A few years ago I worked at a ~50 person startup, where an informal poll revealed everyone on the engineering team to be in an age range of ~24-30. One day we interviewed an insanely qualified dude in his mid-50s. He’d worked with technologicies up and down our stack, their competitors, and their predecessors, and could speak at length to their relative strengths and weaknesses. Tons of open source contributions, mentorship experience galore, super nice - super nice, but also clearly nervous during a few rounds.
At the team standup afterward, pretty much everyone was an unreserved yes except the engineering manager who directly said he was concerned about the candidate’s age, and whether he would “fit in.” He wondered out loud whether we could reject the candidate on this basis. The CTO was at the meeting and immediately shut that line of questioning down, although none of us ever heard from that candidate again. Something I’ll never forget as I get older in this field.
> The CTO was at the meeting and immediately shut that line of questioning down, although none of us ever heard from that candidate again.
Your CTO shut it down because your engineering manager was breaking Federal law in public. However, I don't need to tell you what happens to candidates that the hiring manager doesn't want to hire.
Also, I have witnessed similar situations multiple times. Everyone who worked for over 10 years knows ageism is thriving in tech, especially in the Bay.
Engineering manager was afraid a more experienced dev could call him out on his bullshit. Not being willing to manage someone older than you is likely a sign of cowardice.
The first and second really good developers I worked with were around 35 and 45 when I met them.
This - basically if you are overqualified, and dont jump on the hype-train anymore, and know that all the tech-"trends" are cyclic and have been there at least once - you could wake up the whole team, destroying the cult like atmosphere.
If I were the CTO in that situation, I would seriously have considered firing the engineering manager on the spot. Blatant discrimination is a serious fuck up. Period.
Let's say the CTO said "I'm concerned the candidate won't fit in because he's not into video games or partying with coworkers or working on the weekends, all the things that help us bond and keep a cohesive team". While not directly mentioning his age, such criteria would still make it very unlikely that the older candidate would be hired.
Would you consider this to be age discrimination (from a moral perspective; let's ignore legal considerations since those are incredibly vague and convoluted)?
Of course it is ageism. The CTO confused finding an employee with finding a fk buddy. The company is toxic, and is certainly discriminating unlawfully in multiple axis.
Also, none of the things you mentioned contribute to team cohesion, they are all detrimental to it.
Basically you are describing a CTO that has no idea how to CTO. We can take solace in the fact that his startup will fail hard.
> Would you consider this to be age discrimination (from a moral perspective; let's ignore legal considerations since those are incredibly vague and convoluted)?
It's straightforward (disparate impact) age discrimination from a legal perspective. The law in this area isn't that vague and convoluted.
> The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit did not agree. In a ruling this year supporting CareFusion, it stated that recruiting practices that have the effect of screening out older applicants — what is known in legal terms as having a “disparate impact” — did not violate the law.
I am not a lawyer, but it appears to me that the law is convoluted enough for the 7th court of appeals to offer an alternate decision.
Disparate impact is not a violation of the US law (neither federal nor state). If the disparate impact is related to the job, it's legal. (For example, a movie studio that turns away old actors who apply to play young characters will most likely win in court, if sued.)
What is reasonably related to the job, is far from clear; the rules are vague, and the previous rulings are complex and inconsistent.
In addition, I didn't want to make my question specific to the US. And the laws across different countries (even the Western developed countries) are not the same.
Come on now. It should be perfectly clear that playing video games and beer pong with colleagues is not a requirement for a job as a software developer.
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 mostly unemployed since leaving IBM in 2001, other than a few short stints with NYC area startups.
To F100 corporate organizations I was too “internet” and claimed far too much experience than possible (circa 2002), to startups I was (and apparently am) too conservative, too corporate.
And yes, I tried the non–profit track. Every non–profit I interviewed with decided that I was clearly going to drop them as soon as I could reacquire a job in corporate America.
I’ve found other ways to make money instead of being employed by others.
I'm almost 50 myself. I've been coding for 25+ years, and am looking for a new job myself. I have one at a well-known company but I want to make more hay while the sun shines. I currently have a week of onsites booked with the Big N, and I'm in study mode. Because I'm still technical and hands-on and never became a manager, I haven't had any trouble getting contacted constantly for new jobs.
Same, technical and hands on, people love my work. Had a lot of trouble getting hired last time. Was unemployed for a year and whole family was a mere couple of weeks from homelessness when a govt contract finally came through. Next time I won’t be so lucky as little has changed, and feel the winds of recession picking up.
Same, except add nine years to the age. :). I actually did try management back in the late 90's and early 2000's, first at a startup I cofounded, then at a mid-size public company after the startup was acquired. I basically hated my life from the point where the startup stopped being a bunch of us coding and playing Quake III at night, to the point where I quit the public corp. Went back into engineering, stayed there, work at home and love what I do. Have no lack of opportunities being floated my way.
I was burned out after 5 years of 7x24x365. Days were filled with conference calls and escalations about conference calls, nights were filled with the technical work I was supposed to be doing during the day. I was prohibited from filing patents due to some sort of corporate reporting arcanity, which derailed my technical career. I had (and apparently still have) an extremely negative reputation in the executive ranks from all of the times I told people that no, they couldn't run an IBM site under their desk, and many others.
Appreciate that it's not similar to today's concept of CTO. I was not only responsible for all IBM web sites, I was expected to design, develop, deploy, manage, diagnose software for all IBM web sites, even those that I had no direct control over. IBM’s own software products tended to trail what we were doing in production by 12-24 months, when they were actually released.
Hence a classic toxic 24/7 role where you're expected to double as operation and developer and database and architect and all. You should have run away much quicker.
Nothing to do whatsoever with CTO. It's not event relevant to anything executive or management.
I hope that you can describe your position in a more positive light than this text and without alluding to being CTO, because both will get you rejected fairly quickly in any interview.
MY next door neighbor worked for IBM in OS/2. when IBM stopped supporting OS/2 they laid him off. He blamed Microsoft for it and refused to run Windows. I got him a copy of OpenSUSE from my computer because he refused to use Windows. He went to Linux, and had worked on the IBM Mainframes as well before. He had trouble getting hired because he was in his 60s. He recently died and had called himself a Windows Bigot because he refused to use or support Windows.
Mostly retired. Stopped worrying about finding FTE 5-6 years ago and focused on making the cash I had work for me on a more immediate time scale. I do some advisory work with local startups for equity. Angel invested for awhile but stopped as mentioned elsewhere in an earlier thread.
Would love to work again in tech but have never cracked getting on recruiters’ radar and I have better things to do than play whack—a-mole with the latest and greatest in applicant tracking systems automated decision algorithms.
I'm going to rock your world: almost nobody uses the keyword scanners in the ATSs. Sending a resume is mostly a waste of time, if you find a job you like just speak to someone that works at that company, preferably the hiring manager, and your likelihood of at least getting an interview goes up by about two orders of magnitude. Happy to teach you other tricks if you care for it.
As a 50+ chap, I had an instance of a top company, referred by friend, whole team up for it and to not even get an interview as I got `filtered` by HR and the recruitment process.
Turns out they rejected me as I was `overqualified`.
Equally in my early years pre PC mainstream days, there was an age bias towards older people. With many personal experiences upon that in that time/culture - including, believe it or not `overqualified` (they sat a coding exam and I found mistakes in the exam) for a COBOL job at a bank aged 19 (had 3 years work under my belt already in the field). Recruitment agent said it was because I knew more than the boss and he didn't like that. Was a time also back then when the boss would of previously done the job of those under him in such institutional culture of that time.
Dare say starting out today is easier than it was pre internet boom.
I'm sure there are others who equally have experienced agisim on both ends of the scale in IT.
As a gen-x'er, I wonder about being caught in the middle. I was too young for boomers (started as weekend tech in 9th grade). Now I sense I'm too old for millennials.
Supposedly both demo groups strongly prefer their own. Whereas us x'ers were so few, we just had to get along with everyone.
As a gen-xer, I fucking love where I'm at. I have the perfect combination of knowing how to to fix my toilet and my wifi (was third engineer at Aruba - suck it).
>Turns out they rejected me as I was `overqualified`.
I applied for a helpdesk position like this, once. Was required to take an IQ test and one of the questions during the interview was about what IRQ the keyboard was assigned to (you know, in the plug-n-play era, when IRQ and COM ports no longer were a "thing" to configure).
Got a response back, later, that I was overqualified.
I easily translated it to, "Wasn't willing to put up with our shit for so little pay."
Bullet dodged but there are some truly caustic employers out there, who will try to gatekeep every possible variance that they can think of, to keep the line toed[0].
A friend of mine is in his 50s he got tired of being overqualified for jobs. So he sent in applications for CEO of Microsoft etc and got the overqualified letters back. It is ridiculous if you ask me, and he is only overqualified because of his age.
That is one worth framing and adding to the CV. My personal favorite was time IBM said something could not be done, I knocked up some code 30 minutes later doing what they said could not be done. Took IBM a week (which entailed contacting outside consultants) to come back and say my proposal would solve the problem.
I really wished the response of "over qualified" was made illegal as we all know it is used as a way to say no for reasons that are not legal...like age discrimination etc or other forms of discrimination (note I'm autistic spectrum).
Oh well, I've grown to loath and borderline hate HR departments over the decades thru such experiences. Which have been predominantly staffed by females, not that I'm drawing any conclusion to that, but it has been solid observation over my entire working career and at the very least, curious. Maybe there needs to be a drive for sexual equality with HR departments :/
Usually they staff a female minority in HR to make up for lack of diversity in other departments. In some companies I worked at they upgraded a administrative assistant to supervising manager of IT because she was female and they needed more diversity. She was not qualified for the job, and I'd feel better if she was qualified for the job. But that is just my opinion.
Dare say starting out today is easier than it was
pre internet boom.
Hard to say without a time machine, but from talking to juniors & students (I have a lot of friends who teach) it sounds harder to get that first job than it was when I was starting out (I'm 36).
My completely unscientific gut feeling was that it was the easiest to get started in tech in the late 90s & right as the industry started recovering from the .com bust (~2005, when I got my first "real" full-time developer job).
The funny things is that they were already teaching programming in secondary schools when I was a kid (i.e. it wasn't really 'exotic' to be a programmer) but even in my most recent job most programmers are in their 20s.
I used to get, can you start Monday? pretty often after an hour interview back in the day. Sure miss that, and considering I’m a much better dev now it’s a travesty.
Had that, also for contract work that in itself can be a deal breaker as one case I said I could start a few days later and they gave the contract to somebody else. But then contracting and perm work, you can appreciate and respect that aspect.
AT 36, you would of hit the internet explosions about spot on, prior to the PC days with mainframes and `corporate/government ` structure it was not easy at all. Late 90's was the internet boom time and there was a real sudden shortage in skills back then and it was easier.
I was taught programming in school (well, actually self taught from magazines like Byte, computer World and Unix World and a ZX81) in the early 80's, was an acoustic coupler modem that took 30 mins to get a stable line to a mainframe at some college our school had some airtime upon. Today, far more accessible, but back then, was hard on many levels.
Biggest hurdle was HR and one role I went for (was 20 then), had two interviews, HR and then the tech people. Litterly had HR peon say to me "That's a lot of money for somebody your age" and really was a very uncomfortable attitude. Blow the tech interview out of the water, got offered the job and more money than the HR peon bismershed for somebody my age and turned the job down flat solely due to the attitude of the HR peon and made that very clear. Took another job offer, for less money outer principle. Though turned out to be a better job. But had I not had the attitude from HR, I'd of taken that job.
Lot changed in that 15 year gap between mid-30's aged people and people in their 50's today. But then much has changed on many levels and I'd say for the better overall, albeit the age discrimination thing still exists, they just moved the goalposts.
But IT is still a young industry, compare to say accountants. But then accountant qualification from a decade ago, still worth it's value today, not many tech certs/qualifications that you can say that about as the industry changes and is still evolving. That is kinda the crux and what makes IT as an industry, hard to compare to many other industries as IT is just more dynamic.
That said - COBOL has remained pretty darn static. But I moved out of that area decades ago (before you the internet boom and the time you got into tech).
But tech is a constant learning curve, that won't change soon either. Hence any job in tech is not just the job, but a full time education on top of that to stay current.
Yes, I'm sure I had it easier as there were a lot more jobs requiring programming at the turn of the century than 20 years prior! My point was - is it actually harder for people 15 years younger than me to start up?
Many examples of people in that age having started up on their own, be it some wondrous website thru to a mobile phone app.
Ease of access to consumers with the likes of ebay or app stores and lower running costs into breaking into those avenues have opened up many an avenue that was harder to access before.
But that is progress, come 50+, you may end up having the same perspective in relation to when you started out and starting out today.
> I'm going to rock your world: almost nobody uses the keyword scanners in the ATSs. Sending a resume is mostly a waste of time, if you find a job you like just speak to someone that works at that company, preferably the hiring manager, and your likelihood of at least getting an interview goes up by about two orders of magnitude. Happy to teach you other tricks if you care for it.
How are you supposed to find out the hiring manager's name from a job post? I'd be curious to hear some of these tricks.
> How are you supposed to find out the hiring manager's name from a job post? I'd be curious to hear some of these tricks.
Go to meetups. User's groups. Any gathering of technical people. Important people tend to network, but they may not be the "regulars" as they are busy people.
I know more than a couple of technical/user groups where a relatively unknown person giving a good presentation is likely to wind up with an interview on the spot ... if not an actual consulting/job offer.
The key is a good presentation. The content shows your technical chops and the presentation shows your communication skills.
