I learned an interesting facet related to ageism in hiring today.

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Sense_Difficult@reddit

Oh yes. One of the lessons I learned many years ago with my ex is that one of the employees at his job was let go because he and my ex were costing the company more or raising the premiums more for everyone else in the company for health insurance because they both were going through cancer treatments.

Of course they couldn't prove it, but my sister and BFF both work in medical billing. They told him to make sure that he basically lied about a work gap by saying he went on a vacation to visit family rather than saying he was going through chemo. Sis said, no one would hire him if they knew this. Better for them to think he was a spoiled person who could afford 2 months of vacation. It's so messed up how our health insurance screws up so many things.

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There's people trying to reform healthcare across the country and working very hard. Consider helping out.

Not technically native enough

We were the only generation that had to teach our parents and our kids how to use a computer.

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Taminella_Grinderfal@reddit

I also wonder if we’re less prone to falling for bs on the internet, spam, scams etc? Cause based on my early experiences I don’t “trust” computers, like not in a crazy way, but early computers weren’t nearly as idiot proof. Clicking around on stuff you weren’t sure of was high risk that you’d infect/delete/crash your computer and lose everything.

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Hi-its-Mothy@reddit

Yeah I have this view on AI. Lack of trust in big tech not using data as they wish, regardless of assurances (talking of use in the business sense here).

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Free-Preparation4184@reddit

Yes. This. People assume I'm a Luddite because I'm wary of AI and am not jumping in the"gee whiz, this is cool" bandwagon.

It's like, no, i just know too much. I see how it can be used as a fantastic tool, but I also see the really dark places it can take humanity. I want to hit my head with a brick. Like, didn't we learn anything from what social media did to humans and society?

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socialmediaignorant@reddit

We all saw War Games in our formative years. We know how dangerous tech can be.

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SoCalChrisW@reddit

sudo rm -rf /

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KokoroFate@reddit

C:>delete .

Apparently, this does BAD things in DOS 3.1.

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phillymjs@reddit

Heh, the first DOS command I successfully executed on my Tandy 1000 was “format a:”— unfortunately I did not heed the “Insert new floppy for drive A: and hit Enter” and nuked my only DOS floppy. Luckily the people at the nearest Radio Shack were nice and copied their store demo unit’s MS-DOS 2.11 floppy back onto it for me.

gif

“SYNTAX ERROR” was the bane of my existence as a 10 year old just trying to make the random sounds in the back of the book.

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Meetzorp@reddit

Ours was LOAD "$",8

And to get the "$" it was 'shift lock' so the muscle memory is

People used to obfuscate perl just for fun and write some crazy regexes.

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im_dead_sirius@reddit

This. I was preparing to scan an old D&D module. "Only" 32 pages plus the fold outs of the covers for things like the map.

Mapping the task in my head, I reasoned out "click menu, select scan, press "okay" at least once, wait for scan to render in Libreoffice, click menu, select save, choose a file name, hit ok at least once, go back to scanner to switch pages, repeat."

Probably with a bunch of other little steps. Like all the mouse moves.

Fuck that. Script time. (Generalized and commented after, my use case was more simple):

#!/bin/bash
# Set defaults
outdir="${1:-scans_output}"
docname="${2:-page}"

mkdir -p "$outdir"

count=1
while zenity --question --text="Scan page #$count?"; do
    outfile=$(printf "%s/%s_%02d.jpg" "$outdir" "$docname" "$count")
    scanimage -d 'airscan:e0:EPSON ET-2850 Series (USB)' \
              --format=jpeg \
              --mode Color \
              --resolution 300 \
              > "$outfile"
    echo "Saved $outfile"
    count=$((count + 1))
done

Example: # ./scan_pages.sh ~/Documents/scans project_x. You can also rename "page" when calling the script by adding that substitute after the output directory.

After starting the bash script, instead of going back and forth between my printer and computer, I just took my keyboard over to the printer (it was still in wireless range) and pressed "enter" after switching pages. Once all done, I had a directory/folder full of scans, neatly and numerically named.

Now it lives in my ~/bin directory. Might be useful later, if not, my (slightly fuller) version is 426 bytes/characters of storage. Big whoop.

