[HN Gopher] We Hire Old People
___________________________________________________________________
We Hire Old People
Author : ccleve
Score : 289 points
Date : 2021-08-25 17:39 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (relevantdb.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (relevantdb.com)
| donretag wrote:
| If anything, perhaps the current tech job market is moving away
| (for now) from junior developers. Assuming it is also exacerbated
| due to teams being remotely located.
|
| While searching for jobs, I look to avoid the "Senior Trap", when
| everyone on your team is senior, then by default, the new person
| is the new junior developer, regardless of actual title. While
| searching for a lead role recently, I have found companies where
| almost every dev is a lead. Startup, flat org. That is the Senior
| Trap ^ 2.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| How many Postgres core committers are there under 60? Except for
| the handful of people who do a Ph.D. under Michael Stonebraker or
| whatever, that seems like a hobby that most people don't even get
| into until they're retired.
| gravypod wrote:
| > The hiring process is in the form of a paid, short-term
| consulting gig that will lead to a full-time offer if we like you
| and you like us. We'll give you some tasks, you'll get them done,
| and then we'll talk. No need to quit your day job to do this gig;
| we'll work around your schedule.
|
| Interesting. I look forward to hearing if this works out long
| term. I'd be worried about legal implications of something like
| this but IANAL.
| ryneandal wrote:
| The fact that offering gig work to FT employees could have
| legal repercussions sounds off alarm bells about the US's
| unhealthy attitude towards employees. It's unfathomable to me
| that corporations can have so much power over one's time
| outside of work.
| gravypod wrote:
| (Opinions are my own, not my employer's)
|
| > It's unfathomable to me that corporations can have so much
| power over one's time outside of work.
|
| I think this, and the general brain-drain from the broader
| industry, is really holding the tech sector back. So much OSS
| could be written if contracts weren't abusive in this way.
| anm89 wrote:
| I mean, they say outright they hire old people and they hire
| young people. So I think you can make the argument fairly
| easily that that group includes everyone and that they are not
| discriminating.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| They meant employer NDAs, etc.
| soneca wrote:
| Not GP, but I assumed they are talking about the part that
| they quoted --- consulting gig while on another job, not any
| discrimination worries.
| gravypod wrote:
| I don't think there is discrimination immediately evident. I
| think there are legal implications in actively soliciting
| contract work from people who currently work at other
| companies under full time contracts that may preclude them
| from doing stuff like that (ex: FAANG).
| ipaddr wrote:
| I don't think that is true. Any agreement you have with
| google/faang is your agreement and your punishment. You
| cannot bind others into the agreement. They face no legal
| implications.
| foldr wrote:
| The issue would be with IP. Facebook might be able to
| claim that the code your contractor worked on for you
| actually belongs to them.
| regulation_d wrote:
| For the most part, this is correct. One exception is
| "tortious interference with a contract". Let's say I work
| full-time for Company A, and in my employment agreement,
| I agree not to do any work on the side. Then let's say
| Company B knows that I work for Company A and knows that
| I am contractually prohibited from working for them. If
| Company B induces me to breach my employment agreement
| with Company A, Company A can often sue them under the
| "tortious interference with a contract" cause of action.
|
| For most US jurisdictions, intent is required on the part
| of the obstructing party, but in a minority of
| jurisdictions, negligence is enough.
|
| I suspect this is why there's a clause in most employment
| agreements that I've signed, where the employee has to
| represent that they are free to enter into the agreement.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Why can't I solicit work from all comers, trusting that
| _they_ have the responsibility to ensure that they aren't
| violating any contract that they've agreed to (without my
| knowledge)?
| gravypod wrote:
| If you are asking: "Why can't I solicit XYZ from all
| comers, trusting that _they_ have the responsibility to
| ensure that they aren 't violating any contract"
|
| We can look at: Louis Rossmann soliciting firmware,
| tools, schematics, and parts from people. He's started
| that he feels he is, at best, in a legal grey area. At
| worst, he's paying people to exfiltrate intellectual
| property and trade secrets from Apple.
|
| Moonlighting can look like industrial espionage if you
| squint really hard.
| webmaven wrote:
| I suppose that still excludes the atemporal.
| sahillavingia wrote:
| We do this at Gumroad. Works great; will never go back.
| hcta wrote:
| Do you have any pointers/docs on how to make this work? At
| the most basic level, how do you prevent people from wasting
| your money with no effort on their part e.g. by transitively
| contracting the task to the lowest bidder and pocketing the
| difference? (Not to say there are many people out there who
| would actually do this, but incentives clearly need to be
| fixed if it is feasible.)
| SergeAx wrote:
| IF I am ready to pay XXX bucks for doing a given job in N
| days, I don't really care about who actually did it. I do
| care about quality, so if it is substandard - we'll part
| ways with this contractor sooner or later.
|
| But this actually may work for simple tasks, and a company
| in question doesn't looks like it is gonna throw simple
| tasks on their consultants.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| What would you think is illegal about it? They make it clear
| that age is not an issue.
| dharmab wrote:
| Many full time jobs include language preventing you from
| working a second job in a similar role.
| foxhop wrote:
| I doubt the person they are searching for is currently in a
| similar role. They want domain specific knowledge about a
| stable and _old_ codebase. They want the person around as a
| teacher mentor, and the first gig is something the business
| needs but would prefer to sub out. Seems like a normal
| accepted practice when defined that way.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Never accept such jobs unless you are desperate. Your
| employer does not control or own your spare time. Don't
| cede control of it to them!
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| That's still not illegal: it's breach of contract.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| How far does that extend when interviewing? Some companies
| claim all code written. In theory that might include your
| leetcode.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Similar _role_? Or at a similar _company_?
|
| I would expect my company to be unhappy if I were to
| consult for a competitor on the side. There's probably
| language in the employment agreement that prohibits that,
| and even if there isn't, it's still the kind of thing you
| should avoid due to conflict of interest.
|
| But I'm not sure about an agreement not to take a similar
| role. If the employment agreement says that, I'm not sure
| that it's legally binding. Even if it is, you may be able
| to weasel around it with "but it's consulting, not a full-
| time position".
|
| Note well: IANAL. If you're concerned, get advice from a
| lawyer rather than from some rando on the internet.
| azhenley wrote:
| My thought is that it might be illegal to do consulting
| without your employer's approval in some places (like the
| US).
| shock-value wrote:
| It can certainly be in violation of an employment contract.
| What makes you think it would be illegal though?
| Leherenn wrote:
| In some places, it might exceed the allowed working
| hours, that would be illegal.
| pkolaczk wrote:
| In some places. Not in Poland, as long as you're not
| competing with your employer. Also clauses like "we own
| the work you do in your personal time" have no legal
| implications here, because they directly contradict the
| labor law.
|
| Generally you're free to do whatever you wish with your
| free time outside working hours and the employment
| contract has no power over it.
| stadium wrote:
| It could be a breach of contract, but it would be up to a
| court to decide if that part of the contact is enforceable.
|
| Guessing it's not illegal to solicit someone under such a
| contract, but potentially a new hire could be ordered by a
| court to stop working at the new company, or a 3rd party
| could make claims that the outputs of their former
| employees are owned by said 3rd party.
|
| IANAL
| pkolaczk wrote:
| A lot depends on the local labor law. Here where I live
| (Poland and I guess same in the rest of EU), the outputs
| of your work which were not directly ordered by your
| employer or were not part of the job are _not_ owned by
| the employer (and stating that in the agreement is not
| enforceable), even if done during working hours or done
| using employer 's equipment. Of course you can get fired
| for doing a side project in the office or using the
| equipment without prior agreement, but you take your
| side-work with you.
| klyrs wrote:
| Important distinction, "legal implications" can mean that an
| action is unlawful, or that it can result in a lawsuit. This
| is of the latter sort. If you use your employer's hardware,
| or your contract forbids secondary employment (or "we own
| everything you do on or off the clock" type clauses), then
| there's a risk of your employer's lawyers coming after you.
| kube-system wrote:
| Non-competes, anti-moonlighting clauses, and contract
| employment are all quite common and have been for a long time.
| The "legal implication" is that you read the contracts and
| follow it or work around it. Most corporate/employment lawyers,
| HR teams, or hiring managers should be fairly familiar with
| these situations.
|
| Also, the demands listed in employment agreements are not
| always legally enforceable, or not legally enforceable in as
| broad of a way that they appear to be phrased.
| dhosek wrote:
| It's pretty common for companies to do contract to hire (enough
| so that recruiters will often just write CTH in their emails).
| This is a variation of that which seems a lot fairer than
| another approach I've experienced, which was a full-day pairing
| exercise which effectively translated to donating a day's work
| to the prospective hirer (admittedly, its value to them was
| relatively low since you were coming in with little knowledge
| or context, but its value to you is presumably non-zero).
| tinyhouse wrote:
| I wouldn't call it not legal, but it indeed can violate the
| terms many employees sign when they join a company. I think
| it's a matter of how they frame it. If they frame it as
| actually doing some work for the company then I would say that
| would be illegal for many. But if it's framed as an interview
| then maybe it's OK. Not a lawyer, I assuming it's gray area.
| jays wrote:
| We did this at the last startup I founded.
|
| While it can be difficult on the paperwork side, it's nothing
| short of amazing. It helped us find high quality fits for the
| team AND we actually had a better understanding of skill
| levels.
|
| We also used it to educate ourselves on what each employee
| would need in their on boarding and personal development plans.
| nomel wrote:
| I imagine this simply would not work for someone with
| multiple offers though, which could act as a pretty severe
| filter of talent.
