Show HN: NoAgeismInTech Job Board (Update) – Companies' Culture • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: NoAgeismInTech Job Board (Update) – Companies' Culture

#11

Post by turk73 » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 1:46 AM UTC

rl3 wrote: post #7

Ageism has always baffled me. In my pre-funding pursuits, I've always dreamed of hiring a team composed of top-tier talent. That typically means people who have been in their respective industry 20+ years. I'm in my early thirties and there's no one on my hire list that's younger than me. That isn't to say I wouldn't hire anyone younger than myself provided they've the skill—I absolutely would—it's just that age and…

There's nothing that baffling about ageism. Corporations are like Skynet in the sense that they have a life of their own. They will do their best to drive away 40+ people and seek out H1Bs and anyone else they can exploit at low wages for long working hours. If they get even 50% of the quality, they're happy with that. Companies don't really want insightful people who will question anything, not outside of management anyways. Meanwhile, they will act all politically correct and virtue signal endlessly. Management views developers as a commodity resource, like fuel, or a truck. They use them up and buy more.

Re: Show HN: NoAgeismInTech Job Board (Update) – Companies' Culture

#12

Post by rl3 » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 2:05 AM UTC

erikpukinskis wrote: post #8

rl3 wrote: post #7

Ageism has always baffled me. In my pre-funding pursuits, I've always dreamed of hiring a team composed of top-tier talent. That typically means people who have been in their respective industry 20+ years. I'm in my early thirties and there's no one on my hire list that's younger than me. That isn't to say I wouldn't hire anyone younger than myself provided they've the skill—I absolutely would—it's just that age and…

> young people are easier to exploit and abuse under the pretext of "saving money", but why the fuck would anyone ever want to run their company on that basis? There are two ways to get more from your developer team: quality and quantity. Quality means you pay your people more and more as you grow. Grow from 10 to 20 over 10 years, while retaining most people and tripling their salaries. For that to work: - your reve…

The funny part about the Quantity strategy is that it eventually turns into such an unmotivated and directionless bureaucratic hellhole that often those same companies create teams or even startup-like subsidiaries following the Quality model.

Ironic that, in order to achieve a modicum of quality, many large companies must insulate anything potentially valuable from their true corporate environment.

Re: Show HN: NoAgeismInTech Job Board (Update) – Companies' Culture

#13

Post by mav3rick » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 2:33 AM UTC

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #10

rl3 wrote: post #7

Ageism has always baffled me. In my pre-funding pursuits, I've always dreamed of hiring a team composed of top-tier talent. That typically means people who have been in their respective industry 20+ years. I'm in my early thirties and there's no one on my hire list that's younger than me. That isn't to say I wouldn't hire anyone younger than myself provided they've the skill—I absolutely would—it's just that age and…

(Disclaimer: I'm 60.) Young people are an excellent fit for technology jobs. They are quick to pick up new tech, enthusiastic, energetic, open minded. They're less likely to own a house and have a family to support, are hungrier for experience and learning curve, so can work for less money. More willing to settle for stock options that may or may not pan out some day. Can relocate at a moment's notice. Cons: very few…

This is a refreshingly honest take. I'd love to hear your stories :)

Re: Show HN: NoAgeismInTech Job Board (Update) – Companies' Culture

#14

Post by geowwy » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 2:42 AM UTC

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #10

rl3 wrote: post #7

Ageism has always baffled me. In my pre-funding pursuits, I've always dreamed of hiring a team composed of top-tier talent. That typically means people who have been in their respective industry 20+ years. I'm in my early thirties and there's no one on my hire list that's younger than me. That isn't to say I wouldn't hire anyone younger than myself provided they've the skill—I absolutely would—it's just that age and…

(Disclaimer: I'm 60.) Young people are an excellent fit for technology jobs. They are quick to pick up new tech, enthusiastic, energetic, open minded. They're less likely to own a house and have a family to support, are hungrier for experience and learning curve, so can work for less money. More willing to settle for stock options that may or may not pan out some day. Can relocate at a moment's notice. Cons: very few…

  > Young people are an excellent fit for technology jobs. They
  > are quick to pick up new tech, enthusiastic, energetic,
  > open minded.

