Work is not always only about output and skills, especially in a small company run by 20-something whose only social life is their colleagues. It says nothing about your skills, just that both sides would probably be miserable in case you were hired, so it makes sense to find someone who would fit in the mold, even if less experienced/skillful.
If you want to hang out with your friends and wrestle to decide coding patterns, then that's all well and good. But the second that it becomes a company that employs people it should be more mature, equal and accepting. Work is indeed not always only about output and skills, it's also about respecting each other and collaborating with different people and their opinions & experience to produce the best outcome.
Anecdotally, I have worked at a company whose unofficial hiring mantra was "hire people you'd go drinking with". It did not go well! Luckily some adults got hired and the company started functioning better.
Usually the founders/owners decide what a company is. Often it seems to me that there are plenty of other motivations to run a company. The founders hire people who they like to hang out with, maybe same hobbies etc.
However I personally have never came across a company that could be described as a "frat house" or even which would have that kind of hiring policy. However I find it entirely understandable that people do hiring decisions on various reasons which are not only about job throughput.
There are laws against employment discrimination, and I suggest to you most people aiming for "people who they like to hang out with with" will result in an outcome, intentional or not, of illegal discrimination.
Here's a recent example, if you need one:
https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-game...
> “There are all these generic terms used to find things wrong with women that aren’t specific,” she said. “When I hear ‘She’s emotional,’ I’d say, ‘Okay, why do you think she was being emotional?’ ‘Well she seemed to get intense and was pushing back on this thing.’ The other candidate did that and you liked that because you thought he had ‘grit.’ Why is that different? Is it because this person is a different gender?”
I have worked with and met with probably close to 100 start/scale-up companies in the software domain. I have not yet met a 'brogammer' shop. Some hipster dens, and yes, when the founder is a twenty something you will be hard pressed to find anyone over 30.
So is this 'brogrammer frathouse' a regional thing? Or is it maybe a B2C thing as I mostly work with B2B companies?
1. emphasis on drinking: “gotta have happy hour/get a keg”
2. off-site team building exercises that eat into personal/family time
3. disparaging competition, especially incumbents, often based on superficial things like the dated look of their UI or branding
4. periodic episodes where potential investors or current board members are brought to the office and the staff is expected to all be on-site and “look productive”
for context, i’ve been in large enterprises and a number of startups. the startups where the core staff had been through the process before lacked what often gets pegged as the “brogrammer fratdev shop” vibe.
also, almost every shop that got a keggerator or pingpong table ended up using those items to store things...
[note: edited for formatting]
I think what's slightly more common is homogenous teams within companies that form an overwhelming culture, rather than entire company cultures. Teams do form their own ways of working and their own cultures, and this is fine: it's human and it can be positive. Healthy teams adapt to new members and vice versa.
But I have occasionally seen teams develop an impenetrable culture and reject anyone that wasn't a perfect fit for their existing culture. They also tend to reject any company-wide initiatives for change & improvement, not even engaging with the process or contributing to the discussion. Typically the way to solve such a team is to rebuild it by removing at least half of the members, after which everyone usually goes back to working normally.
And yet, it gets punted around so much you wouldn't think that it would be hard to find a brogrammer shop. On the contrary, going by the 'reputation' you'd think they would be so numerous as to almost be hard to avoid.
After 10 years hopping between Austin and San Francisco, hipsters with impressive beards and flannel seem at least 100x more common than brogrammers.
A better way of describing the problem from the original article is that infleixible & homogenous teams make it harder for people who don't fit a personality type to contribute to the work & work culture.
The linked post literally accuses PayPal employees of being too big of nerds to talk to (and therefore hire) women. And that's supposed to be an example of alpha-maleness? Maybe it's just bad writing, but if they "could and would" wrestle over disagreements, it sounds more like doing it on a lark rather than "alpha-manly" escalation of disagreements into physical violence. I don't practice combat sports, but - as I understand it - two people sparring for the hell of it is fun. Might as well have said they solve disagreements with a round of Rocket League.
