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Ask HN: Over 60 = no engineering jobs?

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Re: Ask HN: Over 60 = no engineering jobs?

#131

Post by duxup »

anonzzzz wrote: post #106
duxup wrote: post #8

Heck I'm only over 40. I did a handful of interviews at places where folks who I went to school with also interviewed. I got a lot of "culture" questions. My younger classmates, did not hear the world "culture" in their interviews, ever. It's hard not to be pessimistic and assume "culture" was about age...

I worked at an HR tech startup that did recruiting services for a lot of seed/series A companies. Maximum ages for roles were discussed openly and nobody even considered the possibility doing so might be illegal.

Yeah a coworker of mine looking for a tech job in a different industry had someone straight up tell them they were worried he was too old.... dude wasn't that old. When he mentioned it to the recruiter she didn't even seem to think it was an odd thing to say... so she repeated it.

Re: Ask HN: Over 60 = no engineering jobs?

#132

Post by iLemming »

codewritinfool wrote: post #10

Interested in moving to St. Louis? I'd like to talk to you.

I met many developers at StrangeLoop that looked to be in their 50s and 60s. And they live in the area. What makes St. Louis so special that older software engineers choose to live there?

Re: Ask HN: Over 60 = no engineering jobs?

#133

Post by newnewpdro »

heydonovan wrote: post #112
C1sc0cat wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LinkedIn my last job search I hardly did any direct job searches and I am hem hem close to 60

LinkedIn has been completely useless for me. Not a single time has it been acceptable. I'll link it in an email, and people will ask for me to send a PDF instead. Got a few complaints when I used the "Save as PDF" feature, since it was obviously generated from LinkedIn. shrugs

It depends on if you're feeding into an HR/sourcing machine or actually talking with the decision makers.

The former is just following a script and wants your information in a specific format because that's what the automation demands.

The latter is a person who you will either work with or under, they don't care.

The latter is the preferable path in my opinion, and personally use the "send me your resume in a specific format" request as a reason to cease contact because of all it implies.

Re: Ask HN: Over 60 = no engineering jobs?

#136

Post by codingdave »

AlexanderNull wrote: post #127

Very current knowledge is one of the main things I look for when evaluating a potential hire. It not only hints at an ability to learn, but also at a passion for the industry. I think that's where a lot of ageism comes in to play. I personally worked at two enterprise dev shops where the older engineers didn't give a hoot past what they had learned years ago and managed to stay writing ever since. Their code might po…

> it also was slower, had a hell of a lot of unnecessary boilerplate, was a pain to navigate, and couldn't actually do much anything impressive because it was working with such a minimal toolset.

Funny, that is the same impression I get from younger coders' work who haven't been around much, only know one narrow stack, and start from the boilerplate that you can get from various CLIs.

Maybe age has nothing to do with it and there is simply a variety in skill level no matter how long you have been doing this?

Re: Ask HN: Over 60 = no engineering jobs?

#137

Post by kareemsabri »

I think a lot of startups are, frankly, ageist. They worry about "culture fit" from an older guy. There's a lot of twenty-something running around. They may also worry you don't want to put in the late nights and long hours they want due to perhaps family obligations, or that you may want more than they can afford to pay.

If you're still on the market, we're hiring, and not ageist. I'm the CTO, 34.

Re: Ask HN: Over 60 = no engineering jobs?

#139

Post by Mononokay »

austincheney wrote: post #63

Abandon the Bay Area. It seems to me that ethnocentricity is rampant in the bay as a sub cultural norm. For example the Bay Area is big on tolerance, but if you choose to voice political concerns that challenges the area’s popularity you will be silently shunned and ignored which counter-intuitively is intolerance. As a solid example review the firing of Brendan Eich from Mozilla. This kind of self-satisfying inward-…

Eich's donations to causes restricted the freedom of his employees. That's generally considered a "no-no" when it comes to being liked by your employees. Shockingly, they may even protest it.

Re: Ask HN: Over 60 = no engineering jobs?

#140

Post by rwmj »

joewee wrote: post #82
klaw123 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are companies that take this the other way. Companies where everyone is over 40 and has kids. And stability of the prod systems is highly prized. Nobody wants hackathons , we all leave at 5:30pm each day. These companies exist in Bay Area.

Care to list a few for those who might be looking for something like that?

The team I work for at Red Hat has many older developers with children.
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