26 ms·

Google Sued by Job Candidate for Age Discrimination

186 points by molmalo 11y ago

solve 11y ago
California badly needs to be taken down a notch with all the age discrimination and wage fixing that's been going on there. NYC shows that it's possible to do vastly better on those. Or at least not to brazenly laugh in the face of those laws.
- freyr 11y ago
  I was at Google's NYC offices last week, and I immediately felt like I was on a college campus. The vast majority of people there look very young. I'm not sure whether the underlying cause is age discrimination, but clearly it's not a NYC/California issue so much as a company or industry issue.
  - solve 11y ago
    From my experience, I'm absolutely sure that large NYC companies are far more cautious about it. Both cities are full of young people, but CA doesn't even try. E.g. the YC application always has directly asked for age. Try that in NYC.
    - pyrophane 11y ago
      SF is too happy to bend to the demands of the tech lobby because the industry is so dominant there. In NYC tech is one of many. The importance is recognized, as it has created jobs while other industries are in decline (cough publishing), but there is no sense here that anyone feels the need to kowtow to the industry.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - icefox 11y ago
      Looking just now the YC application doesn't explicitly ask for age, but it does ask for > Please enter the url of a 1 minute unlisted (not private) YouTube video introducing the founders It would be pretty easy to discriminate on age/race/sex with that.
      - solve 11y ago
        You're looking at the wrong page. They've moved the personal questions to a separate "Founder Profile" form, which each founder gets a special email link to access and fill out.
rockdoe 11y ago
The article looks interesting, not so much for the merits of the case but for the data on the median age per employer. There's going to be a bias in there related to at what point the company was growing the fastest. The question is if there is a another bias - that of actual discrimination.
- pyrophane 11y ago
  Unfortunately I'm not sure how valid those stats are. I'm not familiar with the website that conducted the survey, but there may be a substantial self-selection bias based on who chose to respond in the first place.
1971genocide 11y ago
I hate the trend of new sites putting the stock information for each company mentioned in the article. How did this became a thing ? Do ppl need that data to be shoved in the face like that ?
- bandrami 11y ago
  WSJ, Bloomberg, and I think Yahoo! Finance all do that, and it kind of makes sense for them to.
- maggit 11y ago
  Is it a trend? Note that this is the Wall Street Journal. I think they are targeting a readership that is particularly interested in stock information.
  - 1971genocide 11y ago
    I am not sure, I have been seeing it pop up on every article being posted on HN and reddit.
    - pliny 11y ago
      There have been a lot more Bloomberg articles submitted to HN lately.
  - wyclif 11y ago
    WSJ and Bloomberg are famous for that feature, because they are popular with finance nerds.
googbad2 11y ago
Don't be evil (unless their old!)
- ape4 11y ago
  their -> they're
blfr 11y ago
Previously https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9429576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9429576
deepGem 11y ago
I doubt this case will hold water. There doesn't seem to be conclusive evidence that points to the age bias. That being said, the lawyers must be seeing something that I'm not. They wouldn't file a suit otherwise.
- reacweb 11y ago
  Even if the case does not hold, the cost of the lawyers is probably lower than the reputation damage on Google.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  They might just simply see dollar signs.
  - saiya-jin 11y ago
    I presume same dollar signs as some (anecdotal) lady who sued McDonald and won millions by burning her mouth with fresh coffee because it was... wait for it... hot. On a more serious note, most jobs have all kinds of biases. Army doesn't take older recruits, nor 50% of all recruits are not women/gay/whatever group is right now poplar to fight for. Or commodity traders - one of my ex-gf succeeded in this field, but the amount of macho sh*t she had to go through and still pops up almost daily is unbelievable. Also, some members of her current trading team, which are more on introvert side (yes, there are some traders like that) were asking their boss on private meetings how to handle a WOMAN as their colleague. Some are 50-something, and never worked with woman directly. She just ain't crybaby like these pathetic people and actually works hard to prove herself in such an environment.
    - chrisBob 11y ago
      > some (anecdotal) lady who sued McDonald and won millions by burning her mouth with fresh coffee because it was... wait for it... hot. There are lots of frivolous law suits out there. If you look into this one you will find that it was a legitimate case, and it wasn't her mouth that got burned. Your argument will be more valuable if it is based on facts.
nailer 11y ago
Not that this contradicts the claim, but Rob Pike (59) and Ken Thompson (72) from Unix both work at Google.
- Cederfjard 11y ago
  They are really special cases though, aren't they? I don't think it affects the larger discussion that Google employs a couple of extremely well-known and proven guys in their older age.
  - M8 11y ago
    Yeah, but how about Eric Schmidt? He is 59! Just kidding :).
  - wyclif 11y ago
    You're right; Pike and Thompson are huge outliers. If there is going to be a case made that age discrimination doesn't exist at companies where there have been class-action lawsuits, it's not particularly compelling to point to a pair of outliers as proof.
    - ptaipale 11y ago
      Well, nailer definitely did not provide these outliers as proof. More an interesting anecdote.
      - wyclif 11y ago
        I know he didn't—I can read. I was speaking hypothetically, which is clear from my comment.
  - xienze 11y ago
    Yeah, everyone wants to trot them out whenever Google + age discrimination comes up, but they're not exactly what you'd call your typical 60+ year old developers. Get back to me when Google hires 70 year old Joe Smith.
  - 11y ago
vvpan 11y ago
Dunno about Google, but in the past couple of companies where I worked age was a strong source of bias no doubt.
- nolok 11y ago
  For my (admittedly relatively short) experience in office jobs it was also a self fulfilling prophecy: because tech companies avoided to hire people past 30-35, those either started their own companies or remained at their current jobs even where they didn't want to be there anymore, which gave those established companies a negative view of older devs. Rinse and repeat, add the sad european (?) classic "experienced people have to be manager and mostly stay away from code, senior developer doesn't exist" and you get a poor state of affairs.
  - xroche 11y ago
    And this is why major software companies are actually American. Most European software companies are terrible places, where "coding" people are considered as the lowest class. I don't want to generalize, there are incredible startups and small companies out there, but hey, no European Google or Facebook. And strangely enough, "managers" who used to be good in their 20's and who have been only producing powerpoint-esque bullshit for the last 15 years are not very valuable assets, despite being overpaid, resulting in poor quality products.
    - thefreeman 11y ago
      That seems like quite a vast over simplification. Silicon Valley being in the US probably has a lot to do with it as well.
    - pif 11y ago
      I always find it funny when I read statements about Europe as if there existed something like a European culture. Europe is not a nation, and European nations do not share the same culture. Sure, several values are shared, but the differences can be great. PS: calling the USA America, that makes me smile, too!
heisenbit 11y ago
The stats table in the article is imho not a good basis for discussion. The sample is too small and there is a huge self selection bias for younger people to sign up to such surveys.
fit2rule 11y ago