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xBobble@reddit

I was preparing to scan an old D&D module

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kadyg@reddit

You should! I bet that would make his whole week!

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ThirstyWolfSpider@reddit

Isn't it almost always?

Though from some of the comments above I get the sense that some people might be talking about Windows, which I never used in my career and only use as a retro game launcher, so what do I know about that? Under Linux, you're going to be using the command line for most things.

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jax2love@reddit

My late stepdad was technically late silent generation, but he was an OG programmer. More than once I heard him say that you had no business using a computer if you couldn’t remember DOS commands 😂😂😂

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1crbngrp@reddit

I, too, came from a silent generation dad who was big into programming. When I was 7, he told me that I needed to learn to be computer literate because someday, I would use a computer to make toast.

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Listen bub, if you didn't optimize your AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS every other reboot to have enough extended RAM to run whatever game you wanted to play, you don't get to come at me with "not techie enough". We laid the foundations for the professional, gaming, and streaming world that exists now.

I’m a college professor. “Digital Natives” is the stupidest descriptor ever. The only thing “native” about these kids is their familiarity with apps - they have ZERO understanding or even interest in how their technology works.

Recurring conversation in my house:

GArockcrawler@reddit (OP)

I guess I would argue about being able to navigate complex ux/ui, but I agree completely on their app savviness. I was a product design lead who inherited an enormously complex legacy product and a UX/UI circa 2005. Clients griped all the time that their newer, younger employees could not “get” the interface.

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Elliebell1024@reddit

Correct, HS teacher here. They cant save a fucking file correctly

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Latter_Leopard8439@reddit

Yup. It's always unnamed file name. And they dont know how to click "recent" or create some folders on their google drive to organize things by class.

But at least Google does autosave for them. If they can find it again.

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Latter_Leopard8439@reddit

They dont even know where the "refresh button" is on their school issue chromebooks.

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bemenaker@reddit

Ask them where the C: drive is. Or where their files are stored.

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MrSurly@reddit

Surely you mean / ?

(I use Arch, BTW)

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…and our generation built the internet

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MrSurly@reddit

More accurate to say we built the web.

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Famous_Station3176@reddit

Actually, it was a boomer who invented the internet

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Braincloud@reddit

He said built, not invented. A good case can be made for that.

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AlsoSprach@reddit

Most of the people who invented the Internet were boomers and the silent generation. The youngest Gen Xers were still in grade school. Even Tim Berners-Lee is a boomer.

We can't take credit for Unix, Windows/DOS, or Apple/Mac either. We can claim Linus Torvalds though, so that's something.

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AdditionalLaw5853@reddit

I mean, we used computers when DOS was a thing and you had to load a program from a disc you carried in your bag and then save your work on another disc. But OK. I don't use tiktok or Instagram.

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Due-Flamingo-9140@reddit

Our grandparents got us computers for high school graduation. Mine was so fancy! I had two floppy drives so I didn’t have to keep swapping back and forth from WordPerfect to DOS to WordPerfect.

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erbmike@reddit

I think I still have some unrealized trauma from trying to work with that program in HS. Word was a downright joy in comparison.

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Old_Butterfly7984@reddit

I prefer to hire older software engineers because they do know the technology better and have better intuition with technology than young folks that haven’t evolved with it the way our generation has. Also, many younger folks get through the computer science curriculum with a lot of group projects so their skill sets are lacking. Couple that with school favoring Python instead is f a C based language and it’s a crapshoot. I have hired younger people when there were no other options and had to teach them how to code. Don’t even get me started on their work ethic - it’s like babysitting getting them to put in a full 40 hours per week.

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SavageBudgie@reddit

But OK. I don't use tiktok or Instagram

My son (17) is great with software, but crap with hardware. I have cracked this gaming laptop 3 times to install new ram, 4tb of ssd hard drive and a Wi-Fi 6 card. He watched in horror all three times and was SHOCKED when all three were successful.

No-Durian-7032@reddit

I don’t agree, I’ve encountered plenty of passive aggressiveness with their usage.

