10 ms·
I'm a grey beard who applied to a company specifically advertising for young developers. Got the job without mentioning my vintage. That was six years ago and t
by hirundo 10y ago
I'm a grey beard who applied to a company specifically advertising for young developers. Got the job without mentioning my vintage. That was six years ago and they still haven't seen my face. I waited a while to gently break the news to them. If you're a technological senior citizen remote work is your friend.
- RottenHuman 10y agohow do you work for someone without them knowing your age? Do you keep that out of your CV? How about credentials and signing your contact? Seems very strange to me.
- jlarocco 10y agoYour age or birth date probably shouldn't be on your CV. Unless you think it's relevant to the job somehow, but it probably isn't. Not only should it not matter, but it's illegal for employers to ask about it or consider it in their hiring decision, so having it right there on your CV puts them in a bit of a tight spot. I think some recruiters will actually remove that type of thing before forwarding it on to the interviewers and hiring people.
- philsnow 10y agoMany people put college graduation year on their resume, and hiring managers reflexively subtract ~20 from that year and aren't wrong 99% of the time.
- dorfsmay 10y agoInteresting! I graduated much later in life, don't put my DOB on resume and I've often been told that they expected me to be younger when they see me - now I get it!
- cableshaft 10y agoOne of the few perks of not finishing your degree until much later is the fact that you can put that date on your resume and people assume you're younger. It's expensive, though, considering how much and how fast college tuition has been shooting up in price the past 15 years.
- laurieg 10y agoThat depends on what country you're in. In Japan it's very standard to include date of birth, gender and a photograph on CV's. On the whole I hate the practice, but you have to consider cultural norms when doing the job-hunting dance.
- ido 10y agoIt's also customary in Germany, although I've never had a problem getting a job and I've never attached a photo to my resume.
- denzil_correa 10y agoIt's quite customary in Getmany to even have a picture on your CV.
- kuschku 10y agoNot really anymore, the latest version of the DIN norm on CVs has no photo or birthdate anymore, and in some states, it’s being discussed to ban it even.
- germanier 10y agoIs there a a norm on CVs? The only remotely relevant I know of is DIN 5008 which concerns letters but doesn't contain anything regarding CVs.
- Zelmor 10y agoIn Hungary, it is standard to include a photo on the CV, so I do that. Recruiter friends told me how they consider non-photo applications secondary to ones with photos, and how a human face helps building a connection right from the start. So my only reason for including my age on the CV is because I look like I'm 24, whereas I'm pushing 31.
- dasboth 10y agoNot just Hungary, most of Europe outside of the UK seems to do this. I remember finding it a bit odd the first time I had to sift through developer CVs and most of them had photos.
- geomark 10y agoWhat's the story in Asia? I only know about Thailand where a photo, age, sex and religion(!) are standard on CVs. Most advertised jobs state requirement for male or female of a certain age.
- lostboys67 10y agoThat is because many European country's are still a bit un reconstructed when it comes to issues around race. Photos make it easier to hire people like us :-(
- gaius 10y agoGraduation dates need to be there for any role that involves a background check.
- JadeNB 10y ago> Do you keep that out of your CV? My understanding is that it is not only possible not to mention your age in your CV, but even illegal for companies to ask you what your age is as part of the application process.
- erichurkman 10y agoPutting your age isn't necessary when your experience goes back decades and you graduated from university before your hiring manager was even born. Similarly, your name can convey a lot of biases as well, such as gender and ethnicity.
- dmoy 10y agoYou can truncate your cv and not list graduation year, though name is tough.
- Symbiote 10y agoThe last time I shortlisted people for interview, HR had removed names and any other identifying information. "So, candidate 24892 looks strong." I don't know if I have unconscious biases, but this method was unlikely to make things less fair.
- newscracker 10y agoThat sounds like a very good move to let people have an equal opportunity to "get a foot in the door", so to speak, but I'm genuinely curious how biases may be reduced during the interview process (be it telephonic or direct) and interview questions that may be directed at one's experience? Is this even possible without having dedicated "how to interview people" learning sessions and monitoring?
