Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Brutal Ageism of Tech

newrepublic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 361 posts

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#251

Post by Goladus »

[deleted] wrote: post #245
skrebbel wrote: post #219

Anecdotal: I'm a part-time CTO (long story) of a startup. I'm 30 myself. We hired 6 engineers in total up until now: three interns in their twenties, who're very smart and motivated but also inexperienced; two programmers with a few years of professional experience who can get to real decent (well written, unit tested, etc) code on the first go; and 1 guy of over 40. When hiring, I was very skeptical of the guy over…

[deleted]

The categorical term was necessary to the anecdote. Using a categorical term does not imply discrimination.

In fact none of the sentences you list are real evidence of discrimination, especially in the context of a discussion where it's necessary to separate candidates or hires into categories based on age/sex/religion/etc.

I was skeptical of the guy from China... because we was unable to answer any of the technical questions we asked him during the interview.

You'll note that the parent did not specifically say his skepticism was due to age. Instead he listed standard employment history features that are more common among older programmers.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#252

Post by mgkimsal »

jaimebuelta wrote: post #250
mgkimsal wrote: post #110

How much overlap is there between the types of companies in this article and the typical "we can't find anyone qualified to hire!" company? I suspect it's not total, but there's probably some overlap. I can't wait until these 22 year olds of today hit their 40s and they reap what they've sown. Zuckerburg said "younger people are just smarter"? Certainly there's a degree of hubris in youth that you don't lose without…

I wonder how much of the "younger people are just smarter" Zuckemberg quote is he actually thinking that and how much is "People here in Springfield really know how to rock!"

Good reference! Point taken :)

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#253

Post by jusben1369 »

[deleted] wrote: post #245
skrebbel wrote: post #219

Anecdotal: I'm a part-time CTO (long story) of a startup. I'm 30 myself. We hired 6 engineers in total up until now: three interns in their twenties, who're very smart and motivated but also inexperienced; two programmers with a few years of professional experience who can get to real decent (well written, unit tested, etc) code on the first go; and 1 guy of over 40. When hiring, I was very skeptical of the guy over…

[deleted]

What you're missing is a time stamp. Discrimination follows a pattern. i) It's acceptable, ii) It's actively questioned and discussed and meets denial and resistance iii) it's broadly accepted as a problem and addressed (but who knows when it's fully resolved if ever)

Discrimination against tech workers over 40 is a very newly discovered issue. So it's unfair to say he's on par with racial or other more thoroughly discussed areas of discrimination.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#254

Post by skrebbel »

not_paul_graham wrote: post #243
skrebbel wrote: post #219

Anecdotal: I'm a part-time CTO (long story) of a startup. I'm 30 myself. We hired 6 engineers in total up until now: three interns in their twenties, who're very smart and motivated but also inexperienced; two programmers with a few years of professional experience who can get to real decent (well written, unit tested, etc) code on the first go; and 1 guy of over 40. When hiring, I was very skeptical of the guy over…

But are you based in SF [1]? I think that this article is more specific to the west coast tech scene in the United States. [1] Your profile indicates that you might be based out of Europe.

Indeed, I'm Dutch and based in the Netherlands. So is the startup in question.

The problem highlighted by the article is relatively SF-specific indeed, but you see the same vibe in Dutch startups (less so in older tech businesses here, but there it's just that 50 is considered old instead of 40 - the difference isn't that big).

I don't see how that makes the anecdote less strong though. Why wouldn't there be similarly competent 40+ year old people in SF? I feel that startups that are open to hiring older people in a climate like the one described in this article have a competitive advantage on the job market. It makes me anecdote only more applicable to SF, not less.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#255

Post by [deleted] »

zequel wrote: post #246
[deleted] wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

From someone's who over 40, I'm glad he was candid. It's good to hear people's perspectives, they shouldn't be afraid to share their thoughts. Maybe by him sharing his story, other people will see that he was skeptical (like they may be), and saw a benefit in the end. His silence benefits no one. Please don't censor people.

[deleted]

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#256

Post by skrebbel »

[deleted] wrote: post #245
skrebbel wrote: post #219

Anecdotal: I'm a part-time CTO (long story) of a startup. I'm 30 myself. We hired 6 engineers in total up until now: three interns in their twenties, who're very smart and motivated but also inexperienced; two programmers with a few years of professional experience who can get to real decent (well written, unit tested, etc) code on the first go; and 1 guy of over 40. When hiring, I was very skeptical of the guy over…

[deleted]

Bah, nonsense. Re-read my post. I wasn't skeptical because of his age, it was because he looked like a dull guy with a dull CV at first glance. I introduced him as "the guy over 40" in the first paragraph, which makes sense given the subject at hand. And it is why you can take a line of my post out of context and make me seem like an asshole for writing "When hiring, I was very skeptical of the guy over 40".

Are we so far now that we have to think about formulating our HN comments so that someone can't take parts out of context? Lovely.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#258

Post by [deleted] »

jusben1369 wrote: post #253
[deleted] wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

What you're missing is a time stamp. Discrimination follows a pattern. i) It's acceptable, ii) It's actively questioned and discussed and meets denial and resistance iii) it's broadly accepted as a problem and addressed (but who knows when it's fully resolved if ever) Discrimination against tech workers over 40 is a very newly discovered issue. So it's unfair to say he's on par with racial or other more thoroughly di…

[deleted]

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#259

Post by chiph »

bliti wrote: post #53
Retric wrote: post #8

The odd thing is hiring older workers is generally a great idea. From an organisational perspective programming teams don't scale vary well so hiring less skilled people is generally a terrible long term strategy. Personally, I have worked with a few hundred programmers and I can only name 3 that where competent before 30. Outside the valley you find a plenty of really competent programmers mostly in there late 40's…

Another benefit (I might be selling myself here, watch out) is that older programmers have lived through more issues. Be it management, technical, HR, etc. We have seen more. And some of us know how to steer clear of such issues, and when to interject.

Side effect this is that they don't freak out when stuff goes wrong. They've seen a lot of stuff go wrong in their lives, and they know how to work through it to a solution.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#260

Post by jusben1369 »

[deleted] wrote: post #258
jusben1369 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're missing is a time stamp. Discrimination follows a pattern. i) It's acceptable, ii) It's actively questioned and discussed and meets denial and resistance iii) it's broadly accepted as a problem and addressed (but who knows when it's fully resolved if ever) Discrimination against tech workers over 40 is a very newly discovered issue. So it's unfair to say he's on par with racial or other more thoroughly di…

[deleted]

Sigh Tech workers. And yes, there's always been some age discrimination. But the explosion of consumer and mobile apps in the last 5 - 10 years (vs B2B apps prior) has really created this issue at scale.
Post reply on HN