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NackieNack@reddit

I think maybe younger gens use them for that purpose? Trying to think of when ellipses would be used in that manner made me remember this hilarious skit and if it was written, printer lady would certainly use them 🤣

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CzEHCKfMFur/?igsh=ZXZjdXQ4Ym9qNm0w

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Bokononfoma@reddit

I think something unique to Gen X is that we appreciate some of the very basic functionality available now that arrived while we were in grade school or college. Those that came after us always had the simple advances and took them for granted.

Things like computers with graphical interfaces (Windows/Mac) or even readily available word processing software in computer labs (had these in college, not high school). With SPELL CHECK, and COPY AND PASTE! That was the best fucking thing ever when I first did it. It can handle my footnotes and page numbers? And Excel? Automated spreadsheets? They do all the math? You can make a pie chart and I don't need a protractor, compass, or colored pencils?

I just think a lot of us were in our learning/coming of age years right when this stuff was hitting for the first time. It'll be interesting to see if AI catches hold in a similar way and changes hour by hour life. Maybe it kinda fizzles out a bit like VR has so far, or it gets huge and bottoms out like the .coms and telecom companies when they have cool tech, but can't find many profitable applications. Or maybe something new. I feel like we've seen a lot of turnover/growth/advancement in tech, which happens (Moores Law). It's only going to get more interesting.

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CrushTheRebellion@reddit

Sometimes, I'll open a command window in Windows and start typing DOS commands. My Gen Z kids think I'm hacking into Windows through some kind of a back door.

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Qikslvr@reddit

Right? Not tech native enough? We fucking BUILT the tech industry.

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brownja1116@reddit

This. So much. We were writing stupid routines in basic, moved up crude C compliers. Were directly addressing video memory to create graphics, etc. younger people are big tech consumers, that's not the same as being tech savvy.

This isn't really the case with older Gen Xers, but would be mostly true with younger Xers.

sunfish99@reddit

Well... many of us, but truthfully not all. Older GenX could still get into a career without dealing with computers much (any non-office job). And those that didn't have given the rest of us a bad rap.

It’s super true. As a super small employer, the health insurance premium for someone who is 60 can be 3-4 times as much as your younger employees. You’re not supposed to discriminate but that is a massive financial incentive to discriminate. I had an employee whose health insurance was the equivalent of $8 per hour. For a really crappy plan.

Nobody wishes health insurance was decoupled from employment more than small employers.

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gotchafaint@reddit

This is institutionalized age discrimination

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denisebuttrey@reddit

So why do so many vote against universal health care. Wouldn't we all be better off if our health wasn't tied to our employer?

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Expat111@reddit

I’m a CFO of mid sized companies. From a financial perspective, if we had universal healthcare like I had while living in Singapore, my company would easily save $300K in employer paid portion each year. Why American business owners resist universal healthcare absolutely baffles me.

So a lot of employers are perfectly happy to vote against ACA, which has employers handle health insurance, and which will save them money.

We've tried pretty much everything else, what's left to try? And GTFO with any "free market" unregulated crap. We did that before, and had snake oil salesman and quack doctors/treatments out the wazoo. Why would we want to go back to that?

diogenesRetriever@reddit

I worked for a small company where I was one of the youngest employees. Each year we'd go through the process of working with our insurance broker on trying to keep rates reasonable. We eventually went to what they called "age banded" rates. After a year I looked at the plan and figured out I was subsidizing everyone else so I switched to my wife's plan. The result was that the census jumped and all the older guys dropped insurance going on their wive's plan too. I effectively killed our health insurance benefits.

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temerairevm@reddit

It’s not your fault. The system is incredibly stupid and in the sentence devices the wrong things. Enjoy low premiums while you can, because the older you get the harder they are to find.

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Expensive-Ad1609@reddit

This is so interesting. Here in South Africa, many employers offer 'Total cost to company' packages. They make employees pay for 100% of their own healthcare, or they give a small contribution towards it.

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pdubs18@reddit

We have something in America that might be similar that is trying to catch on called ICHRA (Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangement). It’s still just window dressing until hospitals stop predatory billing and collections. MRIs can be $300 or $3000. You never know until the bill comes. Avoid emergency rooms unless you are dying.

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Expensive-Ad1609@reddit

America is a messed-up place. I'm so thankful that I live in South Africa. We have state hospitals where one pays based on one's income, AFAIK.

