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A slightly cynical explanation: Startups need cheap workers who will work long hours. And honestly, for every one Google (who legitimately needed genius level

A slightly cynical explanation: Startups need cheap workers who will work long hours. And honestly, for every one Google (who legitimately needed genius level scientists), you have 10 WhatsApps (which are glorified simple CRUD apps). Now how are you going to get a guy (who sort of knows what he's doing) to work 15 hours a day for pizza? You've got to trick him "Change the world", " we're the next Google ", " you get to use any stack you want" When your a 20 year old kid, with no responsibilities and a future ahead of you, this sounds perfect. When you're 30 (and all the more so 40), you go to work to 1. Feed your family 2. If you want to "change the world", you work for a non-profit. And all the skills don't matter. Your knowledge how to save RAM? Useless. Just spin up another VM. So for the CEO of a startup, a 30 year old is simply too expensive for what he needs - a cheep code monkey. All the excuses are just that.

fnord123 10y ago
>Now how are you going to get a guy (who sort of knows what he's doing) to work 15 hours a day for pizza? Offer tenure? Then you don't even need the pizza.
- pleasecalllater 10y ago
  So to be honest they should rather change job descriptions from "employee" to "slave".
  - fnord123 10y ago
    Slaves are property and cannot leave. People who willingly enter into terrible contracts are suckers, not slaves.
brian-armstrong 10y ago
WhatsApp is not a good example. They ran a high scale messaging service with a very lean team. There are some interesting challenges there.
- falsedan 10y ago
  All infrastructure, all solved many times many years before. The challenge is usually choosing a solution which can be adapted to match the unchangable assumptions of the non-scaled code (or removing those assumptions).
  - beagle3 10y ago
    Are you familiar with whatsapp or just making a general remark? Whatsapp at 20 engineers delivered service to an audience comparable to Twitter, except with 1/100 the manpower (and hardware) and a couple of 9s more in reliability. They patched FreeBSD and Erlang to get there in the process. it's a problem that was solved many times before, but not successfully at this scale or cost. These are not your run-of-the mill CRUD developers.
    - mastazi 10y ago
      Also, I remember reading that the initial Whatsapp team had a much higher median age compared to most startups [1], so I agree that it's not a good example here. [1] https://medium.com/the-story-of-grip/5-things-every-founder-can-learn-from-the-story-of-whatsapp-b6496bc4f54d#.h2vy9rvs2 https://medium.com/the-story-of-grip/5-things-every-founder-...
    - falsedan 10y ago
      > it's a problem that was solved many times before, but not successfully at this scale or cost I'm not familiar with the scale+cost of every every bank, stock exchange, flight search, messaging app, log transport system, telco CDR matching infra, etc. Can you comment re: similar scale/cost projects? > They patched FreeBSD and Erlang Neither of these are distributed systems, which I think is the interesting challenge part of messaging. Do you have a link for this whatsapp info? It sounds like you got a lot of good information from it that others could benefit from by reading.
      - dahauns 10y ago
        > Neither of these are distributed systems On the contrary - Erlang and its runtime were built from the ground up for use in distributed systems.
banachtarski 10y ago
WhatsApp is a glorified simple CRUD app? Lol I'd love to see you even approach the scale they had even after a year with a "glorified simple CRUD app." I wouldn't try if digging into the nuts and bolts of the Erlang VM isn't your thing. My cynical response to your cynical explanation is that bottom tier engineers only see bottom tier solutions.
ff10 10y ago
I'm 34 and I do work as a developer for a startup. But then again, I'm working in Germany where I saw 45+ lead developers in startups, and age is something that is mostly considered to be an asset, not a burden - as long as you're willing to learn every day. The good thing here is that you recognize hype better than when you're young.
- Insanity 10y ago
  I'm from a similar country (Belgium) but have seen both sides of it, both where age is an advantage as well as a negative factor. At a startup I worked at, we were considering hiring a developer who was older than us (+20 years older), but in the end did not do it as we felt he might have trouble being managed by people significantly older than him. This was not my decision and I would have been in favor of hiring him - for the experience he could bring to the company. Anyway, I now work in a team where most people (apart from 2) are older than me, and I consider that a priviledge. I get to learn from them in a great way, and I feel that I can teach them things as well. It goes both ways really. And I do feel that in general here age is not such an important factor. Though that is just from looking at my colleagues, I am not in a comparable situation yet. Just out of curiousity btw, does 'ff10' hold any relation to 'fast fingers'?
  - NicoJuicy 10y ago
    Where do you live in Belgium? ( I'm also from BE ;) )
    - Insanity 10y ago
      Live, studied, and currently work in Leuven :-)
  - spoiler 10y ago
    > we were considering hiring a developer who was older than us (+20 years older), but in the end did not do it as we felt he might have trouble being managed by people significantly older than him. I am curious: Did something give you the impression he'd be bothered by a younger management, or was it just a general concern? I am only 23, but I imagine I wouldn't have issues being managed by someone my age if I were 33. However, I know that I'd be pretty shit at management right now, and would definitely not want to manage someone older than me. Personally, I'd prefer to be managed by someone older than myself due to them having more experience. Then again, wisdom doesn't come solely from age; one can have more experience and wisdom at 15 than someone at 50. My conclusion is that there is no conclusion, I guess.
mastazi 10y ago
