Body blow!
This isn’t true. Ask Tom Chick. The Coriolis effect only applies to giant things like hurricanes and playable monsters in games made by Sparky. In Australia, however, the seasons are backwards.
This isn’t true. Ask Tom Chick. The Coriolis effect only applies to giant things like hurricanes and playable monsters in games made by Sparky. In Australia, however, the seasons are backwards.[/quote]
Completely off topic, but I have this hilarious map I picked up in New Zealand a few years ago. It’s an inverse Mercator projection with
the South Pole on top, and is subtitled “The Real World”. Of course,
this means that we here in North America would be the backwards ones.
It has some other goofy things, too. New Zealand is called the “Loyal British Colony of New Zealand”. Then there’s the “United States of Canada”, the “Recently Occupied Territory of Siberia” and “The Spanish Empire”.
:D
Cheers,
Loyd Case
Try not to let it worry you. It sounds like a few exceptions are being talked about here as if they were the rule.
In the game industry, age difference seems to mainly cause a difference in attitude. The younger workers usually come in around 10 and prefer to spend part of the day playing games or surfing the web, and then they stay until 10 at night. The older workers get here by 9, work hard all day, and get out around 6.
The only time it becomes an issue is if you work somewhere that prefers people be there until 10, and if you’re not then you’re just not working hard enough. I’ve worked at those sorts of places, and it sucked.
And now I don’t work there anymore. I watch from afar as they struggle to get things done on time when many of the people there are just out of college and have never had a job before. :-)
I don’t worry about this too much, I just see a lot of it in the game industry (and in the tech industry at the peak of the boom when the stupid money had gone nuclear). I entered said tech industry 6 years ago at the age of 31. The guys I learned the most from were all over 40, many of them over 50. Except for one of them who retired a freshly-made millionnaire, they’re all still in the game. Heck, one of them was worth over $300 million when I met him and he still works in the tech industry so he doesn’t get bored.
Your company is doomed with a blanket policy like that. If you’re worried about your ultimate fate, move on to a company that doesn’t think like that. How many really powerful CEOs out there are under 40 compared to the bulk whose spouses are the only ones in that age range?
Try not to let it worry you. It sounds like a few exceptions are being talked about here as if they were the rule. [/quote]
I have the fortune and curse of working at only two jobs in the last 15 years. Both of which fell in my lap and the interviews and resumes were mere formalities. Neither have been great and certainly have not made me financially secure, but they are very safe (Medical Industry). Lots o experience and job skills, but I have never had to do the search thing and measure my worth. Having to do that at the advanced age of 33 
is a little intimidating.
Plus, poking fun at people’s problems from other, much more inferior countries like Canada, England and Australia makes me feel better about myself. And isn’t that what TV tells us life is all about: Fooling yourself into thinking you are better than you are at the expense of others.
And I happen to have a jeans and sweatshirt fetish,Laralyn , so meeeeowww.
You guys act like being in your 30’s is the end of the world. I’m only 23 yrs. old so I don’t know what it’s like getting old.
So what happens when you hit 30? Do your teeth fall out?
lol…
Worse… your penis stops working. ;)
Worse… your penis stops working. ;)[/quote]
I thought that was at 24.
You find yourself going to bed at 11:00 at night, then getting to work the next morning at 8:30 saying, “Where is everyone?”
In IT/IS it’s pretty simple: companies that aren’t cloying to COBOL or AS/400 or whatever are moving towards Java, kids walking out of college know Java, cost half as much as the guy over 30 and are more likely to do what they’re told just to keep their job. They don’t see themselves as a company’s valuable asset yet, so they’re more pliable.
I suspect similar things happen in other areas, especially areas that are becoming computerized or require computer skills. HR, Accounting…this Peoplesoft thing is fucking everywhere now.
I guess in general that since you can pay a new inexperienced employee half of what you have to pay an older, experienced employee, and get a little more percieved flexibility in return, then it makes good sense for any company that desperately needs to cut costs.
And don’t think people who move to management are safe, that new “360 degree evaluation” technique companies are using is (brilliantly) designed to justify the elimination of middle management, who’s numbers as a percentage of companies’ workforces really got out of hand during the '90s.
