
Ageism is becoming an issue for me - niyazpk
http://www.scripting.com/stories/2010/01/11/ageismIsBecomingAnIssueFor.html
======
grellas
Ageism is a fact of life and, if you are too young to have felt it yet, wait
until you turn 50 (as I did a few years back) - no matter what you do, people
_type_ you, they just don't see you in quite the same light as before.

I think this is in part because, as people, we are associational. We
inherently relate to what we know. _Similis simili gaudet_ ("like in like
rejoices") is the Latin maxim that captures this. And younger people tend to
relate to that which is new and exciting to them (this site, of all places,
certainly typifies this, as one sees discussions all the time on issues that
appeal specifically to the young). The counterpart to this, however, is that
those who are younger also tend to be dismissive of the things to which older
people relate, things which the older people themselves found new and exciting
some years back - these are not just select things, they are the day-to-day
things of life: social trends, the heroes we identify with, the people we go
out with, the movies we watch, the cultural events that grab us, even the
ideas we believe in and the values that we share. In time, for those who are
young, such things have "had their day," become faded, and become foreign and
distant.

That part is natural and perhaps even unobjectionable. We all become invested
in our own generation to some degree and it is natural to relate to the things
we grow up with and to believe in them, even if this means "moving on" from
older things and from those associated with them.

But youth is also highly prone to _lose perspective_ because, as Aristotle put
in many centuries ago in his _Rhetoric_ , the thing that most tends to
characterize youth is a (false) sense of invincibility, what he termed in
Greek the word we know today as _hubris_. When one is young, one tends to
strut about and there is no room, when one is strutting, for those who are
perhaps slower, less aggressive, possibly infirm. Yes, a young person can be
kind and gracious and have all the good qualities too. But, at that age,
arrogance can all too often be at the forefront. This propensity leads to the
negative part of ageism because it types those who are older in ways that are
unfair, prejudicial, and, indeed, foolish - when perspective is lost, youth
fails to see the self-evident strengths in those who are older (the wisdom,
the years of accumulated intelligence, the leadership strength, the wealth of
experience, etc.), and this results in a net loss to all.

The reality, then, is that such prejudices tend to be inherent in how we
function as human beings. They can be overcome but only by a conscious effort
that will not likely affect the mass of people no matter how much the issue is
raised in people's consciousness. Of course, that doesn't mean that each of us
can't attempt to overcome it in our own lives, and that is the commendable
goal we should strive for.

~~~
mrbgty
Your post reads biased against younger people. I find that the young suffer as
much if not more prejudice than those older who are generally more often in
position of power.

The young are more likely to just accept it because their entire life, they
have been influenced to accept it.

"Respect your elders"

~~~
grellas
The first half of life's continuum tends to be viewed by those going through
it as "up" (so to speak) and the second half as "down," with an inevitable
midlife adjustment (crisis, in extreme cases) in between.

This may be half-addled philosophy, or it may be common sense, but I think it
is fair to generalize about people in this sort of way and about how this
might color their perceptions of age and youth. On the "youth" side of this,
you do get a tendency to say, "the world is ours and we can conquer it" in
every generation and this tends to lead to a brushing off of those who are not
in the same position. Call it what you will and, if "arrogance" is too strong,
pick your own word. It is not meant to come across as biased. Bias, I think,
manifests itself not when we try to make observations about what we see as
attributes of age or youth but rather when we treat the individuals we
interact with according to type and not based on their individual worth.

Your point about young people often being unfairly discriminated against is
well taken - all too true and essentially the flip side of the ageist coin.
The lesson is to treat people fairly as individuals and not arbitrarily
according to type.

------
edw519
_Inside I think of myself as young._

If you really did, then you wouldn't have even written this post.

Like Dave Winer, I am also 54 and absolutely do not care what anyone else
thinks about it.

When I first started out I quickly rose through the enterprise ranks and was
never taken seriously because of my age. As a wimpy looking nerd, I had always
been underestimated by others and I found a way to use that to my advantage.
When the time was right, I would just shoot them between the eyes with the
right solution. My young age didn't matter.

Fast forward 30 years. I _never_ notice age discrimination. It may be there,
but I simply don't notice it. I think being in IT and in my 50's is a
_tremendous advantage_.

For every issue I have to address, I have that many more instances of
experience dealing with something like that. Many more iterations of similar
patterns to draw from.

IT is one field where you can actually get _better_ with age. You don't have
to run fast or carry heavy loads, but you do have to think nimbly and get
things done, both of which get better with lots of practice.

IT is also one field where "what you get done" is more important than "who you
are". This is always good news for us hackers and makers, regardless of age,
sex, background, or anything else.

