How the Valley treats experienced people • Hacker News Board

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#191

Post by ghaff » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 4:11 PM UTC

specialist wrote: post #163

Terretta wrote: post #63

On a contrarian note: Below a certain age, tooling and practices knowledge is likely to be up-to-date. First thing they learned was today’s ways. Above a certain age, it takes additional expertise to assess whether the individual kept learning every year or just kept relying on the first thing they learned. Recruiters and contentless managers often fail to tell the difference, so mis-bias on age which doesn’t cause b…

1/ Keeping up involves unlearning too. For me, that's the hardest part. Trying to approach everything with a "new mind". Meaning my expectations for how stuff is supposed to work gets in the way of seeing whatever is in front of me for what it truly is. 2/ A fair amount of new stuff isn't better. Or it's a mixed bag. Discerning the Brownian motion from the legit improvements is a lot of work.

I've long found that there's a fine line between legitimately noting that the last 8 incarnations of $CONCEPT didn't work for A, B, and C reasons so #9 isn't likely to fare any better and being endlessly negative about every new idea that comes down the road because almost every new idea is an echo of a prior pattern at some level.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#192

Post by mempko » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 4:11 PM UTC

slics wrote: post #88

If one thinks 35+ is to old to code, well I have news for you. At 35+ you learn how to manage time and prioritize better. Life throws another ranch in your bucket of problems, marriage and children. When you are young, you are hired as an engineer to work 40 hours, which we all know very well that working for startups that means 80 hours or you are not putting good effort. Well with a family that’s not possible, as y…

I think ageism even has an impact on this generation. The quality of software produced is much lower than it could be because we mostly have young guys doing all the work. Ageism is also why we repeat of trends every generation. Our industry simply has no memory.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#193

Post by frakr » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 4:13 PM UTC

galangalalgol wrote: post #184

marktangotango wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The distinction between valley culture and everywhere else is never made in these pieces which is a pity. I work in fortune 500s and we’re all 40+ in these companies. I rarely see 20s.

I too work in a fortune 500 outside the valley. Occasionally I wonder why we lose so many young coders good and bad to SV. I'll then go check salaries using a job hunting site for the same positions in SV and they pay the same or less after adjusting for cost of living. Is there some magic pool of jobs there that let you retired after 10 years that I am not seeing? I'm coming up on 20 years of writing c++ and I'm not…

If you're able to save 10% of your salary for retirement, you're a lot better off in raw dollar amount to work in SV and then move elsewhere at retirement.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#194

Post by mcguire » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 4:13 PM UTC

nikanj wrote: post #69

humanrebar wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For example, I find that technical interviews for experienced developers tend to be harder, which makes me infer an "up or out" culture. A dev with 20 years of experience isn't even evaluated for normal individual contributor roles, instead they are chief code wizard or unqualified. Younger devs, especially college hires, are given more leeway to train on the job and grow into their level of aptitude and interest. A…

I think there’s an element of expectation there. The college hire might grow to be a grand wizard in 10 years, and become a massive asset to the company. It is still possible the older person is going to become a wizard later, but the question is: if they have it in them, why aren’t they a wizard already? College hires are seen as unscratched lottery tickets, older workers are seen as known variables. I’m not saying…

I'm going to assert without evidence that no one in this industry is thinking 3 years out, much less 10. Heck, the chance someone you hire today is going to be working for your company in 10 years approximates 0.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#195

Post by bborud » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 4:14 PM UTC

If you have a young CEO with very little prior work experience, why would you expect them to understand how to recruit, hire and manage people who are different from them? We tend to prefer people we can understand and relate to and if you are a 20-something who hasn't had a professional career yet, people older than you may be a bit of a mystery. As will being a CEO or a manager.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#196

Post by lisper » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 4:14 PM UTC

I'm one of those people who doesn't have to work, but I do because I enjoy it. I moved to the silicon valley nine years ago, and in that time I've done half a dozen or so job interviews. I got no offers, so now I run my own company. It was different story each time, but the upshot (IMHO) is that the interview process seemed to assume that I was a fresh-out undergrad. In one case, they asked me to debug some Ruby code despite the fact that I told them well in advance that I have never worked with Ruby.

There was one notable exception, and that was my experience with Triplebyte. They have a much better technical interview process than any I have seen anywhere else. There is really only one way to assess someone's ability to write code, and that is to have them write code in a language and environment with which they are already familiar. Modern coding is so complex and requires so much infrastructure that productivity hinges as much or more on the impedance match between a person and their environment as it does on their actual abilities. Even the most brilliant coder will stumble if they use emacs day to day and you force them to use vi.

If you want to assess my ability to come up to speed on a new environment, I have a solution for that too: hire me as a contractor and give me a week or two to do a real project for you. I really don't understand why more companies don't do that.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#197

Post by isoskeles » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 4:15 PM UTC

slics wrote: post #88

If one thinks 35+ is to old to code, well I have news for you. At 35+ you learn how to manage time and prioritize better. Life throws another ranch in your bucket of problems, marriage and children. When you are young, you are hired as an engineer to work 40 hours, which we all know very well that working for startups that means 80 hours or you are not putting good effort. Well with a family that’s not possible, as y…

> soon we will be left with a society that only focuses on how to better themselves and not mentoring or preparing the next generation of smart people

I fear we are well on our way to this type of society. "Learning" is a virtue. You'll hear many people say, "I like learning," or some other version of this cliche. It reminds me of this idea, and it makes me cringe, partly because of the robotic aspect and partly because it means they've chosen self-focus and self-improvement over helping others. They've chosen this in terms of priorities well ahead of mentorship, at least to the point where they'll say it out loud.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#198

Post by marcosdumay » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 4:15 PM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #146

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life throws another ranch in your bucket of problems Did you mean "wrench", as in "throw a wrench in the works"?

Speaking as someone who has relatives in the field, a ranch is a problem.

A ranch is an endless stream of expensive problems.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#199

Post by rayiner » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 4:16 PM UTC

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #181

j45 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's fewer kids born today, there's a likelihood of fewer coders in 20 years.

On the other hand, 1 person who knows AWS well today can do things that would take huge capital investments and a team of 40 people 20 years ago

On the other other hand, the total number of programmers has increased dramatically compared to 20 years ago notwithstanding those improvements.

Re: How the Valley treats experienced people

#200

Post by edoceo » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 4:16 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #196

I'm one of those people who doesn't have to work, but I do because I enjoy it. I moved to the silicon valley nine years ago, and in that time I've done half a dozen or so job interviews. I got no offers, so now I run my own company. It was different story each time, but the upshot (IMHO) is that the interview process seemed to assume that I was a fresh-out undergrad. In one case, they asked me to debug some Ruby code…

Yeah, gig to hire works great for my small tech company.