In the 80s and 90s (and to a slightly lesser degree now still) nerds were generally portrayed as effeminate and unmanly. However they would still retain similar toxic ideas about manliness while dismissing "jocks" or anyone too popular or outside their culture. Basically the "while you were busy partying and having sex I studied the way of the sword" meme but played straight.
This means that e.g. "girly" hobbies might be fine and only earn you some mild mockery but being openly gay or seriously empathising with women could easily render you an outcast because you're disrupting the peace unless you "keep your head down".
The idea of solving disagreements through competition is an example of this. Instead of trying to get to the root of the disagreement and resolve a conflict through mutual understanding and dialogue, it determines a "winner" who comes out on top and the "loser" has to roll over and be humiliated for even daring to speak up.
A "play fight" or a round of Rocket League may not result in physical injury but it's still an aggressive display of dominance rather than a cooperative exchange. It's easy to see how this fits in with other ideas of "bros being bros" (or "boys being boys").
Of course nothing in this has anything to do with manhood. You can be a woman and utterly "destroy" someone at Rocket League or wrestle a man into submission. But not only is this behavior "male coded" (i.e. we're socialised to look at it as masculine rather than feminine) but a woman behaving this way would still stick out simply by being a woman and even more so if she doesn't fully commit to performing masculinity in every other way too (i.e. if she ever isn't playing along as "one of the guys", she'll stick out as an outsider again).
TL;DR: being male doesn't mean you think solving disputes through silly competitions is a good problem solving skill but doing so can be comforting if you feel insecure about your peers judging your masculinity, even if you're all nerds.
Spoken like someone who was taught a “lens” to read everything in the world. We can just as easily invent the opposite meaning: that they were both insecure about looking bad at their job, and punted on the question of which design is better and settled the question of which design was used with competition neither of them would mind losing. Armchair phsycoanalysis that assumes all men are still 16 year old boys is lazy and insulting.
That said, did it even occur to you that suggesting a dispute between two grown adult men should best be solved with wrestling or a competitive round of video games is in itself infantilising?
This doesn't resolve the dispute, it just uses a feat of strength to establish literally unquestioned dominance (even if that dominance is purely situational and would require re-establishing on the next dispute).
Resolving a dispute involves, y'know, actually talking and understanding each other's point of view. But that requires empathy.
History would disagree, and then hit you with a stick until you agree with its disagreement.
Resolving a reasonable dispute (aka, a debate) can be done via talking it out, but this requires both parties to agree upon the rules for "winning" this dispute. Typically, in regards to physical confrontation, resolving a logical disagreement isn't the goal. It's about imbalance of respect.
Two people wrestling things out in an agreed upon match, builds camaraderie. You learn to trust one another, and how to defend yourself at the same time. Which can be extremely beneficial for people working together on a team.
Also, take note. Nothing I said included terms like "man", "masculinity", or being an "adult". There's no need conflate these terms with this type of action. Women, and children, also exhibit these social mechanisms.
You're either a troll or larping. "Wrestling things out builds comradery"? We're talking about a disagreement about a work issue in a software company.
Ladies and gentlemen, exhibit A: kempbellt.
EDIT: I'm eagerly awaiting being challenged to a duel now.
I said wrestling is an effective team building tool. If you are trying to settle on which version of React to use in a project, weigh out the pros and cons in an office. If you are looking to work more effectively with some of your coworkers wrestling, or any other form of grappling martial-art (I've enjoyed BJJ), is a valid option. In case you aren't aware of what this is, it's essentially playing three-dimensional chess with your opponent until someone ends up in a physical checkmate. It's fun, respectful, good exercise, and great for building camaraderie - as I mentioned. I'm not talking about scrapping things out in the parking lot like a couple of high schoolers. If you'd rather play actual chess, that's also a valid option. At a previous company, my team did a break-out room together. Do what works for you.
