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Show HN: A job board for companies fighting ageism in tech

• sergiotapia 7y ago
  Great idea! The best two engineers I've had the pleasure to work with were both 45+ years old. They had a cool head when shit hit the fan, and were generally unfazed about technical problems. "Been there done that, let's do this right." If your company is discriminating against older engineers you're making a big mistake! Now can we get a "no leetcode" job board? My favorite companies give you a take home, of a real world problem, vertical slice of what you're expected to do day to day.
  • tidwall 7y ago
    What is “leetcode”?
    • erik_seaberg 7y ago
      They don't want to write code during the interview. Some complain about needing to practice, which I can't understand. Me, I'm pushing 50 and I'd be wary of joining a team who got hired without writing code.
      • pmiller2 7y ago
        I despise Leetcode style problems because I think being asked to give an impromptu CS lecture is not a great interview technique. I wrote code in the interview for my current job, but it wasn’t “find the longest palindromic substring of a given string in linear time.”
      • tidwall 7y ago
        So leetcode is code that is written by the interviewee during an interview? Sounds tough. I never had to do that. I would probably clam up and fail.
        • Stratoscope 7y ago
          That is related, but leetcode is actually a website dedicated to these kinds of interview problems: https://leetcode.com/ https://leetcode.com/
      • sergiotapia 7y ago
        No, I don't want to solve leetcode style questions. Give me normal takehomes or at worst normal problems to solve on the computer.
    • akoumis 7y ago
      Leetcode.com is a website where you practice FAANG-style interview questions
• social_quotient 7y ago
  The link is redirecting me back to HN post. How’s this on the front page?
  • H8crilA 7y ago
    Aren't we all guilty of occasionally up-voting based on title only. Anyhow, OP: please fix, we'd like to see the idea.
  • bubblewrap 7y ago
    I guess it didn't age well.
  • postsantum 7y ago
    There are a few topics on HN that always perform well (loneliness, Google's fuckups, etc). I guess ageism is one of them now
• carmenbr 7y ago
  We're fixing the glitch
  • carmenbr 7y ago
    fixed, sorry...we had some problems with the hosting
• christiansakai 7y ago
  Thank you so much for this. A CS professor of mine who is currently struggling with her income and her future (even though she is tenured) could really use something like this (she doesn't mind doing boring programming work).
  • carmenbr 7y ago
    Many thanks for the support and hope we can help her to find a new position
• marsrover 7y ago
  I think that as the years go by we’ll see ageism reverse. The early 80s is really the first time CS education really started taking off and it continues to be a very popular major. These people are now starting to get old and it’s the first time we’ve had this vast an older software developer workforce. I think it’ll have more effects than just anti-ageism but also the coming into our own in regards to engineering by way of having older mentors.
  • badfrog 7y ago
    > These people are now starting to get old and it’s the first time we’ve had this vast an older software developer workforce. Where are all the older software developers? I've worked at a few FANG and similar-level finance companies, and the vast majority of developers are under 35. Are the older ones clustered in some other corner of the industry?
    • BurningFrog 7y ago
      A lot are rich and retired. A lot are managers. Most never existed. It used to be a much smaller profession. Some burned out and work in real estate.
      • stakhanov 7y ago
        I seriously doubt that the "rich and retired" category is quantitatively all that significant. I think they're in sales and middle management.
        • BurningFrog 7y ago
          Depends on where you are, I guess. Here in Silicon Valley it's pretty significant. Though many of the people I know who could retire keep working. It's truly what they enjoy doing, apparently. One odd thing about this is that you'll rarely meet the rich & retired in your work life, by definition, so it's easy to underestimate how many they are. That said, I have no good way to count them either, and may well be overestimating.
• random42 7y ago
  I wish there was a "no leetcode-ism in tech" job board
  • Impossible 7y ago
    http://they.whiteboarded.me/companies-that-dont-whiteboard.html http://they.whiteboarded.me/companies-that-dont-whiteboard.h...
  • neilv 7y ago
    Maybe we'd have more women and other current underrepresented groups in "tech", did the whole post-graduation jobs thing not seem to be about fratbro hazing and "culture fit". When I got my first real software engineering internship, as a teen, shortly before dotcoms, about half the engineers in my group were women. And, though they were doing difficult work on technical and systems software, there was none of the posturing, glamorizing, and self-congratulating that we often see in industry today. (In hindsight, some of the work they did is still beyond what most developers do today, though I didn't appreciate that enough at the time.) I'm sure there were industry problems such as sexism in the '90s and earlier, pre-dotcoms, and in some ways we have more awareness today, but I think we've become arrogant and cultish in other ways. Yet commoditized. And one-way leetcode-type hazing is part of that.
    • mixmastamyk 7y ago
      The big push in the media to stereotype boys as computer nerds strengthened in the early 80s. Think War Games and Whiz Kids. I didn’t notice at the time because it was what I was. Nowadays every computer “hacker” on TV is a really hot chick; maybe the pendulum could come back to center.
  • cellis 7y ago
    Don’t wish, do. Nothing stopping you from building it. I’d use it :D
• southern_cross 7y ago
  As time goes by there is going to be more and more "old" code out there, and generally that will either have to be maintained in its current state or converted to something newer. And to do that you're going to have folks who are both familiar with it and are willing to work on it - except that the young bucks today just really don't want to do that. I'm hearing from IT employees of local corporations that if their code base is twenty, ten, or even just five years old now, they can't find young folks who are willing to work on it. And even if they do find them, they don't necessarily have the skills to do that work, nor any particular inclination to really learn those skills, nor are they willing to stick around for very long even if they do start the process.
  • jpindar 7y ago
    It may be risky but I've started putting "working with legacy code and obsolete languages" in my list of skills.
  • harimau777 7y ago
    I think that a lot of engineers consider the opportunity to work on new technology and code to be part of their compensation. In that case, in order to attract them a company would either need to allow them to do that or increase other forms of compensation. However, it doesn't seem like many companies are willing to do that.
