After age 40 I did a coding bootcamp to change careers.

Another guy in the camp was doing the same. We compared notes on interviews. One day he gets a call back from a recruiter and he put the recruiter on speaker phone. She told them they liked him but chose someone else because (drum roll) culture fit.

He asked what she meant by that and she outright said: "The other person is younger. You're old." We were shocked and he pretended he didn't quite hear her... she repeated it word for word. I don't think she even realized it was illegal.

The other guy never made a complaint, he needed a job and I could hardly blame him not wanting to put up a fuss / fight over a job at a place he didn't want to be a part of anyway ... it was shocking to hear it made that clear.

Long run we both got jobs and are doing well, but man... that call sticks in the back of my head anytime I think of job hunting.

Would be interesting to compare this across areas. My impression is that eg Finance (another popular destination for mid-career switches) is far more open in that regard. Experience, even if it's in a different field (as long as it's a technical role or one that will give you a rich set of contacts) seems to generally confer seniority. Would be interesting if someone could weigh in.

Anecdotally, the hard engineering fields (e.g., mechanical, civil, etc.) are much more tolerant about age and more receptive to the benefits and tradeoffs of both youth and, erm.., "experience"

(said tongue-in-cheek because age does not necessarily equate to experience)

Probably most regulated industries. I am in medical devices and you can easily make it to 65 with dignity.

because fail-forward works so great with implanted defibrillators, I presume?

/s

“Move fast and kill people”

That's my main issue with SV-mentalities moving into the safety-critical space like autonomous driving

I have mixed feelings. On the one hand you don’t want to kill people but on the other hand a lot of the big players in regulated industries are stagnant, complacent and inefficient. A good example would be SpaceX. Compared to their competitors they move faster, are innovative, cheaper and despite that they are reliable when it counts . Most of their failures were well calculated risks that helped them move faster. I am in health care and this industry also desperately needs new players that take more agile approaches and not the super expensive super slow approach most established players are taking. They are way too complacent.

I agree with you that the old corps in these industries are stagnant, but also recognize when there's a gap in the way new entrants approach safety-critical problems.

One example is the Uber incident that killed a person. If you read the NTSB report, it seems like they intentionally programmed a delay into a safety critical system in order avoid nuisance braking. From a safety-critical standpoint, deliberately slowing the action of a time-sensitive safety mitigation is big error in engineering judgement. Imagine if I reprogrammed your home smoke detectors to wait for an hour to determine if there's really a fire because you were annoyed that they went off every time your baked. My suspicion is they did this because their software wasn't really ready but they wanted to push it to market for testing.

Another example that has had some controversy in the industry is SpaceX using only touchscreens. I don't know where they settled, but a few years back they were adamant that they don't need physical controls. We've all probably experienced issues where a touchscreen doesn't respond as intended. Automotive manufacturers have walked back this idea on a lot of their models because they recognize all the additional failure modes that touchscreens introduce.

My worry is that sometimes "innovation" is really just forgetting (or not knowing) the lessons learned from the legacy players.

The traditional players like Boeing have had their own problems, but IMO they are more due to management than engineering. With the 737MAX, the engineering processes were in place. They had a hazard analysis that said MCAS shouldn't be a single-point failure; it seems they just didn't follow their own engineering processes due to budget and schedule pressures. That's a different animal than not having the safety-critical culture to define those processes in the first place (but not any less egregious).

Sounds believable, but how many people successfully transition into those?

It depends on what you mean by "transition".

It's probably hard to transition from a software engineer to a licensed structural engineer or the like.

But it's much easier to transfer into a software or software-adjacent role related to the field. Those fields have lots of opportunity for controls engineers, or data acquisition system developers, or data scientists, or even developing home-grown applications. The flip side is a lot of bad software practices are tolerated because those running the show just don't know better or don't care because it's not in their wheelhouse.

Sounds a bit like they might put you in the IT rather than the engineering department if you come in as a SE. Control is far outside the ballpark of a typical SE, unless you happen to have studied EE (which is arguably just another one of the 'hard' engineering fields). Sounds like short of having a relevant degree you won't be an engineer in those areas, and very few people get those mid-career.

An area that people do transition into and that almost puts a premium on plain age is therapy/counselling, but that's a far shot from technical fields.

Like I said, it's anecdotal, but I've known people who've transitioned to those fields. There is sometimes an issue of conflating IT to CS, but the converse seems to happen much more in my (again, anecdotal) experience. In that case a mediocre engineer with some software experience is crammed into an IT role because the engineering team doesn't really want them. If a SE adds a lot of value to an engineering team they are usually very reluctant to give them up.

what about someone in his/her 40s with no previous experience in the field?

I wasn't necessarily saying they have to make a complete career switch but rather find a niche within those fields that can use their software experience. For example, building a pressure systems database that isn't god-awful would be useful for oil/gas or firms that do aerospace research. Knowing the mechanical side would obviously be a huge plus, but it's also possible to lean on the mechanical engineers who are the system experts. Same thing with managing environmental requirements, or building automation/energy systems, data acquisition for medical devices, or software quality testing etc.

Old companies also hire old people more easily. Microsoft, Apple, aerospace and defense contractors.

What are some common paths for people who make that jump?

Just my perspective so take it with a grain of salt. It helps to look for positions outside the normal SV roles so places like aerospace, defense contractors, manufacturing, etc. They post a surprising number of CS positions. I would caution, though, that the only role I've seen that pays SV-type salaries ($250k+) was controls engineer for automotive manufacturing. But to be fair, the jobs were all in areas with a cost of living much, much lower than SV.