I just wonder much we really gain from all these new languages and frameworks. Do they actually help or are we just spinning our wheels? These days the majority of us work as web developers – our job isn't much more than pulling data out of a database, generating documents, and sending them over the network. We've been able to do that for decades.

Re: Show HN: NoAgeismInTech Job Board (Update) – Companies' Culture

#15

Post by woah » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 2:55 AM UTC

erikpukinskis wrote: post #8

rl3 wrote: post #7

Ageism has always baffled me. In my pre-funding pursuits, I've always dreamed of hiring a team composed of top-tier talent. That typically means people who have been in their respective industry 20+ years. I'm in my early thirties and there's no one on my hire list that's younger than me. That isn't to say I wouldn't hire anyone younger than myself provided they've the skill—I absolutely would—it's just that age and…

> young people are easier to exploit and abuse under the pretext of "saving money", but why the fuck would anyone ever want to run their company on that basis? There are two ways to get more from your developer team: quality and quantity. Quality means you pay your people more and more as you grow. Grow from 10 to 20 over 10 years, while retaining most people and tripling their salaries. For that to work: - your reve…

Tripling the salaries based just on seniority seems insane. Either you started way too low, or you're going to end up paying a lot. The developers that you were able to recruit with your low starting salary are going to end up working alongside people who came for the high salaries and may very well be quite a bit more talented. This will create a lot of friction.

And at the beginning, either you are keeping your plans of an eventual 3x salary secret from employees, in which case it can not motivate them, you are promising it to them which as an employee I would view with great suspicion, or you are writing some kind of agreement about it which seems like it has all kinds of problems.

Giving employees equity is a much better version of what you are trying to do and I'm puzzled as to why you didn't suggest it.

- Employees get it when it's cheap and it literally represents the value of the company that you were hoping to give them in the form of higher salaries

- It's not based on some kind of vague aspiration to be a good boss, it's a solid, well understood form of compensation

- No new employee is going to resent a lower-skilled old timer for their equity- they earned it.

Re: Show HN: NoAgeismInTech Job Board (Update) – Companies' Culture

#16

Post by ageoldlie » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 4:16 AM UTC

I don't interview anyone over 40. Period. Reason is very simple. By that time they're bitter from some past work experiences and have figured out now a bunch of ways to look busy at work. They also likely have more demands coming from family if they were brave enough to try marriage in the "gig economy" we all live in now. It's great that there is a service out there for those who were never able to save enough to retire before they got replaced with younger more energetic and cheaper labor. At 52, I feel lucky every day that I now have a job in management. Not nearly as interesting work as what I did technically ten years ago, but I'm also making almost three times as much money, and who knows how much more than than one of my former colleagues who is in his 70's with a PhD from a top 10 university and is working at Starbucks to help pay his daughter's $45,000/yr. tuition!

Re: Show HN: NoAgeismInTech Job Board (Update) – Companies' Culture

#17

Post by sh87 » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 4:48 AM UTC

ageoldlie wrote: post #16

I don't interview anyone over 40. Period. Reason is very simple. By that time they're bitter from some past work experiences and have figured out now a bunch of ways to look busy at work. They also likely have more demands coming from family if they were brave enough to try marriage in the "gig economy" we all live in now. It's great that there is a service out there for those who were never able to save enough to re…

I've seen bitter, demanding and unpleasant 20, 30 and 40 somethings. Also some of the most brilliant minds I've met are grey haired. Age does not matter.

I hope you meet someone compelling enough to trigger you to rethink your bias. Good luck.

Re: Show HN: NoAgeismInTech Job Board (Update) – Companies' Culture

#18

Post by ageoldlie » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 5:23 AM UTC

sh87 wrote: post #17

ageoldlie wrote: post #16

I don't interview anyone over 40. Period. Reason is very simple. By that time they're bitter from some past work experiences and have figured out now a bunch of ways to look busy at work. They also likely have more demands coming from family if they were brave enough to try marriage in the "gig economy" we all live in now. It's great that there is a service out there for those who were never able to save enough to re…

I've seen bitter, demanding and unpleasant 20, 30 and 40 somethings. Also some of the most brilliant minds I've met are grey haired. Age does not matter. I hope you meet someone compelling enough to trigger you to rethink your bias. Good luck.

