[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Why are we accepting ageism in tech as somet...
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Ask HN: Why are we accepting ageism in tech as something immutable?
This week alone I had 2 interviews with 2 different companies where
in the first one of the interviewers asked me my age, directly
followed by "why hire you over a younger graduate?" (which isn't
the same as "why hire you over someone smarter than you?" because
why even ask this). In the second one I was also asked for my age,
followed by whether I plan to get married anytime soon. I'm under
the impression that the industry needs to learn to treat amateurs
as amateurs regardless of their age. It feels like I'm not allowed
to be an amateur professional simply because I'm over 30 years old.
Instead of seeing people as "a guy with 2 years of experience" or
"a woman with 4 years of experience" we see "a 40 year old guy with
2 years of experience" or "a 34 year old woman with 4 years of
experience". It feels like there's an implicit expectation of
expertise in doing something that comes with my age. It's almost as
if I'm not allowed to learn and get good in something that I want,
simply because I was late into "the party", where party can be
whatever but since I'm a web developer that's what "the party" is.
I've had multiple people telling me that "we saw people with fewer
and less polished projects get jobs". I've been seeking for 8
months, I'm almost at the point where I might as well freelance to
bypass the discrimination. I get barely any calls back, and the one
interview that felt somewhat fair was because I had my former
manager from a completely unrelated field introduce me to someone
looking for web developers, and that didn't worked out because they
wanted me to learn their stack and build an assignment within a
week, which failed gloriously. Is there something that we can do
so that people can just be amateurs regardless of age? I'm sure
since we're making SOME progress against sexism and racism we could
somehow do something for ageism too, because I can't blame
Zuckerberg's opinion anymore.
Author : Arisaka1
Score : 74 points
Date : 2022-01-13 17:16 UTC (5 hours ago)
| rmk wrote:
| > This week alone I had 2 interviews with 2 different companies
| where in the first one of the interviewers asked me my age,
| directly followed by "why hire you over a younger graduate?"
| (which isn't the same as "why hire you over someone smarter than
| you?" because why even ask this). In the second one I was also
| asked for my age, followed by whether I plan to get married
| anytime soon.
|
| Okay, if this interview was in the United States, interviewers
| can't actually ask these questions.
|
| About 'amateurs': developing software for sale is a professional
| endeavor, so by signaling that you are an amateur, you are
| telegraphing that you are less suited for the job than someone
| who doesn't. This is a function of maturity, and maturity is
| expected from someone who is older.
|
| Most valley companies simply do not care if you are a 34-year old
| with 4 years of experience, provided your education and training
| were not in computer science. If your resume clearly shows your
| educational and work background, absolutely no sane mainstream
| company will care. There are larger companies that do insist on
| hiring people with degrees in Computer Science or Electrical
| Engineering to do software, but that doesn't seem to be the case
| here.
|
| My advice: - Polish your speaking and presentation style. Convey
| maturity that is commensurate with your age. Maintain a positive
| attitude and a professional demeanor in your interviews no matter
| what. Take some time to familiarise yourself with the terms of
| art, and speak the lingo.
|
| - Do not deal with very small shops. They generally do not have
| processes and management structures that are suitable to
| integrating people such as you (or reigning in wackos who ask
| illegal questions during interviews, thus showing their total
| lack of interview training and common sense). You will have
| better luck with companies that have explicit programs to bring
| in people from nontraditional backgrounds into software dev.
|
| - Freelancing is a good idea if you want to make some money and
| connections, but getting into an established company such as the
| one I have described is a much better bet to get into the
| industry.
| brianmcc wrote:
| > the industry needs to learn to treat amateurs as amateurs
| regardless of their age
|
| Out of interest what do you mean by "amateurs" here, I'm not sure
| it's the right word for what you're expressing?
