Another guy in the camp was doing the same. We compared notes on interviews. One day he gets a call back from a recruiter and he put the recruiter on speaker phone. She told them they liked him but chose someone else because (drum roll) culture fit.
He asked what she meant by that and she outright said: "The other person is younger. You're old." We were shocked and he pretended he didn't quite hear her... she repeated it word for word. I don't think she even realized it was illegal.
The other guy never made a complaint, he needed a job and I could hardly blame him not wanting to put up a fuss / fight over a job at a place he didn't want to be a part of anyway ... it was shocking to hear it made that clear.
Long run we both got jobs and are doing well, but man... that call sticks in the back of my head anytime I think of job hunting.
(said tongue-in-cheek because age does not necessarily equate to experience)
/s
One example is the Uber incident that killed a person. If you read the NTSB report, it seems like they intentionally programmed a delay into a safety critical system in order avoid nuisance braking. From a safety-critical standpoint, deliberately slowing the action of a time-sensitive safety mitigation is big error in engineering judgement. Imagine if I reprogrammed your home smoke detectors to wait for an hour to determine if there's really a fire because you were annoyed that they went off every time your baked. My suspicion is they did this because their software wasn't really ready but they wanted to push it to market for testing.
Another example that has had some controversy in the industry is SpaceX using only touchscreens. I don't know where they settled, but a few years back they were adamant that they don't need physical controls. We've all probably experienced issues where a touchscreen doesn't respond as intended. Automotive manufacturers have walked back this idea on a lot of their models because they recognize all the additional failure modes that touchscreens introduce.
My worry is that sometimes "innovation" is really just forgetting (or not knowing) the lessons learned from the legacy players.
The traditional players like Boeing have had their own problems, but IMO they are more due to management than engineering. With the 737MAX, the engineering processes were in place. They had a hazard analysis that said MCAS shouldn't be a single-point failure; it seems they just didn't follow their own engineering processes due to budget and schedule pressures. That's a different animal than not having the safety-critical culture to define those processes in the first place (but not any less egregious).
It's probably hard to transition from a software engineer to a licensed structural engineer or the like.
But it's much easier to transfer into a software or software-adjacent role related to the field. Those fields have lots of opportunity for controls engineers, or data acquisition system developers, or data scientists, or even developing home-grown applications. The flip side is a lot of bad software practices are tolerated because those running the show just don't know better or don't care because it's not in their wheelhouse.
An area that people do transition into and that almost puts a premium on plain age is therapy/counselling, but that's a far shot from technical fields.
If you get in (politely) look for processes that your SE skills can make an impact. These opportunities are sometimes there because the place is full of non-software minded folks who don't know what they don't know. An example from my anecdotal experience was when someone with software acumen helped reprogram an automation system to be more efficient and saved high-six/low-seven figures each year and really gets people's attention. Or showing how they can dramatically improve their quality control by developing unit tests. Some stuff that is common in SE firms is often overlooked in firms focused on other disciplines.
That doesn't sound right. I'm not even sure most people transitioning into finance from another career have any software skills at all (beyond Excel).
How long should anyone wait for clearly illegal behavior to start being not ok?
The "culture fit" excuse is a tough one, though. That framing can be used to unknowingly discriminate in all kinds of ways.
Just an imo here, but anyone who talks about "culture" at a company broadly needs to be called out. 9/10 they are likely leveraging some form of discrimination. Culture cannot be mandated or even controlled in any succinct way that it causes you to use that as a logic branch.
At my work recently, we interviewed a white male and an asian female for the job. To my knowledge, this is the first female applicant we've gotten because they generally get snapped up by higher prestige/visibility roles. I've interviewed many people before, and the manager will request feedback about the applicants and use whichever had the highest score on a rubric. This time, the manager simply asked "please tell me if anyone has an objection to hiring [asian female]". I was shocked at my manager's language, as it implies the default action is to hire rather than to not hire (the latter being typical in companies). The white male was not discussed at all in my presence.
I'm strongly considering tipping off the white male applicant that he was discriminated against and that he may want to consider legal action. This is one of a number of what I consider discriminatory behaviors my employer (large company you've heard of) has displayed. Companies need to be fearful of engaging in all types of discrimination, not just ones that are culturally-sanctioned, and follow the law.
