Age discrimination...not

I saw some posts on another forum where guys were complaining about age discrimination. In the last three years I've been told more than once by interviewers that they were glad to see someone show up with some gray hair as they'd had employees that didn't know the business world existed before the dot com bubble.

I believe that those that complain about age discrimination tend to have limited skills that youngsters can acquire quickly or haven't adapted or planned for changes. They also tend to be tied to a single industry or single job. The one I saw was a mortgage underwriter, nice focused job but the mortgage industry is always a roller coaster.

What have you seen?

 

I'm 18 and thus have no experience with office/desk jobs, but as a webmaster/freelancer, I haven't seen any age-discrimination either here or on other boards.

Ofcourse, Yahoo/Google/paypal doesnt care how old you are (as long as you're 18 )

 

I think people will assume since you are young, you should be pretty good with the webmaster stuff so at your age in your field you should be fine, just make sure you avoid the appearance of being a slacker or some of the other things associated with young people.

Have your parents or their peers mentioned any age discrimination or advantages with having years of experience?

 

I haven't any probem with my age

Lucky for me i don't intend or whant a real life job

 

Never really had problems myself. I went through quite a few jobs too. Like w3bmaster however i intend to carry on working for myself.

 

w3bmaster and mightb,
Are you over 40? That seems to be the number that people site as the point where age started working against them.

 

I've seen some guys around having problems, as on of them was too young. He was about 13 or so I think.

 

Have a look at my avatar. Do i look over 40?

 

Well, I live in California so you look like what guys between 15 and 55 look like.

 

Age discrimination is out there. I have seen it occur before. Some companies will fire older employees for instance, but fire a few young ones too so it doesn't look like age discrimination. Companies do this because they have to pay older employees more for their work experience and because they cost more benefits-wise. A company is also more likely to hire a young person who can rise through the ranks and stay with the company for a long time than someone who might come in for three years and then retire. Age discrimination isn't seen as often in working class jobs as it is in the corporate world though.