[HN Gopher] Older job seekers get fewer offers on LinkedIn but a...
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Older job seekers get fewer offers on LinkedIn but a younger
profile photo helps
Author : Bologo
Score : 98 points
Date : 2021-07-11 16:30 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.psychnewsdaily.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.psychnewsdaily.com)
| pm90 wrote:
| Why is this controversial? Such a bias will almost always exist.
| There is an anecdote from Hamming's famous "You and your
| research" [0] talk which I'll reproduce in full:
|
| > Another personality defect is ego assertion and I'll speak in
| this case of my own experience. I came from Los Alamos and in the
| early days I was using a machine in New York at 590 Madison
| Avenue where we merely rented time. I was still dressing in
| western clothes, big slash pockets, a bolo and all those things.
| I vaguely noticed that I was not getting as good service as other
| people. So I set out to measure. You came in and you waited for
| your turn; I felt I was not getting a fair deal. I said to
| myself, ``Why? No Vice President at IBM said, `Give Hamming a bad
| time'. It is the secretaries at the bottom who are doing this.
| When a slot appears, they'll rush to find someone to slip in, but
| they go out and find somebody else. Now, why? I haven't
| mistreated them.'' Answer, I wasn't dressing the way they felt
| somebody in that situation should. It came down to just that - I
| wasn't dressing properly. I had to make the decision - was I
| going to assert my ego and dress the way I wanted to and have it
| steadily drain my effort from my professional life, or was I
| going to appear to conform better? I decided I would make an
| effort to appear to conform properly. The moment I did, I got
| much better service. And now, as an old colorful character, I get
| better service than other people.
|
| Anecdotally, I've been on the job search train recently. Even
| though recruiters say that dress code is "casual", what I've
| found is that if I take some time to wear fitting clothes and
| make sure that my video background is either blurred out or nicer
| looking, the results are very different.
|
| [0]: https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I never make a secret of my age, but I am also not looking for a
| job.
|
| Corporations are obviously terrified of us oldsters. Not 100%
| sure I know all the reasons.
|
| I was just reading another HN front page story, about this poor
| woman that was fired for not writing an app that really required
| an experienced engineer.
|
| Lot of that, going around. Wonder why?
| giantandroids wrote:
| On the whole we are less likely to advantage taken of from a
| less need to prove yourself.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| I am much more aware of appearing attractive, fitter, and younger
| to other tech peers as I age. I'm curious if anyone else feels
| this pressure?
| siva7 wrote:
| i noticed it absolutely helps. i get flooded with recruiter
| messages. it's a bit like on dating apps - the first appearance
| matters.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| Also I am conscious of not using my not very dank "can has
| cheezburger" memes
| machinehermiter wrote:
| IMO so much of age bias is because so many people are in terrible
| physical shape as they age.
|
| If you are visibly in really good shape, I think you get a bias
| in your favor as an older person.
|
| Not really an age bias but a perfectly rational probability of a
| lack of energy bias.
| vergessenmir wrote:
| Or none at all.
| facorreia wrote:
| I don't know how many offers other people are getting, but I'm 52
| and I get on average about 8 messages from recruiters every day.
| Maybe that's because I look younger in my profile picture... :D
| karaterobot wrote:
| Agreed. I just went through finding a new job, and I was a
| little worried about it, given everything I've heard about
| ageism in this industry. Far from that, I had loads of
| recruiters contacting me, and on the whole this job search was
| the easiest and fastest I've ever had. One interviewer
| commented on my age, which felt a little odd since it was
| something he brought up, and not part of the conversation. But,
| I don't feel like it hurt me, even in that situation. People
| were generally very cool.
|
| At my old job, a YC startup, I was the oldest person on staff.
| Older than the founders, the VPs, or any of the developers by
| at least a few years. But, I can also remember being the
| youngest person at my first job, and on balance, I think my age
| was more of a professional liability for me back then than it
| is now. It wasn't a huge issue in either scenario.
| ithurtswhenip wrote:
| I think last I got any message from a recruiter was more than 6
| months ago. Granted I have nothing in my profile besides photo
| and a listing of the companies I worked for and position. Plus
| some endorsements and recommendations. But I would have
| expected that any recruiter could infer from the companies I
| worked for and endorsements enough. Maybe just an European
| thing. I'm mid 30s and have always been a top performer. All
| jobs I had so far were me applying on the company website. I
| don't understand where's that shortage I keep hearing about.
