[FZ1]

> Young people starting out in the labor market often have The Fear that they will never find a job or never find a good job or another good job.

Young people fear it. Older people know it.

> Quit.

Not everyone is a 20-something silicon valley kid with companies falling all over themselves to throw money at them.

Hiring is effectively broken these days - especially in the software world.

If you're not from a top-flight university, maybe a little older, or in any other way less flashy/attractive in the job market, it can take months or sometimes years to get decent job interviews.

You can't just walk away from a decent income because idealism.

[fctorial]

I thought older people are more valuable since they have more experience. There isn't much physical difference between 20, 40 and 55 year old people unless something like alzheimer kicks in, especially in our field where the job includes reading stuff and pressing button.

[UncleOxidant]

LoL, wait till you hit 50. I hope it doesn't come as too much of a shock. Do what you can to save up as much money as you possibly can in your 20s, 30s and 40s because it becomes a lot harder to find gigs when you hit 50 (even mid 40s in many cases).

I'm in my mid-50s. Took me 9 months to find a gig a couple years ago when I was looking. Now to be completely honest that's also because I can afford to be pretty picky at this point and I was only applying for stuff that looked really interesting. And if it looked like there was just too much bullshit I wasn't interested. When you hit your 50s you've seen a lot of bullshit in your time and can smell it a mile away. So yeah, it works both ways. There's definitely ageism, but many of us who are aged have saved up enough so we are also picky about what we want to take.

I'm currently between gigs again (previous contract may come back when they get funding so I'm kind of biding my time because that was a good place to work and good places to work can be hard to find). I don't want to call it quits and retire just yet, but I'm finding less and less that's non-bullshit out there these days. And the way interviewing is done these days... well, let's just say it makes me want to retire. I like the work, but I hate the interviewing.

[eli]

That logically makes sense, but the reality is agism is a huge problem in tech hiring.

[fctorial]

Reasons?

[bonoboTP]

The often cited reason is that young people are easier to manipulate and exploit (overtime, passion, kool-aid about the company "mission" etc.), or more charitably phrased are more "adaptable" and less set in their ways. They have fewer responsibilities, no family etc. They are more idealistic and don't have the same cynical/sour/realist/seeing-through-the-bullshit outlook that older people have.

[wtracy]

They're also easier to negotiate down on salary.

[eli]

For hiring discrimination? I mean, that’s kind of a hard question to answer.

Personally I think there are lots of people who have an idea in their head (not always consciously) of what a hotshot developer looks like. And it’s not the old guy. And I think this manifests as concerns about “culture fit” or being overqualified or other vague objections.

We ALL have biases. It’s on hiring managers and HR departments and all of us to actively work to minimize their effects. This is hard to do and, unfortunately, some people don’t care to try.

But certainly there are other reasons too. Bias in hiring is a tough problem.

[onetimemanytime]

>>I thought older people are more valuable since they have more experience. There isn't much physical difference between 20, 40 and 55 year old people

Older people have families, don't buy the "lets work 20 hours a day," or "we're a startup" despite being founded in 2000 or whatever, and that's a liability to some. (Another thing, is that they might be less willing to take orders from their 23 year old boss.)

[silvestrov]

My personal experience is that the very best managers use "asking questions" as their main management tool as this is effective to reveal all aspects of a situation and get employees to understand and support the decisions that follow.

Weak managers like to "take decisions" as a display of their value as a manager. This value elevation is undermined by old experienced employees who can point out bad decisions or that the manager doesn't understand the consequences of the decisions, i.e. a fear of being "exposed". Weak managers fear anything that makes them seem weak, like asking questions.

[Psyladine]

Older are more valuable hence demand compensation and don't deal well with bullshit, unlike their younger clueless counterparts.

[UncleOxidant]

Definitely true on the not putting up with bullshit part. As a 50 something I find I have no patience anymore for bullshit. Companies prefer younger folks because they're so much easier to manipulate and control.

