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We Hire Old People

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Re: We Hire Old People

#151

Post by dhosek »

gravypod wrote: post #4

> The hiring process is in the form of a paid, short-term consulting gig that will lead to a full-time offer if we like you and you like us. We'll give you some tasks, you'll get them done, and then we'll talk. No need to quit your day job to do this gig; we'll work around your schedule. Interesting. I look forward to hearing if this works out long term. I'd be worried about legal implications of something like this…

It's pretty common for companies to do contract to hire (enough so that recruiters will often just write CTH in their emails). This is a variation of that which seems a lot fairer than another approach I've experienced, which was a full-day pairing exercise which effectively translated to donating a day's work to the prospective hirer (admittedly, its value to them was relatively low since you were coming in with little knowledge or context, but its value to you is presumably non-zero).

Re: We Hire Old People

#152

Post by greenyoda »

kodah wrote: post #133
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…

> 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. Ironically, in the early 2000's it was the opposite. Something did change though because I've seen the problem you're talking about. One thing could be companies, recruiters, or…

> One thing could be companies, recruiters, or manager looking for CS or CE degree specifically. Someone who is 60 outdates CS and CE.

I'm that old, and I have an undergrad CS degree. CS degrees were already common in the early 1980s.

Re: We Hire Old People

#153

Post by kbenson »

yupper32 wrote: post #129
kbenson wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe it's because I'm a 20 something dev in Silicon Valley? So, you don't like competing with older people? They say they hire young people too, so I'm not sure why else your age would have any bearing. > Maybe it's because I don't trust anyone who calls themselves experts in anything? Some people or organizations really are though. They exist. Google are experts on search. I don't think anyone could support an ar…

> So, you don't like competing with older people? They say they hire young people too, so I'm not sure why else your age would have any bearing. Huh? No, not what I said. They seem to try to say they don't bias against a group of people, and then turn around and be passive aggressive against younger devs in Silicon Valley. Age clearly has a bearing. They bold "We hire old people". They're already primed to think abou…

> They bold "We hire old people". They're already primed to think about the age of their candidates, and potentially bias towards older people.

Or they're primed to make sure they try to exclude accidental bias, or are just signalling that people that might forego the process under the assumption that they are already biased against give it a go?

This is sort of like the whole "Well don't white people matter too" criticism to BLM. Saying something matters or you do something doesn't necessarily imply you don't do something else. They've even gone out of their way to say yes, they hire young people too, but you're still eager to read some slight into it.

What way would you advertise this position such that older developers felt welcome that you think wouldn't cause you to feel biased against?

Re: We Hire Old People

#154

Post by dhosek »

bloodyplonker22 wrote: post #149
outside1234 wrote: post #6

To be clear, age discrimination happens far more broadly than just Silicon Valley. You just hear about it more because there are far more software engineers in Silicon Valley than anywhere else, but it is not a Silicon Valley only problem - it is a global problem. To finish on a positive note: love the contract to hire approach. :)

The contract to hire approach is great for the company if the applicant accepts it, but any good applicant would not because the applicant would simply take another full time job with benefits instead. Especially in today's market.

Except in this case, it's a very short-term part-time CTH arrangement, which would allow someone to pursue the opportunity while still employed and get paid for their time. Better than an unpaid full-day interview from the prospective employee's perspective.

Re: We Hire Old People

#155

Post by dhosek »

anoplus wrote: post #96

Other than "old" engineers which could obviously be valuable - I think having everyone finding their place in society is a great vision to have. Makes me happier seeing old, or even disabled people fulfill themselves

As an old—and disabled—person, I found this a rather patronizing comment.

Re: We Hire Old People

#156

Post by dhosek »

api wrote: post #52
samcheng wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A recruiter from a prominent SF / Silicon Valley tech headhunting firm once told me that 40 is the cutoff for individual contributors. As a counterpoint, I know plenty of over-40 (and older!) wise software engineers working for places like Google. So maybe the discrimination is worse at someplace like Uber? Personally, I value age diversity on a team, just as I value gender, ethnic, etc. diversity. The added perspect…

That statement could be illegal.

Not could be. Is.

Re: We Hire Old People

#157

Post by samstave »

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…

Annecdote: When I interviewed with Twitter in ~2008/09 the manager asked me about what I thought about my previous experience (I was already ~15 years into my career).. and how it would apply at Twitter

I replied:

"I've done a lot of neat things in my career, but I love to learn new things and I always hate it when one says "well the way we did it here was such-and-such, thus that must be the correct way"

and he literally replied:

"thank god, we have hired too many people from Facebook as their first job and they think that just because they did it at Facebook, that theirs is the only way - and they are like 22 years old"

---

When I was at FB, I noticed this - too many people wanted to be the Big-Swinging-Dick in whatever area... too much ego attached to their current position... not enough *wisdom*

---

Anyway - at 46 - I regret how much time I put into my career (meaning directly focused on work - rather than relationships - as my ~26 years in tech have garnered me nothing but lost relationships because I was too focused on "uptime" -- QUALITY DOWNTIME (in life) TRUMPS TECHNICAL UPTIME IN TECH.

---

Now with a ~1.5 year gap in experience... I am floundering looking for something to do, and I lament going to the fricken Nursery to buy mosses, and envy the guy watering them..

---

Anyway - if you need any (previously highly technicals) who are now relegated to PM as opposed to OPs -- I'd love to give you a try.

Re: We Hire Old People

#158

Post by bequanna »

beebeepka wrote: post #118
xtracto wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ugh, cmon. You are really straining to be outraged here.

That is not at all what I said. In my experience, older people almost always ask for above market compensation regardless of experience. We don’t hire people that ask for too much money regardless of age.

Re: We Hire Old People

#159

Post by MattGaiser »

Alex3917 wrote: post #94
gonehome wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also thought this would be an interesting approach, even explicitly. The laws on age discrimination are about discriminating against old people, but not about discriminating against young people. If age discrimination is real, that means that people are not valuing older people properly - they're undervaluing them. You could have roles that are explicitly only hiring people 40+ and that restriction would be lega…

> If age discrimination is real, that means that people are not valuing older people properly - they're undervaluing them While age discrimination is certainly real, I think it's also conflated with the fact that there just isn't a lot of demand for people who are good at their jobs in general. I'd liken it to how, if you take up baking, then on pretty much your first try you can make a pie that's better than the pie…

Yep. I had to demonstrate competence in system design and scaling for my current role. We haven't touched that stuff at all as nobody has wanted to pay for that upfront and when scale has been needed, they have just added compute.

Re: We Hire Old People

#160

Post by bequanna »

chana_masala wrote: post #88
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…

You sound stodgy

Please elaborate.

I am simply providing examples from my own experience to explain why I believe older people can have a difficult time finding work.

Put simply, I’ve found that when correcting for experience, older people ask for above market compensation.

If I can hire someone to do the same work at the same quality level for less money, why wouldn’t I do this?

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