
Show HN: A job board for companies fighting ageism in tech - leonagano
https://noageismintech.com/
======
carmenbr
Hi all Carmen here. A bit of my story below:

my husband (leonagano) had faced ageism in his job hunting journey, especially
because the tech environment sometimes attracts young people and the more
experienced professionals are being left behind. Wearing my journalist hat, I
started looking for ways to help and fight ageism.

After further research, I realised this is actually a common problem among the
IT industry as stated in some articles from the likes of The Guardian
([https://www.theguardian.com/careers/2017/aug/14/women-
ageism...](https://www.theguardian.com/careers/2017/aug/14/women-ageism-tech-
startup-sexism)), Wired ([https://www.wired.com/story/surviving-as-an-old-in-
the-tech-...](https://www.wired.com/story/surviving-as-an-old-in-the-tech-
world/)), Forbes ([https://www.forbes.com/sites/marenbannon/2019/04/10/the-
bigg...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/marenbannon/2019/04/10/the-biggest-bias-
in-tech-that-no-one-talks-about/#278750a062e3)), Bloomberg
([https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-17/75-year-o...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-17/75-year-
old-job-hunters-could-become-new-normal-in-aging-japan))

That's when I decided to start this job board and hopefully, try to reduce
this problem to the minimum possible

Sometimes, the problem happens during the job description, where the "older"
professionals feel excluded when words like tech-native, ninja, etc are used,
according to Dice ([https://insights.dice.com/2018/02/28/employers-welcome-
tech-...](https://insights.dice.com/2018/02/28/employers-welcome-tech-job-
hunters-over-40/))

~~~
Grustaf
That last paragraph says a lot. If you have a company and you want employees
that are “tech-natives”, whatever that may mean, that is not the same thing as
discriminating based on age. No, not even if they are wrong, and don’t
actually need a tech-native.

This is just as silly as complaining that a moving company only hires people
that are strong enough to lift a piano and women complain about sex
discrimination because women tend to be much weaker.

It must be allowed to discriminate based on ability, even if a certain ability
correlates trongly with age, sex or something else.

~~~
RichardCA
I think the main idea is that words like "tech-native" are really just weasel-
words that can be used as a post-hoc justification for rejecting someone.

If my first immersion in tech was BASIC on a PDP-8 in the 70's when I was 12,
does that make me tech-native or not?

~~~
dragonsky67
Depends upon how you define it. I think most people who use the term tech
native and digital native are referring to people who grew up with social
media.

If you are looking for somebody to do your social media campaign, then go with
the "tech native". If you are looking for somebody to develop the next
blockbuster social media platform, maybe you will need somebody who has done
time in the trenches learning how to develop robust software.

------
WalterBright
A company I worked with once hired a team of old contractors to do a job. The
job was done on time, on budget, no drama, no overtime, and the customer was
happy. Each of the contractors received the contractually agreed upon bonus
for meeting all the targets.

I asked a manager why they didn't apply this model to subsequent projects, and
never got much of an answer.

~~~
rangeofmotion
This is my experience with older skilled programmers as well. For the most
part, I notice when there are technical folks in their 40s and 50s on a
project, the "gee whiz" is thankfully tempered by the benefit of experience,
and the projects have a more concrete results-driven character. "There is
nothing new under the sun", as they say. And when you've seen the signature of
a pitfall before, you can spot its many variations. Less chasing after
chimeras. More driving at the actual business goal.

The heavily youth-driven focus of tech hiring has always struck me as
ultimately very dumb. And I think this is also reflected in the god-awful
interviewing practices that everyone is familiar with. I don't see older
engineers promoting those practices that are talked about so much in the
industry as being borderline absurd.

~~~
mieseratte
And as a counterpoint, I've worked with a number of Senior-level programmers
more than old enough to be my parents and seen them behave in some of the most
god-awful ways. Resume-Driven-Development, Not-Invented-Here syndrome, refusal
to write new tests, refusal to maintain existing tests, breaking the build,
deploying broken code. All because of the insidious little "because I (don't)
want to."

I'm less convinced that age has anything to do with good outcomes these days
as is the discipline to do the responsible things, regardless of how little we
wish to do those things.

~~~
krn
> I'm less convinced that age has anything to do with good outcomes these days
> as is the discipline to do the responsible things, regardless of how little
> we wish to do those things.

The age might also act as a filter, since the best developers are often
promoted to the management roles in their 40s and 50s, and are no longer
writing much code themselves.

~~~
milemi
So you’re saying if you see someone over fifty writing code, odds are they’re
not very good at it? That’s a nasty prejudice.

~~~
krn
I believe there are many great developers who refuse other positions and still
code in their 50s, but an average developer in his 30s could be better than an
average developer in his 50s, because many successful developers might
transition into higher paid leadership roles or start their own companies when
they hit 40s. For instance, Joel Spolsky was still writing software in his
mid-30s.

~~~
milemi
Was Joel Spolsky a great programmer when he was coding?

~~~
krn
I assume he was better than an average programmer, since he was responsible
for designing Excel Basic at Microsoft. I think the very best programmers keep
coding in their 40s and 50s, because there is simply nothing they could be
better at. It's the "upper-middle class" of programmers, who often transition
into new roles at around 40, because they no longer feel the progress in their
careers. How many years can one spend being a Senior Engineer at Google?

~~~
milemi
I know of senior engineers at Google in their late sixties, and I’m sure there
are folks in their seventies there. Some of them are top people in their
fields. Donald Knuth is 81 (10000 in ternary) and he still codes for research
all the time. My understanding is that Spolsky’s job at Microsoft, which was
his first job, was to spec out the then nascent macro language for Excel, he
wasn’t a programmer himself, perhaps ever professionally. He does have a lot
of opinions on what a great programmer should look like, and isn’t too shy to
share them.

------
crispinb
The only form of ageism I've experienced was reverse. I entered dev
professionally in my 40s, and it was frequently assumed because of my age that
I knew more than I truly did. In consequence I was often given higher levels
of responsibility than my experience merited (regardless of my protestations).
This might have been good for someone more brilliant than I, but I found it a
problem - it made it very hard for me to learn from other people, and although
it's hard to accurately replay history I would say this slowed my skills
development. It certainly made working in tech less pleasant for me than it
might have been.

