I'm female, 55+. I do QA. Much of this article resonates with me. My spouse is a developer and their comment was "yes to all of that, and sounds like some exposure to U.S. government or DoD security framework".
Because I'm QA, I have not been tagged with "difficult to work with" for refusing out-of-band assignments. I've been able to say "my manager has to approve that" or "I don't have the bandwidth to take that to product owner/manager to get clearance from them, but they can ping me for my input."
I do worry about the ageism. I've been laid off twice in the last 2.5 years, and was the oldest person in the layoff from the startup, and the oldest at my location from the big company (there were folks older than me at other locations). My network of relationships with past co-workers and people I've interacted with at meetups has definitely helped me land jobs - I've been in the same geographic area for 20+ years.
I'm female, 55+. I do QA. Much of this article resonates with me. My spouse is a developer and their comment was "yes to all of that, and sounds like some exposure to U.S. government or DoD security framework".
Because I'm QA, I have not been tagged with "difficult to work with" for refusing out-of-band assignments. I've been able to say "my manager has to approve that" or "I don't have the bandwidth to take that to product owner/manager to get clearance from them, but they can ping me for my input."
I do worry about the ageism. I've been laid off twice in the last 2.5 years, and was the oldest person in the layoff from the startup, and the oldest at my location from the big company (there were folks older than me at other locations). My network of relationships with past co-workers and people I've interacted with at meetups has definitely helped me land jobs - I've been in the same geographic area for 20+ years.
I'm currently working for a government contractor... 😲