Tangentially related: I just turned 65, and am continuing to immensely enjoy programming. Current job involves embedded digital signal processing in medical devices.
My family came up with a new name for my category of programmers: the gerihacktric demographic.. :-)
I have interviewed with Alphabet twice, no offers. One time apparently it was a close call..
It would be fun to be the all-time record holder for oldest new hire!
Love it. Have found that the closer you get to hardware groups at any of the FAANG's, the higher the average age. Met several happily employed grandparents in the groups, adding value and telling the best stories.
Is there any published research-level evidence that FAANG interviews are high-signal?
I'm no expert, but the only published research I've read on this is "Thinking, Fast and Slow", and the original researcher has recently cast doubt on his own results on that study. Regardless, the evidence there was that all that mattered was "any objectively measurable metric" -- which would mean that FAANGs are wasting a lot of time and money on useless interviews. (Of course they have money to throw away, but still...)
I worked at one of those companies. They were very self-certain that their hiring was high signal. They were likewise completely disinterested in doing a control group test where we randomly hire people from the fail pool and see how they compare once hired.
You mean, beyond the companies being successful and effective, and famous for the skill of their workforce? Beyond 9 of the top 10 most valuable companies in America being tech firms that all interview in similar ways?
What kind of evidence that tech interviews work well are you looking for, exactly? Isn't the obvious evidence of your own eyes sufficient?
Not the above poster, but if they only hire 10% of their interviewees, that's a sign that not every interview is a "close call', which is the context of an interview being high signal here.
The phone screens are terrible signal. They intentionally give everyone who can spell Java or C an on-site to get multiple opinions. No one wants to be the single person who commits to a No Hire.
I'm much younger than you, but I also interviewed with Google last year, got rejected after on-site, apparently a "close call" too. Did you grind leetcode enough? ;)
Developer and former recruiter here. You cannot trust the reason you have been rejected to be honest. You can only believe that they were clear about rejecting you.
For example, "it was a close call" could mean:
- you were late to the interview, and we didn't like that
- we closed the job and stopped recruiting everyone
- you had mustard on your shirt, and we didn't like that
- an interviewer was late to an interview, insisted you proceeds anyway, and you could not possibly have received a vote of confidence for the questions asked in the time allotted
And so on and so on. The only things you can really trust are got hired, didn't get hired, and never heard back. That's it.
The recruiter told me I had 3 really positive reviews and 2 somewhat positive and 1 negative review. It's usually more feedback than I expect from companies but it was good to hear. It also matched with my expectations knowing how the interview went. She apparently took it to another hiring committee and they said no as well.
That's true at a lot of organizations. The cost of a false positive hire typically vastly outweighs the cost of a false negative, particularly when you have the luxury of being perceived as a premiere employer in the space (from which follows a steady stream of qualified applicants).
In my case, it was the recruiter in Dublin, where I interviewed, writing "it looks like we are coming to a successful conclusion" about a week before I got the generic dismissal email.
(A quick note/disclaimer: I am extremely happy in my current situation, and work for a great manager; no interest in moving, despite my flippant comment.)
The signal was what I was told when I got a subsequent unsolicited contact from a Google recruiter. She communicated this information to me verbally. (I believed her, and in retrospect still do. She was great during the whole process; never gave me the slightest indication that she was in any way deceptive or dishonest.)
I'm 35. I've yet to learn a programming language. I've always been intimidated by starting and choosing a language.
I've started to loosen up regarding that and finally finding a path I could take. However, instead now I'm intimidated by the job market and age discrimination.
Depends on the market... Pacific coast is definitely skewed young. Phoenix, Houston, Austin and Atlanta will be a little older. Phoenix in particular leans a bit older, I'm 44 and average in the group I'm currently working with is within 5 years of my age.
A lot of the work is more boring business oriented work, and not a lot of startups. But it's steady, there's plenty of it and it pays relatively well compared to cost of living.
Start with Dive Into Python... then decide on something you want to make for yourself and work from there. Python is one of the better options to start from. JS is my personal favorite, second is now Rust, but they're harder to jump into as a beginner.
