5 ms·

> having seen the difference in productivity, I'd hire a 40+ senior over 3 juniors in a heartbeat most of the time Honestly I think it's not directly ageism,

by zmmmmm 8y ago

> having seen the difference in productivity, I'd hire a 40+ senior over 3 juniors in a heartbeat most of the time Honestly I think it's not directly ageism, but indirectly, many people are afraid of managing people with significantly more experience or just plain older than them. So if the team lead is 35 with 10 years eng experience, they will probably be worried about a 45 y/o with 25 years eng experience who will challenge their authority and possibly prevent them from leading the whole team the way they want. Developing the maturity to not just cope with but thrive on managing people with much more experience / knowledge than yourself takes time, especially for engineers who tend to derive their authority primarily from their technical knowledge / experience. Eventually it will happen, but only after those managers replace technical experience with actual management experience as the basis of their self-worth / ego / authority.

JohnBooty 8y ago
> So if the team lead is 35 with 10 years eng > experience, they will probably be worried about > a 45 y/o with 25 years eng experience who will > challenge their authority and possibly prevent > them from leading the whole team the way they want. This was a huge factor at my last job, with myself and other engineers who were much more experienced than the people who were (inexplicably) placed in charge. We had a VP who was so green that he didn't know what he didn't know. He was still in that phase of life where he knew 10% of everything, and since he didn't know the other 90% even existed... he thought his knowledge was 100%. Very difficult to work with, much less for. (And that's even without a "power struggle" happening. Us 40-ish types were explicitly disinterested in becoming management. Nobody wanted to undermine him; we literally just wanted to do our jobs without his incompetent micromanagement)
- exikyut 8y ago
  An interesting reply to the GP comment. I finished reading the GP and immediately thought "so how do you learn to effectively manage people with more experience than yourself?", and then I read this comment. Hmm. I certainly don't want to end in the position of the manager you're referring to. I'm scared about/by the quantity of things I don't know, though, across the board, so there's that. (One of those things that are hard to sum up as good or bad, heh.) I guess the worst-case I can think of right now, is ending up in a situation where I might think the 10% I know _is_ 100%, and the social dynamics make it difficult for those around me to show me otherwise without treading on my toes, even privately. I wonder how I might counter for situations like that. My understanding of management is of owning a summarized, superset overview of a bunch of areas that I'm (ostensibly) coordinating. To do that effectively I need to be able to discern the difference between "implementational or otherwise safely 'losable' detail" and "piece of data I cannot effectively manage without" (literally). This can be very tricky, especially as the analysis rules change per domain...
  - JohnBooty 8y ago
    > My understanding of management is of owning a summarized, > superset overview of a bunch of areas that I'm (ostensibly) > coordinating. I would most definitely agree with you. A manager doesn't need to have more "in the trenches" knowledge than those that report to them. In fact that's probably not even possible or even desirable. Most of my really good managers have been less technical than me. > Hmm. I certainly don't want to end in the position > of the manager you're referring to. I'm scared > about/by the quantity of things I don't know, though, > across the board, so there's that. (One of those things > that are hard to sum up as good or bad, heh.) If you're concerned about it, that's probably an excellent sign that you'll do what it takes not to fall into that trap. Actually I'll be really specific about the trap our manager