| war1025 wrote:
| I get messages from recruiters based on technologies I haven't
| used in a decade (Android primarily). It's all generic enough
| that I assume the people have no specific interest in me, they
| are just casting a super wide net and may not even want to
| interview me if I responded.
| ithkuil wrote:
| I get messages from recruiters based on the very last thing
| I'm doing, even if I just started doing it in the last 6
| months. I got the impression recruiters rarely read the
| LinkedIn profiles.
|
| I assume that either most of the people decline right off the
| bat, or they have a very low cost of processing candidates,
| because that surely doesn't seem to be a very precise way to
| look for the right people.
| tyingq wrote:
| >based on technologies I haven't used in a decade
|
| Pretty sure most recruiters don't read beyond "keyword
| exists".
|
| $ grep android resume.txt && send_email
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >I don't know how many offers other people are getting, but I'm
| 52 and I get on average about 8 messages from recruiters every
| day. Maybe that's because I look younger in my profile
| picture... :D
|
| Messages from recruiters !== job offers. These things are
| completely automated and generated by AI at this point. I get
| dozens a week, and the rare one or two I respond to are met
| with total silence as they are being sent to thousands of
| people.
| psyc wrote:
| Mid 40s. I get about 3 per week. A few years ago it was a lot
| more. But I can't blame my photo, since I haven't changed it
| since 2008. Out of ambivalence, not cunning. Perhaps it's
| because I'm specific about the somewhat niche area I work in
| (not web) or perhaps those resume gaps I've always been
| cavalier about are finally catching up with me. Or maybe I
| should drop the 1990s era from my resume since that gives my
| age away.
| dehrmann wrote:
| There was a mid-stage startup I was at that was happy to hire
| engineers in their 50s. The one caveat is they still need to be
| able to do the standard tech whiteboard interview.
| rmason wrote:
| You can have a younger picture, you can remove older jobs on your
| resume to appear younger. It gets you the interview, you can pass
| the coding test but then get told that they don't think you're a
| 'cultural fit'.
|
| I think the underlying reason is when you have far more
| experience than your future boss they are intimidated by you.
| 1e-9 wrote:
| > I think the underlying reason is when you have far more
| experience than your future boss they are intimidated by you.
|
| That is so true; however, they tend to be weak managers with
| delicate egos and poor vision. Count yourself lucky you didn't
| waste your time.
|
| There are plenty of managers who highly value experience and
| capability regardless of age. They are worth searching for.
| Such a manager's project is probably also more challenging and
| interesting.
| trhway wrote:
| > It gets you the interview, you can pass the coding test but
| then get told that they don't think you're a 'cultural fit'.
|
| a recent AMZN innovation to optimize that process out - an
| explicitly stated max years of experience cap that thus
| effectively bars you even from applying (previous post with
| some replies https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27786601 )
|
| You may be willing and qualified, yet because of age you can't
| even apply. Feels just nice.
| pc86 wrote:
| This is just another one of your comments saying the same
| thing. And the top reply is a current employee saying it's
| not true.
|
| Do you actually have _any_ proof about what you 're
| asserting?
| [deleted]
| trhway wrote:
| i guess it is a recent development as i don't remember
| seeing that from AMZN recruiters before and thus those
| current employees may not experienced it when they were
| recruited.
|
| I think it is an outrageous borderline illegal practice
| worth mentioning in related public forums, and i have
| documentary evidence to bring to the court if it comes to
| that, though AMZN has it on their email servers too, so i
| don't think they need my copy of it.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| I am calling this horse pucky. I am going to throw my
| anecdotal feedback to counter your anecdote. I checked
| with amzn recruiter friends and they were all going
| "wha?"... Their current biggest problem is "getting
| someone who is 50% better then the hiring team". Cutting
| people with extensive experience would be
| counterproductive to this goal.
| Tade0 wrote:
| How old is "old"? I'm 32, is my Lifeclock already red/black?
| trhway wrote:
| may be. What i saw was a 10 years cap, and otherwise the
| next level on the menu was SDE 5 (i.e. principal, expected
| to have publications, etc., and only rare individuals can
| make SDE5 coming from outside as i gathered from googling)
| which i can only wish you great luck passing the interview
| for. Note: it was a real unambiguous cap, explicitly
| stressed as the strict cap 2 times, not that typical "we're
| looking for 5-10 years experience", and it was made clear
| that for exceeding the cap - either apply for SDE5 or don't
| bother to apply at all.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Ive only ever been offered a job by someone older than me.
