21 ms·

Show HN: Hire an Oldster

475 points by adamqureshi 10y ago

edoceo 10y ago
I'm 40, in tech years that's like 1000. I also see value in hiring experience but explicitly factoring by age discriminates against a protected class in the USA. I think a lawsuit is in my future if I use this for placement at my company. Of course, if you simply rebranded to talk about "experience" rather than "age" then solvelem probbed. Also, age != experience != skill.
- mamurphy 10y ago
  It's good to note that this would be a worry, and the name Oldster is troubling, as it's common definition is "an old person." However, aside from that, they do seem to toe the line with phrases like "veteran," "Experience never gets old" and "senior advertising professionals" without explicitly referencing age anywhere. And, at least arguably, an "Oldster" is any experienced professional who uses their site, regardless of age.
- rplst8 10y ago
  I thought age 40 and over was the protected class WRT age.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    Federal law only covers people over 40, and it only covers favoring younger people over older people. Favoring older people is legal. State laws may vary, check your local jurisdiction to see if they add more.
  - jrs235 10y ago
    Correct. At least at the federal level. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) only forbids age discrimination against people who are age 40 or older. It does not protect workers under the age of 40, although some states do have laws that protect younger workers from age discrimination. If your state or local jurisdiction doesn't protect young(er) workers against discrimination and only the federal law applies, then an employer can discriminate against the young but not the old.
    - jnagro 10y ago
      state law might have different wording too...
      - brixon 10y ago
        A state law can make a federal law stronger, but states cannot make federal laws weaker.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- Ensorceled 10y ago
  > age != experience != skill Or, as a former boss of mine put it: "He has one year of experience ten times."
  - madengr 10y ago
    Or maybe one year of experience, each in a specialized topic, which are all intertwined. I have 20 years experience in RF engineering, and probably a few years each in sub-disciplines that combine to form a full system. That is pretty valuable, especially being able to head off problems, due to prior experience with them.
    - shubb 10y ago
      A whole career of very short jobs isn't great though. One particularly valuable kind of experience is seeing a project through and understanding how early decisions went awry later on. Some older coders I work with might not have obsessively learned the latest framework, but they can identify issues like "that's the kind of subsystem that one person ends up maintaining, and then they leave and it's awful", or "We did something similar in the 1990s, and it didn't go so well because it is overly complex. Is there a simpler way to do this?".
      - user5994461 10y ago
        > One particularly valuable kind of experience is seeing a project through and understanding how early decisions went awry later on. That's a good take on it, and the application of it vary with companies and industries. A waterfall EE project at a old school company could hardly deliver any stage in 6 months. A software project at a fast executing startup could have gone through 2 major delivered projects in that time.
      - madengr 10y ago
        Ha ha, I guess I'm screwed as I work in a job shop where no project lasts longer than 6 months. I love it though. Better that than the same project for several years.
    - 10y ago
- tptacek 10y ago
  I'm 40 and don't feel that way at all.
  - mixmastamyk 10y ago
    …and not an "unknown," perhaps laid-off, looking for work, correct?
    - tptacek 10y ago
      So, look, it could be that I have a lot of extra self confidence because my career has been decent to this point. But really, I mean I don't feel even slightly threatened by the technical ability of 20-something coders. I was warned throughout much of my career that I'd eventually have to head off to management to keep afloat, but, nope, that was bogus advice. I can go into more detail here but I'm derailing things slightly already. It is not my contention that ageism isn't a thing. I'm sure it is --- I mean, I'm confident it's a real problem. I'm just pushing back on the "40 is 1000 in tech years" snark. No, it isn't.
      - mixmastamyk 10y ago
        Sure, but I find the problem isn't competing against twenty somethings once you're hired (could be done with one lobe tied behind your back, haha). It's getting hired by them at all, and very difficult if you're not "internet famous."
        danenania 10y ago
        Having recently interviewed lots of developers (in NYC), my experience was that there's such a shortage of senior and even solidly mid-level talent out there currently that an employer would have to be crazy to turn down anyone for non-merit based reasons. We would have hired a 300 year old sea turtle if it could get the job done... internet fame definitely not required. Perhaps the problems are more at the margins (junior level devs, choosing between people of similar ability), but unless the market changes drastically, I can't see a competent engineer having too much trouble regardless of age, at least in locations with a big enough tech scene.
- Declanomous 10y ago
  I worked for a recruiter for a while, and the euphemism used for age was 'seasoned'. "Company X isn't looking for anyone seasoned" "Company Y is open to seasoned individuals" Companies would also look for people who were a certain number of years of out school. Like, "5 to 10 years experience post-degree." Sure, that could technically mean a 45 year old who went back to school at 35 is qualified for the position, but there is a 0% chance the company would hire that person. The other recruiters would talk about these things pretty explicitly outside of emails. There were a lot of interesting justifications: Older people are harder to train Older people are difficult employees because they are stuck in their ways/used to getting their way Older people expect more benefits/vacation/pay Older people use more sick time Older people don't keep up with developments in the field Discrimination wasn't limited to age. The recruiters were just as happy to help their clients discriminate on race, or gender, or familial status. Really anything. In my experience, age was the only protected class that recruiters would try to suss out how the hiring managers felt about while they were trying to determine the ideal candidate. It seemed to me that the other prejudices would only come to light after the recruiter had a relationship with the hiring manager and had sent them a number of candidates in the past. There were still a lot of euphemisms though. This was just my experience though, and I was working for a small firm. I have no idea what the rest of the field is like at all.
  - robalfonso 10y ago
    I always find this kind of thinking to be counter productive - we are all going to be older. The people hiring, the people recruiting, they will all find the same bias working against them in the future - why not do future you a favor and not perpetuate the bias.
    - Declanomous 10y ago
      Some of these recruiters were pretty old themselves. The had a number of justifications for perpetuating the institution of prejudice. Most common were "don't hate the player, hate the game" excuses. They were just working within the system, they don't have any ability to affect the system Hiring managers aren't going to work with us if we send them candidates they are prejudiced against. They'll just work with someone else, or run their own ads, and they'll still be prejudiced. Interviewing with that person would be a a waste of the candidate's time, and they wouldn't want to work for someone like that anyway. Some of the recruiters didn't have justifications, since they didn't feel it was wrong. They just felt they were getting their. Their attitude was pretty much that's the way the cookie crumbles / them's the breaks.
- jameshart 10y ago
  Not an HR lawyer, but I believe that as long as you weren't exclusively hiring through here, using a site like this as part of your hiring strategy could in fact be used to demonstrate that you are seeking out candidates from a broad range of backgrounds. If you only advertise a role in youth-oriented venues that might itself be grounds for being accused of discriminatory hiring practices, so also considering candidates through a channel like this would help defend against that accusation.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  Older workers are a protected class but younger workers are not. So specifically recruiting older workers is actually no problem.
- amorphid 10y ago
  I am 42, and I don't agree with your assessment. I didn't get my first full time software dev gig until age 40 (learned to code over previous few years). The primary thing my employer cares about is my contribution to the company's mission. If lose sight of that, and try selling the value of my many years of X, I am missing the point. To put it another, my age is not coupled to my value. It's up to me, at any age, to focus on what it takes to make my employer more successful. Employer: "I need a developer who can do A, B, and C." Me: "That's me!" Employer: " I can't ask you how old you are, but maybe sometime you can tell me what it was like to start your career at a time when computers read your code off punchcards and ran it on vacuum tubes." Me: "Nah, I started when computers ran on steam and looked like a building sized abacus. All kidding aside, why do you need A, B, and C? Let's talk about how I can help you make mad stacks of greenbacks." Employer: "I like making money! OK, I here's what we're working on..."
- happy-go-lucky 10y ago
  +1 for age != experience != skill
jrochkind1 10y ago
An oldster in HN world is someone over 32, right?
- setq 10y ago
  I'm completely screwed then. Surprisingly our hands don't suddenly fall off when we get to 32 :)
- mathgeek 10y ago
  Only because going one more bit to 64 is too far, and one less bit to 16 is too young.
  - user5994461 10y ago
    If you replace "young" by "cheap", that makes them a lot more attractive to employers :D
  - jrochkind1 10y ago
    Nice, I wasn't even thinking of this, maybe at this point powers of 2 is just what comes out of my brain when I reach for an arbitrary number, ha.
- rhizome 10y ago
  I saw only a handful of 40+ people at Startup School a few years ago.
- emidln 10y ago
  Whew, I got a couple years before they take me out back.
- tim333 10y ago
  Bar chart, kinda looks that way: http://hn-stuff.appspot.com/poll_chart/build/?thread_id=2175588&chart_type=bar http://hn-stuff.appspot.com/poll_chart/build/?thread_id=2175...
  - ep103 10y ago
mamurphy 10y ago
Interesting idea. Let me talk about something very tangential, if I may: a minor branding query. Why go with "A Qureshi Media startup. Contact us at contact@qureshimedia.com" in the site footer? It made me wonder "hmm, why haven't I heard of Qureshi Media, let me check them out, they are probably some huge media conglomerate." To my surprise, http://qureshimedia.com/ http://qureshimedia.com/ appears to be the website of a consultancy that includes the less than inspiring text "Our new site will be up soon." If you are managing multiple established brands, having that in the site footer makes sense to me. For what appears to be a company's only brand, I wonder if it might be better relegated an "About" page. Thoughts?
- adamqureshi 10y ago
  I AM working on it! thank you. ;-)
- moron4hire 10y ago
  I think it makes a lot of sense for a company--especially one whose primary business is as a consultancy--to carve products out into their own brands. And you have to start somewhere.
JoblessWonder 10y ago
Deja Vu.... Didn't we just have OldGeekJobs posted on here a while ago?
- adamqureshi 10y ago
  Dang i gotta add a job board!
  - JoblessWonder 10y ago
    Well, I mean, I didn't post it just so you could put the other guy out of business... :) I liked what both of you are doing!