And, while lots of people say "have a GitHub and reference it", I'm going to caution about this. Just like an art portfolio, only put things you can proud of in there if you're going to make it public and reference it for employment. I may make you show me at the interview on your laptop and talk about it and it shouldn't embarrass you.
(Personally, I don't check GitHub unless someone points me at it explicitly.)
Linkedin. If you can't find the person who manages that department, find anybody in that department and ask them about the job and the manager. One "trick" is to let them know you're looking to apply at the company and want to ask them for career advice. Most people love giving advice.
I work for a company with 4500 employees. I assure you, one of the obvious patterns based on first and last names will get you most email addresses there.
Make sure you have something to brag about in github. Highlight it on your resume and cover letter. As others said, contact hiring managers directly. But most importantly, figure out what is it you enjoy working on 8+ hours every day, and look for companies that would let you do that.
It's a capitalistic market. When everyone does X you have to figure out what Y is which will differentiate yourself. When everyone uses linkedin to target then you have to find other channels.
Everyone should read Traction by Garbriel Weinberg. It's for startup marketing but job searching is basically marketing yourself in a world that has one dominant channel (recruiters). The efficacy of different channels is time varying as they get saturated- You have to find the one that works for you at any given time
I’m 45. I didn’t start aggressively job hopping until I was 35, before then I stayed at one job for almost 10 years. I haven’t once had a problem finding a job quickly. I was a generalist when I was 35 and started down the road of specializing in the Microsoft stack in 2008. I start pivoting in 2016 to more architect level roles but still staying hands on but with more cross platform languages (.Net Core, Node, Python), I also spent the last two years getting a lot of experience with AWS from a development/Devops/netops standpoint.
I’m slowly getting more into the front end $cool_kids stack with React, etc.
But, I don’t do the blind resume submittals to job boards and applicant tracking systems. I keep a very strong network of external recruiters, former managers, and former coworkers.
I have never studied leetCode, and won’t go near a job that’s more concerned with how well I’ve read over “Cracking the Code” instead of how well I can architect a system.
How many employers do you find yourself needing to exclude because of the “no Leetcode” thing? Do you think you’re sacrificing anything in the way of comp by doing so?
None. I don’t live on the West Coast and that seems to be mostly a west coast thing. According to all of the local salary surveys and anecdotal information that I’m getting from recruiters, former managers, and former coworkers, I’m slightly on the right side of the bell curve for architect/principal engineer, etc. Not bragging, the salary and cost of living is well below the west coast.
My last job where I thought I was being hired as a senior developer I was asked “what was my 90 day plan to create a modern software department to create two green field projects”. It ended up they were looking for a dev lead.
The next job interview I spent most of my time white boarding architecture. I wasn’t asked a single development question. I just explained what I did on my last job.
As far as comp, if I were in a position to travel a lot, there are plenty of consulting companies willing to pay me more than I am making now - all I would have to do is send out a few emails to
my network. Again not bragging. After working 20+ years if you can’t get some type of consulting gig you’re doing it wrong.
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 (depending on whether I drive to BART or walk). Just wondering if there’s something better out there.
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 401K, and have enough fun money to do most of the things we want.
But like I said, just from talking to hiring managers over “informal lunches”, there are positions for overpriced “digital transformation consultants”, “enterprise architects”, etc. where you can get $200K and live in a lower cost of living area as long as you live near a major airport.
It’s more a matter of how far behind I am. I spent a lot of years being underpaid and my net worth is about $-100k due to student debt. I am also not in my 20s anymore. I have also only been a software engineer for about 5 or 6 years.
My wife had about 130k in student loan debt when we married, and we went on a ten year repayment plan. Total payment is about $1700 a month...
So your rent plus debt servicing should be around $4000... leaving your around $4000 a month for everything else. You should be able to live pretty well on that! That is more than most people make total.
Well, I’d also like to retire in less than 20 years, so, factor that in (probably $2000-2500/month). Food, utilities, insurance, car expenses (I don’t drive much, but it’s fairly essential for me to have a car to get certain places; it’s also paid off, fortunately), etc. I think you can see where this is going.
> Well, I’d also like to retire in less than 20 years
Don't we all.
> Food, utilities, insurance, car expenses (I don’t drive much, but it’s fairly essential for me to have a car to get certain places; it’s also paid off, fortunately)
We all also pay for this.
> probably $2000-2500/month
Dude you still have $1000 probably free just chilling if you are strict.
I don't get this, "you are not where you should be" mindset.
The student debt sucks, but you are doing extremely, extremely well. Making more than some doctors.
What if I told you I was 35? 45? 55? Does your perspective on “not where I should be” change given my already stated negative net worth? I’m old enough to be worried about being employable in this industry in 10 years. Do you not see how a 20 year time horizon for retirement, starting not from 0, but from -100k, is a source of anxiety?
As for “doctor money”, according to https://www.medscape.com/slideshow/2018-compensation-overvie... I make below the average salary for every physician specialty except public health & preventative medicine, and I’m several years older than the typical newly minted physician.
I also live in an area where you need to make at least $80k or so to qualify for a 1br apartment, according to the “3x rent in gross salary” rule used by a lot of landlords. With my large, fixed expenses (student loans), I’m not convinced moving to a lower CoL area actually improves my bottom line, either.
I’m not poor, and, like I said, I’m getting ahead slowly now, but I’m by no means rolling in it.
I know where you are coming from. Because of $bad_life_decisions until I was 35 and purposefully choices since then, I am behind financially by any objective measure.
You could say my career trajectory is behind being in my 40s and still being an individual contributor, but I don’t see any scenario where I would have wanted to be a person manager. (Been there done that. Went screaming back to an IC role).
But, I do see a narrow path where I can retire at the standard retirement age and be okay with a paid off house, enough savings to be okay, and hopefully social security between me and my wife collecting half of mine instead of her own.
Excuse me, but at $200k you're making $100k net so about $8k per month. With rent at $2.3k, you should be able to save enough to buy something at some point, no? Or at least you could rent something more expensive, closer to work?
Two words: Bay Area. There really is no possibility for me to afford a ~$1M house anytime soon, and renting significantly closer to work (as in a 30 minute public transportation commute) would cost me at least double what I pay now.
> Excuse me, but at $200k you're making $100k net so about $8k per month. With rent at $2.3k, you should be able to save enough to buy something at some point, no? Or at least you could rent something more expensive, closer to work?
Without knowing regional pricing information it's hard to say they "should be able to save enough to buy something at some point".
Depending on your age you might care about what it would be like in a few more decades (I honestly don't know, it's far inland but Florida is low-elevation & would certainly get very hot either way).
Why don’t you say your salary and location? Geeez you’re on an unknown Internet forum. Please do us a favor by joy just bragging about your sitch but also giving us a clue what’s possible.
I've got about 20 years of professional coding under my belt including a 5 year stint doing a lot of job hopping/consulting. I'd never even heard of leetcode until this post and won't bother to even visit the website. For most of my career I've been in the group giving interviews. I don't recall having ever seen it mentioned on a resume. It's a complete and total nothing for any employer I've ever worked for/with.
Based on the comments in this thread, I'm guessing leetcode has done some successful marketing in the valley. I'm an East coaster.
I’m using leetCode in the genericized sense of “Kleenex” instead of tissue or “Googling something”. Basically any algorithm style interview.
Don’t get me wrong, I can see if your company is solving hard problems (tm) or problems at a scale that has never been done before why you need smart people (tm). But I find it ridiculous that some companies care about how well you can do esoteric algorithms when they are hiring you to do yet another software as a service CRUD app or some internal bespoke app that will never see the light of day outside of the company.
I’m not even convinced knowing hard computer science is important in most jobs. One of the best developers I know graduated from a well known but not well regarded private for profit college. Didn’t know much hard computer science but he reads like crazy about best practices when it comes to writing software. His code and unit tests are things of beauty to maintain. We worked together at three separate jobs. He’s also in his mid 40s and he codes on his own time and does side projects like someone in their 20s.
I got my start doing assembly in the 80s as a teenager, bit twiddling C on x86 PCs and mainframes for a decade, but none of that matters when I am spending half my day as a “full stack developer” and the other half as the de facto “AWS Architect” (in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king).
> I have never studied leetCode, and won’t go near a job that’s more concerned with how well I’ve read over “Cracking the Code” instead of how well I can architect a system.
I am 33.5, and looking for a job in India. I absolutely abhor doing leetCode, but atleast here it seems to be the only way - even within my own connected network.
Wow, this description is eerily similar to my own history and current situation - only real difference is a focus on Azure rather than AWS!
I've always been a strong believer in being a generalist - at least in my experience, the best developers and architects have some knowledge of networking, Windows, Linux, security etc. Basically, they know enough that they can quickly get to grips with almost anything that's thrown at them.
Can someone tell me where the older software engineers in the Bay Area have gone? I recently moved into the software industry (after years in the telecom industry), and the lack of older software engineers is disconcerting in a Soylent Green type of way.
I guess some have moved into management, and others have made enough money to retire, or they've moved somewhere with better value than the Bay Area. They're likely to avoid companies where everyone's in their twenties and the offices looks like frat houses. But even so, I'd expect to see many more gray-haired engineers around here than I do.
Many of them are still there. It's important to highlight the fact that CS graduation rates have been increasing in popularity overall, so the age distribution is going to skew younger even absent any discrimination. There's oscillations but the overall trend is upward [1]. I've met plenty of developers in their 40s and a few in their 50s at "hip" companies in San Francisco.
Another factor is that high compensation means people can afford to retire earlier. I know a couple people that saved up a couple million, and then moved to "flyover" states with low CoL to live off passive income. It's often achievable by 40s or 50s depending on how much money is spent on kids. Especially if you have one or zero children it's within reach.
I'm 44 and worked at various bay area startups you never heard of from 1998 to 2005, at which time I moved out of that area.
I don't have precise numbers, but based on a cursory scan of my linked-in connections, some of my cohort has followed that path and moved out. Another big subgroup is the people who went to google or some other Big N. In particular a lot of the high performance people did this.
Another person who replied to you suggested that CS/programming is just a lot more popular now and I think that is big part of the reason why it skews young. When I graduated (in 1997), CS was not a popular study. As a consequence, startups back then had a wide age range (20-60+), but still were quite youthful overall.
Someone who is over 40 today would have gotten their start in the late 90's around the time of the first Internet boom. The number of software engineering positions since then has exploded. Based on numbers on the Bureau of Labor and Statistics website it seems like they are roughly doubling each decade. The main source of new engineers is new graduates. That, coupled with the fact that people move into management, and leave the field, retire early is going to skew the workforce to the younger side regardless of any age discrimination.
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.
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
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.
I started out as a typical 12 year old computer geek. But, by the time I turned 35, I became much more cynical. Computers became a way to put food on my table. I don’t “have fun” with technology. I don’t hate my career by any means, but, I do what’s necessary to stay buzzword compliant.
I got into vicious codependent cycle with my job by the time I was 35. I didn’t know enough to be competitive and leave, I was bitter about my pay and they just kept me around because I knew where the bodies were buried. Since then, it’s all about optionality. If I go more than a month not enjoying my environment it’s time to leave.
I'm in the same boat as you were, I think. I like my company, but as the lead dev of a team in a big company I make a lot of technical decisions/reviews/collaborations... but others implement because I'm spending most of my time talking to the business, support, planning...etc. Not as much hands on.
Considering swinging the pendulum the other way to hands on technical again and let others do the BS work. Do you know anything about the north Atlanta market? Companies, salary range, culture? Or maybe ones to avoid...Thanks!
I think as our sector matures its more about emotional intelligence, and less about technical aptitude. I can’t help but think leetcode is a echo chamber. I personally disagree with this approach, I’ve met a few folks who think the CLI is useless and can be learned in a few days. But they score really well in algorithms.
With today’s data privacy concerns and tough European regulations I don’t think this attitude is acceptable.
I hope the field makes a return to appreciating fundamentals.
I get why companies want to use Leetcode for evaluation. It basically quantifies an applicant down to a number which makes hiring easier and more scalable. There's a lot less room for bias if every candidate can be boiled down to pass or fail by a single test.
That being said, I was on the hiring committee at my last job and personally, I found the best way to hire engineers is to just chat with them about previous projects. I'd usually run through one or two, "just confirming you can code" whiteboard questions and then ask them to tell me about a project they are proud of that they had a large part in. If you ask questions that dig into the project ("How did you do X?", "Why did you do Y?", "Now that it's over, what would you change?") you can usually get a pretty good idea of their skill level and knowledge as a developer as well as some great insights into their personality.
Obviously, that's much harder to scale and more subject to bias, but it worked for me.
In addition to being hard to scale and subject to bias, it's hard to know, even for you, if it was actually a good system or not. The best you can hope for is to have decent confidence it had a low false positive rate.
Short of industry wide collaboration with some kind of longitudinal study, getting an idea of what does and doesn't work in terms of false negatives is nearly impossible.
I think you can tell if it's a good system for your company. As an individual employer all I care about are:
1. are my false positives low?
2. is the time it takes to fill a position low?
If the answer to both of those questions is "yes" then the system is great for me (and I've seen the system described above provide affirmative answers to both these questions in a startup setting).
Determining whether a hiring system is locally good is significantly easier than determining if it's good in general.
You can say if it's acceptable ... but not necessarily good
The problem is that you don't know the cost of the false negatives; you don't know whether the people you didn't hire would have greatly improved your processes / code / business
Software is a collaboration. Almost by definition, all the stuff I don’t know how to do well is at least as important as the stuff I do, even as full stack person.
It’s probably not the stuff you know how to do that makes or breaks your company. Either someone else does it, or you “figure it out” and hopefully you know if you did it right before it’s too late.