Whatsapp is often cited as an example of startup where both cofounders were not as young as in most startups[1]. I know you are talking about devs not cofounders, but in Whatsapp both cofounders were technical so it is very likely that they actively participated to the development at least in the initial period. [1] https://medium.com/the-story-of-grip/5-things-every-founder-can-learn-from-the-story-of-whatsapp-b6496bc4f54d#.h2vy9rvs2 https://medium.com/the-story-of-grip/5-things-every-founder-...
br3w5 10y ago
I think the cheap work, long hours thing is critical because companies will see an older person and think more expensive which is true and the added cost is justified. I've seen companies turn down more expensive and experienced people in favour of less experience and cheaper, only to go back to the older and more experienced person once they realised the management overhead of dealing with less experienced staff. I also think startups have less experience running a company so assume if a developer knows x language and some experience with dbs will be able to build anything but then wonder why they have so many bugs / made so many bad design decisions.
HNLogInShit 10y ago
"When your a 20 year old kid" you + are = you're
koolba 10y ago
WhatsApp is far from a CRUD app. Designing a messaging system to scale like they did, as cheap as they did, is a work of art.
accountface 10y ago
That's generally how I feel about it myself, I just hit 30 and I'm done with the "work hard play hard" mentality a lot of startups run with. I want to do great, efficient work, and leave at 5pm every day to spend time with my family. I don't give a shit if your office has free snacks, beer, and ping pong, I'm an adult. Life isn't work.
schnable 10y ago
The attitude of this content explains some of the bias against older workers. There is a good point about getting engineers that are happy to work long hours but dismissing something like WhatsApp as a "glorified CRUD app" is just wrong and will result in poor engineering.
onetwotree 10y ago
Basically this. I was going to contrast a couple of (heavily anonymized) employees we just hired - a smart but inexperienced twenty something and a smart and very experienced 40 something, when I just remembered that I'd run into the 20 something at the office on a Sunday. I was just there to show the new office and some of our toys to my girlfriend, he was there because he was really excited about the job and just wanted to really kill it. Twenty year olds generally haven't figured out what really matters in life, especially when it comes to work life balance. That's a valuable asset to most companies. I told the kid to go home and have some fun, but I don't think he did. Later that day the 40-year old posted a picture in slack of him flying a drone with his kids, and just looking happy as a clam in mud.
- kaspm 10y ago
  See here's the thing... as a "seasoned" engineer who now has work-life balance, I was once a 20-something engineer working for pizza on crud apps in the office on Sunday, that time _is_ fun. It was super satisfying and fulfilling to learn new tech, create something, solve a business problem and get a raise and promotion because of it. Even doing that some weekends, I still had plenty of time to hang out with friends and fly drones (hack TiVos in my case) or whatever. As I got older, got married, had kids, that time is now spent helping my kids grow up. I have other things that take precedence over it. Honestly, I still think it would be fun to hack out a project for work on a weekend. I just don't have that luxury anymore. I like my life equally (or rather, I try to not constantly judge my life) now as I did then but it's different. Hopefully your 40-year old employee brings something different to the table - domain expertise, ideas born of repetition, lack of mistakes, dedication to quality craft that is equivalent to the raw output of your 20-something.
oceanghost 10y ago
Yep. I'm in my late 30's, being interviewed by 25-year-olds for jobs. These people do not want to be challenged intellectually. Some (paraphrased) excerpts from conversations I've had recently-- "Would you be willing to do a coding challenge? "Sure, about how long is it?" "I'm not sure." "What subject is it on?" I'm not sure." "When do you need it?" "A week from today." "I'm going to be traveling starting tomorrow, can we do the test the week after next?" "No, I really need it on Tuesday." "So the only thing you know about this test-- is the due date? I can't commit to an unknown amount of work in a week where I know I'll be traveling." "We only hire the best, absolutely best programmers." "Oh really? What would you say your average experience level is?" "3-5 years." "We insist on the highest quality work, would you be able to perform at that level?" "How does your organization define quality?" ... what ensued was 5 minutes of stammering and "uhhhsss" until I let her off the hook. Experience, at least in California, is a liability not an asset.
ozarius 10y ago
"... you have 10 WhatsApps (which are glorified simple CRUD apps)" - wow., just wow. So you are calling one of the most reliable, well architected, and secure messaging apps <- a simple CRUD app? Oh HN, you never fail to amuse me. This one's a certified entry for http://n-gate.com/hackernews/ http://n-gate.com/hackernews/
squozzer 10y ago
You're halfway there -- the other ugly side of our profession is stated rather plainly by the author -- "Ours is also one of the fewest industries based on scientific research which blatantly ignores the research, unless it is popularized in shallow books which rarely explore anything in depth. We have a constant churn of technologies which are often pointless, introducing new languages using extreme hype which is often unwarranted as those languages seldom expand beyond a basic domain representing a subset of LISP. I can’t think of a single developer I’ve met professionally who belong to the ACM or to IEEE, and when they run into an interesting problem tend to search Github or Stack Overflow, even when it is a basic algorithm problem. (I’ve met programmers with years of experience who couldn’t write code to maintain a linked list.)" I find it difficult to discern a common thread to the various claims made, but if I had to choose one, it's an obsession with novelty, which overlaps with your comments a little.