"Eagerly awaiting a challenge" from someone you are disagreeing with on the internet is inciting a challenge, in a very childish way.
Also, Google larping. It doesn't make sense in your sentence.
EDIT: BTW did you try out the HN Block List browser extension? Makes the site a lot more bearable than the vanilla experience.
Second, play fighting is one of the quickest ways to learn how to check your ego and gain humility. I've met plenty of very smart people with egos so big it got in the way of finding the best solutions.
I'm saying that thinking workplace disputes are situations that should be solved through domination rather than understanding is emotionally immature.
Even if the disagreement is entirely irrational, the severity of the disagreement alone can indicate more deeply rooted problems with the current dispute just being used as a proxy war. It might not even stem from a work related problem.
As much as programmers (I'm one btw) tend to complain about managers, this is actually something a good manager is aware of. If a conflict arises or an employee is unhappy it's their job to figure out how to best resolve not just the current situation but also prevent it from recurring -- a bad manager would simply enforce policy and enact punishments, a good manager will try to improve the environment and working conditions.
"Competitive sports" (including team sports which really must be co-operative at the team level even if the teams compete directly) are good for gaining humility and building mutual respect, yes, but the PayPal talk wasn't about that.
It was about using domination (whether literal physical domination through impromptu wrestling or metaphorical) to resolve work disputes. The very idea evokes testosterone-fueled high school bullies, not fully-developed grown adults.
HNers tend to cheer for the idea of meritocracy but this is the worst kind of meritocracy: you're not even filtering for being good at the job, you're just filtering for being good at whatever mechanism you're using to establish dominance (whether it's physical altercations or as you suggest Ben Shapiro like dazzling).
'Brogrammer' started as a witticism and has become a social phenomenon that people discuss as though it was based on rigorous observation and not just a joke.
I would bet that 90% of developers are not the classic "jock" member of a frat (which is specific to America Univerities) - we are the ones that got bullied by those types at high school.
Lets be honest CS students are going to get invited to join the skull and bones (Harvard) or the Bullingdon club (Oxford)
Skull and Bones is a secret society at Yale, not Harvard.
The "bro" label is more about performative hypermasculinity than athletics.
What seems to surprise most about nerd culture is that for many nerds the problem with bullying wasn't that bullying was bad but that they were on the receiving end of it, resulting in a revenge fantasy (both against the actual bullies as well as outsiders in general) rather than simply a desire for equality. This is also reflected in the kinds of jokes you used to hear on IRC and later 4chan as well as gaming (even before it became "so mainstream").
For context: I say this as a recovering nerd myself.
To your point, there may be brogrammer only shops out there, but I've never seen one. And, as someone who has always played sports, power lifted, and now trains BJJ, I wouldn't want to work for a non-professional brogrammer type shop if I ever came across one. I've wondered before if I didn't fit a culture because I'm not the stereotypical software person.
Note the following isn't directed toward you specifically, but because you mentioned that you think you're not the "stereotypical software person" I wanted to write why I think that it is more likely - today - that you are...I think part of what we're seeing is the software development "culture" filtering out into "regular culture"? Those aren't probably the right words, but...
What I mean is that - when I started "programming", it was right in the middle of the "home microcomputer" era - mid-1980s. I was 10-11 years old, and I had my own home computer in my bedroom hooked up to my TV. I had always been "science inclined" - but that was where I really became a "nerd".
I didn't really like sports or anything like that, I didn't like much of what was considered "popular stuff" - except arcade games; couldn't get enough quarters. But all I really wanted to do was program.
That's where I started - and that's where a lot of people started (both older and younger than me at the time) - on home computers, typing in junk from magazines and books - and some of the older ones went on to turn that in a career in short order. But they all were "nerds" in their own manner.
