I admittedly waste quite a bit of time on Reddit and am no fan of the_donald but I totally agree. Unfortunately that doesn't suit the narrative being pushed here.
257 karma · joined April 21, 2017
I can't imagine you'll find many older, experienced devs willing to put up with the "we need to ship so you've got to put in 80 hours this week. You build it, you support it so keep your phone and laptop by you at all times outside of work" shtick that a lot of tech companies beat the young guy devs with.
In the modern dev shops now the soft skills you've developed in the additional years you've had before getting into development will give you quite an advantage since 99% of places aren't just heads down coding anymore.
Where I've found I have a disadvantage is in my non-work commitments and free time outside of work. The younger guys can spend their evenings and weekends working on side projects, going to hackathons or just learning something new, whereas I come home to the family and try to spend quality time with them, do my share of the work in the upkeep of the house, yard, etc.
We only get one shot at life so you're never too old for anything in terms of what you want to spend 40+ hours a week doing to finance your life.
Given the consistency at which articles of this nature appear on HN and other tech communities, it appears to be either a common residual feeling or one that is on the rise amongst us in the tech world?
It could be because of the barriers to entry, even perceived barriers to entry, or barriers to said use that it's not actually being used for its intended "purpose", admittedly.
I've personally zero experience with Russian culture beyond what makes it to the media.
From a Western perspective, we've a society that promotes and idolizes women based on their looks and sex appeal. Young girls look up to and subscribe to the snapchats of people like the Kardashians and other transient entities with a very low social value-add but a very large capitalist value add (product promotion, sales, etc.).
The visibility into successful women outside of these looks or "personality" orientated industries is about on par with the modern man. Successful female scientists and successful male scientists receive roughly the same media or social coverage. Successful female business people and successful male business people receive roughly the same, etc etc. (all anecdotally based / personal experience / intuition).
There's also a (social?) pushback against successful non-media women bringing themselves to the spotlight (such as Sandberg) for being seen as pushing themselves into the spotlight for being successful despite being a woman.
Like others have suggested, it could also have to do with the lack of routes to prosperity offered in Russia vs the West. As a whole, women in the West are have far greater access to self-actualization than men in the West, which also spreads the same women across many more routes while condensing men into a more fixed set.
Again, all non-academic and anecdotal but intuitively I feel that, like many other social issues in Western society, the heavy capitalist nature of our society is likely the root of any "issue" we perceive here.