Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry, you run 154+ sites?
Sure do.
I thought I was busy with ~10.
Show HN: Hire an Oldster
121–130 of 308 posts
Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
> age != experience != skill Or, as a former boss of mine put it: "He has one year of experience ten times."
> "He has one year of experience ten times." Never understood this thing. One learns the most when he changes company and learnt about a new industry, with new problems, new tech, new people.
In the world of programming, repercussions of what you do take longer than a year to full play out. Let's say you join a company, get up to speed quickly (let's say 3 months), and you get on your first product, start working on it, and after 6 months you release a beta. And 3 months after that, you launch. And then you are done, and you move on to the next company.
You don't see the results of that year that you were there. You don't see the results of of long term maintenance. What worked, what didn't, where you wasted time, what was used, etc.
Even the tools you used, you only used that to get it into production at some level, but you don't fully understand the full long-term impact.
So when someone looks at that, they don't see production level experience. They see that you've done the first years worth of work 10 times, and that you don't have experience with the results. That your experience doesn't mean you can build something that works in the long term. That you can even be counted on to work on something in the long term.
That's just one of the ways it can be looked at.
Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster
#123Apart 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…
And in my country - "An old patient is better than a new doctor"
Amazing quote :)
Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
I worked for a recruiter for a while, and the euphemism used for age was 'seasoned'. "Company X isn't looking for anyone seasoned" "Company Y is open to seasoned individuals" Companies would also look for people who were a certain number of years of out school. Like, "5 to 10 years experience post-degree." Sure, that could technically mean a 45 year old who went back to school at 35 is qualified for the position, but…
I always find this kind of thinking to be counter productive - we are all going to be older. The people hiring, the people recruiting, they will all find the same bias working against them in the future - why not do future you a favor and not perpetuate the bias.
Some of these recruiters were pretty old themselves. The had a number of justifications for perpetuating the institution of prejudice. Most common were "don't hate the player, hate the game" excuses.
They were just working within the system, they don't have any ability to affect the system
Hiring managers aren't going to work with us if we send them candidates they are prejudiced against. They'll just work with someone else, or run their own ads, and they'll still be prejudiced.
Interviewing with that person would be a a waste of the candidate's time, and they wouldn't want to work for someone like that anyway.
Some of the recruiters didn't have justifications, since they didn't feel it was wrong. They just felt they were getting their. Their attitude was pretty much that's the way the cookie crumbles / them's the breaks.
Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure do.
I thought I was busy with ~10.
It is not that bad. All are in a push CMS. We have a staff for content and UX. Many sites are small. Probably total 15,000 pages for all sites.
These are univeristy sites so they are not complex apps. But there is a lot of backend code and middleware for pushing files to the CDN and to an xml database.
Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
I look at the skillset between when I was 25 and now (30) and it's astounding. I can't imagine what the difference between 50 and 25 will be. If you're hiring 40-60 year olds you cannot simply hire a 25 year old and get an "acceptable tradeoff of competency" unless you didn't need anything close to that competency in the first place. Also if you're 50 and are relying on a new job's retirement program you're probably…
>I look at the skillset between when I was 25 and now (30) and it's astounding. I can't imagine what the difference between 50 and 25 will be. I completely agree (I'm 32), but what is worrying is the possibility of a fundamental shift that doesn't occur within individual companies but rather manifests itself as a new industry of sorts, and then a slow decline of the industry we're in right now - a paradigm shift, for…
> It's not just technology stacks - even the methodologies in this industry seem to undergo radical changes every few years (for better or worse).
If this is the case, then when someone entered the workforce has absolutely no relevance. What is relevant is staying current. It is absolutely ageist to assume that a 50 yr old is going to have more trouble staying current than a 30 yr old.
> How confident are we that the web and mobile development that most of HN does today will be big in 2035? I'm not very confident at all. But how do I recognize when to jump ship?
Thankfully, these days we have data scientists who examine trends in framework and methodology assimilation for fun and publicity. We have metrics like GitHub stars, Stackoverflow questions, and Google Trends to clue us in on the popularity and profitability of new ways of doing things.
Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought I was busy with ~10.
It is not that bad. All are in a push CMS. We have a staff for content and UX. Many sites are small. Probably total 15,000 pages for all sites. These are univeristy sites so they are not complex apps. But there is a lot of backend code and middleware for pushing files to the CDN and to an xml database.
All right. I'll be honest, I forgot what thread we were on, I was just in awe at all of the sites you run. My next thought was, "man, I wish I could use some guy like him, but he is just too expensive."
One thing is for sure: there are definitely, 100%, no-questions about it, over 1 people who can be reached and who, at least for a few months, would take over 15,000 pages and 154+ sites. (An early 20s hacker). For under $30,000.
That excludes nearly everybody: but not everybody. There is 1 person you can find who can do it.
However, that one person is not going to be over 50. Over 50 people "aren't stupid" and are not going to do that for you for $30,000 and no other compensation.
You can say under twenty people will be "stupid enough" that you can find someone to do it. But more accurately, they have different motivations. There's nothing stupid about working for $30,000 doing a job that's worth half a million, when your friends are earning $20,000 as barristas at starbucks. People's lives change over time. . . .
Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster
#128If this is just for the advertising industry, wouldn't 'oldsters have broader networks' also be worth noting? I would have thought networking to be particularly important in advertising.
Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
That wisdom makes you of negative business value to your manager, since he still believes 60-hour gauntlets are an intrinsic part of being on time and under budget. Hence, you won't get hired.
I'd be happy not to be hired by such a manager. Crunch time happens sometimes, and you gotta do what you gotta do. But 60 hour weeks as a matter of course are a dealbreaker for me.
They are a deal-breaker for me, too, at 35 as they were at 30.
Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I look at the skillset between when I was 25 and now (30) and it's astounding. I can't imagine what the difference between 50 and 25 will be. I completely agree (I'm 32), but what is worrying is the possibility of a fundamental shift that doesn't occur within individual companies but rather manifests itself as a new industry of sorts, and then a slow decline of the industry we're in right now - a paradigm shift, for…
> It's not just technology stacks - even the methodologies in this industry seem to undergo radical changes every few years (for better or worse). If this is the case, then when someone entered the workforce has absolutely no relevance. What is relevant is staying current. It is absolutely ageist to assume that a 50 yr old is going to have more trouble staying current than a 30 yr old. > How confident are we that the…
> It is absolutely ageist to assume that a 50 yr old is going to have more trouble staying current than a 30 yr old.
I don't know if I agree with that. When I was 25, I was all over every new technology that came out. I was the expert in my group. I'm now pushing 50. The latest tech isn't nearly as interesting. And honestly, I'm getting tired of chasing it. My energy level has dropped a bit. Physically I'm not in as good a shape (though still quite healthy). The effects of age are very real.