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VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

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Re: VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

#21

Post by frankc »

clone1018 wrote: post #15
qnk wrote: post #9

I am not a lawyer, but is this not illegal in the U.S.? Checking The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission website[1], it says under the "PROHIBITION OF AGE DISCRIMINATION" section: (e) Printing or publication of notice or advertisement indicating preference, limitation, etc. [1] http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/adea.cfm

Seems like they're breaking the law to me, but it's not completely black and white. In the odd chance it would happen, wouldn't saying "20+ years of experience required", prevent anyone younger then 20 years from joining the company?

It is actually legal to discriminate against young people. It's only illegal to discriminate against people over 40.

http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/age.cfm

Also, requiring experience is reasonable anyway since its easy to make a case about why it's required to do the work. I'd dying to here what kind of BS hand-waving argument could be constructed for why having too much experience prevents you from doing the work.

Re: VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

#22

Post by hkmurakami »

dlgeek wrote: post #16
clone1018 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like they're breaking the law to me, but it's not completely black and white. In the odd chance it would happen, wouldn't saying "20+ years of experience required", prevent anyone younger then 20 years from joining the company?

Actually, in the US, discrimination against younger people isn't illegal - it's only illegal to discriminate the other way 'round.

and iirc only applies to 40+ years of age or something along those lines.

Re: VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

#23

Post by KevinEldon »

qnk wrote: post #9

I am not a lawyer, but is this not illegal in the U.S.? Checking The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission website[1], it says under the "PROHIBITION OF AGE DISCRIMINATION" section: (e) Printing or publication of notice or advertisement indicating preference, limitation, etc. [1] http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/adea.cfm

Nah, they can say "the Agile Manifesto was published in 2001, we were just screening out bogus resumes". Of course anyone submitting shitty resumes, who really wanted the job would just tailor their resume to make it appear that they'd been managing agile teams since the day after the manifesto was published. Probably not illegal.

Re: VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

#24

Post by frostmatthew »

clone1018 wrote: post #15
qnk wrote: post #9

I am not a lawyer, but is this not illegal in the U.S.? Checking The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission website[1], it says under the "PROHIBITION OF AGE DISCRIMINATION" section: (e) Printing or publication of notice or advertisement indicating preference, limitation, etc. [1] http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/adea.cfm

Seems like they're breaking the law to me, but it's not completely black and white. In the odd chance it would happen, wouldn't saying "20+ years of experience required", prevent anyone younger then 20 years from joining the company?

I'm not a lawyer but my guess is requiring years of experience isn't discrimination since it would only help, not hurt, the protected class (older workers).

Re: VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

#25

Post by michaelochurch »

ramchip wrote: post #14

500friends, 42floors, 37signals... it's like Yahoo handlenames of the past, but for companies.

83iq... where there are more PMs than products and executives outnumber engineers!

19yearsold... with free dinner after 8:00, unlimited vacation (subject to managerial approval) and equity (at-the-money options on 0.02%, subject to vesting and cliff)!

Re: VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

#26

Post by frostmatthew »

hkmurakami wrote: post #22
dlgeek wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, in the US, discrimination against younger people isn't illegal - it's only illegal to discriminate the other way 'round.

and iirc only applies to 40+ years of age or something along those lines.

40 is correct http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/age.cfm

Re: VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

#27

Post by michaelochurch »

It actually makes sense. It's not about age. Middle management has an expiration date. If you've been a middle manager for 15 years, that's bad bad bad. (Being an IC for 15 years is respectable; but once you move into management, you should make director in 5 years and VP in no less than 10.)

Programming has an ageism problem largely because it's run by career managers (who think all of us want to be them-- and we don't); engineers themselves aren't ageist. Management is where the ageism comes from and it's even worse in their world. It's not that they care about age so much as they want to avoid hiring terminal middle managers, and I can't blame them for the latter. This fact has absolutely nothing to do with age, but terminal middle managers are toxic.

Re: VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

#29

Post by kyro »

KevinEldon wrote: post #10

One way to interpret this is that the Agile Manifesto was published in 2001, so although it's possible you managed agile teams before 2001 it's unlikely, or if you've been successfully managing agile teams since before the manifesto and you're interested in a startup... what's wrong w/ you (seriously... if you're crushing it w/ agile for 12 years and now enterprises are all scrum-happy and you aren't making boatloads…

That was quite a performance of mental gymnastics.

Re: VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

#30

Post by KevinEldon »

kyro wrote: post #29
KevinEldon wrote: post #10

One way to interpret this is that the Agile Manifesto was published in 2001, so although it's possible you managed agile teams before 2001 it's unlikely, or if you've been successfully managing agile teams since before the manifesto and you're interested in a startup... what's wrong w/ you (seriously... if you're crushing it w/ agile for 12 years and now enterprises are all scrum-happy and you aren't making boatloads…

That was quite a performance of mental gymnastics.

I may have ingested performance enhancing liquids.
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