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During my career, I've seen enough discrimination in the name of DEI as well. But what bothers me more is the ageism. The number of times an old person has been

During my career, I've seen enough discrimination in the name of DEI as well. But what bothers me more is the ageism. The number of times an old person has been rejected from a job is too damn high. The reasons have always been "he may not work well with young people", "seniority complex", "he is over qualified" etc. Most of the times, they were more than qualified. I fear when I am into 40s or 50s, I will face the same discrimination.

duxup 4y ago
After age 40 I did a coding bootcamp to change careers. Another guy in the camp was doing the same. We compared notes on interviews. One day he gets a call back from a recruiter and he put the recruiter on speaker phone. She told them they liked him but chose someone else because (drum roll) culture fit. He asked what she meant by that and she outright said: "The other person is younger. You're old." We were shocked and he pretended he didn't quite hear her... she repeated it word for word. I don't think she even realized it was illegal. The other guy never made a complaint, he needed a job and I could hardly blame him not wanting to put up a fuss / fight over a job at a place he didn't want to be a part of anyway ... it was shocking to hear it made that clear. Long run we both got jobs and are doing well, but man... that call sticks in the back of my head anytime I think of job hunting.
- t_mann 4y ago
  Would be interesting to compare this across areas. My impression is that eg Finance (another popular destination for mid-career switches) is far more open in that regard. Experience, even if it's in a different field (as long as it's a technical role or one that will give you a rich set of contacts) seems to generally confer seniority. Would be interesting if someone could weigh in.
  - bumby 4y ago
    Anecdotally, the hard engineering fields (e.g., mechanical, civil, etc.) are much more tolerant about age and more receptive to the benefits and tradeoffs of both youth and, erm.., "experience" (said tongue-in-cheek because age does not necessarily equate to experience)
    - spaetzleesser 4y ago
      Probably most regulated industries. I am in medical devices and you can easily make it to 65 with dignity.
      - forum_ghost 4y ago
        because fail-forward works so great with implanted defibrillators, I presume? /s
        spaetzleesser 4y ago
        “Move fast and kill people”
        bumby 4y ago
        That's my main issue with SV-mentalities moving into the safety-critical space like autonomous driving
        spaetzleesser 4y ago
        I have mixed feelings. On the one hand you don’t want to kill people but on the other hand a lot of the big players in regulated industries are stagnant, complacent and inefficient. A good example would be SpaceX. Compared to their competitors they move faster, are innovative, cheaper and despite that they are reliable when it counts . Most of their failures were well calculated risks that helped them move faster. I am in health care and this industry also desperately needs new players that take more agile approaches and not the super expensive super slow approach most established players are taking. They are way too complacent.
        bumby 4y ago
        I agree with you that the old corps in these industries are stagnant, but also recognize when there's a gap in the way new entrants approach safety-critical problems. One example is the Uber incident that killed a person. If you read the NTSB report, it seems like they intentionally programmed a delay into a safety critical system in order avoid nuisance braking. From a safety-critical standpoint, deliberately slowing the action of a time-sensitive safety mitigation is big error in engineering judgement. Imagine if I reprogrammed your home smoke detectors to wait for an hour to determine if there's really a fire because you were annoyed that they went off every time your baked. My suspicion is they did this because their software wasn't really ready but they wanted to push it to market for testing. Another example that has had some controversy in the industry is SpaceX using only touchscreens. I don't know where they settled, but a few years back they were adamant that they don't need physical controls. We've all probably experienced issues where a touchscreen doesn't respond as intended. Automotive manufacturers have walked back this idea on a lot of their models because they recognize all the additional failure modes that touchscreens introduce. My worry is that sometimes "innovation" is really just forgetting (or not knowing) the lessons learned from the legacy players. The traditional players like Boeing have had their own problems, but IMO they are more due to management than engineering. With the 737MAX, the engineering processes were in place. They had a hazard analysis that said MCAS shouldn't be a single-point failure; it seems they just didn't follow their own engineering processes due to budget and schedule pressures. That's a different animal than not having the safety-critical culture to define those processes in the first place (but not any less egregious).
  - AlchemistCamp 4y ago
    What are some common paths for people who make that jump?
    - bumby 4y ago
      Just my perspective so take it with a grain of salt. It helps to look for positions outside the normal SV roles so places like aerospace, defense contractors, manufacturing, etc. They post a surprising number of CS positions. I would caution, though, that the only role I've seen that pays SV-type salaries ($250k+) was controls engineer for automotive manufacturing. But to be fair, the jobs were all in areas with a cost of living much, much lower than SV. If you get in (politely) look for processes that your SE skills can make an impact. These opportunities are sometimes there because the place is full of non-software minded folks who don't know what they don't know. An example from my anecdotal experience was when someone with software acumen helped reprogram an automation system to be more efficient and saved high-six/low-seven figures each year and really gets people's attention. Or showing how they can dramatically improve their quality control by developing unit tests. Some stuff that is common in SE firms is often overlooked in firms focused on other disciplines.
      - AlchemistCamp 4y ago
        The most common paths for people making mid-career moves to finance are from using software skills in industries like aerospace, defense contractors or manufacturing? That doesn't sound right. I'm not even sure most people transitioning into finance from another career have any software skills at all (beyond Excel).
        bumby 4y ago
        Sorry, I lost track of the thread comments. I thought the question was how to move from SE to hard engineering fields like mechanical or civil.
  - pvarangot 4y ago
    Old companies also hire old people more easily. Microsoft, Apple, aerospace and defense contractors.
- torginus 4y ago
  I think due to the massive influx of people into this profession, the median age is still pretty low, but I think this will stabilize, and the age pyramid will look more even. As good, productive people will get older, recruiters will realize that people don't go senile at 40.
