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We Hire Old People

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Re: We Hire Old People

#191

Post by jfengel »

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…

I think you chose a slightly funny example. Pie crust is a bit of a challenge to get right. Your first one is definitely going to be ugly, and there's a very good chance that it will be tough. Filling is easy, but crusts require experience to know how much is the right amount (of water, of kneading, of rolling).

Most home bakers get better results with frozen pie crust. A great home baker can do better, but not on the first try.

Cookies, on the other hand... yeah, if you can read and follow instructions at the level of a third grader, you can make great cookies.

Re: We Hire Old People

#192

Post by TrackerFF »

poisonborz wrote: post #171

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…

One can probably infer the age from things like school/employment dates, or if your CV lacks those, things like number of earlier employers or tech used at earlier jobs.

A couple of years ago I played around with this idea that it'd be great with a completely censored hiring process, where at the screening stage you can't really see info such as:

- Names are censored or made into generic placeholder names

- All dates are removed. And rather than having from/to date of employment, maybe make more general groups, like "short","mid","long" periods of employment.

- No profile pictures

etc.

But then I read some study from France where they tried out just that, and it didn't really help on diversification. Strong candidates still had a much stronger resume, while those you'd want to help up still had fundamentally weaker resumes.

Re: We Hire Old People

#193

Post by armchairhacker »

My dad is a programmer in his 60s. He has some interesting stories. And yes, when he was interviewing he got passed off as "overqualified".

It's true that software development now is a lot different than it was back then. There are many new skills and technologies to learn, and old ones that no longer apply. But what people need to understand is that old people can and do learn the new skills and technologies. "You can't teach an old dog new tricks" doesn't apply at all to software engineering, believe it or not old people are super familiar with the AWS and machine learning and Agile and other "new" stuff.

Re: We Hire Old People

#194

Post by webmaven »

quantified wrote: post #173
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?

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.

Yeah, but you aren't allowed to ask about a candidate's marital or parental status, and age (at the crude not-a-20-something level) is usually apparent without having to ask.

Re: We Hire Old People

#195

Post by notshift »

Question: Where can I find these companies that heavily bias towards hiring young people / new grads?

I'm 23 with 1.5 YOE and so far my experience has been the opposite: Startups and companies I want to work for only have open positions for seniors and seem to mostly discard my applications, despite the fact that I've been programming in my free time for practically a decade now and consider myself a strong developer.

At this point I've honestly just given up and decided to work for crappy companies for a few years until I have the resume to get a job that I actually want.

Re: We Hire Old People

#196

Post by webmaven »

ccleve wrote: post #48
MattGaiser wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is it that happens? Do you get to the interview and then they see your grey hair and treat you like Grandpa? Do they just not call you for an interview at all? Is it the leetcode and focus on the specifics of very new and flashy tech that is the problem?

Don't even get to the interview stage. My tech skills never got assessed.

Same here. I've sometimes wondered if getting a newly minted college degree would work to bypass the age filter.

Re: We Hire Old People

#197

Post by yupper32 »

kbenson wrote: post #188
yupper32 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Why would they feel unwelcome? I can't but feel this is a problem of you being uninformed. I don't know if that's because of what I presume is relative inexperience in the industry and lack of exposure to the problem based on your age, and I'm not trying to be flippant or denigrate, but there's a widely known and acknowledged problem of ageism in this industry. So widely known and acknowledged, that those that try…

I don't know why you think I don't understand that ageism is a problem.

But if they're in the market for a job, and they have experience with Postgres internals, why would they not apply to this if it otherwise seemed promising? They have to apply to somewhere and they presumably have many years of experience applying to jobs and such.

I get that it's a PR thing. This makes them stand out, and get to the top of HN. I just can't imagine being a young person and applying to this posting (if I wanted to and was qualified).

Re: We Hire Old People

#198

Post by webmaven »

MattGaiser wrote: post #65
ccleve wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't even get to the interview stage. My tech skills never got assessed.

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.

That's because what they really want is a 20-something that has 10 years (or more) of experience.

Re: We Hire Old People

#199

Post by MomoXenosaga »

When companies say there's a shortage in labor they mean there's a shortage of cute fresh 25 year olds who don't talk back and accept bad treatment. Employers will do anything not to hire 40+ year olds including recruiting people from Greece or Lithuania. Enter the great European brain drain.

Meanwhile the government wants everyone to stay in employment until the retirement age of 67.

Re: We Hire Old People

#200

Post by [deleted] »

jfengel wrote: post #191
Alex3917 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I think you chose a slightly funny example. Pie crust is a bit of a challenge to get right. Your first one is definitely going to be ugly, and there's a very good chance that it will be tough. Filling is easy, but crusts require experience to know how much is the right amount (of water, of kneading, of rolling). Most home bakers get better results with frozen pie crust. A great home baker can do better, but not on th…

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