idainc
September 18, 2017, 11:51pm
35
idainc:
I don’t want to hijack the OP’s thread. In the US ageism is rampant no matter what the field and as far as ID goes the US has a preconceived notion that only young people can generate fresh ideas.
Either that or your talent and skills are many light years ahead of the rest of us gifted folk.
I haven’t found this to be true personally. I’m in my 40s. Most of my friends are in their 40’s and early 50’s. A lot of us are still getting job offers. I think the common thread though is that all of us spent the last 20 years building our network and leveling up our value. It is an exponential investment. I’ll never forget having lunch with the vP of design at Nike when I was just starting there. I asked him to get lunch to get his advice on my career and he ended up turning my view of it completely upside down.
He said “you know Michael you have this all wrong, you think of your career as a series of choices that narrows your path down. If you do it right, the opposite is true. If you make each decision carefully it leads to more options, not less, so after 20 years your career path is totally divergent, not convergent”… I paraphrase, but something like that. And he was absolutely right, but like any design project, it has to be done with intent. And like every design project, it wasn’t a straight line. Sometimes I messed up. Sometimes I had to go back a little in order to go forward a lot. Not trying to be preachy here, though it might be coming off that way. In the end, there is no right way to do this.
You’ve inadvertently made my point. You are in your 40’s and seemingly never experienced ageism with 20 years of experience. Try 60 + with 40 years of experience and you’ll see things differently.