  - lazide 4y ago
    Eh, it's been this way since at least the 90's. How long should anyone wait for clearly illegal behavior to start being not ok?
    - wardedVibe 4y ago
      Probably until they routinely get sued for it
    - WanderPanda 4y ago
      Well I don't see the benefit of being lied to over speaking the illegal truth.
- micromacrofoot 4y ago
  I reckon that someone in their 40s or 50s could probably make enough to retire from recording interview rejections and suing for discrimination. I've heard it happen a couple times myself as a junior employee, and had to tell hiring managers that what they were saying was illegal.
- AlchemistCamp 4y ago
  I entered the industry in my early 30s and remember getting a really helpful piece of advice from a meetup talk. Enthusiasm for learning and the technology is a counter for most of the ageism in interviews. It will stop people from assuming you're set in your ways, a curmudgeon, out of date, or anything on those lines. The "culture fit" excuse is a tough one, though. That framing can be used to unknowingly discriminate in all kinds of ways.
  - kodah 4y ago
    > The "culture fit" excuse is a tough one, though. That framing can be used to unknowingly discriminate in all kinds of ways. Just an imo here, but anyone who talks about "culture" at a company broadly needs to be called out. 9/10 they are likely leveraging some form of discrimination. Culture cannot be mandated or even controlled in any succinct way that it causes you to use that as a logic branch.
colpabar 4y ago
[flagged]
- jrsj 4y ago
  Sadly this would probably work. Bonus points if you tell people your pronouns are they/them, HR departments really can’t get enough of that.
  - throwaway894345 4y ago
    My wife works for a company that does tons of business with a FAANG company. They’re putting together a presentation for the client about how diverse they are (“we have all of the sexual identities!”). They also told a Mexican guy he wasn’t diverse enough to give the presentation because he was (1) a man and (2) his accent wasn’t thick enough—it might not be clear that he is “diverse”. It’s over the top even by post-2020 standards.
    - jrsj 4y ago
      It didn’t take long after Silicon Valley was no longer on the air for the entire industry to become more absurd than its parody. I really don’t think any of this is sustainable either. Latinos in particular seem very opposed to this stuff & given that they are part of the fastest growing demographic in the country I don’t see how political support for policies like this can be maintained.
      - bendbro 4y ago
        I recently made a move from Seattle to Dallas. While in Seattle I was consumed by the thought that all of American academia, business, and media was consumed by idpol and other associated confusions. In Seattle, every interaction is permeated by conversations about identity, and friend groups are highly segregated by class, if not race. Moving to Dallas completely changed my perspective. Dallas is an actual multicultural utopia. Everywhere I went, people of all kinds were doing stuff together, and not in the soft late 90s ghetto mural of rainbows and people holding hands, I mean just hanging out as if you would with friends from your neighborhood. Funny that in practice, Texas is significantly less class and race divided than Seattle. I'm happy that latinos reject this stuff. I'm even more happy to know that it hasn't spread throughout the entire US.
jrsj 4y ago
I share these concerns as well, my advice to anyone that will listen is to save everything you can because this industry chews people up & spits them back out a lot faster than you would expect. And if you want longevity you had better try and get into management at a larger corporation.
kache_ 4y ago
That's why I plan to retire at 35 :D
mikepurvis 4y ago
It's kind of ageism-adjacent, but I wonder if some of it is a bias that expects that past 40 you shouldn't really be needing to apply to jobs by resume drops any more. So like, seeing that type of application is in an indication that the person's first twenty years of career haven't yielded the kinds of achievements and contact network that have bumped them out of the hustle and into the world where they no longer beg for jobs because they're being actively head-hunted. Obviously, there are loads of reasons why this might legitimately be someone's situation, including midlife career-, locale- or industry-changes. But it could be another vector for bias.
- sitkack 4y ago
  "If you were good, you wouldn't need this job by now" Who the hell would want to work for an org that thinks this way?
- lkxijlewlf 4y ago
  > It's kind of ageism-adjacent, but I wonder if some of it is a bias that expects that past 40 you shouldn't really be needing to apply to jobs by resume drops any more. I really wish people would stop this. I don't really keep in touch with many coworkers due to time. My friends tend to come from outside of work and they're not software devs. It definitely is age-ism adjacent; having to "network" to get a job is much harder after you get older.
  - johnnyanmac 4y ago
    >having to "network" to get a job is much harder after you get older. hard but I'm not sure about harder than a new grad. contacting someone you worked with years ago is still preferable to cold contacting someone you only have a shallow connection to (same school, maybe you talked for a day at a conference, etc.). They don't have to be friends, just collogues who can vouch for you.
  - sigstoat 4y ago
    > I don't really keep in touch with many coworkers due to time. My friends tend to come from outside of work and they're not software devs. 'friend' is a much higher bar than 'somebody in your network'. plenty of folks i worked with over the years, who i haven't heard from in decades, but i'd move them to the head of the line if they called up asking about work. i remember who got shit done and who didn't, and don't care that they didn't put in a repeating calendar item to take me out for a beer every 17 months.
AnimalMuppet 4y ago
As I have gotten older, my pay has continued to increase. "Over qualified" means that I want too much money. (I don't apologize for that. I bring more value than I did 20 years ago. Either you have a use for that - enough of a use that you're willing to pay for it - or you don't.) Also, if you've got someone with 20 years experience, and they're willing to accept the same pay as someone with 5 years experience... are they really willing? Or are they going to bail for more money at the first opportunity? If you hire them, you have to worry about how long they'll stick. So "more than qualified" can be a real thing, not just a discrimination thing.
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  I’m somewhat sympathetic toward your POV, but the average tenure in this industry is like 1.5 years or something like that. It’s not like young people stick around for a long time, and I would wager that older people are more likely to stick with a company (the older people I know are more likely to talk about “company loyalty” than my age cohort).
  - jnwatson 4y ago
    I don’t think it is loyalty. By your 40’s your pay is high enough that new offers to get another 20% come much rarer. The effort to find a new job has less upside.
