Huh. This may be one of the few times I don't quite like one of your articles, Ben.
I mean, I get what you're trying to say, sort of.
But you only talk down about experience, instead of showing both sides.
In an industry plagued by ageism and "replace all the experienced people with fresh out of college kids cause they're cheaper", I worry how this post comes across.
It appears Ben pumps out micro-content on daily. I can see a positive message. I would just give him the benefit of the doubt that he slapped this one together and he's just working on a time constraint.
One of the things I love most about DEV is that you don't need to post a massive article or blog to have a space to share your thoughts, tips, knowledge, opinions. Let's try and keep it that way!
I certainly don’t think he’s being ageist at all! He is just writing a quick pep post for people entering the industry who may not be very confident (hello 👋 it me).
Saying that, I can completely understand what it must be like to be an industry veteran and see lots of posts geared towards juniors. What Ben has done here is say that newbies have perspective he can’t possibly have - I think that goes both ways. Experienced devs have perspective that I won’t for many years and that’s awesome. I know I have a lot to learn from them and I certainly am not in here thirstily rushing to replace them.
If you feel we’d benefit from hearing an experienced dev’s perspective (I think we would!) and offer yours in a way that doesn’t minimise others’ experiences, then I’m sure tons of people would love to hear it.
But the succinctness of this article is basically summed up as "Juniors have a fresh perspective" ((I agree)) "and experienced devs have bad habits that can't be corrected".
Almost a "can't teach old dogs new tricks" and the article itself isn't ageist; but in an industry that is ageist, it feels incomplete to me. That's all.
Though on re-read I can see he's specifically talking about himself and the post is too short to go into detail or his opinion on any of the presented topics in depth, so my initial reaction is definitely overkill.
So I retroactively would rather say: I'd rather see a long form article on what you're feeling/discussing here because the short version is vague enough to have a weird message? Something like that. :)
Ah sorry, I misread “in an industry with ageism” as you saying the post was ageist. My bad! Agree that long form stuff on both sides would be really interesting.
Re: your other reply, Geocities and Angelfire were also where I got my very basic start as a teenager (and Expages too if that’s the third one you’re thinking of?) I sometimes think what my career would be like now had I stuck with it 🤔
I thought about this when writing it, and I tried not to be ageist. I've always equated ageism with age and a culture of disrespect in that regard rather than experience level per se. Like, if a 45 year old is looking for their first dev job, they might experience ageism due to perhaps not fitting in culturally with a team made up of 25 year olds.
That's just an explanation of my reasoning here, and I'm definitely taking what you said to heart.
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Huh. This may be one of the few times I don't quite like one of your articles, Ben.
I mean, I get what you're trying to say, sort of.
But you only talk down about experience, instead of showing both sides.
In an industry plagued by ageism and "replace all the experienced people with fresh out of college kids cause they're cheaper", I worry how this post comes across.
It appears Ben pumps out micro-content on daily. I can see a positive message. I would just give him the benefit of the doubt that he slapped this one together and he's just working on a time constraint.
One of the things I love most about DEV is that you don't need to post a massive article or blog to have a space to share your thoughts, tips, knowledge, opinions. Let's try and keep it that way!
I certainly don’t think he’s being ageist at all! He is just writing a quick pep post for people entering the industry who may not be very confident (hello 👋 it me).
Saying that, I can completely understand what it must be like to be an industry veteran and see lots of posts geared towards juniors. What Ben has done here is say that newbies have perspective he can’t possibly have - I think that goes both ways. Experienced devs have perspective that I won’t for many years and that’s awesome. I know I have a lot to learn from them and I certainly am not in here thirstily rushing to replace them.
If you feel we’d benefit from hearing an experienced dev’s perspective (I think we would!) and offer yours in a way that doesn’t minimise others’ experiences, then I’m sure tons of people would love to hear it.
I don't think Ben was being ageist.
But the succinctness of this article is basically summed up as "Juniors have a fresh perspective" ((I agree)) "and experienced devs have bad habits that can't be corrected".
Almost a "can't teach old dogs new tricks" and the article itself isn't ageist; but in an industry that is ageist, it feels incomplete to me. That's all.
Though on re-read I can see he's specifically talking about himself and the post is too short to go into detail or his opinion on any of the presented topics in depth, so my initial reaction is definitely overkill.
So I retroactively would rather say: I'd rather see a long form article on what you're feeling/discussing here because the short version is vague enough to have a weird message? Something like that. :)
Ah sorry, I misread “in an industry with ageism” as you saying the post was ageist. My bad! Agree that long form stuff on both sides would be really interesting.
Re: your other reply, Geocities and Angelfire were also where I got my very basic start as a teenager (and Expages too if that’s the third one you’re thinking of?) I sometimes think what my career would be like now had I stuck with it 🤔
Thanks for the note Anthony.
I thought about this when writing it, and I tried not to be ageist. I've always equated ageism with age and a culture of disrespect in that regard rather than experience level per se. Like, if a 45 year old is looking for their first dev job, they might experience ageism due to perhaps not fitting in culturally with a team made up of 25 year olds.
That's just an explanation of my reasoning here, and I'm definitely taking what you said to heart.