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| They seem to be talking about fresh inexperienced junior devs
| applying to their first job or two.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Pretty sure OP just means the version synonymous with novice --
| someone with little experience.
|
| OP Maybe unaware of this Americanism :
| https://imgur.com/gallery/GUcVw
|
| In the the US (elsewhere too?) "Amateur" can have the
| connotation of someone who is unacceptably not good at what
| they do and often with an apathy towards getting better.
| jimmyvalmer wrote:
| _why hire you over a younger graduate?_
|
| Instead of bristling, start by coming up with a good answer for
| this.
|
| We ask because younger people don't go off about ageism the way
| you do. They raise other problems however, chiefly inexperience
| and wokeism.
| jensensbutton wrote:
| > We ask because younger people don't go off about ageism.
|
| Really? That's like saying "Well white people don't go off
| about racism the way you do." Good lord we have some
| incompetent people making hiring decisions.
| jbkiv wrote:
| You will notice that the first question when you apply to Y
| Combinator is your age. The second is your sex.
| patwater10 wrote:
| Perhaps also worth reflecting on the age discrimination against
| the young in many, many other industries
| elzbardico wrote:
| Strange, I am closer to 50 than I am from 40, and despite all the
| fear I had in the past I never find myself discriminated because
| of age. Also, I am not managerial material, So, after a small
| stint on management a few years ago I decided it was not what I
| wanted and so I am still basically a developer. Maybe there's
| some invisible prejudice around that I haven't noticed, maybe I
| am lucky, but compared to other professions, I think that
| software development has been very fair for older guys like me.
| caffeine wrote:
| Unpopular advice: work with good recruiters. Find headhunters
| that have been contracted to fulfil roles like those you are
| looking for. Get them to advocate for you and give you feedback.
| subsubzero wrote:
| First off the questions with age implicit implications are 100%
| illegal in the US full stop. Second it sounds like the companies
| you applying for are sh*tshows (based on those interview
| questions) and you may have dodged a bullet there. The funny
| thing about ageism is its the one form of discrimination that
| affects every single person and yet its the one that I have not
| seen a single tech company take a stand against.
| ppeetteerr wrote:
| No one should be asking your age. No one. It's as offensive as
| someone asking your sexual orientation. You look at the CV, and
| you ask the same set of questions as someone else. If you feel
| you were rejected because of age, you should find a good lawyer
| and consult with them.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > It's as offensive as someone asking your sexual orientation.
|
| Which is basically on every employment form I have filled out.
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| Where TF are you applying??
| indigochill wrote:
| Every "equal opportunity employer" in the states has a part
| of the application that's a dryer form of, "we're working
| towards equal opportunity, so please tell us what you
| consider to be your race as well as which gender you
| identify with and which you prefer to have sex with, which
| we promise are completely work-relevant questions because
| we care so much about representation and pinky promise this
| information won't be used in any other way".
|
| Seems completely backwards to me, but I've seen it on quite
| a few job application forms.
| hnuser847 wrote:
| That's a voluntary survey that gets sent to the
| government. You're in no way required to answer those
| questions.
|
| https://attorneyatlawmagazine.com/what-are-eeo-questions-
| why...
| sokoloff wrote:
| Wait? What?! I've filled many a form that asked for my gender
| but I've never seen one that asked for my _sexual
| orientation_ in an employment context. (I have gotten a
| closely related sexual _experiences_ question in an STD
| screening context and an _orientation_ question for dating
| apps, which are the only situations where it seems relevant,
| but never for employment).
| mmargenot wrote:
| They probably mean the voluntary survey that most quick
| online applications have nowadays.
| hnuser847 wrote:
| Yes, it's a voluntary survey. Employers with 100 or more
| employers are required to include it in the job
| application.
| speedgoose wrote:
| In which part of the world do you live ?
| pydry wrote:
| I tended to think that ageism in the tech industry wasnt so bad
| or at least was "offset" enough by companies that exhibited a
| preference for older workers.
|
| For every node.js driven pet social network with a 26 year old
| CEO that discriminates against you there will be an insurance
| company who will view your graying hair as reassuring evidence of
| your deep experience.
|
| But jesus, the ageism against older "juniors" is just _brutal_.
| Their CVs are always the first in the trash can.
|
| Perversely, a lot of men in tech have hopped on the tech
| "diversity" bandwagon by demonstrating a somewhat creepy overt
| preference for younger women when hiring junior developers,
| ironically making things harder for other minorities. Yay
| diversity :/
|
| And it's an oversaturated market, which is where quietly stated
| prejudices _really_ come out to play.
|
| The hiring market is a real shitshow. I'm relieved not to be a
| grad anymore.
