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Show HN: Hire an Oldster

tryoldster.com

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Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#291

Post by brokenmasonjars »

sodapopcan wrote: post #129
KZeillmann wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I gotta get a giggle. Not that I'm mocking 60 hour work weeks, that's still a lot of hours no doubt. But whenever I read 60 hour work weeks as a big deal I just think back to my time as a chef. I think the max I capped out was 120 hours a week, and I did that for 5 weeks straight before contracting pneumonia due to a cold I got sometime within that period. Never again. Hell...10 hours of work per week is enough to discourage me these days heh.

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#292

Post by themoat »

JorgeGT wrote: post #47
themoat wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

That's really neat

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#293

Post by 6stringmerc »

dragonwriter wrote: post #100
6stringmerc wrote: post #94

Um, I know it's not industry specific, but in the United States, since the 2008 Recession, workers age 55 and older have been the ones gaining employment. Zero Hedge routinely posts the BLS numbers that show just how much better the Oldsters are doing than the Under 30 crowd. Projecting a false notion that older workers are being slighted, when the opposite is true, is not good for the long-term health of a Consumer-…

> since the 2008 Recession, workers age 55 and older have been the ones gaining employment I suspect that's less a trend against age discrimination against them and more a trend that they are progressively less able to retire acceptably.

So who is responsible for that cohort being "less able to retire acceptably" if they've been on this Earth in the United States long enough to reach the ripe age of, well, let's just pick 55? If you'd give me the leeway, I'd like to rebut that there's no reason for a website catering to OLDSTER or GEEZER employees when they're still a blood clot of mobility.

Or, in more plain terms, why shouldn't a person use critical thinking to ask if a person over the age of 55 is smart enough and/or has good judgment if they haven't positioned themselves as able to retire? Does this register at all?

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#294

Post by saghm »

skrebbel wrote: post #136
emcrazyone wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so you're the exception to the norm; you're one data point against... ;)

is he though? i mean, are you sure about the norm? meet a young colleague who doesn't understand search, you'll say "he has no clue about search". meet an older colleague and you might say "he's too old to understand search".

Reminds me of http://xkcd.com/385/

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#295

Post by saghm »

judahmeek wrote: post #126
skwirl wrote: post #88

Earlier 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…

> 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.

I might be wrong, but I got the sense that the comment you're responding to is trying to make the exact same point. It even says that one point that the uncle's age was completely irrelevant to his not learning the newer technologies.

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#296

Post by logicallee »

otakucode wrote: post #170
logicallee wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 un…

Once you find the person stupid enough to accept crap pay for doing something that earns you tons of profit - are you sure you found a person smart enough to do what you need?

accepting "only" $30,000 at the age of 22 is a lot less stupid than accepting "only" $30,000 at the age of 52. people's lives and motivations are vastly different, especially the most qualified, smartest people's lives.

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#297

Post by erikpukinskis »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #265
erikpukinskis wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Only a fraction of a percent of people use the web's most powerful feature, which is JavaScript functions. …What!?

Most web users at best write a little html. Very few do any programming.

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#298

Post by tgarma1234 »

Well, as someone over 40 let me suggest a perhaps controversial take on this type of post: by the time you reach a certain age you should have found a place in life that doesn't involve "looking for a job" or "getting hired". The biggest problem with people at that age isn't that they aren't curious, creative, willing to work long hours, etc but rather that life hasn't worked out for them somehow and they need to apply for jobs. It's basically the same problem as trying to find a date to the prom when you are a teenager. Most people do it naturally and easily so if you are the last person in that game of musical chairs looking for a date, you should ponder seriously why nobody asked YOU yet. Likewise with jobs. If you have 20 years of perl programming experience and 10 certifications in various databases and suchlike, then why exactly aren't you an equity stakeholder in some successful business by now? Short answer: you aren't very good at the game we are all playing. Hence, I am passing on this hire.

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#299

Post by tomcam »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #168
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…

I read #2 about kids and beer bonding and it really irks the heck out of me. This is our industry? A bunch of selfish immatures? Nice.

Ask women engineers if they disagree with this assessment

Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster

#300

Post by agentgt »

My biz partner and I have a recruiting software company that makes career portals for corp HR and staffing firms (SnapHop).

We power many many branded niche staffing firm career portals. There are basically niche job boards but with recruiters backing it. For example I believe there is one just for retired nurses. It is very akin to all the different dating services.

It is absolutely amazing how many of them there are and how well they still do despite Indeed and Linkedin.

I imagine one of the major staffing firms (randstad, manpower, etc) will probably pick up this niche soon. Probably through an acquisition. The major staffing firms have thousands of niche job boards.

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