A great friend asked me: “David do you think what we perceive as ageism is really ingrained in our society, or that perhaps we just refuse to put up with the sort of corporate HR bs foisted upon job seekers today?”

Great question.

What do you think?

MIT Research on Ageism in Technology Review Mag.

I remember when I “crossed over” at about 40yrs old. In my mind I went from being frustrated by processes that didn’t move quickly enough, to dreading the problems that agility and speed inflict on business.

Young organizations and the people that staff them aren’t cognitively tuned to “common sense” in the way mature ones are. In the JoHari diagram they’re in the “don’t know what they don’t know” quadrant.

This is where we apply the axiom “change is only possible when the pain of staying the same exceeds the pain of change.” That dynamic is evident presently in NASA versus SpaceX. SpaceX is busy adopting quite a bit of the NASA CMM model. (out of the scope of this thread.)

I disagree that “elders” must adopt and camouflage themselves in order to find acceptance in a youthful work world. Conversely, I think that the cultural tradition of respecting and honoring the wisdom of experience might encounter something of a ‘revival’ in the next decade or so.

But for now, if you still want to ride in the professional “jet stream” one needs to be a chameleon.

Meanwhile, I periodically observe young masters of tech make totally avoidable, sometimes bankrupting mistakes. And, as an official “Old Fart” I’ve developed a more diplomatic approach to conveying the notion “I told you so.”

Here I am posting on this very issue in 2014.