| ljm wrote:
| It just looks like a consulting gig with the potential
| offer of a job afterwards. If the rates are good and the
| offer is decently compensated, it's probably a fine way to
| recruit for what looks to be a highly specialised position.
|
| Probably not going to get that many low-level postgres
| specialists with deep experience walking through the door.
| If the consultant feels good about the project then they've
| got the chance to stick around in the long term.
| jays wrote:
| Well we didn't market it like that and while technically
| it is consulting for a period of time, it doesn't have to
| feel that way.
|
| The interview process was similar to any other company,
| but at the end we asked the candidate to do a short
| project (20 hours or less), which they would collaborate
| on with someone internally.
|
| So only the best candidates made it to the project and
| hopefully at that point there were pretty sold on the
| company.
|
| Did we lose some candidates? Sure, but we also didn't
| have any hires we regretted after changing to it.
| zsmi wrote:
| > No need to quit your day job to do this gig
|
| This might be true for the employer, but for the employee, I
| think there could be serious issues. For example, my present
| employer would be very unhappy if I agreed to this and I have
| no idea how it would play out. I'm almost positive it is in
| violation of my present employment contract.
|
| Did the candidate that went for it actually have full time
| employment? If so, did they get approval first?
| kyleee wrote:
| Labor must not be so fearful; play it close to your chest
| and cover your tracks. Change jobs if it works out,
| otherwise stay at current position and nobody is the wiser.
| jays wrote:
| We interviewed a lot candidates this way and yes all of
| them were employed full-time. None of the candidates we
| interviewed worked directly in our specific industry, so as
| long as they didn't work on company time of their current
| employer, there was no conflict.
|
| Our time limit of 20 hours or less, also helps. The hours
| could be spread over many weeks if needed to ensure there
| wasn't a conflict.
|
| That said, it's not unheard of that some employees have
| more strict contracts such as yourself and we certainly
| would have had to pass on those candidates or find another
| way to evaluate them.
|
| We also had the luxury of being a fully distributed team
| (pre-covid), so collaboration could happen during the
| candidates off hours, with a team member that was working.
| tetrainfo wrote:
| In theory, us older folk are cheaper because we have Medicare.
| Short term memory is reduced, but good note taking and Prevegin
| fixes that. I have fond memories of older programers when I was a
| 20 something. Code is more than algorithms.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Define 'old'.
|
| How young counts as old in tech these days?
| Justsignedup wrote:
| LOL heard how expensive engineers with > 5 years of experience
| are... So I guess > 27 is old!
| bjornlouser wrote:
| 36. (months of exp)
| sokoloff wrote:
| The greater of 30 or <3 years younger than however old a
| disgruntled engineer is>.
| samcheng wrote:
| A recruiter from a prominent SF / Silicon Valley tech
| headhunting firm once told me that 40 is the cutoff for
| individual contributors.
|
| As a counterpoint, I know plenty of over-40 (and older!) wise
| software engineers working for places like Google. So maybe the
| discrimination is worse at someplace like Uber?
|
| Personally, I value age diversity on a team, just as I value
| gender, ethnic, etc. diversity. The added perspectives benefit
| everyone!
| yupper32 wrote:
| > A recruiter from a prominent SF / Silicon Valley tech
| headhunting firm once told me that 40 is the cutoff for
| individual contributors.
|
| That fits perfectly because 40 is when age discrimination
| becomes illegal: https://www.eeoc.gov/age-discrimination
|
| You should report that headhunting firm.
| em-bee wrote:
| > I know plenty of over-40 (and older!) wise software
| engineers working for places like Google.
|
| yes, but at what age were they hired? and at what level are
| they working?
| api wrote:
| That statement could be illegal.
| dhosek wrote:
| Not could be. Is.
| poisonborz wrote:
| I hope/believe that this is getting higher with time.
| Worldwide, programming as a full-time profession only blew up
| 15-20 years ago. There will be an increasing mass of aged IT
| people, and career paths will be fleshed out in parallel - the
| same had happened with all modern-age jobs, like racecar
| drivers or professional bodybuilders.
| toiletaccount wrote:
| pretty sure old these days means you remember dial up modem
| noises better than whatever music was on the charts at the
| time.
| outside1234 wrote:
| To be clear, age discrimination happens far more broadly than
| just Silicon Valley. You just hear about it more because there
| are far more software engineers in Silicon Valley than anywhere
| else, but it is not a Silicon Valley only problem - it is a
| global problem.
|
| To finish on a positive note: love the contract to hire approach.
| :)
| bloodyplonker22 wrote:
| The contract to hire approach is great for the company if the
| applicant accepts it, but any good applicant would not because
| the applicant would simply take another full time job with
| benefits instead. Especially in today's market.
| dhosek wrote:
| Except in this case, it's a very short-term part-time CTH
| arrangement, which would allow someone to pursue the
| opportunity while still employed _and_ get paid for their
| time. Better than an unpaid full-day interview from the
| prospective employee 's perspective.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| any concrete examples of the broad ageism claim?
| outside1234 wrote:
| My friend in France recently complained to me that it was
| impossible for him, at 52, to find another job in the
| industry. He's at the top of his field (databases). Its
| pervasive.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Ageism is a great gateway to get people talking about their
| personal biases. It's so rampant that most people don't even feel
| like it's taboo.
|
| It's so glaringly obvious in the tech industry, you get groups of
| 20-somethings interviewing and of course they're not going to
| hire someone their parent's age... they ultimately hire someone
| that's much closer to their own age. You then start to wonder,
| how else are they filtering hires to be more like themselves?
|
| I've been in a similar situation on the hiring side and people
| would openly talk about how they assumed an older person would
| have a harder time adapting, might not be up to date, couldn't
| fit into the culture, etc (all illegal discrimination, fwiw)...
| one person involved in particular had also gone on a rant about
| how they think the idea of racial biases are "played up." Very
| little self-awareness.
| jpindar wrote:
| Damn, it's only one job. I was hoping it was a job board.
| mypastself wrote:
| A more accurate title: "We Hire Old Person, Or Maybe Young".
| ccleve wrote:
| We'll hire more than one. A bunch, if this product works out.
| mathgladiator wrote:
| Given the Principals only ask, this is interesting. There is
| something humble about asking for mentor, and this is something
| that I wish I had when I was younger.
|
| I wonder how far I could have gotten if I embraced asking for
| help sooner instead of just tinkering away and relearning old
| lessons.
| ebiester wrote:
| Principals, in this context, means people applying directly,
| rather than recruiters on their behalf.
| dharmab wrote:
| I interpreted it as "Principal level engineers only".
| Clarification would be helpful.
| Spoom wrote:
| To contrast, I've seen this often enough that I knew
| immediately that they meant, don't try to send us blinded
| candidates and claim a finder's fee.
|
| But perhaps just adding ", no recruiters" would be enough
| to clarify.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| It is meant to tell recruiters to go away. Principal in this
| case means direct applicants.
| poisonborz wrote:
| As a general question, why would someone write age/birth date in
| a CV? Maybe it's different per region, but I never saw this as a
| strict requirement. Profile pictures may be skipped as well
| (although a good quality image is hardly telling much). As a
| personal experience, hiring personnel sometimes asked about it,
| some even told this is required by employer/customer, I told them
| they can drop my application then - it never turned out to be a
| problem after all.
|
| To note, the problem goes both ways, a teenager can have an
| impressive portfolio/knowledge and be rejected regardless.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| One can probably infer the age from things like
| school/employment dates, or if your CV lacks those, things like
| number of earlier employers or tech used at earlier jobs.
|
| A couple of years ago I played around with this idea that it'd
| be great with a completely censored hiring process, where at
| the screening stage you can't really see info such as:
|
| - Names are censored or made into generic placeholder names
|
| - All dates are removed. And rather than having from/to date of
| employment, maybe make more general groups, like
| "short","mid","long" periods of employment.
|
| - No profile pictures
|
| etc.
|
| But then I read some study from France where they tried out
| just that, and it didn't really help on diversification. Strong
| candidates still had a much stronger resume, while those you'd
| want to help up still had fundamentally weaker resumes.
| meepmorp wrote:
| > As a general question, why would someone write age/birth date
| in a CV?
|
| If someone graduated university in 1986 (or 1976), it doesn't
| matter if they've written their birth date on their CV or not.
| jp57 wrote:
| It's not just age and birthdate. What about the year I
| graduated college? The year I started working? These are not
| perfect, but you can put a pretty tight lower bound on a
| candidate's age with these. You can leave these out, or say,
| lower your claims number of years of experience, I suppose.
| poisonborz wrote:
| Per my experience in recruiting, not many will make these
| inferences during a process, especially with a lot of
| candidates/large company.
|
| But even as such, other "telling" signs can be worked around:
|
| - College graduation years can easily be skipped - what
| purpose do they serve besides the count of years?
|
| - You only need to put in the last few positions anyway,
| anything 10+ years is mostly irrelevant.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Clickbait basically.
|
| I feel they would be better off going to GitHub and messaging
| people working on the type of projects they are looking for.
|
| I like the consulting part. Maybe they don't absolutely need an
| FTE and are keeping the option of having a part time consultant
| on the table.
| dewey wrote:
| > Clickbait basically.
|
| Not really, The "We Hire Old People" was just something the HN
| submitter picked. It's not the title of the original job
| posting.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| It's basically diversity hiring, which is an accepted hiring
| practice.
| sokoloff wrote:
| The HN submitter appears to be affiliated with the company,
| though, and the text here does seem chosen in an editorial
| way in order to drive engagement.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28304777
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| That's not really a surprise.
|
| YC companies can post job adds here, others can't. So you
| have to be clickbaity to get your add on the front page.