~~~
titanomachy
I could see this happening. I work at a major company and it seems like
everyone over 40 is some sort of director or senior staff engineer, so they
are taken pretty seriously.

~~~
crispinb
Here in Aus a great deal of it is managerial complacency and in some cases
laziness ('management' aspirations sometimes comprising mainly a desire to
play golf & watch rugby). There's a strong tendency to clutch at pattern-
matching shortcuts: "You're over 30 so you must be a senior developer".

Or (another one I've suffered) "I see you have a book on X (new technology) on
your desk, so you must be an expert in it". I honestly have more than once
quickly shuffled a book into a drawer when seeing a project manager approach,
just to avoid being given responsibility over a project using some new tech
I've only just started to investigate.

------
graycat
At the start of my career in computing, in one two week period I sent some
resume copies, went on 7 interviews and got 5 offers. The reason was the high
interest in computing around DC for US national security.

I was making in annual salary 6 times what a new, high end Camaro cost. My 2
BR apartment cost me 8.5% of my gross salary.

Then some _suits_ saw the problem, had the NSF have a team of economists
estimate computing labor supply and demand curves, and then have the NSF write
into research grants that so many students had to be supported and, hint,
hint, could get students from Taiwan, South Korea, India, Greece, etc.

So, net, the main reason for the nonsense in hiring in computing is that
there's no real _shortage_. When there was a real shortage, organizations
would hire based on indications of talent and expect the employees to learn on
the job enough to do the job. Now it appears that the employers have a list of
10 of their most important software tools in their _stack_ and what to hire
people with that particular list of 10 tools, with that particular _stack_ \--
not promising for either the organization or the employee.

For another, managers want their subordinates to be no threat, just secondary,
submissive, subordinate, heads down coding, no bright ideas, no risk of the
_suit_ being shown to lack technical competence, etc. And, the more people the
manager hires, maybe the more the manager gets paid; so hire a lot of
inexperienced people instead of a few deeply experienced people -- _empire
building, goal subordination_.

The non-technical _suits_ need to start to catch on and get the IT departments
being more productive and per dollar.

~~~
titanomachy
Watching the bidding war for a candidate who has offers from both Google and
Facebook makes me think there's still a shortage of _something_. And those
companies mostly don't hire for a particular stack.

There's a certain category of engineer that is still scarce and in-demand,
it's just a matter of figuring out how to convince people you are in that
category.

~~~
SomeOldThrow
There’s a shortage of engineers who will work for the incredibly low industry-
standard wages.

~~~
esoterica
Did you read the comment you were responding to? If they were looking to pay
someone “incredibly low” wages they wouldn’t be getting into a bidding war. I
don’t know what your definition of “low” is, but there are lots of people at
FB and GOOG easily clearing 400k+.

~~~
SomeOldThrow
400k is still a steal.

We need unions.

------
wjioertfhwoeirj
Figured I'd create a throwaway account to chime in here.

I'm 40+, and have to say the last few years (working for Fortune 100
companies) I am truly mortified at the lack of skill in many of the younger
folks I've worked with.

Also, generally speaking when I've had a younger boss I would say it's NEVER
because they're qualified for the position. Generally it seems they've been
able to pull the wool over their managers' eyes. Don't get me wrong, they have
no bad intentions. All I'm saying is confidence can only get you so far in
technology.

~~~
mixmastamyk
I don’t find the comments complaining about older workers very helpful to be
honest. Nor those complaining about younger ones either. Substitute
white/black or rich/poor to highlight.

------
schappim
Anyone else just hit their mid thirties and suddenly become aware of agism?

Not something that is affecting me, but something suddenly I've become more
cognisant about it.

~~~
ownagefool
Not really agism, but I've noticed that companies are super relucant to pay
extra for experience. They put their price tag on and think that's the end of
it.

There's a company local to me that's been failing to deliver on their digital
transformation for years because they can't hire the skills they need, but
they refuse to interview me based on price, despite the fact it's costing them
more to not deliver.

I think the market in the UK is a bit different though.

~~~
world32
This mentality is an issue across all age ranges in the UK. For some odd
reason employers seem to have a fixed idea of how much an employee should earn
for a certain job - and if they can't find any good people for it they usually
end up paying more than double to hire contractors. Its quite baffling really.
And its not just in IT, I've heard of this same thing happening in social
work, medicine, recruitment etc.

~~~
ownagefool
Most contractors aren't getting paid twice what they can get as an employee,
it often works out fairly close when you consider time off, the taxes paid,
etc. Shit companies obviously do act that way, but you're better off heading
elsewhere, because the same companies don't allow their employees to grow.

I'm a contractor myself and made up rates are still a thing. The high end
isn't any better than jobs I can see advertising for perms, and many of the
companies advertise for perms before they'll consider contracts.

There's actually 3 companies that have been looking for my skillset for around
the last 3 months, and they all refuse to even have a call with me because I
don't fit in the rate bracket, but they'll keep looking regardless.

~~~
world32
Really? Thats not my experience at all that contracting earns roughly the same
as permanent. Why would anybody do contracting if that was the case?

Maybe earning double is an exaggeration on my part though. For myself I earn
50% more as a contractor than as permanent (this is the net amount after
taxes, holidays, accountant fees etc.)

~~~
ownagefool
See, it depends. Realstically, as a contractor you'd be billing ~220 days a
year.

Contractor: (Devops, high day rate)

750 x 220 = £165,000. 800 x 220 = £176,000.

Employee: (Devops, high salary) + Employers NI.

150,000 + 19,508.78 = £169,508.78

Said contractor would need to bring his own equipment, pay insurance, and deal
with the risk of being let go arbitrarily, and won't get a bonus or pension
contribs.

Now where the contractor can make out is, he can pay reasonable expenses, and
he can act more tax efficent, especially if he doesn't pay himself more than
the higher threshold.

For the record, I'm not a big fan of the politics that comes with being an
employee, I like to just come in, do the work, and leave, so quite happy as a
contractor.

~~~
world32
Hmmm, a £150k salary seems much harder thing to achieve than a £750 day rate,
I can see quite a few DevOps contract jobs at £750 / day but no permanent ones
at £150k! As you say though, it depends on how you look at it..

~~~
ownagefool
I think there's a reasonble amount of both but large bureaucracies like gov,
banks or multinationals have finance departments that set salary bands.

These usually don't reflect that skilled IT is vastly different from desktop
jocky, and that it's a well paid field, thus they're forced to use contractors
or outsource.

Skill wise, they're probably same same.

------
hamstergene
I am pretty sure "ageism" is just an inadvertent consequence of the wrong
belief that years of experience must linearly translate to ability. Not
because anyone dislikes older folk per se.

If someone has got 30 years of experience, employers/recruiters think it
requires at least senior or manager position, while entry/mid level position
appears "unsuitable".

They don't understand that after 3-5 years the diminishing returns flatten the
output almost completely and the only thing that years of experience can tell
is the arithmetic difference between current year and the year of graduation.

The matters are surely made worse by the current FAANG tendency to ignore
whether the experience is relevant. If someone has never wrote a line of Java
before, a junior position with quick promotion is the most fair and logical
choice. But if their resume shows 7+ years of any coding experience at all it
wouldn't even pop up in recruiter's search because of how they set up their
filters for junior positions.

~~~
world32
I think this is a very good point and is definitely part of the reason why we
have apparent ageism. This aspect is also compounded by the fact that
technologies and paradigms are changing so fast - yes I know software re-
invents the wheel a lot, but the fact that you were coding GUIs in the 90s,
before some of today's 20-something developers were even born, really doesn't
make you that much better of a React.js developer.

I'm not saying the kind of ageism thats being discussed here doesn't exist -
the "brogrammer", "culture fit" kind of discrimination. But I think its
probably blown out of proportion. Especially for non-bay area companies, it
seems like whenever somebody talks about "tech companies" they are referring
to a very specific kind of tech company that is really only a relatively small
portion of the industry.