- jnbiche 10y ago
  Yes, it's at: https://oldgeekjobs.com/ https://oldgeekjobs.com/
terrib1e 10y ago
Brilliant! I'm only 30 but I know plenty of older folks that have a hard time finding jobs. This is basically an issue across all industries. I'd love to get involved in this and help it grow.
- adamqureshi 10y ago
  email me! in my profile. I gotta figure some stuff out.
- johansch 10y ago
  Across all industries? Really?
  - mathgeek 10y ago
    I think the issue of finding a job may be across most other industries, and thus older people will have difficulty regardless.
  - terrib1e 10y ago
    Ok the word 'All' implies quite a bit, but I definitely think it's an issue in a lot of industries. Yes age and experience definitely get you to much higher positions but I was thinking of 50+ aged people losing their jobs and then having to find a new company to work for. I've worked in a variety of places and definitely see the trend of it being difficult to get hired or to fit in. The company I currently work for basically runs all of the healthcare in my state and for team lead and supervisor positions upper management seems to prefer people in their early twenties because they're more "pliable". There are men and women here that are older and needed a job to support their family and they're stuck making way less than their experience dictates. I see them getting passed up for promotions and opportunities all the time. Obviously I can't definitively say it's ageism because I don't think things like that are always explicit but from talking to them they definitely infer that that's the reason. Could it be a lack of ambition or that they used their fire up at their previous jobs? Maybe. Something like this is never black and white so who knows?
- amyjess 10y ago
cookiecaper 10y ago
While I think there are issues with the presentation, as edoceo noted, I love anything that stands to dispel the startup bubble myth that experience is a contraindication. I've been privileged to work in companies with programmers in their 50s and 60s and they've been great mentors. Their work continues to be top-notch and the insight and maturity they bring is absolutely invaluable. In order to keep their labor costs depressed, VCs are incentivized to promote the lie that a very young workforce is an inherent asset, but there is simply no replacement for experience. As the industry continues to mature, that will be self-evident, as it is in all other mature industries.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  A good organization has a mix of old hands and inexperienced young people. They have complementary strengths. Put it another way. When you board an airliner, are you happy to see a fresh faced pilot? Or my (old) dermatologist. He said he could spot skin cancer from across the room. I asked him how, he said half his business was skin cancer - he looked at it for hours every day.
  - cookiecaper 10y ago
    Yes, I completely agree that it's an asset to have all types of people aboard, and that youthful contributions are also important and valuable. They simply don't displace or supplant the needs for mature/senior/experienced contributions, as many in the SV ecosystem would have you believe. You do NOT have to be young to be innovative.
JorgeGT 10y ago
Apart from the particular technical knowledge an older guy may have, the accumulated human experience (this is, how to interact, trust, judge, understand, influence and work with other human beings) is always a very valuable factor that they may possess, for while technology changes very fast, basic human nature remains the same. In my country we have a saying: the Devil knows more from being old than from being the Devil.
- neeleshs 10y ago
  And in my country - "An old patient is better than a new doctor"
  - Dolores12 10y ago
    Amazing quote :)
- mr_spothawk 10y ago
  >the Devil knows more from being old than from being the Devil. brilliant. what's the origin there?
  - themoat 10y ago
    It's a pretty old spanish proverb. I couldn't find where it came from, but for reference, I lived in Peru and heard some older guys say it. Then in college, I worked in a warehouse in the southern united states and older Mexican guys would say it to make sure the young workers respected them. So, I wonder if it's just a universal Spanish proverb?
    - JorgeGT 10y ago
      > So, I wonder if it's just a universal Spanish proverb? Probably! The older exact match I could find in Google Books is from 1846, in a Yucatán periodical: https://books.google.es/books?id=VNgtAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA8&dq=%22por+viejo+que+por+diablo%22&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22por%20viejo%20que%20por%20diablo%22&f=false https://books.google.es/books?id=VNgtAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA8&dq=%22p...
josefresco 10y ago
Sooo no age requirement to submit a resume? How old is an "oldster"?
tjr 10y ago
I was recently working with an older developer. I don't know, maybe of 65 or 70 years. He was working on aerospace network intrusion detection systems, and I was helping him set up a simulation system. He was slinging around low-level computer architecture terminology, while I was quickly trying to access what I remembered from a college class 15 years prior, just to keep up with the conversation. Older programmers are worthless, simply due to their age? Ridiculous. I hope to someday be as skillful as this guy.
- marvindanig 10y ago
  This whole idea of going after young fresh graduates is a ploy from the likes of Facebook or Google to increase their outreach and expand the talentpool they could source from. They are the ones that are on high towers and need people who know react or polymer or stuff like that. Startups usually, though anecdotal, don't discriminate based on age or length of experience. In fact most of the awesome startups that I know hired solely based on experience and that "fit" into the cultural diversity of the company.
- HCIdivision17 10y ago
  It's a weird experience if you're a clever youngster. I liken it to speed vs torque. I have to rely on being fast and being able to scan a problem as fast as I can to understand it. But an older engineer will just know the lay of the land. I had this happen a lot with an older electrical engineer. He seemed slow and I looked to run circles around everyone, but he could point to things as a root cause before I even understood the problem. I would have to spend time to decompress his observations to backtrack how he figured it out, and you start to realize that his shortcuts and heuristics are just so much better than mine. I wish all young engineers to have the opportunity to be whooped by the tortoise. Sometimes I would spot something he didn't, but it was frequently because I was approaching from a position of ignorance. It worried me that someday I'll lose that edge, but I guess it's why a good team will be diverse and balanced.
  - err4nt 10y ago
    sounds like your approach complimented his as much as his complemented yours!
77yy77yy 10y ago
You are only as old as you believe you are. I'm 42 and won't trade spot with any 20-something for a job. The knowledge and experience I have today, most 20-something would love to have but.. they have to live some 20 years to now gain. WTG putting this message together, good luck!
- clifanatic 10y ago
  > You are only as old as you believe you are. Well, I'm 42 and I believe I'm 20... until I spend any time hanging around 20 year olds.
anjc 10y ago
This service should be superfluous due to enforcement of discrimination laws. If companies are specifically not hiring older people then there's surely some way to find out. And the idea that an "oldster" is a thing should not be legitimised by people in the tech industry. Talk about turkeys voting for Christmas.
aresant 10y ago
If you take a survey of hiring managers they will point to three primary reasons that candidates 40 - 60 have a harder time finding jobs: 1) They are typically more expensive than "market" for the same role a younger person can fulfill at acceptable tradeoff of competency - higher salaries, higher related costs like healthcare for a family, expectations around retirement programs, etc. 2) They are less flexible - they are less willing to relocate, they have kids to pick up instead of "beer hour bonding", unwilling to run the same 60 hour gauntlet that a 25 year old can etc. 3) They have less primary & secondary education relevant to today's enterprise issues. In the specific case of "marketers" - like TryOldster is pitching - the best people will learn anything, but anybody over 50 years old spent their professional training + formative 20s thinking about television, radio, and print - not paid search, mobile advertising, and social. That we're at the top of HN again with another "hire older people" post (recently we saw OldGeekJobs) demonstrates there's a huge unmet need within this cohort. I don't think a job-board is the right solution to this problem because the pitch on TryOldster does nothing to alleviate the three principal concerns. My unasked, probably asinine business advice would be to turn this flow of traffic into a training / education platform where you can VALIDATE and address the very real, foundational concerns of hiring managers around this cohort, and suddenly you've got a machine that can get motivated people trained and placed.
- adamqureshi 10y ago
  Let me try. Send me your info i'd love to chat about it.
- wtvanhest 10y ago
  There are also other challenges that may not end up in a survey at all. For example, the hiring manager could feel insecure hiring someone older than they are.
- azeirah 10y ago
  I attended a lecture last week, older people were one of the topics that got touched. Instead of having old employees teaching the younger, he told a story of a business requiring old people to receive fresh young employees as their mentor.
mathattack 10y ago
I've benefited quite a bit from Oldster mentors in my career who had Been There, Done That but still wanted to be in the game. Combining hungry smart 20somethings with Wise Oldsters is a potent combo.
gpm 10y ago
Is this legal? Seems like age discrimination to recruit via this platform.
- krallja 10y ago
  It is illegal to discriminate against a candidate on the basis of them being too old. It is not illegal to discriminate against a candidate for being too young.
OliverJones 10y ago
Some interesting points made here in these comments, worth rebutting. 1. older folks are less flexible, can't relocate, etc. When we have kids in high school, that's valid. But high school doesn't go on forever. 2. older folks cost more. You'd be surprised. Salary doesn't have to be an always-upward ratchet. There are plenty of us who are able and willing -- even delighted -- to work for less than the executive-level pay of the biggest jobs on our resumes. Unlike many of our juniors, we aren't scrambling to pay off our edu loans any more, nor are we scrambling to cover those costs for our kids, or pay big mortgages. You know that dream about being motivated by the work, not the money? It's a real thing. Many of us are living that dream. 3. older folks are a protected class (in USA, anyhow). That's true. We are nominally harder to lay off when things get rough. But we've been through a few cycles of things being good, then bad, then good, and we've survived. We are as willing as anybody to stop drawing our pay when things aren't going well. Some of us are willing to agree to that in advance. Ask whether we'll accept contractor status, rather than employee status. See item 2 about being motivated by the work. 4. older folks drive up health insurance pool costs. true. sucks. But I, for one, am on my spouse's insurance so the startup I'm with doesn't have that problem. Many of us have similar setups. You can't ask in an interview, but we can tell you voluntarily. Plus, when we hit 65 (in USA) we go on this decent national single-payer health plan and out of your pool altogether. 5. older folks can't manage 80-hour work weeks. Of course we can manage crunch time. We've done a lot of it, and we're skilled at getting it done. Can we manage sustained 80-hour weeks for years at a time? No. Neither can you and keep your quality up. 6. older folks' skills are obsolete. Not true. Maybe that was true once, but many of us put a lot of work into keeping up to date. Safari Books Online, and online tutorials, and community / dev versions of various tools, have made that possible. 7. older folks would rather play golf than work. For many of us, that's just nonsense. So, don't just screen out that resume showing a MS degree from 1980. Take a look.
