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Comment by jonnycomputer | Hacker News Reader

did you not get applicants older than 30?

From my experience hiring in startups (and personal life experience, having left the startup world at 28), over-30s have higher salary requirements than startups can afford. It's not even just a Bay Area thing; in pretty much all markets you pay a premium for experience.

If you can’t afford the salary required to hire the right people, then you’re not a start-up, you’re a side project looking to rip other people off by suckering them into accepting meaningless equity.

The ageism stems from having a harder time suckering older applicants. It’s disingenuous to use language making it sounds like the older candidates’ requirements are “too high.” It’s not about that. It’s about who can this self-absorbed start-up sucker.

I think I'd be happy to work on something interesting for crummy money. The trick is the interesting part.

I'd rather take more money, retire in my 30s and work on my personal projects from that point on.

If I was 30+ years younger, I would consider that.

One problem is being old school enough that it's darned difficult to work for free.

Downside is that a lot of startups are not that interesting. They're just filling a business niche.

I am the first employee and I am over 30, I guess Im looking good!

Part of it may be that you pretty much have to be under 30 to think that an online image or video editor is a good idea.

And also not realize that Gimp and Blender exist.

recipe for disruptive startup ... identify existing and free 'native' application, select three features from application and implement as web-app/SaaS, host in cloud, sell subscription.

Yeah, let's sell something with even less features than the free alternative.

Sounds like a winning game plan.

If you have better UX and UI and concentrate on a small number of use cases but make them very easy, yes.

Why? I'm 30+ and would love a good online image editor. All of the ones I've used over the years do something to make them inconvenient.

Granted my use case is doing minor modifications to graphics on occasion. But it's not like everyone that needs photo editing wants to have to install an app on their machine.

And there's nothing about photo editing that a web browser can't do fairly effectively these days. Video editing is definitely tricky but something like Windows Movie Maker I can see working well in a browser. But not anything for professionals.

The best online image editor is definitely photopea, https://www.photopea.com

Full psd Photoshop compatibility and everything.

Experienced people ask for experienced people salaries and for experienced people job security.

And experienced people will generate more value for the company than their salary. Having an inexperienced team is a great way to waste a lot of time. Having a good mix of experience levels is the best balance between wasted time and financial costs.

Sure. Still, you might not be able to afford their salary and they migth have different job security expectations. Not all start-ups live in VC lala-land.

Also, experienced people usually don't jump for your entry level dev position. They are changing jobs to advance their career. In a start-up, you might not even have the positions they are looking for.

Not always true. I've worked with several older people who were willing to take a pay cut to get to work on something they where more interested in. Especially if they felt their existing career path had stalled out.

I don't think they had any applicants over 25 by the pictures. Funny how that works out. Probably not a culture fit.

Interesting. You noticed that too huh?

Would you work in a company with no one older than 30?

i don't judge people by their age -- i've had absolutely amazing young coworkers and crazy shitty older ones (and the other way around).

i would 100% work at a place with younger people AND at a place with older people. it all depends on how the company's culture handled all this.

(and why you are interviewing the company as much as the company is interviewing you).

The ideal thing is a mix that is somewhat representative of the population at large. It's good to have different perspectives and attitudes and experience. Sometimes lack of experience to question 'why we do it that way', but it's also usually good to have someone who knows that we do it that way not "because", but because doing it another way can lead to subtle problems that are hard to diagnose.

If:

* the pay is great

* work/life balance is sane

* the CEO/your direct manager has a family/children

then of course.

One of those 3 things is different to the others

> the CEO/your direct manager has a family/children

Why would that matter?

Because he goes home at night and has stuff to do thats not work and he isnt jealous of you for having that. Worst managers I ever worked for are divorced (and to an extent single) and hate seeing happily married employees

Not the poster, but I assume the idea is because a company of only young people often don't consider or understand the limitations/responsibilities of family life. Once you have kids, suddenly "corporate weekend trips!" and "hackathon all-nighters!" and even "beers after work on Friday!" become complicated commitments that require adjustments from the whole family. With a couple family-havers in the mix there is usually more acceptance of the work-life divide, or even that one exists (or should).

They prefer inexperienced, 'cheap' workforce ;)

Joking obviously! I now a great dev under 30s! Not me...

they weren't good culture fits

Everybody looks so young haha, I say this as a 29 year old.

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