|
| Anytime someone younger interviewed me it never seemed to go
| well.
| bob33212 wrote:
| I was a CTO for a few years at a startup, that definitely seems
| to be a turnoff from potential managers.
| Frost1x wrote:
| It's really an issue with ego in organizational structures
| and power. I've managed people far more experienced or
| skilled in areas than me. It simply requires you to realize
| you're not inherently 'superior' to the people you manage,
| just that you're managing (i.e. manager) highly skilled
| people to solve problems.
|
| Recognize when to trust people and do just that--you know
| they're awesome, they know they're awesome, why not take
| advantage of that and build on it to create something more
| awesome? Learn to be wrong or make bad management decisions
| out of ignorance and accept when experienced people suggest
| or tell you otherwise--they may even give you a way out of a
| mess you created. Skilled people with that sort of experience
| often aren't trying to correct you to insult you, they're
| trying to help you, the team, and themselves by offering
| their wealth of experience and knowledge.
|
| It's when experienced people like this are quiet is when you
| should really be worried. If they aren't making suggestions,
| unless you're sure of yourself, you've likely created or been
| subjected to an environment experienced individuals have
| given up on improving and are now in death marches on your
| project efforts, quietly updating their resumes and awakening
| their contacts, looking for new positions.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| I recently dropped a sage bomb on a friend, and I was sure
| I hit some serious sage advice gold.
|
| Here it is:
|
| There is a difference between your _identity_ being in
| something versus your _heart_ being in something.
|
| Identity is a very very cheap substitute for passion and
| integrity. 'I am this, therefore I am correct in doing
| this'.
|
| Young managers fundamentally will pay the price with
| identity, not anything else.
| lifebeyondfife wrote:
| I'm an engineering manager in my 40s and I've hired engineers
| older than me.
|
| I appreciate you're absolutely correct, age discrimination does
| happen. One thing to consider for older engineers is that,
| though your technical expertise improves through the decades,
| it's not just technologies that you have to keep up with but
| also cultural practices. That is, the bad culture fit isn't
| necessarily code for "We don't want you because you're old."
| but could be a genuine reason.
|
| As an example, consider the book The Phoenix Project which
| dissects the reasons for discarding segregation of roles like
| developers, QA, and ops in separate teams into service teams of
| DevOps / T-shaped engineers. If you haven't worked in that
| environment or don't appreciate the difference, you may be
| judged accordingly.
| fridif wrote:
| The only algorithm for hiring someone should be as follows:
|
| if (candidate.canCode && !candidate.isAsshole) return true;
| return false;
| lifebeyondfife wrote:
| I agree with you, those are absolutely fundamental. The bar
| should be set higher though, especially for senior
| engineers.
|
| https://benjiweber.co.uk/blog/2021/04/10/dont-hire-top-
| talen...
|
| This is why I stress the importance of culture. I got into
| engineering because I loved coding, I loved problem
| solving, I loved writing programs and making things happen
| on the screen. It's so easy for the team sport aspect of
| software engineering to become a blindspot if it's
| something you're not interested in.
| CheezeIt wrote:
| Unsurprising. Older job seekers switch jobs less often, so
| recruiters target young ones to maximize ROI.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Reading about all the ageism anecdotes on HN over the years
| really pushed me towards self employment. I'm still in my 30s,
| but my 40s will hit sooner than I think and I don't want to be
| caught with my pants down.
| imbnwa wrote:
| I'm just now coming out of my not-junior-but-not-senior period of
| overengineering and wish there were more older devs in my shop to
| consort with instead of a bunch of other not-junior-but-not-
| quite-senior devs (if we're being serious and not using senior to
| mean "I've just been doing this a long time" instead of "I've
| been doing thing a long time and I've _learned_ from my
| experiences and here 's what specifically").
| kmbfjr wrote:
| 55 year old software engineer , with extensive RF/analog
| background with dual EE/CE degrees. I can't begin to count the
| number of interviews gleaned from LinkedIn where the first 45
| minutes of the interview was a late 20's early 30's person
| telling me all about their wonderful work and how great they are.
| Not a word about the job, nothing about the company, all about
| them and the places they've worked, what they have done. Just who
| the hell is being interviewed? When this happens, it is all I can
| do not to walk out of the interview or kill the call/Zoom
| session.
