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Comment by throwaway24572 | Hacker News Reader

So here's some hiring anti-patterns I've seen, it's not just millennial managers, but I've seen these patterns in lots of companies and interviews.

1. Managers that want to hire people they could be best friends with. Drinking buddies, social media socialites, etc. Don't confuse this with hiring their best friends, they just feel more comfortable around people that they could socialize with.

2. Managers that don't want anyone to undermine their technical authority. And the best way a manager with 5 years of experience can keep his authority is to not hire an engineer with 20 years of professional experience.

3. Managers that think the culture of a company would turn more boring if they hired middle-aged workers. So they must hire young people only. They can usually get away with it if they hire 80% college graduates mostly.

4. There must be something wrong with the person if he didn't get into management by the age of 50.

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>4. There must be something wrong with the person if he didn't get into management by the age of 50.

This idea amuses/saddens me. Personally, i know a few older technical people (myself included) who have been managers and chose to return to non-manager work. Non-developers (including non-technical managers) seem to have real trouble accepting that someone would not want to be a manager. Hands on techies usually get the attraction of spending your time building stuff Vs going to meetings, shielding your team from political goings on, taking calls, setting budgets, and moving jira tickets around.

Strongly disagree with #4. If you stay in middle management you are basically the easiest target for company "re-structuring" and your position will be made obsolete in a moment - as you are expensive, visible and easily replaceable with a more enthusiastic/younger/cheaper/less vocal individuals. I have seen it many times, such people are unemployable after years of management on this level.

This seems very true to me. I have only middle managers survive are un-management like. They would join 3 AM troubleshooting, prod deployment calls, be available on weekends. In general about as much concerned as tech lead if not more.

#1 and #3 you can probably avoid by working remotely. The thing with remote work is, companies usually look for devs with above average skills, they also look for devs with previous remote experience and of course awesome communication. As for #4, that's a difficult one, I think you could probably get around #4 if you have a great portfolio of working projects

There is a natural repercussion for being a manager who passes on talent, and hires something less. You lose. Unless you are in a company where being good doesn't make a difference.

Working in a company that hires poorly is its own punishment. Dodge the bullet.

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