Replies

I'm not as young as I was, but I think I'm still sharp enough to make a solid contribution in a fast-paced technical environment. However, I have to say that my current situation is quite heavily populated by people who are very obviously coasting to retirement. They have not learned anything since Windows 95 came out. Why should they bother?

And if I try to tell them anything, they lecture me: "I've been doing this for 40 years! Don't try to tell me how to do this -- I could write a book!" Yeah, a book on how computers worked in 1974.

And I'm not a brash young know-it-all. I'm in my mid-50s. I've got experience too and I try to keep up. Not these guys. They are, as we say, "stuck on transmit"; they stopped "receiving" a long time ago.

So -- age discrimination is a bad thing, and many older workers have a lot to offer. Experience can be truly valuable. But let's not lose sight of the fact that in some cases, people do reach a point where bagging groceries at the Quiki-Mart is all they can handle.

I'm not as young as I was, but I think I'm still sharp enough to make a solid contribution in a fast-paced technical environment.
[...]

But let's not lose sight of the fact that in some cases, people do reach a point where bagging groceries at the Quiki-Mart is all they can handle.

And then you self-identify as a ClearCase abuser? Isn't that contradictory WRT fast pace in a technical environment?...;)

In my case, I truly enjoy learning new things. Else I would have burned out decades ago. Occasionally when the industry gets too set in it's ways and is repeating some true nonsense (there is no new technology which can put an end to the practice of automating buffoonery) I will go off into an "I hate computing" fugue. This is in fact why I love open source, life is so much better with source code. Heck, I haven't had a serious episode of computing-ennui since 2002 (which was the last time I used ClearCase, btw).