How the Valley treats experienced people • Hacker News Board

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#81

Post by jsjohnst » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 2:15 PM UTC

ovi256 wrote: post #64

user5994461 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

You shouldn’t list your entire career on your resume, just the past 10-15 years. Also, assuming “18 + length of schooling” is bad too. You’d be way off on my age then too (I graduated HS several years early).

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#82

Post by xuki » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 2:15 PM UTC

shmat wrote: post #68

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" milliona…

Don't beat yourself up, hindsight is 20/20.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#83

Post by bartread » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 2:17 PM UTC

My team has five middle-aged guys[1] on it, myself included, out of a total of 9. Three of the other four were hired by me. I can only live in hope that next time I need a job I'll be able to find somewhere that values experience as much as we do[2].

[1] It's changing slowly but female software engineers are very much in the minority in Cambridge. I suspect, although cannot prove, that the skew is even more pronounced amongst those of us in our 40s and beyond.

[2] Also, we're still hiring.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#84

Post by auxym » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 2:17 PM UTC

nikanj wrote: post #69

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…

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…

> The college hire might grow to be a grand wizard in 10 years, and become a massive asset to the company.

I'm not sure if employers are aware of this, but people staying at companies over 10 years are getting exceedingly rare.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#85

Post by JustSomeNobody » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 2:18 PM UTC

z3t4 wrote: post #6

When I started programming I was very productive, even more then today, but I was ignorant about performance, data races, xxs, sql injects, lower level programming, sysadmin, general CS, etc. So I think the problem is managers see new guys being more productive, but the old "slow" guys gets paid double.

I would argue if you were ignorant of those items, you were not very productive. Someone eventually had to come back and fix that.

It’s like tossing code at QA that you didn’t debug first. If your initial dev time was 8 hours but you have 6 more in fixing issues you didn’t really get done in 8 hours.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#86

Post by arconis987 » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 2:21 PM UTC

I’m so grateful to have worked with older colleagues who did not care about using the framework du jour. Influenced by their experience, we made some unorthodox tech choices as a web startup, including the choice to use C++ and Lisp-like languages heavily, and it worked out beautifully. From them, I learned that it is more important to ship simple, fast code than to contort your system to use the latest tech fads when it doesn’t make sense.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#87

Post by shmat » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 2:21 PM UTC

xuki wrote: post #82

shmat wrote: post #68

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" milliona…

Don't beat yourself up, hindsight is 20/20.

The only one I beat myself up over is hanging on to options too long, since that was greed. The other decisions were all reasonable given what I knew at the time.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#88

Post by slics » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 2:21 PM UTC

If one thinks 35+ is to old to code, well I have news for you. At 35+ you learn how to manage time and prioritize better. Life throws another ranch in your bucket of problems, marriage and children. When you are young, you are hired as an engineer to work 40 hours, which we all know very well that working for startups that means 80 hours or you are not putting good effort. Well with a family that’s not possible, as you know that 40 hours at work means that exactly. The rest of the 40 hours are meant to be spent taking care of your family.

So if one more recruiter doesnt offer the job interview, it’s because they don’t understand what life is all about. If you have no time to socialize and network or raise a good family, soon we will be left with a society that only focuses on how to better themselves and not mentoring or preparing the next generation of smart people. Talent is not born, talent is made and it starts with a good foundation, called FAMILY.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#89

Post by adventured » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 2:25 PM UTC

ovi256 wrote: post #64

user5994461 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

18 + 4 + 10 = 32

You actually have 18 years of experience, making you 40 years of age, and you're listing only the most recent ~10 years. They have no practical means to accurately figure out your age from that resume. The best it can do is slightly help you avoid the first layer of age-based screening.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#90

Post by ivanhoe » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 2:26 PM UTC

nikanj wrote: post #69

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…

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…

But what are the chances that the college hire who had became the wizard is still in that same company after 10 years? It's ridiculous to hire with that kind of long-term expectations.