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Poll: How old are you?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: How old are you?

#21

Post by pvnick »

dllthomas wrote: post #17
pvnick wrote: post #7

There was an article on here yesterday that said something along the lines of "if you're older than 23 most startups won't even give you the time of day" or some tripe of the sort. I find that to be a negative, untrue stereotype, and it's nice to see the data back up my opinion.

In what way does this data back up your opinion?

For the following reasons:

1) assume that the HN readership satisfactorily correlates to the startup demographic at large

2) the majority of the respondants answered 26-30, as was also the case in the poll that tptacek referenced elsewhere in this thread

3) the longtail is heavily skewed towards the older folks, rather than towards the younger side

Re: Poll: How old are you?

#24

Post by gilrain »

djbender wrote: post #14
jpdoctor wrote: post #11

God these types of polls make me feel like a geezer. Just in case any of you whippersnappers are wondering what it feels like to start hacking in your teens and continue (in one form or another) to be hacking into your late 40s: It is pretty much the same after the first cup of coffee in the morning. Where it differs is the lull in the afternoon makes me want to nap. (So I do.) The drag is that until I look in the mi…

Age is only a number.

And an approximate measure of the gradual deterioration of your body.

Re: Poll: How old are you?

#25

Post by jborden13 »

pvnick wrote: post #7

There was an article on here yesterday that said something along the lines of "if you're older than 23 most startups won't even give you the time of day" or some tripe of the sort. I find that to be a negative, untrue stereotype, and it's nice to see the data back up my opinion.

All of the developers at my startup are 40+. But I've always put a heavy weighting on experience being more valuable than being inexpensive. The indirect costs of younger developers can be, at times, quite high and staggering. Regardless of age/experience, if you can get shit done quickly and correctly then age is not relevant.

Re: Poll: How old are you?

#26

Post by dllthomas »

pvnick wrote: post #21
dllthomas wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way does this data back up your opinion?

For the following reasons: 1) assume that the HN readership satisfactorily correlates to the startup demographic at large 2) the majority of the respondants answered 26-30, as was also the case in the poll that tptacek referenced elsewhere in this thread 3) the longtail is heavily skewed towards the older folks, rather than towards the younger side

See, I worry that with 1 you are conflating two "startup demographics" - people who interact on HN are probably interested in startups, but many (most?) of them aren't working for startups.

Re: Poll: How old are you?

#27

Post by beat »

pvnick wrote: post #15
jpdoctor wrote: post #11

God these types of polls make me feel like a geezer. Just in case any of you whippersnappers are wondering what it feels like to start hacking in your teens and continue (in one form or another) to be hacking into your late 40s: It is pretty much the same after the first cup of coffee in the morning. Where it differs is the lull in the afternoon makes me want to nap. (So I do.) The drag is that until I look in the mi…

Have you encountered any agism in your line of work? Do you work with "trendy" languages and technologies or do you stick with tried-and-true, enterprisey type of stuff? Have you considered moving into management or have you always just preferred getting down on your hands and knees so to speak and hacking things together?

I'm 48, and I haven't encountered ageism yet. I haven't seen it, among good technical people. The hard part is that by the time you're in your late 40s, you've probably peaked out on advancement. Even if you go into management (which isn't really "advancement"), you're just going to ceiling out there instead.

Re: Poll: How old are you?

#30

Post by iyulaev »

pvnick wrote: post #21
dllthomas wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way does this data back up your opinion?

For the following reasons: 1) assume that the HN readership satisfactorily correlates to the startup demographic at large 2) the majority of the respondants answered 26-30, as was also the case in the poll that tptacek referenced elsewhere in this thread 3) the longtail is heavily skewed towards the older folks, rather than towards the younger side

Kind of by definition though - I think there are more hackers at 30+25 = 55 rather than 30-25 = 5.
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