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Comment by Swinx43 | Hacker News Reader

This mythology leads directly to horribly created software that will either ensure many terrible security breaches in the future or the continued proliferation of "magic" throughout a product.

One of the issues is using the word "engineer" for any of the brogrammer types. an engineer in any other proper engineering discipline does not become worthless with age, their experience actually counts for something.

Somehow we have confused people who stitch together software from pieces of "magic" that they do not understand with engineers.

The work I did in my 20s cannot even begin to compare with what I am doing today in my 30s. Those years of experience really makes a massive difference.

It is time people are honest about ageism and simply states the real reason they prefer fresh grad or 20-something brogrammers. It normally boils down to those people being willing to work longer hours for less money. At least in most of the cases of ageism that I have seen.

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My fiancee who is a commercial bank loan underwriter made this observation: There are some people who have been in her industry for decades, but effectively have little experience, because they don't examine their decisions and figure out why things went right and went wrong. Then there are other people who have far less "experience" in terms of the number of years they have been working, but are effectively more experienced, because they can analyze new opportunities using the data they've encountered before.

Experience as a software developer does count for something, so long as you're aware, and you're constantly developing models for evaluating cost/benefit and risk. If you can add in the ability to deal with and manage people, then you will have a very valuable and uncommon toolbox of skills!

It goes with the adage: "Some people have 20 years of experience; some have one year of experience repeated 20 times."

First encountered this concept in Reid Hoffman's book Startup of You

I don't think it's ageism if one person is selected based on being willing to work more for less money. That's just a labor market.

There's an argument to be made that 20-somethings shouldn't work more than 40 hours a week or should require higher pay. Or that employers should place more value on the work of more experienced developers. Or both.

But I don't think experienced developers should be exempt from keeping what they're bringing competitive with less experienced ones. That's a market--which is reality.

Never compete on price. Provide something that nobody else can and stick with it, otherwise it's a race to the bottom.

Those companies that hire the cheapest labour will get the quality they pay for. Let them, it's not your problem. There are enough who care about doing it right that they will eventually find you and will pay you according to the value you bring.

>There are enough who care about doing it right

If you know any of them, please list them. One real problem is that the ones who want to do it 'right' are few and possibly not easily identifiable so potential job seekers may not know where to search for them.

Amazon competes on price

Never take universal quantifiers literally.

Only a Sith deals in absolutes.

Not all Sith ;)

That depends where you live of course. The smaller cities have so little tech companies that it's hard to find any tech job, irrelevant of the price.

If you want to make money doing something you love, you have to be willing to do what it takes to do that thing. You either have to play in the market as it is defined, make the market change to the way you want to do things or be willing to relocate to make it happen.

Why do you think all the most highly paid actors and actresses are in Hollywood? Do you think they all started life there or do you think they moved there from all over the world because that's where their market is and that's what they love doing?

> I don't think it's ageism if one person is selected based on being willing to work more for less money. That's just a labor market.

All sorts of discrimination exists still because "perfectly rational" arguments like yours ignore underlying reasons.

For example: it's the same justification racists used for intelligence tests for voting not too long ago.

Yes, and all sorts of underlying reasons are hidden by assuming "-isms" and victimhood at the first sign of disparate outcomes.

But trying to address perceived ageism doesn't solve the problem. Being aware of contributing factors and correcting for them on an individual level does.

> Yes, and all sorts of underlying reasons are hidden by assuming "-isms" and victimhood at the first sign of disparate outcomes.

This is a loaded and contentious statement ("assuming...victimhood at the first sign").

And trying to address ageism is trying to solve the problem; the problem is ageism.

In your particular example, ageism is manifest because older workers tend to have families and financial obligations (both of which, by the way, contribute to society). That's not "perceived" ageism. It's simply ageism.

It is assuming victimhood, because it is presumed immoral (or illegal) activity for what could at least as reasonably be totally moral and legal decisionmaking as a result of other factors.

If you choose not to work as much as someone else or made choices that require higher compensation, it is not an "-ism" for your employer to choose another candidate on that basis alone. We're going down a dark road claiming victimhood without evidence as quickly as people are.

no one claims ageism at the first sign of it... you typically spend the years between 35 and 45 thinking... "no way! that's so stupid!" until it finally hits you, and you still can't believe it's really a thing. It's a lot like racism or sexism, except it's a bit more comforting to know that it will come to its perpetrator with a swiftness that will blow their mind.

How do you individually address an issue where the hiring manager is making a generic decision based on age unrelated to your individual performance (especially in hiring where they have no idea how many hours you personally work)?

Why should dying your hair and wearing skinny jeans affect your hire rate?

