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Comment by seivan | Hacker News Reader

I remember when hearing about this asshole MBA standing on a stage in Singapore talking about how he wouldn't hire developers who were parents.

I've not done my own startup yet, but I suspect developers that also were parents would understand responsibility and dependency the best. It's a bit of a generalisation, but so is the fact that most MBA's are useless cunts. Not going to name this person, but googling could help.

I'm not a father, and I have no need to become one, but I've noticed parents are usually incredibly responsible.

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Dude sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Not hiring parents is a great idea if you just need some warm bodies willing to kill themselves for beanies, but that doesn't say much about your company. If you're looking for people with real expertise, then you're limiting yourself greatly by focusing only on people who are still single into their 30's (not that there is anything wrong with that, it's just atypical).

In Silicon Valley, nobody has kids until their late 30s, if ever.

Edit: the post I replied to originally said something to the effect that finding engineers without kids by age 30 would be statistically difficult. Which is false in Silicon Valley. That said, it's also not atypical in Silicon Valley to remain single well into your 30s.

Are we talking about entrepreneurs or engineers?

Does it matter? The social dynamics are similar.

We're talking about hiring employees, not finding co-founders. The question is what the pool of engineers looks like, not the pool of entrepreneurs. It's quite reasonable to believe that the latter will postpone having children much longer than the former.

Well, I wish I hadn't replied since you edited your comment to say something quite different to what I was responding to. That said, if I was wagering money on the age of when any tech employee in Silicon Valley gets married and starts having kids, I would pick 33.

Get out of the bubble sometime, there's a whole world out there.

What does the rest of the world have to do with my comment?

You have a very narrow view of things if you don't think people are having kids (yes, even in the valley).

Clearly, as the world population approaches 7 billion, people are indeed having kids. My comment was Silicon Valley specific. Do you know something I don't? Are 20 something tech employees in Silicon Valley all of the sudden having lots of kids? Because that would be interesting news, worthy of a news article. I don't appreciate the insinuation that I live in a bubble or have a narrow view of things, simply because I made a comment about Silicon Valley demographics.

This is just not true. If you look at immigrant software engineers, they are usually married by 30 and then start having kids.

I'd like to see your data. Silicon Valley aside, the trend for women with college degrees has been to postpone childbirth until around age 35. This isn't exactly news.

The average age of college educated women at first birth is 30: http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/03/getting-mar...

If Europe, Canada, New Zealand and Australia are included in those statistics, the age is closer to 35.

I don't have data for Silicon Valley, only anecdotal evidence. If you look at Indians and Russians around 30, they are mostly married and having/preparing to have kids. It is a well-known fact that immigrant fertility is higher in US than native fertility.

I don't know where 35 years at first child came from. This is way too high for an average, even among well-educated. There might be a trend but at that age you will have all kinds of problems even with modern advances in IVF.

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