Age discrimination is definitely an issue in this industry. I encourage all the <40's to consider their position towards their elder peers in light of just how quickly 10 - 15 years can fly by when you spend a majority of it in front of a screen ..
- nothrabannosir 11y ago
  I understand you didn't mean it this way, but this is such a depressing message.
  - jasonkester 11y ago
    It's only depressing if you first hear it after said years have flown. Taken in at age 27, it might be the spark that sets one down a life path where "time in a felt cube" is minimized in favor of higher priority things. My 30s flew. But very little of it was spent actually heads down coding.
    - ExpiredLink 11y ago
      > It's only depressing if you first hear it after said years have flown. ... or if you (like me) ignore it because your knowledge and experience are 'state of the art'. Really depressing seeing those 'shortage of IT workers' articles. I would laugh if I could laugh.
    - mikekchar 11y ago
      When I started out 100+ hour weeks were the norm for me. I worked the first year and a half without taking a single day off (neither weekends nor national holidays). Definitely not worth it for me. In my 30's I got smarter and programmed as much as I wanted (which was still a lot more than I got paid for). Career was still a huge priority for me though. I struggled to find work/life balance because I thought it was a zero sum game. In my 40's I took 5 years off and taught English in Japan. I came back to a programming career 2 or 3 years ago. What have I learned? Heads down coding is really important to me. I prioritise it. It is what I enjoy doing most in this world. I pretty much ignore my career now and just try to help out my team the best way that I can. I like helping people (I learned that from teaching). I also try to write as much code as I can before I get tired. And then I rest. My job is fun (most of the time). Sometimes helping people who make my job not fun is very hard, but you always have a choice whether to help people or not. Sometimes if I can't help someone, I have to let it go. I have learned that there are some jobs where you have to let the job go because you can't help the people who are there. But in my experience, most jobs aren't like that. Usually there is a place for people who like to write code. This kind of life can be good too :-)
chucksmart 11y ago
May as well decry prevalent age discrimination in prostitution industry. Its not bias; its a scientific fact. Old people lose cerebral elasticity and therefore suck at learning new tricks.
- wyclif 11y ago
  [citation needed]
- jgrahamc 11y ago
  Old people lose cerebral elasticity and therefore suck at learning new tricks. And experience counts for nothing because everything in the computer industry is about the new, new, new, new, new. Right? Wrong.
  - M8 11y ago
    Endless repetition of thin-thick client cycles.
    - chucksmart 11y ago
      Fields Medal winner.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - chucksmart 11y ago
    I said nothing about the value of experience and dirty old tricks and Jews.
  - tomjen3 11y ago
    Experience in old technologies is a huge hindrance to progress - likely the biggest there is because it prevents people from understanding this new thing - it looks superficially like this old thing and so why not just stick with that? This doesn't mean that old people are automatically worthless, so long as they play around with new technologies too - but looking at the number of people at my workplace who do not code outside of work, statistically the old guy sitting in front of you has spent the last ten years writing the same badly designed Java. If you have spent the last ten years coding java and nothing but java what is the chance that you will choose Go to write that highly concurrent non-blocking network server that is going to be a huge difference in whether the business succeeds or falls? After all Java has nio so that should be good enough, right?
estefan 11y ago
Maybe the older guys are contracting so wouldn't show up those stats...
jqm 11y ago
So that movie "The Internship" with Owen Wilson was just fiction and Google doesn't really hire out-of-work 40 somethings who don't know anything about tech for their sales experience?
- Red_Tarsius 11y ago
  I still can't believe how bad it was. I had high hopes for it to be an educational comedy. Easily on the top 10 of the worst plots I've seen.
- danans 11y ago
  Oh man, that movie was just horrible. And at least you have a sense of humor about how horrible it was, but I've face-palmed so many times when people ask me, as a Google employee, if that's how it really is to work there.
  - loopbit 11y ago
    On the other hand, I do have a couple of friends working in Google in the London office that, not only love that movie, but have incorporated some of the things in it in their teams :) I must say I haven't seen it myself, so I can't judger.
skj 11y ago
In my first group at Google the ages were 26, 29, 32 (me at the time), 35, 55, 60, 70.
artur_makly 11y ago
"Sanctuary" "Sanctuary" "Sanctuary"
math 11y ago
For software engineers at least, I think the Google interview process would naturally select younger people. You need to have a pretty good grip on algorithms / ability to do programming competition like problems and in my experience at least you're not frequently practicing a lot of the required knowledge in real world software dev roles. You get rusty. By comparison, this is fresh in the minds of people just out of university. Also, I think younger people are more open to doing the required prep. I've heard many an older developers complain that they think their time is better spent learning / doing other things (which have more immediate real-world benefit). I also don't think Google should consider changing an interview process that is working for them on the grounds that it may be indirectly penalizing older people. note: I'm an older software dev about to go through the Google interview process.
- ChristianGeek 11y ago
  Didn't Google admit recently that there was not a strong correlation between how well a developer did on their interview questions and how well they performed within the company?
  - r0naa 11y ago
    citation needed...
    - jnbiche 11y ago
      The interview with Google HR stating this finding right is here (Googled "google" + "interview" + "correlation"): http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-hunting-big-data-may-not-be-such-a-big-deal.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-hunting-b...
      - r0naa 11y ago
        I am not sure if you read the article but they never claim that they have found a correlation between performance on technical interviews and ability on the job. Yes, brainteasers are worthless and "structured behavioral" questions yield better informations but there is a gap between claiming that technical interviews are worthless and that. Also, it is usually the duty of the author to support their claims with a direct reference to sources not the opposite.
csbrooks 11y ago
There's not a lot of detail about the actual case. But to me based on what's there, it sounds like a recruiter reached out and told him "you would be a great candidate to come work at Google", which is kind of what recruiters always say. Then he got sent to someone else (someone technical?) for a phone screen, and they decided he wasn't a great fit. It's possible his experience just wasn't really what they were looking for, and that wasn't evident from his resume. I'm not trying to defend Google. As a 40+ year old programmer, I'm concerned about age discrimination, too. The article just doesn't make a very compelling case to me, I guess.
- lqdc13 11y ago
  Definitely agree. The line that is cited by the employee is that the company is "embarking on its largest recruiting / hiring campaign in its history" and that they are very interested in the candidate. This is actually the exact line many people get when they get approached by Google recruiters. Then he didn't pass the phone screen... If there was something worse said during phone screen itself, then they probably would have put it in the article as an argument on his side...
- mikekchar 11y ago