fnord123 10y ago

>Now how are you going to get a guy (who sort of knows what he's doing) to work 15 hours a day for pizza? Offer tenure? Then you don't even need the pizza.

pleasecalllater 10y ago
So to be honest they should rather change job descriptions from "employee" to "slave".
- fnord123 10y ago
  Slaves are property and cannot leave. People who willingly enter into terrible contracts are suckers, not slaves.

brian-armstrong 10y ago

WhatsApp is not a good example. They ran a high scale messaging service with a very lean team. There are some interesting challenges there.

falsedan 10y ago
All infrastructure, all solved many times many years before. The challenge is usually choosing a solution which can be adapted to match the unchangable assumptions of the non-scaled code (or removing those assumptions).
- beagle3 10y ago
  Are you familiar with whatsapp or just making a general remark? Whatsapp at 20 engineers delivered service to an audience comparable to Twitter, except with 1/100 the manpower (and hardware) and a couple of 9s more in reliability. They patched FreeBSD and Erlang to get there in the process. it's a problem that was solved many times before, but not successfully at this scale or cost. These are not your run-of-the mill CRUD developers.
  - mastazi 10y ago
    Also, I remember reading that the initial Whatsapp team had a much higher median age compared to most startups [1], so I agree that it's not a good example here. [1] https://medium.com/the-story-of-grip/5-things-every-founder-can-learn-from-the-story-of-whatsapp-b6496bc4f54d#.h2vy9rvs2 https://medium.com/the-story-of-grip/5-things-every-founder-...
  - falsedan 10y ago
    > it's a problem that was solved many times before, but not successfully at this scale or cost I'm not familiar with the scale+cost of every every bank, stock exchange, flight search, messaging app, log transport system, telco CDR matching infra, etc. Can you comment re: similar scale/cost projects? > They patched FreeBSD and Erlang Neither of these are distributed systems, which I think is the interesting challenge part of messaging. Do you have a link for this whatsapp info? It sounds like you got a lot of good information from it that others could benefit from by reading.
    - dahauns 10y ago
      > Neither of these are distributed systems On the contrary - Erlang and its runtime were built from the ground up for use in distributed systems.