fell into. It's SUPER avoidable. Here's what he did: 1. He or his management would present a problem or challenge 2. He would design a solution with his very incomplete knowledge, down to the technical details 3. He would break it up into tasks 4. He would assign those tasks to us You can see the problem there. The people with the actual in-the-trenches knowledge were completely shut out of the design process and his solutions were often terrible. Furthermore, WE were the ones made to look bad by this process. HIS management thought he was this uber-competant guy who could not only manage but architect solutions as well! And even break them up into little bite-sized chunks for the engineers to execute! And WE looked like "negative nancies" who were like, slowing him down by pushing back against these solutions and tasks he handed out. He was like a poor general who was always getting his troops killed, that managed to convince the higher-ups that he was just constantly given bad troops or something. His favorite retort was "well, what's your suggestion?" when we challenged his poorly thought-out solutions. And it was like... I don't know, Ben. I just got handed your shitty solution five seconds ago and you still haven't even told us what you're even trying to accomplish here. We haven't had three hours or three days or three weeks to come up ideas like you have. Obviously, the process ought to have gone like this: 1. He or his management would present a problem or challenge 2. He should present the problem to his team, explaining the technical goals as well as how those goals fit into the big picture of the business 3. The team collectively should have designed and discussed possible solutions. 4a. Through that process he should have acted as advisor and sounding board. He should have recognized our greater domain knowledge. 4b. Of course, that street goes both ways. He should have recognized our greater experience and domain knowledge, but we should have also recognized the need for to prove the viability of our solutions to him before implementing them, just like we'd do with any manager regardless of relative age or experience -- the relationship would not work if we expected him to simply "take our word for it" because we we older or more experienced.
- TimesOldRoman 8y ago
  This is me right now. I'm on sabbatical while I work some stuff out, but I'll go back to that problem unless I leave the company. Most management is ~10 years younger than I am.
clausok 8y ago
"A players hire A players, but B players hire C players..." -- Steve Jobs https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3102639 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3102639
Aeolun 8y ago
To be honest, I would love to hire competent 40- 50 year old people, but I’d be torpedoing my own chances of advancement since promoting them (or hiring them in a higher position) frankly makes much more sense. I guess I’d still do it though. We need people with experience like a drowning man needs air.
- geekbird 8y ago
  Experience is underrated. Most companies look for people with the exact toolset that they want, rather than look for related skills and a history of learning. I work in sysadmin operations. I have often come in and cleaned up a cowboy implementation, or learned a completely new application (usually undocumented) - deployment and operation - to the point that I can turn around and teach it and write documentation and automation for it. I'm also very cynical about anything that is the "latest and greatest", because I've seen behind the curtain way too many times.
paulgrant999 8y ago
Its directly ageism. Because it happens as soon as you hit 40. Sports has the same thing. So does the military (passed over 3 times for promotion in x amount of years, you leave the military). Military does it for competence. Sports does it for physical reasons. But is there a reason to throw away 20+ years of experience in an engineer, so you can cut payroll? Particularly when those engineers built the industry, your busy making unicorn-money off of? The whole thing is ridiculous.

