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2 years experience @ 30 years old? That's a joke. There are people 10 years younger than you with that amount of experience who are happy to work 16 hour days f

2 years experience @ 30 years old? That's a joke. There are people 10 years younger than you with that amount of experience who are happy to work 16 hour days for a mediocre wage. Sure they will mess up a lot, but so will you. Old people do not have the time, energy or naivety that young people do. This is fact. The only thing going for them is experience, if you can't bring that, then you've got nothing.

simplestats 5y ago
This is bs, sorry. This isn't pro basketball. Your eyes degrade slowly and your memory does too eventually. But unless you're talking about 60+ when such issues really start to catch up with you (still to variable degree depending on the person), you can't possibly make such a generalization. The average age people do Nobel prize winning work is 44, with a standard deviation of ten years. EDIT: for physics it's actually 42. The 35 is from a prior publication for 1901-1950 (if I'm skimming that right). https://orbit.dtu.dk/en/publications/the-age-at-which-noble-prize-research-is-conducted https://orbit.dtu.dk/en/publications/the-age-at-which-noble-... As for niavette, age isn't a guarantee of wisdom by any stretch.
- Zababa 5y ago
  Most software engineering work is far from Nobel prizes work, or even research. In an organization, more than 50% of the workers are basically intellectual assembly line workers. In the remaining people, a few will specialize on each technology, a few will specialize on company-specific stuff, a few on the build system, a few on talking with marketing/business. But the majority of people are doing a medium-intensity job that doesn't require much creativity or genuis. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that or those people. But this means that your output will be a function of your experience and energy. When you're older and inexperienced, you're compared against people that have the same experience but (statistically) more energy. Thus it is the logical choice to prioritize the younger people. If you're older, you either have to have something new grads don't, or the supply has to be so limited that they're ready to take you too. If you don't have an answer to "why should we hire you over a young graduate?", this means that you don't understand the basis of the business, which is a heavy red flag for an employer.
  - simplestats 5y ago
    It's not so different in the ways that matter here. The point is that hard mental work isn't a "young man's game". It's about time and energy still. You need to work very very hard for years to win a nobel prize. In another universe (different only in choice of career path) that nobel prize winner would be an entrepreneur doing 80 hours a week, or a star employee somewhere. You'd be lucky to hire them. If the nobel prize winner went into basketball, however, there's no way they'll be a top athelete when they're 44. Unless they happen to also be seven feet tall, and even then they have biology heavily stacked against their performance. Statistics aren't what I'm talking about. Statistically, some perentage of young women will get pregnant. If the stat is not a guarantee which applies to everyone in the group, it's wrong to use it to stereotype people.
    - Zababa 5y ago
      > In another universe (different only in choice of career path) that nobel prize winner would be an entrepreneur doing 80 hours a week, or a star employee somewhere. You'd be lucky to hire them. But most of the people you recruit aren't nobel prizes or entrepreneurs or star employees. They're not doing hard mental work. Regular development is closer to working in a factory or at McDonald's than to research. "Factory" type code is at least 80%-90% of the work being done in that field. And for that, younger employees are just better. They ask for less, can usually work more, put in more energy, don't have familles to go back to. > Statistics aren't what I'm talking about. Statistically, some perentage of young women will get pregnant. If the stat is not a guarantee which applies to everyone in the group, it's wrong to use it to stereotype people. No, it's not. At some point you have to make a choice, as a recruiter. If I have a 25 years old and a 35 years old, both with 2 years in tech, equal on the rest, why should I take the 35 years old? This choice won't work 100% of the time. But it will work more than 50% of the time. Companies are about risk management and making a profit.
      - simplestats 5y ago
        It's not wrong to discriminate against women? where? And where are you getting these statistics you refer to? I think I disagree with pretty much every point you made here. Tech jobs more like fast food than research? If you're not even trying to make the argument about raw mental abilities (which at least has some kind of support, in narrow situations like chess) then I'd bet the stats regarding work ethic support older workers too. That "all things being equal" trick you keep pulling is the problem. Yeah they're so equal except you're presumimg one is a hard worker and the other one is a slacker and you can't tell from the resume or interview for some reason. Does the older applicant come in with amnesia?

