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> There are plenty of people with wisdom well beyond their years. I still haven't met any. I've met plenty of smart kids, and I'm pretty sure I was one, 15 yea

> There are plenty of people with wisdom well beyond their years. I still haven't met any. I've met plenty of smart kids, and I'm pretty sure I was one, 15 years ago. However, I had no idea what I was doing, and worse yet, had the hubris to think I did. I was insufferable, and I'd never hire 15-years-ago me. I also won't hire any other young engineers -- I'll let them find out how little they actually know on someone else's dime. On the other hand, if I was in the VC game, I'd absolutely leverage young engineers as grist for my mill. They're the most amenable to the risk, and it doesn't really matter if the vast majority of small investments fail (and they will, especially given the inexperienced teams), if you hit just a few home run exits. > Bad news! It gets worse. At some point, just when you start to feel like you know what you don't know, you realize that they are making new things up faster than you can keep track. Talking to people a generation younger than me can be a humbling experience. I have to tread carefully, as you do when you're talking with a person from another country. That's unnecessarily defeatist. There are steady advances, but there's very little that's genuinely new under the sun, and quite a bit of what the youngsters get excited about is just the cyclic rediscovery of what we already knew.

flatline 14y ago
> I also won't hire any other young engineers Your loss, really. I've interviewed and worked with several young engineers who were really top-notch, who worked out great, and were mature in their approach to work and life in general. They also tend to come with a lower price tag. Some have not worked out so well, but I don't have any reason to believe that the failure rate changes dramatically with age. As I myself get older, I'm not so sure that the maturity level changes all that much either. People are just better at hiding their flaws as they grow older, then you find out too late when there's an issue.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- wpietri 14y ago
  Yes. Good young engineers are very amenable to learning new approaches. And I love the raw energy of somebody who is 25 and sees every project as a fresh! exciting! new! challenge!
- flatline3 14y ago
  I've never worked with a top-notch young engineer. Brilliant, yes, top notch, no. Every single one has had misguided priorities, significant experience gaps (leading to both bad engineering decisions and misguided priorities), and -- even in the best of them -- hubris. Despite their intelligence they've always required constant senior level supervision, and have generally been the ones most likely to create maintenance-heavy components due to inexperience. I'm not sure why our experiences differ so substantially, but I'm happy to hire only senior engineers and let other companies pay to train the young ones. The senior engineers are more than worth the minimal financial premium.
  - mamoswined 14y ago
    "I'm not sure why our experiences differ so substantially" Sounds like you have bad projects management and let people go cowboy and build bad things because you don't communicate with each other.
    - flatline3 14y ago
      No, it's simply impossible to babysit junior engineers to a sufficient degree as to prevent bad implementation without effectively doing their job for them. It's not worth the effort.
      - wpietri 14y ago
        Ah, I love when "I can't think of a way to do it" turns into "it's simply impossible".
        flatline3 14y ago
        Not only can I not think of a way to do it, I have never, in 15 years, seen an organization that successfully managed junior engineers in a way that resulted in the production of code on par with what senior engineers would produce. Getting good work out of junior engineers requires a management investment greater than the cost of simply hiring experienced engineers to begin with, and they still will not produce code to the same level of robustness and quality. I can see from your company that you don't operate this way. I assume this choice expands the apparent pool of available applicants, but it also ensures that your company is likely completely uninteresting to senior, experienced, genuinely expert engineers. In my experience, there are two kinds of engineering managers. The first is the kind that has figured out (or thinks they've figured out) how to get decent enough code out of inexperienced or just plain bad engineers. The second is the kind that realizes that they don't have to work nearly so hard or jump through so many procedural hoops if they just hire people that know what they're doing to begin with. What's more, those experienced people tend to have extensive contacts and make it easy to hire their friends. That said, I'm happy to let you spend the time, money, and energy training and managing junior engineers, while dealing with their subpar work output.
- Retric 14y ago
  Except Engineers have a fairly narrow cost range. Something like 50k - 200k except add in Benefits, Management Overhead, Resources (computers, software, office space etc.) are more or less flat and it's really only about a 2.5x cost increase from fresh from a no name school to some of the vary best in the field. Add in communication overhead if you let the team grow and unless you have really simple problems easily solvable by recent graduates it's best to focus on an experienced team.
will_work4tears 14y ago
Are you replying to yourself below? flatline responds to flatline3. Suspicious. That said, I hate ageism. Always have. However, as I get older, I find it more annoying that 22 year olds think they are "old." I'm 35 and Know I'm not old so 13 years my junior as old is just silly. Certainly 22 year olds can be mature. Old... no.
- flatline3 14y ago
  > Are you replying to yourself below? flatline responds to flatline3. Suspicious. No. Caused me to raise my eyebrows too.
  - damncabbage 14y ago
    Doubly eyebrow-raising three hours later: http://i.imgur.com/jL7m2.png http://i.imgur.com/jL7m2.png
mahyarm 14y ago
I'd never hire old engineers, they're stuck in their ways and insist on using SOAP. Software engineering is a young man's game as people on slashdot were apt to say. Old programmers are always complaining about being forced into management. Plus they insist on things like having time for their families. Old engineers can't focus %100 on the company like young geeks satisfied with foosball and beer. Ageism cuts both ways, and it's never an excuse for winning an argument or evaluating a person. You evaluate people on their merits or you pass over valuable people and pay the price for it. Older people can be full of hubris too, using appeals to experience and authority arguments to shortcut rational thinking. Using the I'm more experienced than you argument is the same as people saying you insist on C++ cause that is what your comfortable and experienced with, and you'll cost the company millions in lost productivity.
- flatline3 14y ago
  There are always bad engineers, which is what you're really describing above. All other things being equal, I'll always pick the older engineer with more experience and maturity than the young engineer without.
- adrianhoward 14y ago
  I'd never hire old engineers, they're stuck in their ways and insist on using SOAP Just as a nice case study... I was "old" when SOAP got popular (late twenties early thirties). Most of my (age) peer group seemed to agree with me in that it seemed over complicated and messy. We were, of course, old stick-in-the-muds who couldn't adapt to the new technology :-) It was the "young" developers who jumped on it more than anybody else that I saw - the everything-in-xml crowd. Ten years on, of course, the "young" crowd are now seen as "old". Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose :-) Ageism cuts both ways, and it's never an excuse for winning an argument or evaluating a person. You evaluate people on their merits or you pass over valuable people and pay the price for it. Amen. Young and old both have stick-in-the-mud types. It's just that the young folk haven't had the time to demonstrate whether they are stick-in-the-mud types. You don't want to hire them whatever their age. Using node.js (or whatever) doesn't make you cool, hip, and open to new ideas. I can guarantee that, if this forum is still around in ten years time, there will be somebody complaining about this old fker who wants to do everything in node.js :-)
mcmc 14y ago
I would never publicly post opinions that could put me or my current or future employer/company into legal jeopardy with respect to discrimination against protected classes. Yet, there seems to be quite a bit of this on here.
- seiji 14y ago
  For example, a CEO getting up on stage saying "We never hire anybody older than 28 years old!" As far as I know, nothing ever happened because of that.
- flatline3 14y ago
  In the US, age is only a protected class for the range of 40+, as per federal law. However, what we're talking about is experience. Those with little experience are not members of a protected class.
ams6110 14y ago
quite a bit of what the youngsters get excited about is just the cyclic rediscovery of what we already knew This happens _a lot_.
drhowarddrfine 14y ago
I'm now 60 years old. I've owned my own businesses for almost 30 years. I can't agree with you more.
mamoswined 14y ago
This stereotyping reminds me of stuff that was said about women in the past. Woman are this, women are that, we don't want to hire women because they are XYZ. People don't say it as much explicitly anymore, but I see it in their attitudes. Every woman is different, as is every 18 year old. We should not have pre-conceived notions about what they are like, we should have a hiring process that is a meritocracy where we will let anyone prove to us they have what it takes. Just because you haven't met a young person who would make a good engineer at your company doesn't mean they don't exist. Young people, like women, have often not been aware or been encouraged to seek opportunities in engineering.