|
| The moment some places figure out you're over 45, it is over.
| Except for very forward looking start-ups who want to grow very
| quickly.
|
| That is where I have been working for the past 10 years..best
| time of my life. But I also know, this is my last employer.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > Those stereotypes include being seen as less competent and less
| adaptable, particularly when it comes to using new technologies.
|
| Anecdotally, I have encountered the latter a few times. I've
| known older developers (> 40) who didn't want to move to
| Angular/React and would rather have stayed on jQuery (for
| complicated brand new web apps) or didn't want to learn beyond
| Java 8.
| nowherebeen wrote:
| Counterpoint is if there was any reason to? I find both jQuery
| and React solve very different problems. Simply moving to React
| because it's what's everyone is doing would be just as wrong as
| sticking to jQuery because they refuse to learn new things.
| jgerrish wrote:
| You're right, jQuery alone, even when it was all the rage,
| wasn't enough for a frontend application.
|
| Backbone, Marionette, eventually Angular and all the rest
| were huge improvements. You needed a message passing /
| routing framework, and the new frameworks have consolidated
| that and improved on it.
|
| Older developers are sometimes more conservative. Sorry. And
| age leads to cognitive decline. Reality is reality. I'm an
| older engineer, and even if things are stacked against me,
| I'm ok with that. It's a consequence of the brutal shift in
| cultural education around the craft. I hope more creative
| individuals flourish.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| My experience as well. On top of that, those types of engineers
| usually have a terrible and arrogant attitude and often
| attribute any disagreement as "ageism."
| indymike wrote:
| > didn't want to learn
|
| This right here is the problem. A lifetime commitment to
| learning, especially when it is inconvenient, is a requirement
| to be successful in software development.
| rendall wrote:
| I've known developers like that in their 20s. They get
| comfortable in their niche and have been doing it that way for
| so long they resist anything different.
|
| Be wary. This can happen to us all.
| austincheney wrote:
| The most consistent pattern I have observed as an older developer
| with some years on a resume is absolute utter astonishment when I
| don't want to waste time on a bunch of confused newb shit like
| sickly bloated frameworks with a million dependencies. Its weird
| to hear people acknowledge that I have just so much experience on
| paper and yet be so amazingly dumbfounded surprised that I would
| be focused on less junior things.
|
| I haven't yet found the proper words to converse through that,
| but a team of similarly older developers sharing similar concerns
| adds tremendous value.
| nkingsy wrote:
| The most senior engineer I've met had a refreshing attitude
| that clicked with me.
|
| "It's just typing. Typey typey type."
|
| I take that to mean, no matter the code base, no matter the
| questionable choices made historically and that will be made in
| the future, the job doesn't change.
|
| Figure out the requirements, grind until they're met.
|
| Who cares what the stack is and how many layers of libraries
| there are? If that becomes a problem we will fix it.
| abeppu wrote:
| But how much typing, how much staring at screens, how many
| meetings are needed to reach your actual goals? I care about
| the choices bc the wrong ones create problems which require
| more typing, or typing at night. "The job doesn't change"
| except the amount of time and effort required to do something
| useful can change.
| nkingsy wrote:
| Sure, but that's not my problem as a new hire. I just
| assume any new codebase will be horribly sticky and hope I
| can smooth it out a little.
|
| Humans calibrate so quickly. With my latest job, I spent
| the first month thinking I was coding my way through a
| nostril-deep vat of honey and getting nothing done, but my
| boss was impressed with my productivity. Now it's just
| normal and I feel productive again though the pace hasn't
| changed.
|
| Startups go faster, big companies go slower. I'd much
| rather get paid well and navigate intractable tech debt
| with zero pressure to work extra hours than move quickly
| and get side eyes for stopping at 5.
| dboreham wrote:
| The lunatics took over the asylum long ago.
| bnt wrote:
| I think the sane are locked up in the asylum these days, and
| the loonies are in the spotlight.
| tarr11 wrote:
| What frameworks do you like?
| enriquto wrote:
| Not the OP, but do you know that you can do most things
| _without_ (gasp!) using any framework whatsoever?
| seattle_spring wrote:
| Maybe not your intention, but the way your comment is
| worded aligns perfectly with the folks I've encountered who
| think they can't find a job due to ageism.