  I have to agree with you. Even if they said that the person looks like a great candidate, failing a telephone interview is not necessarily a sign of age discrimination. We once had a guy who looked absolutely fabulous on paper, and was older than me (and I'm pushing 50 ;-) ). To be honest, I was incredibly excited to get the opportunity to work with someone who had more experience than me -- especially with the CV that he had. I'm the oldest person on our team and having someone else who had been there and done that was really enticing. But the phone interview just didn't go well enough. I still kind of regret not calling him in for a face-2-face, but we already had a full plate of people who's phone interview did go well. Sometimes that's just the way it works out. I've screwed up interviews in the past too. One can't very well overlook a bad interview because the candidate is older. That would also be age discrimination.
  - T-hawk 11y ago
    > One can't very well overlook a bad interview because the candidate is older. That would also be age discrimination. Legally, in the US, it isn't. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act specifically only protects workers 40 or older. http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/adea.cfm http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/adea.cfm There is nothing illegal at the US federal level about discrimination in the reverse direction (favoring workers over 40, perhaps by overlooking a bad interview), nor about age discrimination against a 39-year-old who is perceived to be too old for the company or industry.
HillOBeans 11y ago
I can't help but wonder where this might leave someone such as myself, who is over 40, but relatively new to professional software development. I've programmed for years as a hobby, but was educated in a different field and have only recently decided to pursue programming work for a living. Not only am I old, but I also have little experience compared to others my age.
- hvs 11y ago
  As someone that is months away from 40, I've considered this as well. However, considering the continued lack of developer talent as well as the increasing demand for it, I'm not terribly concerned.
- hox 11y ago
  As long as you get the right hiring manager it shouldn't matter. I agree that it is a valid concern of yours, and rightfully so in this hiring climate. But fair hiring managers do exist, and they build some of the best teams around. I work at Twilio, and we put a lot of effort into providing a hiring experience that removes as many biases as possible. The end result is a solid, diverse workforce that understands that we all come from different walks of life and have different employment expectations. Other companies, such as Stripe, also seem to have similar initiatives in their hiring practices. It's a concern, but some of us are actively fighting it.
- mikekchar 11y ago
  As someone who is over 40 and took a few years off, I can tell you that having recent working experience is more important than age (or at least it was for me). Nobody seemed worried about how old I was but many people wondered if I could still code after taking 5 years off (I kept coding as a hobby, though).
- welshguy 11y ago
  I'm wondering as well! Been a UK-based API-level tech author for 10 years and in product marketing (and sales, even) before that. I've programmed as a hobby for 25 years, and love technology so much I'd like to spend the next 10 doing it professionally. It doesn't even have to be a great job :-) But age goes against me, despite an enduring passion in tech and having learned several languages on my own dime.
HeidiWalker 11y ago
This is why the time has come for blind auditions like GapJumpers offers - helps to avoid all bias when deciding who to interview. Bias for age, women returning from career breaks, education pedigree etc - all avoided if you focus on how a candidate completes a job challenge first. https://www.gapjumpers.me https://www.gapjumpers.me
- bottled_poe 11y ago
  And that would be great, if only we lived in a world where everyone was judged purely on technical merit and experience. In reality, social integration with the existing team is exceptionally important. I really wouldn't expect this to change any time soon.
  - jpttsn 11y ago
    Exactly. Synergies from working together are the reason we build businesses in the first place. If the only thing that mattered was individual merit and experience, we could all just sell our work to businesses without a hiring agreement.
  - HeidiWalker 11y ago
    Why assume that selecting candidates for interview based on the results of a blind audition/technical challenge approach like the GapJumpers model wouldn't also yield fantastic candidates who fit into the culture? The real benefit is increasing the diversity of who you interview in the first place, since getting the interview is usually the hardest part. Since there is so much bias associated with reviewing résumés then the entire process is tainted. At least if you eliminate in the first step you have a chance of eliminating it at the next steps as well.
- hessenwolf 11y ago
  Or you could all choose the German solution... 1. A photo on your cv. Or it goes in the bin. 2. Birth date. 3. Marital status and children. 4. Every educational achievement documented officially since highschool. 5. Every working position with an official written reference, in deeply codified form, written mandatorily by your boss, who probably inspired you to want a new job in teh first place. The last company I left had a secret ten factor 5 level numeric rating system, which was then translated into the codified text by the personel department.
UUMMUU 11y ago
This honestly just sounds like a recruiter trying to get their numbers of hires up by getting more people to interview. I too was told I'd be a great fit at Google but in my interview my lack of intense algorithm study showed up and my non-ivy league college didn't win me any points. Poor guy because it sounds like they really got his hopes up.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
j03m1 11y ago
In reference to the table with national age averages, I would love to see those numbers redrawn from the perspective of development staff only. I'm curious about this because I think in recent years there is a corresponding jump in the number of computer science graduates. There may just be more programmers in those lower age brackets and as an organization that skews heavily toward developers your age grouping may just be lower. That said, google's recruiting process is horrible and robotic. Feel for the guy.
swimfar 11y ago
A little off-topic, but a fact that I find amazing is that around the time of the first moon landing the average age of the mission controllers was 26. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tothemoon/kranz.html http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tothemoon/kranz.html
- laurenbee 11y ago
  NASA specifically wanted people right out of college to do operations so that they would not have to unlearn bad habits and since everyone would have to learn new skills for the moon landing to be successful. http://history.nasa.gov/monograph14.pdf http://history.nasa.gov/monograph14.pdf (see p. 17)
grellas 11y ago
This case has nothing really to do with the claim of the named plaintiff. If being brushed off after a brief interview, etc. and similar skimpy items were the criteria for filing a claim for age discrimination, the courts could be loaded with such claims. There is basically zero evidence from the interaction noted in the article to make for a sustainable claim of this type. No, this is all about class action procedures. 1. As in most such cases, the named plaintiff is there only to satisfy the technical requirement that a representative be named to represent the class. 2. The underlying claim, then, in the absence of any direct proof of discrimination in any given case, is based on an "effects" theory: Google stats show that it has an average workforce whose age is considerably lower than what other stats show is the average age of computer programmers; this "proves" that latent discrimination is happening; ergo, the class is entitled to massive damages because Google's hiring practices single out older people and treat them unfairly by rejecting them as job applicants on unlawful grounds. 3. Google recently settled an age discrimination case in which there appears to have been real evidence that they treated an older worker unfairly. This case now seeks to take the evidence in that one instance, combine it with stats evidencing a young workforce at Google, and hope this is enough to justify the class action claim. 4. This is as flimsy a basis on which to sue as one might imagine but its point is to try to pry open Google's confidential employment files to hope to find real evidence somewhere in the mix. In other words, it is a fishing expedition. No particular sympathy here for Google. I am sure it does treat older workers unfairly at some level. The tech industry does this across the board. But that does not make this lawsuit something attractive. It is a stick-up suit, pure and simple, from all surface indicators. Given how flimsy it actually is, I predict it will go nowhere in the long term. There may yet be a potent case lurking against Google over its policies. This just is not it.