| And it's a pretty good place to post an add, signal to
| noise ratio wise.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| My dad is a programmer in his 60s. He has some interesting
| stories. And yes, when he was interviewing he got passed off as
| "overqualified".
|
| It's true that software development now is a lot different than
| it was back then. There are many new skills and technologies to
| learn, and old ones that no longer apply. But what people need to
| understand is that old people can and do learn the new skills and
| technologies. "You can't teach an old dog new tricks" doesn't
| apply at all to software engineering, believe it or not old
| people are super familiar with the AWS and machine learning and
| Agile and other "new" stuff.
| LeoGovender wrote:
| Facebook logins
|
| Username = yagendreng@gmail.com
|
| Password = Alexiag123#
| glennonymous wrote:
| I naively moved from New York to Silicon Valley when I was 52.
| Not saying there isn't age discrimination in NYC, but here it's a
| nightmare.
|
| The drop in my interview track record since my 40s is stark. 2
| years ago, after 6 months during which I failed to get 6 jobs for
| which I interviewed, I made it to the final round for a position
| at a startup and was subjected to the usual all-day grilling. The
| CEO was an older man and the hiring manager was in her late 40s,
| but all the other interviewers were in their early 20s. I left
| convinced I had nailed the interview and feeling optimistic. On
| the way home, the hiring manager, bless her soul, took the
| unusual step of calling to tell me the team had overruled her own
| enthusiasm for hiring me and she felt terrible about it. Without
| saying it in so many words, she made it plain it was because of
| my age.
|
| The age discrimination here extends beyond getting hired. I've
| been subject to cruel jokes and shunning in the workplace that,
| were I in another disenfranchised group, would be labeled
| workplace harassment and likely subject to strong discouragement
| by management at the very least.
|
| Some people in these comments ask the source of the age
| discrimination as if they are skeptical and astonished,
| Astonished!! such a thing could be going on. They look for a
| rational explanation. Here's the explanation: we are tribal
| animals. From young people's perspective, they are "Us" and we
| olds are "Them."
|
| Sometimes young people are conscious of their hostility toward us
| and sometimes not, but that's it. It requires no explanation more
| than that.
|
| It's traumatic to be subjected to treatment like this, to the
| point I have stopped looking for a job. Humans are not built to
| tolerate constant social rejection, and it's more important for
| me to be alive than to be wealthy. I've withdrawn from the tech
| world and started a business that will not make me and my family
| wealthy, but will support us, albeit with modest means.
|
| I hate the fact that I have become a bitter old man at 57!! I
| hate that Silicon Valley has come to this!!
|
| I'm working through my bitterness and will get over it someday.
| And I will have the good fortune to leave this dystopia.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I've been called "The Dad of the Team" and Grandpa at jobs, and
| I'm in my early 40s. I have a good sense of humor and don't
| take offense to it at all, though. It _is_ kind of shocking to
| take a moment, look around the office, and realize you might be
| the oldest person in the room, despite being middle aged!
| Definitely not looking forward to my next job hunt though. I
| understand it just gets tougher and tougher from here on.
|
| Best way to combat it I think is to just suck it up and
| obfuscate your age. Chop off all but the last 8 years on your
| resume. Remove the dates. I've even gone as far as getting a
| young-ish haircut and wearing clothes that feel silly but send
| the right signals. Might even have to dye my hair soon, too
| LOL. It can feel like the "How do you do, fellow kids" meme
| [1], but I figure it can't hurt.
|
| 1: https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/13/15966094/30-rock-
| buscemi-...
| datavirtue wrote:
| Comes off like young people grasping for an adult.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Isn't that what old people say they bring to the table though?
| Experience?
| notshift wrote:
| Question: Where can I find these companies that heavily bias
| towards hiring young people / new grads?
|
| I'm 23 with 1.5 YOE and so far my experience has been the
| opposite: Startups and companies I want to work for only have
| open positions for seniors and seem to mostly discard my
| applications, despite the fact that I've been programming in my
| free time for practically a decade now and consider myself a
| strong developer.
|
| At this point I've honestly just given up and decided to work for
| crappy companies for a few years until I have the resume to get a
| job that I actually want.
| Shadonototro wrote:
| what about you hire people and stop focusing on age
| threatofrain wrote:
| If age is a predictor then the incentives are there. The right
| way to combat inherent incentives is a legal framework which
| can direct society against natural tides, not by asking harder.
|
| The question then is whether age is a predictor.
| gabereiser wrote:
| Anecdotally I've had someone who was older than me, with less
| experience, talk to and treat me like a college graduate... They
| used soft language and acted like I didn't know what IoC was or
| how to model a domain. The guy was the worst coder of the bunch
| but for some reason he was in charge of the backend development
| because of his seniority. He was _the_ worst developer /manager
| hybrid I've ever come across. It was a security software startup
| and he constantly challenged me with questions like "least
| privileged expansive" to describe the security models. I'd answer
| him, and a week later he would go through those motions again -
| and again. I definitely believe there is ageism in this sector,
| but I also believe it goes both ways.
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| So do we at TableCheck (Tokyo, Japan)
| https://www.tablecheck.com/en/company/jobs/
| [deleted]
| ajay-b wrote:
| I want more companies to follow this. Age is a good thing in most
| industries, maybe all. I think silicon valley's stock market
| drove it towards a "younger is cheaper and will work for free
| lunch" and that pushed our elders out.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Or that programmers who'd rather focus on things like "minimum
| viable products" and "just get something down" rather than
| "designing maintainable systems" and "avoiding sources of tech
| debt" skew young/inexperienced.
| ianlevesque wrote:
| I'm just as capable of adding tech debt as a younger engineer
| is!
| bee_rider wrote:
| I always thought engineers' job was to make designs in line
| with best practices, which should hopefully reduce tech
| debt (in contrast with technicians, whose job is to execute
| and worry less about the overall project). But that was a
| lonely and pointless hill to die on...
| postalrat wrote:
| Best practices are a great source of shared tech debt.
| ccleve wrote:
| I wrote the ad. Holy cow, I didn't expect to be #1 on Hacker
| News. Will answer any questions.
|
| Here's one you might ask: Why? I'm pushing 60 and I've attempted
| to interview for developer jobs over the last year. Got nowhere
| despite 40 years of experience. Getting really, really tired of
| this industry's attitude toward people like me.
|
| Based on questions below, I'll give a bit more. Earlier this year
| I had a personal referral into Facebook for a developer position.
| They do hiring centrally. A very young person in the HR
| department spoke to me, put me in the central database, and
| apparently shopped my experience around to a number of different
| groups. No takers. No one wanted to interview me, so the
| application died. Never did a tech assessment.
|
| So now I've started a new group, and I expect this thing is going
| to generate a lot more money than any work at Facebook ever
| would. So Facebook did me a favor. Still, it rankles.
| kodah wrote:
| > Here's one you might ask: Why? I'm pushing 60 and I've
| attempted to interview for developer jobs over the last year.
| Got nowhere despite 40 years of experience. Getting really,
| really tired of this industry's attitude toward people like me.
|
| Ironically, in the early 2000's it was the opposite. Something
| did change though because I've seen the problem you're talking
| about.
|
| One thing could be companies, recruiters, or manager looking
| for CS or CE degree specifically. Someone who is 60 outdates CS
| and CE. I'd caveat by saying most fresh grads don't actually
| know how to negotiate algorithms correctly. They leetcode like
| everyone else before the interviewing process. As I've gotten
| older I've developed more holistic understandings of some data
| structures and algorithms, but definitely not all of them. The
| skill I think I became more adept at was working through the
| logic of them more efficiently. That's the gift repetition
| gives though, I suspect. All that to say, if entities are
| overvaluing those degrees, it's an irrelevant requirement.
|
| Another thing could be that most jobs are phrased, "CS, CE, or
| equivalent experience". As someone without a degree "equivalent
| experience" at times boiled down to, "Have you worked at a
| FAANG or on FAANG level problems?" It's a circular dependency
| unless you spend some time in growth companies or start ups
| that don't have these hard requirements. Again, it's another
| useless requirement because you either have the math chops to
| solve the problems in front of you or you don't. I don't need
| provenance to tell me that.
|
| All that to say, I don't even imagine how old someone is when
| I'm looking at a resume. Most of my judgement relies on the
| interviewing process and whether you can negotiate a simple
| algorithm and some systems design. That's as data driven as I
| can get it right now, although highly inefficient, but
| inefficiency is worth the time for quality, imo.
| toadkicker wrote:
| > "Have you worked at a FAANG or on FAANG level problems?"
|
| "I have not, do you have those problems with 10k users too?"
| greenyoda wrote:
| > One thing could be companies, recruiters, or manager
| looking for CS or CE degree specifically. Someone who is 60
| outdates CS and CE.
|
| I'm that old, and I have an undergrad CS degree. CS degrees
| were already common in the early 1980s.
| kodah wrote:
| I remember around 2007 having a hard time finding colleges
| I could get accepted to that offered CS or CE. You are
| right in that "outdates" was probably the wrong word to
| use, but I don't know how accessible they are much less to
| call them "common". That's just my anecdotal experience, so
| if those two points aren't true outside of my experience
| then I'm fresh out of ideas.