If you get in (politely) look for processes that your SE skills can make an impact. These opportunities are sometimes there because the place is full of non-software minded folks who don't know what they don't know. An example from my anecdotal experience was when someone with software acumen helped reprogram an automation system to be more efficient and saved high-six/low-seven figures each year and really gets people's attention. Or showing how they can dramatically improve their quality control by developing unit tests. Some stuff that is common in SE firms is often overlooked in firms focused on other disciplines.

The most common paths for people making mid-career moves to finance are from using software skills in industries like aerospace, defense contractors or manufacturing?

That doesn't sound right. I'm not even sure most people transitioning into finance from another career have any software skills at all (beyond Excel).

Sorry, I lost track of the thread comments. I thought the question was how to move from SE to hard engineering fields like mechanical or civil.

I entered the industry in my early 30s and remember getting a really helpful piece of advice from a meetup talk. Enthusiasm for learning and the technology is a counter for most of the ageism in interviews. It will stop people from assuming you're set in your ways, a curmudgeon, out of date, or anything on those lines.

The "culture fit" excuse is a tough one, though. That framing can be used to unknowingly discriminate in all kinds of ways.

> The "culture fit" excuse is a tough one, though. That framing can be used to unknowingly discriminate in all kinds of ways.

Just an imo here, but anyone who talks about "culture" at a company broadly needs to be called out. 9/10 they are likely leveraging some form of discrimination. Culture cannot be mandated or even controlled in any succinct way that it causes you to use that as a logic branch.

I think due to the massive influx of people into this profession, the median age is still pretty low, but I think this will stabilize, and the age pyramid will look more even. As good, productive people will get older, recruiters will realize that people don't go senile at 40.

Eh, it's been this way since at least the 90's.

How long should anyone wait for clearly illegal behavior to start being not ok?

Well I don't see the benefit of being lied to over speaking the illegal truth.

Probably until they routinely get sued for it

I reckon that someone in their 40s or 50s could probably make enough to retire from recording interview rejections and suing for discrimination. I've heard it happen a couple times myself as a junior employee, and had to tell hiring managers that what they were saying was illegal.

> During my career, I've seen enough discrimination in the name of DEI as well.

At my work recently, we interviewed a white male and an asian female for the job. To my knowledge, this is the first female applicant we've gotten because they generally get snapped up by higher prestige/visibility roles. I've interviewed many people before, and the manager will request feedback about the applicants and use whichever had the highest score on a rubric. This time, the manager simply asked "please tell me if anyone has an objection to hiring [asian female]". I was shocked at my manager's language, as it implies the default action is to hire rather than to not hire (the latter being typical in companies). The white male was not discussed at all in my presence.

I'm strongly considering tipping off the white male applicant that he was discriminated against and that he may want to consider legal action. This is one of a number of what I consider discriminatory behaviors my employer (large company you've heard of) has displayed. Companies need to be fearful of engaging in all types of discrimination, not just ones that are culturally-sanctioned, and follow the law.

Please let them know, but do so as anonymously as is possible. Consider an email from a proton burner address via VPN, printed letter mailed from somewhere other than where you live (maybe even from your office if there are no cameras). Depending on the size of the company, discovery during a lawsuit like this can get insanely detailed and expensive.

Honestly, it might not be a bad idea to make it easy to find him.

Yeah, the op might be punished, but if companies start to worry that employees are going to out them for their illegal behavior, they might change.

Unfortunately I think the more likely scenario is that OP gets sidelined at work until he leaves. Most importantly (to the company) though, he's no longer involved in hiring.

I've also seen similar behavior on interview loops. I also would love for there to be fear of engaging in illegal discriminatory behavior for companies.

However, as an individual person, the cost/benefit equation on whistleblowing just seems so so bad. It just doesn't seem worth it as an individual. If these illegal things are going to be pushed back against, it seems like it'll need to be a coordinated/collective action.

Whistle blowing is legally protected. So if you do it keep a lawyer on hand so you can sue them latter when they retaliate.

That's a miserable way to live though.

There really are no winners in court except the lawyers.

I'm almost 50. I've been working in tech since 1996, and at this point, despite being a strong and seasoned engineer, I'm getting comments like, "it's different now", or "back in your day", etc, and the very young engineers fresh from school are the ones throwing this around. Those with a few years of experience under their belt don't.

It's really disheartening, but it's also my job to train these bozos and turn them into good engineers, which they most certainly are not coming fresh from school.

I hope these people are in the minority. I'm 21, I have my first internship coming up in the summer, and I am ecstatic to learn from engineers more experienced than me, no matter what age.

I am going to say this is an artifact of people not self-learning things on their own before the school or from a job.

I find in my earlier teenage years that internet was great source of knowledge. I read lots of blogs/articles etc from people 3x-4x my age. It made me appreciate them, not disrespect them. And for the most part, when you are on the internet, you really don't know what otherside even looks like for the most part - you only know in retrospect...

Yes, definitely in the minority.

A vocal minority unfortunately, and hiring is so driven by the fear of hiring the wrong person that just about any pushback is given a large amount of credence generally.

Yes and no to fresh engineers being good. I’ve met many fresh engineers that integrated and soon outperformed their older peers in a couple months. My first engineer position I went from new hire to lead on most projects in about a year. I was surprised and dumbfounded how much better I was than my peers (expect one he was amazing and I learned a lot from him). There a lot of good and bad engineers and experience doesn’t make up for bad engineers.

Certainly, the variance between engineers is huge and can offset experience.

Over time, though, the bad older engineers get managed out of the profession, or leave out of frustration or lack of satisfaction, so you end up having fewer. The selection function for good engineers has had much longer to run on them.

