Terrible reputation for ageism in IT-sector
According to a study by AARP, 61% of respondents over 45 reported having seen or experienced age discrimination in their careers.
According to Indeed, 43% of respondents worry about losing their job because of their age.
85% of tech workers believe their company cares about diversity, but ageism in tech remains an issue.
Many studies and real cases show that product teams with employees from a wider range of educational and work backgrounds created more innovative products. I noticed that age is an important part of management. There are different approaches to problem-solving between generations. Older people tend to solve thorny, complicated problems due to deeper levels of understanding.
I separate an inner age from a passport age. I don’t care about passport age: I work comfortably both with young guys aged 18–22 years and with people over 50 years of age.
But I strictly assess a person’s inner age. I will never hire an old guy for a fast developing project who thinks that doesn’t take new technologies seriously enough, or thinks that colleagues should listen to him just because he always up to senior or he has a couple of years more experience. I will gladly hire him to support an old project, but not for a startup.
It is important to understand the difference between an old guy that hates everything new and a normal old dude that is always open to new experience. Yeah, this guy doesn’t like everything new, but unlike the old guy of ‘indoor’ type, he doesn’t live in a bubble, the whole time saying “what this world’s coming to”. He knows what Hype-Train is, understands, that ineffective, stressful, and time-consuming software like Kubernetes or Webpack can bring more money than super-efficient baremetal and multi-page applications.