------
aryehof
My thoughts are that ageism in IT is a natural consequence of not valuing
experience.

Rather for many employers what is sought is simply someone, smart, fast
learning, motivated, compliant, enthusiastic, loyal, and a good team fit, with
perhaps boot camp level knowledge of the latest in shiny framework(s).

Many inexpensive 18 year olds can fit that description well, particularly in
regards to their being enthusiastic, compliant and motivated. It helps that
these are values that inexperienced managers and interviewers can actually
assess, along with (inapplicable to the position) canned answers to questions
about data structures and algorithms.

~~~
mojuba
> My thoughts are that ageism in IT is a natural consequence of not valuing
> experience.

Exactly, which is often reflected in job specs. You rarely see a requirement
to have 10, let alone 15 or 20 years of experience as a requirement. When the
application is automated you can get a drop down menu that stops at 5+, for
example. I once complained about this to Hired.com; they didn't react at the
time but years later they added more options up to 15+.

This is a Dunning-Kruger effect of sorts. When those hiring have no more than
5 years of experience, they have no idea that the difference between 10 and 5
is as big as between 0 and 5, and so on. Unfortunately you have little chance
of seeing the value of experience if you lack it yourself.

~~~
sverhagen
There's probably a lot of things where the extra years of experience over a
certain number doesn't matter much anymore. I don't think you can learn as
much about many things in the second five years as you did in the first. Other
factors then play a much bigger role anyway, such as: did you use whatever you
claim experience in once a week or all the time.

~~~
mojuba
There are things where it's not about learning as much as about the quality of
code you produce within the same timeframe. My personal record of rewriting a
big product was reducing a 150k LOC project to 7k lines with the same
functionality and then some more. Now compare the cost of maintenance of 150k
lines of code vs 7k. That literally translates to a lot of (saved) money for
the company. While that one was probably a bit extreme, even 3x or 4x
reduction can be a big win. These things come with experience more than
"learning" in the traditional sense.

~~~
world32
Fair point but do we have any actual data around the correlation between years
of experience and value to a company? Admittedly its probably a hard thing to
measure..

Because I can also tell you another anecdotal example of some developers who
each had 20+ years experience each and we're quite high ranking they company
they worked at:

\- They would re-invent the wheel constantly: the framework provided lots of
functionality which had been developed and battle tested by thousands of other
developers but they couldn't be bothered to learn what was available to them
so wrote a lot of functionality from scratch which was usually far more buggy
than the open source code available.

\- classes which had literally 10,000+ lines of code in them.

\- of course the idea of following SOLID principles was never ever going to
happen

\- a general view that they were the experienced ones who "just made it work
and got on with the job" while the younger programmers or those who followed
more modern practices were seen by them as being "airy-fairy" and worried
about things that didn't matter. that argument might have held weight if the
application they built wasn't so awfully riddled with bugs and so poorly
architected that mainting it and building new features took ages.

\- They had all been working at the same company for at least 15 years, so
they were able to ignore the advances made in software development in that
time and carry on with their old ways. Of course they could still code new
features and fix bugs but they didn't realise that what they were doing could
be done in a much much better way.

I'm not saying all old developers are like this. But if somebody is able to
tell me that older developers are better because X, then they should be able
to accept somebody else disagreeing and saying that older developers are worse
because Y. You can't have it both ways.

------
brogrammernot
Super interesting idea and hope it goes well.

I’m not sure if it’s just a slew of interviews lately with older individuals
or a trend but couple of things to avoid when interviewing that maybe are
innocent comments but can def get you labeled as disrespectful.

Things I’ve been called or have had said by candidates in interviews the past
three weeks: \- Kid \- “You’re basically a child then” \- Youngin \- ”You’re
too young to know this but there used to be...” — Punch Cards — Mainframes —
COBOL \- Not taking my questions seriously compared to the older individual
I’m interviewing with \- A comment about the fact I’m wearing a t-shirt

So, yes, I do think ageism is a problem in technology but also, there’s a
growing issue it would appear with older candidates specifically not
understanding how disrespectful it is the other way to assume lack of 15+
years experience somehow indicates I don’t know anything about the origins of
computer science, that I’ve never touched low level code before and that it’s
okay to use phrases like “you’re too young” and “youngin”.

~~~
User23
What was the coolest thing you coded up for your operating systems class?

~~~
kaicianflone
Bro do you even chromebook?

------
bryanrasmussen
Well I am pretty sure I am facing ageism as well, although I am employed now.

Considering why ageism exists though, I think there are some assumptions that
lead to it.

A common one that get trotted out whenever we discuss this subject is that
older workers won't put up with as much as younger people do (long hours,
pressure, low wages).

On the subject of low wages there are two things - younger inexperienced
workers get less money because they are inexperienced, older more experienced
workers get more money because they are experienced, that's clear.

Here is a guide on wages in Denmark (in Danish) [https://www.prosa.dk/raad-og-
svar/loenstatistik-2019/](https://www.prosa.dk/raad-og-
svar/loenstatistik-2019/) In the region I am in programming wages for someone
with 0-3 years experience is 37420 DKK per month (before high taxes of course)
at 19 years experience which is what have it's 57277.

So an employer is paying for this experience, and they might think is it
really worth it. I am working mainly with React now, and it is impossible to
have 19 years experience in that. As it happens my experience with search
solutions and international law garnered from my 4 years at Thomson Reuters is
invaluable at my current job, but that's luck.

At some point a manager must think given the changeableness of the IT market,
how much of that 19 years should be monetizable? I mean I did a lot of years
building XML/XSLT based solutions for web and print - nobody wants that
anymore, I remember when Netscape 4.something would crash because you had a
nested p inside of a div that was inside of a p, an employer pays a couple
thousand for those years, and the argument is that all experience translates
to value but what if it doesn't?

Based on what I do on a day to day basis I would say the experience I have
that I actually use is from 2009 on - based on the guide that should translate
to 48045 of value. I'm not saying my experience before 2009 will never be used
or do not inform who I am, but in day to day I have a hard time pointing to
something I am doing that anything before that year is really relevant, if I
know this I suppose a manager must sometimes suspect it.

on edit: grammar

~~~
mixmastamyk
Interesting, however I’d look at it this way. I don’t need obsolete tool
knowledge anymore, true. But I waste a lot less time making stupid decisions,
which I got out of my system using those tools. And many subjects, such as OS
fundamentals, Unix tools and shells, and project management continue to pay
dividends.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
Sure, but it's hard to quantify, and ok when I think of it there is some linux
knowledge from before 2009 I use but really it is spotty.

There is also the whole thing about pattern recognition, you have seen similar
things in other systems, but these benefits are conjecture - we can't say how
much they apply, we only suspect that they apply at a significant enough level
to matter.

------
dqh
This is great. I am 40 myself, and hired and lead a strong dev team where
about half are older than me and about 30% over 50 years old. In fact we have
a father and his son working on the same team :)

Anyway my view is that you can’t beat experience if what you care about is a
stable system. Good people get better over time.

~~~
carmenbr
This is awesome! What a diverse team. I wish it was a reality for everyone in
this industry but unfortunately is far from.