suprgeek 10y ago
As an oldster - two things that I really wish my younger self would have intimately realized. 1) As a software person your are employed to Solve Business Problems - NOT to write code, NOT to write tests, NOT to hack on platforms, NOT to be Agile. Solve the problem (or add the feature) - never lose sight of this. The value you bring is directly related to this. 2) People outside software development don't give a flying f* about most issues software related - but everyone has a computer, so most are poorly informed about technology and terrible at making right software choices - build products accordingly.
- Benjammer 10y ago
  >As a software person your are employed to Solve Business Problems - NOT to write code, NOT to write tests, NOT to hack on platforms, NOT to be Agile. Solve the problem (or add the feature) - never lose sight of this. The value you bring is directly related to this. My chemical engineering degree really instilled this idea in me early on, and it's by far the biggest motivating factor as to why I love to work at software startups. When a scientist discovers something in a lab, the ChemE's job is to then come in and figure out how to turn this discovery or innovation into a legitimate business. How do we scale this reaction up from a petri dish to a 10,000 gallon reactor? Where and how do we get the reagents? How much do they cost? Are there any hazardous byproducts? How do we dispose of them? I like to operate the same way as a software engineer. I'm an engineer, not a scientist. My job is to use technology to produce value for the business, while mitigating risks of that value eroding over time. All the work done should be focused on those two things. And it's not about focusing on those things instead of other things, it's more about realizing that anything worthwhile to do at work that you can come up with actually filters back to those two things anyway in some indirect fashion, so you might as well keep those ideas front and center.
  - vvanders 10y ago
    That's a wonderful perspective. One thing I feel that's really missing from our field is some of the traditional engineering learnings and approaches from other industries. Nothing made me scoff at the idea of a "Software Engineer" more than when I started digging into some of the EE stuff. When you have a $1M tape out that goes wrong if one transistor is miswired. I just throw crap at the wall and see what sticks, EE and stuff like that is real engineering.
jplahn 10y ago
This is tangentially related (and wholly anecdotal), but one thing I've noticed is that when dealing with other engineers or managers, it's often very easy to tell who has kids and who doesn't. I find myself drawn towards those who have them because they have a knack for understanding people better and can approach mentorship on another level. Easily the best engineer I've ever worked with had a couple of kids, only worked 30 hours a week, but did more to grow team members than any other engineer has done in 20 hours more per week. It's not a perfect 1 -> 1 to between kids and age obviously, but working with older engineers (and managers/TPMs) has been invaluable for the growth early in my career and I wish we had more of them.
wyldfire 10y ago
Between "tryoldster.com" and "oldgeekjobs.com" it strikes me as a stunning display of blatant ageism. I'm in the second half of my career and I like the idea of writing articles and making the case for hiring experienced men and women. Venues which seem to explicitly encourage candidates/jobseekers to focus on age violate the spirit of the law if not the letter (29 U.S.C. § 626).
- krallja 10y ago
  You cannot discriminate against older applicants. You are very much allowed to prefer them.
x1798DE 10y ago
I feel like I would love to use this, but I would be worried about HR freaking out. I had a training before being allowed to interview people and it mostly consisted of teaching how to avoid questions that might inadvertently provide you with information that could be used to discriminate against people that was also irrelevant to the actual job (e.g. don't ask "what do you like to do on the weekends", but you can ask "this job requires you to be on-call on weekends, is that something you are able to do?"). Going on a website specifically advertising that it has people in a specific class seems like the exact opposite of that.
- chc 10y ago
  If you're going on this site, presumably it's to do the opposite of discriminate against them, so I'm not sure how that's a concern.
6stringmerc 10y ago
Um, I know it's not industry specific, but in the United States, since the 2008 Recession, workers age 55 and older have been the ones gaining employment. Zero Hedge routinely posts the BLS numbers that show just how much better the Oldsters are doing than the Under 30 crowd. Projecting a false notion that older workers are being slighted, when the opposite is true, is not good for the long-term health of a Consumer-Based economy like the United States. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t09.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t09.htm
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > since the 2008 Recession, workers age 55 and older have been the ones gaining employment I suspect that's less a trend against age discrimination against them and more a trend that they are progressively less able to retire acceptably.
  - 6stringmerc 10y ago
    So who is responsible for that cohort being "less able to retire acceptably" if they've been on this Earth in the United States long enough to reach the ripe age of, well, let's just pick 55? If you'd give me the leeway, I'd like to rebut that there's no reason for a website catering to OLDSTER or GEEZER employees when they're still a blood clot of mobility. Or, in more plain terms, why shouldn't a person use critical thinking to ask if a person over the age of 55 is smart enough and/or has good judgment if they haven't positioned themselves as able to retire? Does this register at all?
walrus1066 10y ago
So much time is wasted in our field, reinventing the wheel, adopting ill suited architectures and abstractions, not seeing problems in advance, misunderstanding the requirements. An experienced engineer, who can prevent the above is worth their weight in gold. Because ultimately, the fundamentals of software engineering haven't changed for decades, like abstraction, modularization etc
Unbeliever69 10y ago
From a reverse perspective, I am new to professional development but have been a long-time programmer. At the age of 45 I decided to pursue my life-long dream of being a programmer and went back to school. There was another "oldster" in my Intro to Java class. He really struggled at first because he had spent the last few decades using technology but not really understanding it. Me, on the other hand, I utterly destroyed everyone in the class. My final project was a "Dwarf Fortress" style game that utilized more advanced programming techniques, algorithms, data structures, AI etc. that was far outside the scope of the class. Not only was the class blown away but the teacher appeared threatened. I had never had programmed in Java before though I have programmed as a hobby throughout my life. But the major difference between me and the other oldster as well as me and my much younger classmates is that I have devoted my life to learn. I've never settled. I've never grown complacent. If I forget something I relearn it. If I don't know something I know where to find an answer. I believe that this is the problem with many oldsters...they get comfortable, set in their ways, entitled. I quit school that semester as it was clear that I would be far more effective learning on my own. What was true in my Java class turned out to be true in my Linux class, my networking class and my generals. I was WAY ahead of the curve. I now work in the industry as a full-stack Javascript developer and continue to learn each day.
Mz 10y ago
It is possibly the wrong framing. It might be better to do something like this with the framing on "a veteran of the industry" or "someone with experience." Being old per se does not necessarily make you one with more relevant work experience. Just my 2 cents. Best of luck.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
vacri 10y ago
If this is just for the advertising industry, wouldn't 'oldsters have broader networks' also be worth noting? I would have thought networking to be particularly important in advertising.
thekevan 10y ago
What is the age to qualify as an "oldster"? I would think in web development it could be as low as say, 35 but in sales, 50 may only be approaching it.
edblarney 10y ago
Obviously, all good intentions ... but the very title of this, and insinuations therein ... are really negative and creepy. I think there may possibly be more harm than good being done here.
- jayd3e 10y ago
  I would agree with this. They need to get re-branded and completely ignore the accusations of ageism in the industry, and instead just focus on finding high quality mentors with many years of experience, who will all be older.
magnumkarter 10y ago
I used to worked for a startup where the CTO and CEO were older in their 40s and didn't hire people over 30 because they weren't a "culture fit". I was constantly asked what my age was (I look a bit older). The team clocked 60+ work weeks for a product that was barely progressing. The CTO was so work obsessed that he got married to his pregnant fiancee in the morning and came back in the afternoon to make up work. Thankfully for my next job, while the staff is still older, they work smart instead working hard.
- jayd3e 10y ago
  That story about the CTO getting married in the morning and going back to work is cringeworthy...
oppositelock 10y ago
So, I'm not an oldster, not a young'un, but somewhere in between in my mid 40's, and I've been in this industry for over 20 years at this point. I see my friends from the same age group go different ways; quite a number stay in tech as employees, getting more senior and climbing the engineer ladder. They're the ones who are affected by age discrimination, particularly as they get into their 50's and over. The other group takes what they know in tech, and become a super experienced tech-guy in another industry, doing things like machine automation at car manufacturing plants, or optical quality control at meat packing plants, etc. They use their skills in other industries, but by silicon valley standards, they leave tech, since making pistons or making sure chicken breasts don't contain wing aren't tech problems. This second group of people don't stress anywhere near as much about their jobs as the first group, but their highest attainable pay wherever they work is definitely lower. The third group retires early and pursues their dreams, but they're not worth talking about in this context. Tech is amazing in that it enables people who are moderately successful to retire earlier.
- linkregister 10y ago
  How have your colleagues who became managers fared?
  - oppositelock 10y ago
    I don't know many who went into management. One's a VP at a major company, the rest left tech.
deleted 10y ago
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blisterpeanuts 10y ago
Cool idea. There are some creative people out there. Rather than complain about the perceived age discrimination in tech and business generally, someone decided to do something about it. I hope it helps people. I wonder if there's a broader solution to the problem that might involve more outreach and educational efforts to communicate to the younger folk that us oldsters have something valuable to offer, despite our encroaching senility and decrepitude :) Perhaps however, the proof's in the pudding. Nudge some of the bigger corps. like Facebook & Google to expand the upper end of the age range a bit, and then people will rub shoulders with people possessing different and possibly broader life experience. That said, I do find lots of 20-30-something techies to be quite smart and experienced so am not trying to knock them here. Quite often it comes down to the individual's qualities and not merely their numerical age.