Prior to the home computer, you either had to be an engineer or something working at a company with it's own computer or system(s) - or work for one of the computer companies of the era - to even come close to "touching" a computer in any manner. Or maybe have been lucky enough to teach or attend or otherwise finagle access to a university's system(s). There were also a few other very limited ways too (public terminals connected to dialup shared systems that you paid to use and other similar means). But really, only the really hard-core geeks and nerds were in that camp, and they tended to be few.
Prior to that - mathematicians and engineers, mostly.
But soon after when I started - in the early 1990s - computers started to become a tool (and entertainment) for everyone. It was no longer seen as nerdy to have a computer in the home. And then very soon after that - the internet was opened for the public to use (before, access was restricted to certain commercial entities for research, and to educational institutions, and the government - with little allowance for consumer access, and almost no allowance for commercial exploitation - with the exception of research, mostly).
That brought in people of all stripes - also, there was this change; difficult to pin down - but it seems that kids no longer (or far fewer of them) have an interest - or develop the interest - or have the means to develop the interest in front of them - for "software engineering".
When I was growing up with my computer - and this was most computers of the time - you turned it on, and on the screen (which was usually a television) you would get a short "message" of what version of BASIC was running, and a prompt blinking maybe - where you could type. If you wanted software, you had a few choices, in descending order of cost:
1. Purchase the software - on cartridge, tape, or floppy
2. Type the software in from a book or magazine
3. Write the software yourself - usually in BASIC
Many, many people turned to number 3 - usually with help from a manual included with their computer. Many also went the route of number 2 in conjunction with number 3. Some found they could sell the software from number 3 to magazines and books - or to publishers (number 1). That isn't to say nobody bought commercial software - tons of people did (but there was a lot of piracy back then, too). It was a large mixture, but mostly as a kid, you relied on number 3, and maybe number 2 if you had understanding parents who could afford to buy you the books and magazines.
But later - especially with the internet - those programming sources dried up - and today's computers (and phones and tablets, etc) don't start up to BASIC; you get an entire magical operating system, and any means to code software is fairly hidden away.
Even in the early 90s this was evident; Microsoft DOS used to come with at least some form of BASIC, but gradually this has fell away - today, out-of-the-box coding is limited to shell interpreters, javascript and such in the browser, and maybe other scripting interpreters built into some applications - plus maybe .NET stuff on Windows, but I'm not as sure on that last one.
Ultimately, the tools for some kind of "software engineering" - when they are included with a machine (operating system), they are kept fairly "hidden away" - there's nothing there to even entice a kid to "program"...
...hence the rise of "sandbox" style games, that allow a similar kind of "open ended" play. But this is stuff that has to be bought - it's just not "there" for kids like it was when I started.
And so you have a lot of kids who don't experience computing in the same manner, who don't get an "early bite" by the programming "bug" - and who (something else I have noticed) typically are forced in some manner into playing sports via organized team things parents shuttle their kids around too (I often wonder if there are parents out there who realize how lucky they are to have a "geek child" who has figured out the system to get a programming environment going on their machines - and doesn't go for such organized activities?)...
So they kinda grow up with sports or similar activities as "the thing to do" (and I understand why this kind of thing grew up - but I don't think it was completely organic, either - I think some parents became (overly?) concerned about "predators", and moved their kids into these supervised programs, and fewer are left in the neighborhood for other kids to play with, so to "play" kids had to join those teams and activities, etc - and the circle was complete). That is the "normal" thing - sitting at home programming on the computer isn't "normal" - or even really thought about at all.
...until university/college - and so you have a bunch of people, who have interests in things "non geeky" who find out later that they are good at programming, and that they like it. But they also like "normal things" - things that people like me, having been nerds and geeks from an earlier time - maybe don't enjoy as much, or at all?