"-isms" don't work because they are rational individually, although they might work because they are stereotypically true. Or are you saying that the hiring manager should work on this individually... which would be actually just following the law.

> How do you individually address an issue where the hiring manager is making a generic decision based on age unrelated to your individual performance (especially in hiring where they have no idea how many hours you personally work)?

There isn't evidence of this, but even if you believed that were the case, you combat it the same way you would any other weak point of your value proposition. You address it head on in a tactful way that resolves those concerns without having to be asked explicitly.

That could include interest and experience in an emerging tool or architecture (combats stereotype that skillset is outdated), casual commentary on the latest Game of Thrones or Silicon Valley season (combats stereotype of bad cultural fit), or a true passion in solving the problems the company sets out to solve (combats stereotype of clock-in clock-out worker). It could also include adjusting your salary expectations more in-line with what your competition is expecting (if necessary).

The possibility that ageism is not the only cause cannot be simply ignored.

True. What we need is a"not hotdog" style app for tech interviews. Simply photograph the face of the candidate and wait for the app to tell you if they are too old for the job. It needs a hip name. Suggestions? (this was a bit of light humor about a serious and important issue)

It's predjudice if you pre-judge how much people are willing to work or how much money they want based on their demographics.

It is, but parent comment stated it as fact--not a prejudgment.

If you are avoiding older candidates because of presumptions about them in terms of work ethic or compensation expectations, you are wrong. If you are advertising below-market salaries and expecting >40 hr work weeks and only attract younger people, there is nothing wrong with that.

Older candidates are not entitled to employment in the positions they want at the rates they want. They need to compete in the labor market with the rest of us.

> If you are avoiding older candidates because of presumptions about them in terms of work ethic or compensation expectations, you are wrong. If you are advertising below-market salaries and expecting >40 hr work weeks and only attract younger people, there is nothing wrong with that.

You don't seem to understand how discrimination works: the advertisement you describe discriminates against older workers because of how lives typically evolve with age (e.g. ability to sustain long hours, family or other obligations, etc.). The two scenarios you describe aren't objectively independent or even clearly separable.

We're just getting into a pointless gray area when that argument is made. Doesn't having work hours that don't match with school hours discriminate against parents? Isn't a position with on-call responsibilities inherently discriminating against people with more familial commitments?

I don't think it's the employer's responsibility to tailor the job to match a candidate's chosen lifestyle, or that not doing so means you're discriminating. I think people need to be responsible for their own decisions, and if that means you're less competitive relative to another candidate, that is not the employer or the other candidate's fault.

Funny you'd mention on call. It's a major hassle for the allegedly hot positions of devops/SRE/sysadmin, anyone who got a clue leaves the domain pretty quickly.

You don't seem to understand how discrimination works - any separation of people according to some criteria is literally discrimination, however, illegal discrimination is one done according to certain protected characteristics (including age) without a legitimate business need (e.g. actors for a particular commercial).

Offering below-market salaries for 80 hour work weeks isn't illegal age discrimination even if this highly correlates with age, those are legitimate criteria that affect work performance, and thus are valid; just as criteria that require workers to be able to lift a certain weight is a legitimate criteria if appropriate to that job role, even if it would disqualify almost all women for applying.

Disqualifying an old man because you think that people of his age won't work 80 hour weeks for a poor wage or can't carry the required goods is prejudice and illegal discrimination. However, disqualifying an old man because you know that this particular man won't work 80 hour weeks for a poor wage and can't carry the required goods is fair game, it's a reasonable evaluation of a potential employee.

Legal discrimination can occur in explicit, discrete instances, such as your example about this particular man. Illegal discrimination can, too. But illegal discrimination can also occur in a systemic, implicit way.

Systemic bias exists. One manifestation of that in this industry is the signaling in certain job descriptions and hiring practices. We needn't point to explicit, specific examples (e.g. "hiring manager told me point-blank 'sorry, we do not hire people over 30'") to see a broader effect.

> I don't think it's ageism if one person is selected based on being willing to work more for less money. That's just a labor market.

Agreed, however very few ever come out and says that so directly. In a lot of cases the reasons are given as not having the right "cultural fit", or being "over qualified" or some other excuse because the person hiring cannot stomach it to simply say "we want cheap resources that we can work to the bone".

No one should feel like they need to perform the equivalent of slave labour in order to get a job. 20-somethings should not have to work 80 hour weeks. Allowing them the free time to pursue their interests will make them better employees.

Agreed on all points, but we're going down a dark road when any measurable disparity is assumed to be an unfair "-ism" without evidence, that must be corrected because clearly the decisionmaking gatekeepers are "-ists."

It's possible the problem (at a macro level) is caused by other correlating factors, such as differing salary expectations and how up-to-date skillsets are.