[l_t]

I'm very sympathetic to this perspective. If your options are:

1. Stay at unethical job you hate.

2. Get a new job you don't hate.

Well, the answer is pretty obvious. But there is a deeper challenge, which is the choice between:

1. Stay at unethical job you don't hate.

2. Damage/destroy your career and job prospects.

This latter scenario is really a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. It forces you to pick. Would you rather be virtuous (i.e. ethical), or be paid?

> You can't just walk away from a decent income because idealism.

Sure you can. You just choose not to -- and (IMO) that's fine.

[FZ1]

> Sure you can. You just choose not to.

Much in the same way that you can jump in front of a moving bus if you want to - you just choose not to.

The implication is not that it's _impossible_ to walk away - it's that it just doesn't make any damn sense, given the likely outcomes.

[thiagomgd]

THIS! Consider someone with a spouse and kids... Let's just quit, right?

[sokoloff]

Given the trouble we have hiring, it’s hard for me to imagine someone qualified to be a median talent software engineer would have trouble easily finding new employment elsewhere. (The median interview candidate is much, much worse than the median engineer because the worse you interview, the more frequently you show up on interview loops.)

If you’re median or better and in a city with a reasonable tech scene, you are probably going to have a straightforward path. If you’re median or better and not where tech is, look for remote jobs (admittedly harder) or move where tech is.

If your skills are notably below the median, staying put and working on your skills might be the most sensible course and changing jobs once you can interview and place well.

[FZ1]

How many people respond to your job ads? Where I live (major US metropolis), it's about 200-700 per job (according to linkedin, anyways).

The biggest trouble for a soft. eng is getting to a real person. Once that is done, convincing them that you're median or better is the easy part. Most resumes are just screened out by a machine, or reviewed by a clueless HR dept that has no idea what a median-talent software engineer looks like.

I have taught hundreds of CS undergrads in this city, and have had some of the very brightest tell me they've put out 500-600 resumes, and never heard back a thing. Many do get jobs though - even some of the worst performers.

It's very hit-and-miss - not nearly as deterministic as you make it sound.

[sokoloff]

I totally agree with your points, especially the last, and didn’t mean to suggest it was deterministic at all.

Interviewing is a lossy, semi-random practice for both sides. Candidates and firms take different approaches to address this randomness, but it’s still ultimately not a digitally precise (repeatable) not even especially accurate system. You could be the next Jon Carmack and fail to get an offer from 10 straight interviews for relevant positions. “Too experienced; we don’t really do what he’s interested in; bad culture fit; too good culture fit-we want more diversity; simply preferred another candidate; decided to not move forward with the role; lost the budget; existing employee transferred; never was a real open position anyway but we legally had to advertise it...”

[CathedralBorrow]

Do they just sit and wait to hear back and then give up when they don't?

[FZ1]

What else are they supposed to do? Apply to the same job again? There's little you can do if you never make contact or hear back. You just apply to other positions. But what if you don't hear from those either ... ?

Open to suggestions here - but no stalker advice, please - I do not condone friending hiring managers on linkedin/fb, or some of the other creepy tactics we've seen recently.

I think the skillful students generally believe that investing effort to become skillful is all that's needed - and that doing so will eventually pay off.

This is sadly not really true as a general statement.

I have had many 'successful' students - who got more than one offer to choose from. Once, I asked one - who now works at a major investment bank - "so, great job - any advice I should pass on to other students if they ask about job-hunting?" (taking note for myself also - as I am a soft. eng mainly, and only teach part-time).

I expected something like "invest in your skills" or python, or java, or databases, or interview questions ...

The response was: "yeah - copy and paste the job description to the bottom of your resume, and turn the font color to white - so humans can't see it, but the machine will still read it and label you a good match for the job".

My point here is that the current system seems to work best for those who 'game' it to behave in unintentional ways - as opposed to filtering for actually skillful applicants.

[inertiatic]

My experience is that people are rejected for no good reason apart from somebody not liking something, usually not well defined, about them.

That's what I've observed for very competent people around me as well.

Most of the companies I've worked for also rejected candidates for arbitrary reasons and also had "trouble hiring".

[UncleOxidant]

Are you sure that many resumes of qualified candidates aren't screened out prior to making it to your desk? Hiring websites are awful. And there's absolutely no quality control - how do you even know who's not making it through who probably should be? Is anybody actually doing that kind of testing?

