4 ms·

> Sounds like a great opportunity to start your own company, hire the people the market is overlooking, and make a fortune. If you manage to start a company th

> Sounds like a great opportunity to start your own company, hire the people the market is overlooking, and make a fortune. If you manage to start a company that could make a fortune, then you don't have to hire people the market is overlooking - everyone will want to work for you. You're putting the cart before the horse.

nailer 11y ago
All companies 'could make a fortune' Actually making one is not a sudden event, but a slow one. Absolutely: hire for skill, and there's a shit tonne of it being ignored outside young men in Silicon Valley.
- w1ntermute 11y ago
  You're missing my point: hiring skilled, older employees as a strategy is not going to make or break your company. It's just probably not relevant to the ultimate success of the company, because you will be able to hire skilled employees in general if you are on a strong growth trajectory.
  - arcticfox 11y ago
    Employees are one of the most important factors in a company's success, obviously, and if you believe in the 10x developer then it could easily be a winning strategy. If you believe the difference between a great employee and a mediocre employee is marginal, then I see your point, although I don't subscribe to that view.
  - nailer 11y ago
    > hiring skilled, older employees as a strategy is not going to make or break your company. Totally agreed that hiring skilled people isn't, on its own, going to make or break your company. > It's just probably not relevant to the ultimate success of the company. Disagree. Hiring is super critical. You have a limited runway. You need people who can get shit done, and while there's a bunch of skilled SV middle class Americans, there's value being left on the table: - People outside SV are overlooked. Get a PhD from Cambridge with who just wrote a book on machine learning for the same price as an SV grad. Or someone from Warsaw (Poland has awesome CS fundamentals). - Women are overlooked: we all have unconscious biases: I originally thought one of my go-to crypto people was a front end developer, for mostly dumb reasons, even being aware of this stuff it's hard to not do. - Poor people are overlooked: same reasons as women. We look at stupid stuff like mannerisms and decide "that's not how a programmer sounds". - People who don't buy into 'nerd culture' are overlooked. See above. Dress nicely and people think you're a salesperson. - Old people who keep up to date rock. I bet 55 year old Ruby guy in this thread a) knows how to make shit on a current stack as well as a younger Ruby programmer b) brings with him a bunch of experience - not making him a better Knuth-style programmer, but making him a better get-shit-done-ship-it programmer. Having been the oldest dude in my e.f. cohort (I'm 35), people look to me for: a) Network arch, load balancing, Unix, regexs, other non webdev stuff. b) decisions. I've started and failed and succeeded more often and am faster at making decisions. c) Shipping. Telling people to get their shit out to customers even if they manually do X and Y because they haven't written the code yet. d) node, just because I started node earlier than they did.
    - wang_li 11y ago
      >Women are overlooked: Plus you can get them for $0.70 on the dollar!
      - serge2k 11y ago
        No, you can't.
        wang_li 11y ago
        I don't know where you are from, but in the U.S. I am repeatedly told by every other politician, activist, talking head, and celebrity, that I can. Who are you going to believe: all these people who are telling you this truth or the simple market that doesn't have any companies making a killing by employing cheap woman labor to do the exact same jobs!

nailer 11y ago

All companies 'could make a fortune' Actually making one is not a sudden event, but a slow one. Absolutely: hire for skill, and there's a shit tonne of it being ignored outside young men in Silicon Valley.

w1ntermute 11y ago
You're missing my point: hiring skilled, older employees as a strategy is not going to make or break your company. It's just probably not relevant to the ultimate success of the company, because you will be able to hire skilled employees in general if you are on a strong growth trajectory.
- arcticfox 11y ago
  Employees are one of the most important factors in a company's success, obviously, and if you believe in the 10x developer then it could easily be a winning strategy. If you believe the difference between a great employee and a mediocre employee is marginal, then I see your point, although I don't subscribe to that view.
- nailer 11y ago
  > hiring skilled, older employees as a strategy is not going to make or break your company. Totally agreed that hiring skilled people isn't, on its own, going to make or break your company. > It's just probably not relevant to the ultimate success of the company. Disagree. Hiring is super critical. You have a limited runway. You need people who can get shit done, and while there's a bunch of skilled SV middle class Americans, there's value being left on the table: - People outside SV are overlooked. Get a PhD from Cambridge with who just wrote a book on machine learning for the same price as an SV grad. Or someone from Warsaw (Poland has awesome CS fundamentals). - Women are overlooked: we all have unconscious biases: I originally thought one of my go-to crypto people was a front end developer, for mostly dumb reasons, even being aware of this stuff it's hard to not do. - Poor people are overlooked: same reasons as women. We look at stupid stuff like mannerisms and decide "that's not how a programmer sounds". - People who don't buy into 'nerd culture' are overlooked. See above. Dress nicely and people think you're a salesperson. - Old people who keep up to date rock. I bet 55 year old Ruby guy in this thread a) knows how to make shit on a current stack as well as a younger Ruby programmer b) brings with him a bunch of experience - not making him a better Knuth-style programmer, but making him a better get-shit-done-ship-it programmer. Having been the oldest dude in my e.f. cohort (I'm 35), people look to me for: a) Network arch, load balancing, Unix, regexs, other non webdev stuff. b) decisions. I've started and failed and succeeded more often and am faster at making decisions. c) Shipping. Telling people to get their shit out to customers even if they manually do X and Y because they haven't written the code yet. d) node, just because I started node earlier than they did.
  - wang_li 11y ago
    >Women are overlooked: Plus you can get them for $0.70 on the dollar!
    - serge2k 11y ago
      No, you can't.
      - wang_li 11y ago
        I don't know where you are from, but in the U.S. I am repeatedly told by every other politician, activist, talking head, and celebrity, that I can. Who are you going to believe: all these people who are telling you this truth or the simple market that doesn't have any companies making a killing by employing cheap woman labor to do the exact same jobs!