I definitely agree with you and this particular dark road is best left untraveled.

It would be really great to get more data behind what is mostly anecdotal evidence. Also getting data from across the US and other countries would be very useful in understanding this better. Without the data it is too easy to go down the dark path.

we need a #metoo movement for ageist experiences in the interview process and beyond! This antiquated EEOC complaint business needs a "disruption" by a more "agile" and effective approach.

I'd like to share my story related to ageism:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15642428

If it's that hard for me, it seems true to say it's much harder for someone much older.

I hear you about the -ism fanaticism. But there seem to be serious problems on the horizon. I can't make you believe them. All I can do is try to relate it to something in your life.

Once you have a strong understanding of how to architect code and how the "big picture" technologies fundamentally work, learning the different flavors/frameworks/etc takes time, but we're talking weeks of learning vs the years it takes to understand the fundamentals. You're not going to be an expert in the idiosyncrasies of X tech unless you are working with it full time for a year or so but you'll know enough to pass a job interview.

After reading your story, for example, I imagine you could spend 3 months part-time doing an online bootcamp like treehouse (focusing on big picture web architecture and syntax) and you would be more than employable as a web dev.

but you'll know enough to pass a job interview.

Unfortunately not. I believed it myself, until it became obvious it was a myth:

One interview went like this: They sat me down, opened up postgres, and said "Accomplish these goals." The goals were simple things like write SQL statements to query for certain types of users, or join data together.

I never had any reason to learn any of that. I knew that I could learn it if I needed to. I understood conceptually what joins are, why to use them, and what to avoid and why. The "why" is the crucial ingredient, and I naively thought that would protect me.

No... It's not fun when you have to sheepishly admit in front of three engineers that you have no idea how to write those SQL queries.

It was the same deal with Rails. Ditto for JS. Eventually I went through 5 interviews and struck out on all 5, in a row.

That's my point though. You say you don't know the job skills that you need for you to hit the ground running (which is what pretty much every employers expects these days unfortunately) and what I'm saying to you is you could develop a good understanding of these skills rapidly because of your background vs the years it takes if you have zero tech background.

You could spend nights and weekends learning postgresql/SQL, web MVC architecture, JS syntax (for node.js and frontend dev work), and http concepts, in a few months. That's enough to open a lot of interview doors.

Yes, I could, and that was my goal throughout that time. I was doing exactly that, but hadn't focused on postgres yet.

The point is that it was impossible to know beforehand which of those skills I'd be quizzed on. It's both difficult and senseless to learn every technology just in case I'm quizzed on it in a 30 minute interview (which really doesn't give you any sense of my skills or learning capabilities anyway).

The sole way to deal with this situation is to plow through a dozen interviews until one sticks.

You say you don't know the job skills that you need for you to hit the ground running

This isn't an accurate description: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15714338

I'm about to hit HN's comment limit, so I think we'll have to leave this off here. Feel free to email me if you'd like to know more or chat about this. It's an interesting topic and I'm simply trying to call attention to the other side of it.

It's so easy to dismiss it as fake or that it doesn't exist. The real world is quite a bit more complicated and messed up in certain ways; it's not just sour grapes talking.

Yeah tech interviews are notoriously awful about testing for trivia style tech knowledge and you either know it or you don't.

>The sole way to deal with this situation is to plow through a dozen interviews until one sticks.

Yep, and that's pretty much the standard. On the plus side the more you interview the more you see the same questions popping up so you can prep for them. It's an awful numbers game but so long as you keep optimizing/learning that's all that matters.

For what it's worth there was a post on HN a few months back from a high end recruiting company where candidates were highly pre-qualified to interview for certain positions and even then I think their success rate was like 20%. It's the nature of the beast for tech. If your interview offer percentage is too high that probably means you just aren't reaching high enough.

>It's so easy to dismiss it as fake or that it doesn't exist. The real world is quite a bit more complicated and messed up in certain ways; it's not just sour grapes talking.

I'm not dismissing you at all, I've bombed tech interviews before it's the nature of the beast.

can we please be honest here? Is anyone who's claiming it's all about "staying hip with the skillset" actually over 40? Because if you are, and if your skillset totally matches what the job asks for, and especially if you are nimble and quick to boot, then I promise you have heard "overqualified" and "culture fit" many sad times, most often after you nail the first sixteen (i kid, but only a little) interviews in record time and find yourself at the sunny end of a kick-butt onsite at which your facial lines can be seen. Then what was once "the team loves your passion and personality" becomes "we just don't think it's a culture fit". I'm going to have to start sending in a body double. It's that bad/sad/stupid.

