I think it's less animosity and more incompetence.

I remember once when I was younger - around ~26 - being interviewed by a ~22 year-old fresh out of college, and the interview was more like a college test.

What relevance did this have to what I would do at the company? Most likely - nothing.

But this was basically all this person knew.

The younger you are, the less ability you have to 1) know what's valuable, and 2) assess it.

Not that this is a particularly easy thing for anyone to do.

That being said - younger people are going to place close to no value on your decades of battle scars and experience. They don't have any. They probably like to think it's not worth anything - because it makes them feel better about not having it.

You know - never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.

I'd also caution on the things you perceive to actually be animosity - they're probably mostly jealousy. You're someone who has WAY more options available - so you can be demanding and picky about your employer. Younger people might hate that - but that's really jealousy. They probably don't actually hate you. There's a big difference.

I was shocked when he spent the whole hour asking soft questions like “So describe your previous team structure. How did ideas and plans arise? Who took responsibility? How was conflict resolved? What were your impressions?”

I always went hard on technical stuff when interviewing, was always worried that an incompetent would sneak through.

I asked the senior engineer his rationale. He told me “This guy went to X school and got Y degree and worked at Z company. So I know he’s smart enough. And I can teach him to write good software. But I can never teach him not to be a prick.”

I did get a couple of "bad hires," but never for tech reasons.

I suspect that part of the reason is that the smaller shops I looked at were based in Brooklyn.

Brooklyn's agesim is much worse than Silicon Valley. Also, I was interested in the kinds of startups that are probably dominated by energetic younger folks. I do native Swift (Apple) stuff, and have a lot of experience with things like SDKs, and hardware control/communication.

The bigger shops tended to have a lot less interesting work, but were also a lot more "stolid" in their approach to recruitment.

Like I said, I was looking for work that I found interesting. I'm sure I would have been able to find work that was less motivating.

As it has turned out, what I'm doing now, is highly motivating, and I no longer have a desire to go back to the rat race. In the aggregate, I'm glad things turned out the way they did. A couple of startups missed out, but I'm sure they'll be OK. I'm not God's gift to programming. I know that I am doing great.

Is that a Brooklyn/hipster thing, or a NYC finance culture thing seeping into the tech world?

In my experience, “classic” companies (which now include former “rebels,” like Meta, Google, and Apple) are more likely to be professional and courteous (we won’t talk about IBM, though), when it comes to dealing with older folks.

I’ll bet that my experience as a manager also spikes my chances. I have no interest, whatsoever in being a manager again, but it gave me some great viewpoints and experience with things like strategy and pitching.

> I had to do all the same coding tests

I don't know man.

I also deliberately avoided companies known for leetcode style interviews although I can do those kinds of tests too.

I have a current portfolio that is massive.

In fact, I just got done updating several apps and packages, so it's current as of about five minutes ago.

I wouldn't dream of taking me on faith. I never did, as a hiring manager, but I was also fairly good at evaluating folks. I would have killed for the kind of info I can provide; which makes it really weird, that people immediately dismiss it.

In any case, that's all water under the bridge, these days. Barn doors, horses, etc.

In any case if you're financially in a position that you can work on whatever you want it sounds like things might have worked out for the best despite the unpleasant interviewing experiences?

I’m not gonna be zipping around in a Bentley, but I live humbly, anyway.

I never realized how important it is to be truly happy with my vocation, until I was forced into it.

It was so ridiculous though, you aren't going to get people that have defined internet standards, started successful companies, invented important things... to come work at a place to bang out Jiras and get beat up over made up deadlines. And on top of that they were being completely inflexible and were not allowing remote work. Even if you pay them 7 figures, most of these types are already independently wealthy and that's not their motivation at that point in their careers.

I really did not expect this, I got negative seniority and quick NO from people with money.

I think is a losing proposition go to be another "employee", you are a mentor, a consultant, or something alike. Be in the "same" pool than younglings not work because you are not in the range, but playing good the "nice grandpa" can works well, imho.

Also: In the case of small companies is easier to "own" the interview process if is totally pointless or wrong. Take the experience and run with it: If fizbbuzz is on the path, derail the conversation and show something more impressive and how it could be teached to the team (this is by accident something that happened to me in one of my earlier roles long ago: I already bust the first interview and the second time I only remember going for the same company on site (!)... but that time I just sit with one of the developers and talk/code a little about something cool...)