| Threeve303 wrote:
| Because paying older people what they are worth is not
| financially sustainable for most companies, unless youre a big
| tech company, etc. It's not really ageism, it's just about money,
| like everything is.
| bennysomething wrote:
| I think it's more that younger people can accept less money.
| Life was way cheaper in my twenties, I'm now 40 with a family.
| zabzonk wrote:
| > amateur professional
|
| What exactly do you mean by that?
| dehrmann wrote:
| Sounds like a NCAA football player.
| zebnyc wrote:
| Yeah this is unclear to me as well but if I were to hazard a
| guess it would be passing off student project / bootcamp
| experience as work experience. This may be more prevalent when
| starting out.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > I'm under the impression that the industry needs to learn to
| treat amateurs as amateurs regardless of their age. It feels like
| I'm not allowed to be an amateur professional simply because I'm
| over 30 years old.
|
| To be clear: Someone using only your age to discriminate is not
| okay and I'm not suggesting it is.
|
| However, reading the hints in your post ("amateur professional"
| and referring to a manager from another field) suggests that this
| is more of a recent career change for you.
|
| When changing careers, it's important to be able to demonstrate
| that you've accomplished things and gained experience in your
| prior field. If it looks like a complete career reset and you
| can't really explain what you've learned in your career to date
| that makes you a better hire than a fresh graduate with similar
| experience, why would the hiring manager assume you'll thrive in
| your new career path any better than your old one?
|
| > "why hire you over a younger graduate?"
|
| Not very tactful, but this should be a softball question for you:
| They're asking you to explain how your prior career experience,
| even if not in programming, makes you a good choice. Think of
| what you've learned and accomplished and explain how it makes you
| the more mature _employee and team member_. If you can't think of
| anything, that makes you more of a liability for them because
| even average new grads can accumulate some degree of
| accomplishment and achievement.
|
| > I had my former manager from a completely unrelated field
| introduce me to someone looking for web developers, and that
| didn't worked out because they wanted me to learn their stack and
| build an assignment within a week, which failed gloriously.
|
| Being able to do a basic assignment is table stakes when it comes
| to getting jobs with a non-traditional background, like it or
| not. You can't win them all, but I'd suggest working on getting
| to a point where you can demonstrate your skills quickly to new
| employers.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| > why would the hiring manager assume you'll thrive in your new
| career path any better than your old one?
|
| Tech is such a lucrative field, why would your default
| assumption be about whether they thrived or not before, instead
| of just that they recognized the good deal that tech is?
|
| "This is a career reset, and the fact that you weren't happy
| topping out at $60k in your previous field is a red flag that
| must be explained away" is how I read that part of your
| comment.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Topping out compensation wise in your previous field did mean
| you thrived.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| I meant that as "unhappy with the potential topping out at"
| rather than "unhappy having topped out at." But that isn't
| the central point anyways.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Recruiting firms have effectively isolated large companies from
| whatever discrimination they feel like doing. If you're Joe CEO
| and you hate black people, you just overpay a small recruiting
| firm and wink at them not to forward any black people your way.
| Later, if the recruiting firm gets caught (and that's a big "if"
| considering how small the firm is), they just fold and re-open
| somewhere else with the big paycheck you've already given them.
| The company catches no bad PR because it was the recruiting
| firm's fault, not theirs.
|
| There's this weird fiction that recruiting companies are only
| discriminating based on age but they have the ability to
| discriminate on anything they want.
| Fred27 wrote:
| Personally I've never felt any ageism throughout my career. I'm
| 53. My CV has my date of birth on it so my age is obvious at any
| point in the hiring process. I'm still a developer because I have
| no desire to move into management. I recently moved into a new
| tech stack where I don't have years of experience and had no
| problem being hired.
| scotty79 wrote:
| I think the issue is that OP is old person but a new
| programmer.
|
| So the companies ask why not, out of people with little
| expeirience choose younger person.
|
| It's even reasonable for them because they may influence
| younger person easier and have a better chance of hitting a
| hidden gem.
| dboreham wrote:
| Limited input data, but my sense is that this could have nothing
| much to do with age. You've been talking to people who say plain
| out illegal things in interviews (at least in the USA), and it
| sounds like you've been looking for jobs through "commodity"
| channels -- asking for "interview projects" to be done in two
| weeks, hiring for experience with very specific tech, and so on.