How do you hire someone to be good at stuff you aren’t already good at? There’s gonna be a lot of those in the false negatives pile.
LeetCode is one path and it should be supported, but it shouldn't be the only path.
Realistically if a dev gets a leetcode interview they don't want to do, most of them can just cancel and likely get an interview with someone else next week if they're actively applying to jobs.
I love this. I think evaluating/interviewing is hard, should be much more about experience and past projects but so what if the industry has got it wrong, so what you have to study a little to get the job? The world is what it is. I think criticizing this from a ‘we could do better as an industry’ perspective is productive but from a personal perspective — today — what is going to get you hired is playing the game as it is.
"I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the software engineer's great stumbling block in his stride toward hiring fairness is not the Genius Asshole or the Bullshitter Who Can't Code, but the anonymous internet commenter, who is more devoted to 'pragmatism' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of reform to a positive peace which is the presence of fairness..."
I agree. Fairness in the sense of “equal ability to do the job results in the same outcome” would, indeed, get us there. The problem is that interviews don’t actually represent ability to do the job, not in this industry, at least.
I’m on a team with 8 other people right now. All 9 of us are quite capable at our jobs. We all got through some sort of interview process to get there, of course, but that just means we weren’t weeded out. We weren’t false positives, in other words.
But, why did we get through? Maybe the process really is capable of separating wheat from the chaff. Maybe the process works 85% of the time, and the 1 time it didn’t work in recent memory is someone who has already left the company. Maybe only capable people self select into the process for some reason. Maybe we’ve been phenomenally lucky.
The point is, just because a filter allows the right people through doesn’t mean it’s necessarily any good.
> The point is, just because a filter allows the right people through doesn’t mean it’s necessarily any good.
I define “good” and “right people” to be that which produces efficiency, quality, innovation in the business. So a good filter to me is good wrt these outcomes.
The industry is starving for ‘good people’ and ‘good outcomes’ and we should work to optimize this imo.
Any other measure divorced from outcome to me seems... weird.
I wish I could talk about our recruiting funnel numbers. It is the farthest thing from efficient.
Triplebyte claims the industry average onsite pass rate is in the neighborhood of 30% (https://triplebyte.com/blog/12-000-engineers-evaluated). I suspect that the huge majority of those who fail onsites get jobs. Is that efficient?
So anonymous internet comments are inhibiting the fair hiring practices of software engineers? Is there a study establishing the causal link between these two, because it sounds like spurious BS.
Love your attitude. I'm of the opinion that grinding through leetcode/hacker rank type exercises does improve your coding skills so I have no issue brushing up every time I'm on the market.
To that end, I'm 43 and last on the market a few months back, accepted an offer within a week of looking, had 3 pending final/onsites (including Amazon Seattle) and at least another half dozen in earlier stages that I shut down.
I do nothing to hide my age on my resume. Since turning 40 I've been on the market 3 times now, each time interviewing w/ 10-20 companies, and only once did I get the sense that agism was at play.
Oh, I agree that Leetcode can improve certain coding skills. But, are they the ones that matter for doing most software engineering jobs? The ability to write down algorithms on a whiteboard from memory alone is not a skill I’ve ever seen anyone use at any workplace outside of an interview room.
- Whenever I need to hop into a code share w/ a co-worker (I'm remote FWIW) the ability to quickly suss out an idea has greatly improved from having a decent aptitude with those types of exercises.
- Any non-trivial PR usually has at least a few portions that could be extricated to challenges like these. Being able to slice through issues like these in 15-30 minutes vs. say hours helps w/ my cadence. It lets me focus on the issues that are unique to the business.
The 30 minute pairing challenge we give during our interview (which I took myself) was something that was pulled and simplified from our source. I ended up having to implement something very similar just weeks after I started.
Of course being good are things like this isn't necessary to being an effective sr. developer, nor is it sufficient (even for an entry-level). But I do very much see it as a skill that is helpful and worth getting good at.
It was a bit, but only about 1/3 ended up with an onsite.
Part of the reason is because I hadn't spent as much effort on this earlier in my career; now with the concern of agism, every time I'm on the market I try to level up my skillset.
The leetcode angle at least makes interviews much more predictable and easier to prep for. The Google-style interview is well studied and documented by this point, like an SAT with an answer key you can study beforehand.
New graduates are even more out of touch. In what other industry can you graduate with a bachelors (or have no degree at all) and obtain a six figure job in return for a few weeks of studying?
I really like studying. Like, my list of things to learn more about in CS/software engineering/Math alone is probably longer than I'm going to get to before retirement... which, if I'm lucky, will consist in no small part of studying things and working on personal projects. I don't understand people who say they don't want to be immortal, they'd get bored. I can sortof imagine my psyche eventually crushing itself under the weight of its own history but... boredom? Nope. Too much interesting stuff to learn/try, even at the scale of challenge available to us now.
So, trust me when I say I don't object in the slightest to being asked to study and learn things. LeetCode-style problems look like one form of recreation to me.
And yet, I still think this comment is shortsighted because:
* I'd guess a lot of what's on LeetCode isn't exactly untrodden territory for any developer that got their start before 1995.
* Distinguishing oneself can work in the individual case, but it generalizes poorly. Imagine employers and would-be job-seekers alike internalize LeetCode knowledge as a standard distinguishing mark. Like college degrees, distinguishing points often over time become standard expectations. The likely outcome is that about as many devs in their 20s & 30s can brandish the same "distinction" that devs 40+ can and the incentives to prefer youth perform about the same.
Individual efforts to improve ones lot are a good place to start, but they rarely solve systemic problems.
Absolutely. Unless you're working on a greenfield project or refactoring code for extreme performance, understanding the operational side of the business will get you more points towards the mythical 10x programmer status than algorithms.
I can't count the times I've seen scope creep and deadline slippage because the developer didn't really understand the need & use case and built something other than what was required.
This is curious to me, and it's not just in your comment that I've seen this.
But why is there this assumption that if someone studies Leetcode and algorithms then it means that they can't do anything else? Why is there this all or nothing mentality?
If someone studies Leetcode and algorithms, wouldn't one assume they know other things as well in the software engineering realm? I have plenty of friends in the Bay Area who are thriving at FAANG who studied algorithms and Leetcode intensely.
> I have plenty of friends in the Bay Area who are thriving at FAANG who studied algorithms and Leetcode intensely.
And I've seen developers come from doing Node green field APIs at Netflix to waist deep in a 15 year old Java application with Spring MVC and some underlying Struts yet to be removed and don't understand why debugger stopped going any deeper and they lost where they start 10 classes ago from shared modules.
Then they don't understand how refactoring a core message for alerting customer across the sight has tight coupling, wanted to something fancy and broke the key business features, try to argue it's better but a business unit just list functionality of it's product. Instead of researching, and coming up a plan with a team to refactor using TTD and Strangle Vine method from the legacy tightly coupled code, to a separate module with better testing and following SOLID principles.
How much time have they spent using the standard frameworks that most companies use everyday? Could they even model a standard relational schema? Do they know anything about automated testing?
If they were told a web page was slow would they know enough architecturally to know how to find the bottleneck and no the solution for solving it? No the answer is not based on finding the o(n) complexity of reversing a binary tree.
I'm not 48, I'm younger, but in my 30's. I only started the LeetCode study grind about a year or so go, but not consistently. I just got back from my onsite at a Big-N and pretty much bombed it. I gut nervous and forgot the easiest of questions. I lost my confidence. My mind went blank, my hands, nerves shaking. Couldn't write complete code or even sentences I think at times. It was bad. I was intimidated for no reason.
I am having very difficult time getting the offers (duh, when performing like this). Did you always get to receiving offers? I seem to always get the, we decided to go with another candidate... line after my onsite.
I've only had 2 company's fly me out so far and the only companies that I have gotten offers at don't do LeetCode. It's extremely frustrating or maybe I'm just not prepared well enough yet and need to be more consistent with my study and practice (and don't pay as much either) or maybe I'm just not smart enough. I feel stuck.
Will it ever end or am I stuck grinding for the rest of my career (life)? Will I ever be able just breathe and relax again? I'm not on the West coast, but interviewing on the West Coast. I'll rent out my condo or keep it around as a home away from home if I ever get an opportunity.
> I gut nervous and forgot the easiest of questions. I lost my confidence. My mind went blank, my hands, nerves shaking. Couldn't write complete code or even sentences I think at times. It was bad. I was intimidated for no reason.
This happens to me too.
> Will it ever end or am I stuck grinding for the rest of my career (life)? Will I ever be able just breathe and relax again? I'm not on the West coast, but interviewing on the West Coast. I'll rent out my condo or keep it around as a home away from home if I ever get an opportunity.
Dude just try for companies on the west coast. Why is this the end all be all? Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Austin, Houston, Charlotte, Raleigh, Colorado Springs. . . So many cities with low CoL and six figure salaries for Developers, Security Engineers, Linux Admins, Infrastructure Engineers.
You even have Denver, DC, NYC, Charlotte, Arlington, Seattle, Tampa, Minneapolis, so many options. Stop limiting yourself San Francisco when there are so many great cities, with awesome opportunities.
I'm currently in Minneapolis, downtown proper. I even own a condo in the middle of downtown. I don't even need a car and buses galore and multiple trains as well as a skyway for bad weather all within a block or less. I have Target, Whole Foods, Trader Joe's and Mall of America at my access. Oh, I'm also making 6 figures already.
That said, doubling my salary a Big-N for a few years and getting experience at a larger tech company is what I'm mostly chasing at the moment. I want the experience, I want to see what it's like for myself. I can just rent out the condo I have now easily, pack a bag of clothes and go.
Assuming your profile is anonymous, can you tell us what industry you're in and what your offers were paying? Just trying to get a comparison for what myself (and others) can expect.
I've been in several different industries, but what I do in particular is backend software engineering.
I don't feel comfortable saying here, but the Blind app is an excellent resource for finding what total compensation (TC) you can expect for different companies and years of experience (YOE).
Thanks, you've provided some great insights here - and appreciated those links. Will buy that O'Reilly book!
Mid 40s myself, stayed in one tech stack for too long but have been redeeming myself in the past few years with .net core, AWS, Docker and trying to get into React.
I find myself struggling most with the front end bits, but it's just a question of staying with it.
Have always loved tech, and highly passionate about it. Having a family with a kid on the ASD has really restricted available hours to tinker though, that's my main challenge.
Anyway I found what you and others here wrote quite motivational, so thanks again.
One thing that I'd like to mention that I didn't before is that the interview process can be taxing, draining, and it can be an emotional roller-coaster. Try to stay positive and keep at it. Good things will come!
Cheers. I'm a FTE presently, but have always got to look forward so whilst no immediate pressure I've learned that there's really no resting on one's laurels.
And yes can confirm that when I had to go through the process, and was less prepared, it was certainly very draining. So spending time learning/staying on top of things in peace time will certainly help during "war". :)
Staying physically healthy, lifting weights etc is another thing that hasn't been raised so far, so would just like to put that in. Can always adjust perception through that, and also it is something we truly need to be doing now that we're getting older. It also helps for mental health.
Sweet, thanks! The part I struggle with in interviews is more on playing the game. If someone asks "how would you build a parking lot?" or "how would you design a CI system for a team of 8 developers?", I struggle to keep it simple. Making something usable is actually way easier when working with someone who has thought about what they want and/or are participating. It's like "I don't want a parking lot, you do, so tell me about why you want one". Basically I want to avoid wasting the "client's" resources until I have more information, but system design interviews are not in initial kick off meetings where you go away and come back with a few ideas that don't suck. They are accepting that someone wants proof you can design a contrived system neither of you truly care about while they out you on the spot.
The part that is missing from nearly all interviews are an opportunity for the company to sell itself to the interviewee. So as the interviewee, I'd like to say that if you make me jump thru some hoops because you feel like I should go through the same hazing process you went thru when interviewing, I am going to think that you are only focused on what I can do for you.
How about this, as an interviewer, say something like... "This design question is gonna suck because I don't know how to ask it better, but if you can just hang in there long enough to help me understand you can think about something non-trivial, that'd be fabulous. We both know you're smart, and I just need to imagine working with you in something complex."
how would you design a CI system for a team of 8 developers?"
My last three jobs I was hired as the “adult supervision” as either an individual contributor who was more equal than others or as an official dev lead. I was specifically asked by the director those types of questions and how would I rewrite a 20 year old PowerBuilder app that had been maintained by two “developers” who had been their for 20 and 13 years.
I went through the training process they would go through, setting up source control, setting up development, QA environments, automated testing, and CI/CD.
Then he was shocked when I said that I wouldn’t rewrite it from the ground up. I would upgrade to a newer version of PowerBuilder that supported COM, concert the whole app to a COM object, put a C#/WebAPI wrapper around it, write some automated integration reads and contract out some front end developers to put a web interface on it.
Then slowly move the PB logic to C# and keep the stored procedures after upgrading to the latest version of sql server.
Finally move the stored procs to code.
All this to say, that’s what’s wrong with some “senior developers”. They’ve spent their entire career at large companies where they haven’t had a chance to work up and down the entire stack. If you spent your entire career “coding” at a large company, you’re not that much more valuable to most companies than someone with 5 years of experience b
At that job we had to hire some overpriced/clueless “AWS consultants” since I didn’t know AWS at the time. Now I could manage that. I still wouldn’t try doing anything on the front end. There are people much better than me.
Anecdote: My dad (finance/accounting guy) lost his job in his 40's and was never able to find another one.
Thankfully my mom makes enough for things to work out, and they own a piece of rental property, and my dad stashed away a lot of money for retirement while he worked (to the dismay of my mother).
