But nobody will admit that there is a massive ageism problem in technology..? It is nice that some countries have moved to protect against ageism, it is an extremely common problem that few wish to address or take seriously.
I wonder if there isn't ageism inherent in technology. I mean old tech retains old employees. The old companies and old divisions go down when new tech wins.
Being old of course does not entitle you to a job. However people being fired because they are old is something that should bother you. One day, you will be old.
Walk into the office of an accounting firm, engineering firm, bank, architects office, whatever. Count the number of employees that you see with gray hair. Now walk around your (software company's) office and do the same. Chances are (_particularly_ on the west coast in my experience), there is a big discrepancy.
There are several possible explanations. Maybe the old people get fired. Maybe old people get the hell out of the industry on their own terms. Maybe young people are just hired at an absurd rate, which is suppressing the proportions of old people.
Some people suggest that it is because this industry is young, but it isn't that young. Your standard 20-something dev might think he is entering an exciting new industry, but the reality is that the industry is several decades old already; more than enough time to accumulate lots of gray-headed programmers.
> Maybe young people are just hired at an absurd rate, which is suppressing the proportions of old people.
Honestly, I think this accounts for most of the ageism in tech.
Way more people are entering the field now than in the 1970s, so even if there's absolutely no ageism at play you'd still expect the majority of all developers at a company to have graduated in the last decade.
> but the reality is that the industry is several decades old already
Indeed, the industry is several decades old. It's just that it's also rather dramatically larger than it used to be. That growth hasn't been manifesting as freshly trained gray-headed programmers.