I've read your post, and I try to empathise, but at the same time I can't help but feel you were naive in thinking you could take on a web development job without having any of the skills required, even a very basic level of them.

If a 20 year old applied for a job that involved writing SQL queries, and couldn't, I'd expect him to be rejected. There's a world of difference between low level C/C++ style programming, and working in Rails day to day, and if you think there isn't, then you should be able to prove it.

If a 20 year old applied for a job that involved writing SQL queries, and couldn't, I'd expect him to be rejected.

I've been a webdev now for some time, and I've written zero SQL queries. Firebase is nice. So is Mongoose. And yes, I can structure it as a traditional SQL relational database with proper indices if needed. I'm not choosing technologies that cause technical debt or problems down the road.

If you think that you can't take a programmer with a decade of experience and a background in security (where I performed SQL injection attacks) and train them to write SQL queries, then that says a lot about the company. I don't regret failing that interview.

Respectfully, if you're going to play the "I'm a back-end systems guy but I can learn this front-end JS stuff" card, you can't choke on some SQL queries.

We're all here stroking our gray beards about how kids these days don't even understand the tools they're using, and then you turn around and say "i dunno, the ORM handled it for me"?

SQL hasn't appreciably changed in 40 years. I'll take your word that you really know your C/Unix stuff, and I get that gamedev is it's own niche, but I'd expect most senior devs to have developed a rock-solid grasp of SQL just by osmosis over their years.

>>I can structure it as a traditional SQL relational database with proper indices if needed.

These sort of things are the reason I have to these days deal with programmers who show me their several thousands of lines of code and feel proud about it, until I show them it can done with a few SQL queries. Or that Java/Python program who proudly flaunts their few thousands of lines of code weekend project, which is basically a awk command that can be written under 3 minutes.

Only a few months back I was asked to review a backend application. The developer explained passionately how his massive structure of Java code plays with the store, which happens to be a key-value store, while the application is largely transactional in nature. Despite explaining to them why this isn't great idea even from an operations perspective, let alone conceptually or design wise they went ahead. Last time I checked they have to often deal with dirty read/write issues in case of temporary failure, and disk crashes apparently are common.

These sort of issues can be avoided if devs sit down and get basic exposure to things SQL, which by the can be done under a few weeks.

Honestly, I think your attitude towards this is incredibly dismissive. Hiring people with experience is good, but not if that experience is at the expense of some of the fundamentals. Imagine hiring a graphics programmer because they had 10 years experience in front end web development, only to find out they can’t write any shaders, don’t understand any of the theory, and you turned down someone with 5 years graphics programming experience to hire this person instead? Or perhaps more similarly, taking a backend web developer with a decades experience, and putting them in an engine developer role. Then on their first day they ask you why you only use ‘new’ sometimes.

My first real job out of college was writing graphics device drivers in C and assembly. I had no idea how to do it before joining the company and in fact bought a book on writing Windows device drivers a few weeks before I started so I could at least start out knowing basic terminologies.

Thanks for sharing this--and sorry in advance if I came off abrasive.

I just think the key difference in our industry is that it's far more punishing than others if you're not keeping up to date with relevant skills.

I'm 29 and my last search was two years ago. My last job had me primarily doing ColdFusion-based web development and occasionally iOS development. A big part of the reason I left was specifically to avoid finding myself trapped with few relevant skills a few years later.

I got into and built hobby projects around an upcoming "hot" new paradigm (serverless) and learned Python along the way to do it. Being able to talk passionately about that (and cloud architecture in general) was key to finding my next position even though most of my cloud experience on the job was with the plain stuff (like normal VMs).

But despite being 27, I wasn't immune from having to branch out, learn new things, and become passionate about something to find a new position. Respectfully: our industry doesn't allow for one to stick to the same skillset for long. Your post reinforces what I had feared, which is that people are blaming ageism while sitting on a skillset that is no longer competitive.

I think this is a problem that needs to be handled, and maybe that's through a more industry norm "20% time" for trying new things, a stronger case for experience applying well to new concepts, or something else. But I don't think the problem is ageism.

> But despite being 27, I wasn't immune from having to branch out, learn new things, and become passionate about something to find a new position. Respectfully: our industry doesn't allow for one to stick to the same skillset for long. Your post reinforces what I had feared, which is that people are blaming ageism while sitting on a skillset that is no longer competitive.

That's shortsighted and your employer's process sounds shortsighted.

I don't give a crap if you've already used React, Redux, Express, whatever new flavor of the months are coming. If you're 23 and actively using them, odds are you're still going to be worth much less to my team than someone 40 who has to pick them up their first couple months but can immediately contribute valuable, hard-earned broadly-applicable timeless lessons about how to build and operate software.

