China's Ageing Tech Workers Hit By 'Curse of 35' (ft.com) 149
Chinese tech giant Kuaishou is laying off employees in their mid-30s as part of a company-wide restructuring plan dubbed "Limestone," FT reported Tuesday, citing people with direct knowledge of the matter. The move highlights the pervasive ageism in China's tech sector, where younger workers are favored for their perceived willingness to work long hours and keep up with the latest technological developments, the report adds.
While China's labor law does not explicitly prohibit age discrimination, some have interpreted it as such. However, tech executives have openly expressed their preference for younger employees, with companies like ByteDance and Pinduoduo boasting some of the youngest workforces in the industry. The economic slowdown and regulatory crackdowns have exacerbated the problem, with tens of thousands of jobs cut across the sector in recent months. Those over 35 face significant challenges in finding new employment, as even the civil service and service sector prioritize younger applicants. The situation has left many older tech workers anxious about their future job prospects, the report adds.
While China's labor law does not explicitly prohibit age discrimination, some have interpreted it as such. However, tech executives have openly expressed their preference for younger employees, with companies like ByteDance and Pinduoduo boasting some of the youngest workforces in the industry. The economic slowdown and regulatory crackdowns have exacerbated the problem, with tens of thousands of jobs cut across the sector in recent months. Those over 35 face significant challenges in finding new employment, as even the civil service and service sector prioritize younger applicants. The situation has left many older tech workers anxious about their future job prospects, the report adds.
Chinese Employee Carousel? (Score:3)
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Renew! Renew!
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Beautiful woman teleports in, slashdot male walks up, states to her, "Let's have sex."
"Ewwww, gross!"
Well, there's one logical consequence (Score:4, Insightful)
People will start to think like professional athletes: I have to earn a life's wage by the time I'm 35, because after that I won't have an income anymore.
So you better start paying me better.
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35 is also young enough you could be creating a horde of desperate, violent men.
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Why the sexism, women can hold and fire a gun just as well.
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Not sexism, statistical accuracy.
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Incels like to complain about american woman being too picky, but the trend in China and south Korea is far worse, women are very openly choosing men based on earning potential, real estate assets and family wealth, or just deciding the entire arrangement is not worth it, which is increasingly common. This rampant ageism is only going to exaggerate the problem leading to what the media keeps calling "low fertility rate".
We have some of these problems here, but because you can't openly discriminate on age, i
Re: Well, there's one logical consequence (Score:3)
Re:Well, there's one logical consequence (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well, there's one logical consequence (Score:4)
That's what a one-child policy does to your country, in a country where having a male offspring is considered paramount.
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I know this doesn't help now, but a little back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that even if you start with a ratio of 80% one gender, it only takes a few generations to achieve a much healthier 60/40 split without particularly trying. Of course this supposes that there are no forces continuing to skew the demographics through deliberate choices, because those actions that made the imbalance can also preserve that imbalance. It's just that if people just give up and take their hands off the controls entir
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Want to pick up the phone? I think it's the 1950s, wanting to thank you that at least one person still exists that didn't forget its attitude towards gender roles.
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I worried about this a couple of decades ago, when killing your newborn girl was a thing. Beyond that, you were setting up a nation with a 50 million excess of angry men who couldn't get gfs or wives.
Which would be right about now.
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That's logical, but an employee can't generally just demand higher pay and get it.
More likely, in China people will stop entering the tech industries if they're seen as bad places to be working. This builds up a problem for the future for China - it'll take a few years, but China will experience a shortage of skilled tech workers.
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Too bad they ain't North Korea, they could just gang-press people into being tech workers.
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China can still do that.
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I prefer that Western Europe socialism. You know, the one where you get to do what you want and still have a social security net. Sure, taxes are bonkers, but hey, that's just money.
That's not my life and freedom.
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Socialism is just the workers owning the means of production, or now a days, services, usually with a democratic type of management.
Examples include Credit Unions and CO-OP's. In Spain and Northern Italy there are lots of worker owned businesses. It is hard to have Socialism without property rights along with things like the means to enforce contracts, at least in our type of society. The first paragraph of, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Well, there's one logical consequence (Score:4, Insightful)
I prefer that Western Europe socialism. You know, the one where you get to do what you want and still have a social security net. Sure, taxes are bonkers, but hey, that's just money.
That's not my life and freedom.
From my perspective this comes off as sounding like a rich kid who's parents cover their rent bragging about how their superior philosophy has given them a great life.
