How the Valley treats experienced people • Hacker News Board

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#201

Post by zrobotics » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 4:17 PM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #137

I dunno. Maybe it's because I was just sitting here reading Ian Stewart's chapter on Sally Clark and pondering probability, but I rather suspect that the probability that you're over 50 and suck is much higher than the probability that you are over 50 and are a badass. Mostly because the probability that you suck is incredibly high. And I'm saying this as someone who is over 50, with a phd, a bunch of programming lan…

I would agree with you that likely the majority of people over 50 do 'suck'.

But... so do the majority of people under 50. Somehow, things still get built and projects get finished. Fetishizing the rare genius doesn't help anyone, since by definition they are a rarity. How, exactly, does age make for worse employees? Since this discussion is about ageism specifically, and not that 90% of everything is crap.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#202

Post by humanrebar » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 4:18 PM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #194

nikanj wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm going to assert without evidence that no one in this industry is thinking 3 years out, much less 10. Heck, the chance someone you hire today is going to be working for your company in 10 years approximates 0.

Why ever hire people with no experience then?

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#203

Post by shmat » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 4:18 PM UTC

curun1r wrote: post #157

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…

Also, sometimes you don't make enough for early retirement because...gasp...you don't prioritize money over everything else. Some of us have tried to use our talents to do things that are socially responsible. Whether it's doing something in the non-profit space, working on a company that targets the underprivileged, something to do with the environment or anything along those lines, not everyone is comfortable invad…

Good for you. We need more people to work on these kinds of problems. I admit that I was not altruistic. In my defense, I've given a lot to charities over the decades.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#204

Post by throwaway713 » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 4:19 PM UTC

galangalalgol wrote: post #184

marktangotango wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The distinction between valley culture and everywhere else is never made in these pieces which is a pity. I work in fortune 500s and we’re all 40+ in these companies. I rarely see 20s.

I too work in a fortune 500 outside the valley. Occasionally I wonder why we lose so many young coders good and bad to SV. I'll then go check salaries using a job hunting site for the same positions in SV and they pay the same or less after adjusting for cost of living. Is there some magic pool of jobs there that let you retired after 10 years that I am not seeing? I'm coming up on 20 years of writing c++ and I'm not…

> I'll then go check salaries using a job hunting site for the same positions in SV and they pay the same or less after adjusting for cost of living

That's the problem. Salaries on job hunting sites are wildly inaccurate. Glassdoor lists FANG compensation as 2-3x less than what they actually pay.

Also, the important metric isn't COL adjusted income; it's the total amount of money that's left over to save/invest after all other expenses. So it doesn't matter that CA has high income tax or that rent costs $50k per year when you're still able to save significantly more than anywhere else in the U.S.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#205

Post by cenal » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 4:19 PM UTC

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #181

j45 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's fewer kids born today, there's a likelihood of fewer coders in 20 years.

On the other hand, 1 person who knows AWS well today can do things that would take huge capital investments and a team of 40 people 20 years ago

True but you can roll your own infrastructure for much less than it cost 20 years ago. Smart companies rely on cloud up to a tipping point. Then it becomes more cost effective to put in your own infrastructure. AWS and other cloud providers lure customers in with low costs but they get stuck paying a fortune as they start scaling.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#206

Post by rayiner » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 4:19 PM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #183

aklemm wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very well-said! Wouldn't it be nice if we knew going in which companies understand this? I'd like to see more companies state these ideas explicitly in their values.

Sounds discriminatory against ppl who don't have kids and are over 40. 'work to death when you are young or raise family when you are old' is not a good 'value', imo. Your employer shouldn't have some 'values' about what you do outside work.

> Sounds discriminatory against ppl who don't have kids and are over 40.

The economy ceases to exist if, in the long run, couples don't have at least 2.1 kids on average. People are free to not have kids, of course, but having them serves an essential social function and it's not "discriminatory" to have values that accommodate that.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#207

Post by raptordamus » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 4:21 PM UTC

I saw people quoting Charlie Munger. Munger has done extensive study on the topic of incentives. If you want to know why Silicon Valley is so discriminating towards experienced people you should ask what their incentives are.

Startups are incentivized to hire the cheapest, youngest, most naive engineers possible, work them as hard as possible then flip them. If you are old you are no longer cheap or naive. If you aren’t naive, you are unlikely to work 80 hours a week. You can no longer be flipped.

Silicon Valley startups want Ivy League type executives. Why? Because the investors trust them more. Humans give money to people who resemble themselves. Ivy League VC give money to Ivy League executives.

Joining a startup has a very low probability of making you rich. In fact, they are specifically designed not to make you rich as an engineer.

To make matters worse, you have to spend 3-5 years of life you will never get back trying to get the lottery payout.

You getting rich as a non founder at a startup means the executives and venture capitalists miscalculated something. Why would they pay you a cent more than they need to? There are plenty of people in the valley who will now work for just their base salary and nothing more. Why should they give you a single dime more than this?

If you are a typical high functioning aspergers engineer, you are better off using your skills to become a quant or a trader in the finance industry. Teach yourself.

The tools have advanced to a point where anyone can access huge amounts of leverage.

I was an engineer for a long time and I realized that all sides of this is a losing game. All I want is to be left alone and financially independent.

Big companies are just as bad, except they don’t pretend there is a chance you will get rich.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#208

Post by romeisendcoming » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 4:21 PM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #137

I dunno. Maybe it's because I was just sitting here reading Ian Stewart's chapter on Sally Clark and pondering probability, but I rather suspect that the probability that you're over 50 and suck is much higher than the probability that you are over 50 and are a badass. Mostly because the probability that you suck is incredibly high. And I'm saying this as someone who is over 50, with a phd, a bunch of programming lan…

There are a couple problems with your post coming from a 50+ year old.

* Statistics and probability. * PHD,blog posts, > 2 PL and github in the wild = respectable technical resume. * Badass is as badass does.

I work with CS PHDs who are great with math->algo mappings, pattern recognition and data structures that couldn't build a scalable system in fifteen years. Instead you'd end up with some cloud struck monstrosity. I worked with ex auto mechanics who were so quick and deft with hardware, components and diagnostics that they could run/build a DC by themselves. Which is the badass?

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#209

Post by ghaff » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 4:22 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #196

I'm one of those people who doesn't have to work, but I do because I enjoy it. I moved to the silicon valley nine years ago, and in that time I've done half a dozen or so job interviews. I got no offers, so now I run my own company. It was different story each time, but the upshot (IMHO) is that the interview process seemed to assume that I was a fresh-out undergrad. In one case, they asked me to debug some Ruby code…

>I really don't understand why more companies don't do that.

In part, because it doesn't really work for most currently employed people and may even be in violation of their employment contract. Where appropriate it can be a good approach, but it probably makes more sense for people who are already consultants/contractors exploring a full-time opportunity.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#210

Post by zrobotics » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 4:22 PM UTC

opportune wrote: post #109

I think I must be one of the younger people on this site because while I agree ageism is a bad thing in the sense that age should simply not be a factor when it comes to hiring/pay, and that experience is good, I also have direct experience working with older developers who didn’t know the new tools we were trying to use (in my case, AI and big data) very well and so weren’t any more productive / were less productive…

But that has nothing to do with age, and everything to do with poor skills-fit. Because someone fresh out of a CS program won't be all that much better. You admitted that there are cases where experience helps, but some team members don't have that experience.

Isolate for variables, don't compare apples to oranges. You are comparing older engineers without relevant experience to "younger people who were more experienced within that subject area." What about younger engineers who aren't experienced? I suspect their performance will be equally poor, if not worse.