Think of experience as a trend line which pushes everyone to be better relative to what they were. School teaches algorithms, languages, tools, but it doesn't teach things like engineering approaches and how to keep a team productive, which doesn't always mean the most awesome algorithms. School teaches how to get the "correct" answer, experience teaches how to get "good enough" in a short amount of time. You need both!

About algorithms: It very much depends on the thing one works on, whether one ever needs to look up what a good algorithm is for a problem, which needs solving. Often it is more about how to put pieces together, using APIs, building an API, making a service, etc. Similar for data structures. For most you only need to know the basics like when to use a hash table, when to use an array or whatever of the data structures that are often available anyway in the standard library of the language.

This even more diminishes the gains that engineers get from their expert knowledge.

Usually only when in a position to develop something ground up, does the expert knowledge of data structures and algorithms come into play.

Algorithm and data structure questionaires rather seem like mathematics in many cases. A filter to weed out people, but not often of use at the job.

Obviously I might be biased due to personal experience.

Single data point. It doesn't prove or disprove anything. I have seen 60 yo folks jump on a project and literally turn it around in weeks.

> I was surprised and dumbfounded how much better I was than my peers

Self-Humbled

Not really, I really expected to be very lacking in experience and aptitude. I did poorly in school and I have really bad ADHD and Tourette’s. My expectations as an engineer were to do well enough to keep a job; never expected I’d be a natural at writing software.

I'm sure there is ageism from younger devs, but be sure not to confuse it with respect. In my experience, younger devs (like me at the time) were always excited to learn from older devs.

But what if that older dev is only at par with the younger one: will she or he be treated equally, if everything else was equal? In other words, is an old person expected to compensate for her or his lack of youth by an excess of wisdom?

If the older dev is compensated more/has a higher level position, they are expected to provide more to the employer/product, whether it is through their excess wisdom or knowledge or responsibilities or otherwise.

They shouldn't be expected to compensate for their lack of youth in any way, as youth isn't a metric that has any relevance to their work in software development. And if they are of the same title/total comp as the young dev, there is nothing wrong with them being on par in terms of skills/knowledge/responsibilities.

I think there is a certain expectation that after 10-20 years in the industry you bring some added value a fresh grad won't bring. Surely you must have learned a few things, no? If not that's not a great sign.

Impact. Impact is #1.

Interesting thought though, what if the product in question is a product geared toward a younger audience that younger devs are more "in tune" with? Assuming they have more impact as a result.

Recognizing seniority is hard. Computer Science is a field were a teenager in front of a computer quickly feels like a god. You can do anything!

But getting that out of their thinking takes time. And that is IMHO what you experience. It is disheartening that they lack the respect they should have socially independent of profession for an "elder" person.

I am in my early 40s as an architect arguing with our mixed-age teams to give me the necessary rationale before making stupid "it's different now" decisions.

>It is disheartening that they lack the respect they should have socially independent of profession for an "elder" person.

Especially when you consider the fact that the tools and concepts they've learned and made them super awesome were developed by people in their late 30s-50s. James Gosling was 40 when he came out with Java, Bjarne and Guido were both 35 when they came out with C++ and Python respectively. None of these guys, by the way, have stopped working.

I think part of the reason for feeling like a know-all can-do-everything in junior years and afterwards as well is, because of not reading the right books. I am talking about really good books about the core competence of programming. I have read books authored by people with more than 50y of experience. The ideas and wisdom they come up with is unparalleled. Reading about such great ideas and how to avoid issues with code makes me feel like: "Woa that is sooo neat and clean! Why did I not get that idea myself?" and there you have the humbling experience, that should introduce respect for seniority.

Of course it is not a blanket. A senior should adapt to new ways as well, if they make sense. For example functional constructs have become more popular in recent years. Just because one is a senior, does not mean, that they should go on writing their sequential do-while loops (usually it would be for loops, but exaggerating here), when things could be written with multicore in mind and using map reduce style. That is not seniority, it is lack of self-education and development of ones skills. No need to join the web framework churn either though. One should understand their essence though.

I'd still consider myself a bozo (3 years out of school), but may I offer a humble thanks for your shoulders that many of the rest of us stand on!

I'm in my 50s and haven't seen it in that overt form. Maybe a silicon valley thing? I've only worked on the east coast. On the other hand, I have missed out on jobs because of culture fit concerns that have an age component: I'm not sensitive enough. Not mean, but not as...nurturing?...as companies seem to now expect. Things were definitely more rough and tumble when I got into this field and I really do prefer that, so I can't deny, I don't fit into modern company cultures as well.

Oh and do not give up on them. Junior engineers are like teenagers. You need to raise them even if they are their worst.

wow man - thats sucks... As an older engineer, I hope you hang in! There ARE good companies out there!

It's kind of ageism-adjacent, but I wonder if some of it is a bias that expects that past 40 you shouldn't really be needing to apply to jobs by resume drops any more. So like, seeing that type of application is in an indication that the person's first twenty years of career haven't yielded the kinds of achievements and contact network that have bumped them out of the hustle and into the world where they no longer beg for jobs because they're being actively head-hunted.

Obviously, there are loads of reasons why this might legitimately be someone's situation, including midlife career-, locale- or industry-changes. But it could be another vector for bias.

> It's kind of ageism-adjacent, but I wonder if some of it is a bias that expects that past 40 you shouldn't really be needing to apply to jobs by resume drops any more.

I really wish people would stop this. I don't really keep in touch with many coworkers due to time. My friends tend to come from outside of work and they're not software devs. It definitely is age-ism adjacent; having to "network" to get a job is much harder after you get older.

> I don't really keep in touch with many coworkers due to time. My friends tend to come from outside of work and they're not software devs.

