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You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

nytimes.com

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Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#181

Post by gaius »

jlarocco wrote: post #38
RottenHuman wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you work for someone without them knowing your age? Do you keep that out of your CV? How about credentials and signing your contact? Seems very strange to me.

Your age or birth date probably shouldn't be on your CV. Unless you think it's relevant to the job somehow, but it probably isn't. Not only should it not matter, but it's illegal for employers to ask about it or consider it in their hiring decision, so having it right there on your CV puts them in a bit of a tight spot. I think some recruiters will actually remove that type of thing before forwarding it on to the int…

Graduation dates need to be there for any role that involves a background check.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#182

Post by WWLink »

sidlls wrote: post #59
greenyoda wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing a language or toolchain isn't all you need to be a good developer. Knowledge of how to build maintainable, secure, reliable, scalable and usable systems is something that you get with years of experience (and frequently comes from making mistakes).

True, but companies don't care about those things, really, even in the supposedly developer-centric Bay Area. Just browse through any jobs thread or board, even (especially) the "Who's Hiring" HN thread. You're going to see a lot of "We're looking for an X developer" or "we're looking for a developer with Y years of experience in Stack X." Employers, even supposedly knowledgeable tech centric ones, routinely think th…

It's because most of the who's hiring on HN posts are small 2-3 people startups that desperately need a new programmer.. yesterday. They're not a team that can afford to bring someone up to speed, even if that person is amazing in programming other things. Which is really unfortunate.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#183

Post by Accacin »

ido wrote: post #120
laurieg wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends on what country you're in. In Japan it's very standard to include date of birth, gender and a photograph on CV's. On the whole I hate the practice, but you have to consider cultural norms when doing the job-hunting dance.

It's also customary in Germany, although I've never had a problem getting a job and I've never attached a photo to my resume.

Really? That seems very odd to me. In the UK I've never put my birth date, gender or photo on a CV and you're advised not to, unless you're applying to be like a model or something where I guess gender and photo is needed.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#184

Post by calgoo »

wyclif wrote: post #152
dba7dba wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of the 3 Linux admins that were above me last decade or so, none are still in the industry. One went into medicine, one went into real estate, and the last I believe became a firearm instructor. None had passion for Linux or sysadmin per se. It was just a job they could get with enough pay and lifestyle (stable location, hours etc) they wanted. When they got older, they simply moved onto different jobs that they thou…

It already is shaping out. It's called "DevOps."

As a sysadmin with 10+ years of experience moving into development, I agree. The only issue with DevOps is that unless you have a good CS or programming background, you need to spend a few years studying up on coding, coding tools etc. A lot of companies looking for DevOps are asking for Senior Developers etc instead of senior SysAdmin experience. I have however seen one or two companies starting to hire both too balance the knowledge but this might just be experienced managers :)

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#185

Post by semi-extrinsic »

gaius wrote: post #173
vazamb wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like "Digital Natives" is a term non-technical, business people (most in entry level positions) use to make themselves feel better about the fact that their jobs don't require any kind of special skill or knowledge.

Its a term popularized by the BBC, they use "digital native" to mean people not old enough to remember a time before the web, and "digital immigrant" to mean anyone older. The fact that "digital immigrants" built all this stuff and "digital natives" are just users of it, is too subtle for their journos to grasp.

The term has invaded the education system over here in Northern Europe as well, mainly for use by politicians as justification for not putting together proper computer courses in schools: "they're all digital natives, they know how computers work", meaning they can work YouTube and Flappy Bird on a touchscreen.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#186

Post by WalterBright »

glasz wrote: post #175
WalterBright wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you Grey Breads remember using C++ and MFC, etc. I remember submitting my BASIC program on IBM punch cards. Using a card punch machine taught one to not make typos. You youngsters with your backspace keys!

thank you for making me smile during these horrible days.

I'm actually not kidding. My first programs were done on punchcards back in 1974 or 1975. I then moved on to ASR-33s (barf), DECWriters (much better) and then ADM-3A glass terminals (heaven - a working backspace!).

Using a text editor today is not much different than an ADM-3A, it just has more rows and columns on it and the font is slightly, but not much, nicer. (Why do the console fonts suck these days? Jeez)

Edit: the first screen editor I had ran on an ADM-3A and was a TECO macro. I think TECO was the first "tty noise" programming language.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#187

Post by gaius »

Accacin wrote: post #183
ido wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also customary in Germany, although I've never had a problem getting a job and I've never attached a photo to my resume.

Really? That seems very odd to me. In the UK I've never put my birth date, gender or photo on a CV and you're advised not to, unless you're applying to be like a model or something where I guess gender and photo is needed.

When I was in the 6th Form in the UK we were told we had to include a photo with CVs. Another reason you should never take careers advice from someone who became a careers advisor!

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#188

Post by dasboth »

Zelmor wrote: post #167
jlarocco wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your age or birth date probably shouldn't be on your CV. Unless you think it's relevant to the job somehow, but it probably isn't. Not only should it not matter, but it's illegal for employers to ask about it or consider it in their hiring decision, so having it right there on your CV puts them in a bit of a tight spot. I think some recruiters will actually remove that type of thing before forwarding it on to the int…

In Hungary, it is standard to include a photo on the CV, so I do that. Recruiter friends told me how they consider non-photo applications secondary to ones with photos, and how a human face helps building a connection right from the start. So my only reason for including my age on the CV is because I look like I'm 24, whereas I'm pushing 31.

Not just Hungary, most of Europe outside of the UK seems to do this. I remember finding it a bit odd the first time I had to sift through developer CVs and most of them had photos.

Re: You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch

#189

Post by onion2k »

WalterBright wrote: post #150
ourmandave wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, "Grey beard". The term Microsoft used to separate the old from the young at a conference when they first introduced the .NET framework. Classic "old bad, good new" sales. As in, "you Grey Breads remember using C++ and MFC, etc." Yes I remember. Because it was yesterday just before I came to your conference! I still went home and started learning what the hell XML was though. =(

> you Grey Breads remember using C++ and MFC, etc. I remember submitting my BASIC program on IBM punch cards. Using a card punch machine taught one to not make typos. You youngsters with your backspace keys!

You had literal patches though.
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