81–90 of 90 posts
It's also discriminatory. As another commenter put it, you might as well ask how much money their parents earned.
This a meta comment. Many other comments here talk about a correlation between wealth and programming early in life, which really surprised me. I started programming on a commodore 64 in the early eighties, and I don't understand mentions of needing a desktop computer or powerful/expensive hardware; on the contrary, you could learn programming on any old computer with a keyboard. Anybody cares to explain their reason…
A C64 in 1983 cost the equivalent of ~$900 today.
The hobbyist who coded from age 10 because they just enjoy solving super complex problems will be helpful for fixing that thorny bug but may not be the right person to work with a Product Manager to break down an ambiguous project and launch something fast.
A team will necessarily contain lots of different kind of people and I think managers should be looking to understand what a candidates strengths will be (and red flags) and ask themselves if this person could achieve the needs of the team.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn’t have a career in computer science if I didn’t take an early college computer science course my senior year of high school . I had no idea about the world of programming the same way the a classroom setting would gave me and my high school was so poor it didn’t have AP classes to introduce me earlier. I’m in my early 20s. it’s absolutely about access/support.
You didn't have a computer until your senior year of high school?
And no I didn’t get a personal computer until my freshman year of college. Up until then I used my Family’s computer to write essays and did everything else on the web via my phone.
a lot of things are really about opportunity
This is a horrible question that if not illegal, is extremely close to being illegal since it requires the candidate to give information about their age. The signal this question provides is a signal about the person giving the interview (and the company as a whole) and nothing about the candidate. That is, if someone asked me this question in an interview, I would immediately know that I want nothing to do with the…
My father started when he was 11, how old is he?
Not really. You're filtering for wealth.
Not really even for wealth. All of my friends in elementary school got 8-bit or 16-bit home computers. However, my father also got me a BASIC programming manual with it, and I also had an uncle who was already doing some basic tinkering with a ZX Spectrum. Hence, I was the only kid who learned programming in my whole group.
Also, learning to code is too vague. I learned to code at a very young age but did not formally begin programming until much later in life.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
that's true for old people, but almost anyone have access to the internet/computers today, so for younger generations the questions isn't did you have access/support, but did you prefer playing minecraft/fortnite/watching youtube or learning to code?
Did you eat cookies and sweets all day or you ignored those and ate the normal meal as a kid provided you always had access to both? There is no kid who choose hard learning over low hanging dopamine fruits these days. If they do the opposite they are either backed by parents or REALLY strange.
This is a horrible question that if not illegal, is extremely close to being illegal since it requires the candidate to give information about their age. The signal this question provides is a signal about the person giving the interview (and the company as a whole) and nothing about the candidate. That is, if someone asked me this question in an interview, I would immediately know that I want nothing to do with the…
I started programming when I was 6. How old am I? My father started when he was 11, how old is he?
You gave information about your age. Previously I didn't know whether you are below, at, or above 6 years old, now I know. What if some poor chap started when he was 54?