'friend' is a much higher bar than 'somebody in your network'.

plenty of folks i worked with over the years, who i haven't heard from in decades, but i'd move them to the head of the line if they called up asking about work. i remember who got shit done and who didn't, and don't care that they didn't put in a repeating calendar item to take me out for a beer every 17 months.

I'm not even sure it's higher so much as orthogonal.

Like, I have close friends who I still wouldn't necessarily give a special recommendation about simply because I have no idea what it would be like to work with them on a work project. Or even in some cases, I suspect it wouldn't be all that great because they're obvious slackers about work-type stuff; like when we plan things together, I know I'll need to double check their part of it.

Whereas there are work-colleagues I am absolutely not "friends" with but would recommend for almost any role in a heartbeat.

And there are a very small number that are both: a hard-working colleague who has also become a friend. Those are the people I'd consider quitting my job to start a company with.

I think they were implying that their friends do not overlap with work, while your comment seems to allude to friends you've made from work.

please don't put words in my mouth. i said nothing about being friends with anyone. and you've fundamentally misinterpreted what i said.

you don't need to be friends with someone for them to be in your network.

My apologies. I agree you don't need to be friends to be in someone's network and that's all I was pointing out. I deliberately couched my statement in "I think" and "seems to" because I understand how easy it is to misinterpret in this format. Rewording someone's statement is a way to ensure one understands and allows the other person to correct it, it's not meant to "put words in your mouth." I'm not sure why your tone is so defensive, but thank you for clarifying.

>having to "network" to get a job is much harder after you get older.

hard but I'm not sure about harder than a new grad. contacting someone you worked with years ago is still preferable to cold contacting someone you only have a shallow connection to (same school, maybe you talked for a day at a conference, etc.).

They don't have to be friends, just collogues who can vouch for you.

This is just plain ageism; there is nothing “adjacent” about it. It makes a generally untenable correlation between your age with some other trait that has no bearing on your ability to do the job, then bases decisions using that correlation. The result is discrimination based on your age, plain and simple.

> I don't really keep in touch with many coworkers due to time.

It's not hard to connect with people on Linkedin, even if you haven't seen them in years.

But is some random person you worked with 20 years ago reaches out, what are you going to do?

I would send the a link to the careers page, and that's about it. Unless person was a total rock star, you probably can't speak much to their abilities after so much time.

If I reached out a former colleague for a referral, and they just sent me a link to the careers page, I would be trying to figure out at what point I offended them so deeply. You're not saying that this person is a shoo-in for the role and will be promoted within the year, you're saying that you know what the quality of their work was at the time you worked together.

I can think of people from my first real programming job that I would hire or refer in a heartbeat. I am can also think of a couple who I might just send a link to the careers page.

I mean personally I'd refer them if they didn't suck. Yes, 20 years is a long time but I find that people generally don't change, and successful people are likely to continue being successful.

Going deeper though, obviously networking isn't going to hit every time. That's why you need a whole network and not just one or two people. If the first person you reach out to doesn't want to refer you, it's not a big deal. Just move on to the next one.

Maybe, but this feels like making excuses for something that is part of a big and obvious pattern. FWIW, ageism is the one form of outright and open discrimination that I have witnessed in tech companies. None of the unconscious bias, microagession, dog whistle, tone stuff. Just straight up insulting people in the open to their face for their age. And I’ve seen it done to justify crappier technical solutions. The problem is real and out in the open. No need for elaborate excuses.

> It's kind of ageism-adjacent, but I wonder if some of it is a bias that expects that past 40 you shouldn't really be needing to apply to jobs by resume drops any more.

This is akin to saying, "by 23, you should have moved out of your parents' house, otherwise, what's wrong with you?": it renders the speaker's presumptions into judgments.

> It's kind of ageism-adjacent, but I wonder if some of it is a bias that expects that past 40 you shouldn't really be needing to apply to jobs by resume drops any more.

I think that is an assumption made by people who have had a single smooth career trajectory, but it often does not hold water.

Making a career change in your 30s or 40s is a thing. Honestly, I think it’s one aspect of the US that makes the economy robust and resilient.

Having made a bad career choice (e.g., former employer) is also a thing. I know that there is one place a friend of mine worked at that was basically a real-life Dilbert documentary. The specific work she did was right up her alley, but the organization was just an absolute train wreck. The few good people (including her) in that org left as quickly as they professionally could. Sadly, that was her second bum employer in a row, so all of her previous work contacts were not recent.

I wish more people would be open-minded to these possibilities.

"If you were good, you wouldn't need this job by now"

Who the hell would want to work for an org that thinks this way?

I'm in my 40's have been with the same company (FAANG) for over a decade. I'd say a majority of the management (including engineering) is in their mid-30's to 50's. It looks like the entirety of the senior management in engineering in my org is in their 40's.

There are fewer individual contributors in their 40's, but I know several (some moved from manager back to IC, others stayed IC).

Maybe this is a bigger issue at startups, where the founders are in their 20's?

I have similar experience at a FAANG. We have a good mix of 20 somethings through 50 somethings.

Part of it is that FAANGs have explicit IC ladders, so you can advance without being forced to manage.

How many 40+ are recent hires versus having been with the company 5-10 years?

I'd say the many/most have been with the company 10+ years (low attrition!). New hires are generally younger, but new hires that are more senior (IC or Manager) are generally older. That's not surprising, is it?

All the DEI brochures I have seen show young good looking people with different skin colors. There are no disabled people, no ugly people, no fat people, no old people.

United Colors of Peloton

And no political conservatives.

I'm apolitcal, personally, and welcome all points of view in my personal life.

I share these concerns as well, my advice to anyone that will listen is to save everything you can because this industry chews people up & spits them back out a lot faster than you would expect. And if you want longevity you had better try and get into management at a larger corporation.