My job as employer, and my team's job as onboarders, is to train you in the specific skills. Yours is to bring a proven ability to learn, and the general knowledge, wisdom, and thought processes to know how to build things right.

I don't care if you're passionate, I want to know that you'll be professional enough to take pride in what you do and hold yourself to a standard worth being paid for.

If you're a hiring manager and can't figure out better questions than "can you prove you know some things about X technology already," well, please don't get too much better, cause I enjoy being able to hire the skilled people you overlook without as much competition. ;)

I'm not saying it's the definitively the most cost-effective way to hire. It very well could be short-sighted.

I think your view is 100% valid and could very well be correct. The key point is I don't think people who disagree should be presumed "-ist."

And if you are correct: Good news! As a hiring manager, you apparently have a wider selection of better candidates because your competitors aren't properly assessing value in the right places.

I would argue, though, that being able to readily assess someone's experience in a modern framework you're actually using might be a less risky hire than assessing someone's abilities in decades-old technologies you don't use, hoping their lack of horizon-broadening over the last ten years hasn't been due to complacency, and paying them more just to find out.

But I could be wrong! And that's OK. We should be able to disagree without the "-ist" so often.

> I don't give a crap if you've already used React, Redux, Express, whatever new flavor of the months are coming. If you're 23 and actively using them, odds are you're still going to be worth much less to my team than someone 40 who has to pick them up their first couple months but can immediately contribute valuable, hard-earned broadly-applicable timeless lessons about how to build and operate software.

Odds are fine, but they aren't a shortcut for using your brain. If a team's culture makes its members instantly side with either the 40 year old or the 23 year old when he/she makes a claim like "we don't need to write tests", "there are no problems in my code", or "we should convert our entire existing repo to <different style/library/language>", then that culture is stifling discussion and actively harming the quality of the code the team writes. Same applies to hiring decisions.

It's frustrating to see ageism swinging back and forth like a pendulum. There's value in having both the crystallised intelligence of older workers and the fluid intelligence of younger workers on one team, provided they firstly get hired and secondly manage to work together.

Just as the majority of 23 year olds are what you are imagining (inexperienced, know-it-alls, chasing the latest fad, etc.) I would say the majority of 40 year old programmers are just as useless in the other direction.

Maybe not on HN where everyone is above average, but in the flyover states it's absolutely the case. Exceedingly few 40+ year old programmers around these parts I'd describe as holding a relevant modern skillset or holding any interest whatsoever in updating their knowledge or trying to stay competitive. It's almost universal derision over the "flavor of the month" until 10-15 years down the road when they realized flavor of the month turned into Linux and all they have left is bitterness over being left behind.

Just as you have the hiring skills to weed through the huge cruft of useless candidates of your preferred type, some hiring managers hold the skills to wade through the cruft of young hipster bros and find the gems as well. The 80/20 rule typically applies to all things in life.

So put another way - in the end, I'd say it all roughly evens out in my experience. I think age is an extremely poor metric for productivity, and it really depends on the specific individual.

I say all this as someone much closer to 40 than 20.

>>I would say the majority of 40 year old programmers are just as useless in the other direction.

This has nothing to do with age. In most people's case swim lanes are set early in life. If you weren't good enough at 23, unless some major incident in your life changed you, chances are you will be the same at 40.

This has largely been a problem- most people feel with this popular phenomenon called 'Nerd culture'. Some people have it all figured way early in life, others take long, many never. This fact alone counts for different starting points in life, overall seriousness, and the net time available to make progress. Also if you started out as a Nerd earlier, you are more curious, and more eager to learn, change and adapt to things. Than people who start out later, who just wanted a job to provide for their family, and are in purely for 9 - 5 kind of a job, those people will routinely find themselves stuck in the wrong job- As they have to spend bulk of their time learning things. While they might want to spend that time on recreation.

This whole thing about learning and exploring things just for the heck of it doesn't come naturally to most people.

From my own childhood I remember a bunch of bullies from my lane, routinely taunting and beating up kids. One of them grew up to his mid-20s and woke up to the financial realities of life. He then went to college and did his engineering. But that was 8 years after I had finished my degree, and had a neat 9 - 10 years experience compared to him. I once met him in a bus and he came across as a totally changed person, but he still struggles. Largely because the impulse to do things is different, he just wants a job, and beyond that bulk of his early life throughout childhood, teenage and early adulthood were spent doing unproductive stuff. So there is just no desire or curiosity, or even the mental tools required to sustain a continuous learning life long marathon campaign.

I largely agree, I think it's almost always individualistic. I know many 40+ guys who's combination of experience and passion will nearly always trump a similar guy in his 20's. Then it's a "simple" RoI calculation of if you need experience in that position or not.

