Ageism? Good Idea?

OMG - I can't believe that someone would actually portray themselves as such a narrow minded, biased, moron!

Where do you think you are going to be in 20 or 30 years, you twit? By the sound of it you aren't very open to other poeple's ideas or opinions now, so what will make you better when you are old? Are you still going to go on about the merits of Windows XP or RedHat Linux?

Get over yourself you self-important, self-righteous ignoramus - what, can't take any competition? Or are you just threatened easily by the experience and knowledge of others?

I have learnt more from older mentors that what I could have through any course or study program - in fact, my first mentor often said (when I couldn't solve a problem and finally went to him, exasperated, asking for advice): Age and experience will always outwit youth and enthusiasm!

This is a stupid and offensive idea because you over-generalize. I can also motivate that young IT employees are bad, because they usually only care for technology and miss the right experience to keep a complex project on track. They lack experience in the field of human communication, project management, etc. IT these days my friend, is mostly about communication with people, and much less technology centered than you would like.

And now the truth as far as I am concerned, you have to start young and gain experience through the years. Usually first in the technology field, but after a few years you discover that there is much more than this technology stuff. Technology in fact, is often the easiest part. The difficult part is to gain momentum and funding for real life projects. Know how to play political gains is important as well. If you are clever enough grow old and stay in the industry, you will discover.
By the way, you need a mix of young and experienced people to cope with real life project, but both need to be open minded. I doubt if you have the right profile.

I am only 39 years old, but sure wish I knew half as much as I know now when I was at twenty one years of age.

I can hardly wait till I am 60 years so that I can be as smart as Bush, make as much money as him, and have ties to all the monetary giants in the world.

Young people are ignorant, naive, and can be fed with all the latest bovine manure. They make excellent marines. We need the youth to clean up our mistakes, which we just shuck off as experience.

I sure was frightened for the last 20 years knowing that any time I could be call off to war and fight the old geezer?s war. Now I am older, smarter, richer, wiser, and will also exploit the youth for whatever its worth. Yes, that is all gained through experience, (trial and error), which the youth is just starting to experience.

Yes, as we get older we definitely get smarter, it's just that our bodies gets weaker, especially our neck muscles, and it makes our heads droop, causing some of the brain matter to leak out.

I sure envy the older guys. They have all the money, girls, positions, brains, and most of all the power of influence. I can hardly wait till I am 60.

BTW, I do have a 20 year old girl friend which I am going to cash in when she turns 40 for 2 twenties.

I don't think age has anything to do with it just as along as you make it a life time goal to learn something different.

If I was going to employ say anyone from the age of 40 to 55 my decision would be based on their ability to do the job at hand and whether they were healthy enough to do the job and not take a lot of time off.

Working in the IT area for the past 7 years, I have watched help desk and network techs come and go. The best solution I have seen is the 80's guy, 90's guy and 2000 guy using old and new technology to get the job done. It's great to hear 'how'd you do that' from the different spectrums.
BTW - our 80's guy is keeping and and leading the pack with .net

Well done - I was just about to recommend that your parents send you to bed without any supper when I realised that not even the very young could be that thick-skinned!
It is, however, a scary thought that some people really do think like your message and as I approach my fifth decade I may soon face such prejudice. But how do we deal with it?

and I found this discussion thread interesting and entertaining to read on a Friday morning...

I am a female who made a career change to IT when I was 38, am now 43 and hope to continue to work many many more years in IT. I work for and with people who are older or the same age as me and I look up to them and their knowledge and business wisdom. We all continue to strive for the new stuff and I personally find it challenging and fun !

I sure hope that I never run into the type of young person with the same attitude that you portrayed in order to provoke this discussion. Perhaps I will when I become an IT Director some day...then we'll see what happens... :)

When my son a certified geek-(22 years younger than I am)can't figure out what is going on with his computer, whether it is hardware, software or whatever, he comes to me for answers. And I have them or know where to find them. I am the official supergeek of the family. Still learning, too. In a networking class at present.
Newbies watch my dust and kiss my --- if you can get close enough.

Aside from the fact that it's absolutely unconstitutional and against the law to discriminate on the basis of age, there are other reasons to keep the old ones around. They're wiser, for one.