Could not agree more. Experience is hugely valuable. Unfortunately, the way a lot of smaller less-funded companies like ours work is that we take the "brilliant ideas" from someone else (often university research but also sometimes insights gleaned through in-house interview process) and implement them for our customers. The vast bulk of our contribution is what you might call "scut work" (often the kind of thing that gets farmed out to grad students and post-docs on the academia side when they want to build a working prototype) and faster rather than smarter is what enables us to compete most effectively with the rest of our market. I wish it weren't this way. I'd still like to be doing technical work myself, in a more carefree and supportive environment, with all the protections that union members in other trades (like law enforcement and primary education) appear to enjoy. But it seems that the technology sector the world over is moving more and more in the direction of "at will" employment where everyone (except when it comes to affirmative action for certain protected classes) has to fight for their own survival until they get too old to put up much of a fight anymore. "Capitalism is cannibalism" is what one of my first supervisors told me right before I got laid off in 2002, and from where I sit today, I feel like truer words could not have been spoken.

Re: Show HN: NoAgeismInTech Job Board (Update) – Companies' Culture

#19

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 5:07 PM UTC

woah wrote: post #15

erikpukinskis wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> young people are easier to exploit and abuse under the pretext of "saving money", but why the fuck would anyone ever want to run their company on that basis? There are two ways to get more from your developer team: quality and quantity. Quality means you pay your people more and more as you grow. Grow from 10 to 20 over 10 years, while retaining most people and tripling their salaries. For that to work: - your reve…

Tripling the salaries based just on seniority seems insane. Either you started way too low, or you're going to end up paying a lot. The developers that you were able to recruit with your low starting salary are going to end up working alongside people who came for the high salaries and may very well be quite a bit more talented. This will create a lot of friction. And at the beginning, either you are keeping your pla…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: NoAgeismInTech Job Board (Update) – Companies' Culture

#20

Post by erikpukinskis » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 5:28 PM UTC

woah wrote: post #15

erikpukinskis wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> young people are easier to exploit and abuse under the pretext of "saving money", but why the fuck would anyone ever want to run their company on that basis? There are two ways to get more from your developer team: quality and quantity. Quality means you pay your people more and more as you grow. Grow from 10 to 20 over 10 years, while retaining most people and tripling their salaries. For that to work: - your reve…

Tripling the salaries based just on seniority seems insane. Either you started way too low, or you're going to end up paying a lot. The developers that you were able to recruit with your low starting salary are going to end up working alongside people who came for the high salaries and may very well be quite a bit more talented. This will create a lot of friction. And at the beginning, either you are keeping your pla…

> Tripling the salaries based just on seniority seems insane.

That’s a little antagonistic. Your whole comment is weirdly antagonistic.

> Either you started way too low, or you're going to end up paying a lot.

Or 1) you start by paying what people are worth according to “market rates”, 2) at some point they break even on what they cost, 3) every year they bring in more revenue than the last and you share it with them.

> The developers that you were able to recruit with your low starting salary are going to end up working alongside people who came for the high salaries and may very well be quite a bit more talented.

Sure, but they’re paid on performance not “talent”. Work is not a talent show. The people getting more money have successfully deployed projects worth much more than their salary. That’s why their salaries were bumped. If this new person can do that they’ll earn the same salary.

> And at the beginning, either you are keeping your plans of an eventual 3x salary secret from employees, in which case it can not motivate them, you are promising it to them which as an employee I would view with great suspicion, or you are writing some kind of agreement about it which seems like it has all kinds of problems.

Seems simple enough to me. You do the math on how much revenue you think your work has brought in. I do my own math, and we negotiate a number every few years.

> Employees get [equity] when it's cheap and it literally represents the value of the company that you were hoping to give them in the form of higher salaries

Revenue-aligned compensation is very different from an ownership share, both materially and in terms of what they represent.

> It's not based on some kind of vague aspiration to be a good boss

Paying people according to their contribution to the business model is neither vague nor aspirational, although it does require you to have a business model that includes your workers.

And equity calculations in my experience are pretty vague and aspirational. Not sure what you’re indicating at here.

> No new employee is going to resent a lower-skilled old timer for their equity- they earned it.

I’m not sure if what you’re describing is based on my actual advice or a misunderstanding so I’ll let you chime in if you think there’s still a resentment issue here.