|
| Recommendation: don't do that. Instead aim to get a job with
| people who value inherent capabilities and flexibility, and who
| aren't abusers. To do that you may need to do some work first.
| For example, develop a web application of your own, open source,
| using some modern tech stack (doesn't matter which specific one).
| Then, when you interview you can talk about your experiences,
| thoughts, etc with that tech. This shows the interviewer that you
| have the capability to pick up new tech, to understand its
| strengths and weaknesses, to produce output. A good interviewer
| will see that and know that you will therefore be able to pick up
| whatever tech they want you to use. It's not about specific
| knowledge and buzzwords : it's about the ability to learn and
| apply. You can now go into interviews with the approach : I don't
| know anything about some of the tech you're using, but that's ok
| because I have proven I can learn, and I know a huge amount about
| _something_, and perhaps the interviewer will be interested to
| learn from me about that.
|
| One of the advantages of age is that you have had more time to
| meet more people, with with more people, build a network. Use
| those contacts to look for jobs rather than recruiters.
| jart wrote:
| When you reach a certain age you have to play to your strengths
| and focus on the things you're good at doing. Sometimes when
| people hit their midlife crisis, they realize, I want to make
| hundreds of thousands of dollars for typing code too.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=Arisaka1 Some people
| are "Ask HNers" and some people are "Show HNers".
| simplestats wrote:
| There's always a conflict between leveraging your background
| and optimizing for what is highest pay currently (unless
| you're really lucky). Neither direction is a guarantee.
| Certainly we would like a society where a person who follows
| the latter policy is always able to succeed at it. It's an
| important signal for where the need is the highest. At some
| point (hopefully soon..) society will have way too many real
| estate agents again, and it's better if they go where they
| are needed rather than toughing it out because they think
| there are no alternatives at their age.
| ruffrey wrote:
| At all the startups I've worked at over 10 years, this just
| hasn't been the case. I'm in the minority apparently. We've
| explicitly looked for a mix of experience to fill missing roles
| on the team. Frequently the newer devs have direct experience
| with a hot new framework and are clearly very hungry. This is
| great for hiring. However any company of marginal success will
| find itself at a strong disadvantage scaling the systems or team
| size without experienced engineers. You can only punt on this so
| long before the weight of bad architecture, testing and code
| quality from inexperienced devs results in stagnation and
| liability.
| nojito wrote:
| If you're in the US, that first interview question is illegal and
| you should talk to a lawyer.
| zepolen wrote:
| 2 years experience @ 30 years old? That's a joke. There are
| people 10 years younger than you with that amount of experience
| who are happy to work 16 hour days for a mediocre wage. Sure they
| will mess up a lot, but so will you.
|
| Old people do not have the time, energy or naivety that young
| people do. This is fact. The only thing going for them is
| experience, if you can't bring that, then you've got nothing.
| simplestats wrote:
| This is bs, sorry. This isn't pro basketball. Your eyes degrade
| slowly and your memory does too eventually. But unless you're
| talking about 60+ when such issues really start to catch up
| with you (still to variable degree depending on the person),
| you can't possibly make such a generalization.
|
| The average age people do Nobel prize winning work is 44, with
| a standard deviation of ten years. EDIT: for physics it's
| actually 42. The 35 is from a prior publication for 1901-1950
| (if I'm skimming that right).
|
| https://orbit.dtu.dk/en/publications/the-age-at-which-noble-...
|
| As for niavette, age isn't a guarantee of wisdom by any
| stretch.
| Zababa wrote:
| Most software engineering work is far from Nobel prizes work,
| or even research. In an organization, more than 50% of the
| workers are basically intellectual assembly line workers. In
| the remaining people, a few will specialize on each
| technology, a few will specialize on company-specific stuff,
| a few on the build system, a few on talking with
| marketing/business. But the majority of people are doing a
| medium-intensity job that doesn't require much creativity or
| genuis.
|
| There's absolutely nothing wrong with that or those people.
| But this means that your output will be a function of your
| experience and energy. When you're older and inexperienced,
| you're compared against people that have the same experience
| but (statistically) more energy. Thus it is the logical
| choice to prioritize the younger people.
