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I have a feeling that, if I ever applied to YCombinator, my application would end up in the wastebasket the moment they caught a whiff of the fact that I have a wife and kids.

We don't ask on the application form if people have kids, nor as far as I can recall have we asked anyone in an interview. The reason most of the people we fund don't have kids is simply that most of the people who apply don't have kids.

> [...] most of the people who apply don't have kids.

how do you know if you don't ask?

True, I'm guessing based on the demographic similarity between the people we accept (whose circumstances I do eventually learn about) and applicants as a whole. But the median applicant does seem to be about the same as the median company we fund: a pair of guys about 25 years old.

Not for nothing, but for a hiring manager, asking this question is a firing offense. So is age, marital status, religion, or even any question about place of residence apart from "are you capable of being on-site during core hours".

From a lot of unfortunate experience: tech people suck at following these rules.

It's more unfortunate that a few bad apples in the past have made these laws necessary in the first place. Asking someone about their life is hardly a crime, but our governments seem to have no problem making it so. Score another point against a good employer / employee relationship.

How could it possibly be relevant to your hiring decision how old someone is, or what neighborhood they live in?

You can guess someone's age within a few years at an interview if you wanted to discriminate, so blocking a mention of age is naive. You could also work it out in most cases from the dates given on the resume (unless it becomes illegal to learn about a candidate's education or work history - which wouldn't surprise me to be honest).

You could see what neighborhood someone lives in because that will also be typically included on a resume too. Why would you hire someone who can't even put their street address on their resume? Sure, a street address doesn't have much significance to /most/ hiring decisions, although if you knew a candidate would have a 100 mile commute each day, choosing someone who lived around the corner would make a lot of sense if the job required call-out or easy access to the office.

And so it goes. You'll see someone's race at interview. You can probably even figure out if someone's married (presence of a ring). It seems crazy to make it illegal to ask these questions. Instead, it should be law that it's optional for the candidate to ANSWER them.

> Instead, it should be law that it's optional for the candidate to ANSWER them.

Isn't every question optional? It's not like you go to jail if you don't answer a question. It's not a good strategy, but AFAIK it is legal

Instead, it should be law that it's optional for the candidate to ANSWER them.

That opens another can of worms. Any refusal to answer implies something to hide, which would be an immediate red flag.

This line of reasoning seems nonsensical. There are no non-optional interview questions. But all questions asked during an interview are used to discriminate between candidates; that's the point of an interview. How do you ask a candidate what their age is without discriminating based on age? If you're not discriminating on age, why on earth would you ask the question?

Well, true but how offensive is it really if you say that you would rather not say how old you are?

I mean, women do it all the time.

You are totally begging the question. If you have somebody's name, you can "ask" the Internet about their age, sex, religion, or race. That's illegal too.

What I'm asking is, one reasonable person to another, what possible reason could you have for wanting to know the age of an applicant? It is legal to ask if a candidate can legally work full time for you. Why would you ask anything more?

It's been noted in the past that Y Combinator in fact does ask for founders' ages. Presumably it can skirt the hiring laws because it is funding a company, not employing people.

Why does YC ask for founders ages?

This thread suggests that they collect them for statistical purposes:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=116976

It's also a selection bias-- $5000+5000n effectively rules out most people who are farther along in life.

No it doesn't. Further along also means financial resources or contacts that can make up the difference.

If you have financial resources - I guess you would only go to YC for the publicity ? The money would mean nothing.

http://ycombinator.com/about.html

We definitely didn't need the money, and we went to YC. I think plenty has been said about why folks choose YC, and it's pretty rarely the money. There are cheaper sources of financing.

Not everyone with a family to support has tons of money saved up so they can go without income for a year. Almost none do.

I have no idea how you could possibly say "No it doesn't".

He said "rules out". No it doesn't. It was an over generalization.

Over generalization is when you generalize to a group larger than is applicable. This is the same group and a very accurate generalization on his part.

It was an over generalization because I'm an exception: further along in life and YC was a great option.

It is probably true that people with more fiduciary responsibilities have more to think about when taking the plunge, but that is a tautology. People with more responsibility have more responsibility.

My point is that even if you have a house, cars, kid(s), student loans, etc. you can do it. It just takes a bit of planning a maybe a little help from your friends & family.

Keep telling yourselves what you want to hear. Morons. And don't dead me bro.

My co-founder has kids and is older than the OP, and we never felt like that had any impact on our acceptance to YC.

That's good to know! From some of the comments around here, I was starting to feel a little like the guy who showed up at the party uninvited. I probably take things too personally. :)

Just to further reassure you, the average age of YC founders has been creeping upward from the beginning, and there have been many over-30 founders at this point. And, in many polls of age here on News.YC the range of ages run higher than you seem to think. Young single folks are just able to take dramatic risks that occasionally lead to dramatic success, and thus get a disproportionate amount of press. Older folks tend to have responsibilities and more experience which leads to taking fewer and more carefully calculated risks. Successes are less surprising and look more like traditional businesses...so you don't see them talked about as much. But businesses are being started by folks of all ages and a lot of those folks are here at News.YC.

> Perhaps balancing the challenges of work and family five you a healthy dosage of time management and prioritization skills.

Plus, I don't know about you, but I have real world experience about a boatload of pitfalls that I know to avoid that I wasn't aware of 10 years ago. That is a potential source of significant efficiency.

YCombinator startups are startups - it seems that most of them are built to be sold - with a quick (ish) payoff for the founders and investors who sacrificed a lot.

37s viewpoint is more about a sustainable "small" business. Both are valid.

PS I am 33 w. kids as well, and know what it is like. In some ways, you can have a lot more time to think/hack, as you tend to spend more time at home (and quiet time is spent at home, not out at the pub).

"37s viewpoint is more about a sustainable "small" business. Both are valid."

But IMHO 37s viewpoint has little to do with startups. Sure, we could all go and build a modest business that can grow to a small/medium size, and sustain us. But I'm guessing that would count as a failure for a lot of us.

I have a feeling that, if I ever applied to YCombinator, my application would end up in the wastebasket the moment they caught a whiff of the fact that I have a wife and kids. Is that fair?

No, it is not fair for you to air that feeling here. The YC partners get enough discouragement from having to reject a lot of smart people, so why add discouragement about someone speculating they would be rejected if they actually applied?

News.yc is a handout. Take it and be grateful. The information I've gotten here has been invaluable for my own work, and it's actually possible to keep up with it. (I try to follow TechCrunch for photo-specific news that doesn't rise up here, but there's too much noise. I have a day job and 3 kids, so I have to budget my time.)

If you don't want to be dismissed, implement something great. Nobody will ask about your family status.

News.yc is a community site. YC partners may be the stone in the stone soup but the soup comes from the community.

You're right that the surrounding community is a big part of the value. If stones were themselves tasty, and if they worked to maintain the quality of the other ingredients, I would completely agree with your stone soup analogy.

I bet that I'll be in that exact same position in 10 years. All of us will.

Yes. That position is known in the social sciences as your prime earning years.

I suppose the ss people don't measure based on wage? Interesting.

I don't mind the message -- no, you don't have to live in SF (your loss! :-) and no, you don't have to be single.

It's the delivery I have a problem with. More and more, it seems like DHH and his sidekick are deliberately looking for fights. Like they have something they need to prove.

Therapy?

Don't forget "No, you don't have to sell to google for millions"