rrich 11y ago
Unfortunately, the nature of the technical interview allows for easy disqualification of an individual. Miss a semi colon, something we all have done, you're disqualified. Coupled with the preconceived notions of the interviewer, even the most skilled individual can be disqualified with ease. Doesn't bode well in a industry that seems rampant with issues regarding age and gender .
joelberman 11y ago
I am 68 and working as much as I want to. I had no trouble finding a job and am actually in demand. I guarantee this is not because I am a genius. I have hired many people over the years, many worked out well. I have also rejected many candidates over the years. I am sure many of them would have worked out too, but I will never know. Believe me, when you need to hire someone you want to find the right person quickly. And often you know in the first few minutes if the candidate is a fit or not. Then to be polite and fair you spend the next 30-45 minutes even with the candidate you are certain you do not want. Think about the first 2 minutes, because that is where you lost it. Not in the code you wrote or the phone connection.
- datashovel 11y ago
  Interviews are like politics. The people who are good at it usually aren't the people you want.
  - mak4athp 11y ago
    A good interviewer isn't looking for somebody that's suave and comfortable in the interview. They understand awkwardness, nervousness and that it's easy to make stupid technical and social mistakes under pressure -- and they may even relate to it. But they still probably make a 95%-accurate assessment in those first couple minutes.
    - regularfry 11y ago
      Or at least, think they do. They're human, and subject to human biases which no amount of awareness and understanding will completely remove.
  - jeffbush 11y ago
    I don't really agree with that. Some people are naturally more outgoing and comfortable in interview situations than others. It doesn't mean they're bad people.
  - HelloMcFly 11y ago
typicalday 11y ago
I can't speak for El Goog. What would you do: http://www.bobheath.com/ http://www.bobheath.com/ http://www.aspnet.net/ http://www.aspnet.net/ http://www.visit-new-york-city.com/ http://www.visit-new-york-city.com/
- wambotron 11y ago
  I'm assuming they weren't interviewing him for his design skills.
  - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
    He claims to have developed a widely-used CMS built on Java. But his sites use Joomla, which is strange when he's supposedly offering and selling a better CMS of his own. I'm surprised he got an interview.
- teuobk 11y ago
  Clearly he is not a graphic designer, but he would benefit from contracting that out. The sites as they exist today give a poor impression of him. Appearances do matter. Even ignoring all of the dates mentioned, his sites and his resume do not look like the work of somebody who has up-to-date software development knowledge.
- badmadrad 11y ago
  The front end skills are seriously awful but if he is doing all this by hand maybe he just needs a bump in the right direction. IBM has a lot of legacy software and projects. Their engineers are brilliant but they are like time capsules. They get on a project and stay on it for years because the money is there. When the money dries up and they come out of the 5*5 cubicle basement hole ALOT of shit has happened. Realistically, it has to come down to cost benefit. This guy has the chops but would need to be brought to speed on latest dev practices. By the time he is effectively contributing to Google it might be 18 months in. By that time he is well into his retirements years and Google has invested probably 200K(maybe more) into him.
- PopsiclePete 11y ago
CodeSheikh 11y ago
We had recently interviewed a female candidate for a Lead engineering role at our company. What impressed us about her resume was that she was mentioned as co-inventor in at least 11 patents while working for IBM, various SW "Architecture" projects yada yada. During the interview she could not explain the basics of database queries processing before we could even asked her how to write a simple statement that prints out the dupes. The thing is we (as I address to most of the HM community which I am assuming is tech/IT related) work in a very lucrative yet highly dangerous field. If you don not keep up with ongoing technologies and have failed to update your skills even in a time frame of 6-12 months, buddy youre outta market. Companies like IBM, HP/Compaq, Dell, Oil firms, Networking companies have this culture (btw i have had experienced it first handed) where they promote their engineers to lead roles so early on and have them do all of the Project Management tasks and in the midst of everything, years pass by and they are left with obsolete technical skills and 20 years of work experience. I wish things were not like this.
- wyclif 11y ago
  I agree with this comment and there's a lot of truth to this observation, except for one tiny nitpick: "buddy, you're out of market." That depends on many factors, though...primarily the employer and what kind of work is done. For instance, Google has a huge C++ codebase that needs to be maintained. I guess it could be argued that even in C++, one needs to keep up with the C++11/C++14 curve, but I doubt that curve is as extreme or difficult to keep current on as, say, new developments in JavaScript.
  - mak4athp 11y ago
    > it could be argued that even in C++, one needs to keep up with the C++11/C++14 curve It would be a poor argument. An accomplished senior level candidate may not not follow all the proceeding of some language committee, but could have all kinds of important technical and non-technical skills. It's often more valuable that your engineers understand your problem domain well, produce code with a low defect rate in a steady rhythm, encourage others to excel through management or mentoring, etc.
  - 11y ago
hownottowrite 11y ago
The fellow in question seems to have a fairly robust resume, at least according to LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertpheath https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertpheath
- dreaminvm 11y ago
  If you read into the job summaries, it seems like he's been doing the same things for a long time without progressing to roles of greater responsibility. On a side note, hes also starting an Oracle certification class.
mathattack 11y ago
I've seen a lot of complaints about the interview process at Google. One core issue to me seems to be that they outsource a lot of their recruiting. Another may be the metrics. Hiring the equivalent of gym membership salespeople to do recruiting has issues. On the other side, I've only had very positive interactions with Google recruiting. When you have a company growing so fast in both relative and absolute numbers, you're likely to run into some issues. In the broader sense, technical people have to stay relevant. I was recently helping a Phd data scientist try to get a new job. When I suggested that he learn Python to augment his SQL, he said he was too old to learn new tricks. After hearing that I new he wouldn't be of use in my firm, or many others. The flip side is that the people who do stay relevant and have all the experience are enormously valuable. Someone who is programming in Python or Ruby on Rails that also had to learn Assembler and C will have enormous insights into performance and what's going on in the guts of the machine. Those types of folks can solve problems other don't even know how to frame. It's hard to find 21 year olds with such breadth.

