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If you are growing older, you will have a difficult time in your career because you are growing older. If you want to stand out in your career, it would help if you are a vampire.

I’m working in San Francisco nowadays (while continuing to live in Las Vegas), so I pay more attention to Bay Area news. I saw a news story this week that caught my eye. You can read it if you don’t mind getting high blood pressure.

According to this news report, the trend in Silicon Valley is to prefer younger workers. Wow, what urgent breaking news!

This kind of favoring of younger workers is just part of our US culture. AARP wants us to believe otherwise. I worked at AARP for eleven years, so I know what the truth really is. Age discrimination is real. Don’t believe AARP or anyone who tries to sell you on the concept that your age does not matter in your career.

If you happen to be a vampire, you will look young forever. You can lie about your age forever. You can hide the reality that you are not a young person. A vampire has all the advantages in a culture, like ours, where the obsession is with youth.

Young workers may be highly desirable, but young workers can also be immature and often unaware of what real life is all about. One young worker worked himself to death, apparently. Macho, immature, unaware, and dead. It can happen in that precise order if you don’t watch out.

But, if you are a so-called older worker, you should be more sensible and savvy than younger workers. So, what is the best antidote to age discrimination? Become a vampire? No.

The best antidote to age discrimination is to achieve and maintain relevance in your field, achieve and maintain high credibility for your skill set in using today’s technology (no matter how many birthdays you have had), and be willing to relocate wherever you need to go to keep moving forward in your career.

You won’t live forever like a vampire. But, you can go outside and enjoy the direct sunlight. It’s a fair trade.

Share your comments and suggestions on the subjects presented in my online column at Ned’s Job of the Week site. Visit my website, GoulartOnline.com to read more of my commentaries and post your responses. I look forward to hearing from you today!

See the list of posts in the “Stand Out” series here at Ned’s JOTW site.