5 ms·

Me Too. I'll be 51 in a couple months. Age discrimination is widespread in this industry. I get lots of interviews, but quite commonly I find that my intervi

Me Too. I'll be 51 in a couple months. Age discrimination is widespread in this industry. I get lots of interviews, but quite commonly I find that my interviewer starts finding reasons not to hire me, the very instant they see me in person, and so can see I have grey hair. Discriminating against employees or candidates over 40, for reasons of age, is flatly illegal under US Federal Law, as well as the laws of all the States that I know about. However, such age discrimination is quite widespread.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
smoyer 12y ago
I turned 50 last summer and the last time I was looking, I had no problem finding a good job ... perhaps the best job I've ever had. But to survive the interview process, you can't act 50 (or 55 or 51). You need to be current and make it obvious you've kept yourself up-to-date. To a lesser degree you can't look 50 either - I'm fortunate to have been dirty blond when I was younger and my hair doesn't seem to be greying yet but if it was and I was interviewing, I'd change it. Five hundred pounds and rolled into the interview in an oversized Aeron chair? You probably look older than you are to the interviewers. I don't think most age discrimination is conscious but even where it is, don't help them out by acting or looking old/older. Note: Since I have no idea how @MichaelCrawford looks or interviews, this comment is not aimed at him but is rather responding to a pattern I see when we interview people my age.
- mud_dauber 12y ago
  Completely agree. Like you, I have fortunate genes & much younger mindset.
  - smoyer 12y ago
    One more anti-pattern to avoid during interviews - don't be the naysayer during your interview! If they say they're going to be trying "technology/algorithm/framework X", don't immediately say "that will never work!". Sure you've got 30 years of experience and you've tried that and failed with it 15 times but they're young and impressionable and they can do anything. Plus they might be right in this instance! Instead, you're the flexible guy who balances his experience, intuition and caution with the realization that while X might have failed you in the past, there might be situations where it's the right fit. So play the wise sage and say something like "that's an interesting idea, I'd be careful about Q, R and S but if it's implemented correctly that might be exactly the right plan (for instance, sometimes people really do need a NoSQL database, but often it should be put next to an RDBMS ... don't just choose one!). And you'd certainly like to be on the team working with X right? (you are presumeably at the job interview to get the job). So the right play during the interview is to look like you'd be a valuable member of the team. Once you've joined the team you can help guide them to a proper solution - whether or not it includes X. Bonus: Do not in ANY CIRCUMSTANCES get drawn into flame wars during your interview. Editors, IDEs, editors versus IDEs, languages and frameworks are tools - your position is that you use the one that best fits the project and maximizes productivity.
    - MichaelCrawford 12y ago
      I often get into flame wars during my interview. If the hiring manager says something that indicates he is a jackass, I will quite bluntly inform him of that fact. For example, Apple's CoreEdit is profoundly nonportable, as well as clearly designed to implement vendor lock-in. There are all manner of ways to store structured data that are quite portable. So if my interviewer asks me if I have experience with CoreEdit, I will quite emphatically tell them "No, because it's nonportable," then supply some portable solutions such as SQLite. I don't want to work for a bad manager. What I have a problem with is someone making assumptions about me, just because they see my grey hair, and the wrinkles in the skin of my face.