|
| If you're older, you either have to have something new grads
| don't, or the supply has to be so limited that they're ready
| to take you too. If you don't have an answer to "why should
| we hire you over a young graduate?", this means that you
| don't understand the basis of the business, which is a heavy
| red flag for an employer.
| simplestats wrote:
| It's not so different in the ways that matter here. The
| point is that hard mental work isn't a "young man's game".
| It's about time and energy still. You need to work very
| very hard for years to win a nobel prize. In another
| universe (different only in choice of career path) that
| nobel prize winner would be an entrepreneur doing 80 hours
| a week, or a star employee somewhere. You'd be lucky to
| hire them.
|
| If the nobel prize winner went into basketball, however,
| there's no way they'll be a top athelete when they're 44.
| Unless they happen to also be seven feet tall, and even
| then they have biology heavily stacked against their
| performance.
|
| Statistics aren't what I'm talking about. Statistically,
| some perentage of young women will get pregnant. If the
| stat is not a guarantee which applies to everyone in the
| group, it's wrong to use it to stereotype people.
| labrador wrote:
| This is a dead end conversation that I've been involved in many
| times as an older developer:
|
| a) Young people don't care because it doesn't affect them and the
| industry is mostly young
|
| b) Companies don't care because no one can stop them if they
| discriminate surreptitiously
|
| c) Older people have no recourse unless they can prove
| discrimination in court which is difficult. See b)
|
| d) No one wants to think about getting old and what will happen
| to them, so it's not given any consideration or taken seriously
| because it makes people feel uncomfortable
|
| e) young people are judgemental because they all think they're
| going to get rich in tech, so an older person needing a job must
| be a loser
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Wait, what is an "amateur professional"? Isn't that an oxymoron
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I assume that you are basically a junior developer from the
| "amateur" comment and that you couldn't get somewhat going on a
| new stack in a week (no judgement as you probably cannot with
| your level of experience, but a lot of somewhat more experienced
| people can)?
|
| A lot of companies view juniors as expendable coding drones to
| handle the crappy tasks or something you take as you cannot
| afford anything else. Both of those correlate with long hours and
| those are easier to get from unattached younger people. So it
| isn't always about age, but what age generally means.
|
| That aside, what's your stack? Post a bit of info and maybe some
| of us can lend you a hand.Plenty of companies pay for referrals,
| so even asking around on LinkedIn will net you plenty as it costs
| me nothing to toss your resume into the box and is essentially a
| lottery ticket for a couple grand.
|
| To answer your title question, it just doesn't impact people
| enough. Refactoring a large culture is a massive undertaking,
| especially when the people impacted are not part of it yet/are at
| the bottom rung.
| Arisaka1 wrote:
| To be honest, I don't even see myself as a junior but more of
| an entry level, because there are junior openings that assume
| some experience. My only experience comes from personal
| projects and github contributions.
| zebnyc wrote:
| Ageismm is illegal. Leaving that aside, I think you are
| selling yourself short here about entry level / junior
| positions. If you tell the recruiter you are entry level that
| is what they are going to do. Instead of just focussing on
| the tech, think about a framework for the transferable skills
| you bring to the table.
|
| To clarify transferrable skills there are two aspects: I am
| assuming you have prior experience in an unrelated field
| here. - I would recommend you learn about the software
| development life cycle (SDLC) and reflect on work you have
| done in a prior role which can be contextualized into
| planning, analysis, design, execution, maintenance phases.
| Write down that story and practice it till you can narrate it
| in a believable manner - Behavioural interviews: This is
| where companies try to probe your prior experience to see if
| you would be a good fit. Learn about the STAR method and see
| what experience / stories you can have in your aresnal that
| you can commmunicate effectively. You need to communicate
| that you are a good team player, collaborate well, are
| adaptable and a quick learner.
|
| If you can do these well, you are far ahead of most other
| candidates.
|
| Regarding the ageism question: I suggest reflecting on what
| is the question behind the question. Many engineers change
| jobs often and hence many companies have even given up on
| investing on recruiting entry level / junior folks. So if a
| company is willing to recruit junior engineers, then they
| might be wondering why should I invest in this person who
| might be in a different stage in their life / career?
