How the Valley treats experienced people • Hacker News Board

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#61

Post by user5994461 » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 1:22 PM UTC

sureaboutthis wrote: post #50

tokyodude wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it really depends on lots of factors. My father joined a startup in the late 90s, after 5-6 yrs the company failed. At 60 he was unable to get a new job. I'm guessing companies assumed he'd leave in 3-5 years and didn't want to invest the time. I also know from running my own company with partners back in the mid 90s, we were all early 30s except one partner who was 52ish. When getting health insurance for th…

What's funny is that many young people in the industry now would never think of staying at one place for 3-5 years cause they don't want to invest the time. A neighbor of mine is in his 60s and lost his job the same way. He can run rings around anyone I know but he can't find a job or even get an interview. Bjarne Stroustrup, the C++ creator, wrote a blog post about going for a job interview and being told he "didn't…

Not being able to have an interview is a red flag. Companies can't tell the age from a resume.

If they can, take off the date of birth, remove the year on your degrees and don't list experiences beyond 20 years.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#62

Post by intralizee » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 1:27 PM UTC

I think people prefer this mentality when the economy isn't doing so hot. Same goes for people who think they're being treated unfairly by age. The health of the economy is the deciding factor and depending on the health of the particular industry as well. Older developers I've encountered have always been super. Unless they have some ego that tries to claim superiority by "age" equating to more experience; which is never the case.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#63

Post by Terretta » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 1:42 PM UTC

On a contrarian note:

Below a certain age, tooling and practices knowledge is likely to be up-to-date. First thing they learned was today’s ways.

Above a certain age, it takes additional expertise to assess whether the individual kept learning every year or just kept relying on the first thing they learned.

Recruiters and contentless managers often fail to tell the difference, so mis-bias on age which doesn’t cause but can correlate to out-of-date skills.

At both ages, young and old, assess for self-learning, not age.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#64

Post by ovi256 » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 1:43 PM UTC

user5994461 wrote: post #61

sureaboutthis wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's funny is that many young people in the industry now would never think of staying at one place for 3-5 years cause they don't want to invest the time. A neighbor of mine is in his 60s and lost his job the same way. He can run rings around anyone I know but he can't find a job or even get an interview. Bjarne Stroustrup, the C++ creator, wrote a blog post about going for a job interview and being told he "didn't…

Not being able to have an interview is a red flag. Companies can't tell the age from a resume. If they can, take off the date of birth, remove the year on your degrees and don't list experiences beyond 20 years.

>Companies can't tell the age from a resume.

Companies can't add 18 + length of schooling + length of career ?

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#65

Post by ben_w » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 1:44 PM UTC

user5994461 wrote: post #58

humanrebar wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For example, I find that technical interviews for experienced developers tend to be harder, which makes me infer an "up or out" culture. A dev with 20 years of experience isn't even evaluated for normal individual contributor roles, instead they are chief code wizard or unqualified. Younger devs, especially college hires, are given more leeway to train on the job and grow into their level of aptitude and interest. A…

What do you recommend to handle that? I find it difficult to hire senior developers for junior positions with the salary that goes with it. The biggest obstacle to middle age workers who are shifting career is to be unable or unwilling to take the paycut and downsides that come with a fresh start.

Ironically I would be fine with that but the recruitment agents (and everyone else) kept telling me to aim high.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#66

Post by daenz » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 1:45 PM UTC

williamdclt wrote: post #24

daenz wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Luck is a huge part of success. The sad reality is, no matter how irrational is, people don't want to be around someone who is considered unlucky. Especially at a startup. I don't agree with this at all, but I'm saying it because I don't want to pretend that that psychological influence doesn't exist.

I've never seen anybody that had a "lucky" or "unlucky" reputation. Some people are considered to "have been lucky" at some point in time, but nobody considered to have a "luck" or "non-luck" trait. In other words, I've never observed what you describe, never even heard of it

A quick google search "are some people lucky" will show that people very much believe in luck as a trait. Like I said, it's irrational, but people believe in it. It's a placeholder for someone who succeeds or fails abnormally, without a visible cause.

Consider this: You're working at a startup that is struggling, and you're interviewing a candidate whose last 5 startups they worked at folded within 6 months of them being hired. As rational as people try to be, there would be a back-of-the-mind superstition that hiring that person would be bad luck.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#67

Post by ben_w » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 1:50 PM UTC

mmirate3 wrote: post #60

WalterBright wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that sailing on the ocean is no small feat, but my problem with it is it doesn't actually accomplish anything. I want to do things that matter.

Spoiler alert: nothing can matter to you once you die. (And everyone dies.)

That’s like saying nothing can matter beyond the spatial extent of your body. Just another dimension.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#68

Post by shmat » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 1:50 PM UTC

Sometimes you don't make enough money to retire early from a combination of bad luck and poor financial decisions. In my career, I followed a pattern of going to a company just a bit too late to get the really low priced options. I've ended up with dozens of former co-workers who are multimillionaires. I had a family and was (in hindsight) too conservative about when I went to a company. I also was a "paper" millionaire during the dot-com boom. The start-up where I worked was bought making my options worth millions. There was a 6 month lock out and during that time the stock price went from $75 to $0.75. My options were at $2. Did that make me a bad developer? At another company I had options at $7. The stock peaked a few years later at $60. I never exercised any because I was greedy. I was going to cash out when it hit $75. When I left the company after 6 years, the stock was at $8. All in all, I was almost always one of the best developers, but I never made "FU" money. I did learn to exercise options as soon as they were worth a decent amount, but never made enough to be rich that way. I'm sure there are many old developers who were as dumb financially as I was.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#69

Post by nikanj » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 1:53 PM UTC

humanrebar wrote: post #56

zik wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of ageism isn't really visible to you unless you're the subject of it. Yes, it's real.

For example, I find that technical interviews for experienced developers tend to be harder, which makes me infer an "up or out" culture. A dev with 20 years of experience isn't even evaluated for normal individual contributor roles, instead they are chief code wizard or unqualified. Younger devs, especially college hires, are given more leeway to train on the job and grow into their level of aptitude and interest. A…

I think there’s an element of expectation there. The college hire might grow to be a grand wizard in 10 years, and become a massive asset to the company.

It is still possible the older person is going to become a wizard later, but the question is: if they have it in them, why aren’t they a wizard already?

College hires are seen as unscratched lottery tickets, older workers are seen as known variables.

I’m not saying this is fair or clever, but this seems to be a part of it.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#70

Post by mark_l_watson » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 1:55 PM UTC

I am 67, but this story occurred when I was young and just out of college: there was a very old computer programmer at work who had great skill but he miss-applied it. The worse thing he did was writing tortured FORTRAN code that self modified itself at runtime - hardware architecture and operating system dependent binary patches. I promised myself I would never be that guy, read the book ‘The Egoless Programmer’ and followed a different career path from my old friend.