Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry • Hacker News Board

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

#301

Post by CodeMage » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 11:58 PM UTC

oldmanjay wrote: post #247

stcredzero wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

San Francisco strikes as one of these low-tolerance / high-discrimination places. The rapidity with which people flip the idiot bit on you, due to puddle-shallow signalling in the Bay Area really takes my breath away. - The sound of keys clicking in a phone interview automatically means you are Googling the answer in an interview. Never mind that you are a dynamic language programmer and you are writing a 10 second s…

I'm always amused when I have a polar opposite experience to someone's virulent assertions, which is definitely the case here. Edit: in a further comment, you assert an unspoken insult being communicated in a perfectly neutral sentence. I guess what I'm saying is I bet you bring quite a bit of the negativity you experience to your interactions.

I don't know what happened, because I wasn't there, but I do know that it's perfectly possible to communicate an unspoken insult in a perfectly neutral sentence.

I am not convinced that your assumption about his negativity is any more valid than his interpretation of his experience.

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

#302

Post by rdtsc » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 12:05 AM UTC

bovermyer wrote: post #166

rdtsc wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. That's a good point. Quite often poverty makes the situation worse, it radicalizes people and enhances the bigotry.

Poverty isn't tied directly to bigotry. Rather, a lack of new ideas and mindsets in close proximity can present an environment conducive to the development of bigotry (or its less malicious cousin, ignorance).

Well that disagrees with what I have seen. You can say it is correlation and that those are somehow born with the biggot gene can't escape poverty. I think it works the other way, poverty amplifies and accentuates biggotry, rasim, sexims and any other -ism.

This is based on living in other countries, mostly in US though, in both poor and rich communities, some were diverse poor and diverse rich.

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

#303

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 12:13 AM UTC

alex-yo wrote: post #145

wott wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And no, I'm not expensive. I usually don't get to the point where they ask me for the money. Same (a bit older now but it started at the same age). I don't care about the salary: it is always more money that I can spend while working, and at the same time I am not going to get from any honest job the kind of money needed to do what I'd like . The only time I got an interview, the guy wanted me to fill a leader/mana…

During one of my interviews, a couple of years ago, I heard something like "Oh, you're over 30, and you were not a manager yet? Look, I have lots of CVs of people at your age, who are managers. If you are not, then it seems like your employer was thinking that there is something wrong with you. That's why we won't go with you further in the process". I was arguing that in my previous job I was in fact a technical tea…

Sounds like a bullet dodged. Anyone like a Bill Lumbergh on the interview team is a warning sign to stay away.

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

#304

Post by steven777400 » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 12:15 AM UTC

fatdog wrote: post #92

Can someone state honestly and pseudonymously why they don't hire oldz? Speculating I would say: - chose younger hire because cheaper and can be moulded into company specific role. - younger candidate more easily managed by less experienced (cheaper) manager. - wants to keep culture "pure," and needs kids to drink kool-aid. - values power and control over less experienced technically acceptable candidates. - get extr…

Is it generally true that "younger candidate more easily managed by less experienced (cheaper) manager"?

I'm a relatively inexperienced "manager" (team lead) and I have had staff both younger and older (I'm currently 36). Although my sample set is small I have strongly found my older hires much easier to manage. They understand how "work" works, what's expected, and don't mind dealing with the bureaucratic crap (that I can't do anything about). I really just want someone who doesn't mind coloring inside the lines and plays well with others.

In my limited experience, the younger candidates like to "go their own way" and are more strongly emphasizing resume building so they want to make major changes not out of strong technical reasons but simply because it "would be neat" to try it out.

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

#305

Post by dsfyu404ed » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 12:15 AM UTC

kodt wrote: post #251

serge2k wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and people born in the 70s aren't millenials. Really, the oldest are mid 30s, and I think even that is a stretch.

Yet rotary phones were still very common in the 80s, and my grandparents still had one in the early 90s. So people born in the early 80s, which qualifies as millennial, very likely used them.

Until 2000-something (and they might still have it) the Harwich MA public library had a rotary phone that patrons could use to make calls. The typical use case was middle schoolers who's parents forgot to pick them up (the middle school ran a bus to the library) when the library was 30min from closing.

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

#306

Post by jnbiche » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 12:27 AM UTC

tjic wrote: post #12

SadWebDeveloper wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem with your solution is that you already now people, if you don't you have to rely on websites like freelancer that pretty much are the same as paid-to-win-the-bid in modern mobile video games and it's sad when people all over the world bid really low those making the website effectively racist regarding devs that to this for living instead of side jobs.

Also, the way to compete with someone who's charging $10/hr for crappy code is to do what they can't or won't do: * be an excellent communicator * be high bandwidth. F2F, skype, etc. * be a whole stack developer * manage "up". Think of things before your manager does, alert the manager to dangers and problems, give expert advice, avoid the problems. Managers love people who solve the total problem; they hate people w…

> * be high bandwidth. F2F, skype, etc. *

I agree, and I hate it. What happened to the days when I could just be productive? Now, I have to spend hours "working as a team" (ie, socializing) on Slack. I hate it so much that I've dramatically cut down on the work I do. It's not that I'm asocial, it's just that I don't want to be exchanging memes when there's work to be done. I want to do the work, and do it well, so I can spend time with my wife and kids. Work for work, socializing for after work.

Even with IRC, it didn't use to be like this. What happened?