Yeah, the op might be punished, but if companies start to worry that employees are going to out them for their illegal behavior, they might change.
However, as an individual person, the cost/benefit equation on whistleblowing just seems so so bad. It just doesn't seem worth it as an individual. If these illegal things are going to be pushed back against, it seems like it'll need to be a coordinated/collective action.
There really are no winners in court except the lawyers.
It's really disheartening, but it's also my job to train these bozos and turn them into good engineers, which they most certainly are not coming fresh from school.
I find in my earlier teenage years that internet was great source of knowledge. I read lots of blogs/articles etc from people 3x-4x my age. It made me appreciate them, not disrespect them. And for the most part, when you are on the internet, you really don't know what otherside even looks like for the most part - you only know in retrospect...
Interesting thought though, what if the product in question is a product geared toward a younger audience that younger devs are more "in tune" with? Assuming they have more impact as a result.
They shouldn't be expected to compensate for their lack of youth in any way, as youth isn't a metric that has any relevance to their work in software development. And if they are of the same title/total comp as the young dev, there is nothing wrong with them being on par in terms of skills/knowledge/responsibilities.
Over time, though, the bad older engineers get managed out of the profession, or leave out of frustration or lack of satisfaction, so you end up having fewer. The selection function for good engineers has had much longer to run on them.
Think of experience as a trend line which pushes everyone to be better relative to what they were. School teaches algorithms, languages, tools, but it doesn't teach things like engineering approaches and how to keep a team productive, which doesn't always mean the most awesome algorithms. School teaches how to get the "correct" answer, experience teaches how to get "good enough" in a short amount of time. You need both!
This even more diminishes the gains that engineers get from their expert knowledge.
Usually only when in a position to develop something ground up, does the expert knowledge of data structures and algorithms come into play.
Algorithm and data structure questionaires rather seem like mathematics in many cases. A filter to weed out people, but not often of use at the job.
Obviously I might be biased due to personal experience.
> I was surprised and dumbfounded how much better I was than my peers
Self-Humbled
But getting that out of their thinking takes time. And that is IMHO what you experience. It is disheartening that they lack the respect they should have socially independent of profession for an "elder" person.
I am in my early 40s as an architect arguing with our mixed-age teams to give me the necessary rationale before making stupid "it's different now" decisions.
Of course it is not a blanket. A senior should adapt to new ways as well, if they make sense. For example functional constructs have become more popular in recent years. Just because one is a senior, does not mean, that they should go on writing their sequential do-while loops (usually it would be for loops, but exaggerating here), when things could be written with multicore in mind and using map reduce style. That is not seniority, it is lack of self-education and development of ones skills. No need to join the web framework churn either though. One should understand their essence though.
Especially when you consider the fact that the tools and concepts they've learned and made them super awesome were developed by people in their late 30s-50s. James Gosling was 40 when he came out with Java, Bjarne and Guido were both 35 when they came out with C++ and Python respectively. None of these guys, by the way, have stopped working.
Obviously, there are loads of reasons why this might legitimately be someone's situation, including midlife career-, locale- or industry-changes. But it could be another vector for bias.
I really wish people would stop this. I don't really keep in touch with many coworkers due to time. My friends tend to come from outside of work and they're not software devs. It definitely is age-ism adjacent; having to "network" to get a job is much harder after you get older.
hard but I'm not sure about harder than a new grad. contacting someone you worked with years ago is still preferable to cold contacting someone you only have a shallow connection to (same school, maybe you talked for a day at a conference, etc.).
They don't have to be friends, just collogues who can vouch for you.
'friend' is a much higher bar than 'somebody in your network'.
plenty of folks i worked with over the years, who i haven't heard from in decades, but i'd move them to the head of the line if they called up asking about work. i remember who got shit done and who didn't, and don't care that they didn't put in a repeating calendar item to take me out for a beer every 17 months.
you don't need to be friends with someone for them to be in your network.
Like, I have close friends who I still wouldn't necessarily give a special recommendation about simply because I have no idea what it would be like to work with them on a work project. Or even in some cases, I suspect it wouldn't be all that great because they're obvious slackers about work-type stuff; like when we plan things together, I know I'll need to double check their part of it.