As an example: There were two bulls, one old and one young sauntering on a hillside, when a herd of cows came into view. The young bull said, "Let's run down and get us one." The old bull replied, "No, let's walk down and get them all."

Enough said!

From a 67-year-old supervisor

For a group to be effective over the long term, it needs to have a balance. Different demographics bring different things to the table and each is necessary.

Youthful members in a group provide dynamic energy and drive for change.

Older members in a group provide a measure of perspective, and experience which should be used to guide that drive for change into the most positive and useful paths.

I'm 35. My experience in software development goes back to the mid-80's. That field has changed a lot, but surprisingly the lessons I learned back then are still applicable today.

As far as IT goes, I'm not sure. But I do know that good workers are good no matter the age they are. Bad workers are bad. I've struggled while working with older people who didn't take the time to learn new concepts. But I've also struggled dealing with 20-somethings who think they know everything and don't have a work ethic worth a damn.

I don't know if I'd hire a 55 year old to do network tech support but I'd sure rather hire the right 55 year old to oversee all the young geniuses than give the same position to the wrong 20-something.

my $0.02

hammeren has responded exactly to the point. robb is saying we shouldn't even hire people beyond 40 something. hammeren is saying yes we should and here's why. hammeren didn't say we should never hire young people, only what experience he/she had by doing it.

I've had pretty much the same results. As the young get going, say around 20 or so, when you start thinking it looks like they'll turn out OK, the arrogence kicks in. It seems like suddenly they think they know "everything" and nearly everyone else is wrong. But remarkably, they make just as many mistakes as other people. Maturity hasn't yet brought them down to earth with the rest of us. When I hire people, one of my primary questions is 'Can this person be taught?'. Generally if they already 'know it all', you can tell by the way they talk or conduct themselves and I don't want them.

This whole idea sounded strangely like a put on. As I followed the replies, I started to think someone just did this to see what kind of a reaction would be generated. I didn't think anyone would really be serious enough to persue this type of question in this forum. The verbal lashing was sure to follow.

I then read your reply to a couple commenters. I had to smile. Wow there are some immature people out there who probably think they are amongst the 'righteous ones'.

This was fun. I really did have to smile when the first responder called you a Putz. Reminded me of 'Grumpy Old Men'. Thanks for lightening up the day.

Frank

Excuse me... When has age been something that means that people stop learning. My husband and I are both involved in the computer industry and read all the industry magazines and continue to learn about cutting. edge technology We're both in our 50s and are both self-employed in the computer industry. Since when are computer IT jobs only for the young just out of college with no experience working i nthe IT industry. My husband did the hiring for a cutting-edge Robotics company and most of the newly-graduated techies didn't have half the knowledge they needed to even get a job with his company. Inexperience and instructors who don't teach well are as serious as any flaw in getting a job in the IT community. People only get old mentally when they stop learning and that has not happened with either of us, and we both continue to learn and are on te cutting edge. YOUR attitude is the reason age-discrimination is a crime and you are totally off base on this. I can hardly wait until you're in your 50's and let's see how you face ageism.
It's harder in general to find jobs after the age of 50 just do to the inherent misunderstandings about how we age anyway in any job in the country, but if you look around, those who hold the most power (e.g. money) in this country, are over 50 years old. Explain that one where it will make sense.
In addition, I have a friend who is in his 60's and does IT and his company is so happy with him, they do not want him to retire early which is what he wants to do. This is not 1984 where everyone over 30 is the enemy here. We live much longer and healthier lives and middle age doesn't even start until 50 when most people are living into their 80-100's now if they take care of themselves. But I can see that if the current trend of drug, alcohol and obesity addiction causes people to age faster mentally, I would have serious problems with people in IT in that case, but not if a person take care of themselves, and not age by itself.
We all age and most of us get to 50-years old or older, even you. I think you need a serious attitude adjustment here, fella. Let's see how you fare when you get to 55-years old. I'd sure like to read your diatribe then.