On the other hand, System Administration demands experience, and the amount a given company will demand for is obscene. Who the hell has been adminning websphere for 10 years?
…unemployable at 27
You find yourself going to bed at 11:00 at night, then getting to work the next morning at 8:30 saying, “Where is everyone?”[/quote]
I can’t go to sleep at 11 myself unless I am just wiped out from lack of sleep over 2 or 3 nights. Typically 12:30 or 1am for me and I get into work around 9 or 9:30am. I don’t know if any amount of aging will make me get up earlier. I may end up staying up later though. :)
– Xaroc
LOL! So true - I get to work at 6.45am and leave at 4-4.30pm everyday. Most of the guys in my age group do the same.
The younger guys mostly get to work at 9 - 10.00am and leave late. They have no families or wife of course.
Oh sure that’s good in theory but in practice age discrimination means didly squat. How do you know you are being age discriminated when you apply for a job ? The company isn’t going to tell you that someone else aged 25 got the job. They are under no obligation to give that information out.
What about the faceless employment agencies. I know for a fact that one of our main employment agencies accepts over 30 year olds to keep their numbers up but will not place them in employment.
I am somewhat lucky in that I am not overpaid for what I do nor am I underpaid. As a product engineer I am not seen as an “IT” worker and my skills are oriented towards engineering, ie. how does this work, how can we fix it, and fault diagnosis.
I am not sitting on a 24/7 soul destroying helpdesk job nor am I part of middle management always having to watch my back and play the political game.
But nevertheless I am not complacent about my position in my workplace especially considering I still have 15-20 years of house mortgage to pay off.
In a perfect world businesses would hire no matter what your age is based on experience but this just isn’t the case.
I think the lesson from this is that, ultimately, you want to be your own boss, and by ultimately I mean as soon as possible…
So that Java I was made to earn isn’t completely useless knowledge? Good to know.
Anyway, in this part of the world, there has been a lot of talk about companies hiring older workers, in their forties and fifties, since they are more loyal and hard-working. Young people evidently demand high salaries, don’t care about their work, and take too much sick leave.
I work in IT as a UNIX admin. I am 29. I dont really see my company as having an aversion to the 30+ crowd, but I dont really pay attention to that I guess. Thinking about the nine man team I work on, I am the youngest in fact. We have had 3 rounds of layoffs over the past 2 years or so, and the people that got whacked were a wide variety of folks definitely not just older people.
As to workers over 30 in general not being in demand, I think its a money thing. I think most companies feel that once an employee has been ‘trained’, they can get almost as much out of him regardless of age, but they pay the college graduate less than half of what the guy in his 40s is making.
In my personal experience, older workers seem to be much more diligent than the younger people.
olaf
You find yourself going to bed at 11:00 at night, then getting to work the next morning at 8:30 saying, “Where is everyone?”[/quote]
…or when you stare at the mirror after getting up at 6:00am, wondering if you remembered to schedule a full code build the night before. :D
I find the opposite to be true. I believe anyone can be taught a programming language if they have the basic skills…what is hard to learn is the experience you gain over time as you implement solutions. I would not touch the majority of the kids coming out of school claiming to know Java. Give me an old school guy who has been around the block and learned the lessons any day. I am 37 - I manage a team of 23-35 yead olds and I am hiring right now…Got 2 openings and I am staring at resumes every day. I love older candidates. I will say I saw one frightening resume. Guy was in his 50’s. Had been at Xerox Park in its heyday in the late 70’s and was willing to apply for a job in Customer Service!
So can someone answer me this…
As I stated earlier I know a few people that are now working in the special education field and I know of some people that are taking classes. Most of these people started when they were in there 30’s and even 40’s. Seems that most of them got burned out working in the business field so they wanted to try a new career.
If age discrimination happens, is it more likely to happen in the IT field than say in the teaching field? I’m asking, because I know of someone that’s seriously thinking about going back to school and getting his teachers degree, because he can not and doesn’t like what he does! Oh… and he’s 34 yrs. old, so he looking at 2 years of college to get his teachers degree and then he’ll be able to enter the field. So he’ll be 36 yrs. old when he graduates.
You have to be happy at what your doing, right?
:D