We Hire Old People • Hacker News Board

Re: We Hire Old People

#171

Post by poisonborz » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 7:41 PM UTC

As a general question, why would someone write age/birth date in a CV? Maybe it's different per region, but I never saw this as a strict requirement. Profile pictures may be skipped as well (although a good quality image is hardly telling much). As a personal experience, hiring personnel sometimes asked about it, some even told this is required by employer/customer, I told them they can drop my application then - it never turned out to be a problem after all.

To note, the problem goes both ways, a teenager can have an impressive portfolio/knowledge and be rejected regardless.

Re: We Hire Old People

#172

Post by postalrat » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 7:42 PM UTC

bee_rider wrote: post #150

ianlevesque wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m just as capable of adding tech debt as a younger engineer is!

I always thought engineers' job was to make designs in line with best practices, which should hopefully reduce tech debt (in contrast with technicians, whose job is to execute and worry less about the overall project). But that was a lonely and pointless hill to die on...

Best practices are a great source of shared tech debt.

Re: We Hire Old People

#173

Post by quantified » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 7:43 PM UTC

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?

Sure, and yet for the experienced devs that make fewer mistakes and things that can be iterated on more easily, they get the same amount done in less than 60 hours.

Also, once the dev's kids are in college, their time frees up tremendously. I'm not sure that's recognized.

Re: We Hire Old People

#174

Post by echelon » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 7:43 PM UTC

pengaru wrote: post #148

echelon wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Incidentally most startups I've been part of, there were just a few guys doing the vast majority of the heavy lifting Is there a way to identify that talent and pay them more? Or find them and poach them?

Troll public git repositories for committers with the greatest number of hours having commits, then audit for quality? I assumed this was the kind of thing Microsoft was already doing with both github and linkedin under their belt, either for bolstering their own ranks or as a paid service to offer recruiters.

Nadella is a genius.

He made the biggest land grab for developer and engineer mindshare in history, and Microsoft will be able to turn that into advantages across so many different efforts.

They're playing at the next level.

Google, sigh...

Re: We Hire Old People

#175

Post by bequanna » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 7:45 PM UTC

city41 wrote: post #83

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…

Is it inflated expectations, or do younger people not always understand what they are worth? I suspect it's probably somewhere in between the two.

It’s all relative and you are correct.

We get much more “value” when we choose a less experienced candidate who wants much less money, but it is a gamble. Are they trainable? Will they stick around?

But I prefer that gamble to the one where we pay someone more money who has no discernible skill edge over other candidates. Actually, I don’t understand the upside to that gamble at all, which is why I never take it. Should I just assume that they will be more successful simply because they are asking for more money?

Re: We Hire Old People

#176

Post by fatnoah » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 7:45 PM UTC

reactordev wrote: post #115

klardotsh wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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)

For me as a young coder, the long hours were less about office amenities and more about me a) wanting to get the work done and b) not having a whole lot of other things to do. I got to work at 9:00am or so, and if I stayed until 9:00pm, I'd still have energy to go out to dinner with friends/roommates until midnight or so. Rinse & repeat.

As a 20+ year older version of myself, getting home late means I don't see my child before he goes to bed. I also go to bed earlier because I'm up and awake to deal with said child by 6-6:30am at the latest.

Re: We Hire Old People

#177

Post by quantified » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 7:47 PM UTC

bequanna wrote: post #165

caboteria wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > 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."

Our comp is above market. And I would call it entitlement vs. “not wanting to be exploited”. You don’t bring your needs to the market, you bring skills. The market pays you appropriately for those skills.

The market pays the least it can among the alternatives. If the younger were smarter, they wouldn't undercut the elder on price, and therefore maximize their value.

Re: We Hire Old People

#178

Post by yupper32 » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 7:47 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #153

yupper32 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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" cri…

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

Why would they feel unwelcome?

On this post, I'd feel unwelcomed as a young person. Which, whatever, I don't actually care beyond having a conversation about it. I'd just not apply.

Likewise, as a white person if a posting said "We hire black people!" then I'd be like "alright I guess this isn't really for me" and not apply.

Re: We Hire Old People

#179

Post by ChrisMarshallNY » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 7:48 PM UTC

apetresc wrote: post #167

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the above. That's why I am no longer interested in working for anyone else. They can also be fairly insulting in tone. I guess us oldsters are too "thin-skinned" for today's hyper-competitive world. We make unreasonable demands, like being treated as humans. We're supposed to ignore mortal insults. Maybe it's just like a hazing ritual, where we are supposed to prove we are willing to abase ourselves for the co…

> We're supposed to ignore mortal insults. What "mortal insults" are you regularly subjected to during the course of your job...?

This whole thread is about the hiring process; not working. I wouldn't stay at a job for fifteen minutes, if I was treated in the way that some of these interviewers behave.

One big one, is the assumption that applicants are supplicants. The constant attitude that the corporation is the "Dom" in the relationship, and that they are doing us a big favor, by offering us a chance to beg for the job.

Other things are obviously bored and unmotivated interviewers; implying that my being there is an imposition to them, changing interview dates without prior consultation, arriving at companies, to find that no one is expecting you, and getting passed around surprised, unprepared, and visibly angry managers, not asking probing questions, asking if I'm "up to" long project crunches, assuming that I don't know current tech, commenting on the outfit that I decided to wear (I have to assume that it is a fashion faux pas), scheduling interviews in noisy restaurants or bars, assuming I need to use the bathroom a lot (might have a point, there), that "face drop," when you walk in the conference room, and they see you, for the first time, "ghosting" me, asking about my grandchildren (I don't have any), making comments that, as an older person, I should "ask for less" compensation, assuming that I'll be retiring soon, and won't be "loyal," (which is rich, as the whole industry is based on SWEs leaving after 18 months), assuming that I'll be an overbearing, lecturing "OK Boomer," and won't be able to get along with the "culture" of the company, smartass remarks during interview tests, etc. Want me to go on? I know that this list hit a lot of folks. I'm not alone.

Many of these issues are ones that everyone has to face. I don't think that older folks are singled out. It's just that we are old enough to remember when it wasn't like that, and that interviewing people was something exciting and interesting. When we were looking at folks we desperately wanted to work with, and we showed them.

I was a hiring manager for a long time. I always treated prospective hires with the greatest respect; even after I had decided not to offer them the position.

But really, ignoring the portfolio is the biggest one. It's, quite frankly, insane. The only reason to ignore it, is that the decision has already been made, not to hire, and no one wants to waste the time.

Re: We Hire Old People

#180

Post by jays » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 7:49 PM UTC

ljm wrote: post #107

nomel wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine this simply would not work for someone with multiple offers though, which could act as a pretty severe filter of talent.

It just looks like a consulting gig with the potential offer of a job afterwards. If the rates are good and the offer is decently compensated, it's probably a fine way to recruit for what looks to be a highly specialised position. Probably not going to get that many low-level postgres specialists with deep experience walking through the door. If the consultant feels good about the project then they've got the chance…

Well we didn't market it like that and while technically it is consulting for a period of time, it doesn't have to feel that way.

The interview process was similar to any other company, but at the end we asked the candidate to do a short project (20 hours or less), which they would collaborate on with someone internally.

So only the best candidates made it to the project and hopefully at that point there were pretty sold on the company.

Did we lose some candidates? Sure, but we also didn't have any hires we regretted after changing to it.