186 points by molmalo 11y ago

solve 11y ago

California badly needs to be taken down a notch with all the age discrimination and wage fixing that's been going on there. NYC shows that it's possible to do vastly better on those. Or at least not to brazenly laugh in the face of those laws.

freyr 11y ago
I was at Google's NYC offices last week, and I immediately felt like I was on a college campus. The vast majority of people there look very young. I'm not sure whether the underlying cause is age discrimination, but clearly it's not a NYC/California issue so much as a company or industry issue.
- solve 11y ago
  From my experience, I'm absolutely sure that large NYC companies are far more cautious about it. Both cities are full of young people, but CA doesn't even try. E.g. the YC application always has directly asked for age. Try that in NYC.
  - pyrophane 11y ago
    SF is too happy to bend to the demands of the tech lobby because the industry is so dominant there. In NYC tech is one of many. The importance is recognized, as it has created jobs while other industries are in decline (cough publishing), but there is no sense here that anyone feels the need to kowtow to the industry.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - icefox 11y ago
    Looking just now the YC application doesn't explicitly ask for age, but it does ask for > Please enter the url of a 1 minute unlisted (not private) YouTube video introducing the founders It would be pretty easy to discriminate on age/race/sex with that.
    - solve 11y ago
      You're looking at the wrong page. They've moved the personal questions to a separate "Founder Profile" form, which each founder gets a special email link to access and fill out.

rockdoe 11y ago

The article looks interesting, not so much for the merits of the case but for the data on the median age per employer. There's going to be a bias in there related to at what point the company was growing the fastest. The question is if there is a another bias - that of actual discrimination.

pyrophane 11y ago
Unfortunately I'm not sure how valid those stats are. I'm not familiar with the website that conducted the survey, but there may be a substantial self-selection bias based on who chose to respond in the first place.

1971genocide 11y ago

I hate the trend of new sites putting the stock information for each company mentioned in the article. How did this became a thing ? Do ppl need that data to be shoved in the face like that ?

bandrami 11y ago
WSJ, Bloomberg, and I think Yahoo! Finance all do that, and it kind of makes sense for them to.
maggit 11y ago
Is it a trend? Note that this is the Wall Street Journal. I think they are targeting a readership that is particularly interested in stock information.
- 1971genocide 11y ago
  I am not sure, I have been seeing it pop up on every article being posted on HN and reddit.
  - pliny 11y ago
    There have been a lot more Bloomberg articles submitted to HN lately.
- wyclif 11y ago
  WSJ and Bloomberg are famous for that feature, because they are popular with finance nerds.

googbad2 11y ago

Don't be evil (unless their old!)

ape4 11y ago
their -> they're

blfr 11y ago

Previously https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9429576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9429576

deepGem 11y ago

I doubt this case will hold water. There doesn't seem to be conclusive evidence that points to the age bias. That being said, the lawyers must be seeing something that I'm not. They wouldn't file a suit otherwise.

reacweb 11y ago
Even if the case does not hold, the cost of the lawyers is probably lower than the reputation damage on Google.
jacquesm 11y ago
They might just simply see dollar signs.
- saiya-jin 11y ago
  I presume same dollar signs as some (anecdotal) lady who sued McDonald and won millions by burning her mouth with fresh coffee because it was... wait for it... hot. On a more serious note, most jobs have all kinds of biases. Army doesn't take older recruits, nor 50% of all recruits are not women/gay/whatever group is right now poplar to fight for. Or commodity traders - one of my ex-gf succeeded in this field, but the amount of macho sh*t she had to go through and still pops up almost daily is unbelievable. Also, some members of her current trading team, which are more on introvert side (yes, there are some traders like that) were asking their boss on private meetings how to handle a WOMAN as their colleague. Some are 50-something, and never worked with woman directly. She just ain't crybaby like these pathetic people and actually works hard to prove herself in such an environment.
  - chrisBob 11y ago
    > some (anecdotal) lady who sued McDonald and won millions by burning her mouth with fresh coffee because it was... wait for it... hot. There are lots of frivolous law suits out there. If you look into this one you will find that it was a legitimate case, and it wasn't her mouth that got burned. Your argument will be more valuable if it is based on facts.

nailer 11y ago

Not that this contradicts the claim, but Rob Pike (59) and Ken Thompson (72) from Unix both work at Google.

Cederfjard 11y ago
They are really special cases though, aren't they? I don't think it affects the larger discussion that Google employs a couple of extremely well-known and proven guys in their older age.
- M8 11y ago
  Yeah, but how about Eric Schmidt? He is 59! Just kidding :).
- wyclif 11y ago
  You're right; Pike and Thompson are huge outliers. If there is going to be a case made that age discrimination doesn't exist at companies where there have been class-action lawsuits, it's not particularly compelling to point to a pair of outliers as proof.
  - ptaipale 11y ago
    Well, nailer definitely did not provide these outliers as proof. More an interesting anecdote.
    - wyclif 11y ago
      I know he didn't—I can read. I was speaking hypothetically, which is clear from my comment.
- xienze 11y ago
  Yeah, everyone wants to trot them out whenever Google + age discrimination comes up, but they're not exactly what you'd call your typical 60+ year old developers. Get back to me when Google hires 70 year old Joe Smith.
- 11y ago

vvpan 11y ago

Dunno about Google, but in the past couple of companies where I worked age was a strong source of bias no doubt.

nolok 11y ago
For my (admittedly relatively short) experience in office jobs it was also a self fulfilling prophecy: because tech companies avoided to hire people past 30-35, those either started their own companies or remained at their current jobs even where they didn't want to be there anymore, which gave those established companies a negative view of older devs. Rinse and repeat, add the sad european (?) classic "experienced people have to be manager and mostly stay away from code, senior developer doesn't exist" and you get a poor state of affairs.
- xroche 11y ago
  And this is why major software companies are actually American. Most European software companies are terrible places, where "coding" people are considered as the lowest class. I don't want to generalize, there are incredible startups and small companies out there, but hey, no European Google or Facebook. And strangely enough, "managers" who used to be good in their 20's and who have been only producing powerpoint-esque bullshit for the last 15 years are not very valuable assets, despite being overpaid, resulting in poor quality products.
  - thefreeman 11y ago
    That seems like quite a vast over simplification. Silicon Valley being in the US probably has a lot to do with it as well.
  - pif 11y ago
    I always find it funny when I read statements about Europe as if there existed something like a European culture. Europe is not a nation, and European nations do not share the same culture. Sure, several values are shared, but the differences can be great. PS: calling the USA America, that makes me smile, too!