And, those of us 🙋🏽‍♀️ who have private health care can get Gap cover. It pays the shortfall if the medical aid doesn't settle the full bill.

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NoRestForTheWitty@reddit

Healthcare is much less expensive in South Africa.

Healthcare expenditure per capita in the US is about US $10,921.

Healthcare expenditure per capita in SA is about US $547.

For instance, some treatments that cost tens of thousands in the US cost much less in SA.

Example:

Angioplasty: US $57,000 in the US vs US $14,200 in SA.

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Expensive-Ad1609@reddit

Health care in South Africa is crazy expensive for people who earn Rands. That's 99% of the population. A doctor's visit in my middle-of-nowhere town costs R700. The average South African salary is around R6000/pm.

Yes, there are state hospitals where one pays according to one's income, but middle-class people try to avoid going there.

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Remarkable_Salad_250@reddit

And wanna know why hospitals charge so much? (Aside from top heavy salaries) So many uninsured people plus abysmal rates of reimbursement from insurance for people who are insured. Every time someone with no insurance comes into a hospital, the hospital must recoup the cost of that person’s care somewhere. Guess where? Then when some insurances only pay cents on a dollar, costs go up just to break even (for example, if I know I’m going to only get $1 for every $100 I charge and I need to make $10 to cover the actual cost, I will need to charge $1000 for that thing that only costs $10.) And it’s only going to get worse if the ACA tax credits go away. But no, we don’t need Universal Health Care. We’re fine. Everything’s fine. 🙄🔥

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NoRestForTheWitty@reddit

I think we’re in full agreement.

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AnitaPeaDance@reddit

Add to that if your employee has special needs dependent(s) and/or partner, even more $$$.

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temerairevm@reddit

They can’t discriminate based on pre-existing (thanks ACA) so unless it’s a gigantic employer that self insures the special needs dependent doesn’t cost any more than any other dependent.

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eat_a_burrito@reddit

That’s ok. The Insurance CEOs need their 3rd home in Costa Rica. Feel good knowing you are supporting their poor lifestyle /s

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Silent_plans@reddit

someone who is 60 can be 3-4 times as much as your younger employees.

Wow. I had no idea this was calculated on the individual employee basis, rather than averaged across all employees leading to a flat fee.

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temerairevm@reddit

Bigger plans do work the way you describe. I’m not sure what the size threshold is for that. We are probably going to switch to an association plan that does this. It’s not really much cost savings though even with average age of 50.

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MiskatonicMus3@reddit

nobody wishes...

If that were true, they wouldn't have overwhelmingly voted for a fat orange fascist.

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temerairevm@reddit

I truly do not believe that any substantial portion of MAGA voters was primarily motivated by a love for how our healthcare system currently works. I kind of wish they were because you could reason with that.

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Kaa_The_Snake@reddit

But but DEATH SQUADS!

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Tangboy50000@reddit

This came up the other day and everyone wanted to say I was wrong, that insurance doesn’t work that way, and that having babies was way more expensive. Get a pacemaker put in and tell me having a baby is more.

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temerairevm@reddit

Everyone is sort of right here. Not sure how old you are but I am old enough to have had a “no maternity” policy before ACA. Generally companies couldn’t offer them, but they were available on the private market. My rate about tripled when I had to move to ACA.

Women and men used to be charged different rates and one of the main sources of complaining about ACA was young men complaining that their insurance got so much more expensive. I remember it acutely because as a woman who was actively trying to never have children, I was super annoyed that most of the IRL complaining I heard was from men who participated in multiple pregnancies.

The thing about pregnancy being expensive isn’t just the cost of an uncomplicated birth, which isn’t nothing and it’s also VERY common- the average woman is going to do it 1-2 times. The things that can go wrong more rarely are extremely expensive.

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CajunTisha@reddit

It’s wild how much it differs for a 29 year old compared to a 50 year old, I agree, I would love to not have this tied to employers.

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kevinlovechild@reddit

I concur with HR and Finance career. I switched plans to the same price for all but it wasn't easy (or cheap.)

In my dreams, we have European labor laws and healthcare for all. Apparently, this is not the "American Dream"?! We're apart of the Blank Generation...