|
| It is understood in most companies that entry level / junior
| positions require a lot of hand holding. Not just in the tech
| but in how to work in the SDLC and collaborate well, reach
| for help when they are stuck etc.
| bennysomething wrote:
| I'm not trying to say you are wrong, but I've just turned 40, at
| my current job 2 years. I've never had a problem with age. It's a
| financial place, UK, lots of people 30s, 40s 50s.
|
| Maybe finance is different?
|
| We just hired a career change guy in his 30s straight out of code
| boot camp. In fact we have hired a few of them.
|
| How much experience do you have? Is this an American thing?
| giantg2 wrote:
| If you're old enough to fit the protected category (45+?) Then
| those questions are straight up illegal. Same with the marital
| status question.
| simplestats wrote:
| I don't think "straight up illegal" is quite right. More like
| discrimination is illegal and if they ask then don't hire you,
| then they're practically asking you to sue them. They might
| deny it of course.
| giantg2 wrote:
| https://www.eeoc.gov/pre-employment-inquiries-and-marital-
| st...
|
| Considered evidence of intent to discriminate. Defacto
| illegal.
| simplestats wrote:
| "de facto " is better, but still, it's "may be" considered
| evidence.
| decafninja wrote:
| I wish people would hire you based on your skill level, and not
| strictly match your skill level with years of experience. Maybe
| someone with 10+ years of experience wants to get hired as a SWE,
| not a Senior or Staff SWE.
|
| I have 10+ years of experience working at non-tech companies.
| Nominally I was a Senior SWE. However I am certain I am not at
| the same caliber as a Senior SWE who has spent his/her career
| working in Silicon Valley tech companies. I'd love to join a tech
| company as a midlevel engineer and work my way up again despite
| both my age (30s) and years of experience (10+). I've noticed
| there are some companies that outright disallow this. It can go
| like:
|
| "You have 10+ yoe, you either interview and qualify as a
| senior/staff SWE, or we don't want you at all regardless of
| whether you'd make a great midlevel SWE"
|
| That said, my suggestion is the current best way around this is
| to probably become a Leetcode Master. Not all companies make or
| break you over leetcode, but I'd say the majority still do, so
| you will have breadth of scope covered. Utterly wow them with
| your leetcode skills (which admittedly can be a completely
| different skillset from your day to day SWE work), and that seems
| like it can overcome many other perceived cons.
| edwnj wrote:
| You're being silly.
|
| Its not like a job at mcdonalds, We are talking about complex
| creative jobs where you need to invest a lot of time and
| resources to integrate new hires.
|
| The last thing companies want is to waste all that resources into
| a bad hire and spend even more money getting another guy for the
| job.
|
| You bet they are gonna look at all the signals and trust me a 40
| year old amateur is gonna ring a lot of alarm bells!
|
| Like literally what did you expect.. for them to completely
| overlook the fact that either you've done fuck all for 20 years
| or just jumped ship mid life.
| sib301 wrote:
| Good lord, I hope you don't manage people.
| colmvp wrote:
| FWIW, I went into many interviews over the past two years and no
| one asked me about my age.
| nnoitra wrote:
| Your age is on average on your face. It's not hard to realize
| if someone is older than 23.
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| Age discrimination exists but to be fair, people with low
| experience find it difficult to get callbacks regardless of age.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I don't think anything will change unless you name and shame the
| companies. Why protect them?
|
| Until companies hear "I passed because of the ageism I saw when I
| googled your company," there isn't any reason not to behave this
| way.
| simplestats wrote:
| People who name and shame tend to want to hurt their target.
| That motivation tends to also lead to spinning the story, even
| a tiny bit, to sound worse and therefore hurt them worse.
|
| It could be the interviewer was trying to ask something
| beneficial like "explain to us why your additional years of
| experience make you more valuable than someone who lacks that
| additional experience?", but wasn't worded well, and with a
| little spin or removal of context, gets turned into the
| opposite of what they meant.
|
| Similarly the marriage one comes up a lot. People instantly
| assume that the implication is they might quit and become a
| housewife. But in context it could also be the interviewer
| trying to sell their company's and city's benefits for their
| specific lifestyle (whatever it is), to try and further attract
| the candidate.