You give sole credit to "Western Europe socialism," but ignore/neglect the fact that all the NATO members of Europe only cover about a third of your military defense. The other two-thirds of European defense costs is provided by the US--and much of that ends up in European economies through purchases of goods for US military forces.
In other words, the vast majority of your "life and freedom" is bought and paid for by US citizens--not your social system.
I'm not saying that the US is morally superior because it does this--the US gets benefits from this relationship too. I'm just calling on you to make a fair comparison and give credit to the real factors that enable your way of life. And the fact is that your social safety net is only affordable because your country doesn't cover the majority of costs for your "life and freedom."
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Sometimes I wonder whether medical care is the same way. All medical care is insanely expensive in the US, but we constantly hear how it's dirt cheap across much of Europe. Medical suppliers and prescription drug companies have openly admitted to using the United States as a profit center to offset low margins elsewhere (e.g. Europe and Canada).
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Yet Canada has the 3rd most expensive drugs in the world, and also do about the same amount of drug research on a per capita base. Switzerland is #2, they also do quite a bit of drug research IIRC, as well as being European.
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That "dirt cheap medical care" is paid for by about 5-10% of your income.
That's quite a bit of money, but I still think I'm somehow better off losing money in that deal because making a net profit on this would mean my body is really fucked up.
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In other words, the vast majority of your "life and freedom" is bought and paid for by US citizens--not your social system.
But "life and freedom" are determine by much more than just standing militaries and weapons. The underlying reasons for the initiation of military wars include many more factors than simply the existence of militaries. I would posit that the creation of the EU and the subsequent required economic cooperation and mutual economic connections are far more significant in the relative lack of wars on the European continents since WWII. Of course, it's not surprise that the wars that have been fought have been
Re:Well, there's one logical consequence (Score:4, Interesting)
The idea of the EU, and one of the few ideas hatched by politicians that actually worked out 100% perfectly, was to intertwine and mix the economies of European countries so deeply that it would be economic suicide for anyone to go to war with a neighbor.
Germany and France have been at war, on and off, since the partition of the Frankish Empire into an eastern and western part, somewhere in the 9th century. Those (almost) 80 years of peace between these two countries that we had for the past (almost) 80 years are unprecedented in recorded history.
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this comes off as sounding like a rich kid who's parents cover their rent bragging about how their superior philosophy has given them a great life.
It certainly sounds like bragging, but I doubt rich kids brag about social security; I would more expect of them to just never mention social security at all or, for some of them, criticize welfare abuses by some part of the population.
but ignore/neglect the fact that all the NATO members of Europe only cover about a third of your military defense.
It's my turn to brag... Let's consider France. I don't think your argument applies. 1) Strategic independence as a goal; locally designed, locally manufactured military equipment, world class as possible (jets, helis, subs, carriers, air defence, you name it) 2) navy patrolli
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The USA is paying more for their military offence, not defence. And you do realise that the USA was the only country so far to trigger the NATO article 5?
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People will start to think like professional athletes: I have to earn a life's wage by the time I'm 35, because after that I won't have an income anymore.
To be fair, an athlete is more likely to experience a career-ruining injury than the average worker and then be unable to continue in that career. I'm not trying to justify the insane salaries many seem to get, but can understand why they'd want to earn while they can. Of course, being responsible with those earnings would go a long way toward future financial security. (Good advice for everyone.)
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Either way, if your career is over by the time you turn 35, you have to make sure you made enough money by that time to exist on it for the rest of your life.
Re: Well, there's one logical consequence (Score:2)
Or they could just go out and get a regular job like everyone else.
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In China? Nobody wants that kind of a job. Especially when they're competing with so many other men that never made it out of the cheap labor sector.
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That's pretty much the point, they can NOT get a "regular job" because, like everyone else, they get fired when they're 35.
Did you even read the original story? Or do you just browse comments based on the comment's content without bothering with the story that's being commented on?
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Not always. As long as there are athletics, there will remain a need for coaches, scouts, and managers. A lot of retired professional athletes even planned for this when they were still in school and took leadership courses and sport psychology -- courses which will help them later whether they actually graduate their university or not. Others end up in broadcasting, or otherwise "go Hollywood" like Carl Weathers, Howie Long, Terry Crews, Bob Uecker, Alex Karras, Merlin Olsen, and even the recently departed
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And even if you fire most 35 year olds, there is always a need for someone to train the next generation of layoffs.
