81–90 of 121 posts
On the flip side Netflix only hires "fully formed adults". No interns and no fresh college grads.
Or so we're told in reference to their moving to AWS, they could be an exception that proves the rule.
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I get where you're coming from, but this should really be qualified by acknowledging that the overwhelming majority of software work is not "modern" by that definition and has nothing to do with any of those newer technologies. Most software products will never have to be deployed on 1,000 AWS instances. For example, I've never used a DevOps stack, a JS module loader or build manager, or an AWS instance in a professi…
Rampant proliferation of "new" also breaks the hiring process. Companies (i.e. "in-demand startups") want new stacks, and they want to hire people who are experts in everything that didn't exist 2-3 years ago (literally, 5 years experience with a 2 year old platform). When that's the case, you're either a high school or college kid who can spend all their time learning new things, or you are old and learn new things…
A lot of startups really aren't doing anything that technically exceptional, but if you want someone to spend their evenings fixing bugs in your bog-standard Rails app, it's much easier to persuade the guy that spends them fixing bugs in bleeding edge javascript frameworks than the guy that spends them with his wife and kids.
I'm not "young" anymore and not "old" yet, but I'm quite saddened by this point of view: 'The young understand new technologies better than the old do, and are like a clean slate: they will rapidly learn the latest coding methods and techniques, and they don’t carry any “technology baggage”'. Software business seems mostly about exploitation of the naivety of the youngsters and less about software and programming.
To start a "modern" project today, you have to know programming languages, infrastructure, and packaging systems that didn't even exist five years ago. That's the surface-level "technology" they (VCs) mean. VCs don't care about your deep algorithm knowledge or domain experience unless it can accelerate user-facing interfaces to the moon. If you hire people with 30 years experience, do they know what a Gruntfile is? D…
On the other hand, being old means you can quickly spot how trendy magpie technical stacks map to old patterns that the industry has been consistently reinventing over time.
It's also debatable just how many startups actually have much of the contemporary DevOps and data center infrastructure as part of their standard workflow, as opposed to all the volume of buzz that goes into discussing it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To start a "modern" project today, you have to know programming languages, infrastructure, and packaging systems that didn't even exist five years ago. That's the surface-level "technology" they (VCs) mean. VCs don't care about your deep algorithm knowledge or domain experience unless it can accelerate user-facing interfaces to the moon. If you hire people with 30 years experience, do they know what a Gruntfile is? D…
Of course, this is mostly specific to web development. On the other hand, being old means you can quickly spot how trendy magpie technical stacks map to old patterns that the industry has been consistently reinventing over time. It's also debatable just how many startups actually have much of the contemporary DevOps and data center infrastructure as part of their standard workflow, as opposed to all the volume of buz…
oh, gosh. That too. The other big problem we have with so many "new" programmers is you can get a critical mass of a few million users before a platform even makes sense. Go shouldn't exist (Erlang did it first). MongoDB shouldn't exist (no explanation needed). But, they scooped the kids early then everybody starts "thinking" that way and before you know it, the world is stuck in a broken mindset.
Now, with an army of 5 million unknowing people committed to your platform, the people with experience don't matter anymore. You have strength in numbers, not in correctness or long-term viability.
It's also debatable just how many startups actually have much of the contemporary DevOps and data center infrastructure
Startups, yes. Actual companies, no. Most "real" companies (older than 8 years) have legacy infrastructure, physical data centers, and are only now realizing what 'cloud' (or OS-level VMs!) could mean to them (continuous deployment, automated testing, application isolation, reproducible infrastructure, etc).
I'm not "young" anymore and not "old" yet, but I'm quite saddened by this point of view: 'The young understand new technologies better than the old do, and are like a clean slate: they will rapidly learn the latest coding methods and techniques, and they don’t carry any “technology baggage”'. Software business seems mostly about exploitation of the naivety of the youngsters and less about software and programming.
To start a "modern" project today, you have to know programming languages, infrastructure, and packaging systems that didn't even exist five years ago. That's the surface-level "technology" they (VCs) mean. VCs don't care about your deep algorithm knowledge or domain experience unless it can accelerate user-facing interfaces to the moon. If you hire people with 30 years experience, do they know what a Gruntfile is? D…
That doesn't mean all programming is like that though. For instance, you know what I was using for graphics programming 15 years ago? C++ and OpenGL. You know I'm still using 15 years later? C++ and OpenGL. They've evolved a lot for sure, but that knowledge hasn't become irrelevant.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To start a "modern" project today, you have to know programming languages, infrastructure, and packaging systems that didn't even exist five years ago. That's the surface-level "technology" they (VCs) mean. VCs don't care about your deep algorithm knowledge or domain experience unless it can accelerate user-facing interfaces to the moon. If you hire people with 30 years experience, do they know what a Gruntfile is? D…
I think this is a symptom of the fact that most SV startups aren't actually doing anything that's truly technically challenging. (Most startups read like social/marketing experiments that happen to need a web page). So they don't need to hire people with actual experience, and since the tech is largely disposable, fashion tends to rule. That doesn't mean all programming is like that though. For instance, you know wha…
Carmack is a great example of experience+useful. So is notch. But, they are both very tied to hardware, algorithms, and physical implementations of things so they have stationary expert-level targets.
It is definitely not a secret. Age bias is so obvious that its actually celebrated. Look at this example from Jetbrains Jobs page https://www.jetbrains.com/company/jobs/ We offer: Fascinating work in a friendly, young team
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I think the single people can take more risk thing is a ridiculous trope that assumes marriage situations that are rare today (single income couple). A dual income married couple can tolerate more risk than a single person, for obvious reasons.
A dual income couple can tolerate more risk, but in my experience they are unwilling. After marriage, a couple's risk tolerance skews a lot closer to a woman's risk tolerance than to a man's.
How is someone's gender in any way relevant to their financial risk tolerance?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course, this is mostly specific to web development. On the other hand, being old means you can quickly spot how trendy magpie technical stacks map to old patterns that the industry has been consistently reinventing over time. It's also debatable just how many startups actually have much of the contemporary DevOps and data center infrastructure as part of their standard workflow, as opposed to all the volume of buz…
spot how trendy magpie technical stacks map to old patterns that the industry has been consistently reinventing over time. oh, gosh. That too. The other big problem we have with so many "new" programmers is you can get a critical mass of a few million users before a platform even makes sense. Go shouldn't exist (Erlang did it first). MongoDB shouldn't exist (no explanation needed). But, they scooped the kids early th…
Moreover, it's one of the few languages so far that have a near complete POSIX/Unix-like kernel(s) API so that one can do straightforward system programming tasks without C, without even using libc, much less meddling with FFIs, lousy wrappers and whatnot.
Also, I'm pretty sure OS-level virtualization has been popular for a while now. Hosting companies have sworn by OpenVZ and even Linux-VServer for ages. However, those aren't as straightforward to configure, nor do they have the marketing angle that Rocket/rkt and Docker do. They're also more system-oriented as opposed to app-oriented.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 y…
Can you provide some links (other than chatboard comments) to substantiate this claim that "CA companies and investors require your age"? https://oag.ca.gov/publications/CRhandbook/ch2