    - throwaway894345 4y ago
      I meant I've heard older people talk about loyalty explicitly.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      And they may make enough and have enough savings that they care less about a salary bump. They probably own a house and don't want to move for any number of reasons--which still matters a lot of the time even in this more WFH friendly world. And, at some point, they know that a job search is probably going to be harder. And there's always risk with a new job. I've certainly known people who would entertain a move if a new position fell in their lap but wouldn't likely seek one out.
oppositelock 4y ago
I'm almost 50. I've been working in tech since 1996, and at this point, despite being a strong and seasoned engineer, I'm getting comments like, "it's different now", or "back in your day", etc, and the very young engineers fresh from school are the ones throwing this around. Those with a few years of experience under their belt don't. It's really disheartening, but it's also my job to train these bozos and turn them into good engineers, which they most certainly are not coming fresh from school.
- jelsisi 4y ago
  I hope these people are in the minority. I'm 21, I have my first internship coming up in the summer, and I am ecstatic to learn from engineers more experienced than me, no matter what age.
  - oppositelock 4y ago
    Yes, definitely in the minority.
    - monocasa 4y ago
      A vocal minority unfortunately, and hiring is so driven by the fear of hiring the wrong person that just about any pushback is given a large amount of credence generally.
  - tehlike 4y ago
    I am going to say this is an artifact of people not self-learning things on their own before the school or from a job. I find in my earlier teenage years that internet was great source of knowledge. I read lots of blogs/articles etc from people 3x-4x my age. It made me appreciate them, not disrespect them. And for the most part, when you are on the internet, you really don't know what otherside even looks like for the most part - you only know in retrospect...
- bendbro 4y ago
  I'm sure there is ageism from younger devs, but be sure not to confuse it with respect. In my experience, younger devs (like me at the time) were always excited to learn from older devs.
imiric 4y ago
Work remotely and anonymously. Let the quality of your work shine through so that age becomes irrelevant. There aren't many such roles, but with remote work gaining popularity, they're becoming more of an option.
- vageli 4y ago
  What jobs are hiring individuals anonymously?
  - earleybird 4y ago
    Perhaps parent meant private, as in keeping your age private as it wouldn't make sense to be anonymous if your expecting to be paid :-)
  - pc86 4y ago
    No legal ones, that's for sure.
  - jedberg 4y ago
    You can dye your hair and use soft lighting to look a lot younger on video. I've seen senior engineers do exactly that to get remote jobs. Then after that you leave your camera off.
- vmception 4y ago
  Another point to where the crypto space shines, for compensation. Most of the experienced people were involved in some major fuckup not long back. Just roll a new ident and build. The market is insatiable. A segment of the market thinks they want to “doxx” every builder, but they don’t matter.
shmatt 4y ago
If a 70 year old wants to churn out the same amount/quality of React code I get from everyone else on my team, I really couldn't care less When it comes to more senior roles, it may not only be ageism, but naturally there are much less open positions and many more people down the pyramid fighting for them
dheera 4y ago
- dang 4y ago
  Would you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN? You've done it so often that I've started to wince when I see your username. This has nothing to do with your views; I don't have any idea what they are and haven't read the context in this thread. I just saw this comment because it was flagged, and I recognize that this happens a lot with your account. That's not cool and not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - dheera 4y ago
    I don't think it was a flamewar comment at all, but I do believe all this, including this style of moderation is really just shutting up honest productive discussion, and essentially translating to "don't post things that disagree with the majority opinion". I believe this sort of flagging and moderation exacerbates the echo chamber effect. See for example discussion at https://bookface.ycombinator.com/posts/48890 https://bookface.ycombinator.com/posts/48890 I edit-deleted the comment in protest of how the community has decided to treat minority opinions, I did not mean to start a flame war.
    - dang 4y ago
      I don't remember what your views are on any of these topics but I'm pretty sure plenty of HN users express views similar close to yours while remaining within the site guidelines: thoughtful, respectful to others, substantive. You don't need snark, swipes, or putdowns—editing them out makes comments better, not worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html p.s. Bookface is a private forum, so a link to it doesn't make much sense in a public place like HN.
- Erik816 4y ago
  If you can't work with people who don't share your progressive politics, you may be the one who is hard to work with, not them.
forty 4y ago
> "he is over qualified" etc. Most of the times, they were more than qualified. What's the difference between "over qualified" and "more than qualified"? ;)
- wccrawford 4y ago
  The amount they'll have to pay to keep the person in the future. They don't want someone that will leave in a year. They want them to stick around, without inflating their budget.
  - mech422 4y ago
    aka 'wageism' if you don't need a rocket scientist, you don't pay for one... grunt work is grunt work.
georgeburdell 4y ago
> During my career, I've seen enough discrimination in the name of DEI as well. At my work recently, we interviewed a white male and an asian female for the job. To my knowledge, this is the first female applicant we've gotten because they generally get snapped up by higher prestige/visibility roles. I've interviewed many people before, and the manager will request feedback about the applicants and use whichever had the highest score on a rubric. This time, the manager simply asked "please tell me if anyone has an objection to hiring [asian female]". I was shocked at my manager's language, as it implies the default action is to hire rather than to not hire (the latter being typical in companies). The white male was not discussed at all in my presence. I'm strongly considering tipping off the white male applicant that he was discriminated against and that he may want to consider legal action. This is one of a number of what I consider discriminatory behaviors my employer (large company you've heard of) has displayed. Companies need to be fearful of engaging in all types of discrimination, not just ones that are culturally-sanctioned, and follow the law.
- pc86 4y ago
  Please let them know, but do so as anonymously as is possible. Consider an email from a proton burner address via VPN, printed letter mailed from somewhere other than where you live (maybe even from your office if there are no cameras). Depending on the size of the company, discovery during a lawsuit like this can get insanely detailed and expensive.