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| It appears that undergrad CS degrees were a thing by the
| early 1970s:
|
| > 1973 Two-hundred B.S. degrees awarded
|
| [1] https://www.cs.purdue.edu/history/table1.html
|
| PS - Purdue is the oldest CS department in the US, though
| perhaps another university started an undergrad program
| earlier?
| II2II wrote:
| Other good qualities of your ad: it is clearly written and
| provides an idea of what the position involves. I wish more
| companies took this approach while advertising openings.
| samstave wrote:
| Annecdote: When I interviewed with Twitter in ~2008/09 the
| manager asked me about what I thought about my previous
| experience (I was already ~15 years into my career).. and how
| it would apply at Twitter
|
| I replied:
|
| "I've done a lot of neat things in my career, but I love to
| learn new things and I always hate it when one says "well the
| way we did it here was such-and-such, thus that must be the
| correct way"
|
| and he literally replied:
|
| "thank god, we have hired too many people from Facebook as
| their first job and they think that just because they did it at
| Facebook, that theirs is the only way - and they are like 22
| years old"
|
| ---
|
| When I was at FB, I noticed this - too many people wanted to be
| the Big-Swinging-Dick in whatever area... too much ego attached
| to their current position... not enough *wisdom*
|
| ---
|
| Anyway - at 46 - I regret how much time I put into my career
| (meaning directly focused on work - rather than relationships -
| as my ~26 years in tech have garnered me nothing but lost
| relationships because I was too focused on "uptime" -- QUALITY
| DOWNTIME (in life) TRUMPS TECHNICAL UPTIME IN TECH.
|
| ---
|
| Now with a ~1.5 year gap in experience... I am floundering
| looking for something to do, and I lament going to the fricken
| Nursery to buy mosses, and envy the guy watering them..
|
| ---
|
| Anyway - if you need any (previously highly technicals) who are
| now relegated to PM as opposed to OPs -- I'd love to give you a
| try.
| Mattiusly wrote:
| Agism is so bad in this industry. Thanks for writing that ad,
| it's brilliantly worded!
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| I worked at an electric autonomous car company in the Bay Area
| (not that one) that was crawling with 22 year olds slinging
| code every which way. Periodically a bug emerge that the
| younger generation couldn't get their head around. Invariably
| one of the older guys (in his 50's or 60's) would spend an
| afternoon looking at it, fix it, and then yell at all the kids
| in the room. I was somewhere between the two age groups and it
| was hilarious to watch.
| e40 wrote:
| _and then yell at all the kids in the room_
|
| The idea of that is just so hilarious to me, but I totally
| get it. When you have groups of 20 somethings without any
| older leadership, they can obvious do really amazing things.
| But, sometimes you get a group of them that just have no clue
| about things they will learn in the coming decades. When I
| started in the 80's, there were older, more experienced
| people around. I felt it was my job to hoover up all the
| wisdom and knowledge they had. I watched Bill Joy and Sam
| Leffler pour over just acquired code from BBN. That code?
| TCP/IP that would be merged into Berkeley UNIX. There are so
| many times I peered over shoulders just to watch something I
| barely understood. I hope this sort of thing happens today. I
| just never read about it (and I might not be looking in the
| right places).
| api wrote:
| I've seen this too, and I really wonder why there is such an
| age bias toward straight out of college kids. Having some is
| fine but the whole industry seems heavily biased in that
| direction.
|
| I suspect it's rooted in the historic youth of computer
| aficionados back during the early-mid PC era in the 1970s and
| 1980s, and a cargo cult idea that youth was the ingredient
| that made this stuff happen. Instead it was the other way
| around. The youth of the participants was a product of all
| this stuff being so new. Now that the PC revolution is almost
| 50 years old there are tons of people who know computers very
| well in all age groups.
| bsder wrote:
| VCs want people "plugged in" to the latest social fads--
| that's young folks. That's where the quick money is--go big
| or go bankrupt.
|
| Profitable companies, however, tend to have older folks as
| they understand their industry and understand how to
| extract money from it.
| pandaman wrote:
| Most likely it's the way the fresh grads get hired: they go
| through internships either in the same company or in the
| direct competition and this largely increases their
| perceived value. It's as same as people normally returning
| to the same shops/services and following referrals of their
| acquittances, "a devil you know" etc.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _why there is such an age bias toward straight out of
| college kids_
|
| Follow the money. College kids are cheap. Someone who's
| been coding for 40 years knows what he's worth and won't
| fall for vaporware stock options instead of proper health
| insurance.
| suchire wrote:
| A large part of it is ease of hiring. In 80% of cases, new
| grads are relatively simple to hire; you go to campus
| recruiting fairs, get bundles of resumes, and since new
| grads don't usually have specialized skills, you can do
| bulk filtering by things like GPA or simple coding
| exercises.
|
| There are a lot of negative consequences of this sort of
| "factory hiring" mentality (for one, you exclude huge
| numbers of some groups of people because everything is one
| size fits all), but if you contrast with hiring experienced
| folks, it's way more streamlined. You don't have to do
| sourcing, figure out location/geography, match up skill
| sets and team fit, deal with expectations around
| title/role, etc.
|
| A lot of people mention salary and hours worked, but I
| suspect the real limiting factor in hiring at fast growing
| companies is time and staffing to do hiring, and if all you
| care about is the number of people typing code, you get new
| grads being overrepresented
| klardotsh wrote:
| I'd venture a guess that (especially in SV/venture tech
| startups in general) that bias also comes from young folks
| not having many/any external commitments, so may be easier
| to get to work longer hours - someone with a family
| probably can't pull a 60 hour week as easily as someone
| living in a microstudio with few other cares in the world,
| yeah?
| quantified wrote:
| Sure, and yet for the experienced devs that make fewer
| mistakes and things that can be iterated on more easily,
| they get the same amount done in less than 60 hours.
|
| Also, once the dev's kids are in college, their time
| frees up tremendously. I'm not sure that's recognized.
| webmaven wrote:
| Yeah, but you aren't allowed to ask about a candidate's
| marital or parental status, and age (at the crude
| not-a-20-something level) is usually apparent without
| having to ask.
| webmaven wrote:
| Even absent external commitments (which, BTW, also biases
| towards men), older folks are often more resistant to 60
| hour weeks since they've either observed or experienced
| burnout and understand that these unsustainable death
| marches typically result in lower productivity, more
| bugs, bad code, and mounds of technical debt.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| I generalize of course but I think older people realize
| there's more to life than the office and career. Takeaway
| pizza behind a laptop feels less glamorous at age 40.
| webmaven wrote:
| Sure, the "you can't pay me enough to have me sacrifice
| my life outside of work" POV dovetails perfectly with the
| "a lack of planning on your part does not constitute an
| emergency on mine", "you can't pay me enough to sacrifice
| my physical or mental health", and "why would I join a
| company that can't figure out how to work sustainably"
| ones.
| gabereiser wrote:
| Absolutely this. It's easier to force younger coders into
| a slave-like work environment, complete with beer on tap,
| foosball tables, and other amenities to get them to live
| at the office to constantly work on the product(s). I
| can't say it's like that everywhere, but most startups
| are _designed_ to take advantage of their workforce to
| quickly "move fast and break things" looking for their
| market fit.
| fatnoah wrote:
| >It's easier to force younger coders into a slave-like
| work environment, complete with beer on tap, foosball
| tables, and other amenities to get them to live at the
| office to constantly work on the product(s)
|
| For me as a young coder, the long hours were less about
| office amenities and more about me a) wanting to get the
| work done and b) not having a whole lot of other things
| to do. I got to work at 9:00am or so, and if I stayed
| until 9:00pm, I'd still have energy to go out to dinner
| with friends/roommates until midnight or so. Rinse &
| repeat.
|
| As a 20+ year older version of myself, getting home late
| means I don't see my child before he goes to bed. I also
| go to bed earlier because I'm up and awake to deal with
| said child by 6-6:30am at the latest.
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| I'd like to see numbers on how many companies actually
| have beer on tap, or foosball/ping-pong tables at work in
| 2021.
|
| I worked at a place with a foosball and ping-pong table
| in 2018, but they were infrequently used, and when they
| were in use, it was always the same three guys.
| pengaru wrote:
| > they were infrequently used, and when they were in use,
| it was always the same three guys.
|
| Incidentally most startups I've been part of, there were
| just a few guys doing the vast majority of the heavy
| lifting while the rest treated it as just another 9-5.
| echelon wrote:
| > Incidentally most startups I've been part of, there
| were just a few guys doing the vast majority of the heavy
| lifting
|
| Is there a way to identify that talent and pay them more?
|
| Or find them and poach them?
| pengaru wrote:
| Troll public git repositories for committers with the
| greatest number of hours having commits, then audit for
| quality?
|
| I assumed this was the kind of thing Microsoft was
| already doing with both github and linkedin under their
| belt, either for bolstering their own ranks or as a paid
| service to offer recruiters.
| echelon wrote:
| Nadella is a genius.
|
| He made the biggest land grab for developer and engineer
| mindshare in history, and Microsoft will be able to turn
| that into advantages across so many different efforts.
|
| They're playing at the next level.
|
| Google, sigh...
| gmadsen wrote:
| The beer on tap exists up until the point that an HR
| person is hired. I've worked at a few companies that had
| kegs. Some seemed to make it a habit to drink and code
| late into the night, which I rarely did, but to me it at
| least signals that corporate BS hasn't infiltrated the
| company yet.
| herval wrote:
| It exists until the moment there are _HR violations_ -
| just like any other practice that's acceptable at an
| early stage as it grows. I've worked at 10k+ companies
| that still had beer on tap, and they obviously had huge
| HR departments.
| herval wrote:
| Younger people have more to prove, have nothing to lose,
| have no understanding of the politics of work - all that
| makes it easier to "extract more" from them - in particular
| new grads, who are "blank slates" you can train to your
| culture very easily.
|
| This may sound very cynical, but it's literally how big
| consultancies (not only in tech) define their hiring
| strategies - PwC being one of the prime examples, where new
| hires already come in expecting to have a bad and underpaid
| experience, in exchange for a strong label in the CV
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| That may all be true, but (at least some) older people
| have more to extract.
| herval wrote:
| Yes and no - more experienced people have more to
| _impart_, because they've been there, generally know what
| to focus on, etc. That doesn't necessarily mean they're
| eager to just put up with anything or just "play along"
| most cultures, and IMO that's key to a lot of the
| disguised ageism in the industry. With experience, you
| also you bring along your own set of practices and habits
| accrued through the years, which _may_ be good or bad,
| but do introduce "drag" on the system. When organizations
| talk about "strong culture" or "strong focus", that's
| really corporatespeak for "compliance" - "we do things
| this way" - and ageism is a very direct symptom of that.
|
| That and there's no better place where you can cast a
| wide net to catch large amounts of people, with a
| repeatable cadence and well defined bar, than a
| university/bootcamp group/education program of any sort.
| If you're playing a numbers game (eg recruiters that get
| paid per hire, managers that get rewarded for empire
| building, etc), nothing can beat that "pipeline".
