>I launched a job board [...]
Weird, it says there your wife did.
Ask HN: Is ageism in tech still a problem?
21–30 of 193 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is ageism in tech still a problem?
#22I would wager that it will get better soon. Once the LLM/Agent hype has died down and a few years of junior developers went down the drain untrained and unmentored, the demand for experienced seasoned developers will rise again.
This is not to dismiss LLMs entirely, but they always get touted as “they can do ABC, as long as an experienced dev reviews the output”. And with LLMs hindering the growth of juniors in one way or another, I can definitely see a market for “senior” developers down the road.
Re: Ask HN: Is ageism in tech still a problem?
#23I think most of the ostensible age discrimination is explained by the tech industry's massive growth over the past 50 years (means more young people are hired than old people because they have the skills).
Re: Ask HN: Is ageism in tech still a problem?
#24I see lots of ads for "Senior Engineer" that want 3 years of experience.
Re: Ask HN: Is ageism in tech still a problem?
#25Yes, when 50 years old applies as a senior engineer, 25 years old senior engineers get uncomfortable. You might not notice it in any public conversation, but there is still a resistance: * will they be on-call? * can they work long hours? * how do I delegate to them? * are they going to resist new tech?
Recently, I've had a co-worker be "okay" with alerts in the middle of the night. I refused because I have to drive my child to school at 7.30am.
This is really the crux of it. Companies want to hire young engineers without responsibilities so they can burn them out. And there's a long line of new grads who will happily fit into that culture.
Re: Ask HN: Is ageism in tech still a problem?
#26Yes, when 50 years old applies as a senior engineer, 25 years old senior engineers get uncomfortable. You might not notice it in any public conversation, but there is still a resistance: * will they be on-call? * can they work long hours? * how do I delegate to them? * are they going to resist new tech?
This is basically ageism. It's not accurate and should be coached out. Flip the question for a 25 year old:
* Will they be on on-call or out partying with their friends? * Are they committed to the work or will they hop to another company once trained? * Are they able to work within our codebase or just jump to the next hot thing?
These types of questions are ridiculous for both sides.
Re: Ask HN: Is ageism in tech still a problem?
#27It likely still exists but the economy for software dev is so bad as to not be a major factor.
In other words, it’s not ageism when one can’t even get an interview in the first place. Assuming you’ve kept your resume concise and removed education dates, etc. Which I have for the last twenty years or so, since the turn of the century! cough
Re: Ask HN: Is ageism in tech still a problem?
#28get work done, look younger and slice off the first 5 years of your experience because it is "not relevant". I look about 10-12 years younger so I am able to slip under the radar but it makes me wonder how my peers who look visibly their age fare? The job market is london, sector: Hedge funds, asset mangement tech etc.
Do you list the year you graduated on your CV?
Re: Ask HN: Is ageism in tech still a problem?
#29A lot of it involves masking and blending in by the candidate You can easily find an older person ranting against the idea of using full stack javascript, unaware of the V8 changes while still having some valid criticisms But then wonder if their rejection is ageism, instead of the rant just one example
I think the general resistance from older devs comes from the velocity of software in the past decade. I just connected with a former manager I worked with at IT services from my university and we talked about how crazy tech has moved since my time working there. I had the privilege of working on the data center before the university moved to AWS. The entire backend was written in pure C, running on BSD. We had monitoring scripts written in Perl before getting a contract with Splunk. My manager worked on the design of the distributed file system for the university, and is still an active contributor to the distro. It wasn't the greatest system, but it sure was cool. I'd be a little salty too if some MBA came in and said, "we're moving to AWS, Okta, Workday, and Splunk. And oh by the way, we have to rewrite the system in node.js, and these interns are going to do it. Have fun!"
Re: Ask HN: Is ageism in tech still a problem?
#30I'm 53 (physician) and would like to pursue a second career in programming but realising it's really hard.
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