      - devopsproject 12y ago
        > I get lots of interviews, but quite commonly I find that my interviewer starts finding reasons not to hire me > I often get into flame wars during my interview. If the hiring manager says something that indicates he is a jackass, I will quite bluntly inform him of that fact Do you see the correlation? If you said this to me in an interview it would be over immediately.
        MichaelCrawford 12y ago
        No. I get lots of interviews with managers who use technologies I'm quite happy with. When I say I am discriminated against because of my age, it's because I can tell they don't want to hire me, the very instant they look at me. Do you know the term "code word", with reference to discrimination? With me, I am often told I would not "fit the company culture". My ex-wife was one a motel manager. She was specifically told not to rent rooms to First Nations people (ie. Native Canadians). A friend once interviewed to be an apartment manager. She was specifically told not to rent to black people. However, the owners of that hotel and that apartment, did not specifically come right out and say so. They used "code words", for example the apartment owner told my friend to inform people that spoke in a certain way, that there were no apartments available.
        12y ago
- MichaelCrawford 12y ago
  Many young people simply assume I am not up-to-date because of my age. In reality I invest a great deal of money in technical books, as well as time in reading them, and writing code for the exercises in the books.
  - japhyr 12y ago
    That sounds good, but it sounds hard to show that to a potential employer and impress them. Have you built anything with what you've learned? I'm 42, and I performed unimpressively in an interview two years ago. That gave me some motivation to go back and polish the projects I'd been working on, so the projects would speak for themselves. Since then a number of professional opportunities have come up, largely based on the quality of the projects I've been building. It has a snowball effect as well; it's become easier to pick the work I want, and get work in that area.
    - MichaelCrawford 12y ago
      I've built quite a lot with what I've learned, however it's not always possible to demonstrate that. Consider that I am not permitted to tell anyone at all what my most-recent project was, other than that it had something to do with OpenGL. This because the product was an in-house tool for a client of my client. The very existence of that tool is a closely guarded trade secret. I read Robert Ward's excellent "Debugging C" back in the day. In part as a result of that book, I am better at debugging just about anything than just about anybody. But what can I show to a potential employer or client? "Here's some code that doesn't have bugs in it." Similarly with Scott Meyers' "Effective C++" series. Three times I have applied to a certain company to write Mac OS X I/O Kit Kernel Extensions - what Apple calls device drivers. All three times, their HR refused to forward my resume to the hiring manager, unless I removed all the experience that wasn't directly related to Mac OS X. All three times I refused; I first learned to write device drivers by hand-coding LSI-11 assembly into octal, then entering the code into the LSI-11 kernel with an octal keypad and a profoundly primitive debugger called ODT, for "Octal Debugging Technique". That was in an Intro to Computer Architecture class at UC Davis that I took over the summer of 1981, while I was still in high school. Whoever it is who keeps telling me to remove my non-OS X experience, clearly does not understand how computers work. Each time I have refused; I don't want to work for idiots.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