by zmmmmm 8y ago

JohnBooty 8y ago

> So if the team lead is 35 with 10 years eng > experience, they will probably be worried about > a 45 y/o with 25 years eng experience who will > challenge their authority and possibly prevent > them from leading the whole team the way they want. This was a huge factor at my last job, with myself and other engineers who were much more experienced than the people who were (inexplicably) placed in charge. We had a VP who was so green that he didn't know what he didn't know. He was still in that phase of life where he knew 10% of everything, and since he didn't know the other 90% even existed... he thought his knowledge was 100%. Very difficult to work with, much less for. (And that's even without a "power struggle" happening. Us 40-ish types were explicitly disinterested in becoming management. Nobody wanted to undermine him; we literally just wanted to do our jobs without his incompetent micromanagement)

exikyut 8y ago
An interesting reply to the GP comment. I finished reading the GP and immediately thought "so how do you learn to effectively manage people with more experience than yourself?", and then I read this comment. Hmm. I certainly don't want to end in the position of the manager you're referring to. I'm scared about/by the quantity of things I don't know, though, across the board, so there's that. (One of those things that are hard to sum up as good or bad, heh.) I guess the worst-case I can think of right now, is ending up in a situation where I might think the 10% I know _is_ 100%, and the social dynamics make it difficult for those around me to show me otherwise without treading on my toes, even privately. I wonder how I might counter for situations like that. My understanding of management is of owning a summarized, superset overview of a bunch of areas that I'm (ostensibly) coordinating. To do that effectively I need to be able to discern the difference between "implementational or otherwise safely 'losable' detail" and "piece of data I cannot effectively manage without" (literally). This can be very tricky, especially as the analysis rules change per domain...
- JohnBooty 8y ago
  > My understanding of management is of owning a summarized, > superset overview of a bunch of areas that I'm (ostensibly) > coordinating. I would most definitely agree with you. A manager doesn't need to have more "in the trenches" knowledge than those that report to them. In fact that's probably not even possible or even desirable. Most of my really good managers have been less technical than me. > Hmm. I certainly don't want to end in the position > of the manager you're referring to. I'm scared > about/by the quantity of things I don't know, though, > across the board, so there's that. (One of those things > that are hard to sum up as good or bad, heh.) If you're concerned about it, that's probably an excellent sign that you'll do what it takes not to fall into that trap. Actually I'll be really specific about the trap our manager fell into. It's SUPER avoidable. Here's what he did: 1. He or his management would present a problem or challenge 2. He would design a solution with his very incomplete knowledge, down to the technical details 3. He would break it up into tasks 4. He would assign those tasks to us You can see the problem there. The people with the actual in-the-trenches knowledge were completely shut out of the design process and his solutions were often terrible. Furthermore, WE were the ones made to look bad by this process. HIS management thought he was this uber-competant guy who could not only manage but architect solutions as well! And even break them up into little bite-sized chunks for the engineers to execute! And WE looked like "negative nancies" who were like, slowing him down by pushing back against these solutions and tasks he handed out. He was like a poor general who was always getting his troops killed, that managed to convince the higher-ups that he was just constantly given bad troops or something. His favorite retort was "well, what's your suggestion?" when we challenged his poorly thought-out solutions. And it was like... I don't know, Ben. I just got handed your shitty solution five seconds ago and you still haven't even told us what you're even trying to accomplish here. We haven't had three hours or three days or three weeks to come up ideas like you have. Obviously, the process ought to have gone like this: 1. He or his management would present a problem or challenge 2. He should present the problem to his team, explaining the technical goals as well as how those goals fit into the big picture of the business 3. The team collectively should have designed and discussed possible solutions. 4a. Through that process he should have acted as advisor and sounding board. He should have recognized our greater domain knowledge. 4b. Of course, that street goes both ways. He should have recognized our greater experience and domain knowledge, but we should have also recognized the need for to prove the viability of our solutions to him before implementing them, just like we'd do with any manager regardless of relative age or experience -- the relationship would not work if we expected him to simply "take our word for it" because we we older or more experienced.
TimesOldRoman 8y ago
This is me right now. I'm on sabbatical while I work some stuff out, but I'll go back to that problem unless I leave the company. Most management is ~10 years younger than I am.

clausok 8y ago

"A players hire A players, but B players hire C players..." -- Steve Jobs https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3102639 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3102639

Aeolun 8y ago

To be honest, I would love to hire competent 40- 50 year old people, but I’d be torpedoing my own chances of advancement since promoting them (or hiring them in a higher position) frankly makes much more sense. I guess I’d still do it though. We need people with experience like a drowning man needs air.

geekbird 8y ago
Experience is underrated. Most companies look for people with the exact toolset that they want, rather than look for related skills and a history of learning. I work in sysadmin operations. I have often come in and cleaned up a cowboy implementation, or learned a completely new application (usually undocumented) - deployment and operation - to the point that I can turn around and teach it and write documentation and automation for it. I'm also very cynical about anything that is the "latest and greatest", because I've seen behind the curtain way too many times.

paulgrant999 8y ago

Its directly ageism. Because it happens as soon as you hit 40. Sports has the same thing. So does the military (passed over 3 times for promotion in x amount of years, you leave the military). Military does it for competence. Sports does it for physical reasons. But is there a reason to throw away 20+ years of experience in an engineer, so you can cut payroll? Particularly when those engineers built the industry, your busy making unicorn-money off of? The whole thing is ridiculous.