|
| In reality, it's because they can't share even a single
| sentence without being arrogant and condescending.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| As an engineer with more than 15 years professional experience,
| my definition of "junior shit" would be thinking you can hand-
| roll a foundation or framework better than something that
| already exists.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Backend framework? Fair enough. Frontend framework? I'm
| really not so sure anymore. user does
| something -> change state -> modify DOM
|
| This isn't exactly rocket science.
| austincheney wrote:
| That reminds me of people comparing writing in JavaScript
| (without their pet abstraction library) to writing in
| assembly. What a bunch of horse shit. It's a red flag to
| self-identify configuration monkeys (people limited to
| following instructions) apart from those that can actually
| write and test applications.
|
| This rule about _absolute failure in rolling your own_
| realistically only applies to cryptography, because the bar
| there is set extremely high and there is a rigorous vetting
| process.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| I mean you put it a bit harshly but I'm with you. Last year
| I delivered an app in vanilla JS (super tight deadline and
| couldn't figure out how the google maps / react integration
| worked). It was _fine_. I rolled my own reactive data
| structure in a few lines of code (seriously, it can be less
| than 10) and got to work. Really enjoyable experience. Felt
| so much closer to the browser and didn 't feel like I was
| suffering a big loss in expressiveness.
|
| I've been doing some more vanilla JS recently in my off
| time. The only thing that really makes me wish for a
| library is IndexedDB - by the time I took JS seriously it
| already had promises, and this oldschool callback heavy
| 'onerror' style is a challenge.
| blagie wrote:
| I often come to this conclusion.
|
| One of my frameworks has hundreds of open source contributors
| now, and tens of millions of downstream users use things
| built on top of it.
|
| I'm now working on another one, and we just had our first few
| PRs from people who aren't me.
|
| And I ain't too young anymore.
|
| (And yes, this comment, while true, is tongue-in-cheek; there
| were darned good reasons for making new frameworks in both
| cases)
| Tade0 wrote:
| It's number 39. in Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design.
|
| https://spacecraft.ssl.umd.edu/akins_laws.html
|
| I have this on my list of questions I ask interviewers. I
| should follow-up with "how much of your budget is dedicated
| to this?" Major red flag if they don't even know how much
| catering to their NIH syndrome currently costs them.
| cableshaft wrote:
| Really great list, thanks for sharing that!
| tuesdayrain wrote:
| Not sure what kind of work you do but whenever I hear frontend
| devs don't use a framework/view library I have a difficult time
| taking them seriously. More often than not that means they're
| using some mess of a pseudo-framework that they created
| themselves.
| austincheney wrote:
| When you now have things like TypeScript that allow you to
| define interfaces completely external from your logic you
| have already addressed half of what frameworks solve for
| without writing a single line of code. After that the only
| things left that frameworks provide are APIs and composition.
| If you know what you are doing you define your APIs first in
| consideration for the business logic and save composition for
| the final step after all other logic is written. Then you can
| make any adjustments to your internal APIs as necessary to
| glue things together. No framework is needed, minimal
| refactoring, and a smaller code base with less complexity
| because a generic framework doesn't know your business
| requirements in advance.
| war1025 wrote:
| I'm not even that old, but a pattern I noticed when I've
| interviewed in the past couple years is that maybe I'm applying
| for the wrong jobs because my would-be peers ask questions that
| seem irrelevant and seem confused that I don't have answers
| ready for "what frameworks do you use? Which languages do you
| like? etc.", but then I get in an interview with someone who
| would be above me and we have a great chat about architecture
| and design and things that are actually relevant.
|
| I'm here to build a house, I want to talk about the
| architecture of structural design of it. I don't care what
| brand air nailer you guys use.
| closeparen wrote:
| My company has a kind of cultural disease where everyone
| aspires to be an architecture astronaut, people with an ounce
| of talent or ambition learn to treat code as beneath them,
| consequently we get beautiful design docs and a garbage
| codebase. For that reason I would fail any candidate who
| displayed this attitude. I expect senior candidates to raise
| the bar on quality and craftsmanship in implementation, and
| I've met plenty who do. YMMV.
|
| I don't think being a framework partisan is a particularly
| good sign, but at least it shows you have some experience and
| reflection and taste with regard to the tensions involved in
| making things that run.
| war1025 wrote:
| I'm one of four engineers at my company. I don't have the
| luxury of offloading my job to someone else. Also I really
| feel like you're projecting attitudes that I (at least
| didn't mean to) portray. I design the dog food, and then I
| make the dog food.
