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Show HN: Hire an Oldster

tryoldster.com

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Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#41

Post by kcorbitt »

mr_spothawk wrote: post #22
JorgeGT wrote: post #13

Apart from the particular technical knowledge an older guy may have, the accumulated human experience (this is, how to interact, trust, judge, understand, influence and work with other human beings) is always a very valuable factor that they may possess, for while technology changes very fast, basic human nature remains the same. In my country we have a saying: the Devil knows more from being old than from being the…

>the Devil knows more from being old than from being the Devil. brilliant. what's the origin there?

Don't know what country the OP is from, but my guess is the phrase he's referring to is the Spanish "Más sabe el diablo por viejo que por diablo" (which translates to what he wrote above). It's a common saying in Spain at least, and presumably in Latin America as well.

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#42

Post by aresant »

If you take a survey of hiring managers they will point to three primary reasons that candidates 40 - 60 have a harder time finding jobs:

1) They are typically more expensive than "market" for the same role a younger person can fulfill at acceptable tradeoff of competency - higher salaries, higher related costs like healthcare for a family, expectations around retirement programs, etc.

2) They are less flexible - they are less willing to relocate, they have kids to pick up instead of "beer hour bonding", unwilling to run the same 60 hour gauntlet that a 25 year old can etc.

3) They have less primary & secondary education relevant to today's enterprise issues. In the specific case of "marketers" - like TryOldster is pitching - the best people will learn anything, but anybody over 50 years old spent their professional training + formative 20s thinking about television, radio, and print - not paid search, mobile advertising, and social.

That we're at the top of HN again with another "hire older people" post (recently we saw OldGeekJobs) demonstrates there's a huge unmet need within this cohort.

I don't think a job-board is the right solution to this problem because the pitch on TryOldster does nothing to alleviate the three principal concerns.

My unasked, probably asinine business advice would be to turn this flow of traffic into a training / education platform where you can VALIDATE and address the very real, foundational concerns of hiring managers around this cohort, and suddenly you've got a machine that can get motivated people trained and placed.

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#43

Post by HCIdivision17 »

JorgeGT wrote: post #13

Apart from the particular technical knowledge an older guy may have, the accumulated human experience (this is, how to interact, trust, judge, understand, influence and work with other human beings) is always a very valuable factor that they may possess, for while technology changes very fast, basic human nature remains the same. In my country we have a saying: the Devil knows more from being old than from being the…

  Old age and treachery will beat youth and skill every time.
I love that line. It's featured in a neat writeup by ridiculousfish:

http://ridiculousfish.com/blog/posts/old-age-and-treachery.h...

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#44

Post by mathattack »

I've benefited quite a bit from Oldster mentors in my career who had Been There, Done That but still wanted to be in the game. Combining hungry smart 20somethings with Wise Oldsters is a potent combo.

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#45

Post by emodendroket »

edoceo wrote: post #2

I'm 40, in tech years that's like 1000. I also see value in hiring experience but explicitly factoring by age discriminates against a protected class in the USA. I think a lawsuit is in my future if I use this for placement at my company. Of course, if you simply rebranded to talk about "experience" rather than "age" then solvelem probbed. Also, age != experience != skill.

Older workers are a protected class but younger workers are not. So specifically recruiting older workers is actually no problem.

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#46

Post by err4nt »

HCIdivision17 wrote: post #40
tjr wrote: post #28

I was recently working with an older developer. I don't know, maybe of 65 or 70 years. He was working on aerospace network intrusion detection systems, and I was helping him set up a simulation system. He was slinging around low-level computer architecture terminology, while I was quickly trying to access what I remembered from a college class 15 years prior, just to keep up with the conversation. Older programmers a…

It's a weird experience if you're a clever youngster. I liken it to speed vs torque. I have to rely on being fast and being able to scan a problem as fast as I can to understand it. But an older engineer will just know the lay of the land. I had this happen a lot with an older electrical engineer. He seemed slow and I looked to run circles around everyone, but he could point to things as a root cause before I even un…

sounds like your approach complimented his as much as his complemented yours!

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#47

Post by JorgeGT »

themoat wrote: post #31
mr_spothawk wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the Devil knows more from being old than from being the Devil. brilliant. what's the origin there?

It's a pretty old spanish proverb. I couldn't find where it came from, but for reference, I lived in Peru and heard some older guys say it. Then in college, I worked in a warehouse in the southern united states and older Mexican guys would say it to make sure the young workers respected them. So, I wonder if it's just a universal Spanish proverb?

> So, I wonder if it's just a universal Spanish proverb?

Probably! The older exact match I could find in Google Books is from 1846, in a Yucatán periodical: https://books.google.es/books?id=VNgtAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA8&dq=%22p...

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#48

Post by jnagro »

jrs235 wrote: post #19
rplst8 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought age 40 and over was the protected class WRT age.

Correct. At least at the federal level. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) only forbids age discrimination against people who are age 40 or older. It does not protect workers under the age of 40, although some states do have laws that protect younger workers from age discrimination. If your state or local jurisdiction doesn't protect young(er) workers against discrimination and only the federal law appli…

state law might have different wording too...

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#49

Post by adamqureshi »

aresant wrote: post #42

If you take a survey of hiring managers they will point to three primary reasons that candidates 40 - 60 have a harder time finding jobs: 1) They are typically more expensive than "market" for the same role a younger person can fulfill at acceptable tradeoff of competency - higher salaries, higher related costs like healthcare for a family, expectations around retirement programs, etc. 2) They are less flexible - the…

Let me try. Send me your info i'd love to chat about it.

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#50

Post by shubb »

madengr wrote: post #35
Ensorceled wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> age != experience != skill Or, as a former boss of mine put it: "He has one year of experience ten times."

Or maybe one year of experience, each in a specialized topic, which are all intertwined. I have 20 years experience in RF engineering, and probably a few years each in sub-disciplines that combine to form a full system. That is pretty valuable, especially being able to head off problems, due to prior experience with them.

A whole career of very short jobs isn't great though. One particularly valuable kind of experience is seeing a project through and understanding how early decisions went awry later on.

Some older coders I work with might not have obsessively learned the latest framework, but they can identify issues like "that's the kind of subsystem that one person ends up maintaining, and then they leave and it's awful", or "We did something similar in the 1990s, and it didn't go so well because it is overly complex. Is there a simpler way to do this?".

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