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Comment by rifung | Hacker News Reader

> let’s look at the average age of IT workers at well-established companies. Facebook: 28. LinkedIn: 29. Google: 30

I had an interview at Google a couple months ago and noticed that most people were pretty young. When I asked the person who was in charge of taking me to lunch about this, he said that it's probably because there are just much more graduates of CS now than there were before, and that Google would very much like to hire senior people as well but they're much harder to find.

I wonder how much of what he said is true vs ageism.

On the other hand, I wonder how much of a natural bias there is against older people if they have to go through the same interview process because it felt like a mental marathon to me. Although the interview only lasts a day it took a couple days for me to recover.

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> ...and that Google would very much like to hire senior people as well but they're much harder to find.

> I wonder how much of what he said is true vs ageism.

Of course they want to hire more senior engineers now, it would likely help win their court battle[1] over it.

[1] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/07/02/0438216/age-discrim...

Also Atlassian says the same. They said last week that they just can't get senior people in Sydney. Personally I feel older people are not as good at the little puzzles they set as an entry test.

I applied to Atlassian many years ago and what struck me is their refusal to entertain non java devs to cross over. If they want more seniors they should consider c# or other language devs who could cross over.

That is actually a really hazardous approach, almost every job I've had as a software developer have introduced me to a new language and as someone who's been writing code for 10+ years there's hardly a large struggle to learn a new language or framework, especially if it's just another c-like imperative language.

I heard this so many times before about just another language... learning language itself? yes, can be done damn fast, plus everybody had some java-like language in their studies. Knowing this means almost nothing, we're talking about very junior-level resource.

You know gazillions of frameworks to achieve everything these days, their integration tricks, various app servers, CI toolsets and so on and on?

I mean, if you are senior in something, are you senior also in XXX language, meaning I give you spec, we talk and you deliver proper maintenable solution, leading dev team, managing all issues and bumps along the road? If no, and you just come as described junior, nobody has time to babysit you for weeks/months, and you are not willing to take junior salary. but that's what you are to the company.

I'm sorry. No actual senior person who is senior at java or c# takes months of babysitting to switch to the other. The beauty of a senior person over someone who is junior and knows only js, is that the senior person should have used many languages over their careers. Picking up a new language and/or framework is what senior people should be doing best. Most of the factors that go into a proper maintainable solution are all language agnostic. Good design, DI, IoC, all of the 12 factor app suggestions are all language independent.

Even when I was back in college many years ago, only the first class taught a language. From that point forward the teacher of each class said we're using language X and suggested a book if you needed help learning.

I'm not the person you're replying to, but can you really argue that someone senior who doesn't know a language and its associated frameworks is equivalent to someone who does know those things or deserves to be paid the same?

Sure, it's true that many things about good design are language agnostic. On the other hand, frameworks and languages can actually limit or enable what you can do, and that lack of familiarity with them has the potential to lead to mistakes.

If the more senior program is of the same calibre and lacks skill in a language, then 100% yes. The idea of discounting proper experience is a clear example of the Dunning Kruger effect.

If everything else is equal, then obviously knowing the current language I need will push that person ahead. IME, the language(s) a senior person knows is the least important part whether they are a good hire though.

My reasoning for this is that we are always learning new languages and using new frameworks. Why would I let a better person go when the language is probably going to change, or worst case they pick it up in a couple weeks just by looking at the existing code base? One case where I would deviate a bit is if I was hiring for a functional programming position. In that case I would prefer experience with some functional language, but that is not much different than wanting OO experience for a Java/C# position.

Oddly Google's and Atlassian's software have been getting steadily worse over time but I'm sure that's just coincidental.

I can't really speak to Google's software because there's so much of it and it does so many different things (much of which I try my hardest to avoid), but I've been using JIRA for a long time - probably on and off since about 2010 - and I actually think it's a lot better now than it ever was.

Largely agreed, we're still running a confluence version from 2010 at one organization that I'm a board member of and I must say that it doesn't fare well with the more mobile oriented ecosystem of today.

The Google process is also veeeery long. I guess is not unusual for an older developer to start it, and get other good offers meanwhile. Another benefit of age is to be able to pull contacts as ways of getting jobs, and reduce the amount of "meaningless" interviews.

His reply couldn't sound more scripted

It didn't sound that way to me, but maybe I'm just too trusting. For what it's worth he was probably in his mid 30s and had a family.

Your response couldn't sound any less sympathetic.

I wonder how many more people are graduating with CS degrees in the last few years compared to those who graduated two decades ago. I'd imagine there's a lot more today with how popular it is becoming. That's not even counting all the CS grads that have since moved up the corporate ladder/switched roles or careers and aren't applying for dev jobs now.

Actually the average age of software engineers at Google is much higher than 30.[1] It's the non SWEs that being the average down. The cited source in that article lists average ages for all employees, not just technical ones. This is unfortunately an overlooked distinction when writing about the industry.

[1] source: I work for Google.

That is a recurrent point that Uncle Bob tends to do. In my opinion, sounds resonable. e.g.: http://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2014/06/20/MyLawn.html

I don't know your definitions of older/younger, but I interviewed at Google NYC recently, and my perception was that most people were in their 30s, with a few older and much older folks. Maybe a factor of the teams I was talking to, but it was clearly an older bunch compared to FB.

I can't speak for NYC but this is also my experience at Google Zurich and London.

Did they give you a job offer?

I did! Why do you ask?

You left the ending off your story! Nice ending too.

Haha! I didn't feel it was relevant to the comment but thank you! I'd rather be a math genius though! Maybe one day I'll be able to at least study some more math

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