'Gen X has had to learn or die': Mid-career workers are facing ageism

I know I&#x27;m ancient for saying this but....<p>&quot;&quot;&quot; led managers to prioritise digital natives for open roles, believing they are more adaptable than Gen Xers &quot;&quot;&quot;<p>I&#x27;m an old millenial and there&#x27;s truth to the joke that we have to help our parents AND our kids fix their printers. I have found the complete lack of fundamental computer skills in younger candidates (&quot;what is a directory? Why would I ever need the terminal?&quot;) to be a challenge.

I’m biased (Gen X) but I think Gen X has had the most interesting computer technology progression of everyone living today. We started with 8-bit computers like the C64, Apple II, Atari, moved on to 16-bit and DOS, moved on to the 32-bit triad of Windows, Mac, and Linux, on to 64-bit architectures, went from 2400 BBSs to 9600 and beyond, transitioned from dialup Internet with PPP to backbone-connected networking in college, just catching ISDN, DSL, and cable modems as young adults, now enjoying cloud services and hosted VMs, were steeped in assembly language, then BASIC, then pascal, C, C++, got to work with higher and higher level languages and frameworks, and are now witnessing a transformation to AI prompt driven development.<p>What is Gen Z’s “technology progression” look like? iPhone6-&gt;iPhone X-&gt;iPhone 13-&gt;iPhone 15-&gt;and on and on… yawn. Development-wise it’s varying versions of Xcode and&#x2F;or js frameworks, I guess, and now on to AI prompts. I feel like they missed out on so much!

Huh. I have to say as a Gen Xer that it&#x27;s hard to find articles that celebrate cool stuff we do or did, or even ones that condemn us for the mistakes of our generation. Instead we get these &quot;Let&#x27;s pity the poor confused Gen Xers&quot; bits. Meanwhile you can&#x27;t throw a stone without hitting a meme that mocks millennials.<p>Back in the day I thought GenX was all about rebellion, absurdism, and a laugh-behind-your-hand-while-you-take-the-check anti-corporate stance. That&#x27;s still working for me and I&#x27;m having the time of my life learning or dying because that _is_ life.<p>Anyway get off my lawn, I have to go ask an AI how to manage people.

These articles almost always include evidence to suggest that ageism is categorically &quot;bad business&quot;, and every time I&#x27;m left wondering why older workers aren&#x27;t taking advantage of this apparent industry blindspot to build their own powerhouse companies?<p>Being in a series of small startups for most of my career I haven&#x27;t done a lot of hiring, but I&#x27;ve always aimed for people with more experience than me, so they tend to be older. And man, good software developers with 20+ years of experience are _so_ good that it&#x27;s hard to imagine anyone passing them up.

I chopped ten years of highly relevant experience off my resume and the response rate to job applications improved vastly.

53 year old here, almost 40 years experience developing professional software (yes, I was one of those kids) .. all I can tell you the one bit of advice that has ALWAYS helped me through this situation, and I&#x27;ve faced it multiple times:<p>Do not stop learning. Ever.<p>Seriously. Just because you graduated with a piece of paper doesn&#x27;t mean you can stop studying. This is a fatal mistake.<p><i>Study the things that will make it easier and more effective for you to exchange with others.</i><p>Your diploma isn&#x27;t worth a THING until you&#x27;ve actually delivered something - a product or service - to the world, which someone, somewhere is willing to pay for.<p>Until you&#x27;ve actually <i>exchanged</i> something with the world, you are of little use to it.<p>That is a cold hard fact, which you can either resist or embrace.<p>That sense of entitlement you might feel? That is what you need to work on. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

Cost&#x2F;price is another key aspect that is not prominently present in the article but is a key decision driver. The assumption on the employer side is that younger folks will work for lower salaries AND can be developed to the companies needs whereas someone with 10-20 years of experience is automatically “more expensive” and has to adapt. Now there is a catch: even IF an experienced candidate would work for a lower salary, e.g. if they don’t have exactly the matching skillset and need time to learn, the employer may see this as an indication&#x2F;admission of a lack of competency and decide against that candidate. It’s a tough challenge and often a lot of irrationality seems to be involved.

The prisoners dilemma shows that everyone is incentivized against unions. Unions however, would solve this. You just need a mechanism to stop union cronyism.

Notably absent from the article is that younger workers tend to be cheaper.<p>I didn&#x27;t find the article particularly insightful. And ageism isn&#x27;t a new phenomenon

No Javascript required:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&#x2F;worklife&#x2F;article&#x2F;20240320-gen-x-workplace-ageism" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&#x2F;worklife&#x2F;article&#x2F;20240320-gen-x-workpl...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cc.bingj.com&#x2F;cache.aspx?d=2703170581749&amp;w=cNxiEqqAGeP4VblY5tq8lH6Sc-EwRsyi" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cc.bingj.com&#x2F;cache.aspx?d=2703170581749&amp;w=cNxiEqqAGe...</a>

The interesting thing to me is that there is ageism in the title of the article and no one seems to notice. That makes me think that ageism is a deep seeded and very prevalent problem.<p>The phrase &quot;had to learn or die&quot; has an implicit assumption that Gen X may have trouble adjusting to new technology.

We Gen-Xers are the original digital natives. I grew up with early 8-bit computers, moving to 16-bit, 32-bit and 64-bit. My original 286&#x2F;386 PCs got tinkered so much I didn&#x27;t bother putting the case cover back on.<p>My desk was a mess of serial cables, MIDI cables, speaker and headphone cables. My &quot;Internet&quot; was dialed through manual Hayes modem commands and later required starting Trumpet Winsock. I spent hours squeezing 10K out of my DOS low memory for games or Win 3.1.<p>I had to partition my multiple drives, get more HDD space using Stacker and worry about FAT16&#x2F;FAT32. I had to worry about 16-bit compatibility in Windows and DirectX minor versions.<p>Now some jerk comes and tells me I can&#x27;t use some slow and ridiculous browser-based software?<p>Gimme a break. My teenager can&#x27;t sneeze without checking how to do it on YouTube.

&quot;setting up a printer&quot;<p>Ahavi&#x2F;bonjour, mDNS, multicast, cups.d settings -- oof. Setting up a printer to run well on a network is actually a very frustrating task and will fail in surprising ways.

Related:<p><i>Ageism Haunts Some Tech Workers in the Race to Get Hired</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39696419">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39696419</a>

Reaching 50 and I would agree, it isn&#x27;t as bad in Germany, because despite all issues, there are more positions open than people looking for jobs.

“Malleable” is a funny way of spelling “cheaper”.

I&#x27;m a 35 year old software developer, and I&#x27;m painfully aware that I&#x27;ll face it, sooner or later, and working my ass off to build professional network, skills and experience that will set me apart and keep me marketable.<p>However, I don&#x27;t think this ageism is unfair, at least in my case. I already feel that I&#x27;m not as fast as I was in my 20s; I&#x27;ll probably be even slower on my feet and harder to adapt and learn in my 40s. If I don&#x27;t acquire meaningful and provable (two different, both equally important components) experience and wisdom, then not just the perception by hiring managers, but my objective value as a professional will decline.