Additionally, the company I work at is half (or more) people hired straight out of college which kinda makes me feel weird. It's a small company that has been around ~15 years or so, and I feel like their hiring practices would lead to their ass getting handed to them in court.
I like the people I work with, but something definitely feels wrong.
Employment is not an efficient market. Transaction costs are very high, bidding is not public, and utility is a non-linear function of more than just compensation.
It’s not a market at all, because participation, realistically speaking, is involuntary for most sellers. It’s closer to a feudal contract than an actual market.
Yep. Glad that there are at least a few people whose brains haven't been turned to mush by decades of propaganda and inflexible market fundamentalist orthodoxy.
Is this something exclusive to white collar jobs or is it mostly programming? Asking as my day job is in the skilled trade of engine mechanic.
If youre over 45 in a machine shop or in any trade (plumbing, electrical, automotive, HVAC, etc...) your biggest barrier to getting any job is picking up the phone when it rings. Johnson Control, Honeywell, heck even people like Nest and Ford are kicking down your door and offering you any money to join.
I feel like this applies more to programming. It should act as writing on the wall for anyone who thinks they can make a career out of it. You have 15-20 years and then you're considered old I suppose.
I don't find this to be the case with other areas of IT. We have a lot of folks in the late 40's to middle 50's working through out our IT Department and organization.
I suspect its west coast USA, particularly start ups. If you're in your 50's then you probably won't put up with the nonsense startups say. As friend of mine says - I wouldn't work for lottery tickets (shares).
As a generalist developer nearing 40, I worry about this all the time. I have extensive and valuable experience in certain areas, including management, but I have started investigating other directions I can take my career and more focused specialities I can pursue to extend my shelf life, because it's seems pretty clear that it's not really viable to continue my current path.
One thing I'm a bit confused about is why doesn't salary bidding fix this?
For example if a 25 yr old coder is $X per year surely, even if you have terrible age discrimination, there must be some salary level, say $0.75*X where having the older worker is preferable?
Is it that older workers are much more expensive and are bidding themselves out the market? Is it that people value youth so much they will pay a 3x markup for it or something?
If there's a large pool of super skilled people begging for work I don't quite understand why someone wouldn't want to leverage that. I get why maybe you pay older workers less if you discriminate, but to not hire them at all seems strange.
The assumption that there exists some price at which the older worker is preferable is assuming that all software workers have a positive contribution and the only task is to value and compensate it roughly in proportion.
My experience suggests that a fair chunk of the population of software developers are incapable of sustainably creating positive business value overall (even if they were paid nothing). If that model is the correct one, part of what you're paying for in a younger applicant is they might be good, whereas with an experienced yet unskilled applicant, they might already be the equivalent of a scratched-off lottery ticket that isn't a winner. (There's no price at which you would buy it.)
Note that I'm well into the age range where I would be discriminated against if age discrimination were rampant. I'm also not claiming that experienced workers are more likely than younger workers to have a negative value. I'm merely claiming that their value is more likely to be determined and less likely to change in the future.
So you're saying that older workers being in the position of looking for a job are signaling that they're a scratched off lottery ticket for which the expected value of a jackpot is zero?
I’m saying that employers might be making that judgment when deciding not to hire a more experienced worker who interviews/tests the same as a less experienced worker. Same way a ballclub might invest in a rookie OF hitting 0.225 where a veteran with the same stats would be passed over.
I’ve not found age to be a good proxy for capacity or capability; I know exceptionally good (and many poor) coders at every age range I’ve seen in our field.
As for “looking for a job”, that’s a normal thing. Most experienced candidates will have a network to help, but moving to a new area or new field is also normal and hurts networking effectiveness.
A common objection is that they will leave as soon as they can find a 'better' (higher-paying) job. So not worth it to invest in them.
This sucks, but it definitely explains a lot of discrimination at the higher-end of the scale. The OP has a 71-year-old who couldn't find work. It must be very difficult for an employer to agree to hire this person, get them trained up on their specific business processes, only for them to have a serious health issue (and/or die) inside of a year. I get that this can happen to anyone, but the likelihood is of course greater the older you get.
Maybe employers could take out some kind of insurance on their employees, with the cost based on the actuarial tables and taken out of the employees' salaries (kind of what you suggest).
> Is it that older workers are much more expensive and are bidding themselves out the market?
On one cost issue. Let's say you're in a city other than SEA, LA, SF, NYC and Boston. A 55 year old on a good insurance plan will often cost you anywhere from $6,000 to $10,000 more per year in healthcare benefits versus a 20-25 year old. The cost of a 45 year old employee further increases with time due to that (over 10 years, from 45 to 55, an employee's health benefits cost can easily climb by an additional $5k-$6k per year). So if the salary in question is $90,000 (again, outside the elite tech cities), that bumps the cost of the employee considerably as they age. Some states - such as NY - have laws that alter this equation though. When an employee goes from eg 20 to 35 years old, there's a far more modest healthcare benefits cost increase (30%-40% increase would be more typical, starting from a lower base cost versus the 45 year old; from 40 to 55 the cost can easily double, from a higher starting point).
This is another serious issue that people frequently run into with the US healthcare system.
> A 55 year old on a good insurance plan will often cost you anywhere from $6,000 to $10,000 more per year in healthcare benefits versus a 20-25 year old.
Jesus freaking christ I never realised that being European. This is a game changer for older folks, I guess I'm out of luck if I ever want to move to the US and I'm already over 30, ha :/
As things are now, with US healthcare being out of control on costs, it depends heavily on your salary and employment context.
If you're making eg $150,000 or $200,000 in SF or NYC and working for a stable company, an additional $500-$600 per month for the company isn't nearly the concern versus if you're working in Cleveland earning $75,000.
If you're with a decent company with good benefits, it's also not an unusual situation more generally speaking. Half the country receives its healthcare benefits from an employer. Companies in the US are used to forking over very high costs for healthcare benefits. It's an accepted cost of employing people here. Being unemployed at 55 in the US, with weak savings (can't bridge yourself to the next job) and struggling job prospects, is a very serious problem however. That's the sort of situation you want to avoid in the US.
If you're self-employed the healthcare costs can be a real killer also, obviously unless you earn enough to offset it properly. As a very young entrepreneur I simply went without healthcare coverage. I was fortunate to not have any meaningful health problems in those years, it's blatantly a serious risk to take.
I'm not sure that's how employer-based group health plans work, but regardless, the gaping flaw in this theory is that a typical Recruiter and Hiring Manager wouldn't have the first clue about their employer's cost of benefits.
I know this is just personnel experience so don't take it for much but I had to share an office with a 70 year old "programmer" who made three times my salary. I know this because my supervisor got drunk on a business trip and told me the day after he fired the guy. He was constantly asking everyone how to do the simplest of tasks and complaining about being under payed and discriminated against because of his age and was extremely condescending to anyone who tried to help him. He never finished any assignment even after a year and a half. The led developer who has been coding for 15 years took over his last project and had to throw out all the code because it was basically just copied and pasted from stackover flow. I don't think this guy ever really knew how to code well and had got into the industry in a time where programmers where rare. Honestly, for what I've seen all the over 40 crowd in the industry moves into management positions.
Mid-40s, feel like I have been discriminated against based on age more than once. Not being one to fruitlessly blame my misfortune on things I can't change, I exited the rat race and started consulting. Doubled my already staggering pay working fewer hours, and from home. I realize this is not an easy thing to get up and running, but do at least consider finding your true value on the open market. The results could be surprising. The companies do need people who know what not to do, rather than just young-uns who do stupid things faster, with more energy.
I did this for 4 years and went back to full-time management. Even in NYC, I struggled as I (as a DevOps guy) never had the latest tech. If they needed AWS, I got AWS (experience and certs) but then they wanted Docker. Now Kubernetes. Despite years of programming experience in three languages, I still get whiteboarded. The point is, I was being treated like a full-time employee in consultant interviews. A few smaller clients I picked up were miniscule hours, we're talking 8 hours a month at most of work. Here on HN, these startup types wanted me to work for 50 pct less my rate.
I'd love to consult one day, but I haven't cracked that code. I have 18 years of systems automation, operations, and now management experience.
What "interviews" are you talking about? Your track record is supposed to speak for itself. The interview boils down to sitting down with a client and figuring out what they need and whether you can do it. Because you're a contractor you can be fired effortlessly, so there's very little risk for the client. You can also fire the client, so there's little risk for you.
I think you either don't have the right track record, or you're selling yourself incorrectly, by which I mean you're charging too little. Whiteboard interviews are out of the question as a contractor: I simply don't have time for this circus. One thing that helps with such things is pricing your services right. And that means charging more than you think is reasonable. The more you can charge, ironically, the easier these discussions get. The effect compounds further if you have several satisfied former clients who can give references.
My selling point is really simple, too: you've tried and you've failed, now let me show you what's possible.
Well it's partially a marketing issue, to answer your question of why interviews. It's recruiters who find me, and they present me as a contractor (when I signal I'm searching for this). The people I used to work with tend to ping me for full-time roles only, unfortunately, and word-of-mouth seems to be a common contractor route.
Finding clients outside of that requires what I expect is a social media presence, possibly publications and talks. None of which I've undertaken.
No one trusts the "resume/CV" track record, not in contracting and not in full-time roles. It's either word-of-mouth or some other method of trust, if it isn't a set of interviews.
I've picked up a decent full-time role to refurnish my image, as running an infrastructure with staff, you'd expect, should be impressive.
I'm skeptical of the contract market.
And to go back to the original thread, I found myself getting spurned due to age for any role which wasn't technical/managerial in the world of full-time work once I went back to it.
That's highly individual. I did it by leading several fairly involved projects at Google over the course of nearly a decade, and then building two high performance engineering teams from scratch outside Google. I also built a bit of a rare talent stack, which happens to be in heavy demand right now. If you do a good job, people want to work with you again, and don't mind paying pretty penny.
A friend of mine specialized in OSX USB drivers and did contract work for OEMS who make products for the Apple Macintosh. He used to work for Apple in the 1990s and did work on Mac System 7.5.4 with the team.
He recently killed himself, because he could not find clients and work due to ageism etc. He got sick as well and for a while was homeless. Once he got grey hair they didn't want to hire him anymore. He was 55.
This is eerily similar to my own story, except that I'm 59 and still alive, so far.
I didn't work on drivers; I worked on mostly higher-level stuff (Newton, HyperCard, Quicktime, AppleScript, and several projects that did not ultimately become products). I worked at Apple from 1988 to 1998, and after that moved on to a successful startup.
In 2004 for I developed an incurable chronic illness. It was one that is hard to diagnose and hard to treat. I eventually found a doctor who could figure out how to handle it, and became able to work again.
Before the illness, I was in that category where I never applied for jobs, because there was always someone bugging me to go to work for them. In fact, my work at Apple was in two chunks because someone bugged me to go to NeXT, then someone bugged me to join a startup, then someone bugged me to go back to Apple. After Apple laid me off in 1998, two startups immediately bugged me to go to work for them and I chose the one that looked better.
After the illness, it has never been like that again. Since 2004, I have mostly been self employed, mainly as a contractor writing code and technical documentation. I choose to live in a place with very low cost of living, so that when I'm working I can stack up piles of cash to live on between gigs. I'm using one of those piles now to work on a product of my own design.
I've contemplated suicide a few times in what I think is a relatively dispassionate way. It was always during fallow periods when my buffer was getting threadbare, and I was in danger of becoming a financial burden to loved ones. I always decided against it because, first, it's irreversible and other choices aren't; and second, because the harm I would do to my loved ones by making that choice probably outweighed the harm I would do by becoming an expense to them.
Although I didn't make your friend's decision, I also don't judge it. I believe I understand in general how it can seem like a reasonable choice in some circumstances.
Since we're talking about ageism, I'll mention that I can't prove that the drastic change in my employability is a case of ageism, nor a case of discrimination against people with chronic illnesses. I suspect it of being both, though, partly because age and health are (not necessarily reliable) proxies for other qualities that employers are legitimately interested in, so I can see what the motivation might be, and partly because the differences between before my illness and since are just so stark and sudden.
Thanks. That's the plan. I don't think I'm in any danger. Well, not in any danger that we're not all in by virtue of being alive, anyway.
Exercise is tricky. Too much or the wrong kind makes my condition worse. Luckily, over the past few years I've discovered that I can walk several miles a day in modest-sized chunks, and I have a dog who reminds me regularly to do it.
I just don't understand the bias. I'm too young to have experienced age discrimination like this yet, but its obvious at least to me that the best developers and hell, leaders, that I've worked with were all a part of older generations. Is it a shortcoming in pay for all these people? I feel like being out of work for 3 years would definitely lower whatever standard of pay I had prior to becoming unemployed. I just do not get the disconnect
The reasons age discrimination happen are fairly complex (and I'm not ready to write all the ones I understand out), but to your point about the best in the field being part of the older generation, it is my anecdotal experience that top performers don't seem to have problems with employment as long as they can work (generally). My own mother was exceptional in her field, thought not so much as to be written about, and continued to get job offers out of the blue years after illness had robbed her of the ability to work or even speak, purely off reputation. Her friends and colleagues that I've spoken to have had similar experiences as they've retired having lead similarly successful careers.
Of course, by definition, most people aren't exceptional or even in the top 10% and our society unfairly (and unwisely) punishes them for getting older.
Rich get richer.
Top performers get more/better offers.
Poor get poorer.
Non-top performers get less/worse offers.
I remember reading something where Paul Graham of Ycombinator said top performers never apply for jobs. They are often referred and handed jobs. And on the other side, you have ton of (supposedly) not so great workers who are sending out job applications by the dozens trying to get a job.
