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Comment by ChrisMarshallNY | Hacker News Reader

Yeah...but you see, I have committed a serious, unforgivable crime.

I've allowed myself to become old. I'm well past 40.

Most of the time, rejections come within a couple of hours of submission, so I know that a "robo-scrubber" detected eld, and bounced my résumé.

It's actually funny. I see a position advertised, where I am a 100% fit, I submit a CV, and get a bounce within an hour.

Then I see the position still being advertised weeks later.

I have considered adding the following line to the top of my LinkedIN profile:

"Let's just get this out of the way: I'm over 40. If that's a problem, then let's not waste each others' time."

I REALLY don't want to work anywhere that I'm not wanted. I have the rare privilege of being able to do more or less what I want. I love coding. I'm an outstanding manager, but I don't love it.

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I'm 41 and just hired a 50 year old devops guy, because he's good, a little nuts and fits our salary range. The problem with older developers for me is mostly the salary expectations. I'm looking for mid level or senior people, but for most developer positions a few years experience are enough – we're not doing rocket science and the extra experience only makes them more expensive, not more effective. This looks totally different for architect level positions where someone at 25 years just isn't credible enough.

As I've already stated, I would have (the key is "would have") been happy to take a fairly low salary or work as a contractor, as long as the work was interesting and the environment bearable.

It's just not gotten to that part. In some cases, a decent salary would have been required in order to support a move to a higher-cost-of-living area, but it still would have probably been surprisingly low.

As a manager, I made a pretty decent salary for a long time. I would not expect that, as a coder.

I have received a few rather direct answers, and once was privileged to be accidentally CCd in an email, discussing my age.

It's illegal as hell, but hard to prove, and not worth it. If you make a big deal out of it, you blackball yourself.

This kind of behavior has been rampant in the finance industry for decades. It's still crazy as hell, with 25-year-old kids running billions of dollars worth of other people's money through virtual slot machines, while acting like drunken frat boys.

When there's money to be made, people will look the other way. Check out the industries where there's not a lot of money to be made, like social service or education. You will see people being keelhauled regularly.

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