    • southern_cross 7y ago
      IIRC, something like 90% of a software engineer's career will be spent doing "maintenance" work - working on existing code bases, some of which may (eventually) be quite long in the tooth. So it's something that the young bucks are going to have to get used to pretty quickly. Also, a lot of the "new" stuff that they want to work on is really old stuff, just with a new name and a new coat of paint. Having been in the business for several decades now I see of lot of this, and I am by turns both amused and appalled by it.
      • user5994461 7y ago
• streetcat1 7y ago
  I would rather keep ageism. It keep my competitive advantage intact (25 years C++, 20 years java.). I can easily code much faster than a team of 10 younger developers, not because I can program faster, but because I know WHAT to program, as oppose to how to program. I.e. they are running faster to the top of the wrong hill. Kind of strange that you will judge your MD by its age, but when it come to mission critical systems you prefer young people.
  • quickthrower2 7y ago
    That’s not really ageism, but effectivenessism. I think companies like younger people because they are cheaper and perhaps more agreeable.
    • titanomachy 7y ago
      And flexible. They will work longer hours and demand less holiday time.
      • jpindar 7y ago
        And white men are just smarter and harder working! /s Listen to yourselves!
        • marsrover 7y ago
          woosh
        • klipt 7y ago
          I think the point is that young people are more exploitable. That's not really a good thing for young people, but one can see why employers would want to exploit them. This is why unions fought for 40 hour work weeks. Otherwise it's a race to the bottom in terms of who can overwork the most.
        • titanomachy 7y ago
          I think older workers are wise to work fewer hours and demand more holiday. Still, companies exploit the flexibility of young people.
• WalterBright 7y ago
  A company I worked with once hired a team of old contractors to do a job. The job was done on time, on budget, no drama, no overtime, and the customer was happy. Each of the contractors received the contractually agreed upon bonus for meeting all the targets. I asked a manager why they didn't apply this model to subsequent projects, and never got much of an answer.
  • rangeofmotion 7y ago
    This is my experience with older skilled programmers as well. For the most part, I notice when there are technical folks in their 40s and 50s on a project, the "gee whiz" is thankfully tempered by the benefit of experience, and the projects have a more concrete results-driven character. "There is nothing new under the sun", as they say. And when you've seen the signature of a pitfall before, you can spot its many variations. Less chasing after chimeras. More driving at the actual business goal. The heavily youth-driven focus of tech hiring has always struck me as ultimately very dumb. And I think this is also reflected in the god-awful interviewing practices that everyone is familiar with. I don't see older engineers promoting those practices that are talked about so much in the industry as being borderline absurd.
    • mieseratte 7y ago
      And as a counterpoint, I've worked with a number of Senior-level programmers more than old enough to be my parents and seen them behave in some of the most god-awful ways. Resume-Driven-Development, Not-Invented-Here syndrome, refusal to write new tests, refusal to maintain existing tests, breaking the build, deploying broken code. All because of the insidious little "because I (don't) want to." I'm less convinced that age has anything to do with good outcomes these days as is the discipline to do the responsible things, regardless of how little we wish to do those things.
      • pacomerh 7y ago
        Yeah at any age you can have problematic developers, but in general the problem is just being prejudice towards an age segment. I think that if the person has proven to be competent they should be given the opportunity and at the same time treated accordingly if they behave like the example you gave.
• schappim 7y ago
  Anyone else just hit their mid thirties and suddenly become aware of agism? Not something that is affecting me, but something suddenly I've become more cognisant about it.
  • leetrout 7y ago
    Yes. I’m also a parent and that was also eye-opening to tech jobs being geared to childless workers.
    • nothrabannosir 7y ago
      For what it's worth, my little knowledge of London based tech scene is that it's extremely child friendly. Many companies I've seen have no-questions-asked-work-from-home policies, which in the places I've actually worked at were extensively used for child care and ballet recitals. But I definitely don't speak for "the london tech scene", just for my limited perspective on it. (And I'm not a parent so maybe that's not even what a child friendly workplace makes! :) ).
      • leonagano 7y ago
        What I see, having children affects women the most. Men's salary remains the same, whereas, for women, that has a huge impact
      • user5994461 7y ago
        London is mostly big bank and web companies, they have nice perks and work life balance. Startups are usually the opposite.
        • nothrabannosir 7y ago
          My experience (and network) in London is very start-up heavy, if anything. Maybe this is an instance of startup ≠ startup?
  • lambdasquirrel 7y ago
• crispinb 7y ago
  The only form of ageism I've experienced was reverse. I entered dev professionally in my 40s, and it was frequently assumed because of my age that I knew more than I truly did. In consequence I was often given higher levels of responsibility than my experience merited (regardless of my protestations). This might have been good for someone more brilliant than I, but I found it a problem - it made it very hard for me to learn from other people, and although it's hard to accurately replay history I would say this slowed my skills development. It certainly made working in tech less pleasant for me than it might have been.
  • titanomachy 7y ago
    I could see this happening. I work at a major company and it seems like everyone over 40 is some sort of director or senior staff engineer, so they are taken pretty seriously.
    • crispinb 7y ago
      Here in Aus a great deal of it is managerial complacency and in some cases laziness ('management' aspirations sometimes comprising mainly a desire to play golf & watch rugby). There's a strong tendency to clutch at pattern-matching shortcuts: "You're over 30 so you must be a senior developer". Or (another one I've suffered) "I see you have a book on X (new technology) on your desk, so you must be an expert in it". I honestly have more than once quickly shuffled a book into a drawer when seeing a project manager approach, just to avoid being given responsibility over a project using some new tech I've only just started to investigate.
• hamstergene 7y ago
  I am pretty sure "ageism" is just an inadvertent consequence of the wrong belief that years of experience must linearly translate to ability. Not because anyone dislikes older folk per se. If someone has got 30 years of experience, employers/recruiters think it requires at least senior or manager position, while entry/mid level position appears "unsuitable". They don't understand that after 3-5 years the diminishing returns flatten the output almost completely and the only thing that years of experience can tell is the arithmetic difference between current year and the year of graduation. The matters are surely made worse by the current FAANG tendency to ignore whether the experience is relevant. If someone has never wrote a line of Java before, a junior position with quick promotion is the most fair and logical choice. But if their resume shows 7+ years of any coding experience at all it wouldn't even pop up in recruiter's search because of how they set up their filters for junior positions.