I'm not saying anything of this is bad - I just think this is how things have turned out, and probably this is a better thing? Also, there is the growing thing of "STEM" and "STEAM" stuff going on in school (coupled with FRC/FIRST) - which helps to introduce kids earlier to these concepts, but it doesn't seem to extend as far back as grade school (or maybe it does?).
I think it's just all part of a balance; in my day as a kid, it was tilted way far in one direction - toward "nerds" - and today it is tilted past the middle point toward "non-nerds" - but ultimately it is shifting back toward the middle?
Well - that's my ramble - take it however...
I started undergrad as pre-med, and programming was just a fun hobby. I remember one night while studying for some insane biology test from an equally insane teacher that while I was interested in being a doctor, I loved programming/computers/technology. I pushed through that semester and switched majors.
Even today, I feel not nerdy enough in some situations though my wife would disagree (she thinks I'm very nerdy).
Personal computers today are entertainment consumption devices for the masses. You can still use most for creating, but only a tiny, tiny fraction will ever go there.
Don’t you think that this should be up to the founders to decide? I would personally much prefer a frat house atmosphere than the more common geeky introvert culture that most technology companies have, but I would not like there to be laws about it.
There is no one size fits all "company" structure that works for everyone. If we can't have frat house brogrammers why can we have "remote only" companies? One person may hate said brogramming culture, others may love it, still others may hate remote only due to lack of physical interaction with their colleagues while others love it because they hate offices.
I don't like this way of thinking. Individuals are also afforded unsolicited "protections and benefits". Therefore, individuals owe society? That's basically like the Mafia offering you protection, at a price.
I think that's morally wrong, and I don't like this attitude as a matter of principle.
Moral terms shape politics, politics shape laws, laws shape civilizations. How can you say they're not interesting?
Of course there have been lots of societies that put people in their place with no social mobility, which has the benefit of not burdening them with the choice of what to do with their lives. This is very practical, but it's immoral - from my point of view.
Luckily, we don't live in one of these societies, but maintaining that "privileged" status doesn't come for free. That's why I don't like your attitude, I am worried you will make extremely poor political decisions because of it.
Why not? If it's a private business, it can be whatever the owners want it to, unless illegal. I wouldn't have a tiniest inclination to work in such a company, but that's beside the point.
Your argument could be used to ban beanbag chairs, nerf-guns, and kegs from the office because it doesn't meet your "maturity" standards. I've worked at places that have all of these and we made a productive and effective team.
If you don't like the company culture, complaining that they aren't "mature enough" is childish. It's their company...
Find a company that suits your temperament and everyone wins - which is what I believe OP was getting at.
I have seen it used countless times as a term of economic envy in a "they shouldn't be allowed to do better than me" way.
If you had to pick a housemate, how impartial or emotionless would you be, honestly? (not referring to any particular ‘you’ in this conversation — it’s just the hypothetical question I’d ask to demonstrate the re-framing).
What makes SW so special?
This is as true for most small businesses that are just starting out (e.g. real estate work, etc). Yet I do not see an emphasis on culture fit there. They are very picky and will filter for one/two traits, but they're clear and up front about those traits. They don't not hire people because the person had differing hobbies, etc. Partners, maybe - but not employees.
In any case, I think I'm pleasant and easy-going at work, and I do a good job, which makes other peoples' job easier. If someone would become "miserable" because I was hired... well, OK, but that might say more about their personality than mine.
Unfortunately a mismatch in expectations is probably a reasonable (but not good!) reason not to hire.
The hiring party gets to choose, and if their choices are for what they think are local maxima that you don’t fit, they get to own the consequences of not hiring you.
Working with diverse people that are interested in things that you're not is not predetermined to actually be a miserable experience. But it does require that you're open to integrating yourself with many other folks / cultures / etc.
It’s an anecdote so take it with a grain of salt, but I’ve had an experience like this with at least a couple of former colleagues on the higher end of the team’s age distribution — they were great people, but none of the younger team members knew how to relate with them which made day to day interactions a lot more awkward than they would have been otherwise.