I was mostly trying to provide a counterbalance to the "older is always better" opinion I've seen as well. I was lucky enough early in my career to have a myriad of stellar mentors - both old and young, and learned to simply listen to what folks have to say.

As I get older I do understand how hard it is to keep up with the latest thing in tech, while also handling other responsibilities in life. I almost always tend towards the grumpy guy ranting about the latest fad, so this comment is largely out of character!

I thought I'd toss it in my earlier comment - but it's also selection bias at play here. The guys in their 40's looking for work are likely of a different type than those in their 20's. The stellar candidates who have decades of career behind them typically have a strong social network that places them before they even look at a job board. This is an area where I feel ageism is very real, and kind of terrifies me a little should I find myself in that position.

>>I was mostly trying to provide a counterbalance to the "older is always better" opinion I've seen as well.

Older isn't always better, simply because older isn't a separate species or class of humans. Put simply young people eventually become old. If you had major human enterprise issues while you were young, chances are those will remain when you get old.

This extends to other things too.

Why do you think retirement is so hard for people who didn't save well enough in 20s and 30s? Nobody can wake up one day, and run a ultra marathon. Processes for making something like this happen start way early in life.

Your comment highlights more problems than just ageism.

First, what's the deal with passion? Can't land a job if you're not passionate about whatever the prospective employer wants you to work on? Replace that word by "enthusiasm" and it'll be more acceptable. Sorry for singly you out, it's the zeitgeist I'm after.

Second, the "relevant skills" bullshit. Sillysaurus3 had relevant skills for a wide range of jobs. The only problem was the lack of trendy buzzwords in the résumé. Employers just don't want to spend a few weeks (or even a few days) training someone to a new stack.

In the context of a job hiring candidate, I'd consider "passion" and "enthusiasm" to be synonymous. The idea would be to imply that you're interested in building cool things and solving difficult problems more so than just receiving a paycheck. And that's a beneficial thing to convey as a candidate regardless of your age.

Regarding training someone for a new stack: You quite possibly are right. I just think it's possible for employers to disagree with your view and not be presumed "-ist."

> I just think it's possible for employers to disagree with your view and not be presumed "-ist."

So do I. There are more ways to be wrong than being an "-ist".

I used to be passionate about computers, but it's hard to sustain passion after 35 years — these days I'm merely affectionate.

What are "relevant skills?" It's it a programming language? An environment? A framework?

When I started, I was expected to pick anything up as I was working. I got my first job partially as a result of having seen Smalltalk in a programming language class. The important "relevant skills" were enough background to pick up new things (since everywhere was different) and a demonstrated ability to get work done.

"Relevant skills" are the things listed as "required" or "preferred" in the job ad. These typically are all of those things.

I agree with your second paragraph--but isn't that a strong case for investing in a cheaper developer with less experience?

But that's not the legal and societal POV is it would you say that applies to Race Sex Gender and so on?

Of course. I've never seen someone argue they were being discriminated against on the basis of race, and that they know this because someone else offered to do more work for less money and were chosen.

I agree it is currently popular to assume "-ism" simply from disparate outcomes, but I don't think it's right (in both the "correctness" and "morally proper" definitions of the word).

As long as the market has been sufficiently de-skilled, by the belief that it can be taught by weeks-long bootcamps alone and a 25 year old has seen enough crap to be called "senior", that will be a valid view.

Perhaps there is some middle ground, and a fresh perspective with modern tools at a lower price might be more valuable in many circumstances.

And perhaps "years spent in industry" is not as universally correlative with cost-effectiveness as some claim.

>This mythology leads directly to horribly created software that will either ensure many terrible security breaches in the future or the continued proliferation of "magic" throughout a product.

Does it matter if neither the product sales nor the execs will suffer from producing it?

Right, those examples albeit being good to convince a kid to into 5 yrs college are rarely the reality in the IT business. Quality has a price that most of the companies are not willing to pay and might as well detract'em from tapping into a new market.

> One of the issues is using the word "engineer" for any of the brogrammer types.

The problem you’re actually describing is completely orthogonal to whether someone is a “brogrammer”. The actual issue is that most programmers learn neither computer engineering nor computer science. Businesses are typically very high time preference, so they don’t care and are willing to hire people who “know how to code” and that’s basically the extent of their knowledge.

Ironically, working longer hours makes one less productive (in engineering).

>>Somehow we have confused people who stitch together software from pieces of "magic" that they do not understand with engineers.

Exactly, this is like saying carpenters get obsolete every few years because wood pieces with new joints come in every few years.

>>It normally boils down to those people being willing to work longer hours for less money.

