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I think the problem is that in our industry you have many companies where you have 24yo, managers, or even folks under 26 with Director of Engineering titles, a

I think the problem is that in our industry you have many companies where you have 24yo, managers, or even folks under 26 with Director of Engineering titles, and they don't have either the experience or knowledge to sift through good candidates as they just don't have much real life experience. Whenever i used to interview (years ago), 90% of older engineers were polite, more reasonable, and you could talk on and higher level... and in general they respect your time, as many understand that it is wasteful to just do stupid coding challenges just for the sake of it (especially if they have kids) While 90% of the more junior developers are still too young to know what to look for in a good candidate. Unfortunately we are in a industry where often a 24 yo with 2 years of experience, and barely any real life experience, get to evaluate the performance of a 30+ yo, with 10+ years of experience. This just doesn't happen in other professions such as Law or Medicine.

coffee 6y ago
> I think the problem is that in our industry you have many companies where you have 24yo, managers, or even folks under 26 with Director of Engineering titles, and they don't have either the experience or knowledge to sift through good candidates as they just don't have much real life experience. That is a very real, common, and true scenario.
0xy 6y ago
This is just pure age discrimination in comment form. I've seen incompetent developers at all age levels and similarly brilliant developers at all age levels. Age and years of experience does not exclude developers from mediocrity. I have seen countless 10+ YoE candidates with awful practices and performance. Implying you need to be 26 or over to be a good director is ageism.
- ardit33 6y ago
  I said life experience matters... especially when managing people. It is the same in many areas of life. A good developer at 23, is probably much better at 30, after some real life experience in shipping many products. A crappy developer at 23, may become better at 30, or maybe still be crappy at 30.... I'd take a good 23 yo, over a crappy 30yo, but i'd take a good 30 yo over a good 23. The good 30 will have the maturity that comes from shipping long multiple years projects, and have both successes and failures in their belt and learned from them. So, I think experience (up to 10-15 years) makes an already good developer better....
  - 0xy 6y ago
    There is no "you can only go up" trajectory to development experience. A 30 year old might be half the developer they were at 23, due to burnout/disillusionment/less time. Developers can flounder after previously being excellent. I've seen it. Something I've also seen a lot is developers getting promoted to levels they cannot handle, and imploding as a result (it's hard to recover from this). Some people could not lead a project with 30 years of experience. Some people could lead a project with 0 years of experience. Age is basically irrelevant.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  > similarly brilliant developers at all age levels. Being a brilliant developer has absolutely nothing to do with being a brilliant or even effective interviewer.
  - 0xy 6y ago
    Not true in my experience, if you're a poor communicator you cannot be a good developer in a team environment. Developers are not the sum of their raw coding ability. If you are a savant genius at coding but a poor communicator, you will be a terrible addition to any large organization. Such mavericks might be effective in startup environments, but try joining a large org and start tearing up code without communicating effectively, you will be out within a month. I'd even go as far as to say raw coding ability isn't even a developer's most important skill. I'm a full-time developer and coding isn't even 50% of my job.
    - TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
      I didn't say anything about "raw coding ability". Being a good developer has nothing to do with being a good interviewer.
      - 0xy 6y ago
        Disagree. Interviewing is about communication. All good developers communicate effectively. If you can't communicate, you're useless to a large organisation.

coffee 6y ago

> I think the problem is that in our industry you have many companies where you have 24yo, managers, or even folks under 26 with Director of Engineering titles, and they don't have either the experience or knowledge to sift through good candidates as they just don't have much real life experience. That is a very real, common, and true scenario.

0xy 6y ago

This is just pure age discrimination in comment form. I've seen incompetent developers at all age levels and similarly brilliant developers at all age levels. Age and years of experience does not exclude developers from mediocrity. I have seen countless 10+ YoE candidates with awful practices and performance. Implying you need to be 26 or over to be a good director is ageism.

ardit33 6y ago
I said life experience matters... especially when managing people. It is the same in many areas of life. A good developer at 23, is probably much better at 30, after some real life experience in shipping many products. A crappy developer at 23, may become better at 30, or maybe still be crappy at 30.... I'd take a good 23 yo, over a crappy 30yo, but i'd take a good 30 yo over a good 23. The good 30 will have the maturity that comes from shipping long multiple years projects, and have both successes and failures in their belt and learned from them. So, I think experience (up to 10-15 years) makes an already good developer better....
- 0xy 6y ago
  There is no "you can only go up" trajectory to development experience. A 30 year old might be half the developer they were at 23, due to burnout/disillusionment/less time. Developers can flounder after previously being excellent. I've seen it. Something I've also seen a lot is developers getting promoted to levels they cannot handle, and imploding as a result (it's hard to recover from this). Some people could not lead a project with 30 years of experience. Some people could lead a project with 0 years of experience. Age is basically irrelevant.
TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
> similarly brilliant developers at all age levels. Being a brilliant developer has absolutely nothing to do with being a brilliant or even effective interviewer.
- 0xy 6y ago
  Not true in my experience, if you're a poor communicator you cannot be a good developer in a team environment. Developers are not the sum of their raw coding ability. If you are a savant genius at coding but a poor communicator, you will be a terrible addition to any large organization. Such mavericks might be effective in startup environments, but try joining a large org and start tearing up code without communicating effectively, you will be out within a month. I'd even go as far as to say raw coding ability isn't even a developer's most important skill. I'm a full-time developer and coding isn't even 50% of my job.
  - TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
    I didn't say anything about "raw coding ability". Being a good developer has nothing to do with being a good interviewer.
    - 0xy 6y ago
      Disagree. Interviewing is about communication. All good developers communicate effectively. If you can't communicate, you're useless to a large organisation.