flatline 14y ago

> I also won't hire any other young engineers Your loss, really. I've interviewed and worked with several young engineers who were really top-notch, who worked out great, and were mature in their approach to work and life in general. They also tend to come with a lower price tag. Some have not worked out so well, but I don't have any reason to believe that the failure rate changes dramatically with age. As I myself get older, I'm not so sure that the maturity level changes all that much either. People are just better at hiding their flaws as they grow older, then you find out too late when there's an issue.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
wpietri 14y ago
Yes. Good young engineers are very amenable to learning new approaches. And I love the raw energy of somebody who is 25 and sees every project as a fresh! exciting! new! challenge!
flatline3 14y ago
I've never worked with a top-notch young engineer. Brilliant, yes, top notch, no. Every single one has had misguided priorities, significant experience gaps (leading to both bad engineering decisions and misguided priorities), and -- even in the best of them -- hubris. Despite their intelligence they've always required constant senior level supervision, and have generally been the ones most likely to create maintenance-heavy components due to inexperience. I'm not sure why our experiences differ so substantially, but I'm happy to hire only senior engineers and let other companies pay to train the young ones. The senior engineers are more than worth the minimal financial premium.
- mamoswined 14y ago
  "I'm not sure why our experiences differ so substantially" Sounds like you have bad projects management and let people go cowboy and build bad things because you don't communicate with each other.
  - flatline3 14y ago
    No, it's simply impossible to babysit junior engineers to a sufficient degree as to prevent bad implementation without effectively doing their job for them. It's not worth the effort.
    - wpietri 14y ago
      Ah, I love when "I can't think of a way to do it" turns into "it's simply impossible".
      - flatline3 14y ago
        Not only can I not think of a way to do it, I have never, in 15 years, seen an organization that successfully managed junior engineers in a way that resulted in the production of code on par with what senior engineers would produce. Getting good work out of junior engineers requires a management investment greater than the cost of simply hiring experienced engineers to begin with, and they still will not produce code to the same level of robustness and quality. I can see from your company that you don't operate this way. I assume this choice expands the apparent pool of available applicants, but it also ensures that your company is likely completely uninteresting to senior, experienced, genuinely expert engineers. In my experience, there are two kinds of engineering managers. The first is the kind that has figured out (or thinks they've figured out) how to get decent enough code out of inexperienced or just plain bad engineers. The second is the kind that realizes that they don't have to work nearly so hard or jump through so many procedural hoops if they just hire people that know what they're doing to begin with. What's more, those experienced people tend to have extensive contacts and make it easy to hire their friends. That said, I'm happy to let you spend the time, money, and energy training and managing junior engineers, while dealing with their subpar work output.
Retric 14y ago
Except Engineers have a fairly narrow cost range. Something like 50k - 200k except add in Benefits, Management Overhead, Resources (computers, software, office space etc.) are more or less flat and it's really only about a 2.5x cost increase from fresh from a no name school to some of the vary best in the field. Add in communication overhead if you let the team grow and unless you have really simple problems easily solvable by recent graduates it's best to focus on an experienced team.

