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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?

#91

Post by justinY »

emidln wrote: post #19
el_fuser wrote: post #13

Not only is it blatantly ageist... It's stupid. They want someone that has been building engineering organizations for 5-12 years, after having been an individual contributor. Then , they want you to drop back into an individual contributor role. At least initially. Wink wink nudge nudge.

It's not ageist. It doesn't say People who are 50 need not apply. From reading this job posting, someone who is 80, worked as a mechanic, a waiter, a clerk, and then picked up some newfangled technology might qualify. Besides the whole Agile not being codified for more than 12 years thing, if you've been out of the loop managing for 12 years, they say they don't want you. Part of the process apparently involves showi…

Thank you sir.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6043188

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

#92

Post by zpk »

krapp wrote: post #80
zpk wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate the fact you have to say that...it pisses me off to hear this. I was lucky I had minimal loans, and school was 1/2 the cost. If I can give a word of advice, spend less on car #1 and attack that loan, pay it off. Get to 0 debt.

Yeah, what can I say? Times are strange, and fatalism leads one to take risks.

I hear ya...more and more, I think our industry needs to unionize.

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

#93

Post by justinY »

zpk wrote: post #70

Hey right over here everyone!!! This is called ageism. If you write code and you are over 35, you are toast. Yes even you the "above average coder"...done and done. Now wait till that immigration bill passes, make 150k? GOOD ___ing BYE.

that is not true...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6043188

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

#94

Post by dlss »

[deleted] wrote: post #68
geuis wrote: post #58

This is going to probably bite me in the ass because I'm looking for work at the moment and occasionally apply to interesting YC companies but since this has come up, I'm going to share my story here because of the negative experience I had with the company in question. I had a phone screen with 500friends recently. They were late calling me, and the person I was scheduled to talk with wasn't even on the call. They h…

[deleted]

I didn't get the impression OP thought that he was too good to implement a linked list in JS. Rather, he was looking for a company that was too good to spend interview time on a question containing low signal.

Like, the question itself is boring and cookie cutter. Why not implement a linked list or a tree in SQL (much more interesting for everyone)? Or a simple query language in JavaScript (a bit more practical)? Or tell have them do a code review of a simple webapp, have them critique it, then have them refactor it with you (much higher signal overall question)?

If your goal with an interview is to see how much bureaucratic bullshit a programmer is willing to put up with, by all means have them write linked lists. Have them write 5, one for each person interviewing them. If not, think about what you're trying to figure out about the person and craft the questions to suss out who it is you're talking to. "Program a linked list" is uncreative, and won't let you know very much.

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

#95

Post by epoxyhockey »

[deleted] wrote: post #68
geuis wrote: post #58

This is going to probably bite me in the ass because I'm looking for work at the moment and occasionally apply to interesting YC companies but since this has come up, I'm going to share my story here because of the negative experience I had with the company in question. I had a phone screen with 500friends recently. They were late calling me, and the person I was scheduled to talk with wasn't even on the call. They h…

[deleted]

I don't really understand this point of view, because implementing a Sieve of Eratosthenes is not particularly difficult.

I really don't know where to start with your comment. All I can suggest is that you sit in on about a dozen interviews by someone who actually knows how to interview and learn from that process. The thing about interviewing is that it is really just about due diligence. You are verifying that what someone represents on their resume is likely to be true. I think it's great that you are passionate about algorithms and various Sieves. You are a piece of a puzzle in a team. Someone who loves algorithms will pair well with someone who loves standard CRUD, as well as a UI designer. You are not looking for someone who knows exactly what you do plus more, you are looking for a team member.

Interviewing on "what you'll actually be doing" is also problematic, since most work is simple stuff that won't demonstrate the difficult edge cases.

Why not let your inferior-sounding candidate handle all of the CRUD and you can tackle those fun edge cases? For hacker news, I'm not sensing a lot of hacking going on here.

I am 100% positive that I can ask someone 10 questions that they don't know the answer to, and subsequently make them look like a fool. I can do this to PHD's, it's not hard. Get over yourself and start looking at candidates as potential team members, rather than opponents or competition.

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

#96

Post by justinY »

chetanahuja wrote: post #2

Yeah obviously. Who wants to hire gross old people in their shiny new startup.

500friends founder/CEO here. Look at my team - 500friends.com/team. Most people are who you may consider to be "old." And we wouldn't be where we're at without them. We do not discriminate against age.

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

#97

Post by zpk »

trimbo wrote: post #83
krapp wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you write code and you are over 35, you are toast. In SV, maybe. Hopefully not so much elsewhere or I'm gonna have a hard time paying off my student loans...

It's not even true in SV.

This job aside, ageism is 100% prevalent in our industry.

Visa program has been hijacked and have subverted the career engineer.

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

#98

Post by justinY »

kenjackson wrote: post #37

This posting is so bad and offensive, I hold it against the leadership team of this company. I certainly would think less of someone if someone else mentioned, "Oh they were on the leadership team at 500friends".

500friends founder/CEO here. Look at my team - 500friends.com/team. Most people are who you may consider to be "old." And we wouldn't be where we're at without them. We do not discriminate against age.

What we meant is that we're looking for someone who has coded in the past decade. Someone that has been managing 1,000 people at Oracle may not be the right fit for a company of our stage. Make sense?

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

#99

Post by justinY »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #73

What if we gave them the benefit of the doubt, and they were posting "no more than 12 years" because they want someone who's seen what happens but not someone who is steeped in it? Someone who is familiar with the problems but hasn't dealt with it so long that they are still naively excited about trying to change it? For example, if x guy has been doing TPS reports for 12 years,maybe they are figuring that he has alr…

Thank you sir. my response here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6043188

Justin (500friends founder/CEO)

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

#100

Post by effbott »

jerrya wrote: post #62
acchow wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is "no more than 10 years experience" more illegal than "at least 5 years experience"?

At least 5 years experience is a requirement that is job related. You need 5 years of experience at X do lead others doing X. No more than 10 years experience seems very much not job related. How does having too much experience hurt a person's ability to do a job?

It's simple. People who have more experience generally demand higher salaries. The company in question is probably seeking someone who's fairly experienced but doesn't have the budget to afford a superstar.
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