banachtarski 10y ago

WhatsApp is a glorified simple CRUD app? Lol I'd love to see you even approach the scale they had even after a year with a "glorified simple CRUD app." I wouldn't try if digging into the nuts and bolts of the Erlang VM isn't your thing. My cynical response to your cynical explanation is that bottom tier engineers only see bottom tier solutions.

ff10 10y ago

I'm 34 and I do work as a developer for a startup. But then again, I'm working in Germany where I saw 45+ lead developers in startups, and age is something that is mostly considered to be an asset, not a burden - as long as you're willing to learn every day. The good thing here is that you recognize hype better than when you're young.

Insanity 10y ago
I'm from a similar country (Belgium) but have seen both sides of it, both where age is an advantage as well as a negative factor. At a startup I worked at, we were considering hiring a developer who was older than us (+20 years older), but in the end did not do it as we felt he might have trouble being managed by people significantly older than him. This was not my decision and I would have been in favor of hiring him - for the experience he could bring to the company. Anyway, I now work in a team where most people (apart from 2) are older than me, and I consider that a priviledge. I get to learn from them in a great way, and I feel that I can teach them things as well. It goes both ways really. And I do feel that in general here age is not such an important factor. Though that is just from looking at my colleagues, I am not in a comparable situation yet. Just out of curiousity btw, does 'ff10' hold any relation to 'fast fingers'?
- NicoJuicy 10y ago
  Where do you live in Belgium? ( I'm also from BE ;) )
  - Insanity 10y ago
    Live, studied, and currently work in Leuven :-)
- spoiler 10y ago
  > we were considering hiring a developer who was older than us (+20 years older), but in the end did not do it as we felt he might have trouble being managed by people significantly older than him. I am curious: Did something give you the impression he'd be bothered by a younger management, or was it just a general concern? I am only 23, but I imagine I wouldn't have issues being managed by someone my age if I were 33. However, I know that I'd be pretty shit at management right now, and would definitely not want to manage someone older than me. Personally, I'd prefer to be managed by someone older than myself due to them having more experience. Then again, wisdom doesn't come solely from age; one can have more experience and wisdom at 15 than someone at 50. My conclusion is that there is no conclusion, I guess.

mastazi 10y ago

Whatsapp is often cited as an example of startup where both cofounders were not as young as in most startups[1]. I know you are talking about devs not cofounders, but in Whatsapp both cofounders were technical so it is very likely that they actively participated to the development at least in the initial period. [1] https://medium.com/the-story-of-grip/5-things-every-founder-can-learn-from-the-story-of-whatsapp-b6496bc4f54d#.h2vy9rvs2 https://medium.com/the-story-of-grip/5-things-every-founder-...

br3w5 10y ago

I think the cheap work, long hours thing is critical because companies will see an older person and think more expensive which is true and the added cost is justified. I've seen companies turn down more expensive and experienced people in favour of less experience and cheaper, only to go back to the older and more experienced person once they realised the management overhead of dealing with less experienced staff. I also think startups have less experience running a company so assume if a developer knows x language and some experience with dbs will be able to build anything but then wonder why they have so many bugs / made so many bad design decisions.