  • lambdasquirrel 7y ago
    Experience in what? Programming ability? Then yes. I don’t think you really start becoming an engineer until you’ve already got coding down, and then you start having to go onto other things...
  • world32 7y ago
    I think this is a very good point and is definitely part of the reason why we have apparent ageism. This aspect is also compounded by the fact that technologies and paradigms are changing so fast - yes I know software re-invents the wheel a lot, but the fact that you were coding GUIs in the 90s, before some of today's 20-something developers were even born, really doesn't make you that much better of a React.js developer. I'm not saying the kind of ageism thats being discussed here doesn't exist - the "brogrammer", "culture fit" kind of discrimination. But I think its probably blown out of proportion. Especially for non-bay area companies, it seems like whenever somebody talks about "tech companies" they are referring to a very specific kind of tech company that is really only a relatively small portion of the industry.
  • ska 7y ago
    They don't understand that after 3-5 years the diminishing returns flatten This sounds about correct for a single role. A good senior person will have at least a few different roles under their belt too, each one of those takes another 3-5 years to flatten out, and usually at least a couple tech stacks they've been deeply in. Having multiple repeats of the same year's experience never helps anyone, whether it's 2 years or 20. But 10-15 years of good experience puts you far ahead of 5. The old joke about this had to do with learning to differentiate between 10 years experience, and the same year of experience, 10 times.
• bin0 7y ago
  Site got slashdotted. Wayback machine copy: http://web.archive.org/web/20190622083122/https://noageismintech.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20190622083122/https://noageismin... Also, can some one explain the "diversity link" on a bunch of these?
  • carmenbr 7y ago
    Hi, I included "diversity link" where companies explicitly publish some articles about how D&I plays its part within the company
  • thrownaway954 7y ago
    slashdotted??? Now you're truly showing your age ;)
    • bin0 7y ago
      Yikes. I'm not that old... right? Right?
• noncoml 7y ago
  I found myself applying for jobs recently. One of the startups that contacted me was founded by three 2015 graduates. I am 41. I cancelled the interview. There was no way in my mind that I could work with these three folks. It was as good as being from different planets. What I am trying to say is that maybe ageism is a two way street, and maybe it’s just normal. Generation gap and all.
  • neilv 7y ago
    Why didn't you think you could work with them? 2015 graduates probably have at least a couple years real experience, which is a huge difference over fresh out of school (and a lot of people coast after that, anyway). Even new college grads can start figuring things out. And there's so much possible to know today, no one person can know it all, and even a top veteran engineer can learn some things from NCGs. I look for companies where people want to do good work, on good things, are capable, yet intellectually humble, and treat everyone as respected colleagues.
    • noncoml 7y ago
      Maybe my comment came out wrong. It’s not about their(or my) technical skills. Technical compatibility is not enough for a team to work closely and efficiently IMHO
      • neilv 7y ago
        True, though it sounded like them only having a few years experience was a showstopper on its own (no other factors, like their mission blurb was unappealing), in this case? Maybe we're back to your original statement, about ageism being a two-way street sometimes. I appreciate your candor in mentioning it. Were you thinking of particular things, like "they'll make bad decisions, or won't have much experience executing", or "they'll probably be on drugs, and the company picnic will be extreme snowboarding", or something else?
        • TomMarius 7y ago
• graycat 7y ago
  At the start of my career in computing, in one two week period I sent some resume copies, went on 7 interviews and got 5 offers. The reason was the high interest in computing around DC for US national security. I was making in annual salary 6 times what a new, high end Camaro cost. My 2 BR apartment cost me 8.5% of my gross salary. Then some suits saw the problem, had the NSF have a team of economists estimate computing labor supply and demand curves, and then have the NSF write into research grants that so many students had to be supported and, hint, hint, could get students from Taiwan, South Korea, India, Greece, etc. So, net, the main reason for the nonsense in hiring in computing is that there's no real shortage. When there was a real shortage, organizations would hire based on indications of talent and expect the employees to learn on the job enough to do the job. Now it appears that the employers have a list of 10 of their most important software tools in their stack and what to hire people with that particular list of 10 tools, with that particular stack -- not promising for either the organization or the employee. For another, managers want their subordinates to be no threat, just secondary, submissive, subordinate, heads down coding, no bright ideas, no risk of the suit being shown to lack technical competence, etc. And, the more people the manager hires, maybe the more the manager gets paid; so hire a lot of inexperienced people instead of a few deeply experienced people -- empire building, goal subordination. The non-technical suits need to start to catch on and get the IT departments being more productive and per dollar.
  • titanomachy 7y ago
    Watching the bidding war for a candidate who has offers from both Google and Facebook makes me think there's still a shortage of something. And those companies mostly don't hire for a particular stack. There's a certain category of engineer that is still scarce and in-demand, it's just a matter of figuring out how to convince people you are in that category.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • SomeOldThrow 7y ago
      There’s a shortage of engineers who will work for the incredibly low industry-standard wages.
• oneplane 7y ago
  I sadly had an experience last year with older team members neither having the sage wisdom nor the flexibility to add value to a project, but they were kept on because of diversity reasons. The project was still delivered on time, on par with specs and within budget, but the older people were sent on paid leave after the first month of the project. While it's a cliche to assume older (or younger) people are never going to work out in a team, it definitely happens a lot where outliers in the age range simply cannot do the work, whatever the reason. (and I'm not talking about not being qualified, that's usually not the problem) On the other hand, with this anecdotal failure we have seen anecdotal successes as well; but knowing that older members can fail on a project due to what they self-describe as their age does actually happen in just the way people seem to fear; just not as often as they seem to think.
