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New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

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61–70 of 451 posts

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#61

I’m 45. I didn’t start aggressively job hopping until I was 35, before then I stayed at one job for almost 10 years. I haven’t once had a problem finding a job quickly. I was a generalist when I was 35 and started down the road of specializing in the Microsoft stack in 2008. I start pivoting in 2016 to more architect level roles but still staying hands on but with more cross platform languages (.Net Core, Node, Pytho…

Why not both? Skimming through CtCI only takes a few hours.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#62
Or how about this. What software projects do you like to work on in your spare time? aah I don't.... Do you ask a postman if he likes to go on a long walk in his spare time? when we has walks all the day long.

I recently applied for a job at digital ocean, and on the form they asked me how I like to be identified . You know, he , she, it, thing, alien, rubber ducky. I saw so no option for julius caesar.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#63
post #32

I think part of the problem is "protected classes". I learned the other day that if you're over 40 you're a protected class for engineering in California. If you're a protected class and you have a job, that's great! It will help you a lot. But the unintended consequence is that companies are more reluctant to hire someone in a protected class, because if they are legitimately bad at their job, they are harder to get…

Was completely with you until the last paragraph. As the poster above me says, the more you regulate hiring, the more reluctant companies are to do so. You can look at the entire continent of Europe for a 500 million person example of this- sclerotic uber-regulated hiring markets with intense bureaucratic rules around who can be hired or fired, who can be laid off, under what circumstances, etc. The end result of this regulation is dramatically higher unemployment rates and companies that are terrified to hire FTEs because it's so hard to get rid of a bad one.

Hiring needs to be less regulated, not more so

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#64
post #54

Can someone tell me where the older software engineers in the Bay Area have gone? I recently moved into the software industry (after years in the telecom industry), and the lack of older software engineers is disconcerting in a Soylent Green type of way. I guess some have moved into management, and others have made enough money to retire, or they've moved somewhere with better value than the Bay Area. They're likely…

A lot of people want to have kids and a yard, etc. You can work on interesting things for a decent wage outside SV and have these things...

[deleted]

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#65

I still require to work in a company where my manager/boss/CTO know much more than me. I'm almost 40. It's really hard to work for a 20-something guy who has almost no experience and is happily making all the mistakes he could read in books about. Still, finding a job where my boss would know more is more and more problematic. When I was 33 I was rejected by a recruiter with "you know, here I have dozens of resumes o…

My resume has always been one page. I hate looking over 3 page resumes. I don’t care what you did in the 90s. No one cares that I wrote C for DEC VAX and Stratus VOS mainframes in the late 90s or the systems I wrote with a combination of C++/COM and Vb6 in the early 2000s. I only go back 10 years. In fact, I negotiated not to be a team lead at my current job.

Not only that, but I don't want to be hired to fix some old VB6 app or write Crystal Reports. If I'm ever desperate for a job I would change my tune, but that's a different situation.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#66

I'm 48, on the West Coast, and recently finished interviewing, receiving multiple offers. I did 250 Leetcode problems, practiced System Design, and Behavioral. In the end, I found doing 250 Leetcode was probably overkill, but it definitely helped. This will probably get me severely down-voted, and I do understand the antipathy toward having to Leetcode, but the way I see it is that I'm really lucky. I get to sit on m…

Love your attitude. I'm of the opinion that grinding through leetcode/hacker rank type exercises does improve your coding skills so I have no issue brushing up every time I'm on the market.

To that end, I'm 43 and last on the market a few months back, accepted an offer within a week of looking, had 3 pending final/onsites (including Amazon Seattle) and at least another half dozen in earlier stages that I shut down.

I do nothing to hide my age on my resume. Since turning 40 I've been on the market 3 times now, each time interviewing w/ 10-20 companies, and only once did I get the sense that agism was at play.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#67
post #54

Can someone tell me where the older software engineers in the Bay Area have gone? I recently moved into the software industry (after years in the telecom industry), and the lack of older software engineers is disconcerting in a Soylent Green type of way. I guess some have moved into management, and others have made enough money to retire, or they've moved somewhere with better value than the Bay Area. They're likely…

Maybe Bay Area companies are demonstrating that there indeed is age-bias as suggested by TFA by not hiring older devs?

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#68

I still require to work in a company where my manager/boss/CTO know much more than me. I'm almost 40. It's really hard to work for a 20-something guy who has almost no experience and is happily making all the mistakes he could read in books about. Still, finding a job where my boss would know more is more and more problematic. When I was 33 I was rejected by a recruiter with "you know, here I have dozens of resumes o…

> "you know, here I have dozens of resumes of people 10 years younger than you, who have lots of experience in managing team

So they are 23 year olds write lots of managing experience? Sometimes I just dislike this industry with its title inflation. I am 33 having been a recruiter for a short stint, I can tell you most of them just checkbox candidates because they have no idea what they are hiring. As they say, no one ever got fired buying an ibm.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#69
It's interesting that corporate diversity reports provide population breakdowns for demographic categories involved in heated political debates but seldom (never, in my experience) provide breakdowns according to other categories that might be just as important for diversity of thought, e.g. age and political affiliation.
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