We Hire Old People • Hacker News Board

Re: We Hire Old People

#221

Post by webmaven » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 8:59 PM UTC

anm89 wrote: post #9

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…

I mean, they say outright they hire old people and they hire young people. So I think you can make the argument fairly easily that that group includes everyone and that they are not discriminating.

I suppose that still excludes the atemporal.

Re: We Hire Old People

#222

Post by jpindar » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 9:11 PM UTC

frankbreetz wrote: post #78

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…

This seems strange to me, it seems these people would continue adjusting salary and benefits exceptions downward until they found a job, or they would find a company that is paying what they are looking for. I know it is a lucrative field, but is every software developer 40+ financially established enough to be that picky? Side note: paid vacations seem like pretty low exceptions, maybe you are taking advantage of in…

If you name too low of a price, they'll think you're clueless or have self esteem issues or something, and won't hire you.

Re: We Hire Old People

#223

Post by gonehome » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #142

gonehome wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideally yes, but if the discrimination is there in the process (by recruiters/interviewers intentional or not) then that's hard to do. People will think they're 'ignoring age and filtering for competence' when they're not totally. If you tell recruiters "this role can only be filled by someone 40+" it immediately forces that competence filter within those bounds. If there is a lot of under valued talent there that co…

Oh, sure, when the entire society is discriminating, not discriminating may require active initiative. Things like this one "we don't care if you are old" announcement surely help. But you don't need to discriminate on the reverse direction, and doing that is probably harmful.

I definitely agree with this sentiment in nearly every case - goal of society should be one where these kinds of characteristics are irrelevant and discriminating in some other way to correct is generally a bad idea.

It was mostly a thought experiment about how a software company could gain a hiring advantage in a clever way (if old people are undervalued by the market for dumb reasons). At least in the case of age the categories are clear (as opposed to more nebulous socially defined groupings of people).

Re: We Hire Old People

#224

Post by yupper32 » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #210

yupper32 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I don't know why you think I don't understand that ageism isn't a problem. Because you're making statements that seem to indicate you don't understand how it works. > 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? Because that's how discrimination works. When you feel your effort might be wasted, sometimes…

> If you're a man, does "We hire women. (And men too.)" also make you think that you have no place at that company, or make you think they are trying to encourage diversity?

If a specific job listing said that, then no. It'd clearly be a listing trying to get more gender diversity, of which I do not help.

For a real life example, there was a Google internship program back in the day that was specifically geared towards under-represented people. It mentioned in the posting that anyone could apply, but why would I? I'm a white straight male. I don't fit into that program.

Re: We Hire Old People

#225

Post by webmaven » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 9:16 PM UTC

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #205

webmaven wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even absent external commitments (which, BTW, also biases towards men), older folks are often more resistant to 60 hour weeks since they've either observed or experienced burnout and understand that these unsustainable death marches typically result in lower productivity, more bugs, bad code, and mounds of technical debt.

I generalize of course but I think older people realize there's more to life than the office and career. Takeaway pizza behind a laptop feels less glamorous at age 40.

Sure, the "you can't pay me enough to have me sacrifice my life outside of work" POV dovetails perfectly with the "a lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine", "you can't pay me enough to sacrifice my physical or mental health", and "why would I join a company that can't figure out how to work sustainably" ones.

Re: We Hire Old People

#226

Post by bsder » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 9:21 PM UTC

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…

VCs want people "plugged in" to the latest social fads--that's young folks. That's where the quick money is--go big or go bankrupt.

Profitable companies, however, tend to have older folks as they understand their industry and understand how to extract money from it.

Re: We Hire Old People

#227

Post by ryandrake » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 9:32 PM UTC

glennonymous wrote: post #136

I naively moved from New York to Silicon Valley when I was 52. Not saying there isn’t age discrimination in NYC, but here it’s a nightmare. The drop in my interview track record since my 40s is stark. 2 years ago, after 6 months during which I failed to get 6 jobs for which I interviewed, I made it to the final round for a position at a startup and was subjected to the usual all-day grilling. The CEO was an older man…

I've been called "The Dad of the Team" and Grandpa at jobs, and I'm in my early 40s. I have a good sense of humor and don't take offense to it at all, though. It is kind of shocking to take a moment, look around the office, and realize you might be the oldest person in the room, despite being middle aged! Definitely not looking forward to my next job hunt though. I understand it just gets tougher and tougher from here on.