deleted 10y ago
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mempko 10y ago
I'm not old, 32, but this problem worries me. My plan for addressing the "Must keep up with latest tech" problem is to CREATE the latest technology. My hope if I create enough of it that in 15 years I'll be that old guy who created tech X or Y and nobody is going to bother wondering if I can keep up. Will this plan work? Who knows. Best way to predict the future is create it right?
- buzzybee 10y ago
  31.5 here and I have definitely caught on to the "create the future" tack, although I'm taking a mixed approach that isn't purely technology-driven, but more generally "change agent" - so, entrepreneurial, managerial, design, technology, community leadership, any opportunity I spot. I see it as all one rolling snowball that I can find ways to merge together as I push it upwards.
- duderific 10y ago
  What happens when the technology you created becomes "last year's" technology? Then you have to continually create the latest tech, which is probably even more exhausting than simply keeping up with the latest.
- mypalmike 10y ago
  I think for every story you hear about a guy in his 50s who only knows how to program COBOL on mainframes, there are 10 of us ("us" - well, I'm 45) who are learning new, valuable technologies all the time.
- gaius 10y ago
  My plan for addressing the "Must keep up with latest tech" problem is to CREATE the latest technology This kind of thinking is why there are a hundred Javascript frameworks and more being made all the time, thus creating the problem you're trying to solve by joining in...
unicornporn 10y ago
Have you been inspired by http://www.hyrenpensionar.net/ http://www.hyrenpensionar.net/? It's a Swedish site that's been around for quite a few years. Translated it means exactly "hire an oldster", or rather "hire a pensioner".
yitchelle 10y ago
As I am approaching my 50s, I kinda find this type of jobsites a little discriminating. I know that age should not contribute to whether you are suitable for a job or not, but the reality on the ground is rather different. Should there be sites that zone in on a particular discriminating aspect of a person? Hmm, like www.hireanoldveteran.com for old veterans that are having trouble looking for jobs.
ChicagoDave 10y ago
53 and I learn all the time. I'm sorry but age has nothing to do with productivity or capability. Talent and hard work are still the primary components of a successful developer. There is ageism and it's completely unfounded, but some recruiting leans towards younger workers for whatever reason. I think this is similar to H1-B's getting jobs for lower wages. Companies tend to believe that adding X developers to problem Y will produce a better/quicker product. They believe this of younger workers at times as well. They are always wrong. I'm pretty sure my 40 hours is significantly more productive than most 25 year old's 60 or even 80 hours.
danieltillett 10y ago
As a slightly older person (I am 46) and employer the issue I have found with older employees is they don’t cope well with frequent change. I have always hired the person I thought was most qualified for the position and so have hired quite a few older people over the years. What I have observed first hand is that if the job requirements are relatively stable then older people are fantastic, but if the requirements change from month to month (or week to week) then they struggle. As I know from personal experience fluid intelligence declines with age and as you get older rapid change gets increasing difficult to deal with. I wish it were otherwise :( There are of course exceptions, the problem is that it is really hard to know who can adapt to rapid change in an interview or from a CV. A service that could test the fluid intelligence of job candidates would be very valuable, but it would almost certainly be sued out of existence for discriminating against older employees.
- DougWebb 10y ago
  Are you detecting an inability to shift gears quickly, or is it a reluctance to shift gears quickly based on hard-won experience where management-driven frequently-changing requirements led to project failures that were then blamed on the development team? As much as we'd like our job to be engineering, it's usually more like craftsmanship. Craftsmanship goes back a LONG ways, and the traditional approach for learning a craft is for apprentices to learn from experienced masters. Those masters can teach you what to do, and what not to do, in the traditional ways that they've learned over many years. What they can't teach you is new techniques that they've developed, unless they're among the few masters that are advancing the craft. I suspect that works for our craft as well. Most experienced developers can do the work very well, and can also help you to avoid bad practices that they've seen before and can predict the likely outcomes. But only a subset of those experienced developers are able to advance the craft. They have a mixture of the drive and creativity of the younger inexperienced developers, along with the experience to quickly weed out bad ideas and see the potential of the good ideas.
  - danieltillett 10y ago
    Are you detecting an inability to shift gears quickly, or is it a reluctance to shift gears quickly based on hard-won experience where management-driven frequently-changing requirements led to project failures that were then blamed on the development team? That is rather an impossible question to answer as the two causes ultimately have the same end outcome. I certainly never introduce change for changes sake - 95% of management change I have been responsible for have been due to outside factors out of my control. When the market tells you that you need to change you must change. I can say on average I get more direct pushback on change from younger employees than older purely because many younger employees have not learned that arguing with your boss about something when you don’t have a full understanding of the situation is not that wise. I have found that my older employees have understood the need for change, they just find it hard. I am certainly not immune to this effect myself - the thought of learning React or Angular (or the next JS framework de jour) does not fill me with joy.
davidgerard 10y ago
Try going sideways to the "ops" side of devops. Lots of work for older sysadmins (I'm 50 in a coupla months), and you can often gently hint to your hotshot young devs the pitfalls of doing it not so well. Also, as you get older: LEARN TO WEAR A SUIT. Not all the time - suits are going-out clothes, not things you waste on an office - but every now and then show that you can present well and be convincing. Your stock with the non-techies in the office will go through the roof.
jordanpg 10y ago
What about appearance? I'm a 37 year old self-taught backend dev (a fallen physicist) and I seem to be able to talk myself into a job with relative ease, both big and small companies. I worry sometimes that a significant factor in this is that I still look and dress relatively young. I think this body has about 5 more years before it starts to look unambiguously like a grownup.
- Radim 10y ago
  Same here! But since I run my own business, this has actually been a liability at times... What I found to work is grow a beard when I need to appear older, then shave it to appear younger :-)
debt 10y ago
many huge tech companies in SV are predominately marketing companies(fb, google, etc.) they wanna hire the youths. it sucks but it's reality. also, you get more bang for you buck by hiring young workers(no family, kids, house, obligations, etc.)
DrNuke 10y ago
I think hire an oldster is a flawed argument per se. In fact, once escaped the hourly rate trap, forever escaped. Think in terms of providing added monetary value and charge your clients a well deserved 20% instead of asking for a salary. That way, if you are so smart you will work many less hours for a much higher return. This comes natural as we get older because we grow both human and technical benchmarks, but I concede it may not be the best setup for a fast burning startup (headless chickens environment it seems to us). That's why this kind of posts here on HN, recently.
mortdeus 10y ago
isn't this against age discrimination laws in the us? define "oldster" and "veteran"
jknoepfler 10y ago
If you're 50 (edit: and have 20+ years of experience) and interviewing for low level tech jobs, I have to think you just haven't given a fuck for the last 10-20 years of your career. Like why aren't you either 1. Retired 2. A principal dev 3. Managing 4. Doing your own thing 5. Raising kids If you say "I just like to code," fuck off. I'm growing a business, not "Just coding." If you say "I have super powers," I say you're probably delusional. I'll get someone who has 15 years' experience who isn't delusional. If you're still writing ifttt code at 50, yeah, I can find someone with literally 15 year's experience to do the same thing who is more than qualified for the job, but who won't either die or fail to grow with the role. I'm sorry if that's a shitty thing to say, but let's embrace reality. If I can't find anyone else, I'll take a chance on you, but I want to hire people who will grow with the role, not people biding their time doing service-level code work. If you think that's cruel, try getting a job in law. Edit: p.s. If you're 50 and just starting out in programming, none of this applies. I'm interested. It's not age that concerns me, it's failure to grow.
crispytx 10y ago
Why is this on the front page of hacker news? Did everyone just upvote this without actually reading it?
koja86 10y ago
Been thinking about related topics recently (probably as a result of this wave on HN) and realized that despite I am still a young pup (30) my goals are not that different. Knowing that certain company is actively hiring older, more experienced folks I would take it as a sign of potentially very interesting workplace where experience is actually needed and office environment might be actually sane.
tgarma1234 10y ago
Well, as someone over 40 let me suggest a perhaps controversial take on this type of post: by the time you reach a certain age you should have found a place in life that doesn't involve "looking for a job" or "getting hired". The biggest problem with people at that age isn't that they aren't curious, creative, willing to work long hours, etc but rather that life hasn't worked out for them somehow and they need to apply for jobs. It's basically the same problem as trying to find a date to the prom when you are a teenager. Most people do it naturally and easily so if you are the last person in that game of musical chairs looking for a date, you should ponder seriously why nobody asked YOU yet. Likewise with jobs. If you have 20 years of perl programming experience and 10 certifications in various databases and suchlike, then why exactly aren't you an equity stakeholder in some successful business by now? Short answer: you aren't very good at the game we are all playing. Hence, I am passing on this hire.
agentgt 10y ago
My biz partner and I have a recruiting software company that makes career portals for corp HR and staffing firms (SnapHop). We power many many branded niche staffing firm career portals. There are basically niche job boards but with recruiters backing it. For example I believe there is one just for retired nurses. It is very akin to all the different dating services. It is absolutely amazing how many of them there are and how well they still do despite Indeed and Linkedin. I imagine one of the major staffing firms (randstad, manpower, etc) will probably pick up this niche soon. Probably through an acquisition. The major staffing firms have thousands of niche job boards.