I'm 50+, and perhaps I've just been lucky...but its not been an issue for me. I got my last job 18 months ago and I'm looking now. I think a lot of what people think is ageism, is wageism.. but that's just a hunch.

In my experience, if you work in areas with enough demand - its not an issue (eg you work the 'ends' of tech - really old or really new). If the demand isn't there, they probably don't want to pay for a senior employee when a fresh college grad could do it for half the cost ?

Anyway - fear not for your 40s or even your 50s!! Old geeks never die...

we just 'exec' a new program! :-D

Off topic, but this is the first time I’ve seen your username. I would love to compare sometime how we both came to such similar kinda odd usernames, haha.

you mean... a mech uprising! :-P

I think it was mech warrior or something in my case...

Work remotely and anonymously. Let the quality of your work shine through so that age becomes irrelevant.

There aren't many such roles, but with remote work gaining popularity, they're becoming more of an option.

Another point to where the crypto space shines, for compensation.

Most of the experienced people were involved in some major fuckup not long back. Just roll a new ident and build. The market is insatiable. A segment of the market thinks they want to “doxx” every builder, but they don’t matter.

What jobs are hiring individuals anonymously?

No legal ones, that's for sure.

You can dye your hair and use soft lighting to look a lot younger on video. I've seen senior engineers do exactly that to get remote jobs. Then after that you leave your camera off.

Perhaps parent meant private, as in keeping your age private as it wouldn't make sense to be anonymous if your expecting to be paid :-)

As I have gotten older, my pay has continued to increase. "Over qualified" means that I want too much money. (I don't apologize for that. I bring more value than I did 20 years ago. Either you have a use for that - enough of a use that you're willing to pay for it - or you don't.)

Also, if you've got someone with 20 years experience, and they're willing to accept the same pay as someone with 5 years experience... are they really willing? Or are they going to bail for more money at the first opportunity? If you hire them, you have to worry about how long they'll stick.

So "more than qualified" can be a real thing, not just a discrimination thing.

BC (Before COVID), I was having trouble finding a qualified person for a role on my team (Operations, not Engineering). I was getting a lot of candidates apply that looked the same on paper but weren't good fits (they claimed to be technical but weren't that technical, poor communication skills, etc.).

So I went in the tool and looked through the discard pile and found more diverse candidates that hadn't been presented to me. One looked amazing—over a decade of directly relevant experience, Oxford grad, etc. I asked the recruiter why she hadn't given me that resume and she said "She's overqualified, she's got 15-20 years experience."

I was livid and said "I don't care if they have 20 years experience, I want someone who is qualified!" We ended up hiring her and she's been absolutely wonderful, and is still on the team ~5 years later.

I don't think the recruiter was consciously discriminating against the candidate, but there were definite implicit biases that she wasn't aware of.

Implicit bias training is now required. I personally found it to be very helpful, and try and be aware of my own biases. I always hire the candidate that I think will be best for the job, but try and always find a diverse group of candidates to talk to. It's a better process, and makes for a better (and more diverse) team.

You do realize, right, that "implicit bias tests" are poppycock (and hence very likely implicit bias trainings as well).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_stereotype#Criticism

Eh, having known some recruiters over the years? A lot of it is definitely not implicit.

Sure. This was a late 30’s white woman being biased against a late 30’s white woman. It didn’t feel intentional.

I’m somewhat sympathetic toward your POV, but the average tenure in this industry is like 1.5 years or something like that. It’s not like young people stick around for a long time, and I would wager that older people are more likely to stick with a company (the older people I know are more likely to talk about “company loyalty” than my age cohort).

I don’t think it is loyalty. By your 40’s your pay is high enough that new offers to get another 20% come much rarer. The effort to find a new job has less upside.

And they may make enough and have enough savings that they care less about a salary bump. They probably own a house and don't want to move for any number of reasons--which still matters a lot of the time even in this more WFH friendly world. And, at some point, they know that a job search is probably going to be harder. And there's always risk with a new job.

I've certainly known people who would entertain a move if a new position fell in their lap but wouldn't likely seek one out.

I meant I've heard older people talk about loyalty explicitly.

I had interviews with people that were overqualified; I told them it is their choice if to take the position or not. I learned that overqualified people tend to leave after a few months to something more interesting.

Also "I want too much money" is a thing if all you need is a low level tech and the applicant is an expert in the field. It is not worth paying for expertise that you will not need. For example I hired a guy to do some very boring, routine cleanup in some databases; if I would hire a real DBA and pay double, what for? In this case I pay for the work and result, not for the expertise.

But to be fair I always tell the applicants what is the situation and give them the choice. I know it is a very rare case in the industry.

More than just wanting too much money, they think you are going to be bored going back to gruntwork and if you are bored you'll be looking to switch jobs again in a year.

The sad thing is someone like that would probably produce a better product thanks to their years of experience, and even possibly become a mentor to the rest of the team, but that's not the kind of thing recruiters think about.

>>Either you have a use for that - enough of a use that you're willing to pay for it - or you don't.

I think this is the crux of a lot of it. You only need one lead/rockstar/ninja/10x* for every 10-20 'developers'. And, as you said, there is always the fear they will leave tomorrow for 2x the money...

*) I wanna see 'evil genius' next! :-)

> I think this is the crux of a lot of it. You only need one lead/rockstar/ninja/10x* for every 10-20 'developers'

I really disagree, ideally you'd have at least one in every team.

oh - I agree it would be nice... but very few places seem to do that. I've seen a lot of 'senior' people leading 3+ teams of junior/average developers.

edit: point being, if you can muddle thru - mgmt generally doesn't see it as a 'need' just an 'expense'

> If you hire them, you have to worry about how long they'll stick.