  • carmenbr 7y ago
    Sorry to hear that but think that’s more a problem of commitment instead of age
• carmenbr 7y ago
  Hi all Carmen here. A bit of my story below: my husband (leonagano) had faced ageism in his job hunting journey, especially because the tech environment sometimes attracts young people and the more experienced professionals are being left behind. Wearing my journalist hat, I started looking for ways to help and fight ageism. After further research, I realised this is actually a common problem among the IT industry as stated in some articles from the likes of The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/careers/2017/aug/14/women-ageism-tech-startup-sexism https://www.theguardian.com/careers/2017/aug/14/women-ageism...), Wired (https://www.wired.com/story/surviving-as-an-old-in-the-tech-world/ https://www.wired.com/story/surviving-as-an-old-in-the-tech-...), Forbes (https://www.forbes.com/sites/marenbannon/2019/04/10/the-biggest-bias-in-tech-that-no-one-talks-about/#278750a062e3 https://www.forbes.com/sites/marenbannon/2019/04/10/the-bigg...), Bloomberg (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-17/75-year-old-job-hunters-could-become-new-normal-in-aging-japan https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-17/75-year-o...) That's when I decided to start this job board and hopefully, try to reduce this problem to the minimum possible Sometimes, the problem happens during the job description, where the "older" professionals feel excluded when words like tech-native, ninja, etc are used, according to Dice (https://insights.dice.com/2018/02/28/employers-welcome-tech-job-hunters-over-40/ https://insights.dice.com/2018/02/28/employers-welcome-tech-...)
  • dba7dba 7y ago
    Intern is another term often used to prevent older, experienced workers from applying.
    • jpindar 7y ago
      I swear, some companies go straight from intern to senior team lead.
      • dang 7y ago
        That's not always as absurd as it sounds. Particularly talented people can do it. The case of Seymour Cray, admittedly an outlier on the talent side, comes to mind. He was basically a senior team lead from the moment he got his first job, and that was in 1951. I got that from this wonderful book, btw: https://www.amazon.com/Supermen-Seymour-Technical-Wizards-Supercomputer/dp/0471048852/ https://www.amazon.com/Supermen-Seymour-Technical-Wizards-Su...
• jstewartmobile 7y ago
  Aside from the Zuckerberg "young people are just smarter" quote, I suspect a lot of this is more side-effect of businesses (especially large ones) wanting interchangeable, easily-replaceable parts rather than overt ageism. Having a core business system done right the first time by an old-timer or two kind of puts you at their mercy. Using the infinite monkey theorem to grind out a bunch of python and javascript is much safer from a managerial perspective.
• dlphn___xyz 7y ago
  it doesnt make sense to stay in tech (as an individual contributor) long term - especially working for someone else
  • pacomerh 7y ago
    well some people are not interested in management positions and building your own thing is sometimes not as easy for everyone, so care to elaborate why it doesn't make sense?
    • PeterStuer 7y ago
      Simply put: The risk of ending up generally unwanted and unable to get back up after your current gig goes south, or you have to take a leave due to an illness or other life obligations, rises dramatically over the years due to systemic ageism in our industry.
      • carmenbr 7y ago
        That’s exactly the point, apart from what you have chosen (keep coding and work in tech), you don’t have the option to choose as the companies have been recruiting only youngest professionals and all environment is focused on the youngest people. There is space for everyone and it’s a fact that diverse teams are more effective than others.
• BurningFrog 7y ago
  Ninja is one of the oldest professions in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninja https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninja
  • dang 7y ago
    We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20252920 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20252920 and marked it off-topic.
• mbrameld 7y ago
  It would be more useful if the jobs were searchable or sortable. It's frustrating that I have to go to each company's page to see the jobs.
  • leonagano 7y ago
    Yes agreed. Initial idea was to include all jobs on the homepage, but we'd like to build the website as simple as possible to validate the idea and see if it is really a problem in the industry. I'm sure the website will change over time
• wjioertfhwoeirj 7y ago
  Figured I'd create a throwaway account to chime in here. I'm 40+, and have to say the last few years (working for Fortune 100 companies) I am truly mortified at the lack of skill in many of the younger folks I've worked with. Also, generally speaking when I've had a younger boss I would say it's NEVER because they're qualified for the position. Generally it seems they've been able to pull the wool over their managers' eyes. Don't get me wrong, they have no bad intentions. All I'm saying is confidence can only get you so far in technology.
  • mixmastamyk 7y ago
    I don’t find the comments complaining about older workers very helpful to be honest. Nor those complaining about younger ones either. Substitute white/black or rich/poor to highlight.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  • fit2rule 7y ago
    I've been a professional developer since I was 13, in the sense that was when I sold my first commercial product, some 36 years ago. I've gone from being the wunderkind to being the over the hill grey beard, and I've seen some shit. What I think happens is that every 4 or 5 years, there's a cycle of devolution. The new kids in school want to be that wunderkind - they choose therefore to ignore the wisdom of their elders and forge ahead into the darkness of their own knowledge with the light of their own hubris to guide the way. Many times, this is more than enough to build something great - often though, it results in failure. But, every year, a new round of developers hits the scene, fresh from boot camp. These bring new (old) ideas to the scene, rebranded perhaps, refactored perhaps. This somehow has a devolutionary effect on the industry as older developers get moved off the production seats into management, and there isn't an effective turnover to the new guys, who then spend a few years re-inventing things and re-gaining the experience of the previous guy. Things get re-invented. Regurgitated. Recycled. Eventually, a kind of stability occurs - and the new programmer becomes the old guy. The seats get changed again, and we go through the cycle again. Oddly enough, as someone who has gone from being the 13-year old wunderkind and is now the near-50 old guy, the only way I've found to survive this cyclic regurgitation is to stay focused on the user. Nobody cares if the user is young or old - what matters is if they're using something you built. Ageism is real. I started my career with a healthy dose of it - although in the 80's it was a lot more common to have respect for ones guru's than it is today, I nevertheless didn't want to know a lot of the 'obvious' wisdom of my elders - and now I'm 10 years away from retiring from the career, seeing it from the other side of the fence, there is a great deal of 'obvious wisdom' I see the youth of the technology world today clearly ignoring, and pretty certain they're going to re-invent in a few years time, subjectively and objectively. In my opinion, ageism happens because its hard to train people who have just escaped the hell of modern education, and all they want is the freedom to apply their skills and develop themselves, and their identities as skilled workers. Its hard for an old person to care about the stupidity of youth, because after all - if you've got the experience - you probably had a healthy dose of it too, and well .. you came out okay right? If we want to deal with age-related complications in this industry, we should address the source of the problem: educating people, and being educated by people, is hard.
• TheBobinator 7y ago
  There are three themes driving ageism in tech. First, upper management and investorship doesn't understand engineering or technology. Accountants understand cost and risk, they do not understand oppertunity or business process. MBA's understand cost and risk, as well as any non-iterative business process with a defined start and end that is quantifiable; they are suited for running a company, not growing a company, and religous application of skills within that spectrum of capibility only creates tragedy and torture chambers (e.g. open floor plan offices). Any R&D process is by definition unquantifiable; you have 10 million workcenters infront of you and have to figure out the right routing, which may be iterative and require adjustments to the workcenter, to produce the widget. Figuring that out requires knowing where the bottlenecks are to constrain the problem, and that requires specialized knowledge and experience. Accountants and MBA's are taught, religously, to view those things as "key man risk", and because of the ability of people to leave to go elsewhere to work for more money, that training staff is just a waste of money. It is vital to our industry that we take on interns as journeymen for a few years and guide them; the results are much better for all when they are taught how to think. This is antithetical to most organizations. Any company that thinks this way is doomed to a slow death because nobody who is capible of managing the bottlenecks is going to work there; they will reverse engineer the company, find the bottlenecks, propose them, come across as pompous, then move on. Devoid of the experience of working with talent, the management, often coming from non-engineering management backgrounds, assumes programmers are factory, retail, logistics, or any kind of manual laborer and due to that, equates youth with maximum ROI. They build torture chambers and hope to capture a few young geniuses then force out golden eggs. Think of MSP's that have no intellectual property or investment in technology, but hire IT folks and force them into bogus non-competes and other slaver working arrangements. Can't tell you how many times I've been look upon as the "whiz kid saviour" by some imbecile in their 50's or 60's coming from a non-engineering background who happens to have money. It's really patronizing, demoralizing, and absolutely disgusting. Nobody wants to work with that, and especially in a company that creates situations where the staff feel the only way out is bankrupting the place. Second, you have highly levered\financialized companies. Facebook has almost no real world value aside from social entertainment, and nobody knows how to valuate the company. Because of this, goals cannot be clearly defined by the top brass of the organization; there's no long-term vision. Anyone who's seen a Zuckerberg press conference will call him a visionary; he comes across as a man-child trying to make sense of his dumb luck. Old engineers know, most importantly of all, how to have heated debates like an engineer and to discuss like an engineer. That threatens the management in these orgs because engineers, if left to their own whims, will form their own vision and experienced people know what works and how to be successful. They'll do things that can clearly be seen as progress and that reduces the importance of everyone else at the org in the eyes of the investorship. That too, becomes an engine for drama. Finally, there's a severe shortage of good technical\engineering management around right now. Some of that is the above two reasons, but a lot of it has to do with things like IRS exemptions against allowing IT Staff to bill on a W11 obstensively because too many people were working as FTE at multiple companies working as specialists without benefits. Remember, one of the driving factors behind Austin Stack driving a Cessna into an IRS building was that very thing. Technology changes society drastically, and when you see management and leadership turning the nails on people, it's a response to this. Feminism, for example, is a response to technology; first wave feminism was a response better materials science producing pressure vessels that created hard alcohol. Men ended up in the gutter escaping hard lives rather than dealing with them and it's no wonder when universal sufferage was passed, the first thing the ladies voted for and demanded was prohibition. Second wave feminism, e.g. equal pay for equal work, was driven by the obsolescance of muscle in manufacturing. That produces a discussion on what gender roles in a relationship are and ought to be (which by the way, the only people qualified to make that decision is the couple). Third wave feminism is a response to contraceptives and social media. GAO Does retirement security studies and did one in 2009 on the impact of fertility rates on retirement security and ended up publishing, then redacting, the fact that men with an 80th percentile income have a 50\50 shot, back in 2009, of procreating. You have lots of women inundated with too much selection via social media, and throwing everything they've got after it using contraceptives. It's logical, then, that intelligent hard-working men with money being given access to any women they want for anything they want would be demoralized about relationships and the quality of the breeding stock. The old addage of "building a family" or "building a man" has stopped being a concept and instead you have Maybelene, Gucci and Pornhub engaging in psychological warfare against young people to sell sex, hand bags, eye shadow and sex as a mental illness. Government has been far outpaced by tech, and the key realization here is, it can take advantage of anyone irregardless of how smart you think you are. We really do not know what we're doing and it is total chaos out there.
• loraa 7y ago
  The kids now a days hate the work ethics and common sense approach of older workers. Managers who got their jobs by social justice polices are scared of experienced workers quickly replacing them.
• jortizco 7y ago
  I see many people here calling engineers to people who are only coders. A software engineer is something else, and guess what? It is not only about coding, is designing a product from concept to delivery. ( and maintenance of course ). By the way, ageism ( at least in the Bay Area ) is real as hell. It’s happening to me right know, and I am ONLY 43 years old. This is the truth, if the interviewer is younger than you, it does not matter how good you are or what amazing skills you have, you won’t get the job. Sorry, but that’s the truth right now.
  • carmenbr 7y ago
    unfortunately is not a reality just in the Bay Area. We found it here in London as well, in huge companies and startups. That’s why we had the idea, to alert companies that this is actually happening everywhere and they should pay more attention to older professionals, not only gender and race. Diverse teams are proved to be more effective than others.
• bryanrasmussen 7y ago
  Well I am pretty sure I am facing ageism as well, although I am employed now. Considering why ageism exists though, I think there are some assumptions that lead to it. A common one that get trotted out whenever we discuss this subject is that older workers won't put up with as much as younger people do (long hours, pressure, low wages). On the subject of low wages there are two things - younger inexperienced workers get less money because they are inexperienced, older more experienced workers get more money because they are experienced, that's clear. Here is a guide on wages in Denmark (in Danish) https://www.prosa.dk/raad-og-svar/loenstatistik-2019/ https://www.prosa.dk/raad-og-svar/loenstatistik-2019/ In the region I am in programming wages for someone with 0-3 years experience is 37420 DKK per month (before high taxes of course) at 19 years experience which is what have it's 57277. So an employer is paying for this experience, and they might think is it really worth it. I am working mainly with React now, and it is impossible to have 19 years experience in that. As it happens my experience with search solutions and international law garnered from my 4 years at Thomson Reuters is invaluable at my current job, but that's luck. At some point a manager must think given the changeableness of the IT market, how much of that 19 years should be monetizable? I mean I did a lot of years building XML/XSLT based solutions for web and print - nobody wants that anymore, I remember when Netscape 4.something would crash because you had a nested p inside of a div that was inside of a p, an employer pays a couple thousand for those years, and the argument is that all experience translates to value but what if it doesn't? Based on what I do on a day to day basis I would say the experience I have that I actually use is from 2009 on - based on the guide that should translate to 48045 of value. I'm not saying my experience before 2009 will never be used or do not inform who I am, but in day to day I have a hard time pointing to something I am doing that anything before that year is really relevant, if I know this I suppose a manager must sometimes suspect it. on edit: grammar
  • mixmastamyk 7y ago
    Interesting, however I’d look at it this way. I don’t need obsolete tool knowledge anymore, true. But I waste a lot less time making stupid decisions, which I got out of my system using those tools. And many subjects, such as OS fundamentals, Unix tools and shells, and project management continue to pay dividends.
• juskrey 7y ago
  You don't want to be within the system which actively rejects you. Accept the gift of warning and walk away, search further.
  • carmenbr 7y ago
    The point here is the kind of benefits and how companies are advertising their roles more focused on the youngest professionals and forgetting the more experienced ones. ie pets and cool offices with video-games. That’s definitely not attractive for “older” professionals.
• brogrammernot 7y ago
  Super interesting idea and hope it goes well. I’m not sure if it’s just a slew of interviews lately with older individuals or a trend but couple of things to avoid when interviewing that maybe are innocent comments but can def get you labeled as disrespectful. Things I’ve been called or have had said by candidates in interviews the past three weeks: - Kid - “You’re basically a child then” - Youngin - ”You’re too young to know this but there used to be...” — Punch Cards — Mainframes — COBOL - Not taking my questions seriously compared to the older individual I’m interviewing with - A comment about the fact I’m wearing a t-shirt So, yes, I do think ageism is a problem in technology but also, there’s a growing issue it would appear with older candidates specifically not understanding how disrespectful it is the other way to assume lack of 15+ years experience somehow indicates I don’t know anything about the origins of computer science, that I’ve never touched low level code before and that it’s okay to use phrases like “you’re too young” and “youngin”.
  • User23 7y ago
    What was the coolest thing you coded up for your operating systems class?
    • kaicianflone 7y ago
      Bro do you even chromebook?
• dqh 7y ago
  This is great. I am 40 myself, and hired and lead a strong dev team where about half are older than me and about 30% over 50 years old. In fact we have a father and his son working on the same team :) Anyway my view is that you can’t beat experience if what you care about is a stable system. Good people get better over time.
  • carmenbr 7y ago
    This is awesome! What a diverse team. I wish it was a reality for everyone in this industry but unfortunately is far from.
• aryehof 7y ago
  My thoughts are that ageism in IT is a natural consequence of not valuing experience. Rather for many employers what is sought is simply someone, smart, fast learning, motivated, compliant, enthusiastic, loyal, and a good team fit, with perhaps boot camp level knowledge of the latest in shiny framework(s). Many inexpensive 18 year olds can fit that description well, particularly in regards to their being enthusiastic, compliant and motivated. It helps that these are values that inexperienced managers and interviewers can actually assess, along with (inapplicable to the position) canned answers to questions about data structures and algorithms.
  • mojuba 7y ago
    > My thoughts are that ageism in IT is a natural consequence of not valuing experience. Exactly, which is often reflected in job specs. You rarely see a requirement to have 10, let alone 15 or 20 years of experience as a requirement. When the application is automated you can get a drop down menu that stops at 5+, for example. I once complained about this to Hired.com; they didn't react at the time but years later they added more options up to 15+. This is a Dunning-Kruger effect of sorts. When those hiring have no more than 5 years of experience, they have no idea that the difference between 10 and 5 is as big as between 0 and 5, and so on. Unfortunately you have little chance of seeing the value of experience if you lack it yourself.
    • sverhagen 7y ago
      There's probably a lot of things where the extra years of experience over a certain number doesn't matter much anymore. I don't think you can learn as much about many things in the second five years as you did in the first. Other factors then play a much bigger role anyway, such as: did you use whatever you claim experience in once a week or all the time.
      • mojuba 7y ago
        There are things where it's not about learning as much as about the quality of code you produce within the same timeframe. My personal record of rewriting a big product was reducing a 150k LOC project to 7k lines with the same functionality and then some more. Now compare the cost of maintenance of 150k lines of code vs 7k. That literally translates to a lot of (saved) money for the company. While that one was probably a bit extreme, even 3x or 4x reduction can be a big win. These things come with experience more than "learning" in the traditional sense.
• rdlecler1 7y ago
  How much is ageism, and how much is it employers feeling like a more senior person will have higher salary expectations?
  • carmenbr 7y ago
    The point here is that the senior professionals don’t have the option to choose as employers are not recruiting more senior professionals, not just because of their salary expectations. They are not even attracting them to their open roles.
  • tchaffee 7y ago
    Feeling a more senior person will have higher salary expectations IS ageism. Make the same offer to everyone qualified.
  • jpindar 7y ago
    Feeling like <person of a certain demographic> will have <unwanted quality> is the exact definition of <demographic>-ism.
• Doubl 7y ago
  If age discrimination is illegal should not the age profile of companies be tracked the same way race and gender are, at least I think they are.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• closeparen 7y ago
  Are there stats on the proportion of older engineers who can't find work? It would seem most of the "working engineers are young" observation could be explained by most people who have ever entered the field entering it recently.
  • NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Unlikely. Probably representative of not much even if there were. Most old types like me would not seek to be a visible statistic if they couldn't find work, but quietly go off and find something else to do. Of my similarly aged friends who were once in tech, most have now left it - some from getting bored or burnt of some aspect, others from ageism. It's an absurdly ageist sector and startups an order of magnitude worse. Worse still I have seen overt and blatant ageism on the hiring side multiple times. Not everyone cares, and you can often work around it with even more applications, but it does get tedious hearing the euphemisms for "ew, you're old, we're all cool kids." that can translate as "You're perfect, but we think you'll get bored", "great interview, but you're a little overqualified". Hmm. My qualifications were on my CV when you invited me... I've yet to fail to get work, but it's definitely becoming more effort.
• garmaine 7y ago
  THANK YOU. I’m not enough of a dinosaur to need this yet, but this is the right approach. Advertise willingness to hire regardless of age, which works to ingrain acceptance in your own company, and shame those who don’t participate. This is just what our industry needs.
• gingabriska 7y ago
  I guess because most new cool companies are startups and who was the guy over 40 in the movie "The Social Network" other than probably the investor/lawyer. Most companies homepage is filled with younger folks and also why would anyone 40+ is going to listen to a 20 something CEO?
  • PostOnce 7y ago
    Why would a 40+ year old person listen to a 20-something? Perhaps because that's what they're being paid to do? CEOs do more than just issue edicts from on high, they take feedback from the people running the various operations, otherwise the company falls apart.
    • gingabriska 7y ago
      I don't know about you but a friend of mine told me he sometimes feel insulted to take orders from someone inexperienced who don't know what they are doing specially when there are female members on the team, the insult doubles. Did you watch the movie dictator where the the great general Aladdin demands the rocket be made pointy? At small companies CEOs act similar to a dictator, maybe not all? But they've the vision. It's mostly them who get it, other are called naive or stupid. Stuff like this is what drives experienced people out of the door. As you get older, it gets hard to keep up with that BS and some people prefer mental sanity over paychecks naturally the jobs gets filled by ones who are willing to do the crazy thing in order to keep the money coming in.
      • gshdg 7y ago
        What does having women on the team have to do with it?
        • gingabriska 7y ago
          when faced with absurdity, he loses temper and signs of which start showing on him and women feel uncomfortable around him. Atleast he's aware of what people around him are feeling. He never said he wants no women on the team, it's just how he feels.
• rendall 7y ago
  As the tech industry ages, we will see more and more articles about how maybe old programmers aren't so bad after all. By the time Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, the Google gents, et. al. all reach retirement age, there will no longer be such a focus on youth in the industry.
  • carmenbr 7y ago
    I hope you're right and most of the companies change their mind
  • granshaw 7y ago
    Wanted to post exactly this. Ageism is far less of an issue in other Engineering disciplines, and my hope is that as ours matures, it becomes less of an issue too. We’re already starting to see maturation in recent years with things like less language, framework and tooling churn, and consolidation around a few SDLC best practices
• gingabriska 7y ago
  How can people not blame the infanticised offices with food, toys and gym which signal latent expectation that you spend most of your time in the office and you've no family. Lack of private cabins and too much noise in open offices and feeling that you are always being watched. Coding interviews which make you feel as if you are applying for a competitive top tier university which often require days of prep. Then the interviewer who pulls out some weird special case and is shocked to see that you spent years in industry yet you don't know about this case. And startups whoes purpose is market disruption by often undermining rules/regulations, how can anyone who is not naive will not be worried about that? Who wants to be part of a racket who deliberately breaks rules/regulation and it isn't 100% guaranteed how government is going to react to that and feel mostly like a gamble which experienced people won't like making. No wonder younger people commit more crimes. With age comes experience and wisdom and desire to not be taken advantage of and to not be manipulated by any dark patterns. Sorry but I think most tech companies are optimized for certain kind of people and will find it increasingly hard to attract, keep and get best work out of the aged ones.
  • JudgeWapner 7y ago
    I agree about noise and private work areas, but disagree about food toys and gym. In most populated areas, traffic is a big deal. An employer that gives me food now cuts out this potential headache for me, plus saves me money. An employer that has an on-site gym clears a huge burden for me which is the waste of time to drive to the gym and try to work out perhaps at 5:30 when everyone else is doing the same. Perhaps I have a higher social anxiety that normal, but circling crowded parking lots at lunch or after work, or bumping into people in a crowded locker room pisses me the hell off. If an employer eliminates this source of stress for me, that is superb. Double for exercise, because in this industry you will gain weight and lose circulation from being anchored to a computer 8 hrs/day. So working out can literally save/extend my life. Now, if they try to imply that I need to regularly stay for 9,10 or more hours per day, that's when I will become assertive and simply refuse. I don't see the correlation between overworking and giving me great amenities.
  • bongobongo 7y ago
    >With age comes experience and wisdom and desire to not be taken advantage of and to not be manipulated by any dark patterns. You hit the nail on the head, here, I think. I would reckon that the vast majority of age discrimination in tech is because companies understand very well that young, inexperienced workers will work longer hours for less money. Older workers have developed enough experience, wisdom, and confidence to know that working long hours rarely has any benefit to the worker. Companies want tech-savvy employees, not employment-savvy employees. Of course, this is why we need stronger anti-discrimination policies. People should not be punished for not being naive.
• mk89 7y ago
  Great initiative. I hope it gets better and better from this point of view. The way I see it is that we tend to hire minorities but when it’s about people with experience we rather pass... I have the luck to work with 50+ years old colleagues and it’s the best experience you can have, because you can learn a lot and share a lot.
• bartq 7y ago
  Ageism definitely exists when company feels someone is too old to join them. There's obviously easy solution to this problem: join companies where people are similar age to yours or older. Because younger people are probably just not able to handle you or appreciate your life experience and are looking for people similar to them. What if you're extremely old and your equals are dead? You should've retired by that time or have alternative revenue streams than salary. If you've failed to have other income streams than salary that's your fault. You've limited your (professional) life to technical excellence which is obviously only one of the aspects of career and life general. I think people should at some point take wider responsibility of what they're doing and become not necessarily managers, but maybe tech leaders, authors, trainers etc. There is one more aspect to that: person may have a mental condition, like asperger's or something like that. Then he probably cannot build his career in a way described above and he needs to seek alternative ways of progression.
• mrtweetyhack 7y ago
  How to fight ageism. 1 Apply for job. 2. Get rejected. 3. Build competing business. 4. Win.