475 points by adamqureshi 10y ago

I'm 40, in tech years that's like 1000. I also see value in hiring experience but explicitly factoring by age discriminates against a protected class in the USA. I think a lawsuit is in my future if I use this for placement at my company. Of course, if you simply rebranded to talk about "experience" rather than "age" then solvelem probbed. Also, age != experience != skill.

mamurphy 10y ago
It's good to note that this would be a worry, and the name Oldster is troubling, as it's common definition is "an old person." However, aside from that, they do seem to toe the line with phrases like "veteran," "Experience never gets old" and "senior advertising professionals" without explicitly referencing age anywhere. And, at least arguably, an "Oldster" is any experienced professional who uses their site, regardless of age.
rplst8 10y ago
I thought age 40 and over was the protected class WRT age.
- mikeash 10y ago
  Federal law only covers people over 40, and it only covers favoring younger people over older people. Favoring older people is legal. State laws may vary, check your local jurisdiction to see if they add more.
- jrs235 10y ago
  Correct. At least at the federal level. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) only forbids age discrimination against people who are age 40 or older. It does not protect workers under the age of 40, although some states do have laws that protect younger workers from age discrimination. If your state or local jurisdiction doesn't protect young(er) workers against discrimination and only the federal law applies, then an employer can discriminate against the young but not the old.
  - jnagro 10y ago
    state law might have different wording too...
    - brixon 10y ago
      A state law can make a federal law stronger, but states cannot make federal laws weaker.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
Ensorceled 10y ago
> age != experience != skill Or, as a former boss of mine put it: "He has one year of experience ten times."
- madengr 10y ago
  Or maybe one year of experience, each in a specialized topic, which are all intertwined. I have 20 years experience in RF engineering, and probably a few years each in sub-disciplines that combine to form a full system. That is pretty valuable, especially being able to head off problems, due to prior experience with them.
  - shubb 10y ago
    A whole career of very short jobs isn't great though. One particularly valuable kind of experience is seeing a project through and understanding how early decisions went awry later on. Some older coders I work with might not have obsessively learned the latest framework, but they can identify issues like "that's the kind of subsystem that one person ends up maintaining, and then they leave and it's awful", or "We did something similar in the 1990s, and it didn't go so well because it is overly complex. Is there a simpler way to do this?".
    - user5994461 10y ago
      > One particularly valuable kind of experience is seeing a project through and understanding how early decisions went awry later on. That's a good take on it, and the application of it vary with companies and industries. A waterfall EE project at a old school company could hardly deliver any stage in 6 months. A software project at a fast executing startup could have gone through 2 major delivered projects in that time.
    - madengr 10y ago
      Ha ha, I guess I'm screwed as I work in a job shop where no project lasts longer than 6 months. I love it though. Better that than the same project for several years.
  - 10y ago
tptacek 10y ago
I'm 40 and don't feel that way at all.
- mixmastamyk 10y ago
  …and not an "unknown," perhaps laid-off, looking for work, correct?
  - tptacek 10y ago
    So, look, it could be that I have a lot of extra self confidence because my career has been decent to this point. But really, I mean I don't feel even slightly threatened by the technical ability of 20-something coders. I was warned throughout much of my career that I'd eventually have to head off to management to keep afloat, but, nope, that was bogus advice. I can go into more detail here but I'm derailing things slightly already. It is not my contention that ageism isn't a thing. I'm sure it is --- I mean, I'm confident it's a real problem. I'm just pushing back on the "40 is 1000 in tech years" snark. No, it isn't.
    - mixmastamyk 10y ago
      Sure, but I find the problem isn't competing against twenty somethings once you're hired (could be done with one lobe tied behind your back, haha). It's getting hired by them at all, and very difficult if you're not "internet famous."
      - danenania 10y ago
        Having recently interviewed lots of developers (in NYC), my experience was that there's such a shortage of senior and even solidly mid-level talent out there currently that an employer would have to be crazy to turn down anyone for non-merit based reasons. We would have hired a 300 year old sea turtle if it could get the job done... internet fame definitely not required. Perhaps the problems are more at the margins (junior level devs, choosing between people of similar ability), but unless the market changes drastically, I can't see a competent engineer having too much trouble regardless of age, at least in locations with a big enough tech scene.
Declanomous 10y ago
I worked for a recruiter for a while, and the euphemism used for age was 'seasoned'. "Company X isn't looking for anyone seasoned" "Company Y is open to seasoned individuals" Companies would also look for people who were a certain number of years of out school. Like, "5 to 10 years experience post-degree." Sure, that could technically mean a 45 year old who went back to school at 35 is qualified for the position, but there is a 0% chance the company would hire that person. The other recruiters would talk about these things pretty explicitly outside of emails. There were a lot of interesting justifications: Older people are harder to train Older people are difficult employees because they are stuck in their ways/used to getting their way Older people expect more benefits/vacation/pay Older people use more sick time Older people don't keep up with developments in the field Discrimination wasn't limited to age. The recruiters were just as happy to help their clients discriminate on race, or gender, or familial status. Really anything. In my experience, age was the only protected class that recruiters would try to suss out how the hiring managers felt about while they were trying to determine the ideal candidate. It seemed to me that the other prejudices would only come to light after the recruiter had a relationship with the hiring manager and had sent them a number of candidates in the past. There were still a lot of euphemisms though. This was just my experience though, and I was working for a small firm. I have no idea what the rest of the field is like at all.
- robalfonso 10y ago
  I always find this kind of thinking to be counter productive - we are all going to be older. The people hiring, the people recruiting, they will all find the same bias working against them in the future - why not do future you a favor and not perpetuate the bias.
  - Declanomous 10y ago
    Some of these recruiters were pretty old themselves. The had a number of justifications for perpetuating the institution of prejudice. Most common were "don't hate the player, hate the game" excuses. They were just working within the system, they don't have any ability to affect the system Hiring managers aren't going to work with us if we send them candidates they are prejudiced against. They'll just work with someone else, or run their own ads, and they'll still be prejudiced. Interviewing with that person would be a a waste of the candidate's time, and they wouldn't want to work for someone like that anyway. Some of the recruiters didn't have justifications, since they didn't feel it was wrong. They just felt they were getting their. Their attitude was pretty much that's the way the cookie crumbles / them's the breaks.
jameshart 10y ago
Not an HR lawyer, but I believe that as long as you weren't exclusively hiring through here, using a site like this as part of your hiring strategy could in fact be used to demonstrate that you are seeking out candidates from a broad range of backgrounds. If you only advertise a role in youth-oriented venues that might itself be grounds for being accused of discriminatory hiring practices, so also considering candidates through a channel like this would help defend against that accusation.
emodendroket 10y ago
Older workers are a protected class but younger workers are not. So specifically recruiting older workers is actually no problem.
amorphid 10y ago
I am 42, and I don't agree with your assessment. I didn't get my first full time software dev gig until age 40 (learned to code over previous few years). The primary thing my employer cares about is my contribution to the company's mission. If lose sight of that, and try selling the value of my many years of X, I am missing the point. To put it another, my age is not coupled to my value. It's up to me, at any age, to focus on what it takes to make my employer more successful. Employer: "I need a developer who can do A, B, and C." Me: "That's me!" Employer: " I can't ask you how old you are, but maybe sometime you can tell me what it was like to start your career at a time when computers read your code off punchcards and ran it on vacuum tubes." Me: "Nah, I started when computers ran on steam and looked like a building sized abacus. All kidding aside, why do you need A, B, and C? Let's talk about how I can help you make mad stacks of greenbacks." Employer: "I like making money! OK, I here's what we're working on..."
happy-go-lucky 10y ago
+1 for age != experience != skill

jrochkind1 10y ago

An oldster in HN world is someone over 32, right?

setq 10y ago
I'm completely screwed then. Surprisingly our hands don't suddenly fall off when we get to 32 :)
mathgeek 10y ago
Only because going one more bit to 64 is too far, and one less bit to 16 is too young.
- user5994461 10y ago
  If you replace "young" by "cheap", that makes them a lot more attractive to employers :D
- jrochkind1 10y ago
  Nice, I wasn't even thinking of this, maybe at this point powers of 2 is just what comes out of my brain when I reach for an arbitrary number, ha.
rhizome 10y ago
I saw only a handful of 40+ people at Startup School a few years ago.
emidln 10y ago
Whew, I got a couple years before they take me out back.
tim333 10y ago
Bar chart, kinda looks that way: http://hn-stuff.appspot.com/poll_chart/build/?thread_id=2175588&chart_type=bar http://hn-stuff.appspot.com/poll_chart/build/?thread_id=2175...
- ep103 10y ago

mamurphy 10y ago

Interesting idea. Let me talk about something very tangential, if I may: a minor branding query. Why go with "A Qureshi Media startup. Contact us at contact@qureshimedia.com" in the site footer? It made me wonder "hmm, why haven't I heard of Qureshi Media, let me check them out, they are probably some huge media conglomerate." To my surprise, http://qureshimedia.com/ http://qureshimedia.com/ appears to be the website of a consultancy that includes the less than inspiring text "Our new site will be up soon." If you are managing multiple established brands, having that in the site footer makes sense to me. For what appears to be a company's only brand, I wonder if it might be better relegated an "About" page. Thoughts?

adamqureshi 10y ago
I AM working on it! thank you. ;-)
moron4hire 10y ago
I think it makes a lot of sense for a company--especially one whose primary business is as a consultancy--to carve products out into their own brands. And you have to start somewhere.

