Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age (2010) • Hacker News Board

Re: Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age (2010)

#11

Post by solve » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 1:55 PM UTC

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #5

I wonder if there's a difference between the SF Bay Area and the rest of the country, as far as ageism is concerned in tech.

Huge difference. CA companies and investors (e.g. YC) specifically require your age to the interviewers. Using YC as an example, many interviewers are happy to publicly boast about using age as primary factor - I can link to to some comments written here on HN.

In some other places, e.g. NYC, this is all generally believed to be highly legally-risky and no respectable employer would ever consider doing it.

Shame on you CA.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age (2010)

#12

Post by outside1234 » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 1:57 PM UTC

sv_muppets_ wrote: post #10

Let's see - you can get these experienced engineers, who will build a proper platform, a robust architecture, a decent code base, and given the fact they have delivered before, a solution that will provide what the customers want. Or You can have these wet behind the ears fuckers straight from college who will just download a metric shit ton of code via gem install and npm, and then rebuild several wheels in JS, whil…

Youth also doesn't ask complicated questions, like why is the VC getting 10% and I'm getting 0.05% when I'm doing 10% of the work and the VC 0.05%.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age (2010)

#13

Post by gamesbrainiac » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 1:59 PM UTC

How is this a dark secret? This is true for almost all industries is it not? Most business want young hires because the work more (in quantity, not talking about quality here), and can be trained to fit the organization's needs.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age (2010)

#14

Post by pmorici » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 2:01 PM UTC

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #5

I wonder if there's a difference between the SF Bay Area and the rest of the country, as far as ageism is concerned in tech.

It's the reverse in a lot of places. It's common in the Baltimore / Washington area to base salaries on years of experience, education level, and industry certifications. I've applied for jobs where the first question HR asks is do you have at least 10 years of experience. These jobs pay as good or better in absolute $ terms than any salary range I've ever seen for engineers in the valley and if you look at it from a cost of living adjusted value the valley pays a lot less.

My two cents is that preferring young employees has a lot to do with the fact that they will work for a lot less money and put up with housing situations that more mature people wouldn't tolerate.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age (2010)

#15

Post by blisterpeanuts » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 2:02 PM UTC

outside1234 wrote: post #12

sv_muppets_ wrote: post #10

Let's see - you can get these experienced engineers, who will build a proper platform, a robust architecture, a decent code base, and given the fact they have delivered before, a solution that will provide what the customers want. Or You can have these wet behind the ears fuckers straight from college who will just download a metric shit ton of code via gem install and npm, and then rebuild several wheels in JS, whil…

Youth also doesn't ask complicated questions, like why is the VC getting 10% and I'm getting 0.05% when I'm doing 10% of the work and the VC 0.05%.

How is that complicated? Their game, their rules. You can start your own company and keep 100% of the profits -- your game, your rules.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age (2010)

#16

Post by gamesbrainiac » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 2:03 PM UTC

sv_muppets_ wrote: post #10

Let's see - you can get these experienced engineers, who will build a proper platform, a robust architecture, a decent code base, and given the fact they have delivered before, a solution that will provide what the customers want. Or You can have these wet behind the ears fuckers straight from college who will just download a metric shit ton of code via gem install and npm, and then rebuild several wheels in JS, whil…

I think thats the point though. You have a couple of "leads" and "platform engineers" who make the structure of what needs to be, and then you hire a bunch of "coders" to actually turn that structure into a reality, and its great for the company, since they won't question the stack. Whereas, a more experience engineer, will have intelligent discussions about languages, frameworks and tradeoffs.

In other words, companies want stooges so that they can still keep running without addressing the ridiculous technical debt that they have accrued.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age (2010)

#17

Post by dpweb » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 2:04 PM UTC

And engineering is an “up or out” profession: you either move up the ladder or face unemployment

Had to stop reading at this. Completely wrong. It's a move up or stay a programmer for 40 years career. You decide which appeals more to you. People forget that hiring and accessing talent is mostly done quite poorly. There are not many unemployed programmers and the reasons why they are unemployed could be many things.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age (2010)

#18

Post by 11thEarlOfMar » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 2:04 PM UTC

The issue is really more practical: Young engineers can afford to take more risk, particularly if they are not married.

VCs want people who can go all in on an idea that looks like an obvious fail, because often enough, the young engineers who don't know better actually pull it off. These companies become high profile and their founders become famous for being young and wealthy. When VCs profile the successful investments, young, smart and driven all correlate.

Experienced engineers with families can seldom afford take those risks.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age (2010)

#19

Post by gravity13 » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 2:05 PM UTC

jv22222 wrote: post #3

This topic keeps coming up. I think someone should start a community for older coders. A place to brainstorm and help each other out. Edit: SilverFox (and Foxess)

Is it really because they're old? Or because they've established they are one trick ponies?

I've met young programmers who I wouldn't hire (were it up to me) for the exact same reasons most people wouldn't hire the stereotypical old programmer. 'Legacy' dudes from a time who seemed to understand bad code as a way to always retain a job because who else would understand the shit they do?

And then I've also met (and worked with) older programmers who taught me about the almost repetitive cycle of trendy functional languages, the types where I can literally have a two hour long philosophical conversation about design, extremely smart people I would hire.

I get the sense this is not entirely about ageism, but rather, the field itself has two different directions for growth.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age (2010)

#20

Post by gamesbrainiac » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 2:05 PM UTC

vermooten wrote: post #8

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #5

I wonder if there's a difference between the SF Bay Area and the rest of the country, as far as ageism is concerned in tech.

How about 'the rest of the world'?

The "rest of the world" is probably happy to ride the hype the SF crowd are cooking. I know a bunch of companies here, who use python not because its a good choice, but its "hip" and they can appear cool and sophisticated.