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New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

nytimes.com

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Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#31

Post by pmiller2 »

scarface74 wrote: post #26
pmiller2 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. What region do you live in, and how do you think your bottom line compares to what you’d see in a comparable role in the Bay Area? I’m not really architect / principal level just yet (probably 3-5 years of continuous improvement from that I would say), but I feel like I’m just barely getting ahead as a senior making $200k paying $2300/month in rent with no hope to buy and about a 40-60 minute commute (de…

Metro Atlanta GA. My commute is 30-40 minutes depending on traffic and we just bought a 3000 square foot 5 bedroom/3.5 bath house + a large office, new build in a great school system for $335K with 5% down. Our mortgage all in is a little less than $2100/month. The most senior hands on developers/individual contributors/team leads can make between $130K-$160K. Even with that, it leaves more than enough to max out a 4…

Good info, thanks.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#32

Post by jedberg »

I think part of the problem is "protected classes". I learned the other day that if you're over 40 you're a protected class for engineering in California.

If you're a protected class and you have a job, that's great! It will help you a lot. But the unintended consequence is that companies are more reluctant to hire someone in a protected class, because if they are legitimately bad at their job, they are harder to get rid of.

I still think we should have protected classes, but the protection needs to reach into hiring too. Maybe make companies have to submit written justification for not hiring someone in a protected class? I don't know I'm just spitballing here.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#33

Post by mykowebhn »

I'm 48, on the West Coast, and recently finished interviewing, receiving multiple offers.

I did 250 Leetcode problems, practiced System Design, and Behavioral. In the end, I found doing 250 Leetcode was probably overkill, but it definitely helped.

This will probably get me severely down-voted, and I do understand the antipathy toward having to Leetcode, but the way I see it is that I'm really lucky. I get to sit on my butt, do what I love, and I get paid really well to do it. If interviewing is extremely hard and I have to study, yet again, at 48 so be it. There are plenty of people in the world who are so less fortunate than I am.

[Edit] s/250 Leetcode/250 Leetcode problems/

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#34

Post by pleasecalllater »

I still require to work in a company where my manager/boss/CTO know much more than me. I'm almost 40. It's really hard to work for a 20-something guy who has almost no experience and is happily making all the mistakes he could read in books about.

Still, finding a job where my boss would know more is more and more problematic.

When I was 33 I was rejected by a recruiter with "you know, here I have dozens of resumes of people 10 years younger than you, who have lots of experience in managing teams. There must be something wrong with you, so I cannot pass your papers to the client."

Still, looking for a job is a very traumatic experience. The companies are looking for unicorns: young, cheap, without family (aka drinking in evenings, working on weekends), with lots of experience, and academic knowledge (which will never be used).

A couple of times I heard from guys, who would be my managers "oh, I'd love to have your experience"... the rest of the interviews went smoothly. In all the places I even didn't get to the step where they asked for the money requirements. They just didn't answer.

I'm looking for a remote job now. I even made a nicely stripped resume on one page. My normal has 3 pages. It's a very traumatic experience, especially that most of the remote companies require knowing almost only some new stuff, totally ignoring my 18 years of experience in everything else.

Btw... a surgeon of my age is usually not experienced enough to make surgeries on his/her own. A programmer of my age is usually a useless resource, which is happily replaced with someone just after the college.

All this makes me sad. The experience is not valued here. So what is? The lack of experience?

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#35

Post by sk5t »

epc wrote: post #25

Am 52. Served as IBM’s “corporate webmaster” in the 1990s (sort of like being CTO but without the cool executive hat). Corporate Webmaster was responsible for all technical operations of IBM’s corporate sites (from systems administration to application development), as well as theoretically responsible for all IBM web sites. As well as serve as the single point of contact inside IBM for anything “internet”. Have been…

Interesting background - any story behind leaving IBM 18 years ago at the young age of ~33?

As an aside, ultimate responsibility for IBM's corporate websites does not _sound_ very similar to the CTO role at a tech company.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#36

Post by scarface74 »

mykowebhn wrote: post #33

I'm 48, on the West Coast, and recently finished interviewing, receiving multiple offers. I did 250 Leetcode problems, practiced System Design, and Behavioral. In the end, I found doing 250 Leetcode was probably overkill, but it definitely helped. This will probably get me severely down-voted, and I do understand the antipathy toward having to Leetcode, but the way I see it is that I'm really lucky. I get to sit on m…

If leetCode is what you have to do to compete in your market so be it. In the grand scheme of things, it would be hypocritical for me to criticize someone for spending hours upon hours on leetCode considering the amount of time I’ve spent on books about architecture, spent a year learning the ends and out of AWS, and the time I spent networking.

Not to mention the fact that I will spend the next two year learning front end frameworks and Docker ecosystem. I’m 45

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#37

Post by rapfaria »

epc wrote: post #25

Am 52. Served as IBM’s “corporate webmaster” in the 1990s (sort of like being CTO but without the cool executive hat). Corporate Webmaster was responsible for all technical operations of IBM’s corporate sites (from systems administration to application development), as well as theoretically responsible for all IBM web sites. As well as serve as the single point of contact inside IBM for anything “internet”. Have been…

> I’ve found other ways to make money instead of being employed by others

SaaS?

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#38

Post by WalterBright »

jedberg wrote: post #32

I think part of the problem is "protected classes". I learned the other day that if you're over 40 you're a protected class for engineering in California. If you're a protected class and you have a job, that's great! It will help you a lot. But the unintended consequence is that companies are more reluctant to hire someone in a protected class, because if they are legitimately bad at their job, they are harder to get…

It's well known that the harder the government makes it to fire someone, the equally harder it will be to get hired. It's just that people don't want to believe it.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#39

Post by scarface74 »

pleasecalllater wrote: post #34

I still require to work in a company where my manager/boss/CTO know much more than me. I'm almost 40. It's really hard to work for a 20-something guy who has almost no experience and is happily making all the mistakes he could read in books about. Still, finding a job where my boss would know more is more and more problematic. When I was 33 I was rejected by a recruiter with "you know, here I have dozens of resumes o…

My resume has always been one page. I hate looking over 3 page resumes. I don’t care what you did in the 90s.

No one cares that I wrote C for DEC VAX and Stratus VOS mainframes in the late 90s or the systems I wrote with a combination of C++/COM and Vb6 in the early 2000s. I only go back 10 years.

In fact, I negotiated not to be a team lead at my current job.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#40

Post by mykowebhn »

scarface74 wrote: post #36
mykowebhn wrote: post #33

I'm 48, on the West Coast, and recently finished interviewing, receiving multiple offers. I did 250 Leetcode problems, practiced System Design, and Behavioral. In the end, I found doing 250 Leetcode was probably overkill, but it definitely helped. This will probably get me severely down-voted, and I do understand the antipathy toward having to Leetcode, but the way I see it is that I'm really lucky. I get to sit on m…

If leetCode is what you have to do to compete in your market so be it. In the grand scheme of things, it would be hypocritical for me to criticize someone for spending hours upon hours on leetCode considering the amount of time I’ve spent on books about architecture, spent a year learning the ends and out of AWS, and the time I spent networking. Not to mention the fact that I will spend the next two year learning fro…

I bet you have fun learning, right? I actually find doing algorithms problems fun. If I didn't find them fun I don't think I would've done 250. I'm also spending a lot of time reading architecture books and learning AWS. React is probably next on my list.

That said, it sounds like you and I are both "cultivating" and "tending to" our profession. I think that's what it takes to stay competitive and have longevity imo.

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