4 ms·

Ageism, to me, is the ultimate sign that engineers are still a conquered people. See, age is an issue for smooth-talking sales douches, because every career acc

Ageism, to me, is the ultimate sign that engineers are still a conquered people. See, age is an issue for smooth-talking sales douches, because every career accomplishment in their world gets harshly age-graded, but shouldn't be in ours. Ours should be about substance, not image. If I need to evaluate a cool new technology, do I give a rat's ass if the author was 17 or 73? Of course not. I just care about how the thing works.

nugget 13y ago
A few years back I interviewed a mixed race post-operative transsexual for a developer position in our startup. At that point in my life, I had not been exposed to much diversity at all. The candidate had been referred by a friend of mine who offered the personal bio ahead of time, probably to filter out any polite but intolerant employers. Before the interview started I forcefully reminded myself to keep an open mind and conduct the interview as I would any other. Half way through the interview it sort of suddenly dawned on me that I really didn't care, at all, about this person's personal orientation, preferences or lifestyle; as long as they could code, I would be happy to have them on board (as a co-worker and friend, as co-workers tend to become in such close quarters). And I felt intuitively confident that my co-founder would feel the same way. A lot of folks probably repeat this sentiment every day, but I wonder in how many industries they really, truly mean it. I think tech is a very special industry in terms of its ability to focus on substance, as you say, over form or perception.
- glanch 13y ago
  Were they qualified? Did you hire them?
- ionforce 13y ago
  Good on you for being open-minded. Also, diversity bingo!
- nemesisj 13y ago
  This is why we're always adamant that our first interview is a phone screen focused on a few coding problems and discussion about them. Yes, you can still tell some basic things like gender, accent, and so forth, but removing as much of the "first impression" BS that we can is important to us. We save the "culture fit" of the interview process to a later stage, while trying to provide as much transparency about our culture to our candidate as possible. We've ended up hiring some of our best employees that might have not done as well on an in-person interview this way. Yeah, these things shouldn't matter but they tend to. Well done for ignoring the unimportant and focusing on substance!
seivan 13y ago
"broken tribe".
bitwize 13y ago
It really depends on what kind of engineering you do. My dad is 70, and is still a practicing mechanical engineer currently working for a space-equipment company. He is extremely well-regarded in the firm, even by people in their 20s. No one is writing up NYT puff pieces about him, but he is also not working in a hype-train industry like social media, so it's not considered unusual that an oldbie be such a high performer. (In mech eng, age is probably an advantage.) When you try to get on the hype train, ageism is prevalent, but that's been as true of music and fashion for many decades as it is for network-related businesses.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  In fields like mechanical engineering, I'd imagine the typical youthful bent is pretty much the opposite of what you need. The cost of failure makes "fail early, fail often" a really bad idea.
  - WalterBright 13y ago
    I worked designing flight control systems for the 757, fresh out of college. I worked at the direction of a couple of engineers who were in their late 50s. Man, they knew their stuff - what did and did not work. I was a real honor and privilege to work with them. I also had the pleasure of showing how I could get better, more accurate designs by doing some FORTRAN programming as opposed to the older manual methods. I think having old mixed with young, the new techniques and the old techniques, made for having a great team.
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      A good mix is definitely my ideal.
    - bitwize 13y ago
      I think having old mixed with young, the new techniques and the old techniques, made for having a great team. It's actually quite critical. The oldbies have learned things that were completely phased out of the newbies' curriculum. A few years ago my dad mentored university seniors working at their senior project; one of the things he complained about was that they were not taught how to machine a part. As a result they had little gut-level knowledge about details like tolerances. Since a mechanincal engineer's work output is instructions for a machinist, learning how the machinist does his job is essential to you doing yours, even if you spend next to no time on the job at a lathe or mill.

nugget 13y ago

A few years back I interviewed a mixed race post-operative transsexual for a developer position in our startup. At that point in my life, I had not been exposed to much diversity at all. The candidate had been referred by a friend of mine who offered the personal bio ahead of time, probably to filter out any polite but intolerant employers. Before the interview started I forcefully reminded myself to keep an open mind and conduct the interview as I would any other. Half way through the interview it sort of suddenly dawned on me that I really didn't care, at all, about this person's personal orientation, preferences or lifestyle; as long as they could code, I would be happy to have them on board (as a co-worker and friend, as co-workers tend to become in such close quarters). And I felt intuitively confident that my co-founder would feel the same way. A lot of folks probably repeat this sentiment every day, but I wonder in how many industries they really, truly mean it. I think tech is a very special industry in terms of its ability to focus on substance, as you say, over form or perception.

glanch 13y ago
Were they qualified? Did you hire them?
ionforce 13y ago
Good on you for being open-minded. Also, diversity bingo!
nemesisj 13y ago
This is why we're always adamant that our first interview is a phone screen focused on a few coding problems and discussion about them. Yes, you can still tell some basic things like gender, accent, and so forth, but removing as much of the "first impression" BS that we can is important to us. We save the "culture fit" of the interview process to a later stage, while trying to provide as much transparency about our culture to our candidate as possible. We've ended up hiring some of our best employees that might have not done as well on an in-person interview this way. Yeah, these things shouldn't matter but they tend to. Well done for ignoring the unimportant and focusing on substance!

seivan 13y ago

"broken tribe".

bitwize 13y ago

It really depends on what kind of engineering you do. My dad is 70, and is still a practicing mechanical engineer currently working for a space-equipment company. He is extremely well-regarded in the firm, even by people in their 20s. No one is writing up NYT puff pieces about him, but he is also not working in a hype-train industry like social media, so it's not considered unusual that an oldbie be such a high performer. (In mech eng, age is probably an advantage.) When you try to get on the hype train, ageism is prevalent, but that's been as true of music and fashion for many decades as it is for network-related businesses.

sliverstorm 13y ago
In fields like mechanical engineering, I'd imagine the typical youthful bent is pretty much the opposite of what you need. The cost of failure makes "fail early, fail often" a really bad idea.
- WalterBright 13y ago
  I worked designing flight control systems for the 757, fresh out of college. I worked at the direction of a couple of engineers who were in their late 50s. Man, they knew their stuff - what did and did not work. I was a real honor and privilege to work with them. I also had the pleasure of showing how I could get better, more accurate designs by doing some FORTRAN programming as opposed to the older manual methods. I think having old mixed with young, the new techniques and the old techniques, made for having a great team.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    A good mix is definitely my ideal.
  - bitwize 13y ago
    I think having old mixed with young, the new techniques and the old techniques, made for having a great team. It's actually quite critical. The oldbies have learned things that were completely phased out of the newbies' curriculum. A few years ago my dad mentored university seniors working at their senior project; one of the things he complained about was that they were not taught how to machine a part. As a result they had little gut-level knowledge about details like tolerances. Since a mechanincal engineer's work output is instructions for a machinist, learning how the machinist does his job is essential to you doing yours, even if you spend next to no time on the job at a lathe or mill.