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Comment by tinyhouse | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn't call it discrimination. If a company is looking for a principal engineer let's say (very senior in the FAANGs I know). They want to see you have experience showing operating at a principal level based on their expectations. If you worked for 20 years at the same company as a software engineer and never got promoted let's say, you wouldn't be considered. (maybe you're amazing and they are making a mistake, but unless someone at the company who worked with you can recommend you, they will prefer to focus on candidates that look more promising on paper. They cannot interview everyone)

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I think the government would call it discrimination.

> The law prohibits discrimination [against people over 40] in any aspect of employment, including hiring, firing, pay, job assignments, promotions, layoff, training, benefits, and any other term or condition of employment.

http://www.eeoc.gov/age-discrimination

Did I say age? I said they are looking for people who operated in a certain level for at least x number of years. If your resume doesn't show it (regardless your age) you are not qualified for the position. If anything they discriminate against young people since they require x years of experience which young people cannot have.

The important thing is that the `x` number of years requirement is a function of the role, not of the applicant's age.

It seems like he is applying for the same roles that are typically sought after by much younger people. I don’t think he is trying to apply for senior roles. He said that they say he has to be really good or young.

That's a problem then. I already mentioned those places are a bit like the army. They usually don't consider experienced people for junior positions. Academia is the same. What I've seen happening sometime is interviewing someone experienced to a senior position and then giving them an offer to a less senior position since they did well on the interview but not well enough (the thing that changes is the title they are given (less senior level), which affects responsibilities and salary).

I quit applying to youngster-roles (I can now smell them with quite an accuracy) and focused on SRE/Devops roles. They come with a tolerance for grey hair (or at least they claim to) albeit they are so broad and deep at the same time that is insane.

Yeah, I can't see working entry/lower level positions unless you're prepared to compete with recent grads on salary and hours as well as knowledge.

There are lots of reasons why someone who is qualified to be a principal engineer might have worked for a long time without being promoted. Many companies do not recognize or reward based on technical merit. For example, you might need to be buddies with the right manager or luck into the right high-visibility project. Many people also job hop for the sole purpose of being promoted to a higher level because their existing company won't promote. I've worked at several companies where the inside joke was "It's easier to get hired at Google than to get a promotion here."

I think a lot of hiring companies over-index on "what's the candidate's current job title/function" as an indication of potential.

It’s not about title. It’s about accomplishments. I have hopped around working for small companies all of my career. I am actively in the interview process for two of three major cloud providers (consultant not software developer). I have only worked for one company that anyone has ever heard of and only one company that I was anymore than “senior developer”. But working for small companies you get to lead a lot of initiatives if you play your cards right.

>It’s not about title. It’s about accomplishments.

TBH, I don't even know what my official title is. I'd have to look it up in the HR system. And I've been in pretty much the same boat my whole (pretty long) career.

My current job made up some external title for me when I got hired but it didn't actually really parse and was too long so I've just gone through a few iterations that I've basically made up myself for external consumption.

It is, but on a very subtle level. Since there are much less senior positions then non senior (it is a pyramide) there are basically less jobs for older (more senior people). This gets a bit compensated that over time each batch more ppl study CS (although there might have been a bulk 20 years ago, so not sure....) But if the hiring/available position per age group pyramide is narrower than the age distribution for developers, that it is leading to discrimination (although as mentioned very subtle, and with the best definsible intentions)

20 years ago, technology wasn’t as pervasive as it is now. Pre-Covid, in most major cities in the US, senior developers who kept their skills current and knew their market would be swept up as soon as they came on the market. My fastest time going from looking for a job to getting an offer with a subsidiary of a F10 company was 4 days in 2012.

I met a local recruiter for lunch on Monday, he sent my resume to the company Tuesday, I had a phone screen Wednesday in person and offer Thursday.

I was no special snowflake. Just a regular 37 year old Enterprise C# developer.

True on paper I had 15 years of experience. But in reality, I had been an “expert beginner” in 2008.

That wasn’t a fluke. Everytime since then the company I usually ended up working for was one that I was introduced to during the first week of looking.

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