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Comment by JKCalhoun | Hacker News Reader

I believe ageism is real. But I would blunt it a bit: I think engineers hire people "like them". That explains the ageism, sexism, racism....

I say that blunts it a bit because I think I don't blame engineers to look for someone like them — it comes easy, it is probably easier to judge someone who you feel shares your own life experiences.

But yeah, some years back we interviewed a guy for the team who was about my age (early 50's at that time). I thought he was top notch. But a younger engineer on the team pushed hard to reject him for the role. Why? "I think he's a bad fit for the team." That was the only reason we could get for his rejection.

Sure, just an anecdote. I see red flags now though when someone says "not a good fit" (whatever that means).

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Comments like this make me wonder if other posters are living in an alternate universe from me.

The engineers I've known and worked with were more likely to judge someone as being "like them" for their usage of Emacs vs Vim than their race, and everyone is always trying to recruit more women.

The ageism is more tied to actual technology things. The young engineer thinks the latest blog post they read about how to do async programming or manage deployments is the greatest thing in the world and only wants to hire people who think the same. The elder engineer recognizes it all as slight tweaks and rehashes on older ideas, frameworks and systems and is more ambivalent and not as excited to dive into learning their hundredth new way to accomplish the same task.

If management cares about business outcomes, the elder engineer is great. If management cares about vanity metrics and using the latest, coolest frameworks, the younger engineer is great.

> The engineers I've known and worked with were more likely to judge someone as being "like them" for their usage of Emacs vs Vim than their race

There's such a thing as conscious and unconscious bias. People don't sit in the interviewing room and think to themselves "well this person is white, like me, so I like the idea of hiring them more", but the thought is still there at the back of their mind (and before someone jumps down my throat, no, I'm not saying everyone has this bias, I'm not accusing you personally of being a racist, I'm saying that this kind of unconscious bias is prevalent throughout society)

Emacs vs Vim is a far more conscious bias.

Unconscious bias is not a well supported psychological construct. The Implicit Association Test, upon which the theory of unconscious bias is based, has a poor track record for consistency and does not predict actual discriminatory behavior.

Some of the scientists who originated this work have since distanced themselves from it, because people have run with the concept far beyond what the science supports.

I think you're referring to this:

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/unconscious-bias-roger...

But there are lots of these:

https://www.6seconds.org/2018/09/04/the-science-of-unconscio...

https://www.npr.org/2020/07/14/891140598/understanding-uncon...

https://www.mevitae.com/resource-blogs/science-of-bias

Here are my sources:

- https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

- https://qz.com/1144504/the-world-is-relying-on-a-flawed-psyc...

- https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rabble-rouser/201712...

- https://psyarxiv.com/dv8tu/

Edit: your contrary sources do not discredit the thesis of the national review article. They conflate the many different (often legitimate) heuristics or subconscious influences on cognition with Unconscious Bias, which is specifically the idea that people can be racist/sexist/whatever without even knowing it, and that the presence of this latent bigotry can be measured with an Implicit Association Test.

The latter, stronger claim is complete BS and is not supported by the science. This is a classic motte-and-bailey tactic.

Nope. Not emacs vs vim. The biggest thing is what kind of music. Also, what kind of slang. I know this because I was young once, too. When I got a coworker who was twenty years older than me, it made me uncomfortable. Weird 'dad' jokes. Musical references that were completely out of it. Stories about the past. I like people and I liked them but, it was also, always a little uncomfortable. We were peers but they, well, nobody is a true peer with a twenty year gap. Uncomfortable.

Today, hiring authorities are more likely to be young. They also feel uncomfortable with someone who has a huge amount more experience.

Ageism is real.

> nobody is a true peer with a twenty year gap.

I don't think that is necessarily true. It really helps if the older peer is comfortable showing weakness at times.

Something I learned from my father when I was really young. When you don't know something, say "I don't know" first, then "We can probably figure it out".

Always, always, lead with "I don't know"

I am 65, and there are still things I don't know.

What I've seen is that most people dumb enough (I say this about myself) to join startups are young, privileged, and foolish. So even if you have hiring initiatives and strategies to make a diverse company (in age, identity, whatever) the pool of people that will even reply to your recruiters is pretty homogeneous.

So I don't think it's just management and business outcomes, the pool of people that you can even hire for the smaller/riskier businesses is just very different than at big tech (or even non-tech businesses with sizeable software and GIS teams).

Don't get me wrong, I love working for startups. But if I were twenty years older I might care a lot more about the bad 401k matching and progressively longer time/lower outcomes for liquidity in startup equity.

Once they see salary expectations, cheaper wins almost every time. Most business doesn’t care much for quality.

I usually find when people discuss fit, it's helpful to ask specifically what behaviors indicated which personality traits that the co-worker is trying to filter out. Asking for precision also shifts the discussion from something general like fit to specific things like which traits is this company trying to select for, and whether or not the other interviewers agree that a behavior indicated a specific personality trait.