For the record, I'm not talking about being responsive, or good communications. That's critical. I've always responded to client emails within 2-3 hours (I break up my day into 3 email checks). But I find it impossible to get much done with teams that expect me to hang out in Slack or Hipchat all day long. But the younger kids love it. Maybe they code and chat at the same time, I don't know. I can't do it.

Doesn't anyone just hire people to do a job anymore? Are even contractors doomed to spending their days "meshing"?

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

#307

Post by InclinedPlane » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 12:30 AM UTC

mundo wrote: post #282

ori_b wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That coupled with the "have you seen this question before" interviewing is just infuriating. When I interview someone, I will usually ask if they've seen the question before, so that I can skip it -- is there something wrong with that?

> "have you seen this question before" interviewing I suspect that this was meant to refer to interview questions with an "Aha!" answer, that are unlikely to be answered correctly by people who don't already know the answer. For example, I think, "How would you detect a cycle in a linked list?" is a bad question because, if the candidate implements Floyd's algorithm on the whiteboard, the likely assumption is that th…

Exactly. Questions that have a super optimized answer that's probably non-intuitive and unlikely to be arrived at if you've only spent a few minutes exposed to the problem. These are basically puzzle questions in disguise.

In general I think there are two kinds of coding questions that are worth asking. Straightforward implementation based questions that should be solved basically as fast as the candidate can write, assuming they're familiar with the basic techniques. These are in the same vein as fizzbuzz and generally just give you a sense of the techniques the candidate has mastered (basic programming, bit-wise operations, recursion, etc.) The other kind are open ended questions that help show problem solving skills, knowledge of different algorithms and data structures, etc. These sorts of questions don't have the same variance as the secret puzzle questions. The amount of time to throw up a fizzbuzz implementation if you've seen the problem before should be about the same as if you haven't. And the same goes for open ended questions that are more about design, thinking, etc.

And of course you always want to factor in the problem of dealing with candidates who are nervous, in an unfamiliar and uncomfortable situation, and not operating at peak performance. You shouldn't expect production quality code for complex problems in those situations, you should be looking for code that gives you data.

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

#308

Post by jnbiche » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 12:33 AM UTC

kafkaesq wrote: post #241

Noseshine wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On this different topic: I got a lot more relaxed about language after reading numerous books by linguists (because that is their attitude, they just watch what is going on). In this context, I think the train has left the station (as we Germans say, "der Zug ist abgefahren") and "racist" now indeed has a new much wider meaning in public discourse contexts . It now seems to include "being different", in not necessari…

"...they are treating incident ... as racially aggravated" The term is used because the person being attacked was thought of as being of a different "race" by their racist attackers (and because that's the reason he was attacked; bot for being non-heterosexual, or for being a fan of the wrong football team). Not because one is in agreeance with the alleged "racial" distinctions (in the mind of the racist). BTW: der Z…

> In English one would say "the horse has left the barn."

At least in my native English speaking world, we also say "that train has left the station". It's even listed as a cliche on a MetaFilter page on cliches and hackneyed sayings[0].

We also say "that ship has sailed".

0. http://ask.metafilter.com/177148/Thats-so-cliche

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

#309

Post by gech » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 12:38 AM UTC

CodeMage wrote: post #301

oldmanjay wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always amused when I have a polar opposite experience to someone's virulent assertions, which is definitely the case here. Edit: in a further comment, you assert an unspoken insult being communicated in a perfectly neutral sentence. I guess what I'm saying is I bet you bring quite a bit of the negativity you experience to your interactions.

I don't know what happened, because I wasn't there, but I do know that it's perfectly possible to communicate an unspoken insult in a perfectly neutral sentence. I am not convinced that your assumption about his negativity is any more valid than his interpretation of his experience.

And I'd like to posit that you too may be incorrect about your assertion, as I have surely experienced a different interpretation albeit assumption of reality

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

#310

Post by kls » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 12:49 AM UTC

fredgrott wrote: post #279

gozur88 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the company's perspective the job has to be one for which the company can reliably measure your output. If you're doing data entry for medical records the company can easily count the number of patients you've finished, the number of pages, even the number of keystrokes. But for a developer working from home the company can't tell the difference between a bug that took three days of plugging away to find and one…

BULLSHIT! I can damn well see when a issue has been entered in a bug tracker and when the bug has finally been marked fixed with the commit listed in the bug tracker.. So can everyone else including managers

This is where automation and proper process management come into play and sadly this is where many companies fall down. It's not that development productivity cannot be tracked it is that management generally does not understand the problem domain that they manage, well enough to put the proper measures and controls in place to identify inefficiencies.

Something as simple as a software review board, which places time estimates on a problem agreed on by a panel of at least 2 developers and then a process to check those estimations against actual results to find how far their estimation deviate from actuality across all developers, gives a fairly accurate picture of how long something should take and becomes more accurate over time. Further automation like linking the ticketing system to the SCM, so that when a branch is created for the issue the clock starts ticking and stops at checkin/smoke test, gives a pretty accurate picture of time spent on a task. Any developer that is deviating far below the low threshold is potentially wasting time and his/her work should be reviewed, as it is only an indicator that there may be a problem not conclusive proof.

I have worked remote for over 7 years, and currently reside in a very remote area for developers (Key West) and have no issue with remote development. Either a company has these process in place or I quickly put them in place. That or find other remote work as my only bad experiences have been with companies that do not have such measured in place. It's not a hard problem to solve one just needs to know the problem domain, most managers don't, so they just resort to the butts in seats management style and honestly without similar controls the same kind of time wasting can be employed, it just manifests itself differently but incompetent managers figure well they are here so work must be getting done.