simplestats 5y ago

This is bs, sorry. This isn't pro basketball. Your eyes degrade slowly and your memory does too eventually. But unless you're talking about 60+ when such issues really start to catch up with you (still to variable degree depending on the person), you can't possibly make such a generalization. The average age people do Nobel prize winning work is 44, with a standard deviation of ten years. EDIT: for physics it's actually 42. The 35 is from a prior publication for 1901-1950 (if I'm skimming that right). https://orbit.dtu.dk/en/publications/the-age-at-which-noble-prize-research-is-conducted https://orbit.dtu.dk/en/publications/the-age-at-which-noble-... As for niavette, age isn't a guarantee of wisdom by any stretch.

Zababa 5y ago
Most software engineering work is far from Nobel prizes work, or even research. In an organization, more than 50% of the workers are basically intellectual assembly line workers. In the remaining people, a few will specialize on each technology, a few will specialize on company-specific stuff, a few on the build system, a few on talking with marketing/business. But the majority of people are doing a medium-intensity job that doesn't require much creativity or genuis. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that or those people. But this means that your output will be a function of your experience and energy. When you're older and inexperienced, you're compared against people that have the same experience but (statistically) more energy. Thus it is the logical choice to prioritize the younger people. If you're older, you either have to have something new grads don't, or the supply has to be so limited that they're ready to take you too. If you don't have an answer to "why should we hire you over a young graduate?", this means that you don't understand the basis of the business, which is a heavy red flag for an employer.
- simplestats 5y ago
  It's not so different in the ways that matter here. The point is that hard mental work isn't a "young man's game". It's about time and energy still. You need to work very very hard for years to win a nobel prize. In another universe (different only in choice of career path) that nobel prize winner would be an entrepreneur doing 80 hours a week, or a star employee somewhere. You'd be lucky to hire them. If the nobel prize winner went into basketball, however, there's no way they'll be a top athelete when they're 44. Unless they happen to also be seven feet tall, and even then they have biology heavily stacked against their performance. Statistics aren't what I'm talking about. Statistically, some perentage of young women will get pregnant. If the stat is not a guarantee which applies to everyone in the group, it's wrong to use it to stereotype people.
  - Zababa 5y ago
    > In another universe (different only in choice of career path) that nobel prize winner would be an entrepreneur doing 80 hours a week, or a star employee somewhere. You'd be lucky to hire them. But most of the people you recruit aren't nobel prizes or entrepreneurs or star employees. They're not doing hard mental work. Regular development is closer to working in a factory or at McDonald's than to research. "Factory" type code is at least 80%-90% of the work being done in that field. And for that, younger employees are just better. They ask for less, can usually work more, put in more energy, don't have familles to go back to. > Statistics aren't what I'm talking about. Statistically, some perentage of young women will get pregnant. If the stat is not a guarantee which applies to everyone in the group, it's wrong to use it to stereotype people. No, it's not. At some point you have to make a choice, as a recruiter. If I have a 25 years old and a 35 years old, both with 2 years in tech, equal on the rest, why should I take the 35 years old? This choice won't work 100% of the time. But it will work more than 50% of the time. Companies are about risk management and making a profit.
    - simplestats 5y ago
      It's not wrong to discriminate against women? where? And where are you getting these statistics you refer to? I think I disagree with pretty much every point you made here. Tech jobs more like fast food than research? If you're not even trying to make the argument about raw mental abilities (which at least has some kind of support, in narrow situations like chess) then I'd bet the stats regarding work ethic support older workers too. That "all things being equal" trick you keep pulling is the problem. Yeah they're so equal except you're presumimg one is a hard worker and the other one is a slacker and you can't tell from the resume or interview for some reason. Does the older applicant come in with amnesia?