------
sergiotapia
Great idea! The best two engineers I've had the pleasure to work with were
both 45+ years old. They had a cool head when shit hit the fan, and were
generally unfazed about technical problems. "Been there done that, let's do
this right." If your company is discriminating against older engineers you're
making a big mistake!

Now can we get a "no leetcode" job board? My favorite companies give you a
take home, of a real world problem, vertical slice of what you're expected to
do day to day.

~~~
tidwall
What is “leetcode”?

~~~
erik_seaberg
They don't want to write code during the interview. Some complain about
needing to practice, which I can't understand. Me, I'm pushing 50 and I'd be
wary of joining a team who got hired _without_ writing code.

~~~
tidwall
So leetcode is code that is written by the interviewee during an interview?
Sounds tough. I never had to do that. I would probably clam up and fail.

~~~
Stratoscope
That is related, but leetcode is actually a website dedicated to these kinds
of interview problems:

[https://leetcode.com/](https://leetcode.com/)

------
marsrover
I think that as the years go by we’ll see ageism reverse. The early 80s is
really the first time CS education really started taking off and it continues
to be a very popular major. These people are now starting to get old and it’s
the first time we’ve had this vast an older software developer workforce. I
think it’ll have more effects than just anti-ageism but also the coming into
our own in regards to engineering by way of having older mentors.

~~~
badfrog
> These people are now starting to get old and it’s the first time we’ve had
> this vast an older software developer workforce.

Where are all the older software developers? I've worked at a few FANG and
similar-level finance companies, and the vast majority of developers are under
35. Are the older ones clustered in some other corner of the industry?

~~~
paladinxx
There are also many of us who are having trouble finding work. I'm 45, and
have a ton of experience. I lost my last job after a few more younger people
joined the team (all fresh out of college). They all lived together near the
office, went out each night after work -- I'm a single dad with kids so can't
do that these days. As much as I liked working with them, there was this
growing feeling that they felt that I didn't belong (even though I had been on
the team since they were in high school). Code reviews got tougher, I heard
complaints from my manager that they thought I took too long on tasks. The
final straw was an argument that erupted when I took a day extra than they
thought it should take on a particular task. One of them had pulled in OpenSSL
a little while back to do some crypto. I needed to make some changes to their
code and noticed that the random number generator wasn't being seeded. I wrote
some code that I've written before to gather a little entropy from the system
and feed it into OpenSSL's PRNG. Even after showing them articles about weak
entropy being the cause of security breaches, they collectively felt that I
wasn't working in line with the team. At that point I was the only original
team member, and I had six team members, all of whom were well below 30 years
in age.

I've been out of work for 12 months now. Previously I passed every interview I
went to (Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook) and had the luxury of choosing
between multiple offers. I haven't got through an onsite loop with any of
these recently, nor with a bunch of other companies. The _only_ thing I
believe is different is my age.

BTW, the me/them thing is reflection after the fact, not how I felt at the
time.

~~~
WrtCdEvrydy
I'd start targeting the legacy industries (insurance, boating, auto). Plenty
of large software development houses that would (off the record) hire older
people who are more serious.

~~~
ahartmetz
You can earn a living there, but most non-software industries are bad at
software, so your skills will deteriorate and you will have a hard time
finding another interesting job.

~~~
meddlepal
It seems this fixation on the shiny "interesting" jobs is another problem. I'm
not getting any younger and I don't doubt there is some ageism in the industry
but if we're biasing the search to only include FAANG and a handful of other
darlin companies then that's not really a fair analysis of the situation.

Anecdotal but I've seen >40 year old engineers thriving at non tech-hub
software companies. There's plenty of interesting B2B companies that lurk in
the suburbs or tier-2 or tier-3 cities.

~~~
ahartmetz
I did not say that it's either FAANG or not interesting. But the companies
doing interesting software work tend to be software companies. There are many
counterexamples both ways.

------
jortizco
I see many people here calling engineers to people who are only coders. A
software engineer is something else, and guess what? It is not only about
coding, is designing a product from concept to delivery. ( and maintenance of
course ). By the way, ageism ( at least in the Bay Area ) is real as hell.
It’s happening to me right know, and I am ONLY 43 years old. This is the
truth, if the interviewer is younger than you, it does not matter how good you
are or what amazing skills you have, you won’t get the job. Sorry, but that’s
the truth right now.

~~~
carmenbr
unfortunately is not a reality just in the Bay Area. We found it here in
London as well, in huge companies and startups. That’s why we had the idea, to
alert companies that this is actually happening everywhere and they should pay
more attention to older professionals, not only gender and race. Diverse teams
are proved to be more effective than others.

------
random42
I wish there was a "no leetcode-ism in tech" job board

~~~
neilv
Maybe we'd have more women and other current underrepresented groups in
"tech", did the whole post-graduation jobs thing not seem to be about fratbro
hazing and "culture fit".

When I got my first real software engineering internship, as a teen, shortly
before dotcoms, about half the engineers in my group were women.

And, though they were doing difficult work on technical and systems software,
there was none of the posturing, glamorizing, and self-congratulating that we
often see in industry today.

(In hindsight, some of the work they did is still beyond what most developers
do today, though I didn't appreciate that enough at the time.)

I'm sure there were industry problems such as sexism in the '90s and earlier,
pre-dotcoms, and in some ways we have more awareness today, but I think we've
become arrogant and cultish in other ways. Yet commoditized. And one-way
leetcode-type hazing is part of that.

~~~
mixmastamyk
The big push in the media to stereotype boys as computer nerds strengthened in
the early 80s. Think War Games and Whiz Kids. I didn’t notice at the time
because it was what I was.

Nowadays every computer “hacker” on TV is a really hot chick; maybe the
pendulum could come back to center.

------
Grustaf
Granted I’m only 42 but I’ve never experienced a hint of ageism here in
Scandinavia. Maybe it’s an American thing? But to you who complain of ageism,
would you be fine working for the same salary as a 22 year old that shares a
cheap studio apartment with some mates? Or would you be willing to put in as
many late nights as a childless youngster would? If not, I don’t think we are
actually dealing with some kind of nefarious discrimination here, just a
rational market.

~~~
es89r9538
If we were dealing with hard labor maybe your point would make sense to me.
The very best laborer can only do X times as much work in same amount of time
as the least skilled laborer. When dealing with skills of the mind one person
could take an entire lifetime and never accomplish what a skilled academic can
achieve in an afternoon.

Granted I'm not saying older folks are all better than their younger
counterparts. But what I would say is that in corporate America it feels to me
as though there is no differentiation made between 2 people (with same title)
while one takes 10x as much time to accomplish the same amount of work.

Take for example my last project. I never stayed late and always made it known
that I wasn't happy when asked to. Meanwhile my younger counterparts worked
happily through the night very regularly. I was never late on a deadline.
Almost 100% of the younger folks were almost always late. Yet instead of being
happy, that I was accomplishing my work within my regular days, my
"commitment" was questioned as I wasn't happy to work all hours of the day and
night to help this company complete its project.