heisenbit 11y ago

The stats table in the article is imho not a good basis for discussion. The sample is too small and there is a huge self selection bias for younger people to sign up to such surveys.

fit2rule 11y ago

Age discrimination is definitely an issue in this industry. I encourage all the <40's to consider their position towards their elder peers in light of just how quickly 10 - 15 years can fly by when you spend a majority of it in front of a screen ..

nothrabannosir 11y ago
I understand you didn't mean it this way, but this is such a depressing message.
- jasonkester 11y ago
  It's only depressing if you first hear it after said years have flown. Taken in at age 27, it might be the spark that sets one down a life path where "time in a felt cube" is minimized in favor of higher priority things. My 30s flew. But very little of it was spent actually heads down coding.
  - ExpiredLink 11y ago
    > It's only depressing if you first hear it after said years have flown. ... or if you (like me) ignore it because your knowledge and experience are 'state of the art'. Really depressing seeing those 'shortage of IT workers' articles. I would laugh if I could laugh.
  - mikekchar 11y ago
    When I started out 100+ hour weeks were the norm for me. I worked the first year and a half without taking a single day off (neither weekends nor national holidays). Definitely not worth it for me. In my 30's I got smarter and programmed as much as I wanted (which was still a lot more than I got paid for). Career was still a huge priority for me though. I struggled to find work/life balance because I thought it was a zero sum game. In my 40's I took 5 years off and taught English in Japan. I came back to a programming career 2 or 3 years ago. What have I learned? Heads down coding is really important to me. I prioritise it. It is what I enjoy doing most in this world. I pretty much ignore my career now and just try to help out my team the best way that I can. I like helping people (I learned that from teaching). I also try to write as much code as I can before I get tired. And then I rest. My job is fun (most of the time). Sometimes helping people who make my job not fun is very hard, but you always have a choice whether to help people or not. Sometimes if I can't help someone, I have to let it go. I have learned that there are some jobs where you have to let the job go because you can't help the people who are there. But in my experience, most jobs aren't like that. Usually there is a place for people who like to write code. This kind of life can be good too :-)

chucksmart 11y ago

May as well decry prevalent age discrimination in prostitution industry. Its not bias; its a scientific fact. Old people lose cerebral elasticity and therefore suck at learning new tricks.

wyclif 11y ago
[citation needed]
jgrahamc 11y ago
Old people lose cerebral elasticity and therefore suck at learning new tricks. And experience counts for nothing because everything in the computer industry is about the new, new, new, new, new. Right? Wrong.
- M8 11y ago
  Endless repetition of thin-thick client cycles.
  - chucksmart 11y ago
    Fields Medal winner.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- chucksmart 11y ago
  I said nothing about the value of experience and dirty old tricks and Jews.
- tomjen3 11y ago
  Experience in old technologies is a huge hindrance to progress - likely the biggest there is because it prevents people from understanding this new thing - it looks superficially like this old thing and so why not just stick with that? This doesn't mean that old people are automatically worthless, so long as they play around with new technologies too - but looking at the number of people at my workplace who do not code outside of work, statistically the old guy sitting in front of you has spent the last ten years writing the same badly designed Java. If you have spent the last ten years coding java and nothing but java what is the chance that you will choose Go to write that highly concurrent non-blocking network server that is going to be a huge difference in whether the business succeeds or falls? After all Java has nio so that should be good enough, right?

estefan 11y ago

Maybe the older guys are contracting so wouldn't show up those stats...

jqm 11y ago

So that movie "The Internship" with Owen Wilson was just fiction and Google doesn't really hire out-of-work 40 somethings who don't know anything about tech for their sales experience?

Red_Tarsius 11y ago
I still can't believe how bad it was. I had high hopes for it to be an educational comedy. Easily on the top 10 of the worst plots I've seen.
danans 11y ago
Oh man, that movie was just horrible. And at least you have a sense of humor about how horrible it was, but I've face-palmed so many times when people ask me, as a Google employee, if that's how it really is to work there.
- loopbit 11y ago
  On the other hand, I do have a couple of friends working in Google in the London office that, not only love that movie, but have incorporated some of the things in it in their teams :) I must say I haven't seen it myself, so I can't judger.

skj 11y ago

In my first group at Google the ages were 26, 29, 32 (me at the time), 35, 55, 60, 70.

artur_makly 11y ago

"Sanctuary" "Sanctuary" "Sanctuary"

math 11y ago

For software engineers at least, I think the Google interview process would naturally select younger people. You need to have a pretty good grip on algorithms / ability to do programming competition like problems and in my experience at least you're not frequently practicing a lot of the required knowledge in real world software dev roles. You get rusty. By comparison, this is fresh in the minds of people just out of university. Also, I think younger people are more open to doing the required prep. I've heard many an older developers complain that they think their time is better spent learning / doing other things (which have more immediate real-world benefit). I also don't think Google should consider changing an interview process that is working for them on the grounds that it may be indirectly penalizing older people. note: I'm an older software dev about to go through the Google interview process.

ChristianGeek 11y ago
Didn't Google admit recently that there was not a strong correlation between how well a developer did on their interview questions and how well they performed within the company?
- r0naa 11y ago
  citation needed...
  - jnbiche 11y ago
    The interview with Google HR stating this finding right is here (Googled "google" + "interview" + "correlation"): http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-hunting-big-data-may-not-be-such-a-big-deal.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-hunting-b...
    - r0naa 11y ago
      I am not sure if you read the article but they never claim that they have found a correlation between performance on technical interviews and ability on the job. Yes, brainteasers are worthless and "structured behavioral" questions yield better informations but there is a gap between claiming that technical interviews are worthless and that. Also, it is usually the duty of the author to support their claims with a direct reference to sources not the opposite.

csbrooks 11y ago

There's not a lot of detail about the actual case. But to me based on what's there, it sounds like a recruiter reached out and told him "you would be a great candidate to come work at Google", which is kind of what recruiters always say. Then he got sent to someone else (someone technical?) for a phone screen, and they decided he wasn't a great fit. It's possible his experience just wasn't really what they were looking for, and that wasn't evident from his resume. I'm not trying to defend Google. As a 40+ year old programmer, I'm concerned about age discrimination, too. The article just doesn't make a very compelling case to me, I guess.

