Last nights CodeNewbie Twitter chat struck a chord.
Liquid error: internal
Any kind of discrimination is bad and no one should have to go through that. I missed the CodeNewbie Twitter chat last night, but I was able to catch up this morning. I was discouraged by the negative experience my fellow devs have gone through.
My Experience with Ageism
I've had the privilege to run my own dev team for some time now. When going through hiring process to build my team I witnessed what ageism had done to some candidates. These folks were skilled in their trade, had excellent work history and strong work ethics. However, they were coming in with salary requirements $15-20k lower than some of the less experienced and "younger" candidates.
When I asked if they were interviewing elsewhere, some would state they were rejected from great opportunities. I followed up with why? A few had a blank stare and would not know why, but deep in my gut I knew it was because of their "old" age.
How is this fair? It isn't, the sad truth is this happens in reverse too.
I've been around since the '80s and I've seen my fair share of discrimination, with racism primarily. Now that I'm in my mid-30s I'm wondering if my next run in with discrimination will be about "old" age.
Let me know your thoughts.
Top comments (1)
Selecting against experience insulates the younger worker-bees against the deflating impact of "oh: that thing you were working on is nifty ...what made you decide to do that rather than using
<ESTABLISHED_METHOD_A>or<ESTABLISHED_METHOD_B>". I mean, there's plenty of reasons to start from scratch ...but you generally want there to be concrete benefit to the implementing organization than playing into "not invented here/by me" syndrome.