I don't have studies to back this up, but I find personally it helps give an avenue for co-workers to argue against bigotry without accusing anyone of behaving in a bigoted away.

"Not a good fit" is a perfectly good reason not to hire someone, but not if you can't, or are unwilling, to define what you mean by it.

Exactly. Managers should insist that peer-reviewers give specific attributes or behaviors.

Also, "cultural fit" questions can be casually ageist as hell. I was asked once (at 40 or so), "We like to skateboard around the office for fun. What do you like to do?" I sincerely believe it was (for the 20-something interviewer) an innocent, almost routine interview question. I diffused the question by saying that sounded like a blast but I prefer Nerf Blaster wars or pranking people by hijacking their wireless mouse or whatever. I got the job offer but I've been on other interviews where I aced the manager's and technical interviews but got shut down by a barely college graduate who clearly didn't think they'd have to work with "their Dad." Not much you can do about that.

By saying 'not a good fit' requires additional details to be valid you are actually acknowledging that 'not a good fit' is not a valid reason to not hire someone, those additional details are the valid reason to not hire someone.

When people say "not a good fit" they mean "cultural fit" ie, not related to technical skill, which is what the context of the parent post was implying. Maybe that's not so ubiquitous, but I've come across a technical person not be able to point out exactly what they don't like about another technical person's skills.

Ageism is very real. I worked with a guy at a startup who literally said about a candidate, "He's too old to work here." Meaning he wouldn't be able to fit in and relate to his coworkers regardless of his technical ability.

Sidenote, he also voted to reject a candidate because, "we have too many white guys." (He himself was a white man)

Now the guy who said that was one of the few people in my career that I truly disliked working with but I'm sure for every guy like him who says those things out loud there are 10 thinking it to themselves.

One solution I've found is to increase the frequency of interview shadowing. That way you at least have two people in the room, hearing and seeing the same things, and able to catch and call out biases.

Don't underestimate the fact that many companies also like younger workers because it is easier to pressure them to work more hours than they should. Less chances of kids or a family they need to attend to, and higher chances of falling for the "office perks" which is a ruse to keep you in the office as much as possible.

So? The young kids will work more hours; I'll get more done.

I'll get more done because I won't create the bad architectures that they will. I won't write the bugs that they do. I won't head down the dead ends that they do. (Yes, I'll still do a few. They'll do enough more that I'll still finish ahead of them, even with working fewer hours.)

That's not the way senior management sees it, though. They want asses on seats, they want to see people plugging through the night on the CEO's latest darling concept so that they feel important. They also don't give that much of a shit about bad architectures, they want something online tomorrow they can show investors and sell quickly.

That exists, but is not universal. Current position is otherwise for example.

Easy answer (to get the job offer, anyway) when asked "We sometimes work long hours. Are you OK with that?" I answer, "I've pulled 80-90 hour weeks (just last year) & luckily my kids are old enough that they don't need much attention on weekdays or weekends. Also, (to emphasize my "partying days are over" advantage), my friends don't drag me into as much nonsense as they used to."

Once you get the job (although, I highly recommend you avoid taking a job if you get a death march software plantation vibe), you manage high demands by nailing management on requirements and milestones and then out-plan and out-deliver your work so you have an answer for "hey, why are you leaving when we're all working overtime?" If you put in overtime at the start, assist other people and show you can deliver, then they can't give you much grief later.

All that work just to get what you want in a toxic environment you could have easily avoided.

correct. the real reason is they can push young people.

> I believe ageism is real.

I agree, but I would also like to point out a different form of the ageism that I see all the time in my line of work. I'm in tech retail sales. My stores customer base is a bit older, trending more over retired. There is a certain mindset among this age group that goes back a number of years that computers and technology was the playground of the young, so they think because they are older they can get away with not knowing what's going on in technology. I remember the jokes where some older person (in this case around 30-40) would have serious trouble understanding some technology, be it a computer or VCR, and having to call some teenager to their rescue. Too many older people decided that these newfangled toys are just for the kids, and that stuck. So now I have older seniors looking to buy a computer or printer and not understanding how it works because "I'm an older person, I don't know these things like you younger people."

It feels like the old jokes have pervaded our minds and now the younger see the greybeards as some senior citizen who's out of touch on technology. This shouldn't be the case.

I'm an engineer, and I genuinely try to eliminate bias from my hiring process. It's well, a grey area between engineers hiring people "like them" or engineers hiring people that are good engineers and good team members. I've interviewed many people that were one or the other but not both.

One of the things we've done is to conduct our first screening interview as a phone, rather than video, call. We found this helps eliminate some minor levels of bias related to physical appearance when forming that initial opinion, particularly because that first contact should be all about whether the base criteria is met.

I had something similar happen. Rejected by two people in the loop for unspecified "culture fit."

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