lqdc13 11y ago
Definitely agree. The line that is cited by the employee is that the company is "embarking on its largest recruiting / hiring campaign in its history" and that they are very interested in the candidate. This is actually the exact line many people get when they get approached by Google recruiters. Then he didn't pass the phone screen... If there was something worse said during phone screen itself, then they probably would have put it in the article as an argument on his side...
mikekchar 11y ago
I have to agree with you. Even if they said that the person looks like a great candidate, failing a telephone interview is not necessarily a sign of age discrimination. We once had a guy who looked absolutely fabulous on paper, and was older than me (and I'm pushing 50 ;-) ). To be honest, I was incredibly excited to get the opportunity to work with someone who had more experience than me -- especially with the CV that he had. I'm the oldest person on our team and having someone else who had been there and done that was really enticing. But the phone interview just didn't go well enough. I still kind of regret not calling him in for a face-2-face, but we already had a full plate of people who's phone interview did go well. Sometimes that's just the way it works out. I've screwed up interviews in the past too. One can't very well overlook a bad interview because the candidate is older. That would also be age discrimination.
- T-hawk 11y ago
  > One can't very well overlook a bad interview because the candidate is older. That would also be age discrimination. Legally, in the US, it isn't. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act specifically only protects workers 40 or older. http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/adea.cfm http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/adea.cfm There is nothing illegal at the US federal level about discrimination in the reverse direction (favoring workers over 40, perhaps by overlooking a bad interview), nor about age discrimination against a 39-year-old who is perceived to be too old for the company or industry.

HillOBeans 11y ago

I can't help but wonder where this might leave someone such as myself, who is over 40, but relatively new to professional software development. I've programmed for years as a hobby, but was educated in a different field and have only recently decided to pursue programming work for a living. Not only am I old, but I also have little experience compared to others my age.

hvs 11y ago
As someone that is months away from 40, I've considered this as well. However, considering the continued lack of developer talent as well as the increasing demand for it, I'm not terribly concerned.
hox 11y ago
As long as you get the right hiring manager it shouldn't matter. I agree that it is a valid concern of yours, and rightfully so in this hiring climate. But fair hiring managers do exist, and they build some of the best teams around. I work at Twilio, and we put a lot of effort into providing a hiring experience that removes as many biases as possible. The end result is a solid, diverse workforce that understands that we all come from different walks of life and have different employment expectations. Other companies, such as Stripe, also seem to have similar initiatives in their hiring practices. It's a concern, but some of us are actively fighting it.
mikekchar 11y ago
As someone who is over 40 and took a few years off, I can tell you that having recent working experience is more important than age (or at least it was for me). Nobody seemed worried about how old I was but many people wondered if I could still code after taking 5 years off (I kept coding as a hobby, though).
welshguy 11y ago
I'm wondering as well! Been a UK-based API-level tech author for 10 years and in product marketing (and sales, even) before that. I've programmed as a hobby for 25 years, and love technology so much I'd like to spend the next 10 doing it professionally. It doesn't even have to be a great job :-) But age goes against me, despite an enduring passion in tech and having learned several languages on my own dime.

HeidiWalker 11y ago

This is why the time has come for blind auditions like GapJumpers offers - helps to avoid all bias when deciding who to interview. Bias for age, women returning from career breaks, education pedigree etc - all avoided if you focus on how a candidate completes a job challenge first. https://www.gapjumpers.me https://www.gapjumpers.me

bottled_poe 11y ago
And that would be great, if only we lived in a world where everyone was judged purely on technical merit and experience. In reality, social integration with the existing team is exceptionally important. I really wouldn't expect this to change any time soon.
- jpttsn 11y ago
  Exactly. Synergies from working together are the reason we build businesses in the first place. If the only thing that mattered was individual merit and experience, we could all just sell our work to businesses without a hiring agreement.
- HeidiWalker 11y ago
  Why assume that selecting candidates for interview based on the results of a blind audition/technical challenge approach like the GapJumpers model wouldn't also yield fantastic candidates who fit into the culture? The real benefit is increasing the diversity of who you interview in the first place, since getting the interview is usually the hardest part. Since there is so much bias associated with reviewing résumés then the entire process is tainted. At least if you eliminate in the first step you have a chance of eliminating it at the next steps as well.
hessenwolf 11y ago
Or you could all choose the German solution... 1. A photo on your cv. Or it goes in the bin. 2. Birth date. 3. Marital status and children. 4. Every educational achievement documented officially since highschool. 5. Every working position with an official written reference, in deeply codified form, written mandatorily by your boss, who probably inspired you to want a new job in teh first place. The last company I left had a secret ten factor 5 level numeric rating system, which was then translated into the codified text by the personel department.

UUMMUU 11y ago

This honestly just sounds like a recruiter trying to get their numbers of hires up by getting more people to interview. I too was told I'd be a great fit at Google but in my interview my lack of intense algorithm study showed up and my non-ivy league college didn't win me any points. Poor guy because it sounds like they really got his hopes up.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

j03m1 11y ago

In reference to the table with national age averages, I would love to see those numbers redrawn from the perspective of development staff only. I'm curious about this because I think in recent years there is a corresponding jump in the number of computer science graduates. There may just be more programmers in those lower age brackets and as an organization that skews heavily toward developers your age grouping may just be lower. That said, google's recruiting process is horrible and robotic. Feel for the guy.

swimfar 11y ago

A little off-topic, but a fact that I find amazing is that around the time of the first moon landing the average age of the mission controllers was 26. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tothemoon/kranz.html http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tothemoon/kranz.html

laurenbee 11y ago
NASA specifically wanted people right out of college to do operations so that they would not have to unlearn bad habits and since everyone would have to learn new skills for the moon landing to be successful. http://history.nasa.gov/monograph14.pdf http://history.nasa.gov/monograph14.pdf (see p. 17)

grellas 11y ago

This case has nothing really to do with the claim of the named plaintiff. If being brushed off after a brief interview, etc. and similar skimpy items were the criteria for filing a claim for age discrimination, the courts could be loaded with such claims. There is basically zero evidence from the interaction noted in the article to make for a sustainable claim of this type. No, this is all about class action procedures. 1. As in most such cases, the named plaintiff is there only to satisfy the technical requirement that a representative be named to represent the class. 2. The underlying claim, then, in the absence of any direct proof of discrimination in any given case, is based on an "effects" theory: Google stats show that it has an average workforce whose age is considerably lower than what other stats show is the average age of computer programmers; this "proves" that latent discrimination is happening; ergo, the class is entitled to massive damages because Google's hiring practices single out older people and treat them unfairly by rejecting them as job applicants on unlawful grounds. 3. Google recently settled an age discrimination case in which there appears to have been real evidence that they treated an older worker unfairly. This case now seeks to take the evidence in that one instance, combine it with stats evidencing a young workforce at Google, and hope this is enough to justify the class action claim. 4. This is as flimsy a basis on which to sue as one might imagine but its point is to try to pry open Google's confidential employment files to hope to find real evidence somewhere in the mix. In other words, it is a fishing expedition. No particular sympathy here for Google. I am sure it does treat older workers unfairly at some level. The tech industry does this across the board. But that does not make this lawsuit something attractive. It is a stick-up suit, pure and simple, from all surface indicators. Given how flimsy it actually is, I predict it will go nowhere in the long term. There may yet be a potent case lurking against Google over its policies. This just is not it.