As a geek in his 40's, I am mortally offended by this post. I do not consider myself an "oldie", nor I do not struggle to keep up with change.. aside from missing a few hair follicles, there is nothing a twenty-something can handle professionally that I am unable to match or surpass with my more than 25 years experience and up-to-date certifications.
This person sounds like he has some personal issues about older people, and I find that sad. His opinions come across to me as arrogant. Hopefully some day he too will be older, and will have to face someone else saying such tripe. How will he handle it?
If you were my employee, Rob, and you expressed such an opinion to me, I would very likely consider you an inappropriate candidate for any kind of promotion within my department. There is no room in my department for bigotry, of any sort, no matter how logical it may seem.

p.s. -- DOS is, and will always be, important, else how would you be able to run command-line options or work with Unix?

before trading her in.

Women reach their sexual peak well after men do.

Women in their 40s are also much more comfortable with their own sexuality.

All told, they are then most desirable.

I suggest you keep her until she's 60, and then trade her in for two 30 year-olds.

The mind remains (for some, at least) young, while the body ages.

Given the choice, I'd rather live without the pinched cervical nerve, the degenerative lumbar disc, the adnosmia and the Raynaud's syndrome.

While I do concur that a given profile may be less than complete and/or accurate, one can often get enough of a general sense of the individual so as to be able to better put his post in context.

Based on personal experience, I try to remember to investigate & reflect before speaking.

This discussion, however, turned into a vicious feeding frenzy, one that was beginning to turn ugly & becoming at risk for being purged by TR, as have several others.

The time for a call to action, toward a return to sensibilities & civility, had arrived.

Thanks for demonstrating your clear lack of understanding of how the world goes around and for proving the point that while blinkered "know it alls" like you have their place as propeller heads scrabbling around under my desk trying to fix my network cable, the really experienced guys are running $100m projects earning $3000 per day so jerks like you still have a role in life while you grow up. I hope your arrogance and lack of wisdom doesn't prematurely end your days before you come to truly rue these words of stupdity that flow from your seemingly uneducated mouth. Now grow up, shut up and come back in 30 years time to apologise for so being shortsighted.

Mike - 53 and still learning all the time

Would just look around and learn the new stuff. After a while when people were charged too much for phone calls or connecting to another computer did they try changing things. It only hurt the big companys and did not cost them a red cent! AS for using processing power, I would rather a person who has a greater idea of how a system works then a person who just uses a system.
A hacker is a person who likes to look into a program/system and see how it works. And mabie tells the programmer/ sysadmin how to fix it. A long time ago the hacker was a person who just wanted to fix a problem so they could get a better access to the main frame.

...and 30 years from now as you sit across an interviewers desk with sweat pooling your socks trying to explain how important knowing VB script USED to be I hope your brain isn't too fossilized to recall your hubris this day.

Someday it WILL be you.

nice comment. keep the work!

danny
http://www.my-mortgage-loans.co.uk
http://www.my-casino-gambling.com

hey it us old farts that have the understanding of the basics not just in IT but in all realms of life. My personal experience is that the young whipper snappers make too many incompetent decisions. They are not prepared to listen to the old farts who do not blow hot air but have substance with it. Many times lately I have been vindicated when opposing a decision made by young blow hards who think they know everything - my opposition has been proven right.
We all grow old and although I'll always be older than many there must be wisdom in this old brain of mine cos I've successfully survived all this time.

Discrimination on the basis of age is a cowardly thing - we all grow old nad if you don't grow old then something has gone wrong.

.
Read it again, and think about it.

Listen, mate, I awefully curious as to how you would automates so many tasks without using ADSI scripting. And how would you use either NETDOM or ESENUTIL if not from the command prompt?
You posting reveals more than you realise: 1) It's not DOS, but the command prompt (unless your skills are still stuck at the Win9x stage!)
2) Ant half-decent sysadmin will tell you the command prompt is invaluable. Based on your comments I wouldn't expect you to understand why.

It seems to me you launched an attack on people who know more than what you do and who are your seniors, but tried to disguise it as an attack on their age.

Why don't you do yourself a favour and actually bother to get off your rear-end, put in some serious studying and upgrade your skills-level, instead of blaming more competent people for being higher up the ladder than you?
Whatever your birthdate may be, your attitude indicates a very immature approach to life and if you're brutally honest with yourself I think you will find the root of many of your problems there.