JoblessWonder 10y ago

Deja Vu.... Didn't we just have OldGeekJobs posted on here a while ago?

adamqureshi 10y ago
Dang i gotta add a job board!
- JoblessWonder 10y ago
  Well, I mean, I didn't post it just so you could put the other guy out of business... :) I liked what both of you are doing!
jnbiche 10y ago
Yes, it's at: https://oldgeekjobs.com/ https://oldgeekjobs.com/

terrib1e 10y ago

Brilliant! I'm only 30 but I know plenty of older folks that have a hard time finding jobs. This is basically an issue across all industries. I'd love to get involved in this and help it grow.

adamqureshi 10y ago
email me! in my profile. I gotta figure some stuff out.
johansch 10y ago
Across all industries? Really?
- mathgeek 10y ago
  I think the issue of finding a job may be across most other industries, and thus older people will have difficulty regardless.
- terrib1e 10y ago
  Ok the word 'All' implies quite a bit, but I definitely think it's an issue in a lot of industries. Yes age and experience definitely get you to much higher positions but I was thinking of 50+ aged people losing their jobs and then having to find a new company to work for. I've worked in a variety of places and definitely see the trend of it being difficult to get hired or to fit in. The company I currently work for basically runs all of the healthcare in my state and for team lead and supervisor positions upper management seems to prefer people in their early twenties because they're more "pliable". There are men and women here that are older and needed a job to support their family and they're stuck making way less than their experience dictates. I see them getting passed up for promotions and opportunities all the time. Obviously I can't definitively say it's ageism because I don't think things like that are always explicit but from talking to them they definitely infer that that's the reason. Could it be a lack of ambition or that they used their fire up at their previous jobs? Maybe. Something like this is never black and white so who knows?
amyjess 10y ago

cookiecaper 10y ago

While I think there are issues with the presentation, as edoceo noted, I love anything that stands to dispel the startup bubble myth that experience is a contraindication. I've been privileged to work in companies with programmers in their 50s and 60s and they've been great mentors. Their work continues to be top-notch and the insight and maturity they bring is absolutely invaluable. In order to keep their labor costs depressed, VCs are incentivized to promote the lie that a very young workforce is an inherent asset, but there is simply no replacement for experience. As the industry continues to mature, that will be self-evident, as it is in all other mature industries.

WalterBright 10y ago
A good organization has a mix of old hands and inexperienced young people. They have complementary strengths. Put it another way. When you board an airliner, are you happy to see a fresh faced pilot? Or my (old) dermatologist. He said he could spot skin cancer from across the room. I asked him how, he said half his business was skin cancer - he looked at it for hours every day.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  Yes, I completely agree that it's an asset to have all types of people aboard, and that youthful contributions are also important and valuable. They simply don't displace or supplant the needs for mature/senior/experienced contributions, as many in the SV ecosystem would have you believe. You do NOT have to be young to be innovative.

JorgeGT 10y ago

Apart from the particular technical knowledge an older guy may have, the accumulated human experience (this is, how to interact, trust, judge, understand, influence and work with other human beings) is always a very valuable factor that they may possess, for while technology changes very fast, basic human nature remains the same. In my country we have a saying: the Devil knows more from being old than from being the Devil.

neeleshs 10y ago
And in my country - "An old patient is better than a new doctor"
- Dolores12 10y ago
  Amazing quote :)
mr_spothawk 10y ago
>the Devil knows more from being old than from being the Devil. brilliant. what's the origin there?
- themoat 10y ago
  It's a pretty old spanish proverb. I couldn't find where it came from, but for reference, I lived in Peru and heard some older guys say it. Then in college, I worked in a warehouse in the southern united states and older Mexican guys would say it to make sure the young workers respected them. So, I wonder if it's just a universal Spanish proverb?
  - JorgeGT 10y ago
    > So, I wonder if it's just a universal Spanish proverb? Probably! The older exact match I could find in Google Books is from 1846, in a Yucatán periodical: https://books.google.es/books?id=VNgtAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA8&dq=%22por+viejo+que+por+diablo%22&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22por%20viejo%20que%20por%20diablo%22&f=false https://books.google.es/books?id=VNgtAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA8&dq=%22p...

josefresco 10y ago

Sooo no age requirement to submit a resume? How old is an "oldster"?

tjr 10y ago

I was recently working with an older developer. I don't know, maybe of 65 or 70 years. He was working on aerospace network intrusion detection systems, and I was helping him set up a simulation system. He was slinging around low-level computer architecture terminology, while I was quickly trying to access what I remembered from a college class 15 years prior, just to keep up with the conversation. Older programmers are worthless, simply due to their age? Ridiculous. I hope to someday be as skillful as this guy.

marvindanig 10y ago
This whole idea of going after young fresh graduates is a ploy from the likes of Facebook or Google to increase their outreach and expand the talentpool they could source from. They are the ones that are on high towers and need people who know react or polymer or stuff like that. Startups usually, though anecdotal, don't discriminate based on age or length of experience. In fact most of the awesome startups that I know hired solely based on experience and that "fit" into the cultural diversity of the company.
HCIdivision17 10y ago
It's a weird experience if you're a clever youngster. I liken it to speed vs torque. I have to rely on being fast and being able to scan a problem as fast as I can to understand it. But an older engineer will just know the lay of the land. I had this happen a lot with an older electrical engineer. He seemed slow and I looked to run circles around everyone, but he could point to things as a root cause before I even understood the problem. I would have to spend time to decompress his observations to backtrack how he figured it out, and you start to realize that his shortcuts and heuristics are just so much better than mine. I wish all young engineers to have the opportunity to be whooped by the tortoise. Sometimes I would spot something he didn't, but it was frequently because I was approaching from a position of ignorance. It worried me that someday I'll lose that edge, but I guess it's why a good team will be diverse and balanced.
- err4nt 10y ago
  sounds like your approach complimented his as much as his complemented yours!

77yy77yy 10y ago

You are only as old as you believe you are. I'm 42 and won't trade spot with any 20-something for a job. The knowledge and experience I have today, most 20-something would love to have but.. they have to live some 20 years to now gain. WTG putting this message together, good luck!

clifanatic 10y ago
> You are only as old as you believe you are. Well, I'm 42 and I believe I'm 20... until I spend any time hanging around 20 year olds.

anjc 10y ago

This service should be superfluous due to enforcement of discrimination laws. If companies are specifically not hiring older people then there's surely some way to find out. And the idea that an "oldster" is a thing should not be legitimised by people in the tech industry. Talk about turkeys voting for Christmas.

aresant 10y ago

If you take a survey of hiring managers they will point to three primary reasons that candidates 40 - 60 have a harder time finding jobs: 1) They are typically more expensive than "market" for the same role a younger person can fulfill at acceptable tradeoff of competency - higher salaries, higher related costs like healthcare for a family, expectations around retirement programs, etc. 2) They are less flexible - they are less willing to relocate, they have kids to pick up instead of "beer hour bonding", unwilling to run the same 60 hour gauntlet that a 25 year old can etc. 3) They have less primary & secondary education relevant to today's enterprise issues. In the specific case of "marketers" - like TryOldster is pitching - the best people will learn anything, but anybody over 50 years old spent their professional training + formative 20s thinking about television, radio, and print - not paid search, mobile advertising, and social. That we're at the top of HN again with another "hire older people" post (recently we saw OldGeekJobs) demonstrates there's a huge unmet need within this cohort. I don't think a job-board is the right solution to this problem because the pitch on TryOldster does nothing to alleviate the three principal concerns. My unasked, probably asinine business advice would be to turn this flow of traffic into a training / education platform where you can VALIDATE and address the very real, foundational concerns of hiring managers around this cohort, and suddenly you've got a machine that can get motivated people trained and placed.

adamqureshi 10y ago
Let me try. Send me your info i'd love to chat about it.
wtvanhest 10y ago
There are also other challenges that may not end up in a survey at all. For example, the hiring manager could feel insecure hiring someone older than they are.
azeirah 10y ago
I attended a lecture last week, older people were one of the topics that got touched. Instead of having old employees teaching the younger, he told a story of a business requiring old people to receive fresh young employees as their mentor.

mathattack 10y ago

I've benefited quite a bit from Oldster mentors in my career who had Been There, Done That but still wanted to be in the game. Combining hungry smart 20somethings with Wise Oldsters is a potent combo.

gpm 10y ago

Is this legal? Seems like age discrimination to recruit via this platform.

krallja 10y ago
It is illegal to discriminate against a candidate on the basis of them being too old. It is not illegal to discriminate against a candidate for being too young.

