Age based cultural separations aside, I think a lot of people, have a really hard time grasping that experience isn't directly related with skill. There are tons of 'veteran programmers' who are worse than the majority of 20 year olds in the valley.
Silicon Valley's dirty secret - age bias
221–230 of 261 posts
Re: Silicon Valley's dirty secret - age bias
#222I bet many of these hiring managers don't really know what they're doing, so they're doing what everyone else is doing. This protects them from looking stupid, which many people fear more than actual failure. Some of these businesses will succeed but in general failure to get hired by someone who doesn't know what they are doing is, for the truly qualified, a good outcome. I doubt that truly qualified people are bein…
I doubt that truly qualified people are being turned away for age. I doubt that really capable companies are that hung up on age.
I don't. Not even a little bit.
I saw it fifteen years ago when I was able to snap up amazingly talented developers that were piteously grateful for the opportunity after being turned down for similar positions elsewhere due to their age.
I see it now where every decent developer I know past 35 I've discussed it with has some variation of the "I'm not ageist - it's just that old developers are inflexible blah blah etc." story to tell and are noticing it becoming more of a problem as the years go by.
Saw it earlier this week when a conversation with a potential client completely derailed after they found out I was 42.
This shit happens all the time.
Re: Silicon Valley's dirty secret - age bias
#223Is this essentially a Web 2.0/Bay Area issue? I recently went to a Java User Group meeting on the east coast where the presenter and about 60% of the audience....had grey hair. I think I may have been the 2nd or 3rd youngest person at the meeting and I'm 30.... I'm the 2nd youngest person at my current place of employment in the finance domain. I'm hoping that means by 40 yrs old there will be lot's of work and I can…
I would expect Java User Groups to skew much older than the average HN'er or start-up employee, or probably programmers in general.
Replace "Java" with "enterprise" and you're correct. As for COBOL, you're looking at some real geezers pulling in huge consulting fees. 20 years from now when RoR is passe, expect the same for that.
Re: Silicon Valley's dirty secret - age bias
#224I don't think in the outside world, outside tech, anyone in their 40s would think age discrimination was happening to them," says blahblah
That's so unbelievably untrue that I wonder if he cringed when he saw it in print. My father is completely untechnical and works in government policy. 12 years ago, when he started looking for a new job (aged ~45), he went to a recruiter who told him to shave his (grey) beard and maybe dye his hair.
While I am sure that Silicon Valley and tech in general does have a more pronounced age-ism problem than everywhere else, it does nobody any favours to repeat this kind of hyperbolic bullshit that 'everywhere else is amazing! We suck!'.
Re: Silicon Valley's dirty secret - age bias
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm in the same category. I don't enjoy drinking and I hate most video games, especially console ones and especially FPSes. The SV frat culture is such a turnoff.
What's absolutely hilarious about it is that it's not the same frat culture that typifies Wall Street. It's the nerd frats.
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Re: Silicon Valley's dirty secret - age bias
#226Secret? When everyone knows something it isn't a secret.
Re: Silicon Valley's dirty secret - age bias
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
* citation needed
"The other cutoff, 38, has a lot more play in it. One reason I put it there is that I don't think many people have the physical stamina much past that age. I used to work till 2:00 or 3:00 AM every night, seven days a week. I don't know if I could do that now. Also, startups are a big risk financially. If you try something that blows up and leaves you broke at 26, big deal; a lot of 26 year olds are broke. By 38 you…
I don't see any bragging there. Those seem like reasonable and non-discriminatory observations.
Re: Silicon Valley's dirty secret - age bias
#228I'm not sure why it should be a "dirty secret" that the tech world is predominantly driven by younger people who may at times be wont to push older people aside as suits their needs. Welcome to our capacity to be jerks if we indulge ourselves in that direction, as many will. It works the other way too, as all too many younger people can attest as they have occasionally been treated like dirt by those who are older. I…
It always confused me that some really bright young people (e.g., Zuckerberg) can't grasp this: the variation in intelligence and capability due to non-age factors >>> the variation in intelligence and capability due to age factors. Put another way, I'd take Einstein in his 40s over a thousand other randomly-chosen physicists in their 20s
> I'd take Einstein in his 40s over a thousand other randomly-chosen physicists in their 20s
(I don't think I've seen a more clear example of a false dichotomy.)
I agree that age is rarely the determining factor for someone's general competence: someone who's competent young is going to be competent when they're older. Their strengths do shift slightly, though.
Depending on the mission, experience may extremely valuable; when breaking new ground, sometimes creativity and energy are more important. It's hard to argue that there's no correlation with age there over a person's life, even if it's relatively minor.
Ageism to me seems a lot like sexism, racism, and every other -ism. The error is to use those characteristics as false metrics for someone's competence: e.g. "you're old, therefore you're slow" or "you're young, therefore you don't know what you're talking about". Let their work speak for itself and see if they're the right fit for the job at hand. The fact that there are age biases due to the type of work isn't always indicative of discrimination, though it often is.
(In Zuckerberg's case, I would be unsurprised to hear about discrimination given his YC07 talk about "hiring young").
Re: Silicon Valley's dirty secret - age bias
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
Has he said so in an essay? On a HN post? To YC founders in person?
See comment above. There was another interview or blog post where he talked about his preference for young people more extensively, but I can't find it. Do you happen to know how many people over 50 have been accepted into Y-Combinator?
I wonder how many people over 50 would apply? IIRC the seed capital they provide is probably small enough that a 50 year old would likely have that in their savings and possibly enough contacts/credit rating to get other funding directly.
The closest I could find was this: http://www.paulgraham.com/mit.html
But all he really says there is that younger founders have an advantage that they can live on less money.
Re: Silicon Valley's dirty secret - age bias
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've also worked with developers in their fifties who are awful. Me to. And I've worked with devs in the 20s who are awful. And their 30s. And their 40s. And their 60s. I've also worked with great devs in all those age ranges. Proportions seem about the same to me. Good developers are able to learn and adapt quickly, and often older developers can't do that. I've not noticed a difference. I have noticed that it's har…
> Proportions seem about the same to me. Are you sure the proportion was the same? Reason I am asking is because for people who are bad at programming, there are various process/ management roles available that might better suit. It seems rather impossible to me that someone would voluntarily continue programming for a couple of decades and not be excellent. Beyond the 30's, I imagine people would be passionate about…
It seems rather impossible to me that someone would voluntarily continue programming for a couple of decades and not be excellent.
I don't have any hard data I'm afraid - just my fallible recollections ;-)
Some of ways of getting non-excellent old developers that I've observed:
* Not all old developers have been programming for a couple of decades. People can and do come into development late - and suffer all the normal problems of newbie developers.
* You'll be amazed at how little work you can get away with in some large organisations. When you have a couple of hundred people on a project you will find one or two Wallys from Dilbert.
* The devs who have sunk deep into some gnarly legacy system or language. Being the person who knows the right bit to tweak in the middle of a 1500 line procedure in the middle of a big-ball-of-mud project might be stupidly valuable to a company - but produce a lousy developer in any other context.
* The "senior" developer / architect / lead who has been Peter Principled to their level of incompetence, but whose team is good enough to cover up the deficit in leadership ability.
* The large chunk of bad developers (of all ages) who don't realise they're bad developers. Folk can't improve until they understand where they suck.