Great article, as a tech journalist (and not a developer) I love talking to older tech people are they generally simply more articulate and better at explaining things. They've often taught tech (either formally or informally and they thus bring fantastic communication skills to interviews etc.
Anorher reality of getting older that I'd like to share is career change. I jumped careers at an older age after moving countries and finding my previous role (running an environmental charity) unsuitable.
As a relatively new journalist I decided to focus on IoT (with a smattering of AI, med tech etc) and I did things like attending conferences and meetups, podcasts and webinars, reading whitepapers etc. My first few interviews I had no idea and no doubt sounded highly incompetent but I persisted. After a while I felt able to offer commentary and opinions, not just reporting per se. I now write for two publications, am an in-house journo for an IoT company in Shenzhen and do other bits and pieces of copywriting. I'm far from rich but I prove that it is possible to get jobs in tech (it is a bit sector after all) as an older newbie.
Don evolved as a developer during the early days of the Internet: from C and C++, through Java and PHP, and finally to Ruby and Rails. He has published several books and hundreds of articles. Don l...
Thank you Cate. I listen to your podcasts.
I probably will be writing and speaking more on Ageism in tech. I spoke at QConNY 2017 this Spring on it and InfoQ just published: infoq.com/articles/tech-oldies-hiring
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Great article, as a tech journalist (and not a developer) I love talking to older tech people are they generally simply more articulate and better at explaining things. They've often taught tech (either formally or informally and they thus bring fantastic communication skills to interviews etc.
Anorher reality of getting older that I'd like to share is career change. I jumped careers at an older age after moving countries and finding my previous role (running an environmental charity) unsuitable.
As a relatively new journalist I decided to focus on IoT (with a smattering of AI, med tech etc) and I did things like attending conferences and meetups, podcasts and webinars, reading whitepapers etc. My first few interviews I had no idea and no doubt sounded highly incompetent but I persisted. After a while I felt able to offer commentary and opinions, not just reporting per se. I now write for two publications, am an in-house journo for an IoT company in Shenzhen and do other bits and pieces of copywriting. I'm far from rich but I prove that it is possible to get jobs in tech (it is a bit sector after all) as an older newbie.
Thank you Cate. I listen to your podcasts.
I probably will be writing and speaking more on Ageism in tech. I spoke at QConNY 2017 this Spring on it and InfoQ just published: infoq.com/articles/tech-oldies-hiring