So my line in the sand is now drawn. It's a question I regularly ask when
interviewing for new positions now. I'm not interested in working with people
who have to work endlessly to try to meet deadlines. It's a clear "smell" that
ultimately they don't really know what they're doing.

~~~
Grustaf
It’s not just in hard labor where employers may want people to work long
hours. Regardless of what a lot of older people say, you can actually achieve
more by working more hours, at least for short periods. And the younger you
are the longer those periods can be.

And yes, commitment can also be relevant in itself, especially in a startup.

I had a previous career as a management consultant and we worked 60-80 hours
every week. You can’t really do that if you have a family, at least not
without making significant sacrifices. Those crazy hours are not just about
producing more, it’s also about showing your dedication, paying your dues and
showing the client that our people are really working hard for out fees. It
wasn’t for me, but it’s naive and insular to claim that age is irrelevant.
Sometimes it is, but most of the time it isn’t.

~~~
russdpale
Personally I find it kind of disgusting you ever expect anyone to work those
hours for anything. That is absurd.

------
southern_cross
As time goes by there is going to be more and more "old" code out there, and
generally that will either have to be maintained in its current state or
converted to something newer. And to do that you're going to have folks who
are both familiar with it and are willing to work on it - except that the
young bucks today just _really_ don't want to do that.

I'm hearing from IT employees of local corporations that if their code base is
twenty, ten, or even just five years old now, they can't find young folks who
are willing to work on it. And even if they do find them, they don't
necessarily have the skills to do that work, nor any particular inclination to
really learn those skills, nor are they willing to stick around for very long
even if they do start the process.

~~~
harimau777
I think that a lot of engineers consider the opportunity to work on new
technology and code to be part of their compensation. In that case, in order
to attract them a company would either need to allow them to do that or
increase other forms of compensation. However, it doesn't seem like many
companies are willing to do that.

~~~
southern_cross
IIRC, something like 90% of a software engineer's career will be spent doing
"maintenance" work - working on existing code bases, some of which may
(eventually) be quite long in the tooth. So it's something that the young
bucks are going to have to get used to pretty quickly.

Also, a lot of the "new" stuff that they want to work on is really old stuff,
just with a new name and a new coat of paint. Having been in the business for
several decades now I see of lot of this, and I am by turns both amused and
appalled by it.

~~~
user5994461
One caveat though. One way to avoid maintenance is to do full rewrites. This
happens quite a lot in some domains and industries. As long as they can keep
doing it and change company, they can avoid a lot of maintenance.

~~~
southern_cross
Doing a full rewrite is often asking for trouble, though. Somebody out there
on the internet maintains a list of companies which have pretty much put
themselves out of business by doing full rewrites. Why is this? Because it
turns out that a lot of that "old, ugly code" is in fact various types of bug
fixes and other operational accommodations. And when you do a full rewrite you
tend to lose track of a lot of that stuff, meaning that you get to deal with
it all over again, often in a quite painful manner.

A former employer of mine had switched from using custom code to packaged
code, which introduced plenty of problems of its own but overall things were
generally going about as well as could be expected. Then they decided that
they just had to have the latest and greatest version of that code from the
vendor, which promised all kinds of flashy bells and whistles. They unwisely
jumped into this with both feet (they were an early adopter), only to find
that when those bells and whistles were added a lot of the old code had been
rewritten, too, which introduced (or maybe re-introduced) a large number of
very serious bugs. By the time those bugs were corrected (if they ever really
were), the company (which was by now my former employer) was in such bad shape
that they were basically forced to close their doors. They had pretty much
lost control over their inventory and financials, for example, and had
committed themselves to fulfilling contracts which were based on cost figures
that were woefully incorrect.

~~~
user5994461
You're thinking of software that's been used and battle tested over many
years. Most software will never reach that state.

A typical project is done by a handful of contractors or fresh graduates, that
are all gone after a year or so. The next team will attempt to throw it away
and start over more often than not. Point being, there is plenty of work in
churning out software.

~~~
southern_cross
The "churn" thing may cut it the web world and such but not so much elsewhere.
There's a local mega-corporation whose core code base is up to twenty years
old now, and another whose is up to ten years old. Neither will probably be
rewriting anything anytime soon because their current codes bases _were_ the
rewrites - expensive and time-consuming ones at that - so they're still adding
new features and in some cases still trying to work out long-standing bugs.
Neither is lately having much luck bringing in fresh graduates, either,
because the young bucks don't want to work on that stuff - it's too old for
them.

~~~
user5994461
It's more common than you think. A lot of software don't last long. In fact a
lot of software never actually get used.

Consider startups. Each successive group of new joiners will be adding a lot
of new code and regularly throw anything that's already there. The churn is
massive.

Have you worked with or for contracting company like Accenture? They assign
developers to work on a project for a defined period of time, then disappear.
It's not systematic that the software will reach a well working state, be
handed over to the client and be actually used.

Another case. Things done with independent contractors. They are regularly
hired to do nothing, well, maybe pretend to work and show a demo once in a
while. If they produce something, it's not uncommon that the company didn't
bother to hold the source code or build scripts.

Don't get me wrong. I fully agree with you. There is definitely more work
available in maintenance than in new projects. However I also think there is
enough work for a developer to make a career in either.

~~~
southern_cross
Yes, in the past I've been both a contractor myself and a contracting
customer. And while I have seen newly built code bases thrown out for various
reasons, from what I've seen that's not very common. AFAIK most of the code
that I've ever written is still out there and working, unless maybe it died a
natural death - company closed, got bought out, changed technologies, or what
have you.

At my last gig as an independent contractor I did a lot of work on a project
that mostly revolved around one of their largest customers. But then the
employee who I was working with the most on this took early retirement due to
medical reasons, which caused a change of direction somewhat because the
employee who took over that job wanted to do things a bit differently. Then
their big customer went out of business, which had a rather dramatic effect on
the overall project. But as far as I know the code and such that I worked on
is still in active use, it's just not nearly as critical to the business now
as it used to be.

Before that I worked at a local mega-corporation, and there was one project
there which I worked with on and off for ten years. But then one day, due to
an act of legislative fiat, its reason for being just up and disappeared, so
almost overnight all of the software and hardware that was used to make it
work just went away.

But that same place suffered a bit from what you describe, in that it wasn't
too unusual for them to spend money on software that didn't actually work, so
it was ultimately abandoned. In fact, I had a running joke with them: "Gee
folks, if I'd known that you were willing to settle for software that didn't
actually work and that you were going to just throw out anyway, I would have
only charged you half of what you paid those other folks to develop it!"

------
bin0
Site got slashdotted. Wayback machine copy:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20190622083122/https://noageismin...](http://web.archive.org/web/20190622083122/https://noageismintech.com/)

Also, can some one explain the "diversity link" on a bunch of these?

~~~
thrownaway954
slashdotted??? Now you're truly showing your age ;)

~~~
bin0
Yikes. I'm not that old... right? Right?

