Sure. Ageism, sexism, racism, etc, etc, etc, are all fucking idiotic. And yet surprisingly popular. So we have to deal with them.

I agree with you, but imagine being a discriminatory, but rational asshole.

Of course you're not going to hire a woman if you could hire a man - they might get pregnant and be away from work for a long time.

Of course you're not going hire an older employee that knows their worth over a recent graduate that isn't familiar with the salary they should earn. You can rip them off much more easily.

People can be cunts but still act with some rational motivation. That's why we have protected categories, to make sure that that isn't a strategy worth pursuing.

> not going hire an older employee that knows their worth over a recent graduate that isn't familiar with the salary they should earn

that's the real problem, self and situational-awareness.

Except if the more experienced engineer is actually worth more, the rational actor will pay them more.

> the rational actor

i like the points in this thread. perhaps aging is just a natural bad actor filter. options narrow as we wise up.

> So we have to deal with them

this is the one thing you said I disagree with, unless you mean dealing with it by eliminating it.

Yes. Although in practice a lot of what we have do to is mitigating it, as eliminating the roots of it is a decades-to-centuries problem.

A lot of software companies don't care about having good programmers, they want people to do their bidding and be as cheap as possible. Younger people are nicer to look at too.

Such an important point. At so many places, effectively producing good software is low down on the priority list. In which case, a lot of the "rational actor" analysis around hiring totally misses the point.