| nowherebeen wrote:
| I have the exact same experience. Many would-be peers simply
| don't get it when I have very little interest in the type of
| framework or language they use. They take it as a sign that I
| cannot contribute to the team readily even though they
| acknowledge I have more experience.
| cageface wrote:
| Ecosystem matters a lot. For example, React might be overkill
| for a lot of projects but it's relatively easy to hire for and
| there are a lot of drop-in tools and components available.
| [deleted]
| convolvatron wrote:
| omg yes. i've taken way to many jobs where, after alot of very
| considered discussion about the kind of work i do, and how I
| dont consider generic devops worth the time. happy to debug our
| code in production, but i'm not first line support or software
| install/configure.
|
| yes, they assure me, they really want a software developer in
| the classic sense. this is an absolutely perfect fit.
|
| and when I show up? welcome to the team, why dont you shadow
| joe who is going to be upgrading Kafka kafka this week.. at
| Google they actually pointed me at the nightly error queue for
| some AI pipeline and told me my job for the next 6 months was
| going to be pulling out the errors and manually fixing the
| input until it passes.
|
| the real issue is that they just dont really do software
| development. so much so they dont even know what it looks like.
| walshemj wrote:
| Which is why I don't have a photo on Linked in.
|
| IMHO the EU should ban the practice unless is for models /
| Actors.
| joegahona wrote:
| > In terms of practical implications, the authors say these
| results reconfirm why photographs are usually absent from
| traditional resumes or CVs. As such, they suggest that removing
| photos from LinkedIn might make job-seeking fairer. The lack of
| photos might cause recruiters to focus more on information that
| is more relevant to the job.
|
| I would be curious if Linkedin penalizes profiles missing a photo
| in their algorithm or whatever. I.e. I seem to recall getting
| badgered to add a photo when I didn't have one, and the
| implication that my profile was "incomplete." I suppose a way
| around this would be a completely unrelated photo, or a drawing
| of yourself, etc.
|
| I'd love to see the same type of experiment with the person's
| race and gender, but that's probably too inflammatory of an
| experiment.
| lhorie wrote:
| I recall reading that the effect on gender has been documented
| in classical musician auditions (women were selected more
| frequently with the introduction of blind auditions)
| treis wrote:
| Frequently cited but a fatally flawed study:
|
| > The first thing they noticed is that the raw tabulations
| showed women doing worse behind the screens. But perhaps, Ms.
| Goldin and Ms. Rouse explained, blind auditions "lowered the
| average quality of female auditionees." To control for
| ability, they analyzed a small subset of candidates who took
| part in both blind and nonblind auditions in three of the
| eight orchestras.
|
| >The result was a tangle of ambiguous, contradictory trends.
| The screens seemed to help women in preliminary audition
| rounds but men in semifinal rounds. None of the findings were
| strong enough to draw broad conclusions one way or the other.
|
| >So where did Ms. Goldin and Ms. Rouse get their totemic
| conclusion that blind auditions dramatically improved the
| success of women candidates? After warning that their
| findings were not statistically significant, they declared
| them to be "economically significant."
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/blind-spots-in-the-blind-
| auditi...
| kwthrows wrote:
| So basically we're back to the Aryan Race thing.
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| You know, for the longest time, the fact that I look quite young
| for my age bothered me (I'm in my early 40s and recently someone
| I'd just met exclaimed they thought I was 25). But ageism in the
| industry is starting to make me grateful for my luck in the
| genetic lottery...
| treeman79 wrote:
| At 20,I grew a beard so would be taken seriously.
|
| Now I shave to be taken seriously.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| I'm 26 and I still can't grow a beard. I still have some
| patches that hair doesn't even grow in.
|
| But at least I'll have a full head of hair by 55 so that's
| cool.
| privateSFacct wrote:
| For front-end dev - some older developers are really tired of the
| constant churn. This can be a good thing if you can / already are
| off the endless new frontend bandwagon. But since a lot of junior
| folks are into the "latest and greatest" it can be very hard
| internally (and cement a perhaps resistance to change
| stereotype).
|
| I'm a bit tired of folks saying older devs are not resistant to
| change. Reality - with experience some stuff just seems faddy at
| times over the course of longer career arcs. So yes, older devs
| can be bit resistant to jumping onto the latest bandwagon.
| [deleted]
| hajile wrote:
| If someone learned lisp (or ML) in the 80s, very little from
| the "cutting edge" of languages would seem new at all.
| Likewise, most current framework trends have been around for
| decades.
|
| I think the Junior mistake is searching for a programming
| panacea. While lots of bad designs exist, perfect designs do
| not.
| convolvatron wrote:
| learned lisp and ML in the 80s. agree completely.