> (The median interview candidate is much, much worse than the median engineer because the worse you interview, the more frequently you show up on interview loops.)

Not sure I understand what you're saying here. People who haven't needed to interview in a long time are probably not good at interviewing but good engineers nonetheless. Conversely, people who are good at interviewing might be because they've had a lot of practice.

[sokoloff]

If you assume some correlation, even imperfect, between SWE effectiveness and interview performance, the least effective SWEs are likely to both be looking for work more often and require more interviews per successful job search, so will be way over-represented in the “who applies to interview” pool.

Joel Spolsky said it well: “A lot of companies think they're hiring the top 1 percent because they get 100 resumés for every open position. They're kidding themselves. When you fill an opening, think about what happens to the 99 people you turn away. They don't give up and go into plumbing. They apply for another job. There's a floating population of applicants in your industry that apply for nearly every opening posted online, even though many of them are qualified for virtually none of these positions.“

[Gunax]

I'm having a hard time getting a job and this hurts :(

[thiagomgd]

Don't pay much attention to what Sokoloff said. In theory, he's kinda right, but that's not how it works in the real world. And I don't know if you and him/her live in the same area/country.

I've had a rough time looking for jobs, due to 2 main reasons: not getting it right when adapting the resume to a job posting. Many ATS just discard resumes that doesn't have the exact words that they use on the job posting. Even if you are saying the same thing with different words...

The other was the phone interviews, made by a HR person looking for who knows what. For most applies that I did, I didn't get a phone interview. After phone interviews, didn't hear back.

I only got 2 technical interviews for like, 100 applications. One was for the job I'm currently in, the other I declined because I got the job offer to my current job. Both I got through recommendations, even if the people recommending me didn't know me. But they looked at my resume and put it stray to the HR manager for them to talk to me.

I also had a friend (not in IT) that was not getting anything. I told he to look for recommendations. She went to LinkedIn, found someone that worked or used to work at a company she wanted to go, and talked to the person, got recommended, and got the job.

edit: this in Canada

[rgoulter]

I hope this helps: https://danluu.com/hiring-lemons/

[lobo_tuerto]

> Young people fear it. Older people know it.

When you say "older" how much older do you mean? 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s+?

I have not had any problem yet regarding my age (40s), and just landed a decent initial offer from a Silicon Valley company.

You don't need to be a 20-something to land a good job. You just need to be somewhat good at what you do.

In my last 3~5 gigs my age has never been brought up. Not even once IIRC.

[FZ1]

> my age has never been brought up. Not even once IIRC

No one will ever bring it up.

Do you really think someone will take on the liability of discussing your [age|race|sex|sexual orientation] in an interview? ESPECIALLY as a reason to NOT hire you?

> You don't need to be a 20-something to land a good job.

Agreed. However, your chances drop precipitously as you age.

Studies have found this to be the case repeatedly - with very little evidence to the contrary.

[lobo_tuerto]

I should add that I've been working remotely for the last 10+ years. And I'm from Mexico.

[bitcoinmoney]

Good salary? How much? You might be underpaid based on you skillset so it makes you desirable? You

[VRay]

Check out the HackerNews hiring threads, there are a ton of great jobs where you can net 150k/year doing remote web development

[kranner]

> You just need to be somewhat good at what you do.

This is a vague statement that makes your premise unfalsifiable. If someone is not hired because of ageism, it is always possible to say they weren't good enough at their jobs, because good enough is never defined.

[weberc2]

It goes both ways. If someone is not hired because they aren’t good enough, it’s always possible to say it was ageism.

[kranner]

That’s true, but not enough to refute that ageism exists.

[bfieidhbrjr]

It would be a felony to bring up your age, duh.

[inimino]

It's not illegal to mention it. It's illegal to not hire someone for that reason. For that reason, mentioning it would be stupid, whether you are discriminating illegally or not, and so it's a common misconception that mentioning or asking certain questions is illegal.

[FZ1]

Thank you. Probably not felony, but definitely illegal. Not to mention high civil liability.