rrich 11y ago

Unfortunately, the nature of the technical interview allows for easy disqualification of an individual. Miss a semi colon, something we all have done, you're disqualified. Coupled with the preconceived notions of the interviewer, even the most skilled individual can be disqualified with ease. Doesn't bode well in a industry that seems rampant with issues regarding age and gender .

joelberman 11y ago

I am 68 and working as much as I want to. I had no trouble finding a job and am actually in demand. I guarantee this is not because I am a genius. I have hired many people over the years, many worked out well. I have also rejected many candidates over the years. I am sure many of them would have worked out too, but I will never know. Believe me, when you need to hire someone you want to find the right person quickly. And often you know in the first few minutes if the candidate is a fit or not. Then to be polite and fair you spend the next 30-45 minutes even with the candidate you are certain you do not want. Think about the first 2 minutes, because that is where you lost it. Not in the code you wrote or the phone connection.

datashovel 11y ago
Interviews are like politics. The people who are good at it usually aren't the people you want.
- mak4athp 11y ago
  A good interviewer isn't looking for somebody that's suave and comfortable in the interview. They understand awkwardness, nervousness and that it's easy to make stupid technical and social mistakes under pressure -- and they may even relate to it. But they still probably make a 95%-accurate assessment in those first couple minutes.
  - regularfry 11y ago
    Or at least, think they do. They're human, and subject to human biases which no amount of awareness and understanding will completely remove.
- jeffbush 11y ago
  I don't really agree with that. Some people are naturally more outgoing and comfortable in interview situations than others. It doesn't mean they're bad people.
- HelloMcFly 11y ago

typicalday 11y ago

I can't speak for El Goog. What would you do: http://www.bobheath.com/ http://www.bobheath.com/ http://www.aspnet.net/ http://www.aspnet.net/ http://www.visit-new-york-city.com/ http://www.visit-new-york-city.com/

wambotron 11y ago
I'm assuming they weren't interviewing him for his design skills.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  He claims to have developed a widely-used CMS built on Java. But his sites use Joomla, which is strange when he's supposedly offering and selling a better CMS of his own. I'm surprised he got an interview.
teuobk 11y ago
Clearly he is not a graphic designer, but he would benefit from contracting that out. The sites as they exist today give a poor impression of him. Appearances do matter. Even ignoring all of the dates mentioned, his sites and his resume do not look like the work of somebody who has up-to-date software development knowledge.
badmadrad 11y ago
The front end skills are seriously awful but if he is doing all this by hand maybe he just needs a bump in the right direction. IBM has a lot of legacy software and projects. Their engineers are brilliant but they are like time capsules. They get on a project and stay on it for years because the money is there. When the money dries up and they come out of the 5*5 cubicle basement hole ALOT of shit has happened. Realistically, it has to come down to cost benefit. This guy has the chops but would need to be brought to speed on latest dev practices. By the time he is effectively contributing to Google it might be 18 months in. By that time he is well into his retirements years and Google has invested probably 200K(maybe more) into him.
PopsiclePete 11y ago

CodeSheikh 11y ago

We had recently interviewed a female candidate for a Lead engineering role at our company. What impressed us about her resume was that she was mentioned as co-inventor in at least 11 patents while working for IBM, various SW "Architecture" projects yada yada. During the interview she could not explain the basics of database queries processing before we could even asked her how to write a simple statement that prints out the dupes. The thing is we (as I address to most of the HM community which I am assuming is tech/IT related) work in a very lucrative yet highly dangerous field. If you don not keep up with ongoing technologies and have failed to update your skills even in a time frame of 6-12 months, buddy youre outta market. Companies like IBM, HP/Compaq, Dell, Oil firms, Networking companies have this culture (btw i have had experienced it first handed) where they promote their engineers to lead roles so early on and have them do all of the Project Management tasks and in the midst of everything, years pass by and they are left with obsolete technical skills and 20 years of work experience. I wish things were not like this.

wyclif 11y ago
I agree with this comment and there's a lot of truth to this observation, except for one tiny nitpick: "buddy, you're out of market." That depends on many factors, though...primarily the employer and what kind of work is done. For instance, Google has a huge C++ codebase that needs to be maintained. I guess it could be argued that even in C++, one needs to keep up with the C++11/C++14 curve, but I doubt that curve is as extreme or difficult to keep current on as, say, new developments in JavaScript.
- mak4athp 11y ago
  > it could be argued that even in C++, one needs to keep up with the C++11/C++14 curve It would be a poor argument. An accomplished senior level candidate may not not follow all the proceeding of some language committee, but could have all kinds of important technical and non-technical skills. It's often more valuable that your engineers understand your problem domain well, produce code with a low defect rate in a steady rhythm, encourage others to excel through management or mentoring, etc.
- 11y ago

hownottowrite 11y ago

The fellow in question seems to have a fairly robust resume, at least according to LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertpheath https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertpheath

dreaminvm 11y ago
If you read into the job summaries, it seems like he's been doing the same things for a long time without progressing to roles of greater responsibility. On a side note, hes also starting an Oracle certification class.

mathattack 11y ago

I've seen a lot of complaints about the interview process at Google. One core issue to me seems to be that they outsource a lot of their recruiting. Another may be the metrics. Hiring the equivalent of gym membership salespeople to do recruiting has issues. On the other side, I've only had very positive interactions with Google recruiting. When you have a company growing so fast in both relative and absolute numbers, you're likely to run into some issues. In the broader sense, technical people have to stay relevant. I was recently helping a Phd data scientist try to get a new job. When I suggested that he learn Python to augment his SQL, he said he was too old to learn new tricks. After hearing that I new he wouldn't be of use in my firm, or many others. The flip side is that the people who do stay relevant and have all the experience are enormously valuable. Someone who is programming in Python or Ruby on Rails that also had to learn Assembler and C will have enormous insights into performance and what's going on in the guts of the machine. Those types of folks can solve problems other don't even know how to frame. It's hard to find 21 year olds with such breadth.