> Unions reward seniority over everything else, including skill. I'd much rather have the current environment of being able to leave for something better without starting over again at the bottom of the pile.
Let's see if you still hold that opinion in a few years when you reach your 40s/50s, can't find a job because ageism, and you have to compete with people who work 16h/day surviving on cold pizza and Red Bull.
Already well into that age range and have no trouble finding jobs because I'm productive and continue to upgrade my skills. Those habits are rewarded, as opposed to rewarding you for simply existing longer/having gotten hired earlier.
I may be a "programmer type" but I do know 25kg isn't a lot of weight to carry around.
The article is specifically about tech workers in Amazon, so I think it's pretty clear from that and the rest of the context that I was discussing unions in relation to tech workers.
I was disputing the claim that you a) it's hard to get a job in your 40s or 50s, and b) if it is hard, it's because of ageism and not something you did (or didn't do). And as others have pointed out, there is certainly a class of employee who is going to be chugging energy drinks and working 16h a day but if you're 40+ you're not competing with them.
I suspect much of the ageism in tech comes from talented/successful people filtering out of the mainstream workforce by 40s/50s. I think a lot of very skilled people end up with the means to focus on other parts of life, or to do whatever they want in tech and not be beholden to a corporate master.
Which isn’t to say that everyone who doesn’t retire by then is bad, just that the ratio is different than 20s and 30s and this probably colors people’s view of the group. Especially with the crazy industry growth we’ve seen over the career of the average 50 year old in tech.
The idea that a lot or even a sizeable percentage of tech workers can "focus on other parts of life" or "do whatever they want" within 15-20 years of working is frankly kind of ridiculous.
The median developer salary in the US is in the neighborhood of $110k/yr and includes $0 in bonuses and $0 in stock. Outside of the San Francisco bubble simply being able to type JavaScript into a computer does not put you on a trajectory to retire decades before your peers in other industries.
Is there significant ageism in other parts of the industry though?
I thought it was typical for, say, a regional bank software department, to be staffed with a mix of ages up to retirement age, not mostly people in their 20s and early 30s.
All of the ageism concern I’ve seen discussed has been about big tech and startups. Are 48 year olds being pushed out of working at mid sized insurance companies?
Of course it's a meaningful reference point. It is the primary reference point when discussing how much someone can expect to earn in a given profession. Half the developers in the country are making less than that and it's not because they started programming in 2018, it's because 99% of developers do not get any bonus, do not get any stock, and are lucky to hit $200k total comp in their life without going into management.
If you're going to say something like 90% of the workforce is under 30 you're going to need to cite something because I just absolutely do not believe that.
If you had such long career and still compete with these guys, perhaps consider a different career. I'm in my 30s and have no reason at all to worry about this, as my job is no longer about crunching code as quickly as possible - my input is on a much more strategic higher abstraction level that these younger code crunchers don't have the necessary experience for. The VP that manages me would consider 16h workdays and Redbulls a fireable offense at my position.
Yup. I watched a friend get fired because the union salary was double for people with 20 years of work. Yeah, they were more efficient and knowledgeable, but not 2x. So they replaced him with a younger new grad.
Pretty much all of them, really. Business concerns are always important because the union doesn't want to kill the business. That would be really bad.
In the case of this example, the manager was given a budget and that meant choosing staff. So she told my friend that he could go the easy way or the hard way. There are plenty of causes that the manager could dream up. It's not hard. If you want a cause, they can find one.
> So she told my friend that he could go the easy way or the hard way. There are plenty of causes that the manager could dream up.
That's avoiding union contracted processes. Union representation can help a worker when management is concocting bullshit issues. The "hard way" might make things more difficult for a worker (closer supervision, tedious training) but it's definitely harder for the manager than if the worker quits.
Let's see if you still hold that opinion in a few years when you reach your 40s/50s, can't find a job because ageism, and you have to compete with people who work 16h/day surviving on cold pizza and Red Bull.