FOR EXPERIENCED PEOPLE WHO FEEL AGE IS STARTING TO COUNT AGAINST THEM
Ageism is real. But you don’t have to leave the value of your experience in somebody else’s hands.
If you’re over 50 and beginning to feel overlooked, expensive, harder to hire or easier to replace, this article looks at what is happening — and the practical thing you can start doing about it.
Why: Age can start working against you long before you are ready to stop working.
What: The danger is not only ageism itself, but depending entirely on other people to keep valuing your experience.
How: Start turning what you know into something you can own, build and earn for yourself.
Want the practical starting point?
Ageism in the workplace isn’t an abstract idea, it’s a measurable force shaping careers long before retirement age.
Once upon a time, well maybe about ten years ago, I believed that “age was just a number.” Then I turned 50 and found out that number had started quietly disqualifying me from things I didn’t even know I needed to be worried about. Like learning. Like relevance. Like value.
In some places, simply being over 50 is now treated like a risk factor for being trained. I’m not exaggerating. Victoria Tomlinson, FRSA, founder of the Unretirement movement, has spoken about senior executives laughing at the idea that someone over 50 might still be worth investing in.
She sees a future where people might enjoy working, not grinding, for fulfilment well into their 70s, 80s, or even beyond. Not because they have to, but because they can. Or more importantly, because they want to.
But the workplace? The traditional one? It seems to be pushing the eject button earlier and earlier, making careers seem shorter and shorter.
The story, it seems, now reads: Thank you for your decades of service. Here’s a LinkedIn Learning coupon you’ll never use. And could you train your 27-year-old replacement before Friday?
The Rise of Ageism – And the Disappearing Desk
We’re living longer. But careers are getting shorter. Technology’s evolution should be a ladder, but for many older professionals, it feels more like a trapdoor.
Cultural critic Margaret Morganroth Gullette has warned for years that ageism starts far earlier than most people expect, calling it “middle-ageism” and warning that it’s “worse than you think” and “attacking ever younger people.”
Whereas activist and author Ashton Applewhite, best known for This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism, is rather more direct: “Discrimination on the basis of age is as unacceptable as discrimination on the basis of any other aspect of ourselves that we cannot change.”
Advocates like Victoria Tomlinson highlight how damaging it is when employers dismiss over-50s as not worth training. Through her Unretirement work, she challenges the lazy assumption that age equals decline, arguing instead that experience should be a springboard for reinvention.
And from a structural perspective, Kathleen E. Christensen’s research with the Sloan Foundation’s Working Longer program showed that employers need to change job design itself, not just policy slogans, if they want to retain and benefit from the loyalty of older workers.
While this may well be an individual opinion, the story doesn’t end there. The World Health Organization’s Global Report on Ageism found that discrimination based on age doesn’t just cost careers; it also costs mental health. According to the WHO’s Mental Health of Older Adults Fact Sheet, people exposed to ageism are more likely to experience depression, anxiety, and loneliness. Research from the National Library of Medicine confirms that when those stereotypes sink in, we don’t just lose jobs; we lose self-worth, purpose, and identity.
- Margaret Morganroth Gullette, cultural critic and author of Agewise: Fighting the New Ageism in America, warns that ageism is “worse than you think” and is now “attacking ever younger people.”
- Victoria Tomlinson, FRSA, founder of Unretirement, challenges outdated views of older workers and calls for meaningful reskilling opportunities.
- Kathleen E. Christensen, who led the Sloan Foundation’s Working Longer program, highlights how older workers form “a pool of loyal, talented workers” — and how organizations need to design flexible roles to retain them.
- Ashton Applewhite, author of This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism, is one of the loudest and most compelling voices in the fight. Her TED Talk, “Let’s End Ageism,” is worth every second.
- Jacynth Bassett, founder of Ageism Is Never in Style, is shaking up both fashion and corporate culture with her anti-ageism advocacy.
- World Health Organization – Mental Health of Older Adults Fact Sheet, if you want to know more about your growing mental health impact, read here, but it is a deep article and is more biased towards the informed than it should be.
- National Library of Medicine – Ageism and Psychological Well-Being, if you have a medical insight, you might like this article and how the medical profession are looking into this.
- Bradley Richardson speaks directly to the midlife reinvention crowd through his YouTube channel Advanced Adulting.
- And Jubilee’s videos often explore (although they do cover a lot of other contentious areas) age-related topics with real nuance, especially around how tech use and perception shift with age; you'll need to search for it.
Taken en masse, they make a powerful point. The old narrative of decline no longer fits the lives many of us are actually living. We are working longer, learning longer and, in many cases, creating longer. Because getting older should be about what we have accumulated. Experience. Judgement. Perspective. Skills. Contacts. We, who are a little older and wiser, have a better sense of what matters and what doesn't.
That is where age can become advantageous.
The problem is that the systems around us have not necessarily caught up. So this stops being only a conversation about ageism and starts becoming a question about what we can do with all that accumulated value for ourselves.
If that is the question you are asking yourself, Dino-Mite is designed to help you look at what you already know, what you have accumulated, and where some of that value might be turned into something of your own.
The Grip On Our Society And How Does The Individual React
These voices, this global institution, show the scale of the problem: cultural bias, personal dismissal, and design flaws in the way the system works seem unavoidable. If you are still reading this, I can clearly see that I’m not alone in feeling ageism has a grip on our society.
