30 years ago the discrimination was firmly against young people, today it has flipped on its head. Yet we have larger HR departments, rules, etc etc. So some serious questions need to be asked.
But having felt the brunt of age discrimination when I was young and now older, I kinda angst. Kinda feel like generation discriminated sometimes having caught it at both ends.
I think rather than the world flipping, what happened is the absolute value of the age difference between you and the hiring manager was large, small, large. They prefer like kind.
Age difference in manager has never been an issue from my experience. More case of being blocked by initial filtering for being `overqualified`, which in one case - I knew the manager and he had to kick HR's butt for doing what they do best these days. Yes the abstraction layer to a job has grown, before you would agencies and the manager direct. Today you have HR buffers of various forms and with that growth, I've seen a clear shift upon age. Will say in early days it was case of "that's too much money for somebody your age" and "If you was older we would pay you more" with both no question about skills and ability to do the jobs at hand. Though interestingly I did get a response back from a bank once as "overqualified" when I was in my early 20's - but did spot technical errors on the tests they had and agency chap said the boss wasn't keen on having somebody who was better than him as he'd written the tests. So the like minded aspect has some weight in that case.
But the whole money aspect may be a part, companies still (was case when I started work as well) had a mentality that you factored in age when you pay people. So even if you had a young person and an older person who could do the job, you'd pay the younger person less as that was kinda the norm. Though that norm has changed a bit and the days of having somebody 10x as good as the next person and paying them both the same near on has passed, and that is a good thing. As the change about gender, though still needs much work as do many equalities, though again, that's improved.
So on balance, things have improved, but along the way, age has become more defining in mindsets and has a way to go.
But no, I can't support your theory based upon my personal experiences. Not saying that you totally wrong and certainly be the case in some cases/people - though none personally I can attest to myself.
As a millennial (albeit a slightly older one) this is the reason I tend to not worry about this. We’ll be the dominant age group in the workforce for the next 20 years, there’s no reason for us to discriminate against ourselves.
May I suggest that you save your post and look back upon it in 20 years time.
Personally I find swapping around the variable and re-reading things, does help to get a more 360 perspective. So say s/Gen X/Women/, s/millennial/male/ as an example. It's a tip I've learned over my many years that helps to grasp things fairly and helps with many aspects in life to get a fair perspective across to any mindset. Also when you can transpose or flip the variable and come to the same conclusion all the time, then you know that your doing things right and fairly.
That all said, when I was younger I'd laugh at older people who said "School is the best days of your life", then I grew up and appreciated its wisdom more. TAX's alone sure drives that home.
Hahahaha, I see you've never been around startups. Try walking in the door of an SV tech startup in a few years and tell me there's no age discrimination going on. There's little evidence to suggest the trend is generation-dependent.
But having felt the brunt of age discrimination when I was young and now older, I kinda angst. Kinda feel like generation discriminated sometimes having caught it at both ends.