I am currently writing the best software of my life, by far. Not just _how_
I'm writing it, but _what_ I'm writing. I have seen so much that I have a
natural instinct for what is needed, what works, and how to best go about it.
New technologies keep me fresh and engaged. I feel perfectly at home here at
hn even though I'm older than most of you. I can't imagine a better place to
be, with 21st century technology and 30 years experience!

To me it's odd that someone as accomplished as Dave Winer doesn't feel the
same way. Then again, maybe it's just state of mind.

My grandmother taught me one of the most important lessons of my life, "If you
look hard enough for trouble, you'll probably find it."

There is negativity everywhere, about ageism and a million other things. The
secret is that it's only data to process as you choose. I have decided to
ignore it and continue to do what I love and love what I do. I suspect that
Dave should as well.

~~~
coriander
_Like Dave Winer, I am also 54 and absolutely do not care what anyone else
thinks about it._

Perhaps that explains why you are also less likely to perceive it when it
happens. Perhaps Dave Winer is more sensitive to this issue and that explains
why he notices it more. I doubt that he is imagining this since you are one of
the few people in IT that I have heard having a contrary experience. Perhaps
you are simply an outlier.

~~~
allenbrunson
I am guessing it could have a lot to do with the fact that Dave Winer is known
to be a bit of a crank! He's historically gotten into a lot of ugly arguments,
regardless of his age.

It seems crazy to me now, but I worried most about ageism when I was around
38. I had just started a job in the Bay Area where almost everybody else was
in their early twenties. To the extent that there was a problem, it was all in
my head.

I am now 46, I have a much better perspective on it, and I don't think about
it at all. I suppose it is possible that I have been discriminated against
during job searches, but I've got plenty of more important things to worry
about.

~~~
joe_the_user
Well, age discrimination tends to become a personal issue when a person can be
effected by it. Age is naturally only one factor in this.

If you happen to be in situation where age discrimination can't effect you,
well, that's great.

If you think that's an excuse not to consider it as an important social issue,
well, that's lousy.

~~~
allenbrunson
I guess I think that it is not a social issue for me, and it's up to others to
make their own interpretations.

I think there are a _lot_ of disadvantages that could drag you down: you're
losing your hair, you're short, you're ugly, your parents put you through a
rotten childhood, and so on. But you can always find examples of people who
have those same disadvantages and are thriving anyway.

I knew this girl once who thought she was ugly. She mentioned that it goes
beyond mere social conditioning, that even newborn babies react more favorably
to pretty people. So I said: who would a newborn react more favorably to, a
pretty stranger or her own homely mother?

If I am facing some type of disadvantage, I am always going to be looking for
a way to stack the deck in my favor to get around it.

------
jonknee
I don't think it's the age, but Winer is out of touch on a lot of issues. His
primary computing time is in a scripting language / environment that he built
in the early 90s. Much like RMS, he has missed the train and while still has
important ideas is frequently only able to implement them in a way that few
others can experience.

That and his new found mobile passion is just hilarious to witness. Confused
about SMS and MMS (which he called multimedia SMS), unaware of the differences
between GSM and CDMA, etc etc. He may not be gramps yet, but if he's looking
to duck the title he should stop writing about mobile.

~~~
jerf
This isn't really new. He's always been a bit fuzzy on technologies; neither
RSS nor XML-RPC really show a deep understanding of XML, the scripting
environment which I became deeply familiar with in college was always a bit
weird about some of the fundamentals, etc. On the other hand, his resume blows
mine away; his list of truly independent inventions may not be very long but
the list of technologies that he is basically the reason they are popular is.
I have found it more educational to think about why that is than to be
dismissive because he doesn't always have a precise understanding of
everything. Who does, after all? He's got a lot of GetItDoneness, even if his
technical skills aren't always the absolute best.

~~~
sailormoon
_He's got a lot of GetItDoneness, even if his technical skills aren't always
the absolute best._

9 times out of 10 I'd take the former over the latter...

------
bioweek
Until I grew a beard I was getting reverse ageism at job interviews. Despite
10 years of programming experience, companies were telling me they wanted
someone more "senior".

Who knows, maybe that was just an excuse. But the beard seems to have helped.

~~~
middus
Beards are cool anyway. What else could you twirl while thinking about a
problem?

~~~
EricBurnett
A pen always worked for me.

------
pvg
I'm sure there are 'ageists' out there but given Dave Winer's lengthy and
well-documented history of what can only be described as a persecution
complex, it's difficult to take this very seriously. The man has been beset on
all sides by everyone from Google to business partners to conference speakers
deliberately trying to give him a heart attack.

------
petercooper
He makes a good point, but his neutral façade crumbles a bit when he says:

 _Not only that we have a lot more money than you and we know a lot more too._

I think of people as whatever age they act and I think Dave is a curmudgeon a
lot of the time who believes his age gives him special rights to press his
ideas on other people. I wouldn't discriminate or put down his abilities
because of it (heck, in many ways he's a genius) but his behavior doesn't go
far to help people in general treat him objectively.