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U_feel_Me@reddit

Would you vote for “socialized medicine” (like Canada and France, for example, have)?

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Pragmatic_Hedonist@reddit

Australia has a good tiered system. Everyone gets "basic" like your classic HMO policy. If you want, you can purchase a higher level of coverage that gives you more flexibility in choosing your doctors and hospitals.

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NoRestForTheWitty@reddit

I’d vote for single payer like Medicare for all.

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Sexism is still rampant in IT. It's not so much from fellow GenX tech guys, but now it's the millennial guys questioning me on my decisions. JFC. "Tech bros," my ass.

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Starbreiz@reddit

It cracks me up when tech bros act all bro. I've been building and working on servers and networks since before some of them were alive.

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UpstairsFan7447@reddit

I think we are the most tech savvy generation at the moment, simply because we know the world without digital technology and what exactly the tech solutions are meant to do. And as a bonus, we even know what to do when the technology is not working properly, for whatever reasons.

NewPresWhoDis@reddit

Those glamor shot DITL TikToks aren't making themselves

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LectureBasic6828@reddit

"I wonder how they sleep at night knowing they let their coworkers down so often."

The audacity of them not burning themselves out to make profits that they will never see snd for co workers who probably wouldn't even go to their funeral.

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MelodicToken@reddit

We work on a team in healthcare with amazing benefits and nobody’s making a profit (we are not in the US). We’re literally working for the health of our community.

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LectureBasic6828@reddit

Burnout is very real in the healthcare field. Maybe the issue is not with people needing days off and is with the sector where they work being understaffed.

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MelodicToken@reddit

Absolutely staffing is an issue. But unplanned absences increase burnout because then the whole team has to work short. Staff should use their (generous) vacation leave, and schedule appointments for massages, physio, therapy, do lots of self care, for sure. They can use paid sick leave to go to appointments. I’m in favour of that— scheduled and then we can plan for it. It’s the unscheduled days off I have a problem with. We are a small team and once I had fully half my team call in sick one day in the middle of the week. All of them came in the next day with no sign of illness. That was a hard day for us. But most popular is to call is sick on a Monday or a Friday. Or adjacent to a STAT day off.

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Imagine thinking you know me well enough to say I have no empathy. You could not be more wrong.

Uh, what?

Or are you saying they sleep like a baby because they don’t give a shit about showing up for their teammates? And they have no empathy for how their absence puts more workload and stress onto others? In that case, I think you’re right.

Definitely. I worked for a company that was self insured and they frequently found ways to bounce long term employees without making it look like ageism and I always thought that had something to do with it. I never used my insurance for anything other than checkups and minor acute care like a cold or flu but I’m starting to come around on the idea of universal healthcare, though I’m sure the government will ensure it’s screwed up and lines the pockets of the billionaire class somehow.

And nothing will be done about ageism until the mills hit 50. The booms got their gold plated retirement benefits and we still don’t exist to most generations. The mills will screech for attention when they start hitting senior status and then ageism will be the most important thing in the world. They might finally do something about healthcare too.

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Naive-Elderberry5529@reddit

This makes me so PO'd, but not surprising, unfortunately. They keep raising the retirement age older and older for social security, but for those of us in the job market within 10 or even 15 years of that "magic number" it feels like we're screwed

No, a 401k is a private tax-advantaged retirement account. Social Security is a mandatory government retirement program.

We pay into Social Security through our paychecks - currently 6.2%, and the employer matches it so total contribution is 12.4%. You only pay this on the first $176,000 in income.

The amount you draw in retirement (age 67) is based on your highest 35 years of earnings. You can draw at 62, but your payout will be lower. If you retire later, you can get a bit more.

1994 is best known for the death of Kurt Cobain.

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peter303_@reddit

Boomers invented computers and the internet. And they are put out to pasture for being old.

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tarix76@reddit

I was discussing GenZ's lack of tech knowledge with a friend and said something like:

In order to get anything done on a computer we had to learn nonsense like LOAD "*",8,1and then some of us were bored enough to go learn what all of that meant! A cat can use an iPad.