That needs to become outdated thinking, since most people but particularly the younger ones, don't stick around any job for more than a year or two max regardless.

> "he is over qualified" etc. Most of the times, they were more than qualified.

What's the difference between "over qualified" and "more than qualified"? ;)

The amount they'll have to pay to keep the person in the future.

They don't want someone that will leave in a year. They want them to stick around, without inflating their budget.

aka 'wageism'

if you don't need a rocket scientist, you don't pay for one... grunt work is grunt work.

I joke with my age-peers that I'd bring up ageism in our DEI outlets in my current company, but I'm afraid they'd decide to kill us and use us for fertilizer if I speak up ;)

Dark humor with an underlying truth. Ageism isn't seen as an "ism" by anyone except those over the age of 40.

That's why I plan to retire at 35 :D

Remote work helps a lot in that case. I got my current remote job, which was specifically advertising for young developers, without mentioning my age. They know I'm an old fogey now, but that was after I had proven myself.

Yes, I had to severely abbreviate my resume. But no misinformation passed my lips or fingertips. The insurance paperwork, with age related info, all went through a third party.

And working remotely suits me down to the toes. On the internet nobody has to know you're a dog.

My company appears to be extremely concerned with discrimination and inclusion. Been there less than a year, and I had already three trainings on the topic.

The emphasis is very clearly on certain minorities. There's not a single "senior" on the training material videos/pictures and the issue of ageism is barely mentioned. There's clearly no will to hire older employees. I wonder what I could do about this at my level. I'm 45+ and already feel out of place and just "tolerated", don't want to raise any attention on me.

I'm curious if the ageism bothers you more because you know that will impact you specifically or is there another reason?

I agree ageism is total crap, but so is all forms of discrimination - it just seems that we will all ending up aging whereas the other forms are limited to minority groups who probably get the double whammy of minority + age.

If a 70 year old wants to churn out the same amount/quality of React code I get from everyone else on my team, I really couldn't care less

When it comes to more senior roles, it may not only be ageism, but naturally there are much less open positions and many more people down the pyramid fighting for them

Second this. I helped a guy get into a programming career in his mid-50s. He was/is really sharp but it took forever for somebody to give him an opportunity. He shined when he finally got it but there was a real struggle.

Most of the age discrimination I've ever seen has been anti-Boomerism, not specific fixed ages. i.e. it was "people over 30-40" 20 years ago, and now is basically mainly against people in their 60s+. I've never (as far as I can tell) experienced age discrimination, and I'm >40 now. There may be passive age discrimination (incompatible schedules for people with families, etc.), but most of the companies I've interacted with have been explicitly pro-family which goes against thag.

It doesnt matter what label you put on it, its still age discrimination.

Yes but it means the OP is less likely to experience it.

Its interesting how you can make sweeping negative generalisations about one group in society (based on age) and its completely acceptable. But for any other attribute (skin color, gender, orientation, ethnicity) it is considered appallingly ignorant.

Get a faux-vintage t-shirt with your favorite mustachioed mass murderer’s face on it.

But we're old enough we don't need the "faux" vintage - we have the real deal (well, not the murderer part, but old concert/band shirts).

You don’t want the employer to think you are the t-shirt’s original owner. The goal is to appear younger. :)

Those probably smell of cigarette smoke. Better get faux ones, you don't wanna scare them with too much authenticity.

Mario!

If video games could affect people's behavior, PacMan would've caused people to meander around dark rooms while munching on pills and listening to electronic music.

Related https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.28831488.0474/poster,840x830...

Sadly this would probably work. Bonus points if you tell people your pronouns are they/them, HR departments really can’t get enough of that.

My wife works for a company that does tons of business with a FAANG company. They’re putting together a presentation for the client about how diverse they are (“we have all of the sexual identities!”). They also told a Mexican guy he wasn’t diverse enough to give the presentation because he was (1) a man and (2) his accent wasn’t thick enough—it might not be clear that he is “diverse”. It’s over the top even by post-2020 standards.

It didn’t take long after Silicon Valley was no longer on the air for the entire industry to become more absurd than its parody.

I really don’t think any of this is sustainable either. Latinos in particular seem very opposed to this stuff & given that they are part of the fastest growing demographic in the country I don’t see how political support for policies like this can be maintained.

These politics only appeal to ~10% of the population anyway, and they aren't favored by a majority of any ethnicity. This stuff isn't mainstream because voters like it (which is why it never makes its way into any real laws), it's mainstream because the cultural and media elites like it and they don't have to trifle with a democratic process to impose it.

Corporate DEI stuff is also useful to "prove" that an employer isn't racist--current anti-discrimination law puts the burden of proof on employers to show that they didn't discriminate, and since it's not possible to prove a negative, they must instead compete to show that they're among the more 'woke' companies ("look at our DEI propaganda, how could we possibly be guilty of discrimination?").

Corporate DEI has laws backing it, but I don't think that's the full picture. Corporations have a genuine economic interest in diverse hiring even if those laws didn't exist: 1) Diverse hiring expands the labor pool, which suppresses wages. 2) Diverse labor organizes less effectively, particularly if the workers can be kept on edge around each other.

I don't doubt that it's not the full picture, but I'm skeptical about your theory. My $0.02:

Regarding (1), it only expands the labor pool if the pipeline for "diverse" labor hasn't already been exhausted. Instead we seem to see employers competing for "diverse" labor, including in some cases foregoing technical qualifications for "diverse" qualifications. This is only in the company's best interest to the extent that it's economically advantageous to appear to be striving for diversity.

Regarding (2), I really don't think most companies are to the point where they're deliberately stoking racial division as an anti-union tactic, at least not in the FAANG space. Seems like it would be a lot easier to push the political divide button which is pre-primed on account of the media.