OliverJones 10y ago

Some interesting points made here in these comments, worth rebutting. 1. older folks are less flexible, can't relocate, etc. When we have kids in high school, that's valid. But high school doesn't go on forever. 2. older folks cost more. You'd be surprised. Salary doesn't have to be an always-upward ratchet. There are plenty of us who are able and willing -- even delighted -- to work for less than the executive-level pay of the biggest jobs on our resumes. Unlike many of our juniors, we aren't scrambling to pay off our edu loans any more, nor are we scrambling to cover those costs for our kids, or pay big mortgages. You know that dream about being motivated by the work, not the money? It's a real thing. Many of us are living that dream. 3. older folks are a protected class (in USA, anyhow). That's true. We are nominally harder to lay off when things get rough. But we've been through a few cycles of things being good, then bad, then good, and we've survived. We are as willing as anybody to stop drawing our pay when things aren't going well. Some of us are willing to agree to that in advance. Ask whether we'll accept contractor status, rather than employee status. See item 2 about being motivated by the work. 4. older folks drive up health insurance pool costs. true. sucks. But I, for one, am on my spouse's insurance so the startup I'm with doesn't have that problem. Many of us have similar setups. You can't ask in an interview, but we can tell you voluntarily. Plus, when we hit 65 (in USA) we go on this decent national single-payer health plan and out of your pool altogether. 5. older folks can't manage 80-hour work weeks. Of course we can manage crunch time. We've done a lot of it, and we're skilled at getting it done. Can we manage sustained 80-hour weeks for years at a time? No. Neither can you and keep your quality up. 6. older folks' skills are obsolete. Not true. Maybe that was true once, but many of us put a lot of work into keeping up to date. Safari Books Online, and online tutorials, and community / dev versions of various tools, have made that possible. 7. older folks would rather play golf than work. For many of us, that's just nonsense. So, don't just screen out that resume showing a MS degree from 1980. Take a look.

suprgeek 10y ago

As an oldster - two things that I really wish my younger self would have intimately realized. 1) As a software person your are employed to Solve Business Problems - NOT to write code, NOT to write tests, NOT to hack on platforms, NOT to be Agile. Solve the problem (or add the feature) - never lose sight of this. The value you bring is directly related to this. 2) People outside software development don't give a flying f* about most issues software related - but everyone has a computer, so most are poorly informed about technology and terrible at making right software choices - build products accordingly.

Benjammer 10y ago
>As a software person your are employed to Solve Business Problems - NOT to write code, NOT to write tests, NOT to hack on platforms, NOT to be Agile. Solve the problem (or add the feature) - never lose sight of this. The value you bring is directly related to this. My chemical engineering degree really instilled this idea in me early on, and it's by far the biggest motivating factor as to why I love to work at software startups. When a scientist discovers something in a lab, the ChemE's job is to then come in and figure out how to turn this discovery or innovation into a legitimate business. How do we scale this reaction up from a petri dish to a 10,000 gallon reactor? Where and how do we get the reagents? How much do they cost? Are there any hazardous byproducts? How do we dispose of them? I like to operate the same way as a software engineer. I'm an engineer, not a scientist. My job is to use technology to produce value for the business, while mitigating risks of that value eroding over time. All the work done should be focused on those two things. And it's not about focusing on those things instead of other things, it's more about realizing that anything worthwhile to do at work that you can come up with actually filters back to those two things anyway in some indirect fashion, so you might as well keep those ideas front and center.
- vvanders 10y ago
  That's a wonderful perspective. One thing I feel that's really missing from our field is some of the traditional engineering learnings and approaches from other industries. Nothing made me scoff at the idea of a "Software Engineer" more than when I started digging into some of the EE stuff. When you have a $1M tape out that goes wrong if one transistor is miswired. I just throw crap at the wall and see what sticks, EE and stuff like that is real engineering.

jplahn 10y ago

This is tangentially related (and wholly anecdotal), but one thing I've noticed is that when dealing with other engineers or managers, it's often very easy to tell who has kids and who doesn't. I find myself drawn towards those who have them because they have a knack for understanding people better and can approach mentorship on another level. Easily the best engineer I've ever worked with had a couple of kids, only worked 30 hours a week, but did more to grow team members than any other engineer has done in 20 hours more per week. It's not a perfect 1 -> 1 to between kids and age obviously, but working with older engineers (and managers/TPMs) has been invaluable for the growth early in my career and I wish we had more of them.

wyldfire 10y ago

Between "tryoldster.com" and "oldgeekjobs.com" it strikes me as a stunning display of blatant ageism. I'm in the second half of my career and I like the idea of writing articles and making the case for hiring experienced men and women. Venues which seem to explicitly encourage candidates/jobseekers to focus on age violate the spirit of the law if not the letter (29 U.S.C. § 626).

krallja 10y ago
You cannot discriminate against older applicants. You are very much allowed to prefer them.

x1798DE 10y ago

I feel like I would love to use this, but I would be worried about HR freaking out. I had a training before being allowed to interview people and it mostly consisted of teaching how to avoid questions that might inadvertently provide you with information that could be used to discriminate against people that was also irrelevant to the actual job (e.g. don't ask "what do you like to do on the weekends", but you can ask "this job requires you to be on-call on weekends, is that something you are able to do?"). Going on a website specifically advertising that it has people in a specific class seems like the exact opposite of that.

chc 10y ago
If you're going on this site, presumably it's to do the opposite of discriminate against them, so I'm not sure how that's a concern.

6stringmerc 10y ago

Um, I know it's not industry specific, but in the United States, since the 2008 Recession, workers age 55 and older have been the ones gaining employment. Zero Hedge routinely posts the BLS numbers that show just how much better the Oldsters are doing than the Under 30 crowd. Projecting a false notion that older workers are being slighted, when the opposite is true, is not good for the long-term health of a Consumer-Based economy like the United States. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t09.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t09.htm

dragonwriter 10y ago
> since the 2008 Recession, workers age 55 and older have been the ones gaining employment I suspect that's less a trend against age discrimination against them and more a trend that they are progressively less able to retire acceptably.
- 6stringmerc 10y ago
  So who is responsible for that cohort being "less able to retire acceptably" if they've been on this Earth in the United States long enough to reach the ripe age of, well, let's just pick 55? If you'd give me the leeway, I'd like to rebut that there's no reason for a website catering to OLDSTER or GEEZER employees when they're still a blood clot of mobility. Or, in more plain terms, why shouldn't a person use critical thinking to ask if a person over the age of 55 is smart enough and/or has good judgment if they haven't positioned themselves as able to retire? Does this register at all?

walrus1066 10y ago

So much time is wasted in our field, reinventing the wheel, adopting ill suited architectures and abstractions, not seeing problems in advance, misunderstanding the requirements. An experienced engineer, who can prevent the above is worth their weight in gold. Because ultimately, the fundamentals of software engineering haven't changed for decades, like abstraction, modularization etc

Unbeliever69 10y ago

From a reverse perspective, I am new to professional development but have been a long-time programmer. At the age of 45 I decided to pursue my life-long dream of being a programmer and went back to school. There was another "oldster" in my Intro to Java class. He really struggled at first because he had spent the last few decades using technology but not really understanding it. Me, on the other hand, I utterly destroyed everyone in the class. My final project was a "Dwarf Fortress" style game that utilized more advanced programming techniques, algorithms, data structures, AI etc. that was far outside the scope of the class. Not only was the class blown away but the teacher appeared threatened. I had never had programmed in Java before though I have programmed as a hobby throughout my life. But the major difference between me and the other oldster as well as me and my much younger classmates is that I have devoted my life to learn. I've never settled. I've never grown complacent. If I forget something I relearn it. If I don't know something I know where to find an answer. I believe that this is the problem with many oldsters...they get comfortable, set in their ways, entitled. I quit school that semester as it was clear that I would be far more effective learning on my own. What was true in my Java class turned out to be true in my Linux class, my networking class and my generals. I was WAY ahead of the curve. I now work in the industry as a full-stack Javascript developer and continue to learn each day.

Mz 10y ago

It is possibly the wrong framing. It might be better to do something like this with the framing on "a veteran of the industry" or "someone with experience." Being old per se does not necessarily make you one with more relevant work experience. Just my 2 cents. Best of luck.

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vacri 10y ago

If this is just for the advertising industry, wouldn't 'oldsters have broader networks' also be worth noting? I would have thought networking to be particularly important in advertising.

thekevan 10y ago

What is the age to qualify as an "oldster"? I would think in web development it could be as low as say, 35 but in sales, 50 may only be approaching it.

edblarney 10y ago

Obviously, all good intentions ... but the very title of this, and insinuations therein ... are really negative and creepy. I think there may possibly be more harm than good being done here.

jayd3e 10y ago
I would agree with this. They need to get re-branded and completely ignore the accusations of ageism in the industry, and instead just focus on finding high quality mentors with many years of experience, who will all be older.

magnumkarter 10y ago

I used to worked for a startup where the CTO and CEO were older in their 40s and didn't hire people over 30 because they weren't a "culture fit". I was constantly asked what my age was (I look a bit older). The team clocked 60+ work weeks for a product that was barely progressing. The CTO was so work obsessed that he got married to his pregnant fiancee in the morning and came back in the afternoon to make up work. Thankfully for my next job, while the staff is still older, they work smart instead working hard.

jayd3e 10y ago
That story about the CTO getting married in the morning and going back to work is cringeworthy...

oppositelock 10y ago

So, I'm not an oldster, not a young'un, but somewhere in between in my mid 40's, and I've been in this industry for over 20 years at this point. I see my friends from the same age group go different ways; quite a number stay in tech as employees, getting more senior and climbing the engineer ladder. They're the ones who are affected by age discrimination, particularly as they get into their 50's and over. The other group takes what they know in tech, and become a super experienced tech-guy in another industry, doing things like machine automation at car manufacturing plants, or optical quality control at meat packing plants, etc. They use their skills in other industries, but by silicon valley standards, they leave tech, since making pistons or making sure chicken breasts don't contain wing aren't tech problems. This second group of people don't stress anywhere near as much about their jobs as the first group, but their highest attainable pay wherever they work is definitely lower. The third group retires early and pursues their dreams, but they're not worth talking about in this context. Tech is amazing in that it enables people who are moderately successful to retire earlier.

linkregister 10y ago
How have your colleagues who became managers fared?
- oppositelock 10y ago
  I don't know many who went into management. One's a VP at a major company, the rest left tech.

