Comment by jacobyoder | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jacobyoder | Hacker News Reader

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Accepting some advice or input on an individual item vs having someone 'manage' you are different beasts. As I come up to 50, and work with a group of folks ranging from 28-32... the age and experience gaps are highlighted often. I'm happy to contribute, and I do occasionally learn something from someone (often some specific tool I'd not seen before). But there's a resistance to 'learn' from me. We're 'equalized' on a 'team', and "we should all learn from each other!" is a common mantra.

I've done many of these projects before, and will raise issues. "Let's just see how it goes!" and "well... we might make some mistakes, but that's how we learn!" And I'll say "but I thought we were supposed to be learning from each other?" "yes!". "Why does no one ever want to learn from me?" I've done XYZ longer than these colleagues have been adults, but I'm never asked for stuff, people avoid my input, etc.

What's more interesting is that a couple of folks on the client side of the equation (contracting house) have been added who are older, and ... they're quite open to picking my brain. We mesh quite well, and have pairing sessions and learn from each other (but I'm giving more than taking in those cases). With the younger crew... there's just a real standoffishness, and focus on 'team' and 'learning from each other and our mistakes' but... they're willing to make mistakes (repeatedly) vs taking my input to avoid those mistakes in the first place. The client's new person seems to have picked up on this and is raising some issues.

For a while, I really thought it was something wrong with me, but as I jump around between clients/contracts/etc, it seems to be more age related. The larger the age gap, the less impetus there is to work 'together'. And... I'm trying to think back to when I was 25... how open would I have been to 50 year old colleague's input? If they were 'management', I'd have to. Otherwise... possibly not? Hard to remember that far back, other than that I thought I was invincible :)

Hi! Thanks for the honest response. I'm your age, and find the same reluctance from young people to listen to me when I've been down that road before. They really do have to learn from making mistakes, as they keep telling you, and can't learn from your experience. I'm not defending them for not taking advantage of the diamonds right in front of them, but I also understand their need to experience things for themselves. After all, how did you learn?

Rather than “that won’t work because of X”, I may say “here are some potential problems to watch out for”, or just ask a question like “OK, and how will you handle X?”. That message seems to get through better, and at least helps people recognize the mistake earlier.

Partially through trial and error, partially from other people, partially from books, etc.

It's not so much that "these young kids won't listen" that's annoying, but this mantra of "we're all here to learn from each other - that's how we grow!". Except... if it's me. Then you choose not to learn from me. Or older people in general. Just drop the "feel good we're all a team" facade, because it doesn't represent what you're actually doing. The disconnect is the problem, not the actual behaviour.

Youth is dumb.

When I was in my 20's, my mentors were all 50+. And, quite often, I would have to hit the wall before the good advice they gave me made sense. I realized later that I was really irritating to them at many points. It took me, like, 4 times hearing "You might want to think about that" from my main mentor before I started mentally translating that to "Dumbass. You're about to hit the wall. Again."

I am not a smart man.

They stuck with me because the magnitude of my vector was large (ah, the province of youth--boundless energy), so, even if I had a significant amount in a useless direction, I also had a significant chunk in a useful direction. And I would learn--I rarely made the same mistake (but I was quite good at making new mistakes ...)

However, if the people around (not just the kids) really don't understand that you're an expert at what you do, you really should think about getting a different job. If the consultants are willing to pick information from your brain, that's a good sign that you really do know what's going on. In return, you should make use of their people network--poke at the consultants you think are good. And right now is a good time to be making such a job change.

Ageism is a thing. On the flip side, the number of greybeards in this field continues to increase year on year--the people who learned computers as kids in the 1980s are now hitting their 50s.

Good luck and hang in there. You're not alone.

I found myself in an interesting position: on one side I manage a group of people,where most of them are much younger. So it's nice to be able to tell that that you do x and you'll get y. For instance, I made someone a team leader recently and did tell that it is likely that they'll get some resistance from others because of it. Fast forward 3 weeks and now I have to deal with the exact thing I mentioned. On the management side, we do have a wider range of people in terms of age and seniority. It's so refreshing to be in a meeting where someone says: yep, I've done this 20 times previously, these are the common mistakes we are likely to make. I don't want everyone to be my age in the company,a mix of varying experience is great.

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