------
rendall
As the tech industry ages, we will see more and more articles about how maybe
old programmers aren't so bad after all. By the time Elon Musk, Mark
Zuckerberg, the Google gents, et. al. all reach retirement age, there will no
longer be such a focus on youth in the industry.

~~~
granshaw
Wanted to post exactly this. Ageism is far less of an issue in other
Engineering disciplines, and my hope is that as ours matures, it becomes less
of an issue too. We’re already starting to see maturation in recent years with
things like less language, framework and tooling churn, and consolidation
around a few SDLC best practices

------
closeparen
Are there stats on the proportion of older engineers who can't find work? It
would seem most of the "working engineers are young" observation could be
explained by most people who have ever entered the field entering it recently.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Unlikely. Probably representative of not much even if there were. Most old
types like me would not seek to be a visible statistic if they couldn't find
work, but quietly go off and find something else to do.

Of my similarly aged friends who were once in tech, most have now left it -
some from getting bored or burnt of some aspect, others from ageism. It's an
_absurdly_ ageist sector and startups an order of magnitude worse. Worse still
I have seen overt and blatant ageism on the hiring side multiple times.

Not everyone cares, and you can often work around it with even more
applications, but it does get tedious hearing the euphemisms for "ew, you're
old, we're all cool kids." that can translate as "You're perfect, but we think
you'll get bored", "great interview, but you're a little overqualified". Hmm.
My qualifications were on my CV when you invited me...

I've yet to fail to get work, but it's definitely becoming more effort.

------
garmaine
THANK YOU.

I’m not enough of a dinosaur to need this yet, but this is the right approach.
Advertise willingness to hire regardless of age, which works to ingrain
acceptance in your own company, and shame those who don’t participate.

This is just what our industry needs.

------
older_better
"Your really over qualified for the job..." I heard that for the first time my
last job search. It's so tempting to say back: "So...What dpes that mean? I
would do the job too well?"

Age-bias and Agism is real, especially on a job hunt. We have come so far as a
society in chipping away at all the various types of discrimination - this one
may be one of the last to (hopefully) fall.

I am just adding this for those who can relate.

Here's the kicker: In my early 60's I am better at my job (IT Program/Project
Management) than ever. I want to retire at 90 (or never). I understand people
better, know more than ever, embrace what's new, know and am certified on the
newer ideas and methodologies, I am better at working with a wide variety of
people and teams than my peers. Plus, I have far more stamina and energy than
people 25 years younger (not a small thing in IT). I even have 2 teenagers
(keeps you moving).

All I can do is do it better, possibly start my own company (but I'm actually
a much better #2 than an owner.) And hope people get smarter about it. But
building awareness (like this thread) can't hurt. Look at how the other
discriminated groups have challenged everyone else to question their
prejudice.

------
bartq
Ageism definitely exists when company feels someone is too old to join them.
There's obviously easy solution to this problem: join companies where people
are similar age to yours or older. Because younger people are probably just
not able to handle you or appreciate your life experience and are looking for
people similar to them. What if you're extremely old and your equals are dead?
You should've retired by that time or have alternative revenue streams than
salary. If you've failed to have other income streams than salary that's your
fault. You've limited your (professional) life to technical excellence which
is obviously only one of the aspects of career and life general. I think
people should at some point take wider responsibility of what they're doing
and become not necessarily managers, but maybe tech leaders, authors, trainers
etc. There is one more aspect to that: person may have a mental condition,
like asperger's or something like that. Then he probably cannot build his
career in a way described above and he needs to seek alternative ways of
progression.

------
mbrameld
It would be more useful if the jobs were searchable or sortable. It's
frustrating that I have to go to each company's page to see the jobs.

~~~
leonagano
Yes agreed. Initial idea was to include all jobs on the homepage, but we'd
like to build the website as simple as possible to validate the idea and see
if it is really a problem in the industry. I'm sure the website will change
over time

------
oneplane
I sadly had an experience last year with older team members neither having the
sage wisdom nor the flexibility to add value to a project, but they were kept
on because of diversity reasons. The project was still delivered on time, on
par with specs and within budget, but the older people were sent on paid leave
after the first month of the project.

While it's a cliche to assume older (or younger) people are never going to
work out in a team, it definitely happens a lot where outliers in the age
range simply cannot do the work, whatever the reason. (and I'm not talking
about not being qualified, that's usually not the problem)

On the other hand, with this anecdotal failure we have seen anecdotal
successes as well; but knowing that older members can fail on a project due to
what they self-describe as their age does actually happen in just the way
people seem to fear; just not as often as they seem to think.

~~~
carmenbr
Sorry to hear that but think that’s more a problem of commitment instead of
age

------
rdlecler1
How much is ageism, and how much is it employers feeling like a more senior
person will have higher salary expectations?

~~~
tchaffee
Feeling a more senior person will have higher salary expectations IS ageism.
Make the same offer to everyone qualified.

------
christiansakai
Thank you so much for this. A CS professor of mine who is currently struggling
with her income and her future (even though she is tenured) could really use
something like this (she doesn't mind doing boring programming work).

~~~
carmenbr
Many thanks for the support and hope we can help her to find a new position

------
vmurthy
I went through the site out of curiosity . First of all, kudos for taking the
initiative. You will hopefully grow big because it seems like a big problem
(or soon to be one). I have a suggestion regarding the UX: Can you have a
couple of filters (location, skills etc) which will make it easier for job
hunters? As of now, it seems ok without the filters but as soon as the job
postings increase, you will face issues. Again, good luck with the project :-)

------
mk89
Great initiative. I hope it gets better and better from this point of view.

The way I see it is that we tend to hire minorities but when it’s about people
with experience we rather pass... I have the luck to work with 50+ years old
colleagues and it’s the best experience you can have, because you can learn a
lot and share a lot.

------
whatisthemaxcha
I'm not trying to be critical but genuinely curious? How do you convince
companies to post on a job board that is new like this (or any other
marketplace type product)? Is this a fake it until you make it type of
product?

~~~
carmenbr
That's the hardest of having a two-sided marketplace. The famous "chicken and
egg" problem.

The beginning is difficult and for that reason, we're trying to focus on
companies with D&I department. Companies wanting to diversify their staff have
many option when it comes to gender but not many job boards focused on ageism

~~~
brentadamson
What is D&I?

~~~
leonagano
Diversity and Inclusion

------
innocentoldguy
As a 50+-year-old, I like the idea of this site. I think it would be even
better if people could search for specific skills (e.g. Elixir, Erlang, Rust,
etc.) and see more detailed job descriptions.

------
Doubl
If age discrimination is illegal should not the age profile of companies be
tracked the same way race and gender are, at least I think they are.

------
juskrey
You don't want to be within the system which actively rejects you. Accept the
gift of warning and walk away, search further.

~~~
carmenbr
The point here is the kind of benefits and how companies are advertising their
roles more focused on the youngest professionals and forgetting the more
experienced ones. ie pets and cool offices with video-games. That’s definitely
not attractive for “older” professionals.

------
rbanffy
School seems to be a mandatory field and I couldn't find some schools on the
list.

------
dlphn___xyz
it doesnt make sense to stay in tech (as an individual contributor) long term
- especially working for someone else

~~~
pacomerh
well some people are not interested in management positions and building your
own thing is sometimes not as easy for everyone, so care to elaborate why it
doesn't make sense?

~~~
PeterStuer
Simply put: The risk of ending up generally unwanted and unable to get back up
after your current gig goes south, or you have to take a leave due to an
illness or other life obligations, rises dramatically over the years due to
systemic ageism in our industry.