I'm not familiar with the PG essay you mention, but there's one by Joel Spolsky that says something similar to what you describe, that great developers rarely apply for jobs[0], that I've found to generally be true. If you do great work, and are great to work with, former coworkers will jump at the chance to work with you again and recommend you to their own colleagues.
Older workers also cost more in insurance premiums, have more "life events" that pull them away from work and are potentially harder to sell on corporate environment.
The only name in this thread I recognise (although, to be fair, most people aren't using their real names), and as an aside, a name that a seventy-something year-old Vietnam veteran running an apartment full of automated test machines in Greater Tokyo was surprised I dropped when he told me that the Digital Mars compiler was testing well. That compiler was always well behaved. I wonder if his age would have been an impediment to finding work at in the US; in Tokyo he suffered only the problem of being a foreigner.
other HN threads have debated heavily about why the startup industry is centered in SV, given its ultra high cost of living and labor. and yet, despite everything, SV remains at the center.
and that's why i think your explanation is closer to the truth. higher salaries for older workers wouldn't matter. what does matter is that management thinks older workers will bring the wrong sauce to the product, exhibit reasonable skepticism of the (probably unsuccessful) product concept, generally fail to buy in to the vision and sass their 24 year old masters.
Money can easily move. Money chooses to be there due to wanting to be there, good weather, terrain, politics, etc. There is some due to historical effects, but more people than not consider CA coast weather to be pretty ideal, hence the higher cost of living.
Why move if you can entice people to move into your back yard with all that money and not have to go anywhere?
And, weather doesn’t adequately explain the high CoL anywhere outside California or Hawaii. “It’s where the jobs are, so everyone wants to be there does,” and it also explains California. (Hawaii is special— it’s an archipelago, so, cost of shipping goods plus weather is really the best explanation, given the lack of a compelling employment story.)
Because there is more money in SV. All else equal financially, as it was in 1960s, CA is better. Now all else is not equal, except that cost of living may have finally caught up so residents are paying what the weather is worth.
And why is there more money? Because more people want to live there than other places. Why is that? That’s where the jobs are. You’re not rebutting my argument at all.
The jobs were in other places too, but generally people with money move away from less desirable to more desirable places. How many people desire to move to a place is shown by the prices people are willing to pay.
If you've ever sat in a hiring meeting, you'd know it's straightforward discrimination, but it's positive discrimination in favor of young people . It goes like this:
"Old guy here is a low/mid level person after 20 years, so he clearly isn't a superstar. Young guy here is low/mid level person, so he has potential to be a superstar."
Hiring committees, smothered by the legal ass covering around race and sex discrimination, never even think twice about making this discriminatory argument. It's even officially enshrined in hiring plans as "expectation of trajectory", a rule that only applies to old people.
And before you say "ok but that's a logical argument", it's exactly the same logically correct argument as the (illegal) "bases on my limited knowledge, a white/Chinese/male candidate I just met is more likely to be successful at this job than a black/Hispanic/female candidate".
If that's really the case then "age discrimination" doesn't necessarily indicate deliberately avoiding older workers to the sake of the fact that they're old. Say you have to fill a software developer role and the highest TC you can offer is $100k. Not unheard of for a company, say, one standard deviation below average. You interview a bunch of 40 year olds and 50 year olds and all of them have existing salaries way above that. What is the recruiter supposed to do, keep interviewing people that they almost certainly won't accept the offer? Ostensibly that' the law, but in reality anyone in that situation is going to shift their attention to people that would be willing to work for that kind of compensation.
This is partly what it's probably best to publish salary ranges as part of the job description, at least for companies other than top companies. The above scenario does mean that the minority of older devs that would accept that salary range get filtered out, and that's suboptimal.
Older workers = more experience = more responsibility = higher pay.
Without that extra responsibility there's no reason to pay someone more simply because they're older. The pay should be based on what the job is, not the age or 'experience' of the person doing it.
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.
Was completely with you until the last paragraph. As the poster above me says, the more you regulate hiring, the more reluctant companies are to do so. You can look at the entire continent of Europe for a 500 million person example of this- sclerotic uber-regulated hiring markets with intense bureaucratic rules around who can be hired or fired, who can be laid off, under what circumstances, etc. The end result of this regulation is dramatically higher unemployment rates and companies that are terrified to hire FTEs because it's so hard to get rid of a bad one.
Worker protection isn't standardised. The countries with the lowest unemployment rates have relatively dynamic labour markets.
Try France: 8.7%, was 10% as recently as 2015. Italy: 10.2%
Of course, unemployment is much worse for young workers in these countries. If you can't fire anyone then hiring is risky, so jobs tend to end up taken by older workers who then "camp" in the jobs even if they suck. Reverse ageism at work!
Tend to agree with deregulating hiring but some economies with heavily regulated employment like Germany (I’ve lived there, it is a nightmare to fire grossly incompetent employees) have very low unemployment rates.
Hartz IV was successful. Germany decreased bureaucracy and employment protection/regulation to the extent that their unemployment rate went down massively. From 1994-2012 Competition Weighted Relative Unit Labour Costs in Germany declined by 30% and unemployment dropped from 12% to 5.5% from 2005 to 2012.
> The Hartz concept, also known as Hartz reforms or the Hartz plan, is a set of recommendations submitted by a committee on reforms to the German labour market in 2002. Named after the head of the committee, Peter Hartz, these recommendations went on to become part of the German government's Agenda 2010 series of reforms, known as Hartz I – Hartz IV. The committee devised thirteen "innovation modules", which recommended changes to the German labour market system. These were then gradually put into practice: The measures of Hartz I – III were undertaken between January 1, 2003, and 2004, while Hartz IV was implemented on January 1, 2005.
These days, holding all other factors constant, SV companies will generally hire {gay|female|trans|minority} candidates before {male|white|indian|asian}. So companies are apparently not at all concerned about hiring members of protected classes, rather they prefer to hire them.
Now, if you want to make the argument that older employees don't boost the companies D&I numbers, while at the same incurring the risk of a protected class, that's a subtly different argument....
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.
This is why I gave up on ever having a "real job". This thread inspired me to take a look at a job board and the first thing I saw was a mobile developer job listed as "entry level". Scrolling down, the requirements are 5 years minimum mobile development experience. This is entry level now? Five years experience? By the time I have five years experience working at some kind of theoretical pre-entry level job and finally qualify for "entry level", I'll be old enough to be age discriminated against for being too old. If I could afford it, I'd go back to school to be an accountant or something, but since programming as all I know how to do and can afford to do, it's monetize "side projects" or die poor. And yes I know, working for someone else would make way more money, but that's like saying to an Uber driver "Hey bro, you'd make way more money with an NYC cab medallion". Like they don't know that? Of course, but that is not an option.
There’s some cruel irony of you bringing up accounting for more stability when another poster in these comments said his father was laid off from an accounting job in his 40s and never found another job again. Modern work is brutal in the developed world and our institutions both government and market are failing at utilizing the wealth of human experience and knowledge available primarily for the sake of institutions built upon generations of burn-out, complacency, and cronyism as the dark sides of the virtues of diligence, solidarity, and trust relationships.
Had lunch with a friend yesterday, who told me his daughter and her her husband, both under 40, are now partners at their accounting firm. Household income of $480k in flyover country.
Maybe accounting is like bimodal legal salaries, you either make it to the top, or you are out.
Key word there is "partners". They aren't just accountants, they are also business owners. Any field can give a good income if you own a successful business.
I think the I internal consistentcy of these job board postings is a function of the recruitment actors of a company properly filling out the webforms for the roles they post. I get the sense that they leave default values or reuse templates that carry over copy/paste errors.
Some of those job postings are so high on requirements to deter outside folks, and hire someone internal. Most companies have a policy of posting a job x amount of days before internals can officially be offered.
Odd that in an article about age based discrimination, they don't mention that there is also age based discrimination against young people, for example, getting into C level positions in the non-tech world.
When I used to be employed by other people, I specifically remember being told "we can't really promote you to director, you are too young". I wasn't inexperienced (I started working full time at 16). It wasn't that I hadn't earned it. It was because the old farts on the board wouldn't take me seriously.
> I wasn't inexperienced (I started working full time at 16). It wasn't that I hadn't earned it.
Above middle management, political calculus dominates meritocratic concerns (in the short term). This is true in any organisation because we’re primates. You won’t “earn” your way into senior management and you won’t help your case by informally complaining.
If you want a promotion you need leverage. Relationships with (potential) shareholders and creditors, a credible threat to decamp (and cause damage), et cetera. If you can’t threaten to leave you have no leverage. If your leaving wouldn’t cause the Board and senior management pain, you have no leverage. (If you have no leverage, that’s fine—get it.)
Speaking as someone who spent a lot of their career being young (and impatient).
I was specifically told by the CEO I would be considered for the position if not for my age. I earned my place by proving my value and reliability for years.
Explaining why we discriminate is not helping those who want to see this stopped.
It's like explaining why old people get discriminated upon. Yes, there is a logic to it. No, it is not acceptable. Yes, that is how it works now. No, that is not how it will always work, humans are constantly evolving. The way you talk sounds defeatist. It sounds a lot like the old 'thats just the way it is' when people talk about change.
BTW, I totally agree with you as to the fact that the logic you are talking about is correct in that is how things work NOW. Though we have been overcoming this. Or else there wouldn't be black or women in any boardroom. Change is happening. I don't believe those who say it will always be the same.
P.S. this happened to me more than 10 years ago. I ended up quitting and since spent the majority of my life working for myself.
> was specifically told by the CEO I would be considered for the position if not for my age
I’ve been told this and it sucks. I made the mistake of trying grovelling and complaining. Both failed for, with hindsight, fundamental reasons.
If you’re ambitious, you have to develop a political sense. Keeping stock of leverage relationships is key. If you lack leverage, you can’t make demands.
If you’d represented revenue and threatened to take it elsewhere, the CEO or Board may have overcome their biases. (If not, you’d get what you wanted by effecting the threat.)
Again, what you are saying can be summed up in 'get over it' and 'find a way around it for yourself'.
That's fine. I actually did.
But it seems really inappropriate to say this here.
We are discussing the insidiousness of discrimination with the hope of socially being more conscious and finding ways to improve this.
It's kinda like going into a place with victims of racism and saying 'get over' and 'use your white voice/dress more white' when talking about the issue of racism. It's out of place, even if the suggestion is coming from a good place of wanting the best for the other person.
P.S. I had a department with large numbers and strong growth on my side for leverage, that is why the CEO considered me in the first place. The numbers took a big hit after I left. If the board would have had more people in their 40s and less in their 70s-80s, I would likely have been accepted. Explaining to me that this is politics is a bit pedantic in assuming I don't understand politics.
"Again, what you are saying can be summed up in 'get over it' and 'find a way around it for yourself'."
That's not what I'm reading in the comment. They are telling you it's a different game, they focus on what kinds of value you bring that they actually care about, and you can have leverage in such situations if you are such a person. From there, you automatically know to be the person delivering on the metrics that matter to upper management. Maybe to see if you even can before getting a job in a specific organization. They're telling you how to be more effective in the event you want to win more at that level.
This whole thread is coming from an article discussing age bias.
Not ways to avoid getting biased against. Or justifications for biases. So it makes sense to keep the comments on topic.
Even if my case wasn't an ageist thing, which is a lot of assuming on your end, it doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
It takes a certain type of person though to go out and doubt someone when they say they have suffered from something and have nothing to gain from it.
The assumptions are very pedantic, explaining them only furthers the pedantry. It's not that I don't understand them. It's that I understand them too well.
If you think old people are only good for walmart greeters, then I think your problem with getting a C-level job might be the lack of empathy making you a total liability to hire in anything but bottom rung jobs.
If we were talking about discrimination against a large number of young people, I would be singing a different tune. Privileged and well-to-do people seeking “justice” for themselves by comparing their situation to that of other people whose situation is really desperate is unfortunately all too common.
I just can't get over the fact that the parent poster derailed a thread about people not being able to get jobs - which is jeopardizing their retirement - only to complain about themselves being rejected for a CxO job in their youth.
Some really are blind to their privilege and arrogance.
>It wasn't that I hadn't earned it. It was because the old farts on the board wouldn't take me seriously.
Except getting them to take you seriously is part of your job in upper management. Age matters but your view of them as old farts makes me suspect you did nothing to gain their favor in other ways. As someone else said, those ways have little to do with job based merit.
I find it suspect how as soon as I say young people get discriminated on, a bunch of people who I'd assume are older than in their 20s, come out and defend such discrimination.
I'm not that young anymore. I called them old farts because that is what they were. They discriminated on me based on my age alone, so that makes them old farts in my book. I wouldn't have been considered for the director position without any leverage, the numbers dropped for a good while after I left.
There are respectable old men and women. Just like there are respectable young men and women and there are snot nose kids who discriminate against old people. In general, people who discriminate lose the right to respect from me and I might refer to them in a despective tone when commenting on an anonymous site where I'm answering informally.
I suspect that the incivility and self-righteousness that comes through in these comments may have lead some to think that the poster needs some time to gain perspective, and wisdom, about how to deal with everyone with respect.
I might be an incivil, self-righteous person, but could you please explain to this incivil person why ageist discrimination is OK when applied to the young but not the old?
My point is that what you believe to be age discrimination may not be that at all, rather a judgement of suitability based on temperament and how relationships are handled.
A certain equanimity and humility often is attributed to age and the acquisition of wisdom. Perhaps this is what was referred to, rather than an actual judgement based on age.
People frequently do not confront behavior directly, rather using euphemisms or attributing decisions to other aspects to avoid a heated and personal confrontation. One of the necessary skills of leadership positions is to be aware of this and respond to the real, underlying issue rather than the superficial one.
