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The Brutal Ageism of Tech

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Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#271

Post by k2xl »

gammarator wrote: post #163
k2xl wrote: post #130

Oh please. This article is just ridiculous. I find it hard to sympathize with any of the characters or to find any semblance of truth in anything that was presented. Someone gave the same argument to me regarding Y Combinator - They only invest in 22-28 year olds... Which is statistically probably accurate, but here's a question that people don't think about: What do you think the average age of someone who applies t…

> What, do they think that VC's just go, "Oh you sort of LOOK like Mark Zuckerberg. Take my money." It's a reference to something pg said about himself: """And Graham knew that he had his own biases. “I can be tricked by anyone who looks like Mark Zuckerberg. There was a guy once who we funded who was terrible. I said: ‘How could he be bad? He looks like Zuckerberg!’ ” """ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/magazine/y…

That isn't aegism, that's someone who "looks" like Zuckerberg. Lots of people who look like Bill Gates gets funded too.

And there's a difference between investing 15K in a startup and 1M+. I highly doubt anyone invests millions of dollars because a founder looks "young"

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#272

Post by Beliavsky »

Considerable research has found that fluid intelligence declines with age. There is a 2006 paper "Age differences in fluid intelligence: Contributions of general slowing and frontal decline".

We know that 50-year-olds are not as strong physically as 20-year-olds. The brain is an organ, and it would be surprising if every part of the body except the brain worked less well as one aged.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#273

Post by benihana »

Dale1 wrote: post #239
bsder wrote: post #201

There are two perceived problems with hiring older programmers: 1) Older programmers won't put up with bullshit. They expect to have reasonable goals, be listened to, be compensated fairly, and have a reasonable schedule. They've been around the block enough to identify bullshit and will leave when it starts getting too high. 2) Older programmers really don't always understand the "cool" social crap that teenagers ar…

Point 1 == Nail hit firmly on head! I'm 31 and far more streetwise than I was 10/15 years ago. Youngsters tend to get excited quickly and you can make them do all sorts of cool things, working for free, no contracts, perpetual internships etc etc. It seems everyone these days is a "founder" of something. I own sites that do things these youngsters can't do (Turn a profit) but I've never, not for one moment ever thoug…

I'm also 31, and I don't think this article is talking about us. I think it's talking about people who are 15-20 years older than us.

I do agree that I am way more experienced, knowledgeable, and have a much more healthy and mature perspective on business and software engineering than I did when I was 22.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#274

Post by leothekim »

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…

s/older/experienced/. Grey hair does not engender wisdom.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#275

Post by MCarusi »

One of the most common theories floated around about why younger programmers are so "preferred" is that older programmers tend to get stuck doing things a certain way or not adapting to new languages or programming paradigms.

The big issue is that you see this with people in any profession, and of any age. People naturally stick with what's comfortable to them, even in their twenties. It could be that tech is such a rapidly changing field that this gets so much attention, but applying this to a certain age demographic in a single profession is only doing tech a disservice.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#276

Post by RogerL »

late2part wrote: post #109
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…

One of the issues that is unpopular to discuss in inertia in constraints. Experienced people have learned a set of platonic causations that they apply to pattern matched situations. When they come into a new situation, if they match patterns that don't quite fit, they'll apply old solutions to situations that are not appropriate. Enders Game is a good allegory for this. It's good to have diversity and meritocratic pr…

Bullshit.

You are the one with a "platonic causation", namely, older = rigid thinking.

Enders Game is a child's book, written to appeal to children. Note we don't actually have 9 year olds making decisions in reality.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#277

Post by cookiecaper »

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.

Even 30 is low. You know that in all other industries, a person in their 30s is still early in their career, right? You don't start getting the respect of being a season pro until you're in your 40s at least.

Personally I've had great respect for the 50+ yr old programmers that've worked on modern teams with me. They've always been great augmentations, and I prefer to hire more experienced people where possible, especially if that experience predates the web.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#278

Post by mattgreenrocks »

TinyBig wrote: post #89
mattgreenrocks wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They exist, but they don't emit quite as much noise as SV companies do. :)

Do you have any recommendations on where to look for these companies? I figure they must be out there but I am not sure where to look.

I found my gig by putting this on my SO Careers page: "I'm looking for a challenging position requiring significant programming expertise; preferably involving systems-level programming and/or CS theory". Open source work helped.

Older technologists are out there, but they're a bit nomadic.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#279

Post by cookiecaper »

leothekim wrote: post #274
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…

s/older/experienced/. Grey hair does not engender wisdom.

There's a strong correlation that shouldn't be hard to figure out. You're right that it's not necessarily equivalent, but I don't think anyone posited that gray hair automatically equals masterful programming ability.

Re: The Brutal Ageism of Tech

#280

Post by RogerL »

aortega wrote: post #139
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…

Not so much. I'm 35, started programming at about 10 in my TI99-4A, typing games from magazines, etc. the usual stuff. No way a 40 year old guy have more experience than me in general programming, unless he was working at Microsoft or IBM at that date, and surely they are about less than 10000 of those guys in the world. Of course there are 40 year olds that may have way more experience than me in a specific language…

Well, you are "old". Yup, over thirty, you have missed the boat. Welcome to the new ageism.

FWIW, I'm 47 and was programming assembly and microcode in my youth. So I have 10 years on you. At this scale, I doubt the difference matters much. Because you are old, too.

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