Of course, it could be argued that the awkwardness could’ve been avoided had the company started off with a wider age range, but then you run into the issue of attracting older candidates, which can be difficult given the volatility and reduced concrete compensation associated with early stage startups.
If they're out of school and in the workforce, and they don't know how to interact with people older than themselves, that's honestly kind of pathetic.
I guess it would bother me more if we competed in a constrained market but given that development talent, has historically been, is currently and will be in the future a under-supplied market. I tend to look at these entities as just shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to the competition for talent. They are doing more harm to themselves than to the prospects of the rejected candidate.
Right, so better not hire any married people, older people, people of the opposite gender of the founders, people of the wrong political party, people of the wrong religious persuasion, the wrong class, or any other characteristics that risk interrupting the frat party...I mean "work environment".
So you'd discriminate against introverts because the team are awful at socializing? Apart from how sad that sounds and how awful it is for people (you're whole life has single point of failure), it also sounds very self defeating.
> Work is not always only about output and skills
Treating it that way is basically the foundation of what's considered professional behavior. I hate when that gets taken too far, but the core idea is good.
Aren't almost all companies?
> Apart from how sad that sounds and how awful it is for people (you're whole life has single point of failure)
It's not as much of a choice. Unless you've built and are above average good at maintaining a social network prior to work, workplace tends to become the primary part of the social life. It's a trend in the west.
wontfix, working as intended. The startup wants you dependent on them for everything and to spend nearly all your waking hours inside their office so they can coerce your loyalty.
You should understand that what you wrote sounds like discrimination by age (and sex, "frat" means male), which is illegal - and for good reasons.
EDIT: specifically, the only way a 35-year-old is not a "culture fit" in "a small company run by 20-something whose only social life is their colleagues" is if that company is discriminating by age. I don't have better words to explain that being 20 is not "culture".
"I don't discriminate by age, only by gray hair!"
"I don't discriminate by sex, it's just that we have a no-birthing-kids culture!"
Um, no.
If you explicitly don't accept applicants only from select neightborhoods that all just "happen to" be almost all-black, you're still discriminating by race and it's still obvious and obviously illegal. You'll just waste more of everyone's time in court.
Just look at sovereign citizens and their inane shenanigans like "I'm not driving, I'm traveling by car and therefore don't need a driver's license and can ignore speed limits".
However, everything you wrote does apply to the level-up comment.
"Frathouse culture" is an euphemism for "group of mostly white young male people who exclude people who aren't like them" - because this is what fraternities literally are.
(Recall: by definition, fraternities are young, male, exclusive - and statistically, white).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African-American_frate...
But in every joke there is a core of truth. People use language to disparage minorities or downplay the transgressions of the majority all the time.
E.g. nationalist extremist violent acts are done by "lone wolfs" or "mentally ill" people while the exact same atrocities by other groups are done by "terrorists".
I’m also not sure if being a “mentally ill” mass murderer is much better than a “terrorist” mass murderer.
They are socially (and legally) in different leagues.
>are there actually any studies on this, or even examples?
Yes, there specifically are[1][2][3][4][...].
I'd suggest [1] as a start, and then Google is your friend.
[1]https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/when-do-peo...
[2]https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2018-48477-001
[3]https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03050629.2018.15...
[4]https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/06/18/...
And in 2, the question they examine is "whether people with negative attitudes toward Muslims perceive Muslim mass shooters as less mentally ill than non-Muslim shooters". That seems like a very biased group to ask, to say the least...
If you remove the “murder” part from terrorist you basically just have a disgruntled crackpot, but one with political motivations.
I know that I’d rather be a theoretical, non violent terrorist than just mentally ill.
On the other hand, Osama bin Laden is a terrorist, but very far from being mentally ill. His Letter to America[1] clearly outlines the intent and consequence of his actions.