Bob, the CEO, turned out to be a good friend of mine. Next time we have some beers, I'll tell him that his perspective was false and he was trying to protect my feelings (despite being a very brash guy who is known for being upfront) - I'll tell him how jhayward, nickpsecurity, JumpCrisscross and marcinzm and others told me his leadership secrets.
Well, let's leave the world of theory, which I'll let the ass-u-me crowd dominate:
Even if my particular case was not about ageism, we can agree it happens against the young unfairly, even if sometimes. Even if I'm too much of an asshole for it to happen to me.
So, my point stands: can you please explain to this self righteous, incivil person who deserves the discrimination he has experienced, why it is OK to discriminate against the young but not the old?
Fine, young person here. I personally rather the person in a higher up managing position to have a lot of experience because it's such a vast scope of departments and functions you are usually responsible for in a large company. Having experience in multiple roles and area helps a shit ton from being blindsided.
If this is a small company with less responsibilities, then I would consider this a problem and more so ageist, because less complexity and moving parts doesn't require more experience.
But I agree with the others a little bit as well, you seem to lacking a little EQ.
Because in that case it's not about age, age is the excuse given because they didn't want to actually explain why they didn't think you were good for the position. Maybe they attributed your negative qualities to young age and thus used that as the explanation, maybe not. Maybe they wanted a reason you couldn't argue against or fix. If they were particularly devious a-holes and you'd annoyed them then maybe they said age because they knew it'd drive you insane.
edit: And right for the position includes personally not liking you or thinking you're not acting appropriately to them. I doubt they cared much for how the company does compared to their own egos.
One day I will know as much about my own life as you seem to believe you know about me.
Even if my particular case was not about ageism, we can agree it happens against the young unfairly, sometimes. Even if I'm too much of an asshole for it to happen to me.
So, my point stands: can you please explain to this self righteous, incivil person who deserves the discrimination he has experienced, why it is OK to discriminate against the young but not the old?
P.S. Odd how in your last comment when I argued against your logic and you couldn't answer any more, you said: 'I don't care about this you do' and then proceed to post a bunch more times in this same thread.
>So, my point stands: can you please explain to this self righteous, incivil person who deserves the discrimination he has experienced, why it is OK to discriminate against the young but not the old? Or are you going to admit to being a troll like you did on the other comment when I addressed your weak arguments?
I didn't say it was. I said, it's okay to discriminate against personality traits which generally come with age. For example, lack of emotional stability is a negative trait in management and it correlates somewhat with age. As I said, it's about being able to portray those traits and that you possess them independently of age. Moreover, just like work experience matters so does life experience. Your brain changes with experience. It also changes drastically until you mid 20s. So, just like work experience (as measure by years working) can be a proxy for seniority so can life experience (as measured by age) be a proxy for those traits. Hopefully, people independently test things instead of relying on proxies alone.
Finally, the difference between youth and everything else you've mentioned in terms of discrimination is trivially simple. The young naturally become old with time. The old do not become young with time. Blacks don't become white. Women don't become men. A few years of wait versus eternity of wait is the difference.
Age is a proxy in people’s minds for other things, usually maturity, gravitas and playing the social game. Not always but more often than not. Age is a quick if inexact proxy but you can prove it in other ways.
But it seems really inappropriate to say this here.
We are discussing the insidiousness of discrimination with the hope of socially being more conscious and finding ways to improve this.
It's kinda like going into a place with victims of racism and saying 'get over' and 'use your white voice/dress more white' when talking about the issue of racism. Or suggesting that racial discrimination is justified. It's out of place, even if the suggestion is coming from a good place of wanting the best for the other person.
P.S. I had a department with large numbers and strong growth on my side for leverage, that is why the CEO considered me in the first place. The numbers took a big hit after I left. If the board would have had more people in their 40s and less in their 70s-80s, I would likely have been accepted. Explaining to me that this is politics is a very pedantic in assuming I don't understand politics.
>P.S. I had a department with large numbers and strong growth on my side for leverage, that is why the CEO considered me in the first place. The numbers took a big hit after I left. If the board would have had more people in their 40s and less in their 70s-80s, I would likely have been accepted. Explaining to me that this is politics is a very pedantic in assuming I don't understand politics.
The fact you're talking about strong growth and large numbers is why I don't think you understand politics. That doesn't matter to the board. It's the foot in the door at best. Did you align politically with the board? Did they know it? Would you be a reliable pawn for them? Did they think they could work with you and get you to do what they wanted? Did you have strong support from other department heads? Did you have strong support from other in higher positions? Did you have any major opponents? Any secret opponents? Did you know of those opponents through your connections? I could go on but point being, that doing a good job is pretty low on the list of things which matters in politics.
One day I will know as much about my own life as you seem to believe you know about me.
Even if my particular case was not about ageism, we can agree it happens against the young unfairly, even if sometimes. Even if I'm too much of an asshole for it to happen to me.
So, my point stands: can you please explain to this self righteous, incivil person who deserves the discrimination he has experienced, why it is OK to discriminate against the young but not the old? Or are you going to admit to being a troll like you did on the other comment when I addressed your weak arguments?
So every car insurance and car rental company should be removed? After all, they all charge higher rates to young people irrespective of years actually driving. I mean, sure science says the human brain doesn't mature until mid 20s and sure young people have much higher rates of accidents. But, damn it, we should just wipe them all out anyway, right?
It is my experience that when people resort to sarcasm they have lost the argument and can't face it.
But I'll address what you are saying:
Insurance can charge people without using ageism.
Before, insurers found that black people needed to pay more. After all, they were barbaric said the insurers. Then it became illegal.
Insurance companies still exist. Doing away with barbaric old practices is a good thing and as has happened when women got the right to vote, or civil rights, or other major positive reforms, the world continued on without falling apart.
It's sad that even in a rationalist place like hacker news, ageism is still something that can be openly admitted to. At least racists and sexists generally have to hide their ignorance if they don't want to be shunned by society.
>It is my experience that when people resort to sarcasm they have lost the argument and can't face it.
Or they understand that this site is in the end entertainment. Sarcasm makes it more fun for both the writer and the other readers.
You're projecting how much you care about this issue onto me. Reality is, I don't care about it much at all, it's a mild intellectual diversion to me. You're hurt by this, you're infuriated by this, you're driven by this. I'm not.
1- Rational: Your original argument is flawed, you realize it and have changed but can't admit it
2- Irrational: You can't defend your argument since you haven't, but won't change
3- Plain Nasty: You are trolling.
I'm inclined to think 3, though most people don't use their real name when trolling.
Or 4. I don't care to argue those points because I find doing so to not be entertaining or insightful. I used to argue to the death and then I realized that in the end it brought neither joy nor enlightenment. So I don't anymore.
You're free to think you've won, I don't care. Although one piece of life advice for someone who seems to like arguing and seems to be good at it. People will often stop arguing with you because they find it tiring. You'll think you've won and pat yourself on the back. They'll think you didn't win. Instead they'll just think you're good at arguing (but still wrong), an a-hole and will dislike you silently from then on.
Normally I would have stopped responding by now but I find this side conversation insightful.
You can't expect to be taken seriously in a discussion of age discrimination when you are using blatant discriminatory language. Imagine if in a race discrimination discussion you had said the equivalent "I hire respectable black people, but I don't hire--[the word I can't say or HN would ban me]"
Age discrimination against young people is temporary and is not causing any major (or even minor) social problems. One literally just has to wait a bit longer while being gainfully employed.
On the other hand, older people can't get jobs and their livelihood + potentially the livelihood of their families is at risk.
I'm in that age bracket myself, and have fortunately avoided most of the abuses described here.
Like the other posters are saying, the real problem is that learning how to develop good software (or any other technical product) takes time. This is an experience-based subject - art? craft? - and while I have seen many very talented younger engineers and developers, their lack of experience with a whole list of factors that don't involve slapping some code into an IDE, or what have you, usually means they end up being far less productive than people like to assume.
Bay Area culture has produced a lot of great things, but this stereotype has got to go.
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?
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.
>My resume has always been one page. I hate looking over 3 page resumes. I don’t care what you did in the 90s.
This is very culture specific.
Example: Like you, I usually keep a revolving ~10 years history on my CV. As the years progress, I drop anything > 10 years, as it's really no longer relevant.
Anyways, I was pointedly asked one time during an interview, recently, for a company in a different country, "Where's the rest of your work history since university?"
That was almost 20 years ago, now. You have any idea just how long my CV would be, now, with all of that information?
My solution to this has generally been to add a
"1997 - 2000 Various
Previous work history available upon request" at the bottom.
And then just carry a copy or two of the full CV with you to the interview. If someone wants to see it, let them. Generally interviewers have just been curious.
Even though I think ageism is overblown in the software development industry if you are buzzword compliant, I don’t take any chances. I leave everything off before 2008, my year of graduation and I go completely clean shaven and bald in an interview. (I’m Black it’s not abnormal). Most non-Blacks have no idea how old I am without the obvious signs of gray hair or a receding hair line.
White men can shave bald too, and anyone can dye their hair. There's even a famous hair dye brand that specifically advertises its product for use in gaming age doiscrimination! The product (Just For Men) and ads are gender-discriminatory, of course!
Not only that, but I don't want to be hired to fix some old VB6 app or write Crystal Reports. If I'm ever desperate for a job I would change my tune, but that's a different situation.
I took off anything related to C for a similar reason. While C and C++ have a special place in my heart, I was interviewing for a C# position around 4 years ago and I had an interviewer spend 5-10 minutes on C minutiae even though it had nothing to do with the job just to prove how smart he was.
I got the job. But, when I interview there are certain things I want to emphasize and that wasn’t one of them.
Everything. After 10 years it doesn’t really matter how much experience you have. I took off the two jobs I had between 1996-2008 because the skillset was outdated (VB6, Perl, Classic ASP) or something I didn’t want to do (C and C++). I’ve been doing C# since 2008 so I don’t think that will be irrelevant even in 2022.
> a surgeon of my age is usually not experienced enough
Forget surgeons. My dentist is nearing retirement age and a younger dentist was brought in to be groomed to replace him. The youngish dentist on more than a few occasions mentioned he couldn't/wouldn't do certain procedures because one with more experience was necessary.
The 'young' dentist is no more than 30 years old. And in coding world, if you are over 30, you are considered over the hill.
> The experience is not valued here. So what is? The lack of experience?
What is valued is someone who can get productive with new trendy framework right away, while receiving minimal pay.
> I still require to work in a company where my manager/boss/CTO know much more than me. I'm almost 40.
This is a hard requirement to meet because as you go up the hierarchy of positions, the first level leader initially knows more than the junior contributors, but that pretty rapidly flips. Maybe the second level of leadership still knows more than the first, but almost never after that. How could someone be an expert practitioner in all the varied disciplines that they likely oversee? It skews towards general tech leadership quite quickly.
> "you know, here I have dozens of resumes of people 10 years younger than you, who have lots of experience in managing team
So they are 23 year olds write lots of managing experience? Sometimes I just dislike this industry with its title inflation. I am 33 having been a recruiter for a short stint, I can tell you most of them just checkbox candidates because they have no idea what they are hiring. As they say, no one ever got fired buying an ibm.
There are 23 year olds who don’t have the technical chops, so rather than being fired, they are put on a management track. This started to happen around 2000.
Back when I hired into my company in ‘96 (I’m 47 now and 23 years at the same place), all the managers were in their 50’s and 60’s, who had done real engineering.
Then they become younger and younger, and eventually my manager was an idiot in his late 20’s whose relevant technical experience was “designing a power supply for an FPGA”, with me in my 40’s and an expert in my field. I told them I was leaving, so they gave me a promotion, and now I report to a 50 something female. She is a good manager.
Fortunately I’m at they point now where I’m the graybeard in the basement who gets to solve all the hard problems.
> The experience is not valued here. So what is? The lack of experience?
Experience in software development is sadly irrelevant for much of the software development industry. Instead what is today valued is knowledge of some new framework, the ability to describe data structures and algorithms (for interviews only), and the ability to pick-up (hack) at things quickly and without complaint.
All of these things are equally well done by a newcomer, of which there are ever increasing numbers. What future does someone increasingly older have over time, in an industry where the only qualifications (really) sought are "smart, eager, compliant, cheerful, and quick to learn"?
Is this in the US? The way you structure your writing makes me think you're not a native English speaker. What you could be describing is either a bias against hiring non-Americans (i.e. they should be cheap labour) or it's an issue from another country.
Is it just me or is there a way lower bar for evidence when it comes to age discrimination in tech on Hackernews compared to gender or race discrimination.
I’m not saying that it’s not a real phenomenon, but pretty much all the evidence I’ve seen is anecdotal or fairly weak.
While it’s true that a lot of older people are great programmers, I also think programming ability is only about 50% of what most people are looking for. The other 50% is about how well you work with others, and I have to say, when I read a lot of these anecdotes I can’t help but feel like some of people these people aren’t getting hired because they come off as stubborn assholes.
You're going to get anecdotes on HN because this is a discussion website.
Also, studies on this issue tend to not be well known without effort looking them up. The asshole factor is relevant but not as much as you would expect.
The actual perception that older workers haven't kept their edge is actually a common bias I've seen while gathering people for hiring. This bias is probably common amongst younger looking at older workers (eg 25 year old not hiring 35 year old) but also amongst older looking at less older. Eg a 50 year old won't hire a 40 year old because they wonder why the 40 year old even wants the position. Those two viewpoints seem to be recurring patterns at least in my experience.
You probably want hard data. I'm sure it is out here, Department of labor?