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| I'll go a little further and say that more experienced
| engineers are just not as likely to put up with bullshit.
| If you've been in the industry long enough you've seen
| plenty of it from management, marketing, charismatic
| startup CEOs, etc. You've seen it lead to death marches,
| dangerous products, wasted effort, burnout. And you're
| just more likely to call it out and/or object. Most
| company cultures just don't like that - they want
| everyone to play along and pretend there's no problem
| with the plan from on high. They like the NCGs because
| they're very unlikely to object (in addition to being
| willing to work for a lot less).
| pengaru wrote:
| > That may all be true, but (at least some) older people
| have more to extract.
|
| Not when multiplied by number of hours foolishly spent on
| employer interests while caught up in the competitive
| frenzy with effectively zero other obligations.
| irrational wrote:
| I have far fewer obligations in my 50s than I did in my
| 30s. Kids are gone, I'm happily married and not in the
| dating scene, I am settled in a home. Other than work and
| hanging out with my wife, I don't have anything else
| going on. But back when I was dating and then had young
| kids and then even older kids (with all of their
| activities) I had a ton more obligations outside of work.
| It started going down in my mid 40s and now I'm totally
| free. I don't intend to retire for 15-20 more years, that
| is a lot of years of zero obligations someone could get
| out of me.
| pengaru wrote:
| Allow me to count the number of over 50 year olds I
| crossed paths with while burning the midnight oil Getting
| Shit Done crunching at the office...
|
| The only time those offices had lights on after hours
| were when the cleaning people occupied them.
|
| My assumption has been even after the nest empties these
| folks have better things to do like relaxing in their
| preferred home(s), eating their preferred meals, sleeping
| in their preferred bed, all accompanied by their
| preferred people. They have substantial obligations to
| _self_ , and feel entitled to that having put in their
| time in years past.
|
| Young people suck at setting boundaries let alone
| enforcing them. Older people generally take better care
| of themselves and don't fall for the infantilizing
| exploits of "startup culture".
| fossuser wrote:
| I think it might be simpler - it's a lot easier to hire
| straight out of college kids that have no other
| obligations.
|
| You go to Stanford and MIT (already pre-filtered) and find
| kids that are really good. You don't have to overcome
| existing job obligations, etc.
|
| Then this cascades with referrals from this group. A lot of
| software/silicon valley companies haven't been around that
| long so people haven't had time to work there for decades
| and become older.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| Inexperienced people are just cheaper.
|
| There are two types of young software companies:
|
| - Some companies hire a smaller amount of experienced
| people who really know what they're doing, know what
| they're worth, and compensates them appropriately.
|
| - Other companies hire a larger amount of bright, motivated
| young people that don't know how to do anything, trains
| them up quickly, then tries to milk them for 1-3 years
| until they smarten up enough to leave.
|
| I don't think it's as exploitive as it sounds. The young
| people get a slingshot early in their career and a good
| bullet point on their resume, and they're free to leave
| whenever they want. And most do leave in due time to do
| bigger and better things.
| krumpet wrote:
| I'm 47 and strongly considering jumping from marketing to
| front-end dev. I have experience with development so I'm not
| starting from scratch, but I'm definitely not a pro level
| developer. I'm fine with a drop in salary, but your comment
| sure worries me about finding ANY job.
|
| That being said, it has been my dream to be a developer for
| years. I even studied Math, CS and Mech Eng in college. But,
| sometimes life takes you in unexpected directions. No gain with
| no risk, I guess...
| beebeepka wrote:
| I started at 31 or about a decade ago. Never managed to get
| past a single 20 something with the power to hire people. Not
| a single time.
|
| On the bright side, I never had to deal with the environment
| that breeds such young know it alls. These places usually pay
| very little and simply inflate positions. Trust me, as an old
| geezer, you don't want to be on a team of 21 olds. Especially
| if some of them will have power over you
| krumpet wrote:
| Appreciate the comment. I'm definitely not chasing startups
| full of youngsters. I'm way, way beyond having any desire
| to work for FAANG type companies. I just want to write code
| and get out of marketing (which has been good to me, but
| never my passion).
|
| I recognize I'm taking a risk making this switch, but I
| also can't see myself sticking with marketing much longer.
| beebeepka wrote:
| If you can safely afford to give it a proper try, and
| really want to, then go for it.
|
| I don't miss working for marketing one bit. Programming
| is so empowering
| ren_engineer wrote:
| how do they even know your age? I think it's a pretty common
| best practice to only list your most recent 2-3 jobs for a 1
| page resume and you could just remove your college graduation
| year to hide that as well.
| Rd6n6 wrote:
| All the best developers I know are over 40, if not in their 50s
| or 60s. I don't understand the stigma. All the young smart
| programmers I know will be better next year than last year
| MattGaiser wrote:
| What is it that happens?
|
| Do you get to the interview and then they see your grey hair
| and treat you like Grandpa?
|
| Do they just not call you for an interview at all?
|
| Is it the leetcode and focus on the specifics of very new and
| flashy tech that is the problem?
| ccleve wrote:
| Don't even get to the interview stage. My tech skills never
| got assessed.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Damn. I have no great experience and can get interviews in
| a day or two.
|
| And everyone I talk to complains about no experienced tech
| people.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| How do you get interviews in a day or two with no great
| experience??? These days, I just feel lucky to get an
| email rejection back at all
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I mean I don't have brand companies. I worked for the
| government and a quasi tech startup.
|
| Not sure how I can get calls so quickly, but they aren't
| FAANG level interviews either. Small startups and
| desperate corporates mostly.
| webmaven wrote:
| That's because what they really want is a 20-something
| that has 10 years (or more) of experience.
| Mattiusly wrote:
| Same with me. I'm to the point that I'm going to create an
| alternate resume that only lists experience of less than 8
| years, instead of 30+, and use a very old photo of myself
| on socials.
| vidanay wrote:
| 8 years would only be 40% of my current job tenure.
| hondo77 wrote:
| Yeah, I truncated the experience section and for
| education I removed the years of attendance.
| ido wrote:
| I'm only 38 and I already do that (my first job as a
| developer was at age 18).
| webmaven wrote:
| Same here. I've sometimes wondered if getting a newly
| minted college degree would work to bypass the age filter.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| All of the above. That's why I am no longer interested in
| working for anyone else.
|
| They can also be fairly insulting in tone. I guess us
| oldsters are too "thin-skinned" for today's hyper-competitive
| world. We make unreasonable demands, like being treated as
| humans. We're supposed to ignore mortal insults. Maybe it's
| just like a hazing ritual, where we are supposed to prove we
| are willing to abase ourselves for the corporation.
|
| Work environments are also completely centered around the
| needs and desires of younger folks. In many cases, it's not
| deliberate, but these are companies that are run by people in
| their twenties, and staffed by people in their twenties, so
| the sample population is a bit... _homogenous_. Perks are
| designed to entice younger folks (like hiking and skiing
| offsites, no weekends, Friday night happy hours and pub
| crawls, free beer and food, open-plan, "hip" offices, Urban
| locations, T-shirts, no short-term disability, etc.).
|
| The recruiters are just plain rude. They ghost me, almost
| immediately after finding out that I'm older than 35 (a lot
| older). _Very_ different, from when I used to look, before my
| last job.
|
| The LeetCode tests are "Young-Pass Filters." They generally
| cover topics that people fresh out of college would nail, and
| I know that many engineers spend countless hours, practicing
| LeetCode (maybe while they are supposed to be writing non-
| leet code for their employers). How do I know it? Because I
| keep getting notifications, when they post their results on
| LinkedIn and other places.
|
| I've learned that if I see a binary tree test, I might as
| well look elsewhere.
|
| I have been writing _shipping_ code, since 1987. I seldom
| encounter the neat little problems that I see in whiteboard
| tests. Just yesterday, I was dealing with some weird
| threading /memory leak issues; and those are a blue-assed
| bitch to debug ( _spoiler:_ I fixed them). Every single day,
| I have big, nasty problems that need to be fixed, and every
| single day, I fix them; often by designing good, robust,
| high-quality frameworks, modules, and applications. Device I
| /O problems are fun, too.
|
| The most unfathomable thing, is people directly and
| unapologetically, ignoring my portfolio. I have a big one.
| Real big. I _know_ that it isn 't that special, because I see
| bigger and more impressive ones, all the time. There's a
| _lot_ of really talented, experienced developers, with years
| of work, open to perusal.
|
| These folks are looking to hire critical-path talent,
| responsible for the lifeblood of their products, pay us six
| figures, and then they deliberately ignore resources that
| could tell them more about us than twenty hours of
| interviews. People could make the "hire or ignore" decisions,
| simply by reviewing the portfolio. They wouldn't even need to
| call me on the phone, or let me know they were interested, in
| any other way. Complete stealth.
