Comment by michaelochurch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by michaelochurch | Hacker News Reader

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Do not assume that 50 is the threshold that you cross when you have to start dealing with ageism. It will be different for many (it's often much earlier), and you won't see it coming. One day, you'll be relatively dismissed by someone younger than you due to your "age", and you'll think "what the $#@% just happened?"

One of the things that galls me about this industry is its belief that experience (which is not the same thing as age) is a negative.

If you come from Microsoft or Google, you'll be assumed to be "political". If you come from a no-name company, people will think you're a loser who wasn't good enough for the tech giants or elite startups. If you have failed startups on your CV, people assume that you'll be bitter about the ones that got away. If you were at one job for too long, that counts against you; but if you had too many jobs and were a "job hopper", that ruins you as well.

It's ridiculous. It makes no sense. How are people not able to get past the idea that people are more than their experiences, and that most people improve with experience (even of the negative kind) and age rather than becoming "damaged goods" because they weren't millionaires by age 27?

End rant.

> One of the things that galls me about this industry is its belief that experience (which is not the same thing as age) is a negative.

I see this as something that shifts during economic cycles. For example, right now nobody appreciates much that came from those who survived the dot-com bust. Those skills will be invaluable in the next downturn, whenever that happens.

Regarding "TwiFaceGoogSoft": there is an old maxim -- never hire anyone directly from {big-tech-co}, if that's the only place they've ever worked. (In the 1980s, it was IBM. In the 1990s, it was Microsoft. In the 2000s, it was Google.) The maxim developed because those ex-big-co employees were perceived as failures when encountering a non-advantaged environment. The prevailing wisdom was to hire those people "once-removed" from those companies, so they wouldn't learn those lessons on your dime. It might not be fair, but the perception has remained for a long time, even as the big-co name has changed.

In the end, as an industry we need to simply get better at hiring. All these biases only serve to screw us up.

Industry attitudes have changed quite a bit over the past 15+ years I've been around it. Engineers from failed startups were actually pretty popular to hire after the initial dotcom bust, with the theory that they would recognize mistakes. I distinctly recall many clients preferring experience in a failed business for both devs and manager candidates.

Being at one job too long does often count against you, but primarily if (as is mentioned elsewhere here) you were in one role (one team, one tech, one product, etc.). EDIT: (Not condoning, just reporting it)

I had clients years ago that would only hire candidates who had been at their current job for over 5 years. That attitude has changed substantially, and movement is accepted in the industry so long as the movement is 'positive'. You can have several employers and not be a job hopper.

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