“Let’s talk about working in tech and feeling like your best years are perpetually behind you.”
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On his personal Medium blog, Homebrew partner Hunter Walk shares perspective for tech workers who worry about what it means to grow older in an industry that has a certain “incorrect (and sometimes illegal when it plays a role in hiring) age bias.”
“Let me tell you what does get better as time passes: the relationships, the accrued knowledge, your own self-awareness,” Walk offers.
The post reminds me of a story we published on OneZero last year, about “the planned obsolescence of old coders.” That story, written by A. Jesse Jiryu Davis, explores a similar theme: In an industry that explicitly prizes innovation and a knowledge of the bleeding edge, how can older workers fight against the unfair assumption that they might lack an understanding of those things?
It’s a conversation that’s partially shaped by the challenging nature of STEM work: “For each skill a STEM professional learns, another becomes obsolete, leaving little chance for accumulating skills and increasing salary,” Davis writes.
Still, that’s no reason to surrender. As Davis concludes, “Making the software industry more welcoming to coders past their thirties and creating roles suited for very experienced programmers will make companies more effective and fairer. These changes will also benefit the rest of us — in a society increasingly governed by software and algorithms, programmers must gain some wisdom to match their power.”
Read the full story by following the link below:
