6 ms·

In my experience being under 40 is not a prerequisite for being hired in software. A suggestion: two of the biggest turnoffs that I personally see and would wor

by ptero 6y ago

In my experience being under 40 is not a prerequisite for being hired in software. A suggestion: two of the biggest turnoffs that I personally see and would work hard to avoid (not saying you have either of those): 1. Sounding desperate. Do not cast a very wide net at one company -- you can apply to mid level and principal level positions at different companies, but do not blanket all job postings at one company. Choose one that fits you best and apply there. 2. Attitude. People with lots of experience often come in with "let me tell you how you should be doing this instead" approach which in most cases is a fatal wound. Learn what problems the company is solving and help them within their constraints, including using their tools and languages even if they look suboptimal. Just as an anecdote, a friend (close to 50) working in software changed positions in Feb-March and had offers within 2 weeks. He chose to sit out at the dying unit to collect retention money; retention $ required not searching for jobs before he was officially let go, so he started his search from the "unemployed" state as well. It is certainly possible, good luck!

ScottFree 6y ago
> Sounding desperate. Why is that a negative signal? The company has the opportunity to get top talent temporarily down on his/her luck for a reduced rate.
- rfergie 6y ago
  It is a signal the the person isn't top talent. Because if they were they wouldn't be desperate
- ch4s3 6y ago
  I think mostly it just makes other people uncomfortable.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  Companies don't see them as top talent on account of being unemployed.
- wonderwonder 6y ago
  Unfortunately in all parts of life confidence sells. If he gets an interview and gives off the signal that he will take anything, odds are they will pass figuring there is a reason he will do so. Same concept unfortunately goes for looks a lot of the time. If you walk into an interview not well put together its going to work against you. This can be mitigated by youth but when you get older you no longer have this luxury. I'm early 40's and I make sure that a couple months before I start thinking about changing jobs I up my workouts, change my diet etc to appear in shape and more energetic. It has zero reflection of my true abilities but people are judged by their looks and unfortunately older people are double so.
- golergka 6y ago
  Becuase top talent usually don't get desperate. It's a bad way to judge someone, of course, but there aren't many good ways, and when hiring, you want to play it safe: not hiring a good candidate is way better than hiring someone who turns out to be bad. So, if you notice something that looks like it might have been a red flag, you take notice.
  - jamespollack 6y ago
    "not hiring a good candidate is way better than hiring someone who turns out to be bad." is it though? CA is at-will employment, so there's literally nothing stopping a company from firing someone that isn't working out (besides timidity on the part of the person who would have to do the firing). "when hiring, you want to play it safe" personally, i'd rather tell some people it's not working out than miss out on incredible talent because i'm too scared to fire someone. i prefer to lean into strengths, not try to shore up weaknesses. "top talent usually don't get desperate" there are many reasons why people look for jobs, on their own timing, and with their own reasons. reading 'desperation' into someone's application is projecting your own fears and experiences onto theirs without actually taking the time to learn more. it's lazy.
    - golergka 6y ago
      > is it though? CA is at-will employment, so there's literally nothing stopping a company from firing someone that isn't working out (besides timidity on the part of the person who would have to do the firing). Last I checked, I was 9700 kilometers away from California. Not everybody on HN is from Silicon Valley. > personally, i'd rather tell some people it's not working out than miss out on incredible talent because i'm too scared to fire someone. Then you've never seen one bad hire destroy whole teams. > reading 'desperation' into someone's application is projecting your own fears and experiences onto theirs without actually taking the time to learn more. This thesis has no null hypothesis. The same arguments could be applied to about anyone who's perceving any emotions from other people, in any context, aside from listening to a person narrate his emotions out loud. See, none of us have any emptathy or eye for emotion, we're all just projecting something of our own. And if you, or anyone, has any counter-argument against this clearly absurd statement, the same counter-argument could equally rebute yours as well.
- wikwocket 6y ago
  Would you want to date someone who seemed desperate to get into a relationship? Who seemed like they were having trouble getting a relationship at all, let alone a good healthy one? Same principle.
  - jamespollack 6y ago
    it's not a relationship, it's a job - you don't have to fall in love with every candidate.
- hoorayimhelping 6y ago
  Confidence and desperation hardly ever align. Confident people who plan don't get desperate. Desperate people don't make good decisions. People who let themselves reach levels of desperation are either extremely unlucky (unlikely, but not someone you want on your team regardless) or chronically make bad decisions. At the worst, they're a person who chronically makes bad decisions and thinks they're unlucky. Standard: not saying it's fair or endorsing this, explaining how people think and feel about it.
  - Verdex 6y ago
    Yeah, it's a heuristic. People who know what they're doing will over time become more confident. People who don't know what they're doing will over time become more desperate as they run out of places to fail at. You could do a lot of work to figure out the difference between someone who knows what they're doing and someone who doesn't. But it's a lot easier to just notice if they look confident or desperate. Unfortunately, being confident is actually super easy if you're willing to practice it. Much easier than actually being good at anything. Also unfortunately, being confident is really hard if you don't know how to practice it. And the skill is orthogonal to most other skills. So if you're good at something, it might actually be harder to control how confident you appear to others.
  - theli0nheart 6y ago
    > Confident people who plan don't get desperate. Desperate people don't make good decisions. People who let themselves reach levels of desperation are either extremely unlucky (unlikely, but not someone you want on your team regardless) or chronically make bad decisions. At the worst, they're a person who chronically makes bad decisions and thinks they're unlucky. Disclaimer: I'm saying this for your own benefit, but your comment comes across as incredibly naive, and I would never endorse you as an interviewer with this attitude. There are life circumstances which one can literally not plan for, and which can derail even the most well-conceived of plans. Chronic illness, war, natural disasters, etc., all come to mind. Give all the examples you want regarding how one might conceivably prepare for one of those things, but it's pretty clear from your opinion that you've never experienced one of these yourself.
- overgard 6y ago
  Well if this were sports and people had fixed time commitment contracts that makes sense. But for at-will employment, they're likely to move on once they're not desperate. You want a good fit, not a bargain.
- Verdex 6y ago
  The same reason that "what's your biggest weakness" is such a stereotypical interview question. It's all about stories. If you can prove you're the best with math or with certifications or whatever, that is only a protection for yourself. But if you have a good story that is a protection for whoever you tell the story to. What's your biggest weakness is all about your ability to tell a good story about a failure that you're responsible for. Because if you have a good story then the person responsible for you can retell the story to the people that they answer to. Yeah, Joe messed up big time and then left the company and I was responsible for him, but listen to this great story that he told me about why everything was going to work. Clearly this failure was from external forces that shouldn't be held against me. Anyone else would have failed; it was inevitable. Desperation isn't a good story for anyone. Yeah, I left Joe in charge. And he told me that he knew what he was doing. But he also seemed really desperate (and everyone could tell), like he would say whatever he had to in order to get the job. Yeah, this is clearly all my fault and I should probably be fired too.
mgkimsal 6y ago
> Learn what problems the company is solving and help them within their constraints, including using their tools and languages even if they look suboptimal. within reason and 'on day one', yes, agreed. However, if you're hired in because of your skills/accomplishments, but you don't measure up, and it's because their tools/process/code is demonstrably bad, those are constraints that should be on the table for discussion/improvement. In most cases I've seen, those sorts of changes have a net positive for almost everyone on the project (fewer bugs, faster turnaround, whatever), at the expense of being a negative for a handful of territorial people threatened by change. Not coming in on day one saying "you have to change everything to my approach!" - agreed. Toiling away in suboptimal situations when you know the poor results are improvable for fear of not wanting to look pushy... unacceptable (over a longer term).
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  Bad ways to point a problem that will make me think you are a 40 years junior with 20 times of 1 year of experience: - Your stack is bad. - You should use X. - Your process is wrong. A sure way to sound like an experienced senior developer: - Your stack has this flaw; we can live with it by doing X but that is at the expense of Y1. A migration to Z will cost Y2, that is much cheaper on the long run. But you'll probably conclude that Y2 isn't much cheaper on the long run anyway. If it's that case that it is cheaper, and even then people above you do not want the change, then you do have a real problem.
  - bcrosby95 6y ago
    > ... that is much cheaper on the long run. > If it's that case that it is cheaper, and even then people above you do not want the change, then you do have a real problem. Not necessarily so. This assumes the long run is ever reached. I've seen a lot of developers that do this analysis still hop from tech to tech as the best in "the long run", and if you ever listened to them you would never actually reach that long run benefit. Regardless, a lot probably depends upon the current state of your company.
thoraway1010 6y ago
Some of the re-platform / train up roles which benefit from lots of experience go to consultants (a great place to have a lot of experience and talk to the C-suite, the big consulting firms have lots of older solutions architects doing $10M+ deals - I've been stuck using those solutions in past!). You can actually take advantage of your age / experience and hire someone out of college for cheap to do some of the day to day and you deliver the consulting "solution" - can be very lucrative. You may be more likely to get the deal talking to the top as a 40 year old then as a 21 year old.
mam2 6y ago
congrats you managed to hit an unprecedented level of condenscendance... Spoiler: because you assumend he can find a job bevause he's desperate. Your problems are not other people's.

by ptero 6y ago

ScottFree 6y ago

> Sounding desperate. Why is that a negative signal? The company has the opportunity to get top talent temporarily down on his/her luck for a reduced rate.

rfergie 6y ago
It is a signal the the person isn't top talent. Because if they were they wouldn't be desperate
ch4s3 6y ago
I think mostly it just makes other people uncomfortable.
MattGaiser 6y ago
Companies don't see them as top talent on account of being unemployed.
wonderwonder 6y ago
Unfortunately in all parts of life confidence sells. If he gets an interview and gives off the signal that he will take anything, odds are they will pass figuring there is a reason he will do so. Same concept unfortunately goes for looks a lot of the time. If you walk into an interview not well put together its going to work against you. This can be mitigated by youth but when you get older you no longer have this luxury. I'm early 40's and I make sure that a couple months before I start thinking about changing jobs I up my workouts, change my diet etc to appear in shape and more energetic. It has zero reflection of my true abilities but people are judged by their looks and unfortunately older people are double so.
golergka 6y ago
Becuase top talent usually don't get desperate. It's a bad way to judge someone, of course, but there aren't many good ways, and when hiring, you want to play it safe: not hiring a good candidate is way better than hiring someone who turns out to be bad. So, if you notice something that looks like it might have been a red flag, you take notice.
- jamespollack 6y ago
  "not hiring a good candidate is way better than hiring someone who turns out to be bad." is it though? CA is at-will employment, so there's literally nothing stopping a company from firing someone that isn't working out (besides timidity on the part of the person who would have to do the firing). "when hiring, you want to play it safe" personally, i'd rather tell some people it's not working out than miss out on incredible talent because i'm too scared to fire someone. i prefer to lean into strengths, not try to shore up weaknesses. "top talent usually don't get desperate" there are many reasons why people look for jobs, on their own timing, and with their own reasons. reading 'desperation' into someone's application is projecting your own fears and experiences onto theirs without actually taking the time to learn more. it's lazy.
  - golergka 6y ago
    > is it though? CA is at-will employment, so there's literally nothing stopping a company from firing someone that isn't working out (besides timidity on the part of the person who would have to do the firing). Last I checked, I was 9700 kilometers away from California. Not everybody on HN is from Silicon Valley. > personally, i'd rather tell some people it's not working out than miss out on incredible talent because i'm too scared to fire someone. Then you've never seen one bad hire destroy whole teams. > reading 'desperation' into someone's application is projecting your own fears and experiences onto theirs without actually taking the time to learn more. This thesis has no null hypothesis. The same arguments could be applied to about anyone who's perceving any emotions from other people, in any context, aside from listening to a person narrate his emotions out loud. See, none of us have any emptathy or eye for emotion, we're all just projecting something of our own. And if you, or anyone, has any counter-argument against this clearly absurd statement, the same counter-argument could equally rebute yours as well.
wikwocket 6y ago
Would you want to date someone who seemed desperate to get into a relationship? Who seemed like they were having trouble getting a relationship at all, let alone a good healthy one? Same principle.
- jamespollack 6y ago
  it's not a relationship, it's a job - you don't have to fall in love with every candidate.
hoorayimhelping 6y ago
Confidence and desperation hardly ever align. Confident people who plan don't get desperate. Desperate people don't make good decisions. People who let themselves reach levels of desperation are either extremely unlucky (unlikely, but not someone you want on your team regardless) or chronically make bad decisions. At the worst, they're a person who chronically makes bad decisions and thinks they're unlucky. Standard: not saying it's fair or endorsing this, explaining how people think and feel about it.
- Verdex 6y ago
  Yeah, it's a heuristic. People who know what they're doing will over time become more confident. People who don't know what they're doing will over time become more desperate as they run out of places to fail at. You could do a lot of work to figure out the difference between someone who knows what they're doing and someone who doesn't. But it's a lot easier to just notice if they look confident or desperate. Unfortunately, being confident is actually super easy if you're willing to practice it. Much easier than actually being good at anything. Also unfortunately, being confident is really hard if you don't know how to practice it. And the skill is orthogonal to most other skills. So if you're good at something, it might actually be harder to control how confident you appear to others.
- theli0nheart 6y ago
  > Confident people who plan don't get desperate. Desperate people don't make good decisions. People who let themselves reach levels of desperation are either extremely unlucky (unlikely, but not someone you want on your team regardless) or chronically make bad decisions. At the worst, they're a person who chronically makes bad decisions and thinks they're unlucky. Disclaimer: I'm saying this for your own benefit, but your comment comes across as incredibly naive, and I would never endorse you as an interviewer with this attitude. There are life circumstances which one can literally not plan for, and which can derail even the most well-conceived of plans. Chronic illness, war, natural disasters, etc., all come to mind. Give all the examples you want regarding how one might conceivably prepare for one of those things, but it's pretty clear from your opinion that you've never experienced one of these yourself.
overgard 6y ago
Well if this were sports and people had fixed time commitment contracts that makes sense. But for at-will employment, they're likely to move on once they're not desperate. You want a good fit, not a bargain.
Verdex 6y ago
The same reason that "what's your biggest weakness" is such a stereotypical interview question. It's all about stories. If you can prove you're the best with math or with certifications or whatever, that is only a protection for yourself. But if you have a good story that is a protection for whoever you tell the story to. What's your biggest weakness is all about your ability to tell a good story about a failure that you're responsible for. Because if you have a good story then the person responsible for you can retell the story to the people that they answer to. Yeah, Joe messed up big time and then left the company and I was responsible for him, but listen to this great story that he told me about why everything was going to work. Clearly this failure was from external forces that shouldn't be held against me. Anyone else would have failed; it was inevitable. Desperation isn't a good story for anyone. Yeah, I left Joe in charge. And he told me that he knew what he was doing. But he also seemed really desperate (and everyone could tell), like he would say whatever he had to in order to get the job. Yeah, this is clearly all my fault and I should probably be fired too.

mgkimsal 6y ago

> Learn what problems the company is solving and help them within their constraints, including using their tools and languages even if they look suboptimal. within reason and 'on day one', yes, agreed. However, if you're hired in because of your skills/accomplishments, but you don't measure up, and it's because their tools/process/code is demonstrably bad, those are constraints that should be on the table for discussion/improvement. In most cases I've seen, those sorts of changes have a net positive for almost everyone on the project (fewer bugs, faster turnaround, whatever), at the expense of being a negative for a handful of territorial people threatened by change. Not coming in on day one saying "you have to change everything to my approach!" - agreed. Toiling away in suboptimal situations when you know the poor results are improvable for fear of not wanting to look pushy... unacceptable (over a longer term).

marcosdumay 6y ago
Bad ways to point a problem that will make me think you are a 40 years junior with 20 times of 1 year of experience: - Your stack is bad. - You should use X. - Your process is wrong. A sure way to sound like an experienced senior developer: - Your stack has this flaw; we can live with it by doing X but that is at the expense of Y1. A migration to Z will cost Y2, that is much cheaper on the long run. But you'll probably conclude that Y2 isn't much cheaper on the long run anyway. If it's that case that it is cheaper, and even then people above you do not want the change, then you do have a real problem.
- bcrosby95 6y ago
  > ... that is much cheaper on the long run. > If it's that case that it is cheaper, and even then people above you do not want the change, then you do have a real problem. Not necessarily so. This assumes the long run is ever reached. I've seen a lot of developers that do this analysis still hop from tech to tech as the best in "the long run", and if you ever listened to them you would never actually reach that long run benefit. Regardless, a lot probably depends upon the current state of your company.

thoraway1010 6y ago

Some of the re-platform / train up roles which benefit from lots of experience go to consultants (a great place to have a lot of experience and talk to the C-suite, the big consulting firms have lots of older solutions architects doing $10M+ deals - I've been stuck using those solutions in past!). You can actually take advantage of your age / experience and hire someone out of college for cheap to do some of the day to day and you deliver the consulting "solution" - can be very lucrative. You may be more likely to get the deal talking to the top as a 40 year old then as a 21 year old.

mam2 6y ago

congrats you managed to hit an unprecedented level of condenscendance... Spoiler: because you assumend he can find a job bevause he's desperate. Your problems are not other people's.