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We Hire Old People

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Re: We Hire Old People

#111

Post by xtracto »

beebeepka wrote: post #82
hkrgl wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> age correlates with inflated expectations: salary, paid vacation, benefits, etc. This alone has been our hurdle to hiring people 40+. I am curious why you wouldn't offer market-rate salary with paid vacation and benefits to all employees. What does age have to do with it?

They have to treat older people with respect, and pay them accordingly. Apparently, they don't want to.

We don't deserve a higher salary because we are older. "Respect your elders" is a very cultural thing. We should "respect" all people the same. We should "respect" (acknowledge) people that do things worthy of respect.

Re: We Hire Old People

#112

Post by beebeepka »

krumpet wrote: post #80
ccleve wrote: post #30

I wrote the ad. Holy cow, I didn't expect to be #1 on Hacker News. Will answer any questions. Here's one you might ask: Why? I'm pushing 60 and I've attempted to interview for developer jobs over the last year. Got nowhere despite 40 years of experience. Getting really, really tired of this industry's attitude toward people like me. Based on questions below, I'll give a bit more. Earlier this year I had a personal re…

I'm 47 and strongly considering jumping from marketing to front-end dev. I have experience with development so I'm not starting from scratch, but I'm definitely not a pro level developer. I'm fine with a drop in salary, but your comment sure worries me about finding ANY job. That being said, it has been my dream to be a developer for years. I even studied Math, CS and Mech Eng in college. But, sometimes life takes yo…

I started at 31 or about a decade ago. Never managed to get past a single 20 something with the power to hire people. Not a single time.

On the bright side, I never had to deal with the environment that breeds such young know it alls. These places usually pay very little and simply inflate positions. Trust me, as an old geezer, you don't want to be on a team of 21 olds. Especially if some of them will have power over you

Re: We Hire Old People

#113

Post by gonehome »

api wrote: post #90
cjohnson318 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at an electric autonomous car company in the Bay Area (not that one) that was crawling with 22 year olds slinging code every which way. Periodically a bug emerge that the younger generation couldn't get their head around. Invariably one of the older guys (in his 50's or 60's) would spend an afternoon looking at it, fix it, and then yell at all the kids in the room. I was somewhere between the two age groups…

I've seen this too, and I really wonder why there is such an age bias toward straight out of college kids. Having some is fine but the whole industry seems heavily biased in that direction. I suspect it's rooted in the historic youth of computer aficionados back during the early-mid PC era in the 1970s and 1980s, and a cargo cult idea that youth was the ingredient that made this stuff happen. Instead it was the other…

I think it might be simpler - it's a lot easier to hire straight out of college kids that have no other obligations.

You go to Stanford and MIT (already pre-filtered) and find kids that are really good. You don't have to overcome existing job obligations, etc.

Then this cascades with referrals from this group. A lot of software/silicon valley companies haven't been around that long so people haven't had time to work there for decades and become older.

Re: We Hire Old People

#114

Post by AnimalMuppet »

herval wrote: post #109
api wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this too, and I really wonder why there is such an age bias toward straight out of college kids. Having some is fine but the whole industry seems heavily biased in that direction. I suspect it's rooted in the historic youth of computer aficionados back during the early-mid PC era in the 1970s and 1980s, and a cargo cult idea that youth was the ingredient that made this stuff happen. Instead it was the other…

Younger people have more to prove, have nothing to lose, have no understanding of the politics of work - all that makes it easier to "extract more" from them - in particular new grads, who are "blank slates" you can train to your culture very easily. This may sound very cynical, but it's literally how big consultancies (not only in tech) define their hiring strategies - PwC being one of the prime examples, where new…

That may all be true, but (at least some) older people have more to extract.

Re: We Hire Old People

#115

Post by reactordev »

klardotsh wrote: post #103
api wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this too, and I really wonder why there is such an age bias toward straight out of college kids. Having some is fine but the whole industry seems heavily biased in that direction. I suspect it's rooted in the historic youth of computer aficionados back during the early-mid PC era in the 1970s and 1980s, and a cargo cult idea that youth was the ingredient that made this stuff happen. Instead it was the other…

I'd venture a guess that (especially in SV/venture tech startups in general) that bias also comes from young folks not having many/any external commitments, so may be easier to get to work longer hours - someone with a family probably can't pull a 60 hour week as easily as someone living in a microstudio with few other cares in the world, yeah?

