On the wrong side of 40? Join the gig economy

If you don’t want to be subjected to an employer's ageism (or sexism, or racism, or ableism, or sectarianism) then don’t be an employee

When I needed a logo for this Substack newsletter, I went on Fiverr. I looked for a graphic designer who wasn’t suspiciously cheap or ridiculously expensive and who had been given high ratings from a goodly number of previous customers.

I quickly settled on somebody named shailene_george. I didn’t give much thought to Shailene’s age, gender, nationality or religious beliefs. But, if I had, I probably would have defaulted to assuming she was like most of the graphic designers I worked with during the decade I spent writing for and editing magazines: in the 20-40 age range, female, Australian and culturally Christian but not religious.

After Shailene finished the job, it was revealed that she – or possibly he – was based in Pakistan. I like to flatter myself that I still would have given ‘Shailene’ the logo-designing job even if they used a name like Hamza Ali Farooq on Fiverr. However, there’s a mountain of academic research that suggests an obviously Pakistani name would have given me pause.

But the beauty of the gig economy in general and online marketplaces in particular is that client-service provider relationships are typically untainted by either conscious or unconscious forms of discrimination.

I was never going to have to spend 40 hours a week working alongside ‘Shailene’. I wasn’t even going to have to make some polite small talk with him or her during a video conference or phone call. Thanks to Fiverr, our relationship was as impersonal and businesslike as it possibly could have been. I requested a logo and transferred across the agreed fee. Within 48 hours, the logo was provided. Shailene and I thanked each other – via messages routed through the Fiverr platform – gave each other a rating and went our separate ways.

Above: The logo ‘Shailene’ designed for me

Diversity’s false dawn

A while back, I did some work for a business catering to uni graduates seeking internships and entry-level roles. I was required to churn out countless bios of graduate-employing companies. Every bio had to include a section on the company’s diversity and inclusion policy. Regardless of the industry or company, the stated policies were always the same. The boilerplate always went something like this:

Our people are our greatest asset… We at [insert company name] strive for excellence. To achieve it, we must have the best people, and the best people are drawn from the broadest pool of applicants. The people we need can be found only by looking across the full spectrum of race, colour, religion, creed, sex, age, national origin, citizenship status, disability, qualified veteran status, genetic information, marital status, sexual orientation and gender identity.

Confession: I cut and pasted the above from Goldman Sachs’ website. All you need to know about this investment bank is that Matt Taibbi memorably and accurately described it as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money”. But I don’t mean to pick on Goldman Sachs; go to the relevant page on the website of any evil corporation that springs to mind – Exxon Mobil, Halliburton, McDonald's, Monsanto, News Corp, Palantir, Raytheon – and you’ll find similarly pious declarations.    

I’ll grant that these declarations aren’t complete bullshit. Women, especially those with a prestigious degree from a top-tier university, have made great strides in the corporate world in recent decades. It is also the case that in many companies it’s no longer a career-limiting move to be an openly L, G, B or T employee. And industries that disproportionately employ males and/or those classified as white or ‘white adjacent’ are now desperate to present at least a Potemkin Village-façade of inclusion.

For instance, despite tech company workforces largely comprising South-East Asian, Indian, Jewish and Caucasian men in their twenties and thirties, their websites are filled with images of women and African-Americans, along with the occasional greybeard.) While the tech industry doesn’t even pretend to want to employ older workers, it does go to some lengths to recruit females (of any ethnic background) and non-white/white-adjacent males.      

But whatever strides may have been made elsewhere, ageism is the one form of discrimination employers refuse to give up. It’s difficult to think of any industries where being old is an advantage. In many lines of work, especially the more glamorous ones (e.g. advertising, fashion, high finance, high-end hospitality, media, publishing, PR, upmarket real estate), employees are expected to conform to a certain look. A look that rarely accommodates crow’s feet, greying hair or a middle-aged paunch.   

The loathing that dare speak its name      

"Young people are just smarter. Why are most chess masters under 30? I don't know... young people just have simpler lives. We may not own a car. We may not have family."

Mark Zuckerberg (aged 22)

I first realised I was a man of a certain age in my mid-forties. It happened minutes after walking into a funky converted warehouse in a rapidly gentrifying inner-city Sydney suburb filled with bright young things. The ‘customer experience agency’ occupying the warehouse had advertised for freelance content providers. I’d applied and the agency’s HR director, who appeared to be the only person over the age of 30 on the premises apart from me, had asked me to come in for a chat.

After I arrived, the HR woman accompanied me to some sort of chill-out room-cum-interview space. We had a pleasant conversation while waiting for the twentysomething Rockstar Content Ninja, or whatever her title was, to join us. Eventually, she deigned to grace us with her presence and things immediately turned Kafkaesque.

It wasn’t so much that Ninja Girl was consciously trying to be rude to me. It was more like she was flailing around trying to resolve an enraging category error in my presence. (‘Only people not pre-occupied with the all-consuming burdens of car-ownership and family activities work for this organisation. Yet sitting here in front of me is some demented senior citizen who’s wandered out of his nursing home and is apparently under the impression he’s still of working age.’)

Ms Ninja hadn’t looked at the email I’d sent introducing myself or at my website, perhaps believing that this kind of fuddy-duddy preparation was something only Boomers did. I attempted to briefly outline how I could be of use to her, but her eyes glazed over as I described my past roles and current skill set. An awkward silence soon settled over the three of us, prompting the HR woman to abruptly usher me out of the building with an apologetic, or possibly pitying, smile.

Much like I’d like to think I wouldn’t hesitate to employ a Pakistani graphic designer, I’d like to believe I would have behaved differently to the Ninja if our roles were reversed.

I’d like to believe it, but I don’t.

Despite ageism being the one form of prejudice every human on the planet will experience, should they survive long enough, it’s also the one kind of discrimination nobody cares about – until it starts to impact them.

I don’t remember giving any thought to why there were so few people over the age of 40, and none over the age of 50, working alongside me in magazine offices when I was the Ninja’s age. If, in my late twenties, I’d had to choose between employing someone close to my own age and someone 15 years older than me, I suspect I wouldn’t have opted for the more experienced candidate.

The upsides of impersonal transactions

Luckily for me – and every other remote-working freelancer who is the ‘wrong’ age, gender, ethnicity, religion, body shape or personality type – most potential clients don’t want a tête-à-tête before hiring you. They are also usually unconcerned with whether you’re a good ‘cultural fit’.

As was the case when I needed the services of a graphic designer, all most clients care about is that you can supply quality work in a timely fashion for an amount they are happy to pay.

In the decade I’ve been freelancing, I’ve interacted solely via email with around 85 per cent of my clients, including some I’ve worked with for several years. I’ve come across a handful of old-school operators who liked to have the occasional phone conversation, but hardly any clients who wanted to meet face-to-face either before or after they hired me.

If I’d be smart enough to concoct an excuse for why I couldn’t attend a meeting at the aforementioned agency, the Ninja whippersnapper probably would have just emailed me a brief for a trial article. Then, if I passed the audition, she most likely would have continued to send me work while remaining either oblivious to, or unconcerned by, my immutable characteristics.  

So, if you’ve reached the Logan’s Run stage of your career where your existing employer is looking for an excuse to move you on (and any other potential employers will likely be throwing your CV straight into the ‘Too Old’ basket), it’s perhaps time to think about hanging out your shingle and embracing gig-economy entrepreneurship. In cyberspace, nobody can smell your geriatric odour.