I started in COBOL on an IBM 360. I've had a PC since they came out and learned each 'real' language as it became available on that platform. Basic, Forth, C would be the sequence of events, with 8086 assembler in there somewhere.

Now I support and make major modifications to my clients' web sites from home coding in C# and VB.NET. I totally embrace .NET as the first unified, orthogonal, platform that supports oop in a meaningfull way.

So I really don't give a crap about ageism. Anyone that stayed technical and avoided managment and lead positions like the plague and really cared about programming shouldn't have a problem.

Hello,
A few years ago you were in diapers, and I was a hack. Well maybe a few more years earlyier and your parents were in diapers. I taught myself to steal time on time-share systems. When I look at the youngsters trying to hide from me, I laugh. Oled Geek means more experience than you. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Able to solve problems in half of the time that you need. More experience means less money for old geeks. If I was a plumber, I would be earning much more money. Recently I took a job at carpentry. This is a job that pay's squat, but to do the job half a**ed, you need real skills. I taught my 82 year old father to repair his system and kill worms and such. It only took about 2 years, and he is much more proficient at burning MP3's and Photos. I still have the edge when it comes to hardware. I understand the electronics behind the system, and when you learn a new trick, I probably saw the trick first.

It is federal law to not descriminate against age, but for many a**holes like you, it does'nt matter. You seem to think that your SH*t doesnt stink. Well let me tell you, it does, and you only have half of the skills that I have. I don't care how much money you earn, you will always be behind me in skills.

I am a older person with alot of experenice in the computer field. I have programed, interfaced (ie) used the main frame and just dialed into things that were so called secured. The new people who are just learning about computers are virgins to what you know. And they will stay that way if they do not try to use their brains. The internet is not free any more, there is alot of branches to it now. So if you really want to learn about the web you need to search and look for other ways to use it. The web is the new way to interface life and use it to change your life.
Give it a few years and it will tell you how to change your life and fix whats wrong.
Sorry my view on life has stopped.

Your post is an insult to the fields of Information Technology, Information Systems, and Computer Sciences. It not only uses derogatory stereotypes of older people, it it is blatently illegal. The violation that you're espousing, if your employer were to follow it, would cause your employer fines in the millions of dollars, plus ineligibility for future federal and state contracts. That doesn't even begin to cover the expenses of defending against discrimination civil suits that could be filed by every person over your 40's who isn't hired.

I'm sorry that you feel so threatened by older people. I'm in my late fifties, starting my third career. I was a computer technician before there were chips. Computers were designed around the functions needed. When chips came out, you didn't need to troubleshoot a problem down to a discrete component. You could figure out which board the problem would be from, and you changed the board. Boring to the max. A monkey can be trained to do that.

While I was a computer technician, I also earned my Emergency Medical Technician Ambulance. This lead me to change fields to healthcare where I spent twenty years as an RN (troubleshooting the complexities of the human mind and body). I still played around with computers as a hobby. As needed, I would design an application or put together information packages using computers to show what a powerful tool computers could be for healthcare.

Five years ago, I returned to college to change fields again. I had observed a hospital convert to a computerized medical records system. The hospital lost over 50% of the system's potential efficiency because the young geeks didn't understand what the hospital needed, and they also couldn't bring their instruction down to the level of non-computer literate people (many of them young people) to teach the users how to use their system. The young salesmen also snowed the administration (again computer illiterates) by telling them what administration wanted to hear, and neglecting to inform the bosses of the parts that they wouldn't want to hear. Unfortunately these 30's to 40's business types didn't know enough about networks and information systems to be able to ask the right questions. And nobody talked to any of us that were computer literate. It wasn't us older folks that screwed this up. I realized then that I was able to do better than what that hospital got even as out of date as my knowlege was.

So I returned to school. I received my BS in Information Technology and Design (Network Engineering) last spring with a 3.71 GPA (with Honors) at a school that has a reputation for very tough grading. It is ranked as one of the top five small engineering schools in the nation by several sources. I am now in the Project and Engineering Management Masters program and will be included in the 2004-2005 Chancelors List (Who's Who for graduate students). I have out performed most of the young techno-geeks four out of the past five years. Maybe you need to be afraid of us older "unchangable" slow brains. At least I don't have to worry about the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission fining me or my boss for discriminating agains you youngsters. Because I'm not afraid of competing against you youngsters.