>I really don't think most companies are to the point where they're deliberately stoking racial division as an anti-union tactic

Amazon tracks lack of racial diversity as a union formation risk metric https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=61403

For 2) corporations themselves may not be doing it with that in mind but when management consultants like McKinsey etc began pushing for this stuff I absolutely believe it was a consideration.

If anyone has seen Severance on Apple TV, the animosity fostered between the MDI and O&D departments is an excellent example of the strategy behind this last point.

“Management isn’t taking advantage of you; it’s the person sitting next to you with a different gender or skin color that’s the threat”

There are laws against certain types of discrimination. Corporate DEI is something else altogether (and if the anecdata elsewhere in this thread are to believed, run in direct opposition to some of those anti-discrimination laws).

I guess what I mean is that I believe this will become a political issue again & the backlash will be strong enough that cultural & media elites will no longer be able to maintain it.

My understanding is that Corporate DEI is mostly bottom up, not top down.

It usually starts as an HR initiative & then ERGs are created as a means of fulfilling goals set by the HR departments. I wouldn’t really characterize it as bottom up, although I’m sure there are plenty of companies where C suite & other divisions didn’t want this to happen & it’s being used as political leverage against them.

I recently made a move from Seattle to Dallas.

While in Seattle I was consumed by the thought that all of American academia, business, and media was consumed by idpol and other associated confusions. In Seattle, every interaction is permeated by conversations about identity, and friend groups are highly segregated by class, if not race.

Moving to Dallas completely changed my perspective. Dallas is an actual multicultural utopia. Everywhere I went, people of all kinds were doing stuff together, and not in the soft late 90s ghetto mural of rainbows and people holding hands, I mean just hanging out as if you would with friends from your neighborhood. Funny that in practice, Texas is significantly less class and race divided than Seattle.

I'm happy that latinos reject this stuff. I'm even more happy to know that it hasn't spread throughout the entire US.

From what I've gathered the few times I've been to Seattle, it isn't so much racially segregated as predominantly white. A Black friend of mine moved there to work for Amazon and hated Seattle. Eventually he got the ability to relocate to LA and is much happier now.

I was in Austin last weekend and it appeared very diverse; much less segregated than the Bay Area.

I've heard things similar about Seattle specifically that line up with what both you and the parent commenter are saying.

Maybe Seattle just sucks?

Had a similar experience visiting Texas and I’m looking forward to moving there myself soon.

I would like to push back against this, because They/Them also has plenty of risks that are usually never thought of by people who don’t use they/them or other nonstandard profiles. Many companies, especially startups, don’t have HR departments to begin with. Of those with large HR departments, many don’t have a reputation of not protecting abusers (see: Uber, Google). Most HR software, payrolls, health data, etc also assume M/F sex === he/she pronouns (this problem also happens to people with nonstandard names to some extent). Additionally, there’s no guarantee your co workers will actually use they/them around with you or somehow believe you’re less technical or less skilled purely because of your choice in pronouns.

Overall they/them isn’t really worth progressive points unless you actually are non-binary. But that comes with a lot of bullshit, see above ignorance.

This was really just a joke about how an old white guy could go “undercover” and become hireable again, I definitely wouldn’t recommend anyone actually do something like this.

Explicit pronouns are actually useful for communicating with coworkers. If you communicate with people who have names that don't hint at gender (or are in a language you are completely unfamiliar with), having pronouns available helps to avoid some basic communication gaffes. Think of it as human type hinting.

In that metaphor, why is gender part of the type hierarchy in this context? Why is that the first-class classification for concrete implementations of `Person`? Why not hair color? Why not height? Why not age? I feel like everyone would have been better off if pronouns weren't even gendered to start with. But now that would be an incendiary political crusade, which I'm not interested in.

unless you're applying for a job in HR, I don't see how HR's feelings on your pronoun use would make a difference to your job prospects.

They have a DE&I gun to the head of every hiring manager in the company so it doesn’t particularly matter what you’re applying for, there’s strong pressure to hire candidates that help meet HRs goals.

I’d pass on Soviet stuff right now, at least until Eastern Europe stabilizes.

Are Che tshirts still cool? Maybe just one of those raised-fist tshirts. That's sufficiently distant from the Russian matter.

Che is great, especially if you can rock a beret.

Che tshirt, beret, plaid kilt, birkenstock sandals, and a few of those candy necklaces. This'll be my new look.

Would you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN? You've done it so often that I've started to wince when I see your username.

This has nothing to do with your views; I don't have any idea what they are and haven't read the context in this thread. I just saw this comment because it was flagged, and I recognize that this happens a lot with your account. That's not cool and not what this site is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I don't think it was a flamewar comment at all, but I do believe all this, including this style of moderation is really just shutting up honest productive discussion, and essentially translating to "don't post things that disagree with the majority opinion". I believe this sort of flagging and moderation exacerbates the echo chamber effect.

See for example discussion at https://bookface.ycombinator.com/posts/48890

I edit-deleted the comment in protest of how the community has decided to treat minority opinions, I did not mean to start a flame war.

I don't remember what your views are on any of these topics but I'm pretty sure plenty of HN users express views similar close to yours while remaining within the site guidelines: thoughtful, respectful to others, substantive. You don't need snark, swipes, or putdowns—editing them out makes comments better, not worse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

p.s. Bookface is a private forum, so a link to it doesn't make much sense in a public place like HN.

I'm not quite approaching 50 yet, but I am getting there. What I can tell you is that the reason for some older folk's views on new trends is not that they're generally behind times, it's that with more life experience you have seen trends come and go, and you're actually in a slightly better position to judge the baloney factor of novel things.

