[justinY]

500friends founder/CEO here. Look at my team - 500friends.com/team. Most people are who you may consider to be "old." And we wouldn't be where we're at without them. We do not discriminate against age.

What we meant is that we're looking for someone who has coded in the past decade. Someone that has been managing 1,000 people at Oracle may not be the right fit for a company of our stage. Make sense?

[kenjackson]

Hi Justin. It makes sense, but why didn't you say something more like that to begin with? Something like "Active development skills are part of the hiring criteria". You already mention doing Ruby development -- someone who hasn't coded in a decade, probably doesn't have much Ruby experience.

It just seems odd that of all the possible ways to ask for what you describe above, you choose arguably the most offensive and least effective way to do so. And I think as a marketing company, you should know better. The message matters -- not just the intent.

Seriously, think about a better way to phrase the requirement. There are several preferable ways to phrase the question (not just from a legal perspective, but even in terms of simply capturing the pool of candidates you desire).

[justinY]

You do have a point sir.