  - mywittyname 4y ago
    Honestly, it might not be a bad idea to make it easy to find him. Yeah, the op might be punished, but if companies start to worry that employees are going to out them for their illegal behavior, they might change.
    - pc86 4y ago
      Unfortunately I think the more likely scenario is that OP gets sidelined at work until he leaves. Most importantly (to the company) though, he's no longer involved in hiring.
i_like_waiting 4y ago
From perspective of fairly young hiring manager (25y old) it really depended on candidate. If you changed industries and you want to come in, more than fair. If you have 10+YoE and I know we don't play that much, why would you want to work with us? I am bit wary if those people are teachable. Please don't take it offensively, I just want to understand better philosophy of people who do only lateral moves for 8+ years (not becoming seniors, not becoming highly paid). If the case is "not everybody is looking to dedicate their life to work" then its more probable that I will hire young person, as they just might put extra effort, as they maybe haven't chosen the philosophy yet.
- i_like_waiting 4y ago
  But for the record, my first hire was 10yrs older than me, my last one is probably 10yrs older as well. So I still value experience of people who are longer in the industry
- MisterBastahrd 4y ago
  If I were a senior manager and I heard that coming from you, you'd hit the unemployment turnstile faster than you could blink. You're being paid to determine whether they can do the job well and are a good team fit. If you don't understand that, then you aren't capable of conducting a quality interview, and you shouldn't be in that position at all.
  - pc86 4y ago
    What do you expect from someone who wonders if old people are teachable?
    - i_like_waiting 4y ago
      I know some of them are, but I seriously wonder for people who spend considerably long time in exactly same position with regular job hopping
  - i_like_waiting 4y ago
smugma 4y ago
I'm in my 40's have been with the same company (FAANG) for over a decade. I'd say a majority of the management (including engineering) is in their mid-30's to 50's. It looks like the entirety of the senior management in engineering in my org is in their 40's. There are fewer individual contributors in their 40's, but I know several (some moved from manager back to IC, others stayed IC). Maybe this is a bigger issue at startups, where the founders are in their 20's?
- spookybones 4y ago
  How many 40+ are recent hires versus having been with the company 5-10 years?
  - smugma 4y ago
    I'd say the many/most have been with the company 10+ years (low attrition!). New hires are generally younger, but new hires that are more senior (IC or Manager) are generally older. That's not surprising, is it?
- jnwatson 4y ago
  I have similar experience at a FAANG. We have a good mix of 20 somethings through 50 somethings. Part of it is that FAANGs have explicit IC ladders, so you can advance without being forced to manage.
spaetzleesser 4y ago
All the DEI brochures I have seen show young good looking people with different skin colors. There are no disabled people, no ugly people, no fat people, no old people.
- sitkack 4y ago
  United Colors of Peloton
- icsa 4y ago
  And no political conservatives. I'm apolitcal, personally, and welcome all points of view in my personal life.
mech422 4y ago
I'm 50+, and perhaps I've just been lucky...but its not been an issue for me. I got my last job 18 months ago and I'm looking now. I think a lot of what people think is ageism, is wageism.. but that's just a hunch. In my experience, if you work in areas with enough demand - its not an issue (eg you work the 'ends' of tech - really old or really new). If the demand isn't there, they probably don't want to pay for a senior employee when a fresh college grad could do it for half the cost ? Anyway - fear not for your 40s or even your 50s!! Old geeks never die... we just 'exec' a new program! :-D
- mech4bg 4y ago
  Off topic, but this is the first time I’ve seen your username. I would love to compare sometime how we both came to such similar kinda odd usernames, haha.
  - mech422 4y ago
    you mean... a mech uprising! :-P I think it was mech warrior or something in my case...
hirundo 4y ago
Remote work helps a lot in that case. I got my current remote job, which was specifically advertising for young developers, without mentioning my age. They know I'm an old fogey now, but that was after I had proven myself. Yes, I had to severely abbreviate my resume. But no misinformation passed my lips or fingertips. The insurance paperwork, with age related info, all went through a third party. And working remotely suits me down to the toes. On the internet nobody has to know you're a dog.
rdl 4y ago
Most of the age discrimination I've ever seen has been anti-Boomerism, not specific fixed ages. i.e. it was "people over 30-40" 20 years ago, and now is basically mainly against people in their 60s+. I've never (as far as I can tell) experienced age discrimination, and I'm >40 now. There may be passive age discrimination (incompatible schedules for people with families, etc.), but most of the companies I've interacted with have been explicitly pro-family which goes against thag.
- lazyeye 4y ago
  It doesnt matter what label you put on it, its still age discrimination.
  - rdl 4y ago
    Yes but it means the OP is less likely to experience it.
    - lazyeye 4y ago
      Its interesting how you can make sweeping negative generalisations about one group in society (based on age) and its completely acceptable. But for any other attribute (skin color, gender, orientation, ethnicity) it is considered appallingly ignorant.
brightball 4y ago
Second this. I helped a guy get into a programming career in his mid-50s. He was/is really sharp but it took forever for somebody to give him an opportunity. He shined when he finally got it but there was a real struggle.
boringg 4y ago
I'm curious if the ageism bothers you more because you know that will impact you specifically or is there another reason? I agree ageism is total crap, but so is all forms of discrimination - it just seems that we will all ending up aging whereas the other forms are limited to minority groups who probably get the double whammy of minority + age.
gilbetron 4y ago
I joke with my age-peers that I'd bring up ageism in our DEI outlets in my current company, but I'm afraid they'd decide to kill us and use us for fertilizer if I speak up ;) Dark humor with an underlying truth. Ageism isn't seen as an "ism" by anyone except those over the age of 40.
yodsanklai 4y ago
My company appears to be extremely concerned with discrimination and inclusion. Been there less than a year, and I had already three trainings on the topic. The emphasis is very clearly on certain minorities. There's not a single "senior" on the training material videos/pictures and the issue of ageism is barely mentioned. There's clearly no will to hire older employees. I wonder what I could do about this at my level. I'm 45+ and already feel out of place and just "tolerated", don't want to raise any attention on me.