- dmoy 10y agoYea definitely the company can do that on their end. Harder for you to do as an applicant though.
- hirundo 10y agoI amputated my birth year, education and about 20 years of experience from my CV. Health insurance paperwork went directly to the broker. This is an outfit that hires by test and interview and cares not about aught else. Turns out they're not that rare.
- ourmandave 10y agoAh, "Grey beard". The term Microsoft used to separate the old from the young at a conference when they first introduced the .NET framework. Classic "old bad, good new" sales. As in, "you Grey Breads remember using C++ and MFC, etc." Yes I remember. Because it was yesterday just before I came to your conference! I still went home and started learning what the hell XML was though. =(
- newjersey 10y agoI still can't wrap my head around the fact that we have developers who work on .NET and have never touched either WinForms or WebForms. And I am relatively young.
- douche 10y agoWebForms can die in a fire, and thankfully has, for the most part, but WinForms is still plenty good enough for cranking out quick and dirty tools. Maybe I'm old, or it's just because I started out in high school doing VB6 forms applications, but I still prefer it unless I have a good reason, over WPF. WinForms is also a pretty thin layer over Win32 controls, as well, so if you have to switch between .Net and native C/C++ Windows dev, it's less of a context switch.
- themartorana 10y agoWebForms changed the game. ASP was a sub-subset of VB, but WebForms with C# made websites full-scale eventful and stateful programs for the first time. I had never felt such power and freedom programming for the web. Yes, some people would put humongous data structures in view state, and yes, more-better solutions have arisen, but WebForms deserves your respect!
- robin_reala 10y agoIt really doesn’t. I’ve never seen a good WebForms site / app and I’ve always dreaded working with them. They were a regressive step.
- teuobk 10y agoHow did they "specifically advertise for young developers" without running afoul of age discrimination laws?
- hkmurakami 10y agoI've seen many job postings with qualitative descriptions along the lines of: "You're a young, ambitious, fast learner..."
- hirundo 10y agoEnforcement is, uh, spotty. But the regulatory environment is enough to give applicants an advantage in this situation. Interviewers know they're ignorant of complex shifting rules, so are afraid to ask anything personal that isn't also spinnably vague.
- gaius 10y agoEasy. Ask questions that only someone who has recently revised for exams would know. No-one enforcing this has any idea that coding a red-black tree from scratch on a whiteboard isn't something that any working programmer actually does...
- skafjvhs 10y agoYou could just take your job hunting seriously and do a bit of studying. Though the details of a red-black tree are a bit much to ask anyone.
- jonnathanson 10y agoGenerally speaking, there's nobody out there proactively enforcing antidiscrimination laws. The enforcement pathway is reactive. You get penalized for discrimination (in theory) when someone you've discriminated against brings legal action against you. In this case, someone would have to sue them. For instance, an older developer who interviews, believes he or she is being discriminated against on the basis of age, and uses the advertisement as further evidence in the complaint.
- markbnj 10y agoHeh, I applied for and landed a position on the SRE team of a youngish startup that is almost entirely remote. I'm 55 and there is one other guy in his 40's I think who works out of Northern Cal. Other than him I'm 20 years older than everyone else and it's been a blast. We recently did a week-long retreat and I had a truly good time, which surprised me. Really the only thing I can say after 20 years in the business is you just never know. I got lucky this time around and fell in with a group of people who are perfect for me.
- bbcbasic 10y agoPlastic surgery is another option for onsite jobs.
- protomyth 10y agoSadly, there was an article a while back specifically about tech workers doing just that. Might want to lighten up on down voting given the truth of the statement.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- gozur88 10y agoThey gave you a job without ever seeing you in person? That seems kind of rare.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- sajitmk 10y agoHow does that work? Dont they do a background check based on your social or something?