I'm now 24 years old, and have been working in IT since I was 18.
Experience is very valuable... No matter how much you have, you will always benefit from more.

Robb: Will you work at Big Mac when you are over 55?
This stinks of the worst kind of age discrimination I have ever seen in print. Why not just come out and say it Robb, everyone over 55 is useless in your eye's !

It's the "old geeks" who mentored you to get you where you are today. A formidable challenge for them considering you seem to be working with somewhat less than half a brain!

We 55 year olds have a lot more to offer than you seem to!

Guitar scratching heroes will throw their chops at you. Great musicians will keep theirs for the moment.

I have been writing code for 15 years now and I am just getting better. I will best any young lamb on a line of code per line of code basis.

I remember when I needed to prove, and I would make stupid mistakes to impress the manager.

Now, the less I write, the more is done. This is the gift experience brought me.

In 1965 I applied for a job as a junior programmer, working on an IBM 1440 main frame.

I had been top of my class and was the only one to be granted an interview

At the time I was 35, (yes, 75 now) but with some caution I declared an age of 29. My interviewer said, I quote: "you are rather old for this but in view of your good results we will employ you.

I have kept up my interest, but very quickly took a different career path.

Sadly, I believe that the age of the computer has not been beneficial to society in many ways. It destroyed that bastion of society, the clerical class, most of whom seem to have migrated to social services or local authority work.

I leave others to suggest other adverse affects, beginning with the youth of the day, poor service (often blamed on computer crashes or faulty programs) and the proliferation of paper, (which we were assured would be a thing of the past) and the resultant destruction of forests!

That is the World wide attitude of the IT Industry! I have been in IT for over 30 years and since I attained the age of 40, the industry
asume that I 'all of a sudden', know absolutely
'nowt' about IT. Yet really nothing in IT is new!
Lots of the 'new stuff' isn't really new, it is just smaller and faster, with a new slant!
If you present an 'oldie' with a 'problem' he
will usually take it as a opportunity to learn, yet the first thing youngsters do is 'break the tool' they need to fix the problem. Ageism is
illegal but it, like racism, etc, it is still
rife world wide.

Not ALL IT people are geeks, for a start. Speak for yourself, not us old farts who actually HAVE some knowlege - apart from throwing insults like a spoiled child.
What the IT industry needs is some MATURITY about it - not cocky upstart BRATS. You sound like you are worth the basic wage - if at all. You would not gain employment in MY business, because your lousy attitude would chase all of it away.
As for means of transport, I drive a Honda sportscar. Why don't you upgrade from your pram? I have NO trouble with keeping up with technology - at the ripe old age of 39 I designed, sourced, managed and installed the first Netware 5 SFTIII network in the Southern Hemisphere. EVERYTHING went well - under budget and on time. Can you tell me that you could do the same at your age? Don't think so - you were probably still wetting your nappies. At the age of 40 I had just finished developing and documenting an NT & 2K image for an Australia-wide client. It was delivered to all their clients in 4 beta releases before going into production mode, and ran on all their widely diverging PC's quite happily. Seven minutes from newly setup PC to logging in. Reckon a fellow like yourself who has yet to learn how to shave could do that? Don't think so.... so learn to get your feet out of your mouth before opening it again. Pah!!!! Yes, I DO know how to spell USB, Firewire, VOIP and wireless.....I even know what they stand for and how to utilize ALL of them. DO you?

This appears to be a troll by robb to get attention. It worked didn't it?

I manage a group of IT people and I can tell you the 20-somethings don't really start knowing anything of use until they've been through a few trials by fire. YMMV

== /]/]

I am 53
Technically and physically, I'll kick your ****.

If my Linux students knew DOS, I wouldnt have to mspend so much time going over it

rk

I'm female, and I'm chubby.... guess what... not only did I find a new job a year and a half ago, but I got two offers in the same day.... and have had headhunters calling ever since as well. So there's still very much an element of what it is you know, and how well you know it. Granted, my area of IT is somewhat of a niche specialty (and one where most employers want experience, not just paper), but the work is there.