🎯

Do not mess with Gen X baby

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SlyFrog@reddit

I think a lot of people need to drop the delusion that this is about anything other than just age.

We don't like old people. You didn't want to work with the "weird" 58 year old guy when you were young. As we age, more and more decision making gets done by people younger than you. People have always gravitated toward bonding with other people their own age or younger.

See how many people spend time really visiting and talking with their elders even outside of work.

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GenX-ModTeam@reddit

Prejudices & Hostility - No speech of any form targeting anyone, including but not limited to:

Race, culture, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, socioeconomic status, disability, or other personal attributes.
No objectification, or sexual harassment.
No threats, or advocating for violence, torture, or death.
No generational bashing.
No "anything else" that is deemed to fall under this category.

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LetsBNiceYall@reddit

Pretty ageist comment, u must not b GenX. Maybe someone younger trolling.

It is not delusion but observation. I work with people age 25-75 in a building that serves the public typically a few hundred daily.

I observe a lot & know that the work & effort I put into my body & health is paying off. We can actually change our biological age too.

So be smug, but keep an eye out for the fit grey haired ladies that buzz past u out in the reals, one of them is me.

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SlyFrog@reddit

Uh huh.

I look forward to seeing 58 year olds compete at the Olympics, since so long as you keep a positive attitude and work out hard, you aren't old and don't lose a step.

Not being delusional is not "negativity." Seeing the world as it is instead of how we want it to be is not "lack of kindness."

You know what really ages people? Years going by. That's what ages people.

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LetsBNiceYall@reddit

Who said anything abt Olympics? U ready compete at the level youngster? Silly comment. And u will age as well & from ur neg comments, that probably won't go well. Again, good luck. Good bye

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Panic_Azimuth@reddit

just look at reddit, where half the posts are about wanting to liquidate old people off to death camps.

Um, I'm not sure what corners of Reddit you're subbed to, but that is not what appears on my front page.

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mookiexpt2@reddit

Every one of those statements makes out a prima facie case under the ADEA. If you’re ever told this when applying for a job (and you’re over 40), run don’t walk to the local EEOC office.

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Vladivostokorbust@reddit

I’m not quite gen x but spend time on this sub because I relate to this generation more than boomers. And the gen jones sub is too repetitive.

I am 65. I had to enroll in Medicare Part A at my birthday but am currently employed. I retain my employer’s insurance coverage for anything not covered by A, which only pays for inpatient hospitalization. That’s totally off the table from my employers plan from having to cover. I pay the same rate regardless. In my case my employer covers all premiums for spouse and i.

My point, once you hit 65 if still employed risk to employer goes down.

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TheGreenLentil666@reddit

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SageCactus@reddit

But...if they fire you, don't they have to give you COBRA...so they aren't saving for 18 months. Or do small companies get out of that?

And before anyone comments, I thought the COBRA "price" was generic, not, Jimmy gets 20k, but Mary gets 30k.

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TheJokersChild@reddit

Offer it, yes. But taking it is the hard part because now you're paying full "retail" for your plan rather than having it subsidized through your employer.

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NoRestForTheWitty@reddit

I just went on COBRA. I’m sure this is intended to get people off. The company says I don't have coverage if a doctor's office checks. The doctor’s office and I have to call for every appointment.

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SageCactus@reddit

That's weird. I'm planning to go on COBRA in March and know from other ex-employees that that is not the case where I am.

I was recently job searching. I'm pretty sure everything was AI gibberish made solely of random key words. No salary range. No real job description. Some were tagged as remote and were not. I'm over this nonsense but I need to work. Found a job an hour away. Those 3 years i worked within 20 minutes of my job were great and now it's back to commuting.

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TheJokersChild@reddit

No salary range

That's becoming illegal in more and more states. Thanks, Colorado!

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typeyou@reddit

Um.. Did they have learn dos on their own? I didnt think so.

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MissDisplaced@reddit

This is precisely why healthcare needs to be separated from employment!

The government wants us to work until age 67 but it costs employers too much to hire older workers, thus forcing many people to take Social Security early.

You’d think big business would get behind supporting a separation of healthcare from employment as it’s less for them to deal with. But they’re not.

