
Ask HN: Why won't start-ups hire older, experienced programmers? - extofer
Why won't start-ups hire older experience programmers. They seem to focus on recently graduated engineers who will take this as their first career job rather than experienced developer with 10 + years under their belt?
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steveklabnik
If you have 10+ years of experience, then you're probably 30. If you're 30,
you're probably married. If you're married, you probably have kids. If you
have kids, you probably want to leave work at 5pm to go spend time with them.
If you need to leave at 5pm, you probably aren't the right cultural fit for a
startup.

It's just math, really.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
How about asking them? All these assumptions have a name: discrimination

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steveklabnik
Of course, as I say above, all generalizations are false. However, when you're
asking about a general trend, broad strokes are appropriate. The number of
people of that age that fit into startup culture are much smaller than the
number of people that are younger.

Even though this thread sounds like "Why don't I get hired?" that's not what
he actually asked.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Well, change the pronouns and it is: "Why don't young startup founders hire
more experienced programmers?"

~~~
hga
Or at least one? See my comment to jhg.

To make a more general point, you need balance, at least as soon as you can
afford it. You don't necessarily need to make an experienced programmer a
lead, but you ought to listen to him when he says "If once you start down the
dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will..."
(i.e. help you see how much technical debt it will incur).

And then there are the things that just won't work at all: you don't need an
experienced per se programmer, but you're likely to be very unhappy if you
don't have one who knows big O notation and regularly does the math, so you
aren't e.g. trying to get 100x or more the max peak transaction rate out of
your database, exceed the bandwidth of your systems, etc.

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byoung2
Older, more experienced programmers are likely used to getting paid a real
salary instead of equity, and eating more than just ramen.

~~~
elbrodeur
I think this is a huge part of it. As you get older you naturally acquire and
subsequently have to maintain things -- they can be material (a mortgage, car
payments, insurance, etc), emotional (dog that needs walking, kids that need
feeding, wife that needs attention) or other obligations. And that's just
obligations. There are other reasons why startups fail to convince older, more
mature and more experienced developers/engineers.

Kids fresh out of college are easy to convince for little or no money and the
slim chance of glory. As you get older you are more realistic: Even if this
company is successful it won't make me rich. Even if the technology is awesome
to work on it may not make the company successful.

We tried really hard to grab a couple of really brilliant engineers right
after we closed our angel round. The reality? While what we were working on
was cool, they could make twice as much as we could afford to pay until we
closed our Series A and even though our options package was decent, it wasn't
generous enough to make them rich even if we had a generous buyout or IPO
(which, you know, who knows if that will ever happen). Plus it takes 4 years
to vest.

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dagw
At the end of day I think it is for essentially the same reason the 50 year
old Harvard MBAs in grey suits prefer to hire other 50 year old Harvard MBAs
in grey suits. Like attracts like. People are instinctively drawn to people
with the same cultural values and background as themselves.

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brianm
Startups do hire older, more experienced, developers. That they won't is a
myth.

~~~
byoung2
That's more likely to happen as the startup matures. In the early days of
ramen-fueled late night code-a-thons in a tiny 1 bedroom apartment, you have a
much better chance of finding 20-somethings, not older developers with
mortgages and kids.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
How about older developers without mortgages and kids? They exist, but are
underrepresented anyway.

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ganley
Easy: We're expensive, and we don't work 80-hour weeks. (Both generalizations,
but both certainly far more true of older engineers than younger ones.)

That said, I've worked for two startups, one when I was 31 and one when I was
38. If you bring something to the table that they need badly enough to be
worth the higher pay and lower time commitment, it can happen. As
@steveklabnik said, it's just math, though the math doesn't always fall in
favor of the young guy. Just usually.

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geebee
I think they probably would hire an older, experienced programmer...

...but it might be interesting to turn this question around and ask if these
older experienced programmers would want to be hired by a startup. Keep in
mind, this is a very different question from asking if they'd want to work
for, or at, a startup.

The old mantra I heard was "the founders get rich, the early employees get
screwed, and the late employees get paid." Of course, not at all true in all
occasions (even fairly "late" employees at google got rich, and at most
startups, nobody gets rich). But I figure an older, experienced programmer
would truly understand how illusory the stability of W-2 work at a startup
really is. It'd better be a pretty great startup (and they are rarely as great
as they think they are).

If you're going to tolerate that degree of instability in your life, there are
usually much better options than taking an "interview you, hire you, assign
you work" role as a programmer at a startup (consulting work, starting your
own company if you seek high risk/rewards, bigco, gov't work if you want to
interview for a job with a paycheck).

~~~
hga
Well, I for one loathe working at bureaucratic, political companies. And the
older you get, the less you believe in the illusory stability a W-2 at such
(for an extreme, Lucent had 106,000 employees when I started at it and was
aiming for 35,000 when I left).

I prefer the environment of startups, I prefer being given an opportunity to
focus all my talents and energy in making tangible differences, I'm not in it
primarily for the money. Granted, I'm a would be scientist who was forced to
live a sordid life as a programmer due to finances....

As for the options I didn't cover, I'm not enough of a extrovert, salesman
type (you need at least some of that) to be a multi-client consultant or co-
founder.

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exline
Price tends to be the biggest issue for our startup. I'd love to hire some
senior programmers that I know can produce high quality solutions for any
problem I throw at them. But from a cash flow perspective, we simply can not
afford them. And with older programmers having wives/kids/house payments, they
(I'm including myself in this boat) tend to be more risk adverse and not as
willing to take the pay cut for potential payout later.

I think there is a network effect as well. When I was fresh out of college,
everyone in my close network was all the same age. I always prefer to hire
someone I've already worked with or someone that was recommended by a friend.
So if the start up is founded by fresh college graduates, their network is
going to mostly consist of other young developers.

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amk
There are several reasons. Depending on the startup, it may be one or more of
these:

* Older and more experienced programmers may need a bigger salary, which startups cannot always afford.

* Older and more experienced programmers may be more suited to work in larger organisations with set procedures and practices, which is not suited for startups.

* Older programmers have other commitments which may prevent them from putting more energy in the startup. It may also be more of a risk (money wise) for them to join a startup which may or may not succeed.

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starkfist
I'm 35 and I've never not worked at a startup. I don't think that many older
guys apply to startups because the pay is usually shit.

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Julianhearn
I have found that older programmers are out date in terms knowledge and
skills. It sounds ageist but that us my experience.

