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Age Discrimination in Silicon Valley

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Re: Age Discrimination in Silicon Valley

#41

Post by fleitz »

JabavuAdams wrote: post #36

You should hire young ... but not to get the best technical ability. You should hire young because we older developers, while being technically superior to our younger colleagues, don't want to put up with your bullshit. I've been on enough projects that can best be described as rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic that I don't put up with management dropping the ball. The challenge for more experienced developers…

It's deck chairs all the way down.

You rearrange them to the best of ability, get some commendations on how well the chairs are arranged, and get promoted to the next sinking ship before the current one sinks.

If you're lucky you'll become an expert deck chair arranger and get lucrative consulting gigs on how a different arrangement of chairs could have saved the ship.

Re: Age Discrimination in Silicon Valley

#43

Post by optimusclimb »

collyw wrote: post #29
adambratt wrote: post #16

I've worked in a few different industries that are traditionally a lot more corporate than most startups. Most notably, finance. What I've noticed is that while these companies tend to have older tech guys than you'll find at a lot of startups, it's still a lot younger age-wise than the rest of the business. I think part of it is that the number of young people who were in tech 20 years ago compared to now was much s…

I am just about to turn 40. Been developing software for 11 and a half years professionally. I realise that I am a lot better developer than I was a while ago. Actually I have seen a lot more problems, and I have a good idea what will work two months down the line, and what will be a constant fire fighting exercise due to a half though through design. How do I get this across to employers? All they seem interested is…

If mongodb is in fact a poor choice for their problem set and they made it anyway, you're better off not being there.

If it WAS the pragmatic or correct choice, then I'd say spend a few days or nights getting up to speed with mongo. Learning to use it is not that hard, it's keeping things working smoothly/tuning when you have a huge cluster and many consumers of it that's hard.

Re: Age Discrimination in Silicon Valley

#44

Post by JabavuAdams »

fleitz wrote: post #41
JabavuAdams wrote: post #36

You should hire young ... but not to get the best technical ability. You should hire young because we older developers, while being technically superior to our younger colleagues, don't want to put up with your bullshit. I've been on enough projects that can best be described as rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic that I don't put up with management dropping the ball. The challenge for more experienced developers…

It's deck chairs all the way down. You rearrange them to the best of ability, get some commendations on how well the chairs are arranged, and get promoted to the next sinking ship before the current one sinks. If you're lucky you'll become an expert deck chair arranger and get lucrative consulting gigs on how a different arrangement of chairs could have saved the ship.

Bingo. Every so often, you do ship something and gasp people like it and pay money for it, though. That keeps me on the ship. The moment that becomes institutionally unlikely, I'm gone.

Re: Age Discrimination in Silicon Valley

#45

Post by fleitz »

lotsofmangos wrote: post #14
ashwinaj wrote: post #2

Well there goes another person who is "offended". Is there age discrimination? Possibly, but at my workplace there are a lot of slackers and you guessed it, they're usually (emphasis on "usually", stop trolling) older, paper pushers, "Let's have a meeting to talk about changing a line of code" people, etc. Needless to say, I work in a big company. The best way to avoid discrimination of any kind is to continuously up…

You are getting old. Day by day, all-nighter by all-nighter. The more hours you put in, the faster you will burn. But that's ok, your company will not mind. There's a sucker born every minute.

Their company is a family... one of those cannibalistic ones that eats their ancestors.

Re: Age Discrimination in Silicon Valley

#46

Post by incision »

I would certainly like to see the data, but I'm not sure what I think about the topic.

Age discrimination feels like it could be the other side of the coin that presents so much opportunity in this field to begin with - a system that values intelligence, willingness to learn and work hard on par with or lieu of experience.

I jumped into tech without a degree or much in the way of experience. Now that I'm established can I reasonably expect that the situation should reverse to suit me?

I just turned 35, young by most standards yet older to old by seeming tech standards. After 17 years working full-time, I'm a better asset than I was 15, 10 or 5 years ago in every way, but I can think of plenty of reasons why someone would understandably prefer to hire young me versus old me.

It's the difference between a guy who will work 65+ hours a week year round and someone who wants to spend every hour possible with his child. It's also the difference between a guy who is learning certain things and one who has fully automated those things a dozen times over.

That's an oversimplification on both fronts, but hopefully you get the idea.

