Anyone else in their 40s facing assumptions about their skills in interviews? I keep getting asked if I'm "comfortable with modern tools," which feels like a polite way of questioning my age. Is it even appropriate for them to be asking?
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Ageism sucks. And I see older folks constantly subjected to it. But let's be clear, ageism isn't *just* towards older people. A common occurance is older people trying to pull rank on younger developers, even when the younger devs are clearly more qualified. It seems the more meaningful distinction is not age or years of experience - but whether or not you care about your work, and have continued to refine your taste and explore new ideas. Maybe we need a new metric: "Years of new experience".
My current full-time job is a total dead end and I'm miserable, but it's stable. A recruiter reached out about a contract-to-hire position that's exactly what I want to be doing, but I'm wondering if it's just going to be a glorified temp job. Would it be crazy to leave a permanent position for this?
I think some interviewers are trying to filter out people who stopped learning years ago, but the assumption that older engineers are automatically behind is frustrating. Half the younger devs I’ve worked with learned from senior engineers in their 40s and 50s.
That’s unfortunate, so long as the stacks you’re keeping up with are on your resume you shouldn’t have to answer that question
Yeah unfortunately a lot of people stop learning when they graduate, or only incidentally learn or learn from within a very small bubble of coworkers that doesn't have much exposure to outside ideas. It's really frustrating if you're older to have that assumption put upon you, but it's also not unwarranted for a hirer to ask. I would take a fresh graduate over someone with 20 years of java experience any day if that person isn't excited about Java's new Algebraic Data Types and still codes in JDK 8 styles (maybe they use jdk17 but don't know about its features). Although I guess this particular instance is prodding at whether or not you'll use AI, which I personally am extremely bearish about but I digress.