Whereas there are work-colleagues I am absolutely not "friends" with but would recommend for almost any role in a heartbeat.
And there are a very small number that are both: a hard-working colleague who has also become a friend. Those are the people I'd consider quitting my job to start a company with.
It's not hard to connect with people on Linkedin, even if you haven't seen them in years.
I would send the a link to the careers page, and that's about it. Unless person was a total rock star, you probably can't speak much to their abilities after so much time.
Going deeper though, obviously networking isn't going to hit every time. That's why you need a whole network and not just one or two people. If the first person you reach out to doesn't want to refer you, it's not a big deal. Just move on to the next one.
I can think of people from my first real programming job that I would hire or refer in a heartbeat. I am can also think of a couple who I might just send a link to the careers page.
I think that is an assumption made by people who have had a single smooth career trajectory, but it often does not hold water.
Making a career change in your 30s or 40s is a thing. Honestly, I think it’s one aspect of the US that makes the economy robust and resilient.
Having made a bad career choice (e.g., former employer) is also a thing. I know that there is one place a friend of mine worked at that was basically a real-life Dilbert documentary. The specific work she did was right up her alley, but the organization was just an absolute train wreck. The few good people (including her) in that org left as quickly as they professionally could. Sadly, that was her second bum employer in a row, so all of her previous work contacts were not recent.
I wish more people would be open-minded to these possibilities.
This is akin to saying, "by 23, you should have moved out of your parents' house, otherwise, what's wrong with you?": it renders the speaker's presumptions into judgments.
Who the hell would want to work for an org that thinks this way?
There are fewer individual contributors in their 40's, but I know several (some moved from manager back to IC, others stayed IC).
Maybe this is a bigger issue at startups, where the founders are in their 20's?
Part of it is that FAANGs have explicit IC ladders, so you can advance without being forced to manage.
I'm apolitcal, personally, and welcome all points of view in my personal life.
In my experience, if you work in areas with enough demand - its not an issue (eg you work the 'ends' of tech - really old or really new). If the demand isn't there, they probably don't want to pay for a senior employee when a fresh college grad could do it for half the cost ?
Anyway - fear not for your 40s or even your 50s!! Old geeks never die...
we just 'exec' a new program! :-D
I think it was mech warrior or something in my case...
There aren't many such roles, but with remote work gaining popularity, they're becoming more of an option.
Most of the experienced people were involved in some major fuckup not long back. Just roll a new ident and build. The market is insatiable. A segment of the market thinks they want to “doxx” every builder, but they don’t matter.
Also, if you've got someone with 20 years experience, and they're willing to accept the same pay as someone with 5 years experience... are they really willing? Or are they going to bail for more money at the first opportunity? If you hire them, you have to worry about how long they'll stick.
So "more than qualified" can be a real thing, not just a discrimination thing.
I've certainly known people who would entertain a move if a new position fell in their lap but wouldn't likely seek one out.
Also "I want too much money" is a thing if all you need is a low level tech and the applicant is an expert in the field. It is not worth paying for expertise that you will not need. For example I hired a guy to do some very boring, routine cleanup in some databases; if I would hire a real DBA and pay double, what for? In this case I pay for the work and result, not for the expertise.
But to be fair I always tell the applicants what is the situation and give them the choice. I know it is a very rare case in the industry.
The sad thing is someone like that would probably produce a better product thanks to their years of experience, and even possibly become a mentor to the rest of the team, but that's not the kind of thing recruiters think about.
So I went in the tool and looked through the discard pile and found more diverse candidates that hadn't been presented to me. One looked amazing—over a decade of directly relevant experience, Oxford grad, etc. I asked the recruiter why she hadn't given me that resume and she said "She's overqualified, she's got 15-20 years experience."
I was livid and said "I don't care if they have 20 years experience, I want someone who is qualified!" We ended up hiring her and she's been absolutely wonderful, and is still on the team ~5 years later.
I don't think the recruiter was consciously discriminating against the candidate, but there were definite implicit biases that she wasn't aware of.
