue in this industry."
Perhaps this is true for certain segments of "this industry", but, like so many blanket statements on HN, this is just false for the larger industry as a whole. Most of the jobs in "this industry" are enterprise/corporate/consultancy, and those jobs are simply not age-discriminatory. For those who seek a work environment where the latest/greatest is paramount, please prepare yourselves to deal with the consequences. For the vast majority of us, other forms of discrimination are INCREDIBLY more relevant.
>For those who seek a work environment where the latest/greatest is paramount, please prepare yourselves to deal with the consequences.
...because you will face well known and rampant age discrimination right?
The wsj article list also includes Salesforce, Nvidia, Adobe, Intel, Samsung and, IBM which I believe qualify as being corporate. But even if they were not discriminatory it would not remotely excuse those who are.
Speaking of blanket truths on HN, what percentage of ycombinator founders are over 40?
My understanding is that much of the YC evaluation comes from accomplishment density - accomplishments/time. That's pretty hard to maintain for many years, so it's natural that fewer 40 somethings meet that metric. I'm 44 and can easily chart my regression-to-the-mean over the years.
In fact, I think if somebody does maintain that accomplishment density and is interested in YC, they become a partner. :)
Yet others in this thread have explained low numbers of over 40 employees by claiming they often go on to become entrepreneurs. In that case we should see a higher precentage of founders in that older age group not a lower number.
Of course what you and others say is quite plausible. But also often contradictory. It really looks like a very real phenomenon for which intuitive but post hoc conjectures are being generated. You could do the same thing for women or any other group as well (thank goodness sensible people don't)
Ycombinator is not evil or unusual but really ageism is a very measurable, irrational problem in the industry that is undoubtedly resulting in lost efficiency and we have a choice of addressing it or just ignoring it with facile explanations.
http://www.endicottalliance.org/jobcutsreports.php just search for age, the situation is long and complicate and the corps have perfected the art of hiding layoff in plain sight, but the preference for laying off staff was the same cross countries.
>what percentage of ycombinator founders are over 40?
It seems obvious to me that even in a world with no discrimination, programs with an introductory/learning aspect that require massive drive will mostly have younger people in them, because older people with the same drive will have largely already gone through something like that.
When I started out 100+ hour weeks were the norm for me. I worked the first year and a half without taking a single day off (neither weekends nor national holidays). Definitely not worth it for me.
In my 30's I got smarter and programmed as much as I wanted (which was still a lot more than I got paid for). Career was still a huge priority for me though. I struggled to find work/life balance because I thought it was a zero sum game.
In my 40's I took 5 years off and taught English in Japan. I came back to a programming career 2 or 3 years ago.
What have I learned? Heads down coding is really important to me. I prioritise it. It is what I enjoy doing most in this world. I pretty much ignore my career now and just try to help out my team the best way that I can. I like helping people (I learned that from teaching). I also try to write as much code as I can before I get tired. And then I rest.
My job is fun (most of the time). Sometimes helping people who make my job not fun is very hard, but you always have a choice whether to help people or not. Sometimes if I can't help someone, I have to let it go. I have learned that there are some jobs where you have to let the job go because you can't help the people who are there. But in my experience, most jobs aren't like that. Usually there is a place for people who like to write code.
> It's only depressing if you first hear it after said years have flown.
... or if you (like me) ignore it because your knowledge and experience are 'state of the art'. Really depressing seeing those 'shortage of IT workers' articles. I would laugh if I could laugh.
Could you please recommend a line of actual real private-sector salaried work where time doesn't fly? Or is it that recent generations are entitled to some better fate than previous ones?
Why does it have to be an entitlement? If there's a better fate to be had, why not have it? "Other people suffered this way, so you should too" never made sense to me.
There is always talk on HN about American culture versus European and how Europe has no big tech companies like the US. I can't speak for all of Europe, having worked in only 2 of these countries full time, and Germans I know have a very different week to those of us in Norway, but I'm only here at 4.15pm because I'm on HN. I should have home half an hour ago. Really, why am i still here?
We can have it better and we don't need 100 hour weeks. The company I work for has cornered the industry and won out over MS for our last major contract.
Majority of time being awake (ie roughly 50% of those 16 hours), 5 days a week, most weeks of year, say 52 - 7(vacations) - 1-2(sickness/accidents, and yes, they do happen).
How you spend remaining time is entirely up to you. Me, for example, I've been through much more and grown quite a bit as a person in last 5 years (moved to different country), then in first 28 years of my life (33 now). Looking back, it feels like a lifetime and a bit more (weekends mostly in the mountains, either ski touring or hiking/climbing/etc), travelling around the world - recently 2 weeks in indonesia, etc). No, even those 5 years didn't fly by at all.