I'll go broad and say unemployment is below 4.0%, Fortune 500 have less age discrimination probably, and this particular comment section on Hacker News seems to be a lot of Bay Area/ San Fransisco perspective.
Attitude is the core of the problem. Another comment mentioned that if age discrimination happens, it happens primarily in VC culture areas like SV. I have a sneaking suspicion that high-tech workers don't really know what real unemployment looks like and are complaining about not getting to pick specifically where they want to work based on their tailor-made ideal environment that SV has spoonfed them about what a job should look like. Having the ability to even live in high profile areas and apply for high-tech jobs puts you several cuts above the rest of the non-tech working world and you will never truly be jobless. I would be grateful for that, personally.
EDIT: evidence of this in this thread said by others:
"Also, the SV is really the bastion of anti discrimination. Which is great. But they replaced it with something else, ageism."
"I have been unable to rejoin the supposedly "hot" SF Bay Area tech industry. I can get interviews if I whack 15 years off my web development career on my resume. I don't pass the in-person or video interview stage, because then the employer sees that I'm older than 35."
If 70 year olds really are less productive software engineers than single Red Bull-fueled 22 year olds (on average), and you thus end up hiring less 70 year olds, is that really discrimination? I get the article has stories from older people that seem to suggest they are well-qualified for the job and literally just their age number seems to lose them the job, which of course would be discriminatory.
But the law suits of companies based on statistical analyses of the number of older people in the company made it seem like a company can be sued for not having an expected distribution of ages but it’s not clear what assumptions are baked into these analyses (ie is it assumed a priori that all ages are equally productive). Certainly older people are more productive in certain contexts than others (eg I’ll take an older more experienced surgeon over the new junior attending any day, but I’ll bet on the young person in a football match or tasks that require a lot of cognitive flexibility).
> If 70 year olds really are less productive software engineers than single Red Bull-fueled 22 year olds (on average)
That's a really big "if", and seems to have no supporting evidence.
Let me turn this around into an only slightly less unsupported statement:
Youngsters in programming are desirable because most programming has become a shitty job where you need obedient people just slightly smarter than average but no smarter. Genuinely smart people are actually unwelcome in most programming jobs.
Programming now is mostly plumbing garbage data between crappy APIs that change every 6 months according to whim and fashion and you don't need smart people for that. In that environment, any knowledge you learn has a half-life of 3 months and you are solving the same problems over and over in different languages and APIs.
Or, alternatively, most VC money is chasing scalable "fad" social businesses, and having youngsters is useful because they are willing to expend enormous amount of money following fads while attempting to get laid. Again, knowledge half-life is under 3 months.
People making actual money and solving business problems seem to have no problems with hiring older people.
Along similar lines, we have a decent amount of senior (read "older") people at our company that are well paid. But, most of the work we do can be done by less experienced people who are much cheaper. That almost always means they are young. We don't discriminate based on age, but if you just looked at the ages of people that we mostly hire then that data would look like we're discriminating based on age when age is not part of the decision at all.
This is what I observe as well. If you have job that really just boils down to hooking up event listeners in java-script and fiddling with html and css until it looks they way the designers want it then experience beyond competency isn't really all that important. On principle, a company should hire an older dev with decades of experience if they're willing to work at rates that reflect the job they're doing. But devs with decades of experience are probably looking for work that is more complex and pays better.
"(eg I’ll take an older more experienced surgeon over the new junior attending any day, but I’ll bet on the young person in a football match or tasks that require a lot of cognitive flexibility)"
You seem to be contradicting yourself there, why you would you think an older surgeon lacks cognitive flexibility?
Because "developers get dumb by 30" is an HN meme that just won't go away. So every new batch of impressionable 20 year-olds hears it, at the same time VCs and big corps are telling them "you're so smart, now just submit to this series of hazing rituals."
This is accurate. Age discrimination is rampant in tech because young people are essentially recruited as unwitting scabs against their older peers. Aside from depressing wages and increasing loyalty (via fear of precarity), it’s also a very effective way to fight unionization, which software desperately needs (not for compensation reasons, although that will change, but for professional and ethical reasons).
It’s easy to impress a 24 year-old with a decent salary, a stocked kitchen, and lots of dumb little perks they can brag about (never mind that they are being paid, sometimes literally, in peanuts). They don’t start thinking about job security and labor power until it’s too late.
Based on your description of your priorities one could argue that older workers are the ones depressing wages, not younger workers. Many older workers (including you, by your own admission) value job security and work life balance over raw compensation and are less willing to rock the boat. Younger workers are more likely to go “fuck you, pay me, and if you don’t I’m going to move across the country to take up this other job offer I have”. Older employees with a spouse and kids have much less geographic mobility.
I understand the point that you are trying to make, but it's off the mark. Older workers are almost always paid more than younger workers, all else being equal. Unless there is some seismic shift in the economy, this might as well be axiomatic. So, it's just not possible for older people to depress the wages of younger people, unless older people in their prime working years for compensation (35-55+) for most sectors of the economy (including IT) started volunteering to do the same work for less compensation. As others in this thread have already made clear, even when they do that (e.g., out of desperation due to age discrimination), they're still going to be considered more "expensive" than a younger worker.
Also, let's be realistic: the vast majority of entry-level software developers just are not good enough to pull off the kind of thing you describe. They would be laughed off.
I owe 100% of my salary growth to job-hopping, so your assumption is incorrect.
Look, you made a bad argument. It's not a big deal. The fact is that the situation you described is frankly ridiculous: the notion that, were it not for older workers depressing wages, entry-level workers would cause compensation to go up by being so good at what they do and geographically flexible that they can go from metro area to metro area telling employers to fuck off until somebody recognizes them for the genius that they are. (It's a nice fantasy, though.)
Not a contradiction. Surgery is a skill honed by repetition and experience over many years. A cognitive task like mathematical theorem proving can be mastered by a bright teenager in much, much less time.
I suspect as you age your Bayesian priors become stronger and stronger so all new data only mildly updates your priors. Young people have very weak priors, so new data can easily affect their thinking.
Anecdotally, my mom has had a smart phone for more than 5 years but she still has just memorized certain functions she knows how to do like texting and placing a call. Ask her to do anything else and she throws up her hands. My 2 year old daughter, while not able to text or place calls, has a much more intuitive grasp of how the phone works and has been able to learn a lot of functionality on her own.
Or another example is that I've noticed from my (albeit limited) experience that all the surgeons I've worked with who used robotic surgical systems were younger (30s-40s). Anecdotally but I think there's a pattern there. Younger people tend to be more open to learning something radically new.
So while virtually all skills benefit from repetition and experience, some skills require more cognitive flexibility (ability to forget what you already know and start fresh) and demand frequent learning and re-learning.
this has to be viewed in the overall context of employment law and its purpose in society. we have anti discrimination laws not because the government is trying to give each and every corporation all the fuel it needs to become devilishly efficient. we have anti discrimination laws to increase equality and create a more even distribution of wealth and opportunity despite disadvantages imposed upon applicants by circumstance.
also, the government can be viewed as having an interest in keeping people employed in general so that they do not become dependent upon government for sustenance.
Head of HR once asked me what type of people we needed. I said we desperately needed older people. 20-year-old project managers don't have a clue. Company went under, he sells air-conditioning now.
> maybe the company should have had policies that gave their managers more clues?
Nah, I think management is just a job that requires experience and certification like any other job to be truly good at. People have this idea that "it's management, how hard can it be"... Turns out, really hard.
Only the qualified should be managers, not some 20 year old whose only qualification is being 'good with people'.
Yeah, I am in my mid 40s, and it was wild to interview for a new job after 5 years. Things have really changed in that short time.
I posted a portfolio that showed, if you want this, hire me! My resume was standard, listing out my projects and summarizing my experience.
I had good references that I rarely shared unless it was the last stages, so they wouldn't get bombarded. I applied weekly to new opps, keeping track for the inevitable unemployment record as well.
Results: My huge project list showed my age. Some companies clearly weren't interested... they wanted new programmers, younger, not stuck in the past, etc. I couldn't understand some companies purpose, so new agey with today's internet and reddit culture.
Still, I got 20–30 emails a day! Constant phone calls, messages, occasional scams. Did 2 in-person interviews. I found a great new job, remote programming, in 3-4 months! It was a blur!
The secret is respect, communication, wisdom and quick reflexes, in my case.
I'm 47 and have run my own companies, exited some of them with handsome returns, enjoyed many cool start-up projects, worked for some fortune-50 companies, have an IQ that is through the roof, but despite everything, since around 7 years am unable to get a job. Mostly I'm "overqualified" or "just too old" ... never mind I am still hands-on and happy to just get paid whatever the Junior gets, but nobody is interested. Since I've hit the end of 30ies I've become invisible.
This has costed me my marriage, the relationship with my kids who don't talk to me. That lead to a decline in my mental health and physical health. Lack of connections costed me a lot of friends too. I quit all social media because that too radicalized me a lot (nothing else to do when you're sitting on your arse).
For some parts of 2018 and most of 2019 I was homeless. In the past 6 months tried to kill myself twice. Once with heroin (never took it before), second time with Fentanyl. Making sure nobody would find me I went into the woods on a several day hike and shot enough to kill a horse, but both times I woke up with a massive hangover 2 days later. I can assure you it wasn't a cry for fucking help. Everything was done right and I am not supposed to be here, yet for some reason I still fucking am.
When I still had the energy to open up to people after they asked why I'm falling apart nobody listened. Everyone focused on me losing my family so they told me I should get "help", others told me I should just lower my expectation when it comes to jobs. How much lower can you go? Junior jobs are pointless because they don't want to talk to people my age but people who they can "shape" to their ideology.
But seriously fuck them, and fuck their ignorance. They dare to ask "what is the problem" yet when they hear they are so incapable of helping that their best and only suggestion is to "seek professional help". Yes why not outsource the problem to a professional because sure as fuck I have no time to bother with your problems (which compared to my non-problems sound pretty fucking real).
Nobody even considers that my problem isn't drugs, or being suicidal, or becoming estranged, and that my problem is simply that I don't get a job. I never thought I would end up at this point because everything went well for me. Well at least until I got "old". Guess we all gotta go at some stage. I had a great time so maybe I shouldn't complain. It's probably better to leave when you're still ahead (I made the mistake of still being here).
I'm still housed, and my home life is okay, which is a damn miracle, since I have been unable to rejoin the supposedly "hot" SF Bay Area tech industry. I can get interviews if I whack 15 years off my web development career on my resume. I don't pass the in-person or video interview stage, because then the employer sees that I'm older than 35.
Many of your points resonate with me intensely. We're not sick, disabled, immoral, nor incapable. We're just unemployed, given too much evidence that our societies consider us useless.
I suspect it is a deep seated human tendency to look up to and defer to the experience of those who are older than you (parents, community elders), so people are naturally uncomfortable with "senior underlings". Junior bosses will inevitably feel their decisions and position threatened by people older than them, especially in more general settings.
Throw in the conflation of skill with seniority, leading to an expectation of adjusting wage to age (not skill), our culture's infatuation with youth and the reliance on heuristics to save time and you have a situation highly unsuited to our present job-hopping lifestyles. Finding a job is more about "who you know, not what you know", which just makes things worse since age groups tend to cluster. This then gets explained as "cultural fit".
IME HR is all about risk avoidance. HR is not about finding the best candidate, it is concerned about finding the safest. The older folk may be the best, but they are not the safest, because they tend to have empty patches in their resume and the soft skills like wisdom, communication skills, tend not to be expressible in resume form.
It's never easy going against ingrained norms, especially when they are held by other people. Until the current millenial tech companies hit middle age, I don't see things changing much. Business opportunity?
The ironic thing of course is that it's hard to imagine what actual advantage a practice of age discrimination might provide. All real and true criteria for a job can be tested for directly; there's no need to make age a dubiously-accurate proxy for any of those. It literally makes no sense. From the COMPANY'S point of view.
Yeah but you can do that by means of "salary and work hour discrimination," see what I'm saying? Those are things you can state outright, legally. Just make it clear that those are parameters of the job, and if they accept the job, they accept the job. I dunno maybe I've gone completely batshit crazy up in here.
No, you're right, they are just doing it the quick/lazy way. Older workers are also less liable to drink all the other corporate koolaid that might be harder to test for.
> All real and true criteria for a job can be tested for directly;
Analytical skills can be tested. It gets much harder on the creative skill and interaction skill side. Software is mostly about people communicating and making decisions. These standardized tests are only good to get accurate results in an area not so relevant later.
Sorry, I didn't mean to focus too literally on the idea of "testing." I'm using the term broadly to include things like pair-programming or job interviews (and other things, obviously), which are examples of "tests" that try to tease out some of the things you're talking about.
I'm 41 and still have recruiters contacting me and generally do well in interviews. I'm lucky in that the skills I have are harder to find (8 or so years doing iOS development). I also have to admit that one thing that helps me tremendously is that I look young. Just about everyone I work with assumes I am still in my 20s based on my appearance. They all act shocked once they do find out that I'm older. Looking young helps a lot with rapport in interviews since the interviewers feel more at ease that I'm "one of them" rather than some old guy.
In my experience attitude and connections count for the most. I'm 45 and I don't have any problems finding new opportunities. But I never go through the front door, it's always a referral. I can't imagine having a real problem until I'm in my 60s. At least around here, there just aren't so many programmers that we can afford to turn away qualified people just because they are in their 40s or 50s. If they know their shit, they're welcome to work for us. We've got developers ranging from 20-65, pretty evenly distributed.
Same age here. Mid-thirties career switch into tech. Landed my first tech job at 37 (consulting), first startup at 40 (data engineering) and just started a new startup at 41 (data engineering/devops). I'm probably the oldest at my company by a decade. I don't think I look particularly young, but maybe? I'm not saying age discrimination doesn't exist, just that I've been lucky / fortunate enough not to have experienced it.