How much 'done it before' value can there be in the context of growing companies which are creating things which don't yet exist or are constructed with tools that are <5 years old? How many opportunities are there for people whose most effective position would leadership or strategic?

Re: Age Discrimination in Silicon Valley

#47

Post by JabavuAdams »

test4now wrote: post #17
steven777400 wrote: post #6

How much of the "ageism" is actual discrimination and how much is "we have a small budget and need 80 hour weeks" that older workers won't accept? I received an offer from a very interesting startup in southern California (down between LA and San Diego, not SF). The offer was $30K/year (with increases as revenue increased), with minimum 80 hours a week expected. As cool as the projects were... There's no way I at my…

I was willing to accept the "we have a small budget and need 80 hour weeks", but they still preferred to hire a younger person and gave him a decent salary

They don't need 80 hour weeks. That just underscores the irrationality of these employers.

If developers honestly track their time, I'd be surprised if many who claim to be doing 60-80 hours a week are doing more than 8 hours a day of productive work. I'm not talking about coding. I'm just talking about doing work related things that aren't watching Youtube and writing on HN.

I got kind of annoyed at a buddy of mine would humble-brag about staying until midnight to get things done. Of course, he arrived at 11, made coffee and surfed until lunch, and then got down to work around 1:30 or so. While working, he'd have a Youtube window open continuously on a second monitor, and be bidding on penny auctions, etc.

He's a great guy, and got a lot of stuff done. But he basically worked an 8 hour day.

Re: Age Discrimination in Silicon Valley

#48

Post by bdcravens »

fleitz wrote: post #11

The key with ageism in tech is to move into mgmt. You're not supposed to be a code monkey at 30. And especially not having 10 years of experience in a technology 10 years old. Also as you said, young people put up with shit no one over 30 would ever put up with. $30k for 80 hour weeks? No thanks, I'd rather flip burgers because it pays more than $7.50/hr, McDonalds also has free soda.

The key with ageism in tech is to move into mgmt. You're not supposed to be a code monkey at 30.

To suggest that one must move into management, and not do a particular job, because of age, is quite possibly the most ageist comment I've ever heard on HN.

Assuming you have a degree, that means you have 6 or 7 years of experience. To think that's the full extent of your development "career" means that our entire industry would be exceptionally shallow skills-wise.

I'm 37, and I love to hack. And no, I'm most definitely not making $30K for 80hr/wk.

And especially not having 10 years of experience in a technology 10 years old. Is this an indictment against those who get in on the ground floor of a technology? Are you suggesting that you should jump to the latest hipster language, never becoming an expert in anything? Not to mention the fact that most languages that drive the web (Java, JavaScript, Ruby, PHP, to name a few) are about 20 years old at this point.

Re: Age Discrimination in Silicon Valley

#49

Post by lostcolony »

fleitz wrote: post #11

The key with ageism in tech is to move into mgmt. You're not supposed to be a code monkey at 30. And especially not having 10 years of experience in a technology 10 years old. Also as you said, young people put up with shit no one over 30 would ever put up with. $30k for 80 hour weeks? No thanks, I'd rather flip burgers because it pays more than $7.50/hr, McDonalds also has free soda.

I expect to be a programming primate come 30. Some day I aspire to be a software simian.

Re: Age Discrimination in Silicon Valley

#50

Post by ashwinaj »

chimeracoder wrote: post #38
ashwinaj wrote: post #2

Well there goes another person who is "offended". Is there age discrimination? Possibly, but at my workplace there are a lot of slackers and you guessed it, they're usually (emphasis on "usually", stop trolling) older, paper pushers, "Let's have a meeting to talk about changing a line of code" people, etc. Needless to say, I work in a big company. The best way to avoid discrimination of any kind is to continuously up…

> The best way to avoid discrimination of any kind is to continuously update your skills (technical, social, inter-personal etc.) That may be a way to respond to discrimination, but it's not a way to avoid it. Discrimination, by its definition, refers to what happens after one's skills and qualifications are sufficient and comparable to other candidates, and yet other candidates are systematically shown preference.

Yup, I agree. I'm not disputing this fact, discrimination happens everywhere. I'm merely pointing out what I think we should do as individuals, because let's face it, legislation is not going to work (passing it is one major hurdle, implementation is another)
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