duxup 4y ago

After age 40 I did a coding bootcamp to change careers. Another guy in the camp was doing the same. We compared notes on interviews. One day he gets a call back from a recruiter and he put the recruiter on speaker phone. She told them they liked him but chose someone else because (drum roll) culture fit. He asked what she meant by that and she outright said: "The other person is younger. You're old." We were shocked and he pretended he didn't quite hear her... she repeated it word for word. I don't think she even realized it was illegal. The other guy never made a complaint, he needed a job and I could hardly blame him not wanting to put up a fuss / fight over a job at a place he didn't want to be a part of anyway ... it was shocking to hear it made that clear. Long run we both got jobs and are doing well, but man... that call sticks in the back of my head anytime I think of job hunting.

t_mann 4y ago
Would be interesting to compare this across areas. My impression is that eg Finance (another popular destination for mid-career switches) is far more open in that regard. Experience, even if it's in a different field (as long as it's a technical role or one that will give you a rich set of contacts) seems to generally confer seniority. Would be interesting if someone could weigh in.
- bumby 4y ago
  Anecdotally, the hard engineering fields (e.g., mechanical, civil, etc.) are much more tolerant about age and more receptive to the benefits and tradeoffs of both youth and, erm.., "experience" (said tongue-in-cheek because age does not necessarily equate to experience)
  - spaetzleesser 4y ago
    Probably most regulated industries. I am in medical devices and you can easily make it to 65 with dignity.
    - forum_ghost 4y ago
      because fail-forward works so great with implanted defibrillators, I presume? /s
      - spaetzleesser 4y ago
        “Move fast and kill people”
        bumby 4y ago
        That's my main issue with SV-mentalities moving into the safety-critical space like autonomous driving
        spaetzleesser 4y ago
        I have mixed feelings. On the one hand you don’t want to kill people but on the other hand a lot of the big players in regulated industries are stagnant, complacent and inefficient. A good example would be SpaceX. Compared to their competitors they move faster, are innovative, cheaper and despite that they are reliable when it counts . Most of their failures were well calculated risks that helped them move faster. I am in health care and this industry also desperately needs new players that take more agile approaches and not the super expensive super slow approach most established players are taking. They are way too complacent.
        bumby 4y ago
        I agree with you that the old corps in these industries are stagnant, but also recognize when there's a gap in the way new entrants approach safety-critical problems. One example is the Uber incident that killed a person. If you read the NTSB report, it seems like they intentionally programmed a delay into a safety critical system in order avoid nuisance braking. From a safety-critical standpoint, deliberately slowing the action of a time-sensitive safety mitigation is big error in engineering judgement. Imagine if I reprogrammed your home smoke detectors to wait for an hour to determine if there's really a fire because you were annoyed that they went off every time your baked. My suspicion is they did this because their software wasn't really ready but they wanted to push it to market for testing. Another example that has had some controversy in the industry is SpaceX using only touchscreens. I don't know where they settled, but a few years back they were adamant that they don't need physical controls. We've all probably experienced issues where a touchscreen doesn't respond as intended. Automotive manufacturers have walked back this idea on a lot of their models because they recognize all the additional failure modes that touchscreens introduce. My worry is that sometimes "innovation" is really just forgetting (or not knowing) the lessons learned from the legacy players. The traditional players like Boeing have had their own problems, but IMO they are more due to management than engineering. With the 737MAX, the engineering processes were in place. They had a hazard analysis that said MCAS shouldn't be a single-point failure; it seems they just didn't follow their own engineering processes due to budget and schedule pressures. That's a different animal than not having the safety-critical culture to define those processes in the first place (but not any less egregious).
- AlchemistCamp 4y ago
  What are some common paths for people who make that jump?
  - bumby 4y ago
    Just my perspective so take it with a grain of salt. It helps to look for positions outside the normal SV roles so places like aerospace, defense contractors, manufacturing, etc. They post a surprising number of CS positions. I would caution, though, that the only role I've seen that pays SV-type salaries ($250k+) was controls engineer for automotive manufacturing. But to be fair, the jobs were all in areas with a cost of living much, much lower than SV. If you get in (politely) look for processes that your SE skills can make an impact. These opportunities are sometimes there because the place is full of non-software minded folks who don't know what they don't know. An example from my anecdotal experience was when someone with software acumen helped reprogram an automation system to be more efficient and saved high-six/low-seven figures each year and really gets people's attention. Or showing how they can dramatically improve their quality control by developing unit tests. Some stuff that is common in SE firms is often overlooked in firms focused on other disciplines.
    - AlchemistCamp 4y ago
      The most common paths for people making mid-career moves to finance are from using software skills in industries like aerospace, defense contractors or manufacturing? That doesn't sound right. I'm not even sure most people transitioning into finance from another career have any software skills at all (beyond Excel).
      - bumby 4y ago
        Sorry, I lost track of the thread comments. I thought the question was how to move from SE to hard engineering fields like mechanical or civil.
- pvarangot 4y ago
  Old companies also hire old people more easily. Microsoft, Apple, aerospace and defense contractors.
torginus 4y ago
I think due to the massive influx of people into this profession, the median age is still pretty low, but I think this will stabilize, and the age pyramid will look more even. As good, productive people will get older, recruiters will realize that people don't go senile at 40.
- lazide 4y ago
  Eh, it's been this way since at least the 90's. How long should anyone wait for clearly illegal behavior to start being not ok?
  - wardedVibe 4y ago
    Probably until they routinely get sued for it
  - WanderPanda 4y ago
    Well I don't see the benefit of being lied to over speaking the illegal truth.
micromacrofoot 4y ago
I reckon that someone in their 40s or 50s could probably make enough to retire from recording interview rejections and suing for discrimination. I've heard it happen a couple times myself as a junior employee, and had to tell hiring managers that what they were saying was illegal.
AlchemistCamp 4y ago
I entered the industry in my early 30s and remember getting a really helpful piece of advice from a meetup talk. Enthusiasm for learning and the technology is a counter for most of the ageism in interviews. It will stop people from assuming you're set in your ways, a curmudgeon, out of date, or anything on those lines. The "culture fit" excuse is a tough one, though. That framing can be used to unknowingly discriminate in all kinds of ways.
- kodah 4y ago
  > The "culture fit" excuse is a tough one, though. That framing can be used to unknowingly discriminate in all kinds of ways. Just an imo here, but anyone who talks about "culture" at a company broadly needs to be called out. 9/10 they are likely leveraging some form of discrimination. Culture cannot be mandated or even controlled in any succinct way that it causes you to use that as a logic branch.