|
| But, like I said, I'm not particularly interested in
| rejoining the "rat race." This forced me into an early
| retirement, and I'm fine with that. I work harder, these
| days, that I ever did, and it's a joy.
| apetresc wrote:
| > We're supposed to ignore mortal insults.
|
| What "mortal insults" are you regularly subjected to during
| the course of your job...?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| This whole thread is about the hiring process; not
| working. I wouldn't stay at a job for fifteen minutes, if
| I was treated in the way that some of these interviewers
| behave.
|
| One big one, is the assumption that applicants are
| _supplicants_. The constant attitude that the corporation
| is the "Dom" in the relationship, and that they are
| doing us a big favor, by offering us a chance to beg for
| the job.
|
| Other things are obviously bored and unmotivated
| interviewers; implying that my being there is an
| imposition to them, changing interview dates without
| prior consultation, arriving at companies, to find that
| no one is expecting you, and getting passed around
| surprised, unprepared, and visibly angry managers, not
| asking probing questions, asking if I'm "up to" long
| project crunches, assuming that I don't know current
| tech, commenting on the outfit that I decided to wear (I
| have to assume that it is a fashion _faux pas_ ),
| scheduling interviews in noisy restaurants or bars,
| assuming I need to use the bathroom a lot (might have a
| point, there), that "face drop," when you walk in the
| conference room, and they see you, for the first time,
| "ghosting" me, asking about my grandchildren (I don't
| have any), making comments that, as an older person, I
| should "ask for less" compensation, assuming that I'll be
| retiring soon, and won't be "loyal," (which is rich, as
| the whole industry is based on SWEs leaving after 18
| months), assuming that I'll be an overbearing, lecturing
| "OK Boomer," and won't be able to get along with the
| "culture" of the company, smartass remarks during
| interview tests, etc. Want me to go on? I know that this
| list hit a lot of folks. I'm not alone.
|
| Many of these issues are ones that _everyone_ has to
| face. I don 't think that older folks are singled out.
| It's just that we are old enough to remember when it
| wasn't like that, and that interviewing people was
| something exciting and interesting. When we were looking
| at folks we desperately wanted to work with, and we
| showed them.
|
| I was a hiring manager for a long time. I _always_
| treated prospective hires with the greatest respect; even
| after I had decided not to offer them the position.
|
| But really, ignoring the portfolio is the biggest one.
| It's, quite frankly, _insane_. The only reason to ignore
| it, is that the decision has already been made, not to
| hire, and no one wants to waste the time.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| I wonder what you attribute the ageism towards? I wonder what
| actual or perceived traits trend with age that hiring managers
| are trying to avoid?
|
| I'll venture one idea-- Once you have enough experience you
| start to be able to see the emperor has no clothes situations.
| Not being naively positive about everything can be interpreted
| as being overly negative (at least in the bay area). Funny
| enough it might just be the "negative" ones are more accurate
| (Depressive Realism) .
| conductr wrote:
| My experience is it has everything to do with the non-work
| part of work. Diversity isn't really the goal, the goal is
| building a team who has fun happy hours, eats breakfast lunch
| and dinner together, off-sites with passport, knows the
| latest beers/whiskey/alcohol du jour. There's a reason you
| don't see many 30 year old single moms in the sorority. It's
| just not a good "fit".
| cmiles74 wrote:
| When I'm feeling generous, I would guess the company doesn't
| want to spend the money required to compensate people with
| that level of experience.
| jpindar wrote:
| Which is in itself a kind of prejudice, assuming I'm going
| to demand more money.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| Or ungenerously, they think all engineers are
| interchangeable and don't realize there may be a difference
| in code quality between different levels of experience, so
| why not just get the cheapest ones you can.
| ido wrote:
| As a 38 years old who has worked as a software developer
| since age 18...I'd say software developer salaries really
| plateau long before you're 60. You make "senior" after
| about 5-10 years of job experience, and not everyone makes
| principal or director (or CTO).
| candybar wrote:
| You're a borderline public figure in politics and your role in
| politics seems to have been your primary occupation over the
| past few years. Does that ever come up in your conversations
| with tech recruiters? Given these specifics, I'm not sure if
| your experience generalizes to other old engineers, though I'm
| sure ageism is a problem for older engineers in our industry.
| avgDev wrote:
| Refreshing. Great ad design and to the point. 8/10. I would
| give it 10/10 if you included compensation range.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| As a 58 year-old who has pretty much given up on tech, thanks
| for doing this. I'd apply, but I have no experience with
| postgress internals and have never even used Postgress.
| [deleted]
| soneca wrote:
| Thanks, appreciate qualifying a bit what is considered "old". I
| am 41, but only 4 years of software development experience. So
| only applied for junior positions yet. I don't think I faced
| ageism applying to jobs, but I rarely applied to SV jobs (I am
| not from the US).
|
| What do you think is the reasoning people having ageist
| behavior use to convince themselves they are not bad people?
| That old people won't learn, or won't be "tecahable", or
| "manageable"? That old people will be slow somehow? What were
| you able to grasp from the experiences you had?
| webmaven wrote:
| You're assuming that the bias is overt and conscious. It
| doesn't have to be, any more than sexism, racism, or classism
| do.
|
| One looming issue for small orgs is a worry that an older
| employee will drive up the cost of the company health plan.
| fossuser wrote:
| I've also thought this would be an interesting approach, even
| explicitly.
|
| The laws on age discrimination are about discriminating against
| old people, but not about discriminating against young people.
|
| If age discrimination is real, that means that people are not
| valuing older people properly - they're undervaluing them. You
| could have roles that are explicitly only hiring people 40+ and
| that restriction would be legal (at least as I understand it).
|
| I think this would be interesting to try.
| foobarian wrote:
| How awkward would it be to have the 35+ requirement be
| outlawed. Would certainly be interesting to read those legal
| arguments.
|
| Edit: I meant 35+ not 40+. Updated.
| freeopinion wrote:
| Are you referring to the constitutional requirement for USA
| presidential candidates?
| TheDong wrote:
| It would be quite tricky to outlaw.
|
| It's perfectly legal to have "years of experience"
| requirement, so for example you could have a requirement
| of: "Communication with spoken language is a valuable part
| of the job. We require all applicants to have 35+ years of
| experience speaking one or more languages".
|
| That's practically a requirement that you're 40/45+ without
| ever mentioning age.
| gmadsen wrote:
| That seems like a court case at least. You would need to
| prove there is any difference in language skill from
| someone with 15 years versus 35 years, otherwise it is
| just an age requirement superficially disguised as a
| needed skill requirement
| bachmeier wrote:
| > That seems like a court case at least.
|
| For what? Youth is not a protected class. Discriminate
| against them all you want.
|
| > You would need to prove there is any difference in
| language skill from someone with 15 years versus 35
| years, otherwise it is just an age requirement
| superficially disguised as a needed skill requirement
|
| Age discrimination is different from other discrimination
| cases. It's really hard to win, for instance[1]. The
| company doesn't have to prove anything. The worker would
| have to prove that it was explicit age discrimination.
| For other types of discrimination, like race, the only
| thing that needs to be shown is differences in outcomes.
|
| [1] https://www.nextavenue.org/what-it-takes-win-age-
| discriminat...
| marcosdumay wrote:
| If the entire market is discriminating against old people,
| you don't need any discrimination to fill those roles with
| them. You just need to ignore age and filter for competence.
| fossuser wrote:
| Ideally yes, but if the discrimination is there in the
| process (by recruiters/interviewers intentional or not)
| then that's hard to do. People will think they're 'ignoring
| age and filtering for competence' when they're not totally.
|
| If you tell recruiters "this role can only be filled by
| someone 40+" it immediately forces that competence filter
| within those bounds. If there is a lot of under valued
| talent there that could be a strategic hiring advantage.
|
| Obviously don't do this for all roles, but some age
| restricted 'tribal elder' roles or something for each team
| would be interesting imo.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Oh, sure, when the entire society is discriminating, not
| discriminating may require active initiative. Things like
| this one "we don't care if you are old" announcement
| surely help.
|
| But you don't need to discriminate on the reverse
| direction, and doing that is probably harmful.
| fossuser wrote:
| I definitely agree with this sentiment in nearly every
| case - goal of society should be one where these kinds of
| characteristics are irrelevant and discriminating in some
| other way to correct is generally a bad idea.
|
| It was mostly a thought experiment about how a software
| company could gain a hiring advantage in a clever way (if
| old people are undervalued by the market for dumb
| reasons). At least in the case of age the categories are
| clear (as opposed to more nebulous socially defined
| groupings of people).
