On Wednesday, 9 December 2015 at 06:08:01 UTC, Chris Wright wrote:
On Wed, 09 Dec 2015 05:40:47 +0000, Tony wrote:
On Friday, 28 August 2015 at 13:08:36 UTC, Chris wrote:
On Friday, 28 August 2015 at 12:28:43 UTC, Russel Winder
wrote:
On Thu, 2015-08-27 at 16:01 +0000, BBasile via
Digitalmars-d-announce wrote:
[…]
That's courageous, particularly past 50 yo. It's a
different culture, past 50 yo in Europe people choose
security, but in USA, past 50 yo some people still take the
risk to try something new. Awesome.
I say "bollocks" to your accusation that Europeans post 50
are a bunch of useless idiots.
I call double "bollocks" on the claim that only in the USA
do people do anything.
I agree (I think it's the first time I agree with you!). Age
is a state of mind. I've seen people in their 20ies who only
think about a pension plan and watch TV every evening until
they fall asleep.
But in general, people slow down mentally as they age. Most US
companies - and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook is leading the
charge with his FWD.us lobby group - would prefer the
government give them the capability to hire an unlimited
amount of 25 year old foreign programmers instead of them
having to hire 50 year old American programmers.
25-year-old people are more likely to work unpaid overtime.
They generally get lower salaries. They're less likely to have
families, which means lower health insurance costs. They're
less likely to think about retirement, which means companies
can advertise 401k matching as a competitive benefit without
having to pay as much.
Companies have the option to offer 50 year olds the same salary
they offer 25 year olds, and to not give them 401K plans and
reduce or eliminate their medical benefits. The government would
support that just as much as they currently support laying off 50
year olds to be replaced by 25 year old foreign non-citizen visa
workers or hiring visa workers in lieu of American workers.
But they choose not to because none of that changes the fact that
the brains of 50 year olds are not as good as the brains of 25
year olds, in the same way that the muscles of 50 year olds are
not as good as the muscles of 25 year olds. The two situations
are not entirely identical in that acquired knowledge and
experience can help to level out the brain side more than it does
on the muscle side. But the field of programming is one of the
worst, if not the worst, for having past job experience match
current job prospects.
The assertion that people slow down mentally as they age is
pretty vague. While senescence does have mental effects, that
wouldn't be hitting significantly at the age of 50 unless you
have early onset Alzheimer's or the like. If there are some
other effects impacting productivity, there are benefits to an
extra 25 years of experience.
One thing that comes to mind to refute the contention that
senescence would be insignificant at the age of 50 is notable
technical achievement.
If we were to list the mathematical and scientific discoveries of
the past - like calculus and theory of relativity, etc. - how
many would have been done by someone at the age of 50 or older?
How many milestones in computing history were achieved by someone
50 or older? How many were done by someone over 40? And I think
most of the aging process isn't even quality (what would most
impact notable discovery) - it's quantity (that is, slower clock
cycle). And companies probably have more concerns about quantity
of thought than quality.