Absolutely this. It's easier to force younger coders into a slave-like work environment, complete with beer on tap, foosball tables, and other amenities to get them to live at the office to constantly work on the product(s). I can't say it's like that everywhere, but most startups are _designed_ to take advantage of their workforce to quickly "move fast and break things" looking for their market fit.

Re: We Hire Old People

#116

Post by MattGaiser »

beepbooptheory wrote: post #87
MattGaiser wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn. I have no great experience and can get interviews in a day or two. And everyone I talk to complains about no experienced tech people.

How do you get interviews in a day or two with no great experience??? These days, I just feel lucky to get an email rejection back at all

I mean I don’t have brand companies. I worked for the government and a quasi tech startup.

Not sure how I can get calls so quickly, but they aren’t FAANG level interviews either. Small startups and desperate corporates mostly.

Re: We Hire Old People

#117

Post by conductr »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #45
ccleve wrote: post #30

I wrote the ad. Holy cow, I didn't expect to be #1 on Hacker News. Will answer any questions. Here's one you might ask: Why? I'm pushing 60 and I've attempted to interview for developer jobs over the last year. Got nowhere despite 40 years of experience. Getting really, really tired of this industry's attitude toward people like me. Based on questions below, I'll give a bit more. Earlier this year I had a personal re…

I wonder what you attribute the ageism towards? I wonder what actual or perceived traits trend with age that hiring managers are trying to avoid? I'll venture one idea-- Once you have enough experience you start to be able to see the emperor has no clothes situations. Not being naively positive about everything can be interpreted as being overly negative (at least in the bay area). Funny enough it might just be the "…

My experience is it has everything to do with the non-work part of work. Diversity isn’t really the goal, the goal is building a team who has fun happy hours, eats breakfast lunch and dinner together, off-sites with passport, knows the latest beers/whiskey/alcohol du jour. There’s a reason you don’t see many 30 year old single moms in the sorority. It’s just not a good “fit”.

Re: We Hire Old People

#118

Post by beebeepka »

xtracto wrote: post #111
beebeepka wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have to treat older people with respect, and pay them accordingly. Apparently, they don't want to.

We don't deserve a higher salary because we are older. "Respect your elders" is a very cultural thing. We should "respect" all people the same. We should "respect" (acknowledge) people that do things worthy of respect.

Presumptuous response.

I responded to someone who literally said older guys ask for too much and that's why they don't hire them

Re: We Hire Old People

#119

Post by micromacrofoot »

Ageism is a great gateway to get people talking about their personal biases. It's so rampant that most people don't even feel like it's taboo.

It's so glaringly obvious in the tech industry, you get groups of 20-somethings interviewing and of course they're not going to hire someone their parent's age... they ultimately hire someone that's much closer to their own age. You then start to wonder, how else are they filtering hires to be more like themselves?

I've been in a similar situation on the hiring side and people would openly talk about how they assumed an older person would have a harder time adapting, might not be up to date, couldn't fit into the culture, etc (all illegal discrimination, fwiw)... one person involved in particular had also gone on a rant about how they think the idea of racial biases are "played up." Very little self-awareness.

Re: We Hire Old People

#120

Post by caboteria »

hkrgl wrote: post #69
bequanna wrote: post #51

Admirable, but in practice this is tough. We have always been age-agnostic and all our engineering hires are remote. I don’t explicitly ask, but can get a sense of how old someone is in the phone call portion of interview. My takeaway from doing hundreds of these interviews is that even after correcting for experience levels, age correlates with inflated expectations: salary, paid vacation, benefits, etc. This alone…

> age correlates with inflated expectations: salary, paid vacation, benefits, etc. This alone has been our hurdle to hiring people 40+. I am curious why you wouldn't offer market-rate salary with paid vacation and benefits to all employees. What does age have to do with it?

> > age correlates with inflated expectations: salary, paid vacation, benefits, etc.

> What does age have to do with it?

I'll translate: "Age correlates with an unwillingness to be exploited and the experience to recognize when that's about to happen."

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