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blisterpeanuts 10y ago

Cool idea. There are some creative people out there. Rather than complain about the perceived age discrimination in tech and business generally, someone decided to do something about it. I hope it helps people. I wonder if there's a broader solution to the problem that might involve more outreach and educational efforts to communicate to the younger folk that us oldsters have something valuable to offer, despite our encroaching senility and decrepitude :) Perhaps however, the proof's in the pudding. Nudge some of the bigger corps. like Facebook & Google to expand the upper end of the age range a bit, and then people will rub shoulders with people possessing different and possibly broader life experience. That said, I do find lots of 20-30-something techies to be quite smart and experienced so am not trying to knock them here. Quite often it comes down to the individual's qualities and not merely their numerical age.

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mempko 10y ago

I'm not old, 32, but this problem worries me. My plan for addressing the "Must keep up with latest tech" problem is to CREATE the latest technology. My hope if I create enough of it that in 15 years I'll be that old guy who created tech X or Y and nobody is going to bother wondering if I can keep up. Will this plan work? Who knows. Best way to predict the future is create it right?

buzzybee 10y ago
31.5 here and I have definitely caught on to the "create the future" tack, although I'm taking a mixed approach that isn't purely technology-driven, but more generally "change agent" - so, entrepreneurial, managerial, design, technology, community leadership, any opportunity I spot. I see it as all one rolling snowball that I can find ways to merge together as I push it upwards.
duderific 10y ago
What happens when the technology you created becomes "last year's" technology? Then you have to continually create the latest tech, which is probably even more exhausting than simply keeping up with the latest.
mypalmike 10y ago
I think for every story you hear about a guy in his 50s who only knows how to program COBOL on mainframes, there are 10 of us ("us" - well, I'm 45) who are learning new, valuable technologies all the time.
gaius 10y ago
My plan for addressing the "Must keep up with latest tech" problem is to CREATE the latest technology This kind of thinking is why there are a hundred Javascript frameworks and more being made all the time, thus creating the problem you're trying to solve by joining in...

unicornporn 10y ago

Have you been inspired by http://www.hyrenpensionar.net/ http://www.hyrenpensionar.net/? It's a Swedish site that's been around for quite a few years. Translated it means exactly "hire an oldster", or rather "hire a pensioner".

yitchelle 10y ago

As I am approaching my 50s, I kinda find this type of jobsites a little discriminating. I know that age should not contribute to whether you are suitable for a job or not, but the reality on the ground is rather different. Should there be sites that zone in on a particular discriminating aspect of a person? Hmm, like www.hireanoldveteran.com for old veterans that are having trouble looking for jobs.

ChicagoDave 10y ago

53 and I learn all the time. I'm sorry but age has nothing to do with productivity or capability. Talent and hard work are still the primary components of a successful developer. There is ageism and it's completely unfounded, but some recruiting leans towards younger workers for whatever reason. I think this is similar to H1-B's getting jobs for lower wages. Companies tend to believe that adding X developers to problem Y will produce a better/quicker product. They believe this of younger workers at times as well. They are always wrong. I'm pretty sure my 40 hours is significantly more productive than most 25 year old's 60 or even 80 hours.

danieltillett 10y ago

As a slightly older person (I am 46) and employer the issue I have found with older employees is they don’t cope well with frequent change. I have always hired the person I thought was most qualified for the position and so have hired quite a few older people over the years. What I have observed first hand is that if the job requirements are relatively stable then older people are fantastic, but if the requirements change from month to month (or week to week) then they struggle. As I know from personal experience fluid intelligence declines with age and as you get older rapid change gets increasing difficult to deal with. I wish it were otherwise :( There are of course exceptions, the problem is that it is really hard to know who can adapt to rapid change in an interview or from a CV. A service that could test the fluid intelligence of job candidates would be very valuable, but it would almost certainly be sued out of existence for discriminating against older employees.

DougWebb 10y ago
Are you detecting an inability to shift gears quickly, or is it a reluctance to shift gears quickly based on hard-won experience where management-driven frequently-changing requirements led to project failures that were then blamed on the development team? As much as we'd like our job to be engineering, it's usually more like craftsmanship. Craftsmanship goes back a LONG ways, and the traditional approach for learning a craft is for apprentices to learn from experienced masters. Those masters can teach you what to do, and what not to do, in the traditional ways that they've learned over many years. What they can't teach you is new techniques that they've developed, unless they're among the few masters that are advancing the craft. I suspect that works for our craft as well. Most experienced developers can do the work very well, and can also help you to avoid bad practices that they've seen before and can predict the likely outcomes. But only a subset of those experienced developers are able to advance the craft. They have a mixture of the drive and creativity of the younger inexperienced developers, along with the experience to quickly weed out bad ideas and see the potential of the good ideas.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  Are you detecting an inability to shift gears quickly, or is it a reluctance to shift gears quickly based on hard-won experience where management-driven frequently-changing requirements led to project failures that were then blamed on the development team? That is rather an impossible question to answer as the two causes ultimately have the same end outcome. I certainly never introduce change for changes sake - 95% of management change I have been responsible for have been due to outside factors out of my control. When the market tells you that you need to change you must change. I can say on average I get more direct pushback on change from younger employees than older purely because many younger employees have not learned that arguing with your boss about something when you don’t have a full understanding of the situation is not that wise. I have found that my older employees have understood the need for change, they just find it hard. I am certainly not immune to this effect myself - the thought of learning React or Angular (or the next JS framework de jour) does not fill me with joy.

davidgerard 10y ago

Try going sideways to the "ops" side of devops. Lots of work for older sysadmins (I'm 50 in a coupla months), and you can often gently hint to your hotshot young devs the pitfalls of doing it not so well. Also, as you get older: LEARN TO WEAR A SUIT. Not all the time - suits are going-out clothes, not things you waste on an office - but every now and then show that you can present well and be convincing. Your stock with the non-techies in the office will go through the roof.

jordanpg 10y ago

What about appearance? I'm a 37 year old self-taught backend dev (a fallen physicist) and I seem to be able to talk myself into a job with relative ease, both big and small companies. I worry sometimes that a significant factor in this is that I still look and dress relatively young. I think this body has about 5 more years before it starts to look unambiguously like a grownup.

Radim 10y ago
Same here! But since I run my own business, this has actually been a liability at times... What I found to work is grow a beard when I need to appear older, then shave it to appear younger :-)

debt 10y ago

many huge tech companies in SV are predominately marketing companies(fb, google, etc.) they wanna hire the youths. it sucks but it's reality. also, you get more bang for you buck by hiring young workers(no family, kids, house, obligations, etc.)

DrNuke 10y ago

I think hire an oldster is a flawed argument per se. In fact, once escaped the hourly rate trap, forever escaped. Think in terms of providing added monetary value and charge your clients a well deserved 20% instead of asking for a salary. That way, if you are so smart you will work many less hours for a much higher return. This comes natural as we get older because we grow both human and technical benchmarks, but I concede it may not be the best setup for a fast burning startup (headless chickens environment it seems to us). That's why this kind of posts here on HN, recently.

mortdeus 10y ago

isn't this against age discrimination laws in the us? define "oldster" and "veteran"

jknoepfler 10y ago

If you're 50 (edit: and have 20+ years of experience) and interviewing for low level tech jobs, I have to think you just haven't given a fuck for the last 10-20 years of your career. Like why aren't you either 1. Retired 2. A principal dev 3. Managing 4. Doing your own thing 5. Raising kids If you say "I just like to code," fuck off. I'm growing a business, not "Just coding." If you say "I have super powers," I say you're probably delusional. I'll get someone who has 15 years' experience who isn't delusional. If you're still writing ifttt code at 50, yeah, I can find someone with literally 15 year's experience to do the same thing who is more than qualified for the job, but who won't either die or fail to grow with the role. I'm sorry if that's a shitty thing to say, but let's embrace reality. If I can't find anyone else, I'll take a chance on you, but I want to hire people who will grow with the role, not people biding their time doing service-level code work. If you think that's cruel, try getting a job in law. Edit: p.s. If you're 50 and just starting out in programming, none of this applies. I'm interested. It's not age that concerns me, it's failure to grow.

crispytx 10y ago

Why is this on the front page of hacker news? Did everyone just upvote this without actually reading it?

koja86 10y ago

Been thinking about related topics recently (probably as a result of this wave on HN) and realized that despite I am still a young pup (30) my goals are not that different. Knowing that certain company is actively hiring older, more experienced folks I would take it as a sign of potentially very interesting workplace where experience is actually needed and office environment might be actually sane.

tgarma1234 10y ago

Well, as someone over 40 let me suggest a perhaps controversial take on this type of post: by the time you reach a certain age you should have found a place in life that doesn't involve "looking for a job" or "getting hired". The biggest problem with people at that age isn't that they aren't curious, creative, willing to work long hours, etc but rather that life hasn't worked out for them somehow and they need to apply for jobs. It's basically the same problem as trying to find a date to the prom when you are a teenager. Most people do it naturally and easily so if you are the last person in that game of musical chairs looking for a date, you should ponder seriously why nobody asked YOU yet. Likewise with jobs. If you have 20 years of perl programming experience and 10 certifications in various databases and suchlike, then why exactly aren't you an equity stakeholder in some successful business by now? Short answer: you aren't very good at the game we are all playing. Hence, I am passing on this hire.

agentgt 10y ago

My biz partner and I have a recruiting software company that makes career portals for corp HR and staffing firms (SnapHop). We power many many branded niche staffing firm career portals. There are basically niche job boards but with recruiters backing it. For example I believe there is one just for retired nurses. It is very akin to all the different dating services. It is absolutely amazing how many of them there are and how well they still do despite Indeed and Linkedin. I imagine one of the major staffing firms (randstad, manpower, etc) will probably pick up this niche soon. Probably through an acquisition. The major staffing firms have thousands of niche job boards.