------
randallsquared
There's a reason people are more comfortable about insulting people based on
age: everyone either has been or will be a member of the class they're
criticizing. People who want to complain about a group without getting in
trouble seem to often try to position themselves as part of or close to the
group before complaining about the group.

"My girlfriend or wife is [group], and I can tell you..."

"I was in a gang when I was a young man, and let me tell you..."

"My brother is an IT guy, and so I can say that..."

With age-related remarks, no one needs to even posture. There's an implicit
"...and I can say this because I'm one of them, or will be".

~~~
jamesbritt
"There's a reason people are more comfortable about insulting people based on
age: everyone either has been or will be a member of the class they're
criticizing. "

Just the opposite: most people can't really see themselves as old, and like to
think that as they age they'll still somehow stay cool and hip and up-to-date,
not like those creepy Readers Digest AARP people.

I've yet to meet anyone who didn't say, Wow I can't believe I'm(40|50|60|...).

You realize, intellectually, that it will happen, but it never seems quite
real until you are there.

------
nfnaaron
"Bring up ageism and out comes it comes -- it's the one insult that's
considered socially acceptable."

That and politics. I'm absolutely amazed at the hateful language that friends
and talking heads use for people who are "differently politicized."

As for me, I "knew" I was old and irrelevant (or seen as such) the day I
answered a telephone poll for local radio stations. The first question was my
age, and the next statement was "Thank you for your time <click>."

I was guilty when I was young. The tables have turned, and I try not to let it
bother me now, although it sometimes does.

~~~
kscaldef
> "Bring up ageism and out comes it comes -- it's the one insult that's
> considered socially acceptable."

> That and politics

and weight, and attractiveness, and "white trash" / rednecks, and ...

Not to mention that there's still an awful lot of racism and sexism around.
Just look at how much TV comedy is built almost entirely on gender
stereotypes.

------
JangoSteve
From one of Dave's responses in the comments:

 _Next time you think a 54-year-old is washed up, remember what you just said.

Not only that we have a lot more money than you and we know a lot more too.
:-)_

I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that smiley meant he
was being ironic, but it was still too funny to _not_ point out.

Based on the fact that he can still get so offended by something like this,
unlike edw519 in this HN thread
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1052618>), it seems Dave hasn't reached
his full cognitive maturity as of yet (not to mention that elsewhere in the
comments Dave admits that he is unable to enact change or persuade others on
any meaningful level). Given this, I'm willing to bet there are at least a few
people reading his blog that are younger, have more money, and have more
knowledge than him.

------
hyperbovine
Kudos to Dave Winer for successfully navigating Twitter at his age.

Sorry, I couldn't resist ;-)

------
balding_n_tired
"I've been seeing a lot more ageism lately.

By ageism, I mean people saying that my age makes me less intelligent,
informed, clued, aware, whatever."

Having kids will do that, at least once they get to be 10 or 12.

------
figital
Wait until children learn how to type with their brainwaves. Then you'll be
the old slow guy sitting there with the keyboard because your brain won't do
that anymore (a la people raised by wolves)

~~~
holygoat
It always blows my mind that my friends' children are growing up never having
known a world without broadband connectivity in your hand, high-def (even 3D!)
TV, GPS, manned space stations, buying everything online, and social
networking.

If today's young teenagers (my wife's cousins are glued to their phones,
sending hundreds of SMSes a week) are any indication, we have a _very_ strange
breed coming down the pipe.

------
dusklight
Well, but what if it's true?

On the macro scale, I think it's obvious that people are getting smarter. If
you compare people now with people 1000 years ago, it is obvious that the
average IQ now is higher than it was then. If you compare with people 10k
years ago, 100k ago .. no contest. There was a time when calculus was
something only the smartest people in the world understood. Now it is a
subject routinely taught in high school. All of human progress has been
written by young people getting smarter than old people, and proving the old
people wrong.

The question then should not be are young people smarter than old people, but
is the difference in generational intelligence so great that it is noticeable?
I don't know for sure the answer to that, but one has to ask what are the
origins of the ageism prejudice in the first place.

Not saying that any kind of discrimination is acceptable, there certainly are
highly intelligent, highly competent older people out there. But there are
also a bunch of old people who stopped learning anything new 30 years ago, who
nevertheless own a lot more stuff than their children and more political power
than they deserve to have, and we should be able to recognize that too.

~~~
steveklabnik
The average IQ is always 100, regardless of the population.

At least, if they make the test the way they're supposed to.

------
Mz
There's always something. I find I have some issues because I'm 44 but
everyone at work seems to think I am between 35 and 40. I think it gets my
behavior misinterpreted. And I have had people say horribly insensitive things
in front of me about how forty is just around the corner for them and "how
scary is that?!" and similar. (Someone who knew my age, which is why I feel it
is insensitive. And it was a pattern of behavior over a period of months, not
a stray remark. Still, I suspect this person just doesn't really think of me
as "over 40", even though they know I am, and I think that is part of why they
blathered on thoughtlessly in front of me about their negative feelings about
their own age.)