Phoenix salaries are abysmal. I looked for work about 5 years ago and senior positions had an advertised range of up to 60k. I left the area, maybe it’s different now.
From my experience, most Sr Developers are 100-120k, unless it's PHP. For niche skills it can be closer to 140k. Even 5 years ago. Not sure where you were looking or your specific skillset.
According to glassdoor, the average for "Senior Software Developer" is 93k in Phoenix. So, I'm a little off. Of course, I've also seen "senior" roles requiring all of "2 years experience" with the core technology (that's 18 years old). So YMMV. Also worth noting that the cost of living here largely offsets this.
Just my own experience... Of course, I did read something a while ago that stated since software development began, roughly half of all software developers had less than 5 years of experience. The reflects growth and attrition in addition to youth. So definitely young people out there.
From my experience, at least half of the devs I've worked with have been within 5 years of my age (currently 44) and where I am now, and my last two positions that's been the case as well.
Start with Python and a highly-rated book on Amazon. You will learn the same concepts with any language. You will have more fun an learn faster with an easy language like Python.
I feel if they're learning strictly to find work and it's not something they do for fun then it's a legitimate concern due to time it takes to learn to get to an employable level. As you get older you need to be more smart with how you spend your time.
It's great, that you got to interview stage. What I mostly found that most discrimination happens before someone gets to the interview phase, which makes sense, as it makes interviewing cheaper.
Most old people don't learn as many new things as younger ones, which makes it harder for older people who do to get the chance to prove themselves.
Not my experience. I've learned how to tweak my resume to a job spec while at the same time not giving an impression of my age (getting a degree with the Open University in my 40s really helps with that). It's at the face to face interview stage that the wheels tend to fall off my cart - nothing I could prove as 'ageist' behaviour, more like they're disappointed in me (or discounting me) before we sit down to chat?
"Most old people don't learn as many new things as younger ones..." - this is demonstrably ageist. People performing a mid-life career change can be as focussed and driven to succeed in IT as anyone; the determination to acquire and master new skills is, in my view, a personality thing, not an age-related thing.
To some extent it could also be that you’re presenting as young?
FWIW - My only concern with older folks is that they’re either jaded, stuck in their ways technologically, or obstinate towards being managed by people younger than them. Strong opinions held strongly is a net negative. This isn’t everyone or even a majority, but it’s quite a few.
> they’re either jaded, stuck in their ways technologically, or obstinate towards being managed by people younger than them
Again, (mostly) stereotyping:
"jaded" - I'd argue this hits a lot of front end developers after about 5 years. How many new frameworks have there been in the last 5 years? There comes a point when any sane person will look at the newest "killer" framework and decide to wait a couple of years before investing time in learning it, just in case next year's "killer" framework turns out to be more fun to learn.
"stuck in their ways" - this is more a personality thing, I think. Most people will find their comfort zone pretty quickly, and then get grumpy when asked/required to venture outside of it. Risk aversion and/or laziness doesn't, in my view, increase significantly with age.
"obstinate towards being managed" - this one is a problem that everyone has to face as they grow older. The sad fact (from what I've seen in my age group) is that some people just cannot come to terms with the ageing process, that there's going to be younger people who are better placed to do a team-leader/manager job than they are (because: longer experience in the industry). But that is something that can be worked on - the important thing is to demonstrate a willingness to at least give it a go, offer support to the younger manager (be a wise owl, not an old owl), and be an excellent team player. At least that's my attitude.
This isn’t everyone or even a majority, but it’s quite a few.
In other words: not only is there no hard data behind this view; there isn't any (from a gut perspective) that much of a correlation -- but it's a strong opinion, strongly held nonetheless.
I certainly could've and should've added a lot more context, or refrained from sending off a quick post without giving it more thought. I was trying to list the ways in which I've seen some programmers who happen to be older be a negative - not that anyone should make the assumption of any single older person, or that there's not equal or greater problems with younger people. Just different.