• innocentoldguy 7y ago
  As a 50+-year-old, I like the idea of this site. I think it would be even better if people could search for specific skills (e.g. Elixir, Erlang, Rust, etc.) and see more detailed job descriptions.
• Grustaf 7y ago
  Granted I’m only 42 but I’ve never experienced a hint of ageism here in Scandinavia. Maybe it’s an American thing? But to you who complain of ageism, would you be fine working for the same salary as a 22 year old that shares a cheap studio apartment with some mates? Or would you be willing to put in as many late nights as a childless youngster would? If not, I don’t think we are actually dealing with some kind of nefarious discrimination here, just a rational market.
  • es89r9538 7y ago
    If we were dealing with hard labor maybe your point would make sense to me. The very best laborer can only do X times as much work in same amount of time as the least skilled laborer. When dealing with skills of the mind one person could take an entire lifetime and never accomplish what a skilled academic can achieve in an afternoon. Granted I'm not saying older folks are all better than their younger counterparts. But what I would say is that in corporate America it feels to me as though there is no differentiation made between 2 people (with same title) while one takes 10x as much time to accomplish the same amount of work. Take for example my last project. I never stayed late and always made it known that I wasn't happy when asked to. Meanwhile my younger counterparts worked happily through the night very regularly. I was never late on a deadline. Almost 100% of the younger folks were almost always late. Yet instead of being happy, that I was accomplishing my work within my regular days, my "commitment" was questioned as I wasn't happy to work all hours of the day and night to help this company complete its project. So my line in the sand is now drawn. It's a question I regularly ask when interviewing for new positions now. I'm not interested in working with people who have to work endlessly to try to meet deadlines. It's a clear "smell" that ultimately they don't really know what they're doing.
    • Grustaf 7y ago
      It’s not just in hard labor where employers may want people to work long hours. Regardless of what a lot of older people say, you can actually achieve more by working more hours, at least for short periods. And the younger you are the longer those periods can be. And yes, commitment can also be relevant in itself, especially in a startup. I had a previous career as a management consultant and we worked 60-80 hours every week. You can’t really do that if you have a family, at least not without making significant sacrifices. Those crazy hours are not just about producing more, it’s also about showing your dedication, paying your dues and showing the client that our people are really working hard for out fees. It wasn’t for me, but it’s naive and insular to claim that age is irrelevant. Sometimes it is, but most of the time it isn’t.
• sonnyblarney 7y ago
  This has likely a lot to do with a wave of 'new' experiences in tech that possibly required a whimsical and specific curiosity, and of course a degree of 'nativism'. When someone said something about 'digital natives' - I think he had a point. I'm 'not quite digital native' and I've never liked FB, or anything 'social media'. I think that kind of disqualifies me for such work. Instagram, FB, Snapchat, Kik - these are as much 'social' as they are 'tech' - they are more like media shops than tech shops in many ways (or were). So for the same reason MTV etc. (ha ha, dated reference!) are mostly young and hip, it might make sense that some companies have the same. There's something to be said for 'doing things in a new way'. Now, as many have noticed "there's nothing new under the sun" for the most part, and as the heady bubble bursts a little bit, I'm hoping that things become normative. I started my career in the Valley, in Telecom, surrounded by 35-50 year old people, so brilliant, so experienced, I could barely keep up and I felt 'junior' on a daily basis. Contrast that with my 'dot com' SF friends who were 27 and the 'oldest, most senior' folks at the company. For the issues that I face in my work, I actually loathe to have to deal with 'fresh grads' because there's so much grindy material in the work, that one needs 'a couple of years' of experience just to be useful. For example, almost anything done in C++ ... there's so many ways to 'do it wrong', it takes some failure and good habits. I think things will probably change as the materiality of experience becomes evident in some ways and managers catch on to that. I suggest there are probably enough companies around that do value experience. One issue is however that 'experience' shouldn't be an excuse for complacency, nor should it excuse bad habits, not does it mean 'massive dollars' at every job. The pay scale probably starts to plateau at 5 years, maybe inching incrementally after that.
• whatisthemaxcha 7y ago
  I'm not trying to be critical but genuinely curious? How do you convince companies to post on a job board that is new like this (or any other marketplace type product)? Is this a fake it until you make it type of product?
  • carmenbr 7y ago
    That's the hardest of having a two-sided marketplace. The famous "chicken and egg" problem. The beginning is difficult and for that reason, we're trying to focus on companies with D&I department. Companies wanting to diversify their staff have many option when it comes to gender but not many job boards focused on ageism
    • brentadamson 7y ago
      What is D&I?
      • leonagano 7y ago
        Diversity and Inclusion
• vmurthy 7y ago
  I went through the site out of curiosity . First of all, kudos for taking the initiative. You will hopefully grow big because it seems like a big problem (or soon to be one). I have a suggestion regarding the UX: Can you have a couple of filters (location, skills etc) which will make it easier for job hunters? As of now, it seems ok without the filters but as soon as the job postings increase, you will face issues. Again, good luck with the project :-)
• rbanffy 7y ago
  School seems to be a mandatory field and I couldn't find some schools on the list.
• older_better 7y ago
  "Your really over qualified for the job..." I heard that for the first time my last job search. It's so tempting to say back: "So...What dpes that mean? I would do the job too well?" Age-bias and Agism is real, especially on a job hunt. We have come so far as a society in chipping away at all the various types of discrimination - this one may be one of the last to (hopefully) fall. I am just adding this for those who can relate. Here's the kicker: In my early 60's I am better at my job (IT Program/Project Management) than ever. I want to retire at 90 (or never). I understand people better, know more than ever, embrace what's new, know and am certified on the newer ideas and methodologies, I am better at working with a wide variety of people and teams than my peers. Plus, I have far more stamina and energy than people 25 years younger (not a small thing in IT). I even have 2 teenagers (keeps you moving). All I can do is do it better, possibly start my own company (but I'm actually a much better #2 than an owner.) And hope people get smarter about it. But building awareness (like this thread) can't hurt. Look at how the other discriminated groups have challenged everyone else to question their prejudice.
• older_better 7y ago
  And - Thanks for this forum!