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Optimal_Platform_215@reddit

Regarding large employers who self-insure employee healthcare, they seem to purge folks over fiftyish if they start to see big health care claims. It doesn’t make sense to keep the seniors if they will suddenly cost hundreds of thousands as compared to a younger person without major health issues.

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friendlypeopleperson@reddit

“We cost our employers too much in health insurance premiums.” This really upsets me. I’ve paid my share of insurance premiums over the past 3 or 4 decades. I’m a very healthy person and so is my husband. (Thankful for all our blessings.) We have never really had any health problems or expenses.

But now that we (all of us collectively speaking) are getting a little older, we are being “punished” from many multiple directions. I used to pay lots of money in insurance premiums when I was young and healthy and was told that I had to because that money is used to pay for older people who needed more care. (Paying for it felt like I was being used back then.) Now that I’m older, I’m getting charged triple what younger people are? Why aren’t the younger people’s premiums paying for us GenXers now?!? We are getting screwed again.

Ageism is nothing new.

Many people 50 years old and up, who lost their jobs/careers to George W. Bush’s Great Recession faced long term unemployment & were never again able to find a job paying anything close to the job they’d lost to W’s Great Recession.

Many went from solid middle income to low income & never recovered financially.

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kcjonezz@reddit

rm -rf

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kwill729@reddit

“Not tech native enough” is hilariously stupid and untrue. We were the pioneers who got us to where we are now.

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KetoLurkerHereAgain@reddit

Must be able to lift 50 pounds

SheriffBartholomew@reddit

not tech native enough

WTF? Who would think this? We're literally the most tech savvy generation alive. We gree up with tech when you actually had to understand it to use it. Younger generations don't know how anything works. They barely use computers, they rely on AI for all of their information, and software & hardware is all created to cater to the stupidest people nowadays. We're the only generation who actually understands things, values history, standards, and protocols, and has evolved along with the tech. I've forgotten more about tech than my young coworkers will ever know.

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Blrfl@reddit

We're the only generation who actually understands the inner workings of technology, values history, standards, and protocols, and has evolved along with the tech.

We had the luxury of doing that as it happened instead of being forced to drink from the fire hose, which is what we've done to the younger set. I say we because it's the older generations, which now includes us, writing job descriptions that expect far more from fresh grads than we were ever expected to know. Meanwhile, how long are typical BSCS programs? The same four years they were when I got my degree 35 years ago. What we seem to be telling young engineers is "learn harder," and we sound like a bunch of boomers doing it.

The industry has largely dropped any pretense of wanting to invest in developing young talent and does very little in the way of long-term retention of those they hire. It might be nontechnical bean counters making those decisions, but it's still our generation doing it.

We've also been very slow to acknowledge that the full set of knowledge in our field has expanded enough that it can't all be kept in one head in any useful way. I don't look down my nose at people who didn't walk to school in the snow uphill both ways like I did. People developing databases for insurance companies have their own problems to solve and don't really need to know the gory details of how device drivers or compilers work. I've got at least one of each to my name and that knowledge is rarely helpful in the work I'm doing today. It's nice to know, but when I have a problem with the Kubernetes cluster that's running what I develop, I call the guy who understands it to fix it. He'll get it done a lot faster than I would and I can concentrate on what's on my plate.

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Screwsrloose1969@reddit

I noticed a marked decrease in job opportunities when I hit 40… 16 years ago.

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sunqueen73@reddit

I was backing up my old company's network on TAPES and taking those cassettes home as insurance in case of network failure every night.

These fuckin young ppl think they invented computers and the internet.

The insurance thing has pissed me off for the day

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Iwonatoasteroven@reddit

As an older worker it’s really important to counter the stereotypes about older workers being less tech savvy. Many of us have been using the Internet since its inception. As we get older it’s time to limit the number of positions we include on our resume, remove the dates for the years we graduated and ensure that the email address we’re using isn’t from a provider that’s well past its prime. I would discourage using and aol.com, hotmail.com or yahoo.com. These domains just seem dated to me. I’ve also used AI to reformat my resume and was happy with the results.

