Hacker News Reader

You said: "And who wants to hire a 45 year old junior web developer?"

That smacks of pure ageism to me. Just recast it to a racial context to see:

"And who wants to hire a black junior web developer?"

Yes, that's the problem. Our society fortunately no longer tolerates overt discrimination by race, sex or religion, but unfortunately still tolerates discrimination by age, overt at the low end and thinly veiled at the high end. We need to put an end to that.

Not so: the word "junior" implies that they're new to web development and need close supervision. If they're 45 and still a junior web dev, they're either incapable of moving forward in their career (bad), or have just done a radical mid-life career shift (not necessarily bad, but probably warrants some extra scrutiny).

Why would a person's above-average age when they begin web development warrant "extra scrutiny"? I'm baffled. This is ageism writ large, and there's no reason for it. Judge the quality of the employee's work, not his or her age.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com