The successes of startups in Silicon Valley really drove up the compensation of programmers. But these same startups have founders/managers who openly state they prefer younger programmers, and direct their HR/recruiters to act accordingly. And now, we have whole classes of programmers who can't get a job at all.
It's pretty obvious no recruiter lost his/her job for passing on resumes of younger programmers.
Also, the SV is really the bastion of anti discrimination. Which is great. But they replaced it with something else, ageism.
It's already a trend. The fault, IMHO, lies with browser vendors making it possible for sites to detect private browsing mode in the first place. That should be a privacy but and prioritized accordingly.
Incognito can be detected by via javascript looking at how the browser behaves differently in incognito.
It looks like some of these detection mechanisms go away as Chrome gets updated but like seo, spam, viruses, and other such problems etc. there is a war aspect between trying to exploit and avoid exploiting.
I don't see how it'd be difficult to just obfuscate this. If it tries to write a cookie then let it write a cookie, just clear it on the next page reload. I don't see how it should be able to distinguish between an incognito browser and a non-incognito browser that has no history and is navigating to the page in question for the first time.
I guess some things around local storage can be used to infer incognito mode, but I think it'd be straightforward to just write all local storage usage to memory instead of disk.
The stackoverflow link I included says that the FileSystem API is disabled in incognito mode so its absence suggests the user is connecting via an incognito tab.
The PiHole I use at home renders a lot of media sites unavailable to me. I'm not going to subscribe to all of them, so it will effectively reduce my bubble to whatever I'm willing to pay for (and I'll tell you know, that will basically be whatever I can get from a single all-you-can-eat provider, like Apple News).
I'm sure the actions of a person who would buy and set up a specialized device to block ads are not representative of the general population so I (and probably any other content producer) are not going to optimize for that use-case, though I do appreciate your sharing.
It may be that "regular" people are more willing to have a dozen different media subscriptions for various sites, but I don't think that's a safe assumption.
I am 39yo, but I do not relate with these stories from people with 20+ years of experience in tech. I am a frontend developer for two years only, moving to Los Angeles just now and looking for a job.
Anyone would like to comment if my age and my lack of experience programming will compound and make extra hard for me to get a job?
The way I look at it, when you work in tech, it doesn't take long for fields to become stratified. I've gotten turned down for a senior job for not having enough "agile experience." Really? Am you looking for an engineer or a project manager?
I think every single programmer needs to be looking forward to the day where every single job move is at best a lateral one, so it's going to make more sense to move towards business rather than staying in IC if you want upward mobility as a 'regular' coder.
I suspect IC technical jobs are going to be the next professional class, you're either going to be in when that happens or you're going to be out. You won't realize it's happened and you're not in until you get laid off and replaced by a contractor at a fraction of your salary, and you won't be able to find a job except as one of those contractors.
I was recently rejected for a job for not having enough “API experience.” I have been a backend engineer for 5 years. Regardless of whatever the hell “API experience” is supposed to be, my entire career has been designing, implementing, and calling APIs.
A recruiter gave me a great piece of advice, to ask the question towards the end of the interview, "is there anything that would cause you to think I'm not quite qualified for the position," this way you can get such concerns out in front and be able to address them while it's still convenient and before they reject you for it.
I did ask those things. Don’t underestimate people’s unwillingness to look you in the eye and tell you the truth when they think you might not like it.
>Whenever I hear "We need more programmers! Make more young people interested in programming! Teach programming at kindergarten!" I always get the urge to ask "What did you do with the old ones you had?"
>Where are all those programmers you hired 5-20 years ago? Why is no programmer at your company older than 40? Why do you have senior software engineers that are 25 years old? What did you do to all those people?
>If you can't take care of your employees, no wonder you never have enough.
I've been consulting the last few months, mostly brought in to coach CTO's. I'm (somewhat unwillingly) coming to the conclusion that nobody really feels like they know how to manage programmers.
This leads to mismanagement, and nobody likes being mismanaged, (also it usually means you're being underpaid), so devs eventually wise up and get out. If you think about it, this is a natural extension of the "the best code is no code" ethos.
The best situations I've seen are programmers-managing-programmers. I've been lucky in my career to work for multiple "engineer-turned-founder" types, and these have felt the most "aligned."
I suspect that MBA programs should start including a CS component.
Sounds about right. A non-technical manager managing technical people is like the commander of a tank battalion not knowing how fast his tanks can go or what kind of ammunition they shoot, their fuel range, hell he probably doesn't even know how many people can fit in a single tank. But he thinks he's fit to manage such a unit because he's an expert in "general warfare", and he has all the "metrics".
I've seen it in my own employment multiple times, my team's(admittedly good-hearted) managers come in and say "We'd like to do (list of 10 things). Now we know the software has limitations, and we don't have any money for feature enhancement, so feel free to tell us no on any of these."
Us: "We can do 2 of those, maybe three if you can give us a couple of days to hack in one of the simpler requests"
Managers: confused, questioning but begrudgingly accepting looks
> I'm (somewhat unwillingly) coming to the conclusion that nobody really feels like they know how to manage programmers.
That's because they don't. I've had good managers and bad ones, and all the good ones were, or had been, software engineers themselves. (Of course, some of the engineers were not so great as managers.) As I like to say, software engineering is about the management of complexity, and if you've never worked on a complex system, you don't understand how to do that.
older devs had to go into management to keep their career trajectory, no matter whether they liked coding or management more. the ones that failed in some way - meaning a disruption in their spending and earning capability - are the only ones on the market trying to get programming jobs, and complaining about it.
fixing the earning trajectory in a programming track helps fix this outcome too. FAANG companies seem to have figured it out for people they've already hired.
> older devs had to go into management to keep their career trajectory ... FAANG companies seem to have figured it out for people they've already hired.
The FAANG companies and other technology platform companies have separate technical and management career tracks. Only those who want to be managers become managers.
In theory, yes. In practice, no. At a certain point, a lot of engineers plateau in terms of technical ability and are unable to continue to level up. For many, they feel compelled to switch tracks to management to continue to make progress, regardless of whether they have any innate ability or desire to excel at management.
or they fall for the money-making scam, where their new car payment is now the same amount as their rent originally was when they began their careers. Buying larger houses, etc. Basically always barely acclimating to their new level of wealth, so that they always try to climb up the next rung.
I recently quit a job that was advertised as a developer but turned into 90% paperwork. Lasted over a year (it was contractor anyway). But in hindsight, basically NO amount of money would make me happy or willing to fill out forms all day. Seriously, even another $100k wouldn't make me feel any better, I'd still be miserable and not doing what I love.
>...they feel compelled to switch tracks to management to continue to make progress, regardless of whether they have any innate ability or desire to excel at management.
Can confirm: Once you "plateau" in a division, the only options are lateralling to a technology you don't know (with the same expectations exacted upon you) or simply going management and that assumes that there's room in management.
Given how frequently "organisational shifts/changes" occur, that could leave you out in the cold, just as well.
My company does explicitly say that certain levels, roughly equivalent to a staff engineer at most companies, will likely be a career level (as in, you will never advance beyond it) for many people that level still pays very well - easily in the 200-300 TC range maybe more. As long as companies are okay with developers being at this level for a long time - perhaps even decades - I'm fine with it. The only thing that would bother me is an "up or out" kind of culture, that prioritizes "velocity". Fortunately I think more and more companies are getting comfortable with developers that they no will never progress beyond a senior developer role.
I wonder how much the transition to management helps nowadays. I have a few friends who did that, lost a lot of technical relevance and have had a terrible time finding new jobs as many places promote from within.
If you live anywhere besides the west coast in a major city and have 7-10 years of experience you can easily make $130K as a senior developer. That puts you right at the 5th quintile of household income.
If your spouse is making even $50K that puts you in the top decile.
Vs just sucking it up and doing your own hacking on the own time. Even if you write code all day at work, you should be doing some at home, because we need to keep up on the latest tech in a risk-tolerant environment (like personal projects that can fail with no loss). Companies can't afford to take on the project risk of leading edge/research level tech.
So hack on the cool stuff at home. Treat your job as a job. There's no principal broken by going into management.
Like I said in another post, I just bought a 5 bedroom/3-1/2 bath house, 3000+ square foot house with a large office for $330K two years ago in the northern burbs of Atlanta where the school systems are ranked in the top 15% nationwide. It is the most affluent county in GA and one of the fastest growing in the nation. Three exits down the same size house is going for about $450K and you’re in one of the 10 most affluent cities in the nation -Johns Creek GA. (http://money.com/money/collection-post/4504851/richest-towns...)
Vs just sucking it up and doing your own hacking on the own time. Even if you write code all day at work, you should be doing some at home, because we need to keep up on the latest tech in a risk-tolerant environment (like personal projects that can fail with no loss). Companies can't afford to take on the project risk of leading edge/research level tech.
When I’m at home, I’m exercising, spending time with my wife and son, and just relaxing. If I can’t keep up with the latest tech at work, it’s time to change jobs.
Yes I will do work related side projects to learn a new to me technology, or proof of concepts with newer technology that aren’t on the critical path. I also work at small companies where I do get my hands dirty with everything from the front end to playing around with whatever I want to with a DEV AWS Account.
I don’t do “leading edge technology”. They are probably not widely marketable yet. I stay on the far end of “the slope of enlightenment” going to “Plateau of Productivity” of the Hype Cycle.
My commute is 30-40 minutes a day on the three days a week I actually have to go into the office. Any job I work I make sure the “core hours” allow me to go into work after traffic dies down and leave before traffic picks up.
How do you think the other 80% of households survive that aren’t making the $130K that an average developer can make in any large city or if you’re a dual income earner with your spouse making about the average of a college educated worker of $50K - how do you think the other 90% of households make it?
But then again, I am also of the opinion that the school you go to doesn’t have as much bearing on your later success in life - as long as it safe and teaching the basics - your home environment.
I look at the top 20 students who went to my (relatively poor performing school) and we were all teacher’s kids or doctor’s kids. There are two doctors, a few teachers, one professor at an Ivey league school, and a lawyer or two.
But my current job is also in the northern burbs where I live.
yes, money. life changes that required more money to maintain their current or desired standard of living. expectation of life changes that required more money to maintain their current or desired standard of living. expectation of generational wealth if their inheritance or lack thereof doesn't already accomplish that for them.
did I really need to spell that out? I know some people can't relate, but its not clear to me how much they can't relate
It's interesting that corporate diversity reports provide population breakdowns for demographic categories involved in heated political debates but seldom (never, in my experience) provide breakdowns according to other categories that might be just as important for diversity of thought, e.g. age and political affiliation.
Sorry, but this comment section is primarily focused Bay Area, LeetCode, California, and Software Devs.
Mean while the story doesn't focus on any of those things in particular. How is an old gentleman getting turned away from a job at a restaurant chain, Season 52, for, "Not looking young enough" relate to any of that and the broader issue of Age discrimination across the board. The anecdotal stories are cool and fine obviously.
But normally non-tech postings on Hacker-News, especially political news stories/articles, lead to discussion about what was discussed _in_ the article at least somewhat... And I'd like to see that. Just found it odd. Don't mind me if this sentiment isn't shared.
Can anyone tell me if this is felt all over specifically in areas like the midwest or the south? Or does this problem happen mainly in the weird zones of silicon valley and NYC?
In IT, employers find it much easier to scale with junior employees. It is not about their age, but rather the fact that they are cheap and available. Old people tend to be expensive and less likely to change jobs.
Job ads address people more likely to be a good fit. That's it.
Young people have more variable potential. If you hire a young person they might be 100x or 10x or 1x in a couple years. If you hire an old person you already know they aren’t 100x or 10x otherwise they would be above you in the org chart or retired. There’s nothing wrong with 1x, but preference for young people is common sense all else being equal. And it’s never equal in terms of salary expectations and extra effort.
If they're 100x in a couple of years (assuming such individuals exist) then you'll be paying them a hell of a lot more in a couple of years. What you're saying would be reasonable if they were signing employees to long-term contracts at a fixed wage based on current productivity.
Advancement is typically a pyramid, which means not everyone can reach the top. It is impossible for everyone to “be above you in the org chart or retired.”
You made my point better than I did. “Not everyone can reach the top.” Young people have had fewer opportunities to reach the top. Not being at the top is a negative signal that gets stronger every year.
There’s no room for those young people, so the chance one will be 100x, whatever you mean by that, is effectively 0. Young people are malleable and cheap. The majority of workers are never more than commodity labor. As the saying goes anyone can be replaced. That being the case cheaper and easier to exploit is what’s being optimized for. But they’ll let you think you got a shot at 100x, it’s how the scam work kiddo.
If your business is a financial equivalent portfolio allocation of too many lottery tickets and not enough stably yielding bonds and securities, you're gonna have a bad time. Predictably, many businesses run with such a naive mentality fold.
Not to double comment, but the other completely fallacious part about this line of reasoning is a conflation of team productivity with individual productivity. Different beasts. A productive team with high cohesion will outproduce a team full of all-stars with low cohesion by at least 10:1, sometimes north of 100:1, but that's mostly because the team full of all-stars with low cohesion works _so_ poorly. One is dysfunctional, the other is not.
At the team standup afterward, pretty much everyone was an unreserved yes except the engineering manager who directly said he was concerned about the candidate’s age, and whether he would “fit in.” He wondered out loud whether we could reject the candidate on this basis. The CTO was at the meeting and immediately shut that line of questioning down, although none of us ever heard from that candidate again. Something I’ll never forget as I get older in this field.