That is not to say that this is _always_ the way things are, of course, because everybody is not the same. But that goes both ways: like you say, there are tons of people who "get" newer concerns likes the ones you mentioned.

As an example of this, compare the hype of “the cloud” with the introduction of XTerminals from people like sun and oracle.

Right. Or think of the recurring discussion on how much of a certain task should be computed on the server-side vs. in the client.

If you can't work with people who don't share your progressive politics, you may be the one who is hard to work with, not them.

Yeah, I don’t look good in brown, so I have to be careful where I work.

I think there may have been a misunderstanding.

For many things, keeping up-to-date and at least having some opinion is what's important to align with some subset of the companies out there. Otherwise you have no culture to even fit to and align with nobody.

Being too keen on the current trends might make someone a bad culture fit, too. For some projects, social upheavals are either irrelevant, or a distraction.

If you're in the time range to edit your comment, there is time to actually delete your comment instead of making a passive agressive edit. I feel that simply invites more in-fighting, with less context.

I didn't have a delete button, only an edit button.

Also I wasn't trying to be passive aggressive, I think it's worth leaving a trail of instances of when "agree with the masses or shut up" happen on HN.

I see. I think what I didn't know was that you can't delete a comment once someone replies to you. Like, I can't delete the comment you just replied to, but there are older comments I can delete.

>I think it's worth leaving a trail of instances of when "conform with the masses or shut up" happen on HN.

without context, that trail doesn't lend much weight. That's what makes the sentiment feel passive aggressive. "deleting evidence" so to speak, gives the implication that the comment in question wouldn't be a universally agreeable one to begin with, even outside of the hivemind.

By deleting your comment you're depriving people of the chance to evaluate whether the downvotes really are an echo chamber or a reasonable reaction to reprehensible statements. If you're confident that what you wrote was reasonable, and HN's reaction unreasonable, it'd be a lot better to leave the comment up.

From perspective of fairly young hiring manager (25y old) it really depended on candidate. If you changed industries and you want to come in, more than fair. If you have 10+YoE and I know we don't play that much, why would you want to work with us? I am bit wary if those people are teachable.

Please don't take it offensively, I just want to understand better philosophy of people who do only lateral moves for 8+ years (not becoming seniors, not becoming highly paid).

If the case is "not everybody is looking to dedicate their life to work" then its more probable that I will hire young person, as they just might put extra effort, as they maybe haven't chosen the philosophy yet.

If I were a senior manager and I heard that coming from you, you'd hit the unemployment turnstile faster than you could blink. You're being paid to determine whether they can do the job well and are a good team fit. If you don't understand that, then you aren't capable of conducting a quality interview, and you shouldn't be in that position at all.

What do you expect from someone who wonders if old people are teachable?

I know some of them are, but I seriously wonder for people who spend considerably long time in exactly same position with regular job hopping

>You're being paid to determine whether they can do the job well and are a good team fit.

Yes and their job history and how they changed the companies is very vital part of that.

So many people are talking a lot about "quality interview" but lets be brutally honest, for more junior positions 10% of people get to have interview, rest of them is rejected based on CV (story that job history tells) screening or technical test.

So instead of criticising me, can you advise me motivation of somebody who does 5 lateral moves in 10 years?

Let me give you a personal anecdote.

I built software for an employer that pulled in over $35M over the 13 years that I worked for them and continues to draw approximately 70% of their revenue. This wasn't an application. It was an entire suite of online products. I interfaced directly with C-level executives to go over the strategy, the scope, the features, and the design of each of these products in the lineup. I met with clients to learn about their marketing needs and how we might meet those needs. I was the technical point of contact for all software and hardware related tasks.

I was the only technical employee on staff. Occasionally I'd manage a contractor.

To be clear, I was the product manager, the hiring manager, the project manager, the lead developer, the business analyst, and devops.

But those weren't my "official" titles.

My job title was software developer.

I was fully engaged with creating the products, I was well compensated, and I was close to home.

Now tell me, what should my next move have been? Should I have gone for a position where I sat around, twiddling my thumbs, fucking with spreadsheets, sitting through inane product roadmap meetings, planning to plan about planning, and all the other insane busy work bullshit that tech companies do to justify spending capital?

I'm an expert product developer and an expert product designer and an expert facilitator and I have the receipts. I didn't become a software developer to manage people. I became a software developer because I wanted to develop software. How's that for motivation?

Thats very impressive to be honest. So to understand better people like you, if you decided to change jobs, would you search for SWE again, or only filter for positions with "senior", "principal" etc.?

If for any SWE position, what would be the motivation/ in which cases would you consider smaller scope of work?

I didn't quite have five moves in ten years and they weren't all lateral so this isn't me but I have a resume that some people didn't like because of high frequency moves due to early stage start-ups. My resume took off when two of the companies I worked with got acquired by Shopify, but before then having a high frequency of moves was viewed by some as a negative.

Keep in mind moving every two years is common in tech especially in companies that don't give four year option plans because you often get a token 1% raise when inflation is hovering around 8%. This means you're roughly 15% behind after two years with compounding. If you're a senior engineer making roughly $200K, that means you're often getting around a $30K raise to move. I think some people have careers that cap out at senior and that's okay. Not everyone makes staff or principal engineer.

You might also hire a younger who turns out to not work on bugs because it's beneath them. Or they only want to work on new projects because they went to some uppity college and it would just be wasting their education to work on "old tech".

I've seen those. They suck to work with just as much as an older who is set in their ways.

Honestly, age has nothing to do with either. It's personality.

But for the record, my first hire was 10yrs older than me, my last one is probably 10yrs older as well. So I still value experience of people who are longer in the industry