[intellectronica]

This argument is kind of pointless. Hiring for almost all tech jobs is based neither on some kind of "crystallized intelligence" nor on a hypothetical cognitive potential. Rather, jobs are usually matched with people who have the right skills. When a candidate with the right skills for a job gets rejected it's reasonable to ask whether age discrimination was a factor.

One counter argument that I would be willing to consider is that sometimes older workers who have neglected to update their skills are explaining their rejection as ageism when in fact they simply can't demonstrate that they have the relevant skills and expect to be hired based on their past (and by now, not so relevant) experience.

[sillysaurus3]

This argument is kind of pointless. Hiring for almost all tech jobs is based neither on some kind of "crystallized intelligence" nor on a hypothetical cognitive potential. Rather, jobs are usually matched with people who have the right skills.

Not in my experience. It's all about whether a candidate can come in and learn quickly. The skills are nearly irrelevant.

Which makes sense. What are the chances that you're going to be versed in every technology a new company uses?

Also, the idea that old people need to have exact skills is harmful. Our industry changes so rapidly that the old people are the most likely to have resumes that don't reflect their potential. Nobody believes them when they say they can learn just as quickly as everyone else.

[intellectronica]

I'm not sure what your experience has been, but mine (more than 20 years of working in several jobs, doing quite a lot of hiring myself) is that there are two main tracks:

1. hiring promising interns and graduates - no relevant skills but the hope is that they're so smart they'll be able to learn quickly

2. hiring people with very relevant skills - either they've already done the exact same thing at another company or they've done something adjacent and quite similar and can probably handle the switch.

The 2nd track is the bigger one by a wide margin, for the simple fact that people are only 20-something-recent-graduates once in their life time, but tend to move to new jobs several times during their career.

[sillysaurus3]

I'd like to posit that the reason you've seen more of the latter is because you've hired for more of the latter. I assure you, if you were to look for well-rounded, motivated developers that didn't have the immediate skills you need, you'd get the same work done. Usually more effectively, since the people who don't have the skills usually feel they have something to prove. Their work turns out better.

Unfortunately, there's not really any way to prove this. I wish there were, since it'd be quite nice to demonstrate it. All I can do is say what I've seen.

[intellectronica]

I don't think that I'm inherently biased against promising candidates with no skills. Heck, I used to be one myself. Perhaps it's just that in the fields and company types I've worked at most (startups) that's not usually what you look for. The promising recent-graduate scenario is much more common in big corporations where people plan for long, linear careers. In the startup world the average time for someone to be at the company is 2~3 years, and the roles usually get filled only when there's a burning need to get the job done right now. So it could be that I'm not aware of what the correct proportions between the different tracks are.