Terrorists are, by definition, a threat -- but mentally ill people are victims (of mental illness, of society, etc); one is fare more likely to feel sympathy for an ill person vs. someone who is deliberately inflicting terror (as a means to an end or otherwise).
Terrorists can be affiliated to a group, but 'mentally ill' is not a group.
And that's a part of the reason why the labels get attached. 'All ____ are terrorists' is a trope where many will easily fill the blank with <group du jour>. But that won't work with 'All _____ are mentally ill'. A mentally ill person is a one-off, an accident. We don't have to solve that problem because there is no systemic problem. It just happens. The best we could do is think how we could help those people, how we could catch them before they slip.
But terrorism, that's warfare, and we respond to warfare with warfare.
That's the connotation. If you are not seeing it - well, the articles discuss this. Overall it's a part of a greater pattern of how politics shapes language, and language shapes thinking. Orwell had it down back in the 50's [2], and not much has changed since.
[1]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/nov/24/theobserver
[2]https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_poli...
So you, as a 35 year old, want to work in a company that has a 14 hour days, including at least one weekend work culture which is what created a nearly forced socialization with one's coworkers who are in their early twenties?
If so, I'm pretty sure you would be accepted in the open arms if you
a) take their kind of salary ( i.e. take a pay cut )
b) work the 14 hour days (i.e. take another pay cut )
c) tolerate their social quirks -- those that do not socialize with others outside their tiny world for 14 hours a day 6-7 days a week are going to be rejected by the randos they meet in random places, repeating the cycle.
And in any case, this is something that's discussed outright (hours) and while extending an offer (salary).
Socialization outside of working hours is nobody's business, and reaches into illegal land (I don't care if one doesn't socialize with old/black/other gender people; but making hiring decisions based on that is illegal).
Thirty five year olds rarely agree to work for the amount of money twenty year olds agree to work for. That is also known.
This means that a thirty five year old going to a startup of twenty year olds is going to take a paycut.
Startups push people to work more hours. Young people are OK with that because they do not have a social life apart from finding someone to have sex with and having sex with that person. That is also reasonably well known. That means their life is sleeping/working/having sex with people. Long hours at work by people who do not have anything else to do act as a filler. That's why startups that have lots of young people working in them tend to push long hours. If you are there just to get a paycheck then it would mean getting an effective pay cut.
> Socialization outside of working hours is nobody's business, and reaches into illegal land (I don't care if one doesn't socialize with old/black/other gender people; but making hiring decisions based on that is illegal).
If you are working 14 hour days with group of same people those are going to be people you would be socializing with. It is the case everywhere -- be that oil rigs, armed forces. It is a matter of proximity and logistics.
That's all that matters, and everything else you wrote is an attempt to justify discrimination by age.
Please reconsider your views.
For social awkwardness - there are many kinds of that. For some corporate interview process may be not an issue. For others, a road blocker.
The job does not have to be a frat house office in order for a candidate to fail the culture fit. Unfortunately many programmers think programming is 100% writing code, when often times it is more about communication and relationships. If you were missing a certain technical skill what would you do? Now apply that same mindset to being a little less socially awkward. No one is saying you have to learn to be Dale Carnegie himself, but even just a small amount of people skills goes a long way.
In such a case, how is “too introverted” as a reason for rejection or even as a negative cultural connotation not overt discrimination to exclude neurodiversity?
I’d even be willing to concede that such personality-based discrimination may need to be made for customer-facing roles or roles if being charming or extroverted is explicitly part of the job description. But other than that, it seems odd to reject an engineering candidate for reasons like this.
I was getting pretty depressed after all that rejection, but I got a random call from a recruiter at a big-N company, and figured why not give it a shot. The interview ended up being more professional, and at the same time the interviewers seemed friendlier and less antagonistic. And I ended up getting an offer.
In any case, I'm mentioning this because I went in expecting what you described -- that startups would be easier for me, as a socially-awkward person -- but that's not always the case.