You can call it “experience”, but that won’t help you find many TurboPascal jobs in 2019. At some point, experience is something that allows you to learn new things quicker and more efficiently, not something to be used as an excuse for not learning new things.
I've found that with myself, as I get older I get more selective with what new stuff I learned. I've seen so many fads come and go, and don't really have a whole lot of time ahead of me, so I need to make sure that what I learn really counts.
As I'm getting older all my organs are working less, and my brain is slower as well (though I'm able to think just as deeply as before).
At the same time I'm much more concious about spending my thinking energy, and because of my experience I'm making much more money than when I was younger _despite_ my slower thinking.
Discrimination involves hate, and I definately not hate old people, just accept the facts of life (and I'm also hoping for a cure for aging).
You are the proof that there is age discrimination in interviews. If you are in tech there's a high chance you've been on the interviewer side and you already gave your opinion based on this bias.
I'd say they already know the paradigms & architectures so they don't throw themselves at the latest fad as easily and above all seem to value family more highly and lets be honest. Back in the day you had to learn some pretty amazing tech (assembler and low memory data structures) just to get by.
But yeah, just today there was a comment here on Hacker News saying (I'm paraphrasing): I learnt C then C++ then Java, then enough was enough. Which is just sad, that's like going from oatmeal to porrige.
The flip side of that coin is the drain that comes from...
Learning C, then C++, then Rust, then Java, then Ruby (rails), then Objective-C, then Swift, then JavaScript, then Angular, then React, then Flutter, then ....
Depending on the timeframe in which all that learning happens, there's simply no way you can reach expert level with such a diversified knowledge base.
> there’s simply no way you can reach expert level with such a diversified codebases.
What are you talking about? I’ve checked in production code in 4 languages in a day.
Once you learn your first few languages you should be able to learn the new syntax of a language in a day or two and a good portion of their idioms in the next month (as you know more languages you’ll notice what’s unique about each language and glean idioms from online tutorials and your local codebases).
Being a polyglot is a huge part of many in our industry, especially full stack development. For one project alone I had to work with a backend that was part Java and part Go that hosted customers’ Node backend. I oversaw client SDKs in Objective-C, Java, and C++ and helped prototype the server-side SDK for Go. That’s not fatigue, it’s enjoyable and a skill I can offer my team. Sure I get rusty with a language, but it doesn’t take long to blow off the dust with a skill.
From what I've seen, some people are passionate voracious learners. This does not correlate with age. However, it may be harder to find these (very valuable) people among a younger population than an older one. If someone has slowed down in the area of constant learning, their existing knowledge may be more recent if they are younger. The "constant learner" signal stands out more prominently for older developers.
Recently the Danish company KMD was caught utilising a no hiring of anyone above the age of 36 policy. A practice they’ve apparently used for a decade. That’s illegal and they’ll likely be punished, but the interesting part is that they are doing terrible.
They have the largest amount of scandals, the largest amount of settlements for not meeting what they promised and the largest financial drop of any major Danish IT company.
This could be happening for a range of reasons. With hiring practices like that, their management is probably questionable, but hiring young certainly doesn’t seem to have helped them much.
> but hiring young certainly doesn’t seem to have helped them much.
A proper team has a mix of old and young, because they bring different skills to the table. Young people tend to be more energetic and enthusiastic, while older people have already learned that you don't store customer passwords unencrypted and check that backups are being done.
Why are these numbers so small? Even more so to the fine for data protection violations. The point of these sort of things are to make companies think twice. While 11m is a lot of cash it is nothing compared to Google's total income, and would not even been half a years salary for those they refused to hire. Seems like they got let off easy on this one.
The plaintiffs may have settled because they thought it was unlikely they would prevail if this went to trial, so it would be better take a guaranteed payout.
Google may have settled because they figured that the PR hit of a lengthy age discrimination trial would be worth more than $11M, regardless of whether they won.
I doubt any company, especially in SV, takes a PR hit from age discrimination, which seems to be widely accepted and barely punished. Google just wants to swat away the plaintiffs like annoying gnats.
It's definitely normal for the class members to receive little payout per person, but a lot of that tends to have to do with astronomical legal expenses.
