Hacker News Reader

Comment by Fr3dd1 | Hacker News Reader

I myself lead a software development team. I am 31 and the last two people I hired were almost 50 and they are very good devs. In my opinion age alone isnt a reason not to hire someone. What is the "common reason" older people are not considered to be hired? I guess because people think they cant adapt or are stuck in some ways in theire thinking. If your future you can show that this is not the case, I guess you are fine :) Only "REAL" age related reason is (and I have to admit that I myself didnt hire someone because of that) if the person wants to retire in the near future and you think you want to invest your time in someone who will, hopefully, stay longer.

View on HN

It depends on what part of the industry we’re talking about. One aspect of this is startup culture and needing to “fit in.” Or in other words “culture fit.” You see it on HN all the time where people mention many of their friends are coworkers. Sometimes that means not hiring the person who has a life outside work, isn’t going through the same issues everyone does in their 20s, and is perceived to not fit in. In some cases, I think it is simply the threat of possibly having a life outside of work and not signing up to overwork yourself by default.

Another is pricing yourself out of the industry. And another is the mistaken idea that all an older dev knows is older out of date technology. The usual stuff.

I’ve found that firmware and regulated industries in general do not have as rampant of an ageism issue.

Some IC roles do fit more younger candidates than older. E.g. in a startup - often better they not have outside commitments like a family, or need for a healthy work-life balance. Sometimes "work smarter not harder" falls apart and they need to work like a maniac. On balance I've found older colleagues less willing to do that. That isn't meant as a criticism, just an observation about role-fit, those people usually didn't last long.

The underlying belief to this is, is that more hours = more results = better results. I highly doubt that this is the truth.

That's not the underlying belief in a startup. It's more like: we have not fully figured out market fit. We may need to build something very very quickly (I'm talking about hours/days, not weeks/months) and then maintain them for while.

That's why I say "work smarter not harder" can fail - that only works if you make assumptions about the future, in a startup that can only take you so far.

Okay, I didnt thought about such an early state.

> Only "REAL" age related reason is (and I have to admit that I myself didnt hire someone because of that) if the person wants to retire in the near future and you think you want to invest your time in someone who will, hopefully, stay longer.

If you're in the US, you might want to ask your HR about whether that can be a factor in hiring criteria.

If HR says "Don't do that", then they might prefer not to hear that it was already done (so maybe don't volunteer the info, unless they ask), in which case it's a for-future-reference.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com