| hogrider wrote:
| I truly really hope I will be done with tech by my early 40s
| (made enough to do something else less lucrative maybe). I don't
| think management will ever become so enlightened as to see humans
| fir their real capabilities. So, HN, please advise what else can
| I pivot to, that treats older people as increasingly expert
| instead of irrelevant.
| avgDev wrote:
| Pivot and do tech for companies that have no idea about tech.
|
| There are companies spending thousands of dollars on
| contractors who deliver suboptimal work. Hiring someone who can
| code/vet/manage contractors can save money. You could also do
| some work for city govts, my local village is paying $90k for a
| dev role, it isn't great but I have feeling it is a very cushy
| job. A friend of mine works for a major city as a project
| manager and his salary is $110k. He can go to the office and
| nap. Things move EXTREMELY slow. This would be great for me
| once I get older.
|
| I work for non-tech manufacturing company and have freedom to
| use whatever stack I want. I work whenever I want. My boss
| tells me "no rush" all the time. They are used to contractors
| missing deadlines by YEARS. I can have a productive week and a
| crappy week, nobody cares.
|
| You could also try to build some software for small to mid
| companies. They are a small fish for major software shops but
| for a solo dev can produce a nice income, even if you just
| maintain their stuff on a contract basis.
| deputymartin wrote:
| The entire tech interview landscape is littered with landmines.
| Inept middle managers often throw individuals with no HR training
| and blatant personal bias at recruits with disastrous results.
| It's been that way for years now with no end in sight.
| Interviewing is essentially about how comfortable someone feels
| around you and a sizable portion of the current generation in
| tech don't feel comfortable around anyone. We have to accept the
| fact that it will not change. It just takes time and patience to
| find the right fit.
| alexfornuto wrote:
| In the U.S. it's illegal to ask an applicant's age, so you've got
| potential legal recourse against both of the companies in your
| examples.
| rileymat2 wrote:
| In practice, without a ton of leg work to find patterns, how
| would you prove it?
| jonathankoren wrote:
| Pattern doesn't matter. You document it.
| [deleted]
| sundaeofshock wrote:
| You report it so that the state is aware of it. Let the state
| find the pattern. Companies get away with this crap because
| we let them.
| throw_away wrote:
| Only in a small handful of states (CA, MN, PA, WI, CT):
|
| https://www.aarp.org/work/job-search/info-2021/employers-age...
|
| For the rest of the US, age is only a protected status if you
| are >40.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| :not sure if face:
|
| > In order to protect against ageism, we created a law with
| an age restriction
| zebnyc wrote:
| Question is how do you prove it? And what can you do about it?
| A few years back a recruiter was gushing at my resume and said
| the hiring manager wants to talk to you but wants to know a
| particular gap in my resume when I left prior employer X. I
| told the recruiter that I was not happy that X made it very
| hard for me to take my FMLA leave when my kid was born.
|
| The recruiter hung up shortly and a couple of days later I got
| the generic rejection letter. I responded by stating that this
| was discrimination & illegal but I don't have any material
| evidence and the recruiter simply rejected my claim. So I
| thought I would post my experience on glassdoor. Couple of days
| later, I see that my review about the company had been removed
| from Glassdoor. Glassdoor definitely know which side of one's
| bread is buttered.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > In the U.S. it's illegal to ask an applicant's age,
|
| Common misconception, but it's not true except in a few states.
|
| Age discrimination has a very specific legal meaning, and it
| doesn't apply at all below a certain age threshold.
|
| Even when age discrimination is in play, simple asking about
| age (except in those few states) doesn't constitute
| discrimination. You have to prove that age was a deciding
| factor in choosing against the hire, which is actually much
| more difficult than even just proving the question was asked.
| jensensbutton wrote:
| > one of the interviewers asked me my age, directly followed by
| "why hire you over a younger graduate?"
|
| I hope you told them it's because you have enough experience to
| know what they said is illegal.
| chadash wrote:
| _> I 've had multiple people telling me that "we saw people with
| fewer and less polished projects get jobs"._
|
| I have a few projects on github. NO... ONE... EVER... LOOKS.
| _Maybe_ they will do a cursory glance, but I 've never had anyone
| actually look through them in any detail.