I had it described to me that class actions are less about making the wronged parties whole, and more about forming large enough sticks to beat misbehaving entities about the head with.
No. Lawyers get about half. That's a lot, but class members each getting a pittance isn't much different from getting twice a pittance. Substantial payments to everyone in a class would wipe out the defendant.
How much would've it cost to actually litigate this? I'm wondering if this settlement was similar to how much it would've cost to litigate and they just wanted the people to go away.
"Generous" is hard for me to have an opinion about. $11M is less than a rounding error for Google.
"Fair" isn't as hard. It's not fair, if (as I suspect) Google is guilty of age discrimination. There should be greater consequences than just trying to pay people what they might've lost financially from the discrimination.
Or, to put it another way: Google deserves to be punished if this was actually happening.
If you see it from the other side, it is more than 50,000 for each of the 200 people, even if the lawyers will likely get 1/3 of that, it remains 35,000 US$ or so.
For what?
Having been NOT hired (but making it to the interview).
Presumably, even if a bit "old" according to Google standards, these people are anyway "top notch" in programming and almost surely soon found an appropriate job at some other company.
So, the compensation is seemingly very hypothetical, covering what? 2-3 months of wages for someone hypothetically getting 140,000-200,000 US$ per year.
Or is it because the applicant could have been hired at 160,000 US$ per year but only makes - poor little thing - 125,000 US$ from the company that hired him/her, and so first year is covered?
Engineers at google can make way over 200k in salary and even more in total compensation. Given these guys were over 40, and many of them likely seasoned it is likely they would have made way more than the numbers you are suggesting.
I don't doubt that, it was just an attempt to put the numbers in pespective, if you believe that it is only 1 month or 15 days of wage it is ok as well, but what was the actual inconvenience to them?
Let's bring it to the extreme, 35,000 US$ for the hassle of making four (fruitless) interviews?
All good enough to be hired AND that if they were, that the job they eventually did get paid substantially less. That is very possible, but it's still a loaded assumption indeed.
They were all good enough to get in person interviews at least[1]. If I read that document correctly Google would have been able to argue about the qualifications of various individuals and have them removed from the lawsuit after discovery concluded. Of course I am not a lawyer so I might be wrong.
Phone screens at google are not foolproof, and some candidates get to skip them for various reasons. I've seem some candidates make it to onsite and then be unable to answer my warmup question of: write a function that takes an integer, leaves all the zero bits alone, changes all the one bits into zero bits, and returns the result.
> Why is Google still making denials and statements after settling the action?
This is standard in any settlement, which is typically a release of liability. Part of the boilerplate in these contracts is that both parties are compromising not because of guilt but because of the uncertainty of litigation.
Even were Google in the right, a long protracted legal battle against claimed discrimination will constantly remind people that there’s alleged age discrimination. Nipping the negative PR in the bud is probably clearly worth it.
As an aside, ageism is pretty apparent in most companies where I’ve worked. There’s a huge expectation of “up or out”. I was on a hiring committee where I’m ashamed I didn’t stand up for a candidate who the committee decided had too much “experience” to be slotted at level X and therefore not offered any job. At least that shame gave me the courage to speak up the next time I ended up in that position.
Google has a history of age discrimination and losing in court, going back to the founders of the company.
See Reid v Google where Brian Reid, a key developer of the tech we use, was told his ideas "were too old to matter" and that he was an "old fuddy duddy."
Another fun fact from that lawsuit: Steve Jobs threatened Palm with a patent war if they didn't join the cartel. Oh, it was a fun time to work in the valley...