If someone is having an issue with that, there are somethings they can do while looking.

1. Have someone else go over your resume and make sure it reads well and looks good. Beyond the simple basics of spelling errors, is it laid out well? Are there bullet points to help "draw in" potential employers?

2. Never put your age, gender or any other personal information on your resume. Yes, in most cases your name will give your gender away... but putting those items on your resume comes off as unprofessional.

3. Talk to the people you're using as personal and professional references and find out what they're saying about you -- sometimes they think they're helping and it's backfiring -- I had one former co-worker (who I think actually IS a genius) who kept telling people I was a "genius" (sheesh), and it was scaring off potential employers who kept responding to me with "we really liked you, but we're afraid you'd be bored here". When I found out about his use of the "G-word" I asked him to not use that word anymore -- and I got offered both of the next 2 positions for which I interviewed.

4. This one is weird, but it seemed to help me. Go to the company's website, not just for the obvious reason of finding out about the firm, but for one "odder" reason as well. The layout and colors on their website say a lot about the "tone" of the firm -- dress accordingly. If a firm's website is all in shades of navy and blue, wear those colors to the interview. If their site is primarily gray, then work the gray in... they need to feel as if you fit in with them. If the sight is brown and red, then a red power tie is a reasonable idea. The red tie at a firm that's all grey and blue probably isn't a good idea... odd, but true. And oddly, don't wear a brown suit to an interview -- stick to blues and grays -- there was some study a while back that ended up with the result that people for some reason don't trust people in brown suits.... I kid you not.

55+ Network technical support? No. It'd have to be somebody young enough to be willing to work the 80 hour weeks and weekends required, who would like to drive a sports car (big carrot)and has the latest slavers' chains hanging from his belt and ears. And thinks that's cool.

55+ IT director? Network architecture design? Troubleshooting? Dealing with irate or insecure clients? Robb's boss? Yes. Give me gray hair, an economy car, and a conventional pager or a cell phone at least two years old. Someone you can make an appointment with. Someone who's forgotten more than Robb knows or thinks he knows (really), but will remember it when it comes around again.

There's a reason soldiers are young and generals aren't.

As a 40+ (ok, 50+) IT person, I love IT. My experience is that IT "morphs" more than it changes. Same basic technology (1's and 0's)in semi-infinite recombinations. Adapting to IT change over 40 is like dealing with a river; you don't have to swim upstream all the time any more, just jump in as needed.

I'd reconsider your stand on DOS, Robb. You may not need DOS for everyday network administration. But a network technician who doesn't know how to use commands like ipconfig and netdom when troubleshooting is going to be severely handicapped, and those commands only work from the DOS prompt.

There are laws against discrimination. That said, you post a job position, you specify what skills you want the employee to posess, - those requirements are set by YOU.
If an "oldy" has the skills you need - it should reveal a great deal about that person's character - they keep up with the times. That person is worth a great deal to you. If the older person does not posess those skills or has not even trained in them, that should also reveal the character of the person you wish to hire.
You are bound by law to hire the person who qualifies regardless of race, religion, sex, marital status, age, or sexual orientation.

PERIOD

That said...
The common misperception is that IT is for the young. I am 43, I am an MCSE, I use Windows XP, Linux, Active Directory on Windows Server 2003 servers, Exchange Server 2003, Office 2003, VBScript, Windows Shell programming, C++, Java - What does that say about me? Do the "older" technologies help me to do my current job? Emphatically - YES. However, the fact that I have been in the industry nearly 26 years would probably disqualify me, in your book, before I walked through the door!
If I have experience and a skillset that matches the job description - why is my age a factor?

There could be an off chance that the "oldy" might work for you too. How do you know you will not "hit" a legacy system programmed in fortran or cobol or pascal? What will you do when that happens? Retrain your "youngster" in order to understand the code?

The bottom line is ANY type of thinking like that shows a limit in critical thinking. The need to analyze and fit the skills to the job and the personality go a great deal further than simplifying and creating a logical error in the hiring practices such as age discrimination.

Nuff said.

I knew you had to have some years behind you...