|
| Sure, if you created a library with some decent traction and have
| a good amount of stars, it might help. But for your average
| developer with personal projects, no one has the time to look at
| your code. Even for someone with a hit project, they are still
| probably just looking at your stars as a proxy for your ability
| to write production code and not your actual code. There is so
| much HN advice focusing on having projects to show people and I
| think it's mostly bad advice.
|
| Here's my two cents:
|
| 1) Pay someone professional to look over your resume. If you
| aren't getting interviews this might be a factor. It'll cost you
| a few hundred dollars and may potentially earn back many many
| times that amount. Bonus: Have them look over your linkedin
| profile as well.
|
| 2) Find companies on linkedin that you'd potentially want to
| interview with. Send messages to developers there. This might
| required a paid linkedin account for a few months, but again,
| think of it as an investment. Have your resume on dropbox or
| similar and then include a URL with a link to your resume in
| there, since I don't think linkedin allows attachments.
|
| 3) Interview, interview, interview. The interview process is very
| imperfect and it sucks. But every time you fail, go back and see
| where you went wrong. Eventually you will see that a lot of
| companies ask the same questions with small twists, so practice
| makes perfect here.
|
| 4) Don't sweat it when you get rejected. Remember it's a numbers
| game. More interviews == more chances to get an offer. You only
| need one job at a time.
| sibeliuss wrote:
| It's unfortunate about people not looking at Github more.
| Personally, I look in depth, but i'm not responsible for
| hiring. If I were, I most definitely would not have hired many
| of the people that we have hired where I work. There IS a
| flipside to this however: many of the best devs I've worked
| with have very little on Github, so its imperative to find a
| way to judge technical merit some other way.
| the_only_law wrote:
| I've straight up brought up my projects in an interview, only
| to be rid "we don't care, we want to hear about your
| professional experience" (though not in those words)
|
| It's sucks because my professional experience is a bunch of
| droll bullshit. My projects tend to at least be interesting
| bullshit.
|
| Note that the last time I heard this was in the context of a
| "tell me about a time" context regarding technical challenges.
| This wasn't a case where they wanted to hear about my
| professional work because of non technical ability (think
| ability to ship under ever changing requirements, etc.) because
| they were equally unimpressed with that.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I look at the GitHub profile of anyone who puts it on their
| resume before I talk to them. (I might eliminate someone before
| looking at their GitHub, but I don't think I've ever talked to
| someone with a profile on their resume without looking first.)
|
| Not having one isn't a negative (too many devs have none or
| almost none to use it as a signal), but having a good one can
| be a positive.
| emerged wrote:
| Yea and many of us also keep the majority of our projects
| private. Either because they are work for another company or
| because we don't as a rule give away everything for free.
|
| It would be a red flag for a company to punish you for not
| producing a bunch of open source code. Unless of course they
| are an open source company and that matters for your job.
|
| It would be bizarre if when hiring a plumber you ask for a
| history of free plumbing they've provided for people.
| alexpetralia wrote:
| Print out your projects. On paper. I did this - it has always
| worked and routinely impressed the interviews with the
| (printed!) appearance of it. Then discuss it in the interview.
| miloignis wrote:
| Just as a bit of small opposing anacdata - I always look at
| applicants GitHub/etc projects and skim through the code to get
| an idea of their skill/style/interests etc, and then always
| have them discuss those projects in the interview itself.
|
| I've only worked at a few places, but one of the coolest
| interview things that happened to me was when I applied for an
| internship at Mozilla, and one of my interviewers ended up
| contributing some tests to a project I had on GitHub after we
| discussed that project in the interview.
| ajkjk wrote:
| Disagree; I've had people bring up projects from my Github in
| interviews, and I didn't even have anything impressive up
| there. Even when they don't it gives you something to talk
| about yourself. I implemented a horribly basic version of chess
| and one interviewer had played it and found a bug, which was
| kind of embarrassing.
|
| * qualification: only a small companies; at big tech shops this
| never happens.
| throwaway675309 wrote:
| Small counterpoint but I've definitely interviewed at companies
| where they asked me for my github and then we even walked over
| some of the code and talked about design patterns,
| implementation details, etc.
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