colpabar 4y ago

[flagged]

jrsj 4y ago
Sadly this would probably work. Bonus points if you tell people your pronouns are they/them, HR departments really can’t get enough of that.
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  My wife works for a company that does tons of business with a FAANG company. They’re putting together a presentation for the client about how diverse they are (“we have all of the sexual identities!”). They also told a Mexican guy he wasn’t diverse enough to give the presentation because he was (1) a man and (2) his accent wasn’t thick enough—it might not be clear that he is “diverse”. It’s over the top even by post-2020 standards.
  - jrsj 4y ago
    It didn’t take long after Silicon Valley was no longer on the air for the entire industry to become more absurd than its parody. I really don’t think any of this is sustainable either. Latinos in particular seem very opposed to this stuff & given that they are part of the fastest growing demographic in the country I don’t see how political support for policies like this can be maintained.
    - bendbro 4y ago
      I recently made a move from Seattle to Dallas. While in Seattle I was consumed by the thought that all of American academia, business, and media was consumed by idpol and other associated confusions. In Seattle, every interaction is permeated by conversations about identity, and friend groups are highly segregated by class, if not race. Moving to Dallas completely changed my perspective. Dallas is an actual multicultural utopia. Everywhere I went, people of all kinds were doing stuff together, and not in the soft late 90s ghetto mural of rainbows and people holding hands, I mean just hanging out as if you would with friends from your neighborhood. Funny that in practice, Texas is significantly less class and race divided than Seattle. I'm happy that latinos reject this stuff. I'm even more happy to know that it hasn't spread throughout the entire US.

jrsj 4y ago

I share these concerns as well, my advice to anyone that will listen is to save everything you can because this industry chews people up & spits them back out a lot faster than you would expect. And if you want longevity you had better try and get into management at a larger corporation.

kache_ 4y ago

That's why I plan to retire at 35 :D

mikepurvis 4y ago

It's kind of ageism-adjacent, but I wonder if some of it is a bias that expects that past 40 you shouldn't really be needing to apply to jobs by resume drops any more. So like, seeing that type of application is in an indication that the person's first twenty years of career haven't yielded the kinds of achievements and contact network that have bumped them out of the hustle and into the world where they no longer beg for jobs because they're being actively head-hunted. Obviously, there are loads of reasons why this might legitimately be someone's situation, including midlife career-, locale- or industry-changes. But it could be another vector for bias.

sitkack 4y ago
"If you were good, you wouldn't need this job by now" Who the hell would want to work for an org that thinks this way?
lkxijlewlf 4y ago
> It's kind of ageism-adjacent, but I wonder if some of it is a bias that expects that past 40 you shouldn't really be needing to apply to jobs by resume drops any more. I really wish people would stop this. I don't really keep in touch with many coworkers due to time. My friends tend to come from outside of work and they're not software devs. It definitely is age-ism adjacent; having to "network" to get a job is much harder after you get older.
- johnnyanmac 4y ago
  >having to "network" to get a job is much harder after you get older. hard but I'm not sure about harder than a new grad. contacting someone you worked with years ago is still preferable to cold contacting someone you only have a shallow connection to (same school, maybe you talked for a day at a conference, etc.). They don't have to be friends, just collogues who can vouch for you.
- sigstoat 4y ago
  > I don't really keep in touch with many coworkers due to time. My friends tend to come from outside of work and they're not software devs. 'friend' is a much higher bar than 'somebody in your network'. plenty of folks i worked with over the years, who i haven't heard from in decades, but i'd move them to the head of the line if they called up asking about work. i remember who got shit done and who didn't, and don't care that they didn't put in a repeating calendar item to take me out for a beer every 17 months.

AnimalMuppet 4y ago

As I have gotten older, my pay has continued to increase. "Over qualified" means that I want too much money. (I don't apologize for that. I bring more value than I did 20 years ago. Either you have a use for that - enough of a use that you're willing to pay for it - or you don't.) Also, if you've got someone with 20 years experience, and they're willing to accept the same pay as someone with 5 years experience... are they really willing? Or are they going to bail for more money at the first opportunity? If you hire them, you have to worry about how long they'll stick. So "more than qualified" can be a real thing, not just a discrimination thing.

throwaway894345 4y ago
I’m somewhat sympathetic toward your POV, but the average tenure in this industry is like 1.5 years or something like that. It’s not like young people stick around for a long time, and I would wager that older people are more likely to stick with a company (the older people I know are more likely to talk about “company loyalty” than my age cohort).
- jnwatson 4y ago
  I don’t think it is loyalty. By your 40’s your pay is high enough that new offers to get another 20% come much rarer. The effort to find a new job has less upside.
  - throwaway894345 4y ago
    I meant I've heard older people talk about loyalty explicitly.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    And they may make enough and have enough savings that they care less about a salary bump. They probably own a house and don't want to move for any number of reasons--which still matters a lot of the time even in this more WFH friendly world. And, at some point, they know that a job search is probably going to be harder. And there's always risk with a new job. I've certainly known people who would entertain a move if a new position fell in their lap but wouldn't likely seek one out.