But like with coaches and trainers, you need far fewer than you need players.
older people don't want to work 996! (Score:2)
older people don't want to work 996!
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It's harder to exploit older people, that's true.
They have already heard all the bullshit and empty promises and just don't fall for them anymore.
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but before 35, the employee has very little experience. A workforce of 25s is just fine, if you're willing to reinvent the wheel a thousand times, but be utterly baffled at the first flat tire.
Demographics to the rescue!? (Score:2)
https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
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China can just follow Justin Trudeau's lead and import in Indian workers to displace the native population.
Doesn't China have "a level of admiration for [Canada]. Their basic [democracy] is actually allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada... [www.cbc.ca]
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That bad? Well, they seem to be a society even farther advanced in Enshittification than most of the West.
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That bad? Well, they seem to be a society even farther advanced in Enshittification than most of the West.
Give us westerners a break. We're trying desperately to catch up!
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We are. But a birth rate of 1.16 is _impressive_. Well, the planet is massively overpopulated anyways, so this is a good thing, regardless of any short-term problems it causes.
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You're not meant to agree with Thanos.
"Limestone" (Score:2)
Lime is what they sprinkle on corpses before they close the mass graves. How appropriate.
Communism maintains its zero unemployment reputation.
Can you have a eight-month dupe? (Score:2)
https://it.slashdot.org/story/... [slashdot.org]
Although the story from last year wasn't behind a paywall, so perhaps that had to be remedied...
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Apparently so. Good catch.
Apparently, (Score:2)
they're trying to make Logan's Run [imdb.com] reality.
35+ = Peak Engineer Value (Score:5, Insightful)
I see a bunch of comments on here about how you can't survive in tech past your 30s, but that hasn't been my experience at all. I work in chip design and it's extremely rare for one of the key players to be in their 20s. Experienced engineers are considered to be worth 2X or 3X as much as recent college grads.
I get the idea that technology is changing so fast, but the people who work on that technology are usually better aware of that than anyone. For those of you that think people in their 40s and 50s are getting pushed out of engineering/technology jobs, what industry are you working in?
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Well, this will bite back (Score:2)
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How are they going to do that if they were broke enough to work for slave wages in the first place?
Oh ... (Score:2)
So the Chinese tech sector is going through the: "We're cultivating our image as young and dynamic company by lowering our average employee age." phase. This was a big thing in the west during the dot-com bubble, It was also one of those 'innovative corporate strategies' that turned out to be dumb a shit.
Two very different reasons for ageism (Score:2)
The first is the usually wrong assumption that an old tech worker has stale knowledge and is slow to learn new stuff. This is untrue, unfair and usually illegal.
The second is the self inflicted problem of expecting reasonable work conditions. Old people don't want to work long hours for assholes and shit pay, so are more picky about ta
Re: That's just tech (Score:3)
I kept up quite well through my mid-40s. I stopped, not because I couldn't keep up, but because I got tired of seeing the wheel be reinvented time and again.
New blippet - does the same thing as the old blippet, only differently. Rewrite and re-test all your code! What fun!
It's a stupid treadmill, because each new crop of developers thinks they know better and are smarter than their predecessors. Hint: they don't and they aren't.
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Screw you old timer. Ruby on rails will solve all our problems, you just don't get it. /s
Re: That's just tech (Score:2)
The 2010s called, they want their dev enviroment back.
Re: That's just tech (Score:3)
I'm closing in on 60 and see two things.
1. Less technological diversity.
2. More cloud stupidity. With Win11 Microsoft manages the directory.
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The Cloud is just mainframes at a grander scale.
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Instead of offshoring workers to save a buck, the cloud is offshoring hardware to save a buck.
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Off-site, though not really off-shore. The concept is the same - don't deal with the problem locally with local experts, let someone else deal with it.
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I see the same thing. And I see that what MS has built is a crumbly house-of-cards (see recent attacks). Competitors are a bit better, but still, the cloud is a massive single-point-of-failure. Solid and resilient engineering looks different. Less tech diversity is also a big problem. It means more mono-cultures and these are easy to attack and very hard to replace. Again, solid and resilient engineering looks different.
I guess we will need to have a global IT problem that makes Covid like a small thing for
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2. More cloud stupidity. With Win11 Microsoft manages the directory.