The people I’ve just highlighted (and others like them) are proof that ageism is far too real to try and ignore, but I’d also like to highlight that experience can be turned into an advantage. Yes, this is a large topic, and no, I can’t solve it on my own, but you can clearly see how big this problem is becoming, especially if you clicked on any of the links to those who are shaping this conversation.
Follow them if you like, or follow me. I’m simply adding my voice to the discussion.
I do, however, believe there is something we can do on an individual basis.
We may not be able to stop an employer from deciding we are too old, too expensive or no longer worth investing in. We may not be able to stop an employer from choosing somebody younger. But we can start reducing how much our future depends on those decisions.
That is where digital income enters the conversation. (If the idea of building another route before the current one disappears completely feels relevant to you, I wrote more about that in Digital Income After 50: Practical Exit Plan.)
I don’t want you to think this article is suggesting some quick money fix, because it is not. It is a lot more important than that, especially when you consider what the WHO is saying about the wider impact ageism can have.
In my own personal terms, it is more about reclaiming agency. The ability to say, "I’m still here, I still matter, and I can still contribute."
If the office has already shrunk your desk or, sadly, even removed it altogether, the internet, as writing my blog here clearly demonstrates, offers a much bigger working environment, one where experience and curiosity can ensure you aren’t pushed onto the scrap heap way too early purely because of a few numbers on your birth certificate. (I wrote more about that idea of building something outside the traditional system in Digital Income After 50: Build Your Own System.)
The Digital Pivot: Where the Dinosaur Evolves
So here’s where my story picks up.
While the traditional workplace started dimming the lights, I enrolled in what I cheekily call the School of Digital Income. You can read more about that if you follow my blog or visit my website, and don’t worry, no school uniform is required.
What have I learned so far?
In the digital world value doesn’t age; it actually helps you convert.
While an employer may decide you are too old, too expensive, or no longer worth investing in before you ever get the chance to show what you can do.
A customer? Well, they are looking for an answer, a useful product, an idea or a point of view. That is making a different judgement.
Can you help me?
Can you solve this?
Do I trust what you are telling me?
And trust, I’ve discovered, matters enormously.
Consider this:
When it comes down to who people are buying from, 88% say trust is as important as quality and price. (Source: Edelman Trust Barometer).
So who is best placed to build that trust?
Quite often, it is the people with experience. People who have already made mistakes. Solved problems. Seen cycles come and go. Learned what works and what doesn’t.
People who are, shall we say, a little longer in the tooth.
Namely you and me.
Thankfully, it seems, trustworthiness can come with age rather than youthful exuberance.
The AgeIsAdvantageous Mindset
This isn’t just a soapbox moment. It’s a launchpad.
I believe age doesn’t have to be a disadvantage in the digital world; it can be your unfair advantage.
That’s why I’ve created this blog under the banner of AgeIsAdvantageous. Because when the world says, “You're too old for this,” I want to show it we’re actually just getting started.
If you're feeling creatively frustrated, inquisitively minded, and tired of your boss scrutinising your birth certificate, this blog and what it promotes is definitely for you. Or perhaps you’ve already been quietly shown the door or made to feel like you need to ask permission to learn new things? Well, I’m here to say this:
You are not outdated. You are extremely experienced. And no doubt greatly undervalued and, worse, overlooked. But the great news is that experience is the most valuable commodity on the internet. Follow me to see how experience is the new online economy.
You Do Not Have To Wait To Be Chosen
If the employed world is starting to feel narrower, the answer is not necessarily to push harder at the same locked door. There are other ways to use what you know, depending on what you need most right now.
Frequently Asked Questions About Ageism at Work
Is ageism at work really that common?
Yes. It does not affect everyone in the same way, and not every rejection is because of age, but there is enough evidence to show that older workers can face disadvantages in hiring, training, progression and redundancy decisions.
What age does workplace ageism start?
There is no single age. For some people it starts surprisingly early, especially in industries that prize youth, speed or lower salaries. The important point is that it can start affecting careers long before retirement age.
Can digital income really help with ageism?
It does not make ageism disappear. What it can do is reduce how much your future income depends on an employer, recruiter or client deciding whether your age counts against you.
Do I have to start a business?
Not necessarily in the conventional sense. You may simply need to find a way to turn some of what you already know into something useful, repeatable and ownable.
What if I do not know what I could create?
That is often the starting point. Most experienced people have accumulated more useful knowledge, judgement and problem-solving ability than their job title suggests. The challenge is learning to see it differently. This article is about reclaiming that value: how to start reducing your dependence on people who may see your age before they see the value in your experience.
What Comes Next?
Ageism is real. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
But there are two separate questions here.
The first is whether the workplace still values your experience.
The second is what you decide to do if it doesn’t.
You may not be able to change somebody else’s assumptions about the date on your birth certificate. But you can start changing how dependent your future is on those assumptions.
That does not mean throwing away everything you have spent decades learning and starting again.
Quite the opposite.
It means looking at what you have accumulated, working out where it still creates value, and finding a way to put more of that value back into your own hands. (And if you already have a route in mind but struggle to keep moving it forward, I wrote about that in How To Build a Second Income After 50: The Consistency Plan.)
Dinosaurs are supposed to be extinct.
Some of us just didn’t get the memo.
Stay focused. Stay sharp. And don’t let somebody else decide the number on your expiry date.
#paulthedinosaur
Old School Grit. New School Income.