smoyer 12y ago

I turned 50 last summer and the last time I was looking, I had no problem finding a good job ... perhaps the best job I've ever had. But to survive the interview process, you can't act 50 (or 55 or 51). You need to be current and make it obvious you've kept yourself up-to-date. To a lesser degree you can't look 50 either - I'm fortunate to have been dirty blond when I was younger and my hair doesn't seem to be greying yet but if it was and I was interviewing, I'd change it. Five hundred pounds and rolled into the interview in an oversized Aeron chair? You probably look older than you are to the interviewers. I don't think most age discrimination is conscious but even where it is, don't help them out by acting or looking old/older. Note: Since I have no idea how @MichaelCrawford looks or interviews, this comment is not aimed at him but is rather responding to a pattern I see when we interview people my age.

mud_dauber 12y ago
Completely agree. Like you, I have fortunate genes & much younger mindset.
- smoyer 12y ago
  One more anti-pattern to avoid during interviews - don't be the naysayer during your interview! If they say they're going to be trying "technology/algorithm/framework X", don't immediately say "that will never work!". Sure you've got 30 years of experience and you've tried that and failed with it 15 times but they're young and impressionable and they can do anything. Plus they might be right in this instance! Instead, you're the flexible guy who balances his experience, intuition and caution with the realization that while X might have failed you in the past, there might be situations where it's the right fit. So play the wise sage and say something like "that's an interesting idea, I'd be careful about Q, R and S but if it's implemented correctly that might be exactly the right plan (for instance, sometimes people really do need a NoSQL database, but often it should be put next to an RDBMS ... don't just choose one!). And you'd certainly like to be on the team working with X right? (you are presumeably at the job interview to get the job). So the right play during the interview is to look like you'd be a valuable member of the team. Once you've joined the team you can help guide them to a proper solution - whether or not it includes X. Bonus: Do not in ANY CIRCUMSTANCES get drawn into flame wars during your interview. Editors, IDEs, editors versus IDEs, languages and frameworks are tools - your position is that you use the one that best fits the project and maximizes productivity.
  - MichaelCrawford 12y ago
    I often get into flame wars during my interview. If the hiring manager says something that indicates he is a jackass, I will quite bluntly inform him of that fact. For example, Apple's CoreEdit is profoundly nonportable, as well as clearly designed to implement vendor lock-in. There are all manner of ways to store structured data that are quite portable. So if my interviewer asks me if I have experience with CoreEdit, I will quite emphatically tell them "No, because it's nonportable," then supply some portable solutions such as SQLite. I don't want to work for a bad manager. What I have a problem with is someone making assumptions about me, just because they see my grey hair, and the wrinkles in the skin of my face.
    - devopsproject 12y ago
      > I get lots of interviews, but quite commonly I find that my interviewer starts finding reasons not to hire me > I often get into flame wars during my interview. If the hiring manager says something that indicates he is a jackass, I will quite bluntly inform him of that fact Do you see the correlation? If you said this to me in an interview it would be over immediately.
      - MichaelCrawford 12y ago
        No. I get lots of interviews with managers who use technologies I'm quite happy with. When I say I am discriminated against because of my age, it's because I can tell they don't want to hire me, the very instant they look at me. Do you know the term "code word", with reference to discrimination? With me, I am often told I would not "fit the company culture". My ex-wife was one a motel manager. She was specifically told not to rent rooms to First Nations people (ie. Native Canadians). A friend once interviewed to be an apartment manager. She was specifically told not to rent to black people. However, the owners of that hotel and that apartment, did not specifically come right out and say so. They used "code words", for example the apartment owner told my friend to inform people that spoke in a certain way, that there were no apartments available.
        12y ago
MichaelCrawford 12y ago
Many young people simply assume I am not up-to-date because of my age. In reality I invest a great deal of money in technical books, as well as time in reading them, and writing code for the exercises in the books.
- japhyr 12y ago
  That sounds good, but it sounds hard to show that to a potential employer and impress them. Have you built anything with what you've learned? I'm 42, and I performed unimpressively in an interview two years ago. That gave me some motivation to go back and polish the projects I'd been working on, so the projects would speak for themselves. Since then a number of professional opportunities have come up, largely based on the quality of the projects I've been building. It has a snowball effect as well; it's become easier to pick the work I want, and get work in that area.
  - MichaelCrawford 12y ago
    I've built quite a lot with what I've learned, however it's not always possible to demonstrate that. Consider that I am not permitted to tell anyone at all what my most-recent project was, other than that it had something to do with OpenGL. This because the product was an in-house tool for a client of my client. The very existence of that tool is a closely guarded trade secret. I read Robert Ward's excellent "Debugging C" back in the day. In part as a result of that book, I am better at debugging just about anything than just about anybody. But what can I show to a potential employer or client? "Here's some code that doesn't have bugs in it." Similarly with Scott Meyers' "Effective C++" series. Three times I have applied to a certain company to write Mac OS X I/O Kit Kernel Extensions - what Apple calls device drivers. All three times, their HR refused to forward my resume to the hiring manager, unless I removed all the experience that wasn't directly related to Mac OS X. All three times I refused; I first learned to write device drivers by hand-coding LSI-11 assembly into octal, then entering the code into the LSI-11 kernel with an octal keypad and a profoundly primitive debugger called ODT, for "Octal Debugging Technique". That was in an Intro to Computer Architecture class at UC Davis that I took over the summer of 1981, while I was still in high school. Whoever it is who keeps telling me to remove my non-OS X experience, clearly does not understand how computers work. Each time I have refused; I don't want to work for idiots.