Thanks for throwing yourself on the proverbial sword to bring this topic up...

OK, member "ROBB" - I have sat on the sidelines long enough and I will speak my peace now: "When All is Said and Done, Experience and 'HANDS-ON' counts! I don't care how much "book-learning you have, if you cannot apply it in the real ANALOG WORLD we live in, still, it is not worth a hill of beans! It's like trying to learn and ride a horse by reading and never experiencing it in the REAL WORLD - it won't happen! You have to get UP on the HORSE physically and in person!
Yes I've been in this racket as long as Bill Gates has, and I don't see anyone telling him to step down and go "out to pasture"! I am 52.5 years YOUNG and can think for myself and am very innovative and flexible. I got into computers before it was the "in thing to do". I am as much a PIONEER in MICROCOMPUTERS (Yes, laugh - that is the original name for these 'PCs') as Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates and Steven Jobs.... As for DOS, well as long as you have DISK DRIVES and FILES-FOLDERS whatever you want to call them, you are going to need a "DOS" "D)isk O)perating S)ystem, no matter how well Microsoft wants to hide it like it's some accident your pet dog left on the sofa, LOL!
"MICROSOFT WINDOWS" has been "out" since at least 1985 and I see it is so humorous with the "Johnny come lately crowd" to beat up Us old guard pioneers in this IT Field.
AMEN members "CRISTech", "mikeolmon", "Super_IT_Mom", and so many of you thinking along these lines, too!

Yes! I wonder if you're familiar with CORVUS SYSTEMS "Omninet" as well....your list of experiences parallels mine pretty much, too!
I had a Northstar Horizon network with TSS/C - Northstar DOS and CP/M on it many year back....
Oh yes, Lantastic! CP/M Netware, UNIX, XENIX, you name it! I thought no one left remembers any of 'The Good Old Days" when it was really exciting to be a PIONEER! I think I am jaded now, it does happen - same old WINDOWS XP out for how many years now? Hah!
Sounds like Windows went stale to me, LOL
Where's the overdue PENTIUM FIVE????

This is utterly asinine. It's hard to believe you're being this obnoxious in yet another thread. If your aim is to annoy people, you're on the right track.

[i]It's not your job to instruct the whole world in what you think everyone should know,[/i] and it sure isn't your job to spread duplicates of the same post all over the damned place like this. You're about a hair's breadth away from spamming.

It's not reasonable to expect everyone to read the entire thread, so there's no reason to get tetchy with them over the misconceptions robb has created. Good ol' robb has made his bed with that absurd, stupid, trollish post that started this thread, and should be allowed to lie in it: the consequences of that action (namely, the poor regard in which robb is held by people that take the deception at face value) are not your responsibility. I don't know if one of those two is the reason you feel it incumbent upon yourself to become the Supreme Busybody of TR, and "inform" everyone of their errors, but you're doing a bang-up job of ensuring that the signal-to-noise ratio of this thread has dropped significantly.

Those who have actually been following the thread are far less likely to continue following it when a significant percentage of the discussion is the same friggin' post repeated over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

Is your goal to reduce the intellectual value of TR to a least common denominator status by hammering every discussion with redundant posts? Don't bother answering: even if that is your goal, I don't expect you to admit it.

You're just trying to increase your post count without actually contributing to discussions! You want higher placement in the "top members" and other activity ratings without having to actually compose new and unique posts. That must be it. I should have realized earlier what you're doing: I've seen other trollish nitwits do this sort of thing in other discussion fora online.

You're just cutting-and-pasting your way to a high post-count. Great.

they are simply shouting into a vacumn.

Once, more, those to which I have responded with the post that offends you are [b]not[/b] engaged in dialogue. And, if no one replies to their posts, are unlikely to do so.

I fail to see how you are in any way affected by my position on this.

Is it the case that you are simply venting your anger at Robb; or are you trying to dictate style & procedures?

Ad hominem attacks are of no value, as I refuse to lend them currency.