~~~
carmenbr
That’s exactly the point, apart from what you have chosen (keep coding and
work in tech), you don’t have the option to choose as the companies have been
recruiting only youngest professionals and all environment is focused on the
youngest people. There is space for everyone and it’s a fact that diverse
teams are more effective than others.

------
older_better
And - Thanks for this forum!

------
gingabriska
How can people not blame the infanticised offices with food, toys and gym
which signal latent expectation that you spend most of your time in the office
and you've no family.

Lack of private cabins and too much noise in open offices and feeling that you
are always being watched.

Coding interviews which make you feel as if you are applying for a competitive
top tier university which often require days of prep. Then the interviewer who
pulls out some weird special case and is shocked to see that you spent years
in industry yet you don't know about this case.

And startups whoes purpose is market disruption by often undermining
rules/regulations, how can anyone who is not naive will not be worried about
that? Who wants to be part of a racket who deliberately breaks
rules/regulation and it isn't 100% guaranteed how government is going to react
to that and feel mostly like a gamble which experienced people won't like
making. No wonder younger people commit more crimes.

With age comes experience and wisdom and desire to not be taken advantage of
and to not be manipulated by any dark patterns.

Sorry but I think most tech companies are optimized for certain kind of people
and will find it increasingly hard to attract, keep and get best work out of
the aged ones.

~~~
JudgeWapner
I agree about noise and private work areas, but disagree about food toys and
gym. In most populated areas, traffic is a big deal. An employer that gives me
food now cuts out this potential headache for me, plus saves me money. An
employer that has an on-site gym clears a _huge_ burden for me which is the
waste of time to drive to the gym and try to work out perhaps at 5:30 when
_everyone else_ is doing the same. Perhaps I have a higher social anxiety that
normal, but circling crowded parking lots at lunch or after work, or bumping
into people in a crowded locker room pisses me the hell off. If an employer
eliminates this source of stress for me, that is superb. Double for exercise,
because in this industry you will gain weight and lose circulation from being
anchored to a computer 8 hrs/day. So working out can literally save/extend my
life.

Now, if they try to imply that I need to regularly stay for 9,10 or more hours
per day, that's when I will become assertive and simply refuse. I don't see
the correlation between overworking and giving me great amenities.

------
sonnyblarney
This has likely a lot to do with a wave of 'new' experiences in tech that
possibly required a whimsical and specific curiosity, and of course a degree
of 'nativism'.

When someone said something about 'digital natives' \- I think he had a point.
I'm 'not quite digital native' and I've never liked FB, or anything 'social
media'. I think that kind of disqualifies me for such work.

Instagram, FB, Snapchat, Kik - these are as much 'social' as they are 'tech'
\- they are more like media shops than tech shops in many ways (or were).

So for the same reason MTV etc. (ha ha, dated reference!) are mostly young and
hip, it might make sense that some companies have the same.

There's something to be said for 'doing things in a new way'.

Now, as many have noticed "there's nothing new under the sun" for the most
part, and as the heady bubble bursts a little bit, I'm hoping that things
become normative.

I started my career in the Valley, in Telecom, surrounded by 35-50 year old
people, so brilliant, so experienced, I could barely keep up and I felt
'junior' on a daily basis.

Contrast that with my 'dot com' SF friends who were 27 and the 'oldest, most
senior' folks at the company.

For the issues that I face in my work, I actually loathe to have to deal with
'fresh grads' because there's so much grindy material in the work, that one
needs 'a couple of years' of experience just to be useful. For example, almost
anything done in C++ ... there's so many ways to 'do it wrong', it takes some
failure and good habits.

I think things will probably change as the materiality of experience becomes
evident in some ways and managers catch on to that. I suggest there are
probably enough companies around that do value experience.

One issue is however that 'experience' shouldn't be an excuse for complacency,
nor should it excuse bad habits, not does it mean 'massive dollars' at every
job. The pay scale probably starts to plateau at 5 years, maybe inching
incrementally after that.

------
social_quotient
The link is redirecting me back to HN post. How’s this on the front page?

~~~
postsantum
There are a few topics on HN that always perform well (loneliness, Google's
fuckups, etc). I guess ageism is one of them now

------
gingabriska
I guess because most new cool companies are startups and who was the guy over
40 in the movie "The Social Network" other than probably the investor/lawyer.

Most companies homepage is filled with younger folks and also why would anyone
40+ is going to listen to a 20 something CEO?

~~~
PostOnce
Why would a 40+ year old person listen to a 20-something? Perhaps because
that's what they're being paid to do?

CEOs do more than just issue edicts from on high, they take feedback from the
people running the various operations, otherwise the company falls apart.

~~~
gingabriska
I don't know about you but a friend of mine told me he sometimes feel insulted
to take orders from someone inexperienced who don't know what they are doing
specially when there are female members on the team, the insult doubles.

Did you watch the movie dictator where the the great general Aladdin demands
the rocket be made pointy?

At small companies CEOs act similar to a dictator, maybe not all? But they've
the vision. It's mostly them who get it, other are called naive or stupid.

Stuff like this is what drives experienced people out of the door.

As you get older, it gets hard to keep up with that BS and some people prefer
mental sanity over paychecks naturally the jobs gets filled by ones who are
willing to do the crazy thing in order to keep the money coming in.

~~~
gshdg
What does having women on the team have to do with it?

~~~
gingabriska
when faced with absurdity, he loses temper and signs of which start showing on
him and women feel uncomfortable around him. Atleast he's aware of what people
around him are feeling. He never said he wants no women on the team, it's just
how he feels.

------
carmenbr
We're fixing the glitch

~~~
carmenbr
fixed, sorry...we had some problems with the hosting

------
BurningFrog
Ninja is one of the oldest professions in the world.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninja](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninja)

~~~
dang
We detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20252920](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20252920)
and marked it off-topic.

------
TheBobinator
There are three themes driving ageism in tech.

First, upper management and investorship doesn't understand engineering or
technology. Accountants understand cost and risk, they do not understand
oppertunity or business process. MBA's understand cost and risk, as well as
any non-iterative business process with a defined start and end that is
quantifiable; they are suited for running a company, not growing a company,
and religous application of skills within that spectrum of capibility only
creates tragedy and torture chambers (e.g. open floor plan offices). Any R&D
process is by definition unquantifiable; you have 10 million workcenters
infront of you and have to figure out the right routing, which may be
iterative and require adjustments to the workcenter, to produce the widget.
Figuring that out requires knowing where the bottlenecks are to constrain the
problem, and that requires specialized knowledge and experience.

Accountants and MBA's are taught, religously, to view those things as "key man
risk", and because of the ability of people to leave to go elsewhere to work
for more money, that training staff is just a waste of money. It is vital to
our industry that we take on interns as journeymen for a few years and guide
them; the results are much better for all when they are taught how to think.
This is antithetical to most organizations.

