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Comment by gedy | Hacker News Reader

> once said long term technical unemployment would be a sign of the singularity; just pray for a soft take off

I think that's true, but in your case (mine as well), companies just don't really want to hire older people. People get touchy when this is brought up, but young recruiter women aren't attracted to them and are biased, younger guys/interviewers view them as some dragon to be slayed to prove themselves, etc. When they say they want "experienced", they mean not so junior so as to be clueless, but not so experienced that you see through their company bullshit.

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> People get touchy when this is brought up, but young recruiter women aren't attracted to them and are biased

Age discrimination is real (I'm 56) but if you honestly think this way age discrimination isn't your biggest problem. You sound old fashioned and entitled in your thinking rather than experienced. That sort of stuff might fly on Facebook but if that's what you're presenting in your job search it's not going to fly.

I've been doing one of those "Randstad" recruiter support things after lay off, and one of the first things they hammer away is "Ageism is a thing" and have us remove our dates of graduation on our LinkedIns.

So I think ageism is a thing. Or according to the commenters here, it can't be, and maybe you just didn't think of it the right way.

I'm pretty sure any recruiter's primary motivation is to find a fit for the role so they can get their commission.

I'm talking in-house recruiters/HR, not the external broker types

those ones typically don't have the vested interest but are just as clueless and probably have a worse ageism bias. It's hard enough for technical people to assess talent; in-house recruiters at best are weak keyword matchers, at least IME.

Have you considered the possibility that the issue might be your own biases, not those of the recruiters?

Honestly, even assuming a bias, I doubt it's attractiveness. What's usually cited with hiring older employees is the additional social cost, as well as time off work (because they often have families to support and are more settled).

> young recruiter women aren't attracted to them

Having worked with a lot of recruiters, I promise -- promise! -- this is not a factor lol. Just because you find them attractive does not make the feeling mutual. They deal with enough shit from both management and engineers. They're friendly because of their job.

As a second knowledge bomb, the barista also does not find you charming.

> I promise -- promise! -- this is not a factor lol.

Study after study after study shows more attractive people do better by the numbers in just about every single metric you can come up with. I imagine a recruiter may bristle at that as much as they would the racial bias that is also measurable in recruiting, since it would be the recruiter committing the bias. It's there in the numbers though.

1. Immune function: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8848230/ 2. hiring: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12383758/ 3. age: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38959815/ 4. wealth: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5558203/ 5. reputation: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4873083/

There is definitely a correlation but I don't believe it's the causation

You're denying the data because the findings don't align with your feelings about it.

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