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Show HN: Hire an Oldster

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Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#231

Post by mgkimsal »

edblarney wrote: post #146
maerF0x0 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unwilling to run the same 60 hour gauntlet that a 25 year old _can_ etc. Older people _can_ run 60 hour gauntlets. We're just wise enough to know that it leads to no good outcome.

"We're just wise enough to know that it leads to no good outcome." I'm middle aged, working with some very young people right now, and I'm having an epiphany, because they are running around like chickens with their heads cut-toff, and I see there's no reason for it, they are equating 'sweat and crunch' with 'value' and making all sorts of mistakes. The epiphany is: they remind me exactly of me at that age! And they…

> though I did definitely respect my managers

Maybe you thought you were respecting them, but did they actually perceive it as respect? Or something else?

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#232

Post by bubblesocks »

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…

Your point #3 is the very definition of ageism. It assumes that since I grew up before the Internet, before cell phones, before CDs even, that I cannot understand any of this newfangled mobile and social nonsense. It also assumes that I haven't continued my education.

The fact is that I'm currently the architect and sole backend engineer for a mobile app that relies heavily on data mining, search technologies, and social media marketing. I'm also finishing my current degree (one class to go), and then I'll be starting another one right after that. I'll be 50 soon, and I'm a hell of a lot smarter and more capable now than I was 25 years ago.

Having been 25 before, I think 25-year-olds tend to think they know everything, and make the rash assumption that people older than them don't. The truth tends to be quite the opposite though.

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#233

Post by mgkimsal »

bettyx1138 wrote: post #208
rhizome wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what an effective approach would be for 40+'ers who don't have kids or other outside constraints. I'm thinking they wouldn't necessarily want to bring it up in an interview, since familial status is a protected class and employers may blanch at statements along these lines.

i'm 51 (altho i probably pass as 40-something) and if during an interview it feels right, i'll mention that i'm child-free and unmarried (thus free to travel and work flexibly i try to say implicitly). i know employers aren't supposed to take those things into account but i think they do anyway.

It's something I've mentioned in interviews because, yeah, I think it can make a difference in some cases. (married, but no kids, wife works from home, wife travels some independently of me, etc)

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#234

Post by erikpukinskis »

rhizome wrote: post #165
DougN7 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I'm your age, and I think a good example of what you're talking about is javascript frameworks. Younger programmers might dissect each one and suss out the details like any of us might have done with CONFIG.SYS, but as an older programmer they all seem essentially similar and as far as professional skills go I can probably either just choose one or wait until the dominant one shakes out. This of course is aided by my…

You're mostly right, but that means you're missing an extremely important piece of the picture.

Both the browser and Node provide hardly any structure at all compared to Cocoa, WinForms, or even the Java standard library. Experienced developers recoil because it feels like building a house with hand tools, compared to having a team of contractors at your disposal.

This results in JavaScript developers building their own tools. That's why there are so many of them. In iOS no one writes a GUI toolkit, because Apple already provided one and it's pretty good. People have their complaints but they're rarely serious enough to warrant throwing the whole stack away.

In that sense these more robust platforms are superior. But the JavaScript world is like a giant evolutionary system trying all ideas at once, at almost every level of the stack. Lots of repetition, lots of death, but also WAY more ideas floating around.

JavaScript frameworks all look the same to outsiders because they mostly are. But they are different in subtle ways that you simply can't explore on iOS because Apple already decided where the major architectural boundaries will be.

There are painful tradeoffs on the JavaScript side, but I think in the long run the fundamental advantages will become enormous. I believe the web a disruptive (to native) technology in the Innovators Dilemma sense, but we're still very early on the adoption curve. Only a fraction of a percent of people use the web's most powerful feature, which is JavaScript functions.

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#235

Post by Clubber »

suprgeek wrote: post #74

As an oldster - two things that I really wish my younger self would have intimately realized. 1) As a software person your are employed to Solve Business Problems - NOT to write code, NOT to write tests, NOT to hack on platforms, NOT to be Agile. Solve the problem (or add the feature) - never lose sight of this. The value you bring is directly related to this. 2) People outside software development don't give a flyin…

>1) As a software person your are employed to Solve Business Problems - NOT to write code, NOT to write tests, NOT to hack on platforms, NOT to be Agile. Solve the problem (or add the feature) - never lose sight of this.

I couldn't agree more with this. When I was very young, I secretly wondered why people would pay me money to play with computers all day. Once I understood why, I was able make myself more valuable because I understood why I was valuable.

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#236

Post by Clubber »

vvanders wrote: post #148
Benjammer wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As a software person your are employed to Solve Business Problems - NOT to write code, NOT to write tests, NOT to hack on platforms, NOT to be Agile. Solve the problem (or add the feature) - never lose sight of this. The value you bring is directly related to this. My chemical engineering degree really instilled this idea in me early on, and it's by far the biggest motivating factor as to why I love to work at softw…

That's a wonderful perspective. One thing I feel that's really missing from our field is some of the traditional engineering learnings and approaches from other industries. Nothing made me scoff at the idea of a "Software Engineer" more than when I started digging into some of the EE stuff. When you have a $1M tape out that goes wrong if one transistor is miswired. I just throw crap at the wall and see what sticks, E…

>I just throw crap at the wall and see what sticks, EE and stuff like that is real engineering.

That's one of the things I really love about writing software. You don't have to plan too much before you start to see some results and so you can really get creative quickly. If your thinking was wrong, just undo and try another angle.

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#237

Post by GrinningFool »

DougN7 wrote: post #130
judahmeek wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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.

But that's also experience. There is a sameness both the 'new thing' cycle and the new things themselves that largely becomes apparent as we accumulate experience -- which happens to coincide with years, but I don't think it's the years that are the cause.) From that perspective it seems logical to be less interested in chasing all the new things.

So far I've found (~10 yr. younger than you) that if something comes along that is sufficiently interesting, I dive into it just as deeply as ever -- but I'm a fair bit more discerning about what I find sufficiently interesting.

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#238

Post by tshadley »

danieltillett wrote: post #227
tshadley wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fluid intelligence decline is not necessarily age-related, see for example "The effect of age on fluid intelligence is fully mediated by physical health." 2013, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23540273 : "Our findings imply that improving health by acting against the common age-related circulatory- and nervous system diseases and risk factors will oppose the decline in fluid intelligence with age."

I know this this is why I said there are exceptions - the problem is identifying the exceptions at the recruitment stage.

> I know this this is why I said there are exceptions

If indeed it is physical health that is the crucial factor in preventing the decline in fluid intelligence, and older workers are becoming more healthy (relative to the older workers of the past), you might say, rather, that the exceptions are those that experience a decline in fluid intelligence.

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#240

Post by GrinningFool »

cesarbs wrote: post #194
ijustdontgetit wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it irks me when people with kids think they are better than people who don't too. ;)

Appropriate username? They never said they thought they were better.

They didn't, though it's certainly possible to read that into their words.
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