Ageism does occur in this industry, but I've mostly heard it around associating various levels with age or years of experience. For instance, at a financial product company I worked for I saw a man who went on to become a Googler get cut from our interview because he "had too much experience to be a senior". For context, most of his background had been in contracting and he'd only recently really invested himself in DS&A knowledge (the kind larger firms look for). The kind of companies he had worked for put his skills cumulatively around Senior but he'd been in the industry a long time.

There's "innocent sounding" explanation for the managers decision to cut the interview, but they're all tainted with some form of ageism.

I’m really confused. What was the motivation of the hiring company here?

More context at https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=29969359

I'm still kinda confused - did you have no work to do at all? Or you just were expecting some collaborative team work that's not there? I agree lack of communication seems extreme, but if you are working that's not exactly bench warming.

You should have asked to go remote and avoid the state taxes.

pls name a company, I want a job at that company

Seriously, if I could do all of my work without people trying to talk my ear off all day and let me keep my work life and social life truly separate, that sounds ideal to me.

"Oh the tech was textbook perfect but I didn't like that nobody wanted to stand around and bullshit all day"

Like bruh.

I dunno. Sounds to me like the kind of culture where the first way you hear about poorly communicated expectations is when you're asked to sign a PIP.

Google in Sunnyvale was like this. We had lunch together but the office was eerily quiet. People would catch themselves talking, apologize, then go to a meeting room if they wanted to continue. Low key hated it and I'm not a social person and prefer quiet while working.

That is a rather different story indeed. They made it sound here like they weren't working at all in that five months.

Maybe hitting some hiring target?

This happened frequently in the dot-com era. There was tons of over hiring to inflate the budget and get more VC money. I remember one company I worked for raised $8 million (a pretty good size A round for late 90's), then immediately dumping $1 million into office renovations for a second location down the street.

That office needed to be full. We'd hire guys who could barely spell HTML. The next round was $20 million or so. More hiring. It was like monkeys banging on keyboards. There were no code reviews, no process, nothing like that. We hired some of the most clueless management you could possibly imagine.

The product itself was half baked and ill-conceived. But we just kept on hiring. Eventually 2001 came and there were mass layoffs. I was not among them, but I left on my own about a year later. Eventually there was a fire sale and everything was sold for pennies on the dollar.

> so I hung out in the lobby for several hours waiting for anyone brave enough to get me to the badge people

Did you consider asking someone going in or out to help you get a badge or to put you into contact with the right person?

Sounds like you passively waited for someone to come and help you, which might be fine for a short while, but eventually it's better to take action.

I've never heard of a "professional bench warmer" in software development. It's not as if devs get injured regularly and need replacements. Why do you think they'd hire you just to not give you anything to do?

>> I've never heard of a "professional bench warmer" in software development.

I think this is real.

My friend who is serial Project Manager (he works for big corps here in Poland and changes job almost every year for last 15 years) actually uses the term "on bench" for programers that do not have projects assigned to them and he claims that he quite often hires people before project is confirmed, so from time to time some people are left hanging without free chairs when music stops.

I have 20+ years of experience in different companies (software and just using software);and I never ever heard of this behaviour.

I never changed job (Unusually work 2-4 years at one company) where I didn't have everything ready on my first day.

I have heard of this at Infosys in the US

IBM and Accenture in the Philippines.

Ah. I live in the EU where they a person is quite expensive to onboard and it makes no sense to hire people to be idle.

I can confirm that - "on bench" was a real term used in a software house I worked for in Poland. I think it becomes a necessity when your company doesn't have a product on its own but delivers projects for other companies. Depending on the needs of your clients, the projects may be short 3 months stints or longer years long cooperations. In an environment like that firstly you want to be able to start working as soon as the contract is signed, so you must have some staff available all the time, and secondly you don't want to wreck the morale by letting your staffing level fluctuate with the workload. Hence some people are "on bench", waiting for a project to come, doing internal work or upskilling. This company was the best one from the ones I worked for in my career BTW

yeah that's how a lot of consulting companies work

It happens for all sorts of reasons. Often managers are seen as important not because of what they produce, but how big their teams and budgets are. In that circumstance, hiring people is important, but getting anything useful out of them is secondary.

Or it could be pure chaos. Years ago I joined a startup that was scaling rapidly. The interview process was exciting, the people seemed great, and the compensation was very appealing. So I go in on my first day, eager to get to work. After sitting in the lobby a while, I'm told that they aren't ready for me, and could I come back?

The next day I come in, and they again say they aren't ready, they're very very sorry, and that I should come back tomorrow. So I do.

The third day I figure, great, now I'm going to get to work. But once again, nobody's ready for me. No desk, no computer, no nothing. They weakly suggest that maybe I could find a corner somewhere and read manuals?

I politely tell them that I think this isn't a match, GTFO, and never come back. They go out of business a few years later.

Being in the bench is not unusual for Consultancy companies, where there is no necessarily alignment between finishing with a client and starting with the next one. Or even starting directly on a client when you join them.

Quite useful time to spend learning.

Many big government consulting companies will have a constant pool of employees that have nothing to work on for a few reasons: they have a job but are waiting on a clearance to start work, they were hired for/working on something that didn't pan out so they are waiting for a new job, or they've got a job but the project hasn't been given a green light to start working it yet. These workers may be able to find some low level work to keep busy or they have some training budget that can be spent on bootcamps but sometimes there is just nothing for them to do other than just spend all day looking at the internal job board and canvassing program managers for work. The last situation is the worst to be in, you only get to bill overhead for so long until you get laid off. The good part is at least you're getting paid while applying to other companies in the evenings. Unless you know there's a position waiting for you, its best to spend as much training money as you can and find a new company before the lay off comes.

My company likes to do the complete opposite. There is always endless work to do because we only hire if there's an immediate need for someone. The upside is that you're always going to be busy and lay offs are very rare. The downside is that we are perpetually understaffed.

I'm sorry you've been burned and it's not easier for you to take these risks.

I average about 2 years, and each company has been progressively better than the last.

Don't let a bad job hop stop you. To me it's the only way to really progress your career.

I've done a huge variety of projects, experienced a ton of different management styles, and of course also never stagnated compensation wise.

Leetcode kind of sucks, but it's possible to build up enough confidence to ace it.

Particularly start by focusing on one area until you see all the basic patterns. For me, I was rather weak with trees.

Job hoping seems to be the only reliable way to increase your comp. I was promoted at Intel and got 11% as a raise. Then I bounced and gained another 40%.

From there I doubled entirely. Please do consider your value, plus selfishly you'll help keep the software engineering market competitive if you do.