Beats on-prem stupidity, like thinking that Microsoft isn't "managing" your underlying on prem directory...That's called Windows Update, and nobody actually goes through each update and verifies the binaries do what they want it to do. Everyone is trusting Microsoft, cloud or on prem. With on prem, you also have to trust your admins not to set the password to Administrator/myITConsultingCompanyName1, which they happen to re-use at all their clients. If they don't run updates and leave your DC exposed t
Re: That's just tech (Score:2)
Me too, kinda.
Some might be lucky if they choose the dominant tech, but there are so many smart arses around that think they know better that whole genres of tech get fragmented to hell, so picking one with longevity is a challenge/gamble.
I just got fed up with the churn - it's just not fun any more - and have enough savings. Maybe.
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It's always been this way ...things get reinvented, but also advanced. However, as you get older your brain is already filled with ideas of the way things ought to be and your brain's pattern recognition systems are set to the old ways. You're less likely to be excited by the [seemingly] incremental advances. When the Wright brothers flew their airplane in 1903 it actually took until around 1910 before airplanes started getting popular and the Wright brother's feat was even recognized as a big deal. Why? Be
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Well, you're assumign these incremental changes are advances. Very often they are not advances. When they are advances they're often just rediscovered ideas from the past.
The reason old folks with experience are seen as negatives naysayers is because we see the same old problems being reinvented and rediscovered. Learn from history before repeating it. The younger generation would not be able to even use computers if people before then had not invented them!
This sort of leads to a bit of a style of think
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Yes old & experience has value (I'm old too btw, so might be self-preserving bias), but logically an organization should have both and consider the opinion objectively.
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For some jobs, I can see this, if there are no rules. I want 20 year olds as my ditch diggers, not 65 year olds. But the law says no you can't do this. It seems like perhaps these Chinese bosses are treating their workers like manual labor. Long term job prospects are probably better as a factory worker than as a software engineer... For engineering, software or otherwise, I agree with your view that diversity is important - if you're going to create excellent products. But that's a long term viewpoin
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The reason old folks with experience are seen as negatives naysayers is because we see the same old problems being reinvented and rediscovered. Learn from history before repeating it.
This times a billion.
I'm close to the end of my career, and I see the same fucking mistakes being made today as I did 40 years ago. Over and over and over again, regular as clockwork.
And if you suggest a better, proven path, it will be ignored in favor of a flashy new 'solution'. This is the normal state of things as far as I can tell.
Tech's different now (Score:2)
I mean, I guess if you're one of those freaks that doesn't need sleep. I've known a few.
Re: Tech's different now (Score:2)
They're fine on 4 hours sleep until a few years down the line they're suddenly not and they burn out mentally and often physically too. Ultimately you cant fight biology.
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it's because experience is basically worthless because tech moves so fast.
Really? Does TCP/IP change tremendously over time? Does C/C++ programming change so fast nobody can keep up? Do route/switch troubleshooting methods change dramatically? Does monitoring technology change so radically one cannot keep up with agents and the same-old-tired-methods of checking RAM, CPU, and storage? Did Fiber Channel change dramatically in terms of implementation (not speed, that's silly) and design principles? Does HPC have something shiny and new besides big clusters or big single-system-imag
Re: That's just tech (Score:5, Insightful)
Legit greybeard here.
People hunted me down to help scale up AI networks. I was ready to retire.
There is no shortage of work because thereâ(TM)s no shortage of mistakes. Ageism is a thing for meat grinder roles, absolutely. When $ matters youâ(TM)d be surprised how fast the grey hair turns into an asset, not a liability.
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This 100%
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There is no shortage of work because thereâ(TM)s no shortage of mistakes. Ageism is a thing for meat grinder roles, absolutely. When $ matters youâ(TM)d be surprised how fast the grey hair turns into an asset, not a liability.
True that. Of course, there are a lot of "meat grinder" roles (love that term!) and not so many roles for senior experts. But here is the thing: There are _never_ enough experts (let alone senior ones) and, yes, there is indeed no shortage of mistakes.
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Declining birth rates are part of the problem. But that isn't the only problem. What does it take to inspire a new generation of neckbeards to want to get involved in IT, software development, etc.?
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> Does TCP/IP change tremendously over time?
Yes. The high paying jobs would be in converting over datacenters to VxLAN such as NSX. The underlay is mostly UDP.
> Does C/C++ programming change so fast nobody can keep up?
It's the libraries/tools/APIs you need to interface with that change all the time.