oppositelock 4y ago

I'm almost 50. I've been working in tech since 1996, and at this point, despite being a strong and seasoned engineer, I'm getting comments like, "it's different now", or "back in your day", etc, and the very young engineers fresh from school are the ones throwing this around. Those with a few years of experience under their belt don't. It's really disheartening, but it's also my job to train these bozos and turn them into good engineers, which they most certainly are not coming fresh from school.

jelsisi 4y ago
I hope these people are in the minority. I'm 21, I have my first internship coming up in the summer, and I am ecstatic to learn from engineers more experienced than me, no matter what age.
- oppositelock 4y ago
  Yes, definitely in the minority.
  - monocasa 4y ago
    A vocal minority unfortunately, and hiring is so driven by the fear of hiring the wrong person that just about any pushback is given a large amount of credence generally.
- tehlike 4y ago
  I am going to say this is an artifact of people not self-learning things on their own before the school or from a job. I find in my earlier teenage years that internet was great source of knowledge. I read lots of blogs/articles etc from people 3x-4x my age. It made me appreciate them, not disrespect them. And for the most part, when you are on the internet, you really don't know what otherside even looks like for the most part - you only know in retrospect...
bendbro 4y ago
I'm sure there is ageism from younger devs, but be sure not to confuse it with respect. In my experience, younger devs (like me at the time) were always excited to learn from older devs.

imiric 4y ago

Work remotely and anonymously. Let the quality of your work shine through so that age becomes irrelevant. There aren't many such roles, but with remote work gaining popularity, they're becoming more of an option.

vageli 4y ago
What jobs are hiring individuals anonymously?
- earleybird 4y ago
  Perhaps parent meant private, as in keeping your age private as it wouldn't make sense to be anonymous if your expecting to be paid :-)
- pc86 4y ago
  No legal ones, that's for sure.
- jedberg 4y ago
  You can dye your hair and use soft lighting to look a lot younger on video. I've seen senior engineers do exactly that to get remote jobs. Then after that you leave your camera off.
vmception 4y ago
Another point to where the crypto space shines, for compensation. Most of the experienced people were involved in some major fuckup not long back. Just roll a new ident and build. The market is insatiable. A segment of the market thinks they want to “doxx” every builder, but they don’t matter.

shmatt 4y ago

If a 70 year old wants to churn out the same amount/quality of React code I get from everyone else on my team, I really couldn't care less When it comes to more senior roles, it may not only be ageism, but naturally there are much less open positions and many more people down the pyramid fighting for them

dheera 4y ago

dang 4y ago
Would you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN? You've done it so often that I've started to wince when I see your username. This has nothing to do with your views; I don't have any idea what they are and haven't read the context in this thread. I just saw this comment because it was flagged, and I recognize that this happens a lot with your account. That's not cool and not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dheera 4y ago
  I don't think it was a flamewar comment at all, but I do believe all this, including this style of moderation is really just shutting up honest productive discussion, and essentially translating to "don't post things that disagree with the majority opinion". I believe this sort of flagging and moderation exacerbates the echo chamber effect. See for example discussion at https://bookface.ycombinator.com/posts/48890 https://bookface.ycombinator.com/posts/48890 I edit-deleted the comment in protest of how the community has decided to treat minority opinions, I did not mean to start a flame war.
  - dang 4y ago
    I don't remember what your views are on any of these topics but I'm pretty sure plenty of HN users express views similar close to yours while remaining within the site guidelines: thoughtful, respectful to others, substantive. You don't need snark, swipes, or putdowns—editing them out makes comments better, not worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html p.s. Bookface is a private forum, so a link to it doesn't make much sense in a public place like HN.
Erik816 4y ago
If you can't work with people who don't share your progressive politics, you may be the one who is hard to work with, not them.

forty 4y ago

> "he is over qualified" etc. Most of the times, they were more than qualified. What's the difference between "over qualified" and "more than qualified"? ;)

wccrawford 4y ago
The amount they'll have to pay to keep the person in the future. They don't want someone that will leave in a year. They want them to stick around, without inflating their budget.
- mech422 4y ago
  aka 'wageism' if you don't need a rocket scientist, you don't pay for one... grunt work is grunt work.

georgeburdell 4y ago

> During my career, I've seen enough discrimination in the name of DEI as well. At my work recently, we interviewed a white male and an asian female for the job. To my knowledge, this is the first female applicant we've gotten because they generally get snapped up by higher prestige/visibility roles. I've interviewed many people before, and the manager will request feedback about the applicants and use whichever had the highest score on a rubric. This time, the manager simply asked "please tell me if anyone has an objection to hiring [asian female]". I was shocked at my manager's language, as it implies the default action is to hire rather than to not hire (the latter being typical in companies). The white male was not discussed at all in my presence. I'm strongly considering tipping off the white male applicant that he was discriminated against and that he may want to consider legal action. This is one of a number of what I consider discriminatory behaviors my employer (large company you've heard of) has displayed. Companies need to be fearful of engaging in all types of discrimination, not just ones that are culturally-sanctioned, and follow the law.

pc86 4y ago
Please let them know, but do so as anonymously as is possible. Consider an email from a proton burner address via VPN, printed letter mailed from somewhere other than where you live (maybe even from your office if there are no cameras). Depending on the size of the company, discovery during a lawsuit like this can get insanely detailed and expensive.
- mywittyname 4y ago
  Honestly, it might not be a bad idea to make it easy to find him. Yeah, the op might be punished, but if companies start to worry that employees are going to out them for their illegal behavior, they might change.
  - pc86 4y ago
    Unfortunately I think the more likely scenario is that OP gets sidelined at work until he leaves. Most importantly (to the company) though, he's no longer involved in hiring.