HNLogInShit 10y ago

"When your a 20 year old kid" you + are = you're

koolba 10y ago

WhatsApp is far from a CRUD app. Designing a messaging system to scale like they did, as cheap as they did, is a work of art.

accountface 10y ago

That's generally how I feel about it myself, I just hit 30 and I'm done with the "work hard play hard" mentality a lot of startups run with. I want to do great, efficient work, and leave at 5pm every day to spend time with my family. I don't give a shit if your office has free snacks, beer, and ping pong, I'm an adult. Life isn't work.

schnable 10y ago

The attitude of this content explains some of the bias against older workers. There is a good point about getting engineers that are happy to work long hours but dismissing something like WhatsApp as a "glorified CRUD app" is just wrong and will result in poor engineering.

onetwotree 10y ago

Basically this. I was going to contrast a couple of (heavily anonymized) employees we just hired - a smart but inexperienced twenty something and a smart and very experienced 40 something, when I just remembered that I'd run into the 20 something at the office on a Sunday. I was just there to show the new office and some of our toys to my girlfriend, he was there because he was really excited about the job and just wanted to really kill it. Twenty year olds generally haven't figured out what really matters in life, especially when it comes to work life balance. That's a valuable asset to most companies. I told the kid to go home and have some fun, but I don't think he did. Later that day the 40-year old posted a picture in slack of him flying a drone with his kids, and just looking happy as a clam in mud.

kaspm 10y ago
See here's the thing... as a "seasoned" engineer who now has work-life balance, I was once a 20-something engineer working for pizza on crud apps in the office on Sunday, that time _is_ fun. It was super satisfying and fulfilling to learn new tech, create something, solve a business problem and get a raise and promotion because of it. Even doing that some weekends, I still had plenty of time to hang out with friends and fly drones (hack TiVos in my case) or whatever. As I got older, got married, had kids, that time is now spent helping my kids grow up. I have other things that take precedence over it. Honestly, I still think it would be fun to hack out a project for work on a weekend. I just don't have that luxury anymore. I like my life equally (or rather, I try to not constantly judge my life) now as I did then but it's different. Hopefully your 40-year old employee brings something different to the table - domain expertise, ideas born of repetition, lack of mistakes, dedication to quality craft that is equivalent to the raw output of your 20-something.

oceanghost 10y ago

Yep. I'm in my late 30's, being interviewed by 25-year-olds for jobs. These people do not want to be challenged intellectually. Some (paraphrased) excerpts from conversations I've had recently-- "Would you be willing to do a coding challenge? "Sure, about how long is it?" "I'm not sure." "What subject is it on?" I'm not sure." "When do you need it?" "A week from today." "I'm going to be traveling starting tomorrow, can we do the test the week after next?" "No, I really need it on Tuesday." "So the only thing you know about this test-- is the due date? I can't commit to an unknown amount of work in a week where I know I'll be traveling." "We only hire the best, absolutely best programmers." "Oh really? What would you say your average experience level is?" "3-5 years." "We insist on the highest quality work, would you be able to perform at that level?" "How does your organization define quality?" ... what ensued was 5 minutes of stammering and "uhhhsss" until I let her off the hook. Experience, at least in California, is a liability not an asset.

ozarius 10y ago

"... you have 10 WhatsApps (which are glorified simple CRUD apps)" - wow., just wow. So you are calling one of the most reliable, well architected, and secure messaging apps <- a simple CRUD app? Oh HN, you never fail to amuse me. This one's a certified entry for http://n-gate.com/hackernews/ http://n-gate.com/hackernews/

squozzer 10y ago

You're halfway there -- the other ugly side of our profession is stated rather plainly by the author -- "Ours is also one of the fewest industries based on scientific research which blatantly ignores the research, unless it is popularized in shallow books which rarely explore anything in depth. We have a constant churn of technologies which are often pointless, introducing new languages using extreme hype which is often unwarranted as those languages seldom expand beyond a basic domain representing a subset of LISP. I can’t think of a single developer I’ve met professionally who belong to the ACM or to IEEE, and when they run into an interesting problem tend to search Github or Stack Overflow, even when it is a basic algorithm problem. (I’ve met programmers with years of experience who couldn’t write code to maintain a linked list.)" I find it difficult to discern a common thread to the various claims made, but if I had to choose one, it's an obsession with novelty, which overlaps with your comments a little.