And for naivety, you can easily sell stories like 'work for great exposure' to newly arrived kids.

> One of the issues is using the word "engineer" for any of the brogrammer types

In Canada the term 'engineer' is regulated at the provincial level, and a person can be prosecuted for labeling themselves as an engineer if they are not registered and licensed with their province's engineering association. For example in Ontario in order to join Professional Engineers Ontario and call yourself an engineer you must meet strict academic and work experience requirements[1], pass an ethics exam, and pay a yearly membership fee. Everyone who graduates from an accredited engineering program in Canada has to take an ethics course and has these rules drilled into their heads. I know I did.

But then I graduated and half the people I run in to at hackathons and conferences did a two week bootcamp and have "Software Engineer" in their job title, and proudly introduce themselves as such.

I call myself a software developer because although I have a software engineering degree I'm not registered with the PEO and it wouldn't benefit me if I was.

[1] http://www.peo.on.ca/index.php?ci_id=1848&la_id=1

Canada, along with a couple other nations I do not recall, is an outlier in this respect. As an American EE degree holder who has been employed as an EE in the past, I think the attachment of "engineer" to shitloads of titles just to fluff them up is ridiculous. However, I think the Canadian position is equally ridiculous in the opposite direction.

> For example in Ontario in order to join Professional Engineers Ontario and call yourself an engineer you must meet strict academic and work experience requirements[1], pass an ethics exam, and pay a yearly membership fee.

Sounds like a racket, especially given that the PEO is a private organization. I’m not sure why this is supposed to be a good thing.

> Everyone who graduates from an accredited engineering program in Canada has to take an ethics course and has these rules drilled into their heads.

It bothers me that people believe that A) ethics can be taught like any other engineering class and B) ethics should be prescribed by some professional association.

> But then I graduated and half the people I run in to at hackathons and conferences did a two week bootcamp

I agree this is a problem, but most of the actual engineers I meet in real life (i.e. people who did a 4-or-more year accredited engineering program, including some who are from Canada) don’t actually have a particularly impressive level of rigor that would set them apart from most of the college-educated programmers I meet.

In Canada the engineering associations are self regulating bodies, that is, the associations serve a legal purpose because of the technical nature of engineering. The thinking is that Politicians don't have the technical background to regulate the profession and so having pronvincial bodies allows engineers to regulate themselves. Hence the ethics part

You can become a software PE in the United States, but it is absolutely a racket. One of the requirements for a PE is you need to work for another PE. This leads to a situation where new exams, like the software discipline, have 20 people sit for an exam in one year. The transportation discipline had 1,800.

> One of the requirements for a PE is you need to work for another PE.

That's also a requirement in Canada (Ontario at least). Work experience has to be completed while working under a P.Eng.

The value of the system shows up in things like civil engineering when it is required that an accredited engineer signs off on the design. That engineer has personal liability if the building fails. The engineer's boss cannot simply order the engineer to sign off on the design, if the engineer says that you must, it has real weight.

The US has the same basic system, all that is different is how strictly the word "engineer" is regulated. And that varies by state.

Before that system was adopted, bridges fell down an average of once a week in the USA. We have a lot more and bigger bridges now, but not nearly as many fall down.

Read https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Software-Development-Sch... for case for doing the same thing for software development.

> Sounds like a racket, especially given that the PEO is a private organization.

Dunno why you need the qualifier there. There are public and nonprofit rackets, too.

> and have "Software Engineer" in their job title, and proudly introduce themselves as such.

Personally I don't see a problem with this. That's their job title. Whether they have a P. Eng and can legally sign documents is another matter.

You are correct that technically they cannot walk around saying "I am a Software Engineer" unless they are a Professional Engineer. But I don't see the harm of someone saying "I work as a Software Engineer in X company" because:

- that's their job title

- the company chose the title and hired them for that role knowing their qualifications

- to my knowledge there are no legal restrictions on what title a company can give a role

If you want to go after someone calling themselves a "Software Engineer" when they're not a P. Eng I would argue you should go after the company for advertising an "engineer" position without hiring a P. Eng.

Edit: my argument here is that professional engineer licensing bodies should go after companies hiring engineering graduates to fill an "X Engineer" role the same as they would go after an individual falsely claiming to be a P.Eng.

It's stupid to allow companies to hire someone without a P.Eng to an "Engineer" role and then chastise the person for calling themselves by their job title.

That’s how we got to where we are today. You don’t get to call yourself a doctor or nurse because you have a box of band-aids in your pocket.

The meaning of engineering on the other hand has been watered down to be meaningless. There are no professional standards and no control on what companies represent their staff to be. It sounds prestigious as a title, but that’s about the end of it.