i_like_waiting 4y ago

From perspective of fairly young hiring manager (25y old) it really depended on candidate. If you changed industries and you want to come in, more than fair. If you have 10+YoE and I know we don't play that much, why would you want to work with us? I am bit wary if those people are teachable. Please don't take it offensively, I just want to understand better philosophy of people who do only lateral moves for 8+ years (not becoming seniors, not becoming highly paid). If the case is "not everybody is looking to dedicate their life to work" then its more probable that I will hire young person, as they just might put extra effort, as they maybe haven't chosen the philosophy yet.

i_like_waiting 4y ago
But for the record, my first hire was 10yrs older than me, my last one is probably 10yrs older as well. So I still value experience of people who are longer in the industry
MisterBastahrd 4y ago
If I were a senior manager and I heard that coming from you, you'd hit the unemployment turnstile faster than you could blink. You're being paid to determine whether they can do the job well and are a good team fit. If you don't understand that, then you aren't capable of conducting a quality interview, and you shouldn't be in that position at all.
- pc86 4y ago
  What do you expect from someone who wonders if old people are teachable?
  - i_like_waiting 4y ago
    I know some of them are, but I seriously wonder for people who spend considerably long time in exactly same position with regular job hopping
- i_like_waiting 4y ago

smugma 4y ago

I'm in my 40's have been with the same company (FAANG) for over a decade. I'd say a majority of the management (including engineering) is in their mid-30's to 50's. It looks like the entirety of the senior management in engineering in my org is in their 40's. There are fewer individual contributors in their 40's, but I know several (some moved from manager back to IC, others stayed IC). Maybe this is a bigger issue at startups, where the founders are in their 20's?

spookybones 4y ago
How many 40+ are recent hires versus having been with the company 5-10 years?
- smugma 4y ago
  I'd say the many/most have been with the company 10+ years (low attrition!). New hires are generally younger, but new hires that are more senior (IC or Manager) are generally older. That's not surprising, is it?
jnwatson 4y ago
I have similar experience at a FAANG. We have a good mix of 20 somethings through 50 somethings. Part of it is that FAANGs have explicit IC ladders, so you can advance without being forced to manage.

spaetzleesser 4y ago

All the DEI brochures I have seen show young good looking people with different skin colors. There are no disabled people, no ugly people, no fat people, no old people.

sitkack 4y ago
United Colors of Peloton
icsa 4y ago
And no political conservatives. I'm apolitcal, personally, and welcome all points of view in my personal life.

mech422 4y ago

I'm 50+, and perhaps I've just been lucky...but its not been an issue for me. I got my last job 18 months ago and I'm looking now. I think a lot of what people think is ageism, is wageism.. but that's just a hunch. In my experience, if you work in areas with enough demand - its not an issue (eg you work the 'ends' of tech - really old or really new). If the demand isn't there, they probably don't want to pay for a senior employee when a fresh college grad could do it for half the cost ? Anyway - fear not for your 40s or even your 50s!! Old geeks never die... we just 'exec' a new program! :-D

mech4bg 4y ago
Off topic, but this is the first time I’ve seen your username. I would love to compare sometime how we both came to such similar kinda odd usernames, haha.
- mech422 4y ago
  you mean... a mech uprising! :-P I think it was mech warrior or something in my case...

hirundo 4y ago

Remote work helps a lot in that case. I got my current remote job, which was specifically advertising for young developers, without mentioning my age. They know I'm an old fogey now, but that was after I had proven myself. Yes, I had to severely abbreviate my resume. But no misinformation passed my lips or fingertips. The insurance paperwork, with age related info, all went through a third party. And working remotely suits me down to the toes. On the internet nobody has to know you're a dog.

rdl 4y ago

Most of the age discrimination I've ever seen has been anti-Boomerism, not specific fixed ages. i.e. it was "people over 30-40" 20 years ago, and now is basically mainly against people in their 60s+. I've never (as far as I can tell) experienced age discrimination, and I'm >40 now. There may be passive age discrimination (incompatible schedules for people with families, etc.), but most of the companies I've interacted with have been explicitly pro-family which goes against thag.

lazyeye 4y ago
It doesnt matter what label you put on it, its still age discrimination.
- rdl 4y ago
  Yes but it means the OP is less likely to experience it.
  - lazyeye 4y ago
    Its interesting how you can make sweeping negative generalisations about one group in society (based on age) and its completely acceptable. But for any other attribute (skin color, gender, orientation, ethnicity) it is considered appallingly ignorant.

brightball 4y ago

Second this. I helped a guy get into a programming career in his mid-50s. He was/is really sharp but it took forever for somebody to give him an opportunity. He shined when he finally got it but there was a real struggle.

boringg 4y ago

I'm curious if the ageism bothers you more because you know that will impact you specifically or is there another reason? I agree ageism is total crap, but so is all forms of discrimination - it just seems that we will all ending up aging whereas the other forms are limited to minority groups who probably get the double whammy of minority + age.

gilbetron 4y ago

I joke with my age-peers that I'd bring up ageism in our DEI outlets in my current company, but I'm afraid they'd decide to kill us and use us for fertilizer if I speak up ;) Dark humor with an underlying truth. Ageism isn't seen as an "ism" by anyone except those over the age of 40.

yodsanklai 4y ago

My company appears to be extremely concerned with discrimination and inclusion. Been there less than a year, and I had already three trainings on the topic. The emphasis is very clearly on certain minorities. There's not a single "senior" on the training material videos/pictures and the issue of ageism is barely mentioned. There's clearly no will to hire older employees. I wonder what I could do about this at my level. I'm 45+ and already feel out of place and just "tolerated", don't want to raise any attention on me.