"I would prefer that Omid do it verbally since I don’t want to create a paper trail over which we can be sued later? Not sure about this.. thanks Eric"
Companies settle all the time. It's common for insurance claims, for example. At a not-for-profit organization I'm involved with, a homeless person punched someone on the sidewalk outside their property. The victim then turned around and sued the organization, who had nothing to do with the incident except that it technically happened on their property (which is in an urban area). The president of the organization wanted to fight the case in court (on principle, because he felt that he shouldn't be liable, though he did express sympathy to the victim). The not-for-profit's insurance company wanted none of it and they settled for something like 50K. I'm sure that the insurance company has better lawyers than your average joe, but I'm also sure that they run the numbers and look at the risks (financial and reputational) and then make a decision whether to fight a case in court or not.
a) to be fair, this homeless person punched them in the face
b) the organization does medical research, not work with the homeless. It just happens to be that the victim was walking on their property when a homeless person who was also passing by punched them in the face. The victim was indeed hurt and needed to go to the hospital. But the president of the organization felt that someone getting punched on the sidewalk (which is in an urban area... we're not talking a large property) was unfortunate, but not something his org should be responsible for. However, the insurance company didn't want to deal with the lawsuit, so they settled.
Sure, but if you get a judge that decides that the penalty should be salary from the time you were interviewed to the settlement date for each of the plaintiffs, the cost could be many times higher. Not to mention this simply won't look good in the public spotlight, regardless of how right Google may be.
It's also almost impossible to prove on both sides. Even if Google has insane numbers showing how many young vs old people they hire, it's totally possible that the younger ones are simply more experienced with the technologies/paradigms Google is looking for. A judge might not see it the same way though.
Isn't it usually the defendants that attempt to drown the plaintiffs in discovery-related paperwork? This is an employment dispute, surely Google's own lawyers have a much better handle on the legalese of their own HR practices (and of labour laws in the state) than the plaintiffs?
(See, e.g., the Kevin Spacey lawsuit for a recent example in the news)
Again, the question is not who would win. It's whether it is worth winning.
Let me use a strong amount of hyperbole to try to make this part of the point.
Imagine a 3 year old challenges you to a fight.
They are completely and totally adamant about it.
You certainly could win.
Is it worth winning?
Or would it be better to try to give them ice cream and get them to stop bugging you.
Now imagine this fight will take 5-7 years :)
Despite what random comments on hacker news say, these are basically settled on a regular basis as cost of doing business.
If they were arbitration (heresy, i know) or some other cheaper/less intensive method of dispute resolution, google would likely (and often does) fight it.
But court cases are just really expensive and time consuming.
The average civil litigation takes 5-7 years to resolve.
They settled and deny wrongdoing to limit the impact. Now we have to wait for another set of age discrimination lawsuits to get more info about Google's practices... or we have to wait for the Government to get involved. Settling, basically tries to get the fire out before the Government decides to see what is going on. Given that Google has a hiring committee that reviews all applicants, this doesn't look good for Google... It'd be hard to argue that it's just a few managers and that it isn't a systematic issue rather than an "unconscious bias". Any company arguing "culture fit" in hiring decisions is making a poor argument. It's also hypocritical when they state that they want "diversity" in opinions, workers, etc...
We may also get more insight if/when Google goes after Federal contracts which have reporting requirements and stronger applicant protections.
Right, this is why it confuses me because it's been declared settled, a formal resolution outside of the court, the matter is resolved independently between the parties. It seems odd to settle this kind of class-action allegation while continue making statements about it after the fact.
Settlement offers this fun gap where they've paid people to not pursue them further, but don't have to actually admit they did anything wrong. And obviously, Google doesn't want people to believe they discriminate against people unfairly, so of course if they legally can, they're going to stand by their position that they don't. Even if they do and had to pay people to settle a case for it.
And obviously, Google doesn't want people to believe they discriminate against people unfairly, so of course if they legally can, they're going to stand by their position that they don't
This is about on par with where my thinking was on this. I'm aware that these settlements are often contingent upon agreements from both parties regarding disclosing details of the settlement, and I suppose I assumed there was something in place here that prevented parties from speaking out about the settlement other than to release a statement saying 'a settlement was reached'.
I think it's common to forbid the parties from saying derogatory comments about the other party. Google can continue to say whatever it wants about itself.
Aka, the plaintiffs probably can't argue with Google's claim that they don't age discriminate, and Google probably can't say bad things about the people that sued them for it. But Google can continue to claim it treats all applicants fairly.