> The meaning of engineering has been watered down to be meaningless

For some disciplines like Software Engineering, I agree.

For other disciplines like Civil engineering, the term has not been watered down. No company would hire someone to certify designs who was not a P. Eng because they are required to employ a P.Eng for this by regulations/law.

This problem has come up because the government/PEO has not reacted to the changing engineering landscape and don't require positions like "Software Engineer" to be filled by an actual P. Eng.

Companies made the title worthless. I don't see how it's fair to fault the person in the position because there is a double standard applied to individuals and companies regarding the term "Engineer"

Apply the standard both ways. People cannot call themselves an "Engineer" unless they hold a P.Eng and companies cannot hire anyone but a P.Eng for an "X Engineer" position.

> to my knowledge there are no legal restrictions on what title a company can give a role

From [1]: Becoming licensed gives you the right to use “P.Eng.” after your name and “engineer” in your job title. Under the Professional Engineers Act, you may only use “engineer” in your job title if you hold a P.Eng. licence.

So yes, I'd agree that companies shouldn't be using engineer in the job title unless they're hiring a P.Eng, but that doesn't absolve the employee of liability.

[1]http://www.peo.on.ca/index.php?ci_id=2075&la_id=1#whypeng

> So yes, I'd agree that companies shouldn't be using engineer in the job title unless they're hiring a P.Eng, but that doesn't absolve the employee of liability.

So, would you agree that if we are going to be strict about who can use the term "Engineer" there shouldn't be a double standard allowing companies to call a position "X Engineer" and then hire someone who isn't a P. Eng for the position?

If Engineer is a restricted term for individuals, then it should be a restricted term for employers as well. Employers having a position with "Engineer" in the title should only be permitted to hire people with a P.Eng.

> Under the Professional Engineers Act, you may only use “engineer” in your job title if you hold a P.Eng. licence.

The company sets the job title. So if they want to hire someone who isn't a P.Eng to the role, that person is supposed to tell the company to change the role title to exclude the term "Engineer" ?

Yes, I thought my agreement was clear in my previous comment. Companies shouldn't be using 'engineer' in the job title unless they're hiring a P.Eng.

TIL I can say "I work as an attorney at X company" even if I never went to law school, as long as that's my job title. Hint: I can't.

The link suggests that what is regulated is "Professional Engineer", not "engineer".

Here are a couple more links from the PEO website that are more explicit about the term "engineer".[1][2] Admittedly I don't know if the claims here are accurate or not, the Professional Engineer Act [3] is too legalese for me to decipher.

[1] http://www.peo.on.ca/index.php?ci_id=2075&la_id=1#whypeng [2] http://www.peo.on.ca/index.php?ci_id=2075&la_id=1#aftergrad [3] https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90p28#BK36

does the ethics test preclude doing work on rayguns? asking for a friend.

Probably, engineers are required to adhere to a strict code of ethics that puts the public interested first. Rayguns tend to be developed by people with evil ambitions. If I were a professional engineer and my boss asked me to work on a raygun, I would be ethically required to refuse and potentially to report him to the relevant authorities.

my boss asked me to work on a raygun, I would be ethically required to refuse and potentially to report him to the relevant authorities

So Canada has no arms industry? I call shenanigans.

maybe their engineers are called advisors?

> So Canada has no arms industry? I call shenanigans.

Whether or not Canada has an arms industry is irrelevant to the question of whether or not it's unethical to build weapons.

Having an ethical obligation and acting on it are two different things. People can argue about the philosophy around the ethics of creating weapons. It could be argued that every engineer working on creating weapons is violating the ethical requirements of being an engineer.

It could be argued that every engineer working on creating weapons is violating the ethical requirements of being an engineer.

If that were true, wouldn't the professional body expel them from membership? Or perform some other form of sanction? Which it hasn't - ever, to my knowledge.

Ethics exams are the stupidest kinds of exam. If you have no ethics, you'd have no problem and cheating to pass.

They don't care if you know the material.

They care about having a legal lever to manipulate so that there is proof that you should have known better.

The English word "engineer" is quite difficult for French people, because in French we have the term "ingénieur" (usually meaning "ingénieur diplômé"), which is something like the big universities diplomas in other countries.

A better translation of engineer would be "technicien".

French "ingénieurs" come from "Grandes écoles", see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandes_%C3%A9coles

True or not true: Engineers in Canada wear a ring made of steel from a bridge that collapsed?

Found it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring

When you say "brogrammer" it makes people not want to read the rest of your comment. Please be civil on HN and in general in the world.

Are we really this thin skinned? It's a funny portmanteau not a slur.

Given the context, though, its use here is acceptable.

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