I'm still trying to figure out what causes people to perceive me as younger
than I am. I find it baffling. But it has happened on the Internet too. So I
suspect it is in part behavior-related, not just a looks thing.

------
natep
Take a look at jazz history if you want to see ageism (and every other -ism,
for better or worse) cycle again and again. In the 20's and 30's, the older
generation said it was sinful and immoral and why couldn't these kids just go
back to good ol' ragtime. (Answer: they just needed to be different but they'd
come to their senses sooner or later and enjoy music with real emotion behind
it)

Then in the 40's, as bebop began, the older generation said the same thing,
except those in the older generation were the ones who had been criticized for
playing jazz (ex. Louis Armstrong), but it was still just the younger
generation wanting to be different and not having any real emotions. And the
older generation has never been 'hep' or 'hip' or 'cool' or 'down' or 'hot' or
...

------
JangoSteve
If you scroll down in the comments to where Lenni posted, and then read that
thread, he doesn't seem to realize that ageism works both ways, and in fact
holds a few ageist prejudices of his own regarding younger people.

------
lacrossegm
Should we start looking into techniques for keeping the mind and body young?
One measure would probably be how quickly you can learn new technologies and
methods for getting work done. As I get older, I'm always trying to learn
something new and coming up with ideas for solving problems. The last thing I
want my employer to think is that I'm only good for maintaining the existing
code. Another thing is how well you can relate to younger people and work with
them. You can't afford to have them thinking of you as being out of touch with
the current tech.

~~~
byrneseyeview
This would tend to confirm the "ageism" that Weiner is talking about. If a
young body and mind is a good thing, an old body and mind is not.

I guess the "Ageist" position is that yes, human bodies and brains do decay,
but experience and wisdom precisely mitigate this. It seems a little absurd.

~~~
AngryParsley
I think the ageist position is that experience and wisdom aren't enough to
counteract the brain's decline as one ages. So really this is an argument
about two things: 1. The rate of cognitive decline and 2. the value of
experience. The former varies with each individual and can be mitigated with
proper nutrition and exercise. The latter varies depending on the task.

Oh, and in case anyone disputes that cognitive abilities decline with age:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_and_aging#Memory_decline...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_and_aging#Memory_decline_in_normal_aging)

~~~
lacrossegm
This is true but we're a lot closer to isolating the nutrients that support
memory and delay aging. You can also play "brain games" to stimulate neural
activity and develop better memory recall, even with people over 50.

------
donaldc
I would suspect that one cause of uneasiness that some people have towards
older people is due to the de facto age segregation practiced by much of this
society up through the end of college. I know that I personally barely had any
experience interacting with people more than a couple years older than me well
into my twenties, excepting teachers and parents.

Even once one finally _does_ get exposed to people of all ages, with some
people it may take years for this uneasiness to wear off.

------
blasdel
People are thinking of Dave Winer as "less intelligent, informed, clued,
aware, whatever" _because he's Dave Winer_ , because he can't be "part of an
intelligent discussion". The only thing it has to to do with his age is that
he's had decades of practice at screwing up technical matters, spoiling
communities, and fucking over business partners.

He has a hell of a reputation as an asshole. I don't think anyone besides
service employees care that he's old.

------
JoeAltmaier
What we all seem to agree on is, people of different ages act differently. To
the extent generalities can be draw, and to the degree these are used to spot-
evaluate someone you've just met (job interview, radio survey etc), this is
ageism. It happens because it works, at least 80% of the time. Its unfair
because important decisions are made about people (me) with too little
information. Yes I'm old, but I actually have kept learning.

------
hendler
When I was younger, I also was discriminated against for being too young. In
ANY profession, some one that has spent 10-30 years doing something in an
inefficient and incorrect way doesn't like to be told so from a young upstart
who figures it out the first week on the job (or in class).

I think there is plenty of pain to go around caused by the inefficiencies of
cultural divides.

Advice: go where you are needed and appreciated.

------
flogic
As the young team lead on a team composed of mostly older programmers, I say
older programmers pay off. I'm quite happy with their experience. Much less
explaining to do. And they know to investigate the hairy bits.

------
known
"Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes." --Oscar Wilde

------
jodrellblank
And some comment by David Deutsch on ageism going the other way here:
<http://www.youthrights.org/final.php>

------
gaius
Nothing in here about age discrimination in the IT industry.

------
mhartl
Must...resist...w(h)iner...joke...

------
yason
The world is different for everyone.

------
zandorg
That's what you get when you employ feminists to run the Human Resources
department (as in most medium-size tech startups) instead of doing it
yourself.