will_work4tears 14y ago

Are you replying to yourself below? flatline responds to flatline3. Suspicious. That said, I hate ageism. Always have. However, as I get older, I find it more annoying that 22 year olds think they are "old." I'm 35 and Know I'm not old so 13 years my junior as old is just silly. Certainly 22 year olds can be mature. Old... no.

flatline3 14y ago
> Are you replying to yourself below? flatline responds to flatline3. Suspicious. No. Caused me to raise my eyebrows too.
- damncabbage 14y ago
  Doubly eyebrow-raising three hours later: http://i.imgur.com/jL7m2.png http://i.imgur.com/jL7m2.png

mahyarm 14y ago

I'd never hire old engineers, they're stuck in their ways and insist on using SOAP. Software engineering is a young man's game as people on slashdot were apt to say. Old programmers are always complaining about being forced into management. Plus they insist on things like having time for their families. Old engineers can't focus %100 on the company like young geeks satisfied with foosball and beer. Ageism cuts both ways, and it's never an excuse for winning an argument or evaluating a person. You evaluate people on their merits or you pass over valuable people and pay the price for it. Older people can be full of hubris too, using appeals to experience and authority arguments to shortcut rational thinking. Using the I'm more experienced than you argument is the same as people saying you insist on C++ cause that is what your comfortable and experienced with, and you'll cost the company millions in lost productivity.

flatline3 14y ago
There are always bad engineers, which is what you're really describing above. All other things being equal, I'll always pick the older engineer with more experience and maturity than the young engineer without.
adrianhoward 14y ago
I'd never hire old engineers, they're stuck in their ways and insist on using SOAP Just as a nice case study... I was "old" when SOAP got popular (late twenties early thirties). Most of my (age) peer group seemed to agree with me in that it seemed over complicated and messy. We were, of course, old stick-in-the-muds who couldn't adapt to the new technology :-) It was the "young" developers who jumped on it more than anybody else that I saw - the everything-in-xml crowd. Ten years on, of course, the "young" crowd are now seen as "old". Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose :-) Ageism cuts both ways, and it's never an excuse for winning an argument or evaluating a person. You evaluate people on their merits or you pass over valuable people and pay the price for it. Amen. Young and old both have stick-in-the-mud types. It's just that the young folk haven't had the time to demonstrate whether they are stick-in-the-mud types. You don't want to hire them whatever their age. Using node.js (or whatever) doesn't make you cool, hip, and open to new ideas. I can guarantee that, if this forum is still around in ten years time, there will be somebody complaining about this old fker who wants to do everything in node.js :-)

mcmc 14y ago

I would never publicly post opinions that could put me or my current or future employer/company into legal jeopardy with respect to discrimination against protected classes. Yet, there seems to be quite a bit of this on here.

seiji 14y ago
For example, a CEO getting up on stage saying "We never hire anybody older than 28 years old!" As far as I know, nothing ever happened because of that.
flatline3 14y ago
In the US, age is only a protected class for the range of 40+, as per federal law. However, what we're talking about is experience. Those with little experience are not members of a protected class.

ams6110 14y ago

quite a bit of what the youngsters get excited about is just the cyclic rediscovery of what we already knew This happens _a lot_.

drhowarddrfine 14y ago

I'm now 60 years old. I've owned my own businesses for almost 30 years. I can't agree with you more.

mamoswined 14y ago

This stereotyping reminds me of stuff that was said about women in the past. Woman are this, women are that, we don't want to hire women because they are XYZ. People don't say it as much explicitly anymore, but I see it in their attitudes. Every woman is different, as is every 18 year old. We should not have pre-conceived notions about what they are like, we should have a hiring process that is a meritocracy where we will let anyone prove to us they have what it takes. Just because you haven't met a young person who would make a good engineer at your company doesn't mean they don't exist. Young people, like women, have often not been aware or been encouraged to seek opportunities in engineering.