That's the entire point of settling vs going to trial. The problem goes away and they don't have to admit to anything. They also make the plaintiffs sign lengthy NDAs to prevent them from saying anything about it.
I'm 37, I'm starting to get worried about my age being a problem. But to hell with blaming employers who don't want me, it's their call. I think that maybe the actual problem is that by 40 they expect that I should be leading teams not just stuck at senior dev. Personally I want out of tech as I see supply and demand acting on wages (I'm in UK). Pretty soon, as far as I can estimate, it will go the way manufacturing went in the west: gone or heavily unionised blue collar like Germany which I don't want to be.
Anecdotal: was recently trying to apply to one of Google’s engineering positions in Zürich (I already tried to do that 7 years ago, did not pass the interview, now I think I am better equipped) Got a referral from one of my Googler friends.
In 2 days, I’ve got a very dismissive letter from Google, which amounted to “we decided that your profile and experience is no match for this position — and by the way, don’t bother applying to other similar positions at other Google offices. Case closed”.
My CV only got better since my last interview at Google, and while I didn’t pass it with flying colors, it wasn’t completely bad, too. I wonder if my current age played the part. Meanwhile, at Google jobs site, there were many positions marked as “fresh alumni of 2019 only” — perhaps that’s their perfect target.
"JK Scheinberg, the engineer who spent 21 years working at Apple and is best known for persuading Steve Jobs to move the Mac from PowerPC to Intel in 2005, was rejected from a job at an Apple store a few years later. "
What's the reasoning behind not hiring older developers? Besides the lack of flexibility in personality and old guy sentiments, they are usually solid developers and have a lot of knowledge. I've learned so many things by osmosis by just being around them. Is it solely that they can grind young developers into the ground at a low salary? Nearly every young developer in my short time as a developers thinks they are Mr. Robot, whereas the older guys give a much better sense of what programming is really all about in the context of reality.
I'd love to hire some talented individuals with this level of experience. Any recommendations on where I can post positions that don't attract the typical west coast brogrammer set?
Maybe, but you know it is totally legal to discriminate against people under 40 in the US, right? Not saying it’s ethical or otherwise a good idea, but it won’t get the DoL on your case.
Will anything happen if you lie about your age on an application? I don't see how your age, race, or sex should be taken into consideration unless you are doing a job that requires strenous physical labor.
In the UK it is against the law to ask people for their age on an application form (eg: no date of birth field). Also against the law to ask questions at interview which can be interpreted as ageist. The only exceptions are for legislated occupations such as joining the armed forces.
Interesting, their current interview practices is age discrimination - i.e. they are tailored for fresh grads. I wonder if every non-fresh-grad candidate is eligible for such compensation :)
Technically they didn't admit guilt, but from a PR point of view they did.
So from that respect, they probably opened themselves up for further scrutiny from future applicants whether they engaged in ageism or not.
I suspect they feared during the discovery process things would be found in the internal communications that do show some kind of -ism or other things that would just look bad for them, so throwing $11m at the problem to go away quickly seemed better.
That's funny, I was just rehired at Google. I'm over 40. 4/6 of my coworkers are over 40. I sat on hiring committee for 4 years before I left a couple of years ago (FB is a terrible place to work, BTW), and we _NEVER_ discussed the age of a candidate. Looking around my office (a major US office), and I'd estimate > 50% are over 40.
How does this work for the claimants, do they get ~$50,000 each (it says more than 200 people but doesn't quantify it) or do the legal costs swallow up most of that
> Of the $11 million payout in the settlement, $2.75 million will go to lawyers representing the class, Bloomberg reports. Fillekes will get an extra $10,000 as the lead plaintiff. The remaining cash works out to around $35,000 per plaintiff.
That seems kind of low. I would assume software engineers capable of interviewing at google would be somewhat well off, and take the risk for a bigger payout.
My family came up with a new name for my category of programmers: the gerihacktric demographic.. :-)
I have interviewed with Alphabet twice, no offers. One time apparently it was a close call..
It would be fun to be the all-time record holder for oldest new hire!