Any company that thinks this way is doomed to a slow death because nobody who
is capible of managing the bottlenecks is going to work there; they will
reverse engineer the company, find the bottlenecks, propose them, come across
as pompous, then move on. Devoid of the experience of working with talent, the
management, often coming from non-engineering management backgrounds, assumes
programmers are factory, retail, logistics, or any kind of manual laborer and
due to that, equates youth with maximum ROI.

They build torture chambers and hope to capture a few young geniuses then
force out golden eggs. Think of MSP's that have no intellectual property or
investment in technology, but hire IT folks and force them into bogus non-
competes and other slaver working arrangements. Can't tell you how many times
I've been look upon as the "whiz kid saviour" by some imbecile in their 50's
or 60's coming from a non-engineering background who happens to have money.
It's really patronizing, demoralizing, and absolutely disgusting. Nobody wants
to work with that, and especially in a company that creates situations where
the staff feel the only way out is bankrupting the place.

Second, you have highly levered\financialized companies. Facebook has almost
no real world value aside from social entertainment, and nobody knows how to
valuate the company. Because of this, goals cannot be clearly defined by the
top brass of the organization; there's no long-term vision. Anyone who's seen
a Zuckerberg press conference will call him a visionary; he comes across as a
man-child trying to make sense of his dumb luck. Old engineers know, most
importantly of all, how to have heated debates like an engineer and to discuss
like an engineer. That threatens the management in these orgs because
engineers, if left to their own whims, will form their own vision and
experienced people know what works and how to be successful. They'll do things
that can clearly be seen as progress and that reduces the importance of
everyone else at the org in the eyes of the investorship. That too, becomes an
engine for drama.

Finally, there's a severe shortage of good technical\engineering management
around right now. Some of that is the above two reasons, but a lot of it has
to do with things like IRS exemptions against allowing IT Staff to bill on a
W11 obstensively because too many people were working as FTE at multiple
companies working as specialists without benefits. Remember, one of the
driving factors behind Austin Stack driving a Cessna into an IRS building was
that very thing. Technology changes society drastically, and when you see
management and leadership turning the nails on people, it's a response to
this.

Feminism, for example, is a response to technology; first wave feminism was a
response better materials science producing pressure vessels that created hard
alcohol. Men ended up in the gutter escaping hard lives rather than dealing
with them and it's no wonder when universal sufferage was passed, the first
thing the ladies voted for and demanded was prohibition. Second wave feminism,
e.g. equal pay for equal work, was driven by the obsolescance of muscle in
manufacturing. That produces a discussion on what gender roles in a
relationship are and ought to be (which by the way, the only people qualified
to make that decision is the couple). Third wave feminism is a response to
contraceptives and social media. GAO Does retirement security studies and did
one in 2009 on the impact of fertility rates on retirement security and ended
up publishing, then redacting, the fact that men with an 80th percentile
income have a 50\50 shot, back in 2009, of procreating. You have lots of women
inundated with too much selection via social media, and throwing everything
they've got after it using contraceptives. It's logical, then, that
intelligent hard-working men with money being given access to any women they
want for anything they want would be demoralized about relationships and the
quality of the breeding stock. The old addage of "building a family" or
"building a man" has stopped being a concept and instead you have Maybelene,
Gucci and Pornhub engaging in psychological warfare against young people to
sell sex, hand bags, eye shadow and sex as a mental illness.

Government has been far outpaced by tech, and the key realization here is, it
can take advantage of anyone irregardless of how smart you think you are. We
really do not know what we're doing and it is total chaos out there.

~~~
russdpale
I feel like you made some good points, but how does feminism fit into this?
Interesting take on it I had not heard that about feminism. Another huge part
of the alcohol problem with men was marital rape, lots and lots of drunken
marital rape.

------
jstewartmobile
Aside from the Zuckerberg " _young people are just smarter_ " quote, I suspect
a lot of this is more side-effect of businesses (especially large ones)
wanting interchangeable, easily-replaceable parts rather than overt ageism.

Having a core business system done right the first time by an old-timer or two
kind of puts you at their mercy. Using the infinite monkey theorem to grind
out a bunch of python and javascript is much safer from a managerial
perspective.

------
noncoml
I found myself applying for jobs recently.

One of the startups that contacted me was founded by three 2015 graduates.

I am 41. I cancelled the interview. There was no way in my mind that I could
work with these three folks. It was as good as being from different planets.

What I am trying to say is that maybe ageism is a two way street, and maybe
it’s just normal. Generation gap and all.

~~~
neilv
Why didn't you think you could work with them?

2015 graduates probably have at least a couple years real experience, which is
a huge difference over fresh out of school (and a lot of people coast after
that, anyway). Even new college grads can start figuring things out.

And there's so much possible to know today, no one person can know it all, and
even a top veteran engineer can learn some things from NCGs.

I look for companies where people want to do good work, on good things, are
capable, yet intellectually humble, and treat everyone as respected
colleagues.

~~~
noncoml
Maybe my comment came out wrong.

It’s not about their(or my) technical skills.

Technical compatibility is not enough for a team to work closely and
efficiently IMHO

~~~
neilv
True, though it sounded like them only having a few years experience was a
showstopper on its own (no other factors, like their mission blurb was
unappealing), in this case?

Maybe we're back to your original statement, about ageism being a two-way
street sometimes. I appreciate your candor in mentioning it. Were you thinking
of particular things, like "they'll make bad decisions, or won't have much
experience executing", or "they'll probably be on drugs, and the company
picnic will be extreme snowboarding", or something else?

~~~
TomMarius
Maybe it's simply about them being two generations younger? E.g. people in
their 20's have never suffered communism while my father has lived through the
socialist normalisation AND the Velvet Revolution, my grandfather fought in
WW2 and then lived in stalinist communism and my great-grandfather was in
Austrian Imperial Army and then Czechoslovak Legions in Russia during the WW1.

~~~
slavik81
Perhaps their grandfathers lived through the socialist normalization, their
great grandfathers fought in WW2, and their great-great grandfathers were in
the army.

It sounds like you can relate to people older than you. Maybe they can do the
same. It's worth giving people a chance.

~~~
TomMarius
Oh yeah, of course, but maybe someone (certainly not me) doesn't want to. We
should let them be themselves.

------
streetcat1
I would rather keep ageism. It keep my competitive advantage intact (25 years
C++, 20 years java.). I can easily code much faster than a team of 10 younger
developers, not because I can program faster, but because I know WHAT to
program, as oppose to how to program. I.e. they are running faster to the top
of the wrong hill.

Kind of strange that you will judge your MD by its age, but when it come to
mission critical systems you prefer young people.

~~~
quickthrower2
That’s not really ageism, but effectivenessism.

I think companies like younger people because they are cheaper and perhaps
more agreeable.

~~~
titanomachy
And flexible. They will work longer hours and demand less holiday time.

~~~
jpindar
And white men are just smarter and harder working! /s

Listen to yourselves!

~~~
klipt
I think the point is that young people are more _exploitable_. That's not
really a good thing for young people, but one can see why employers would want
to exploit them.

This is why unions fought for 40 hour work weeks. Otherwise it's a race to the
bottom in terms of who can overwork the most.