Implicit bias training is now required. I personally found it to be very helpful, and try and be aware of my own biases. I always hire the candidate that I think will be best for the job, but try and always find a diverse group of candidates to talk to. It's a better process, and makes for a better (and more diverse) team.
I think this is the crux of a lot of it. You only need one lead/rockstar/ninja/10x* for every 10-20 'developers'. And, as you said, there is always the fear they will leave tomorrow for 2x the money...
*) I wanna see 'evil genius' next! :-)
I really disagree, ideally you'd have at least one in every team.
edit: point being, if you can muddle thru - mgmt generally doesn't see it as a 'need' just an 'expense'
That needs to become outdated thinking, since most people but particularly the younger ones, don't stick around any job for more than a year or two max regardless.
What's the difference between "over qualified" and "more than qualified"? ;)
They don't want someone that will leave in a year. They want them to stick around, without inflating their budget.
if you don't need a rocket scientist, you don't pay for one... grunt work is grunt work.
Dark humor with an underlying truth. Ageism isn't seen as an "ism" by anyone except those over the age of 40.
Yes, I had to severely abbreviate my resume. But no misinformation passed my lips or fingertips. The insurance paperwork, with age related info, all went through a third party.
And working remotely suits me down to the toes. On the internet nobody has to know you're a dog.
The emphasis is very clearly on certain minorities. There's not a single "senior" on the training material videos/pictures and the issue of ageism is barely mentioned. There's clearly no will to hire older employees. I wonder what I could do about this at my level. I'm 45+ and already feel out of place and just "tolerated", don't want to raise any attention on me.
I agree ageism is total crap, but so is all forms of discrimination - it just seems that we will all ending up aging whereas the other forms are limited to minority groups who probably get the double whammy of minority + age.
When it comes to more senior roles, it may not only be ageism, but naturally there are much less open positions and many more people down the pyramid fighting for them
Please don't take it offensively, I just want to understand better philosophy of people who do only lateral moves for 8+ years (not becoming seniors, not becoming highly paid).
If the case is "not everybody is looking to dedicate their life to work" then its more probable that I will hire young person, as they just might put extra effort, as they maybe haven't chosen the philosophy yet.
Yes and their job history and how they changed the companies is very vital part of that.
So many people are talking a lot about "quality interview" but lets be brutally honest, for more junior positions 10% of people get to have interview, rest of them is rejected based on CV (story that job history tells) screening or technical test.
So instead of criticising me, can you advise me motivation of somebody who does 5 lateral moves in 10 years?
Keep in mind moving every two years is common in tech especially in companies that don't give four year option plans because you often get a token 1% raise when inflation is hovering around 8%. This means you're roughly 15% behind after two years with compounding. If you're a senior engineer making roughly $200K, that means you're often getting around a $30K raise to move. I think some people have careers that cap out at senior and that's okay. Not everyone makes staff or principal engineer.
I built software for an employer that pulled in over $35M over the 13 years that I worked for them and continues to draw approximately 70% of their revenue. This wasn't an application. It was an entire suite of online products. I interfaced directly with C-level executives to go over the strategy, the scope, the features, and the design of each of these products in the lineup. I met with clients to learn about their marketing needs and how we might meet those needs. I was the technical point of contact for all software and hardware related tasks.
I was the only technical employee on staff. Occasionally I'd manage a contractor.
To be clear, I was the product manager, the hiring manager, the project manager, the lead developer, the business analyst, and devops.
But those weren't my "official" titles.
My job title was software developer.
I was fully engaged with creating the products, I was well compensated, and I was close to home.
Now tell me, what should my next move have been? Should I have gone for a position where I sat around, twiddling my thumbs, fucking with spreadsheets, sitting through inane product roadmap meetings, planning to plan about planning, and all the other insane busy work bullshit that tech companies do to justify spending capital?
I'm an expert product developer and an expert product designer and an expert facilitator and I have the receipts. I didn't become a software developer to manage people. I became a software developer because I wanted to develop software. How's that for motivation?
If for any SWE position, what would be the motivation/ in which cases would you consider smaller scope of work?
I've seen those. They suck to work with just as much as an older who is set in their ways.
Honestly, age has nothing to do with either. It's personality.