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Ask HN: Should I Downplay My Age?

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Re: Ask HN: Should I Downplay My Age?

#81

Post by rajacombinator »

mjones wrote: post #79
rajacombinator wrote: post #77

As a startup founder who anticipates hiring some time this year, my feeling is that all things equal I would vastly prefer someone who has been programming for 40 years and still loves it. You're likely to have far more experience, knowledge, and superior work habits vs a fresh grad. However I doubt you would be willing to join a risky startup for lower wages than you could get elsewhere.

Actually, due to the fact that my kids are grown up and out on their own, I am not nearly as concerned about getting top dollar (or climbing some career track) as I am about working on something interesting and having done something I can look back on 10 years from now and feel that my time was well spent.

That's cool, I like that attitude! Maybe once I am ready to hire I will reach out. :)

Re: Ask HN: Should I Downplay My Age?

#82

Post by loumf »

hawkice wrote: post #2

My advice is to play up the experience, but play down some details of that experience. For instance, 40 years of COBOL and C++ has some signalling issues (not completely unreasonably, what with carpenters blaming shoddy tools). I'd probably not talk about the technical nature of the experience at all -- just say the industry it was for and what the tool was used for, and not name-dropping old technologies. Also, outs…

44 year old programmer here -- I keep hoping that one day C++ won't matter, but I keep getting jobs (at startups) partly because I know it well.

Re: Ask HN: Should I Downplay My Age?

#83

Post by jtchang »

sparkman55 wrote: post #33

I've built a number of teams, and have repeatedly had the fortune of anchoring the back-end with a senior engineer over age 50. Experience matters, and it helps the entire team from a morale, design, and process perspective. You don't want to work for someone who doesn't recognize that anyway... I wish I could be so lucky to attract senior candidates at my current gig; they're hard to come by at a trendy downtown-SF…

100% agree.

Senior engineers with experience are hard as hell to come by. They offer perspective and focus: something that is often needed but hard to find.

Re: Ask HN: Should I Downplay My Age?

#84

Post by mjones »

Thanks everyone for your thoughts.

I'm proud of the skills I've acquired over the years and the projects I've worked on. And I never think my skills are enough, lately I've worked with meteor, zero-copy packet architectures, iPhone apps, and some security-related issues.

I'm not going to try to hide my age and I'm not going to try to make it a desirable trait. I will hope that bit of ambiguity gets me in for a face-to-face interview which I am very confident will turn out well.

Companies which are so rigid as to wonder whether I'm "young enough" are probably not places I'd like to work anyway.

Re: Ask HN: Should I Downplay My Age?

#85

Post by syllogism »

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #50
schlinb wrote: post #46

I have recently been involved in a project where we are analyzing employment offers from companies in different markets (SF bay area being one of them). We have found that one of the biggest factors in getting employment offers is how you position yourself. For instance right now if you are an enterprise engineer with extensive perl or .Net experience this will hurt you if you want to get into a young web company. On…

It's pretty silly, though. Node is not a new "technology." It is framework for using Javascript. It is debatable if it is even good. What is more important is someone's grasp of core CS and programming concepts. If a code bootcamper with 6 months of using some fad framework is more valuable than someone with 30 years of experience, why is that? If the code bootcamper can use Nodr, presumably the person with 30 years…

The problem is that the hiring risk is greatly amplified if they don't know the stack. If they don't know the stack, they say "Give me a month or two, then you'll see."

Well, in a month or two, what do you get? Who knows. Evaluating anyone from a resume is very difficult. They might be terrible, but you had to give them two months to find out.

If they claim to know the stack, a bad hire has nowhere to hide. They'll be found out much quicker, so you've lost much less.

Re: Ask HN: Should I Downplay My Age?

#86

Post by annasaru »

bgar wrote: post #22
annasaru wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats 1) A bit depressing - you seem to be conveying that there is no other possibility 2) Starting a new business is not everyone's cup of tea. Even for a young person. Its loaded with risks. I do face this as well. Age does slow down a person. But age also helps us make haste slowly. I've seen younger engineers scattering their energy around, and then coming to realize that the common sense option was the best. And…

Why do you want to stop using emacs?

I don't think I want to eliminate emacs from my work. 'editing' is a term loaded with lots of meanings - especially when it comes to emacs one is talking of a lot of (mostly good) consequences. I would think adopting an editor, such as vim, or maybe atom (or something else in the future) - would imply stepping into a slightly different ecosystem and culture.

Re: Ask HN: Should I Downplay My Age?

#87

Post by annasaru »

old-soft-man wrote: post #26
tjradcliffe wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one of the advantages of being older is that it gives one the wisdom to be more selective about tools. I'm an expert in the tools I use (C, C++ and Python, mostly, although I know a dozen-odd languages well enough to crash a program in them) and not hugely keen on learning new ones. I poke around at new languages now and then but quickly learn they are either a) so much like ones I know there's nothing specia…

Why is being comfortable such a problem? I'm fine with having bled the captains of big data and presentation (thereof) hysteria of enough resources to live the rest of my life on comfortably, and now enjoy embellishing whatever terminal window I'm inhabiting to suit my needs of the moment. I'm happy in vi, wish I'd stuck with emacs, blah, blah. But when you can make things happen in a terminal window, does it really…

What you say is absolutely fine. But sometimes being comfortable can mean that we have not adapted to changes. In your case (and mine), technology seems to have circled back to what our preferences are - emacs/vi as the editor, terminal/tmux as a conduit into the work area. And a screwdriver, or a pair of pliers never went out of use.

Re: Ask HN: Should I Downplay My Age?

#88

Post by annasaru »

developer1 wrote: post #43
tjradcliffe wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one of the advantages of being older is that it gives one the wisdom to be more selective about tools. I'm an expert in the tools I use (C, C++ and Python, mostly, although I know a dozen-odd languages well enough to crash a program in them) and not hugely keen on learning new ones. I poke around at new languages now and then but quickly learn they are either a) so much like ones I know there's nothing specia…

The editor thing can be kind of important. People who stick with emacs or vim tend to be horrible with following coding standards and being able to review and navigate code efficiently. There's nothing like an editor from Jetbrains for tooling (Eclipse works too, but seriously the Jetbrains line is the best). I have never used emacs, but vim is horribly limited in what it can truly do in terms of handling code. You c…

There is some truth in what you say. Variations both good and bad will exist.
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