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > If age discrimination is real, that means that people are
| not valuing older people properly - they're undervaluing them
|
| While age discrimination is certainly real, I think it's also
| conflated with the fact that there just isn't a lot of demand
| for people who are good at their jobs in general.
|
| I'd liken it to how, if you take up baking, then on pretty
| much your first try you can make a pie that's better than the
| pie from almost every commercial bakery. The reason for that
| isn't because home bakers have more knowledge of baking
| techniques than professional bakers -- they don't, not by a
| long shot. It's because if only 1 in 100 people is willing to
| actually pay enough to make it profitable to make properly
| made baked good, then there just aren't many situations where
| you can build a business around doing that.
|
| In other words, older people might not be less employable in
| spite of the fact that they're better at their jobs, but
| because they're better at their jobs.
| jfengel wrote:
| I think you chose a slightly funny example. Pie crust is a
| bit of a challenge to get right. Your first one is
| definitely going to be ugly, and there's a very good chance
| that it will be tough. Filling is easy, but crusts require
| experience to know how much is the right amount (of water,
| of kneading, of rolling).
|
| Most home bakers get better results with frozen pie crust.
| A great home baker can do better, but not on the first try.
|
| Cookies, on the other hand... yeah, if you can read and
| follow instructions at the level of a third grader, you can
| make great cookies.
| [deleted]
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Yep. I had to demonstrate competence in system design and
| scaling for my current role. We haven't touched that stuff
| at all as nobody has wanted to pay for that upfront and
| when scale has been needed, they have just added compute.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| Right, and that's not even the difficult part of doing a
| startup. I did a software dev interview where they asked
| me if I had any questions, and I said something along the
| lines of "I notice that if you look at Mark Zuckerberg's
| reading list, he's reading books about things like the
| history of the Islamic golden age, whereas you're asking
| me questions about javascript syntax. Do you actually
| think the latter is more important?" And then they kicked
| me out halfway through the interview.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| DO they really want the opinions of developers for
| anything non-technical?
|
| My current startup hired me partially on account of
| product experience. I've been an exclusively technical
| resource.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| When companies say there's a shortage in labor they mean there's
| a shortage of cute fresh 25 year olds who don't talk back and
| accept bad treatment. Employers will do anything not to hire 40+
| year olds including recruiting people from Greece or Lithuania.
| Enter the great European brain drain.
|
| Meanwhile the government wants everyone to stay in employment
| until the retirement age of 67.
| varispeed wrote:
| Let's not forget that those corporations are allowed to avoid
| paying tax while workers are taxed through the nose. Proxy
| taxation doesn't work, because you don't see people enjoying
| the same growth as corporations wealth wise. The whole system
| needs an overhaul and big corporations need to pay the money
| back.
| anoplus wrote:
| Other than "old" engineers which could obviously be valuable - I
| think having everyone finding their place in society is a great
| vision to have. Makes me happier seeing old, or even disabled
| people fulfill themselves
| dhosek wrote:
| As an old--and disabled--person, I found this a rather
| patronizing comment.
| tomaszs wrote:
| In our society programming is only for young people. You always
| have to have a backup plan for job when you will be older. Mine
| is olympics games.
| SergeAx wrote:
| So that's what "Senior software developer" really means.
| protomyth wrote:
| I am glad someone is going for the older set (selfishly since I'm
| in the older set), but it has been a concern of mine as students
| get attracted to the technology fields. I work at a TCU (Tribal
| Colleges and Universities) and most of our students start later
| than average and graduate much later. Age discrimination is
| problematic to populations that receive their degree when they
| are already in their thirties. Tech's love of 20 year olds is a
| real problem.
| bequanna wrote:
| Admirable, but in practice this is tough. We have always been
| age-agnostic and all our engineering hires are remote. I don't
| explicitly ask, but can get a sense of how old someone is in the
| phone call portion of interview. My takeaway from doing hundreds
| of these interviews is that even after correcting for experience
| levels, age correlates with inflated expectations: salary, paid
| vacation, benefits, etc. This alone has been our hurdle to hiring
| people 40+.
| hkrgl wrote:
| > age correlates with inflated expectations: salary, paid
| vacation, benefits, etc. This alone has been our hurdle to
| hiring people 40+.
|
| I am curious why you wouldn't offer market-rate salary with
| paid vacation and benefits to all employees. What does age have
| to do with it?
| caboteria wrote:
| > > age correlates with inflated expectations: salary, paid
| vacation, benefits, etc.
|
| > What does age have to do with it?
|
| I'll translate: "Age correlates with an unwillingness to be
| exploited and the experience to recognize when that's about
| to happen."
| bequanna wrote:
| Our comp is above market.
|
| And I would call it entitlement vs. "not wanting to be
| exploited".
|
| You don't bring your needs to the market, you bring skills.
| The market pays you appropriately for those skills.
| quantified wrote:
| The market pays the least it can among the alternatives.
| If the younger were smarter, they wouldn't undercut the
| elder on price, and therefore maximize their value.
| beebeepka wrote:
| They have to treat older people with respect, and pay them
| accordingly. Apparently, they don't want to.
| bequanna wrote:
| I get what you are saying and appreciate it.
|
| But when you are in a position to hire and there is no
| apparent benefit to hiring someone who wants more money vs
| someone with the same skills and relevant experience, why
| would you hire the person who wants more money?
| jpindar wrote:
| How do you know they want more money if you don't
| interview them?
| bequanna wrote:
| Please read my original comment. We discuss salary
| expectations during the initial interview.
| xtracto wrote:
| We don't deserve a higher salary because we are older.
| "Respect your elders" is a very cultural thing. We should
| "respect" all people the same. We should "respect"
| (acknowledge) people that do things worthy of respect.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Presumptuous response.
|
| I responded to someone who literally said older guys ask
| for too much and that's why they don't hire them
| bequanna wrote:
| Ugh, cmon. You are really straining to be outraged here.
|
| That is not at all what I said. In my experience, older
| people almost always ask for above market compensation
| regardless of experience. We don't hire people that ask
| for too much money regardless of age.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Why would I be outraged?
|
| Who you pick is entirely up to your company. If you don't
| super expensive people, that's fine. Maybe you already
| have those?
| sokoloff wrote:
| Exactly. Age has no place being passed to the proposed
| compensation function. Experience and other correlated
| parameters are valid, but age itself is not.
|
| If a candidate and the employer can't reach an agreement, so
| be it. If that is because the candidate inflates their
| expectations because of their age [or wisdom], well, see
| previous sentence.
| xtracto wrote:
| I think the point is that people who are older usually fall
| in the "more expensive" side of the compensation curve: We
| expect a higher salary, we want more paid vacation and we are
| looking for more expensive benefits (paid family health plan
| instead of only personal).
|
| I turn 40 this December; 20 years ago I got bought with just
| being able to get into a programming job (in the small town
| in La Paz, BCS Mexico), the fact that I was paid OK was good
| Vacations and all that extra stuff was just icing on the
| cake. I didn't care about the "retirement" things (in Mexico
| by law everyone gets "poor mans" version of 401k). 20 years
| later, darn I am sure I am WAY more picky than then.
| frankbreetz wrote:
| This seems strange to me, it seems these people would continue
| adjusting salary and benefits exceptions downward until they
| found a job, or they would find a company that is paying what
| they are looking for. I know it is a lucrative field, but is
| every software developer 40+ financially established enough to
| be that picky?
|
| Side note: paid vacations seem like pretty low exceptions,
| maybe you are taking advantage of inexperienced developers,
| maybe you meant amount they expect too much time off.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I'm a 40+ developer, and yes, we do find companies that will
| pay what we're looking for. If this guy won't, fine, feel
| free to hire cheaper developers. That's the way a competitive
| labor market is supposed to work. Employers can't just get
| their pick of whoever the heck they want at a price they
| unilaterally name unless they're the only employer.
| Thankfully, they aren't.
| jpindar wrote:
| If you name too low of a price, they'll think you're clueless
| or have self esteem issues or something, and won't hire you.
| city41 wrote:
| Is it inflated expectations, or do younger people not always
| understand what they are worth? I suspect it's probably
| somewhere in between the two.
| bequanna wrote:
| It's all relative and you are correct.
|
| We get much more "value" when we choose a less experienced
| candidate who wants much less money, but it is a gamble. Are
| they trainable? Will they stick around?
|
| But I prefer that gamble to the one where we pay someone more
| money who has no discernible skill edge over other
| candidates. Actually, I don't understand the upside to that
| gamble at all, which is why I never take it. Should I just
| assume that they will be more successful simply because they
| are asking for more money?
| nly wrote:
| I think this is the game as well. Companies want to
| minimize risk for new hires, so would rather hire someone
| at $X and get 2-3 years out of them than hire someone at
| $2X and hope they get twice the value out of them before
| they retire or call time on their bullshit.
|
| A small % of new hires (in their 20s and 30s) will stick
| around for >10 years, and the value you get then from years
| of incremental pay raises is huge. Those people are
| comfortable and don't know their market value or are too
| afraid to go and get it.
| chana_masala wrote:
| You sound stodgy
| bequanna wrote:
| Please elaborate.
|
| I am simply providing examples from my own experience to
| explain why I believe older people can have a difficult time
| finding work.
|
| Put simply, I've found that when correcting for experience,
| older people ask for above market compensation.
|
| If I can hire someone to do the same work at the same quality
| level for less money, why wouldn't I do this?
| 1-6 wrote:
| Wow, and I love this company!
| volandovengo wrote:
| We hire old people too! We've found that experienced people are a
| perfect fit for a startup
|
| https://www.wrapbook.com/careers
| zarkov99 wrote:
| As what some would call an old person (~50), I love this. There
| is so much knowledge in old workers. Not all is relevant, sure,
| but there is so much that is timeless stuff that every young
| Engineer will learn, sooner or later, though varying degrees of
| suffering. If we could put away arrogance (from both young and
| old) we could do so much to advance the field.
| amatecha wrote:
| Oh yeah, I absolutely love talking with the oldest possible
| people I work with. I'm not being sarcastic or anything. The
| older colleagues always have unbelievably awesome insight and
| interesting stories, and really wise advice. In a purely
| selfish way I'm always disappointed when someone retires
| because I know what kind of knowledge and wisdom is walking out
| the door. I always hope to be this type of person for those
| around me, sharing knowledge/experience to those who are up-
| and-coming in the career/industry. :)
| gorbachev wrote:
| The thing that gets me is the cookie cutter interviewing
| approach a lot of places do. They ask about specifics, but
| that's not what is the really valuable stuff.
|
| As an example I've worked with so, so many web frameworks over
| the years, even created one or two of my own (small, limited
| functionality things). Most of them nobody uses any more,
| because newer frameworks are just better.
