I wish more ads said that the company hires old people. I work in the pharmaceutical industry at a company where the CSO stated he didn’t want anyone over 50 working there. If you are over 50, you won’t be promoted and they want to push you out the door while hiring inexperienced younger people to be leaders. These people make a lot of mistakes and often have poor judgement as well as a terrible work ethic. But they did go to an ivy league school!
If I had my own company, I’d be damm sure to only hire those over 40. And perhaps only those who didn’t go to an Ivy.
We Hire Old People
251–260 of 303 posts
Re: We Hire Old People
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 "…
When I'm feeling generous, I would guess the company doesn't want to spend the money required to compensate people with that level of experience.
That's not the issue, as an older dev I'm willing to work for the industry standard wage. Sr. Engineer is Sr. Engineer.
Re: We Hire Old People
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
It appears that undergrad CS degrees were a thing by the early 1970s: > 1973 Two-hundred B.S. degrees awarded [1] https://www.cs.purdue.edu/history/table1.html PS - Purdue is the oldest CS department in the US, though perhaps another university started an undergrad program earlier?
At UF they had been maintaining and operating the duplicate "backup" full IBM mainframe system for the Apollo program at Cape Canaveral, and offering degree programs for some time by then.
At Nova they had the big iron too even though there were only 11 students.
There's more to the story on that one.
Re: We Hire Old People
#254Question: 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…
Junior positions can be difficult to come by as well. We can’t all be 28. What are these people thinking?
Re: We Hire Old People
#255I 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 her…
While I understand your attempts to make yourself look younger, I really find this cruel to a degree. No body should pretend to be something they are not, just for a job.
As some one who is in late 30s, I fail to understand why any young person should make fun of old people.
What do these young people plan to do about their own age? To prevent aging do they plan to die early?
Re: We Hire Old People
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
> If I can hire someone to do the same work at the same quality level for less money, why wouldn’t I do this?
That makes sense. But what if the older developer has more experience and can demonstrate greater skill? People tend to become more skilled with more experience, and having been exposed to different technologies gives one a larger perspective to base decisions on. Also helps with challenging bugs, and knowing what sort of leaky abstractions the tower of modern software is built on top of.
The comments above tend to be about refusing to even consider hiring developers over a certain age despite whatever experience and skills they have, or treating them poorly because they are older.
Re: We Hire Old People
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I'd like to see numbers on how many companies actually have beer on tap, or foosball/ping-pong tables at work in 2021. I worked at a place with a foosball and ping-pong table in 2018, but they were infrequently used, and when they were in use, it was always the same three guys.
I recall a ping-pong table at an IBM branch office 55 years ago but it was only used at lunch hour. As a consultant at dozens of companies, I've seen a lot of neat perks especially in Silicon Valley but no beer taps.
Re: We Hire Old People
#258In theory, us older folk are cheaper because we have Medicare. Short term memory is reduced, but good note taking and Prevegin fixes that. I have fond memories of older programers when I was a 20 something. Code is more than algorithms.
Re: We Hire Old People
#259Why do I feel uncomfortable with this listing? Maybe it's because I'm a 20 something dev in Silicon Valley? Maybe it's because I don't trust anyone who calls themselves experts in anything? Maybe it's because I work with plenty of "older" devs in Silicon Valley? Or that I think the two-jobs-at-once hiring process is horrible? I probably shouldn't feel uncomfortable with it, but I do. I guess the ad isn't for me, thou…
I'm old as well and I'm uncomfortable with it. The tone is kind of passive-aggressive and although this extended temp-to-hire thing is paid, it also rubs me the wrong way; like you, I can't completely say why. I'd be curious to see if it works for people, though (I kind of suspect it won't because of the time investment involved but who knows). It's also hard to explain but by coupling the "we hire old people" with "…
They’re looking for a very specific skill set. Just any good coder is not gonna do.
Contracts are tailor-made for this situation. Great way to get started at low risk to both parties.
Re: We Hire Old People
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Younger folks do not deliver the same quality, and go on unproductive goose/chases a lot more often. It takes years to develop the detail-oriented skills of quality software delivery. I know because I was one of them.
Would you say a new culinary grad delivered the same quality pizza as Jeff Varasano, who’s been honing a craft for multiple decades?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28296260
Now if you’re in a field that doesn’t require high quality, then cheaper makes sense. Let the market decide. Unfortunately it is inefficient due to biases. Oldies know their cv has a good chance of hitting the bin without a further look, if they have the grey hairs of experience.