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Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

oldgeekjobs.com

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Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#61

Post by robohamburger »

kelukelugames wrote: post #37
johnwheeler wrote: post #3

Hi Everybody, I'm the creator of the site the down blog in the OP links to https://oldgeekjobs.com . I developed it as an MVP last night in one hour. The blog looks like it's getting crushed under load, so here's the content of the post: Check out https://oldgeekjobs.com/ if you’re over 30. In the software development industry it’s hard to get hired when you get past 35 and are still “just a developer”. Employers loo…

I find it weird we consider over 30 old when legal protection doesn't kick in until we are over 40.

Even without the legality, it is super weird. If someone told me I was old at 30 I would laugh :)

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#62

Post by clifanatic »

eranation wrote: post #53

Could be just me but it seems to me that for some jobs (Architects, tech leads) in enterprise-ish industries (Big data / Java / Spring / Cloud) they look (at least from job posting) for ridiculous years of experience. I for one (nearing my 40's) didn't see any problem landing any job (non SF area, mostly Java/Scala/Spring and Spark/Hadoop on AWS). I get tons of LinkedIn recruiter spam, and it's easy to tell my age fr…

> they look (at least from job posting) for ridiculous years of experience

Yeah, they want 20 years of experience. But they still won't hire anybody over 25. Start young, kids!

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#63

Post by zwieback »

vemv wrote: post #11

You don't want to be coding by age 50 anyway. Sooner or later it has to end. If you are a young programmer and your salary merely covers your costs of living (including leisure etc), it seems to me that you need a plan.

Turned 50 this year, coding every day although my job includes loads of other stuff as well. One of the advantages of having 35 years of coding and engineering experience is that it's easier to judge the value of "innovations" in the field.

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#65

Post by tentakull »

tjic wrote: post #2

I think that the "Bay Area scene" is different from much of the world. I think that part of human nature is that people like people who are like themselves, so you sometimes get these insular / discriminatory sub cultures that judge people on superficial traits instead of the quality of their minds. From both this article and the tales of many friends, San Francisco strikes as one of these low-tolerance / high-discri…

Working in SV, quite honestly the best member of my team is >40 (I'm in my late 20's). I don't understand ageism at all, experience really makes the job easier and I value that wealth of knowledge as a more junior dev

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#66

Post by bphogan »

throwanem wrote: post #31
SadWebDeveloper wrote: post #9

The sad part is that when you reach that age (31 here) is you start looking at the "new trend" (ex Angular, React and NodeJS) as unnecesary and the "new devs" that doesn't have any experience on making and maintaining long term projects (> 5 years) look at this as the holy grail technology and if you aren't using that technlogy it means you aren't as efficent as the "new guys" so you either migrate to management (whi…

I'm considerably older than that, and would argue from experience that the mistake is in regarding everything new as just another fad. Often it's good to wait a while and see how things play out with a new technology before deciding whether to invest in it. But you don't want to fall into the bad habit of making such evaluations on prejudice, rather than merit.

Exactly. Use your experience to judge a technology on merit. Does this solve a pain point in a new and interesting way, or is it the same approach in a different language?

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#67

Post by vonmoltke »

eranation wrote: post #53

Could be just me but it seems to me that for some jobs (Architects, tech leads) in enterprise-ish industries (Big data / Java / Spring / Cloud) they look (at least from job posting) for ridiculous years of experience. I for one (nearing my 40's) didn't see any problem landing any job (non SF area, mostly Java/Scala/Spring and Spark/Hadoop on AWS). I get tons of LinkedIn recruiter spam, and it's easy to tell my age fr…

Unfortunately, many of those places want someone who grew up in their ecosystem. They replace "too enterprisey" bias with highly-specific laundry lists of skills they are actually serious about adhering to.

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#68

Post by sAuronas »

Old (40) geek here. I think I have two pennies-worth to share here. I came to the industry at 38. I left real estate development when I couldn't overcome the unemployment history gap in my resume, despite working for KB Home, Toll Brothers and on the largest redevelopment project in Chicago history (Stateway Gardens housing project to Park Boulevard). I was living in the Bay Area at the time I made the transition (finally). I can tell you first hand - the culture fit thing as a means to discriminate is real. I will say that I at least had interviews. Interviewing felt good after not even getting an email for - any - job applied for in real estate. I got a response for - every - job applied for the in Bay (minus FB and Pandora, you guys suck).

After 6 months of interviews in the Bay, I gave up (due to cost) and decided to try another market... less than 6 weeks and I had a job in Charlotte. I had my first iOS role at a startup another 6 months after that. Even after the startup coughed me up (thanks again Zomato), I was able to get another iOS job in a month. I won't mention (any other) names but I can say that the culture fit issue doesn't really exist outside the Bay.

And to any decision makers out there, you are making a mistake if you assume someone like me can't fit on a team of 18-30 y/o. I fit in so well, in fact, that almost all of my new connections on LinkedIn are these same 18-30 y/o. I have made more friends with interns than I did when I was the age to intern. And my 20 year-old friends have no fear in making fun of my age just as I have no fear in making fun of theirs. We even talk sH$@! about race (oh yeah, I'm also black).

The experience has been awesome for me as well as them (I believe). So, the next time you have a chance to hire an old dev who just wants to be a fu$!@E~!! DEV - just hire her.

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#69

Post by bphogan »

One thing that may help is for those with experience to do a lot more teaching and mentoring. A lot of the evangelism of new technology is done by younger, hungry people looking to advance their careers. The more experienced devs sound like complainers.

The people I respect and aspire to be are those who are currently in their late 40s or 50s talking about Elm and Elixir. They were the ones in their 30s and 40s telling me Ruby was it. They were right, because they used their experience.

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#70

Post by 6stringmerc »

morgante wrote: post #6
johnwheeler wrote: post #3

Hi Everybody, I'm the creator of the site the down blog in the OP links to https://oldgeekjobs.com . I developed it as an MVP last night in one hour. The blog looks like it's getting crushed under load, so here's the content of the post: Check out https://oldgeekjobs.com/ if you’re over 30. In the software development industry it’s hard to get hired when you get past 35 and are still “just a developer”. Employers loo…

Be careful to not discriminate against young people either. Assuming developers in their 20s are naive and underpaid is just as insulting as attitudes towards older developers. This isn't necessarily an indictment of you. I'm just a little sick of people stereotyping younger developers on Hacker News when the truth is that most of us get great value for our time and are well aware of the choices we make.

Having been on the flip-side of ageism - being the young person in fields traditionally led / managed / etc by those in their 40s or older - I'm very unsympathetic to this kind of discussion. I had to wade through years of inflated expectations (BA + 5 years experience + tech skills = $35k / year job) and put-downs about actually understanding technology ("We old people do the important work, you just make it look good") that I'm rather bitter and sometimes it shows. Well, turnabout's fair play, and this is, without question, an example of it.
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