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NerdyComfort-78@reddit

A lot of wisdom being lost by not hiring us. My spouse works in industry and says there’s a lot of millennial managers in their 30s and 40s who don’t understand how to lead and develop business because they job hopped several times in their 20’s AND there’s no one older around to show them or teach them because they were all let go.

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Rowan6547@reddit

My friend is 50 and unexpectedly laid off. She's applying for a state job as an administrative assistant that has unexpected age related road blocks.

Well, fuck. Every damned day it's another horror show. I wish I'd have bought a sprinter van back when we had jobs and incomes. We wouldn't worry about being homeless come January. FML

If the Boomers ran out of ways to screw us, their Millennial kids are hell bent on "hold my beer" see how to take it to an 11 in ways to kick us harder. #enoughalready

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AdmirableWrangler199@reddit

Millennials did not have a hand in this. Maybe you mean Gen X.

Thank you for posting this. My hubby is in the tech field in his early 50 and type 2 diabetic. He still has his job but was let known he will be laid off in the near future. He has been applying to other jobs and quite a few ask if there’s any disabilities and enlisted on the checklist is diabetes. He maintains his diabetes and not any issues while working. It’s crazy if they consider diabetes as a disability then can he claim his disable????

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sethasaurus666@reddit

The tech natives of old know the truth.

We were there when the ZX80 crawled out of the primordial soup. The punched card machines stood as motionless sentinels as we forged silicon dies to create the new1kB RAM chips.

People were disseminating code via printed page, and later, we carried it on sleek black disks, spreading the binary viruses far and wide.

Once the telephone lines were pressed into service, the BBSes appeared, and eventually we graduated to the internet.

Health insurance premiums are the real problem. My employer is paying a ton to insure people and when pressed on the rise in costs, “it is what is.”

As a GenXer to the core I respect the blow off but these prices are crazy for routine health checks.

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Picmover@reddit

Last year a friend of mine was let go by a giant music streaming service he'd worked for for over 20 years. On the record they said it was cutbacks. Off the record they said he was too old. He was 52 or 53 at that time.

I always believed the streaming service thought he was too old when it came to music and new trends. The reason you describe here though, makes a lot of sense.

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Impressive-Health670@reddit

I work in this space and I’m not sure the person who said that knows what they are talking about.

It would be a bigger concern for companies that self insure, but those are already giant organizations. If a smaller company is concerned about hiring an older worker because of health insurance premiums they don’t actually understand the economics of it that well. It’s not a significant enough cost to justify not considering a candidate that may be the best fit for the role.

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YellowBeaverFever@reddit

Heh, the technical bit got me. Laughed so hard I threw out my back.

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captcha_fail@reddit

Just got hired by a smallish but growing company. It was never spelled out to me but because of simple logic I'm guessing I had a leg up on competitors because I don't have children and they can likely guess it won't change (it won't- it's never been a goal for me) . I'm almost 50.

That said, we just had an open enrollment meeting and our advisor told us our company offers better insurance than he himself has. If I get to year 5, this company will cover me with $0 from my paycheck as a loyalty incentive. Free insurance on my first day of year 5.

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Back in 2000 I had a guy in his 60s working for me and the company part of health insurance for him was about $1600 a month. The 25 year old shipping guy was $350 for the same coverage.

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prancing_moose@reddit

“Not tech native enough?”

We invented this cloud shit you take for granted today!

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bradmajors69@reddit

Yet another reason we should all have universal healthcare.

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Fr00tman@reddit

It’s so funny they call us “not tech native.” We grew up with the evolving world of computing, had to learn each generation of systems - and the earlier stuff we had to understand the underlying logic of the systems. I constantly find myself amazed at how tech illiterate many gen z kids are bc they grew up w idiot-proofed stuff and all sorts of proprietary sandboxed apps and don’t intuitively see the logic of the systems underneath and generalize between systems.

Plus, accumulated knowledge and wisdom is valuable. Ask Boeing :)

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YourGuyK@reddit

The reason they don't want to hire older people it's you expect a salary that matches your experience. They aren't worried about you retiring. They generally don't try to retain employees, and don't expect more than 5 years from anyone anyway.

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Tangelo-Agitated@reddit

In "socialist" Canada we have no such concern.

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Oxjrnine@reddit

gif

I don’t cost my company anything

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