And, I've received a number of private e-mails thanking me for pointing out Robb's true nature, along with 1 - count them folks, 1 - dissenter who lacked the ability to construct a grammatically correct sentence.

i still use DOS when formatting diskettes even XP is here.... better, 'coz u can still do other tasks...

happy computing! : )

While the young are busy patting themselves on the back for their youth, the mature get the job done. The young seem to think they've earned a supervisor's job just because they can sit at a desk and read a book. The field experienced know what is needed to bring a project a successful completion.

The ideas you have stated are silly at best. The ability and flexibility to keep up with the industry are individual talents and not related to age. I'll hire the field experienced 55 year old over the 30 year old every day. Even if they cost a little more, their immediate output usually makes up for the difference.

But it isn't!

I am 56 and was laid off because the 29 year old that became my manager decided that I was no longer needed. He let me go saying that "I just didn't fit in.". The real reason he let me go was that he had originally been hired to do the routing for the company. I was the server manager. I had been there a little over a year and had out lasted 3 other managers. They were moving from using Cisco routers to Extreme and I had been trained on the Extreme equipment in preparation for this. He didn't even know what Extreme was, but he got the job anyway. I had the knowledge and he did not! He managed to take the entire network down at least twice that I can remember and then had the balls to ask everyone to lie for him and say that it was a hardware problem. I told him where he could stick his lie and would not back up his story with management, but everyone else did. He was promoted to my manager a few months later and didn?t like the fact that I was making more money than he was and would not back him up in the past. When he could not get the management to give him a raise because the IT budget was spent he solved the problem be getting rid of me.

I could not get another full time job for 2 years. During that 2 years I had no problem at all doing high level contract work, mostly migrating companies from NT to Windows 2000/2003 and AD. One of the migrations involved moving the natural gas assets of Enron to a company that had purchased them. The project manager for the section of pipeline I worked on took one look at me when I got there and said "Thank goodness they didn't send me some young punk that doesn?t know DOS." We migrated over 125 computers (mostly laptops) from one companies AD to another companies AD that also used different routes to the servers and lost no data at all. I was the oldest person hired to do that job and was the only one that didn't loose any data.

Many of the jobs I applied for over that 2 years went to younger people. When talking to other IT people in the area they would hear that I had applied for a certain job and knew my work and that of the person that got the job and would find it hard to understand why they got it and I did not as they thought I did better work and had more knowledge that the younger person that got the job.

On another point, if you are a manager of a Windows 2000/2003 AD network you must know DOS, or as it is now called, the Command Line. You can not truly diagnose RPC, DNS, and replication problems unless you know how to use the Command Line utilities that come with the OS tool kits. If Windows blows up you may need to boot to the Command Line to make repairs. All the commands you will user there are basic DOS commands.

I have worked with and meet many young and old "Book" certified people. They take a class that teaches them how to pass the tests to get certified in a specific field like Microsoft's MCSE certifications. Most of them could not manage a network as they did not know what to do when things didn't go just as Microsoft thought they would, which is quite often. Hands-on experience is a must in this business.

The reason many of us old codgers are not getting hired is money. Companies can hire the young certified wet noses for half (or less) what they would have to pay us and they are willing to put up with the problems caused by the lack of knowledge.

Remember, we were all wet behind the ear at one time or another and will be again when the next big thing comes out and we all have to start learning new things again.

The only true advantage age gives us is past experiences and history. If we remember it and apply it to the new things that come out, we can stay ahead of the young guns; but we may need to accept lower pay to stay competitive as companies try to cut back on expenses to stay alive.

I know plenty of 'oldsters' who spent literally thousands of dollars and huge blocks of time to re-educate themselves in the new technologies, just to be overlooked.
It isn't 'ageism', it's cheaper wages.
One of the posts struck a true point. The 'oldsters' are more cautious; they know how things can get messed up without prudence and some knowledge of a particular system.

I can remember using it on the first IBM PC's that came out. We'd use it for word processing and for writing our cobol programs before running them through the cobol compiler.

You guys sure know how to make a girl feel old...er. Older, I mean.:P Never thought I'd be old enough to say " I remember when..."

What's a Ducati? Australia has speed limits? What is there to hit but dingos, roos and Uluru?

Just kidding. I know there is a lot more to Oz than that, but I couldn't resist. Kind of pointless since you're in NZ anyway, right? But I still don't know. What's a Ducati?