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| Exactly this - people spend more time talking about
| frameworks than solving problems sometimes - the framework
| will not solve it and people have built huge / successful
| apps w rudimentary stack
| abnry wrote:
| Do you think the fads will come and go with lower frequency as
| more time passes? Software engineering is a young field. I
| don't hear a lot about, for instance, fads in aerospace
| engineering but that could be because I hear little about it in
| general. Perhaps software engineering is always going to be
| "faddy" because of how flexible and reconfigurable software is
| in general.
| hajile wrote:
| I think it's the latter. Aerospace engineers do have fads
| like the aerospike rocket engine. Nobody's launched one (that
| I know of) because it simply doesn't work yet. The cost of
| failure is just too catastrophic. Instead, there's a focus on
| the tradeoffs and lots of experimentation to get it right.
|
| In software, if the prototype didn't work, you tweak it and
| try again or even deploy with known issues and fix in prod
| later (looking at you game companies). If you had to throw
| away all your code and start over completely with each
| iteration like you do with rockets, you'd see more discussion
| and testing out earlier (in fact, you tend to see this more
| in critical software --- eg, the software that controls those
| rockets).
|
| Finally, very few companies throw as much money behind
| business software as they do at rockets. I'd bet heavily that
| v8, .net, hotspot, or even gcc (metaphorical engines for your
| code) have only a fraction of the resources spent on a new
| rocket design.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| > The cost of failure is just too catastrophic
|
| Yes. Real engineers are responsible for life and death
| decisions in their designs. Software developers for the
| most part are not, and where they are, you don't see fads
| you see them using very long-proven and careful approaches.
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| One thing - software engineering is harder to measure than
| hardware. Have a new wing design ? Amazing strength at low
| weight - you can actually test your design and measure if
| it's better.
|
| Software engineering is much muddier
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| That seems like something that would already be reflected on
| people's resumes, so it seems odd that a different photo would
| make a difference if that's the concern.
| ElViajero wrote:
| > "A younger-looking face creates impressions of higher physical
| and mental fitness," the authors write. "Our results suggest that
| these impressions may indeed be a powerful driver of favorable
| employment outcomes."
|
| It is possible that there are other explanations. Older
| developers may want better salaries, better working conditions,
| be harder to manipulate, etc.
|
| Good leadership is going to hire people that fits in the culture
| of the company and have the needed skills. Whenever the candidate
| is younger or older does not matter.
|
| Bad leadership wants cheap employees that obey orders and don't
| challenge authority. Younger, more inexperienced developers will
| fit this category, even if they are technically skilled.
|
| This is as good a theory that any other one to explain the fact
| that recruiters want younger developers.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Nothing else in the resume changed, though. Just the picture.
| The age was still listed truthfully, demands didn't change, and
| the experience was the same.
|
| If bad leadership wanted cheap employees, that is easily
| filtered by hiring folks with less experience (for example)
| because those folks tend to be younger.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| > better salaries, better working conditions, be harder to
| manipulate
|
| That's me. I only 36 and I absolutely do not buy the corporate
| bullshit that someone's product is going to "change the world"
| through some incremental improvement of some software as a
| service. I am strongly against exploitative business models.
| And I know how much I am worth. When interviewing I like to
| give the CEO a little push back and see how they respond. I'm
| not going to work for someone who gets flustered when I
| question their thinking.
|
| I will however provide a lot of value for a team I am
| comfortable with.
| blagie wrote:
| I'm kinda with you there. There are more jobs for junior
| developers, and higher salaries for senior ones. That kinda
| correlates with age too. If I see someone 60 in tech, I assume
| they're either:
|
| - A wizard, who spent 40 years knee-deep in technology.
|
| - Someone with management experience.
|
| - A flake-out who never did either.
|
| I'm also less likely to cold-call someone more intimidating for
| random job screening, but more likely to reach out for
| something aligned to their skill set.
| surfingdino wrote:
| I have been following a simple pattern of learning a new tech
| stack every five years. It's not easy, but that's what pays the
| bills and keeps me in the game.
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