Best way to combat it I think is to just suck it up and obfuscate your age. Chop off all but the last 8 years on your resume. Remove the dates. I've even gone as far as getting a young-ish haircut and wearing clothes that feel silly but send the right signals. Might even have to dye my hair soon, too LOL. It can feel like the "How do you do, fellow kids" meme [1], but I figure it can't hurt.

1: https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/13/15966094/30-rock-buscemi-...

Re: We Hire Old People

#228

Post by kbenson » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 9:34 PM UTC

yupper32 wrote: post #224

kbenson wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know why you think I don't understand that ageism isn't a problem. Because you're making statements that seem to indicate you don't understand how it works. > 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? Because that's how discrimination works. When you feel your effort might be wasted, sometimes…

> If you're a man, does "We hire women. (And men too.)" also make you think that you have no place at that company, or make you think they are trying to encourage diversity? If a specific job listing said that, then no. It'd clearly be a listing trying to get more gender diversity, of which I do not help. For a real life example, there was a Google internship program back in the day that was specifically geared towar…

> It'd clearly be a listing trying to get more gender diversity, of which I do not help.

Trying to get more diversity doesn't necessarily mean they just want to hire those people underrepresented, or that the program (or company) would necessarily be filled with just underrepresented people. The nature of the problem is such that one of the current tactics is to clearly call out to those that you think are valid candidates that are ignoring the call to apply. The understanding is that it gets you closer to a societally representative mix of people, whereas without that it would be worse. That doesn't necessarily mean that's the only people they want to hire, or that by not applying you are actually helping that overall issue.

For very large companies like Google it's possible that they indeed do try to tailor programs to primarily hire for diversity purposes to meet some overall goal, but I suspect (and hope) they don't do it like you suggest. Having one program that's mostly of fully staffed with underrepresented people is probably self defeating in that it spurs other problem (the goal should be a diverse mixture, not concentrated groups within a mostly homogeneous whole), and if they do desire people that aren't just those underrepresented, then there's no reason not to apply.

That said, I think we've mostly plumbed this topic.

Re: We Hire Old People

#229

Post by kyleee » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 9:39 PM UTC

zsmi wrote: post #209

jays wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We did this at the last startup I founded. While it can be difficult on the paperwork side, it's nothing short of amazing. It helped us find high quality fits for the team AND we actually had a better understanding of skill levels. We also used it to educate ourselves on what each employee would need in their on boarding and personal development plans.

> No need to quit your day job to do this gig This might be true for the employer, but for the employee, I think there could be serious issues. For example, my present employer would be very unhappy if I agreed to this and I have no idea how it would play out. I'm almost positive it is in violation of my present employment contract. Did the candidate that went for it actually have full time employment? If so, did the…

Labor must not be so fearful; play it close to your chest and cover your tracks. Change jobs if it works out, otherwise stay at current position and nobody is the wiser.

Re: We Hire Old People

#230

Post by jays » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 9:40 PM UTC

zsmi wrote: post #209

jays wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We did this at the last startup I founded. While it can be difficult on the paperwork side, it's nothing short of amazing. It helped us find high quality fits for the team AND we actually had a better understanding of skill levels. We also used it to educate ourselves on what each employee would need in their on boarding and personal development plans.

> No need to quit your day job to do this gig This might be true for the employer, but for the employee, I think there could be serious issues. For example, my present employer would be very unhappy if I agreed to this and I have no idea how it would play out. I'm almost positive it is in violation of my present employment contract. Did the candidate that went for it actually have full time employment? If so, did the…

We interviewed a lot candidates this way and yes all of them were employed full-time. None of the candidates we interviewed worked directly in our specific industry, so as long as they didn't work on company time of their current employer, there was no conflict.

Our time limit of 20 hours or less, also helps. The hours could be spread over many weeks if needed to ensure there wasn't a conflict.

That said, it's not unheard of that some employees have more strict contracts such as yourself and we certainly would have had to pass on those candidates or find another way to evaluate them.

We also had the luxury of being a fully distributed team (pre-covid), so collaboration could happen during the candidates off hours, with a team member that was working.