> Do route/switch troubleshooting methods change dramatically? Does monitoring technology change so radically one cannot keep up with agents and the same-old-tired-methods of checking RAM, CPU, and sto
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Do route/switch troubleshooting methods change dramatically?
Yes, they do. Having a CCIE Cisco certification doesn't help so much when modern companies are up on Azure and AWS, which don't even give you raw access to network equipment..just an API and console interface. The old hat networking folks went kicking and screaming into this, even insisting they put up ridiculously-expensive Cisco cloud appliances to do the n
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Yes. The high paying jobs would be in converting over datacenters to VxLAN such as NSX. The underlay is mostly UDP.
The parent said "tremendously". You cite some niche tech barely deployed outside of large "cloud" environments. Bzzaaant.
It's the libraries/tools/APIs you need to interface with that change all the time.
Some do some don't. You certainly need to know libc (or microsoft's core libs) and there are tons of APIs such as OpenGL that aren't much different than they were in the 1990's, they just got a few more calls and features. Sure, there are new APIs, but not everyone is going to be forced to learn them and some will simply overlook or reject them as rehashed BS trying to reinvent the wheel
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> You're out of touch with what's going on in actual, large environments. ... and you think NAS overwhelmed and somehow erased block storage? Sweet summer child, you need to tour a real data center sometime when you grow up.
>
I replace FC and block storage with NetApp faster than HCI/software defined storage replaces block. And block isn't taking market share from anyone.
Re: That's just tech (Score:2)
Docker seems to be reasonably popular, but its little more than a halfway house between BSD jails and a VM. And it still needs an OS to run in it and for it to run on.
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In the same way a Virtual Machine still needs a machine to run. But it is abstracted away and less relevant.
However, the OS or container aspect is the least interesting part about containerization. It's the orchestration layer that adds value. The ability to scale, self-heal, self-update, etc.
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Do you use some sort of peer-peer architecture so you can be "serverless"?
Do you write bare metal code so you don't need an OS, since you say the OS is no longer relevant?
What you actually mean is "I rent people's servers, and they can change their terms suddenly" and "microservices that can go away in a heartbeat or have major changes to their APIs before I can integrate them"
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Was this your take on Virtual Machines (VMs) in 2018....
> If you are hardwareless, where do your OSes run?
> Do you use some sort of peer-peer architecture so you can be "virtualized"?
> Do you write virtual machine code so you don't need baremetal, since you say the hardware is no longer relevant?
> What you actually mean is "I rent people's servers, and they can change their terms suddenly" and "virtual machines that can go away in a heartbeat or have major changes to their APIs before I can inte
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I've been trying to push VxLAN in my organization for a few years now (I'm 50)...VxLAN also would make a good replacement for VPLS/MPLS and QinQ on the metro area network, but having a hard time selling that (mostly due to hardware costs of switches that support such).
"Fiber Channel is overpriced and dying. It basically being replaced with ethernet. Where latency is important NVMe/TCP wil
Can confirm (Score:2)
The belief that old technicians are unwilling/unable to update their skillset is largely false. Only the bottom-tier of technical talent has such a learning disability. Most technicians can do this easily.
This false belief is used to justify ageism of course, but the real reason motivating ageism is the very true fact that young technicians are much more willing to harmfully overwork themselves than old technicians. New technicians naively believe that all that overwork proves their importance to their e
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CGI and C++? I do you one better. Apparently, if I was interested (currently not) my ex-boss knows people that are really looking for engineers that can handle Fortran competently and the pay seems to be pretty good. Once you are actually an engineer and not a mere technician anymore, the language matters not a lot, what you do with it matters. And none of the youngsters have even heard of things like Fortran, which is actually a pretty decent language.
Re: That's just tech (Score:2)
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Explains why tech always sucks.
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Indeed, it does. Although not all tech sucks. Often you find some graybeards behind tech that does not suck or at least sucks less though.
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In 5 years your knowledge is out of date
Even if you throw a legacy system in the garbage and start over green field, the 5 years of experience knowing what worked and what didn't work for your particular business case is still valuable. If all you are learning is syntax and APIs, you are only scratching the surface of what people expect high level individual contributors to bring to the table. IMO syntax and APIs and frameworks de jure are worthless to learn, period. Not 5 years down the road. Not ever. They are worthless to learn on the da
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Re: China is a "communist" country (Score:2)
It isn't.
Next.