|
| But I bet the majority of recruiters see "Web Framework X,
| 1995" in my resume and think...wow, how outdated is this
| guy...what they don't seem to realize is that with some
| exceptions and advancements in technology, they all do the same
| things, even now. The issues you run into are mostly the same
| or so similar it's easy the spot the pattern, if you've got the
| experience I have. This is the same for any problem area for
| any experienced developer.
|
| That is very, very hard to convey in most interviews.
|
| What I do not have is skills to develop an implementation of a
| randomly selected algorithm in 20 minutes on the spot, because
| the last time I even saw it mentioned was 35 years ago, and
| even then I probably used a well tested library for it. Ask me
| about why you'd want to use that algorithm, or why I'd choose
| it over another one...that I could answer.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| Hang in there. I had to go through the Leetcode ordeal as
| well and it gets easier. It feels awful at first, but if you
| stick to it, read through the solutions, make sure you
| understand them, after 100 problems or so it all starts to
| come back and it becomes much easier. Its probably not the
| interview methodology I would use but I can see how efficient
| it is from the interviewer's POV.
| yupper32 wrote:
| Why do I feel uncomfortable with this listing?
|
| Maybe it's because I'm a 20 something dev in Silicon Valley?
| Maybe it's because I don't trust anyone who calls themselves
| experts in anything? Maybe it's because I work with plenty of
| "older" devs in Silicon Valley? Or that I think the two-jobs-at-
| once hiring process is horrible?
|
| I probably shouldn't feel uncomfortable with it, but I do. I
| guess the ad isn't for me, though.
| draw_down wrote:
| There isn't anything wrong with it
| kbenson wrote:
| > Maybe it's because I'm a 20 something dev in Silicon Valley?
|
| So, you don't like competing with older people? They say they
| hire young people too, so I'm not sure why else your age would
| have any bearing.
|
| > Maybe it's because I don't trust anyone who calls themselves
| experts in anything?
|
| Some people or organizations really are though. They exist.
| Google are experts on search. I don't think anyone could
| support an argument against that adequately.
|
| > Maybe it's because I work with plenty of "older" devs in
| Silicon Valley?
|
| How old? The author of the post chimed in above, and they're
| close to 60. Is that about what you were expecting, or quite a
| bit older?
|
| > Or that I think the two-jobs-at-once hiring process is
| horrible?
|
| That's not a requirement, that's a relaxation of a requirement
| that allows more people to try out. Think the person working a
| non-tech job or working a current consulting gig that will end
| soon as well as those looking to switch from a current full
| time employment. As long as those people don't have legal
| requirements requiring they don't work elsewhere, I'm not sure
| what's the problem with letting people manage their own time
| for this stage.
| yupper32 wrote:
| > So, you don't like competing with older people? They say
| they hire young people too, so I'm not sure why else your age
| would have any bearing.
|
| Huh? No, not what I said.
|
| They seem to try to say they don't bias against a group of
| people, and then turn around and be passive aggressive
| against younger devs in Silicon Valley.
|
| Age clearly has a bearing. They bold "We hire old people".
| They're already primed to think about the age of their
| candidates, and potentially bias towards older people.
| kbenson wrote:
| > They bold "We hire old people". They're already primed to
| think about the age of their candidates, and potentially
| bias towards older people.
|
| Or they're primed to make sure they try to exclude
| accidental bias, or are just signalling that people that
| might forego the process under the assumption that they are
| already biased against give it a go?
|
| This is sort of like the whole "Well don't white people
| matter too" criticism to BLM. Saying something matters or
| you do something doesn't necessarily imply you don't do
| something else. They've even gone out of their way to say
| yes, they hire young people too, but you're still eager to
| read some slight into it.
|
| What way would you advertise this position such that older
| developers felt welcome that you think wouldn't cause you
| to feel biased against?
| yupper32 wrote:
| > What way would you advertise this position such that
| older developers felt welcome that you think wouldn't
| cause you to feel biased against?
|
| Why would they feel unwelcome?
|
| On this post, I'd feel unwelcomed as a young person.
| Which, whatever, I don't actually care beyond having a
| conversation about it. I'd just not apply.
|
| Likewise, as a white person if a posting said "We hire
| black people!" then I'd be like "alright I guess this
| isn't really _for_ me " and not apply.
| meepmorp wrote:
| > Likewise, as a white person if a posting said "We hire
| black people!" then I'd be like "alright I guess this
| isn't really for me" and not apply.
|
| As a white person, I don't understand; why wouldn't you
| apply?
| yupper32 wrote:
| If they specifically mention race in the listing, then
| it's probably a program specifically meant to help a
| company's diversity. I definitely do not fall into that
| category, and would feel that I'm actively hurting that
| effort by applying.
|
| And then if they turned around and also said "Unlike
| Silicon Valley, we aren't racist" then I'd just be
| uncomfortable with the whole thing.
|
| Not a perfect 1:1 comparison here, but hopefully it makes
| sense.
| kbenson wrote:
| > Why would they feel unwelcome?
|
| I can't but feel this is a problem of you being
| uninformed. I don't know if that's because of what I
| presume is relative inexperience in the industry and lack
| of exposure to the problem based on your age, and I'm not
| trying to be flippant or denigrate, but there's a widely
| known and acknowledged problem of ageism in this
| industry. So widely known and acknowledged, that those
| that try to cut through the problem feel the need to
| advertise like this.
|
| You can search on HN[1], or elsewhere for more info.
|
| 1: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=ageism
| yupper32 wrote:
| I don't know why you think I don't understand that ageism
| is a problem.
|
| But if they're in the market for a job, and they have
| experience with Postgres internals, why would they not
| apply to this if it otherwise seemed promising? They have
| to apply to _somewhere_ and they presumably have many
| years of experience applying to jobs and such.
|
| I get that it's a PR thing. This makes them stand out,
| and get to the top of HN. I just can't imagine being a
| young person and applying to this posting (if I wanted to
| and was qualified).
| kbenson wrote:
| > I don't know why you think I don't understand that
| ageism isn't a problem.
|
| Because you're making statements that seem to indicate
| you don't understand how it works.
|
| > But if they're in the market for a job, and they have
| experience with Postgres internals, why would they not
| apply to this if it otherwise seemed promising?
|
| Because that's how discrimination works. When you feel
| your effort might be wasted, sometimes you are much more
| considerate of where you spend that effort. Sometimes you
| don't spend it at all.
|
| > They have to apply to somewhere and they presumably
| have many years of experience applying to jobs and such.
|
| No, they don't. The alternative may very well be people
| assuming there's no place for them in the market, so they
| stay at their current job even if unhappy or underpaid.
| Signalling to people that might be under the impression
| they have no place at your company that they actually
| might is worthwhile in many people's eyes.
|
| This is a discrimination issue. Would you have the same
| perception if we were discussing women, or minorities, or
| people with disabilities? If you're a man, does "We hire
| women. (And men too.)" also make you think that you have
| no place at that company, or make you think they are
| trying to encourage diversity?
| yupper32 wrote:
| > If you're a man, does "We hire women. (And men too.)"
| also make you think that you have no place at that
| company, or make you think they are trying to encourage
| diversity?
|
| If a specific job listing said that, then no. It'd
| clearly be a listing trying to get more gender diversity,
| of which I do not help.
|
| For a real life example, there was a Google internship
| program back in the day that was specifically geared
| towards under-represented people. It mentioned in the
| posting that anyone could apply, but why would I? I'm a
| white straight male. I don't fit into that program.
| kbenson wrote:
| > It'd clearly be a listing trying to get more gender
| diversity, of which I do not help.
|
| Trying to get more diversity doesn't necessarily mean
| they just want to hire those people underrepresented, or
| that the program (or company) would necessarily be filled
| with just underrepresented people. The nature of the
| problem is such that one of the current tactics is to
| clearly call out to those that you think are valid
| candidates that are ignoring the call to apply. The
| understanding is that it gets you closer to a societally
| representative mix of people, whereas without that it
| would be worse. That doesn't necessarily mean that's the
| only people they want to hire, or that by not applying
| you are actually helping that overall issue.
|
| For very large companies like Google it's _possible_ that
| they indeed do try to tailor programs to primarily hire
| for diversity purposes to meet some overall goal, but I
| suspect (and hope) they don 't do it like you suggest.
| Having one program that's mostly of fully staffed with
| underrepresented people is probably self defeating in
| that it spurs other problem (the goal should be a diverse
| _mixture_ , not concentrated groups within a mostly
| homogeneous whole), and if they do desire people that
| aren't just those underrepresented, then there's no
| reason not to apply.
|
| That said, I think we've mostly plumbed this topic.
| partdavid wrote:
| I'm old as well and I'm uncomfortable with it. The tone is kind
| of passive-aggressive and although this extended temp-to-hire
| thing is paid, it also rubs me the wrong way; like you, I can't
| completely say why. I'd be curious to see if it works for
| people, though (I kind of suspect it won't because of the time
| investment involved but who knows).
|
| It's also hard to explain but by coupling the "we hire old
| people" with "but we're not actually hiring you, just putting
| you through an extended probation with no benefits, security,
| or investment" it kind feels like the opposite of inclusive.
| It's a whiff, you know, it's their company, they can hire how
| they like, but it's weird to focus on one form of illegal
| discrimination they don't engage in and follow it up with extra
| hiring hoops.
| zigradett wrote:
| I bet they don't actually hire old people, but are publishing
| this for the publicity it might generate.
| mavelikara wrote:
| Do you have evidence to believe so?
| colecut wrote:
| Most of the publicity will result in job applications from old
| people
| ccleve wrote:
| See my other comment. Yes, we will hire actual old people.
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