My family came up with a new name for my category of programmers: the gerihacktric demographic.. :-)
I have interviewed with Alphabet twice, no offers. One time apparently it was a close call..
It would be fun to be the all-time record holder for oldest new hire!
Hm that makes sense given the relative infancy of the software industry.
Not to mention that enrollment in CS programs has been increasing so the talent pool is skewed towards younger people
For example, "it was a close call" could mean:
- you were late to the interview, and we didn't like that
- we closed the job and stopped recruiting everyone
- you had mustard on your shirt, and we didn't like that
- an interviewer was late to an interview, insisted you proceeds anyway, and you could not possibly have received a vote of confidence for the questions asked in the time allotted
And so on and so on. The only things you can really trust are got hired, didn't get hired, and never heard back. That's it.
I've started to loosen up regarding that and finally finding a path I could take. However, instead now I'm intimidated by the job market and age discrimination.
A lot of the work is more boring business oriented work, and not a lot of startups. But it's steady, there's plenty of it and it pays relatively well compared to cost of living.
Start with Dive Into Python... then decide on something you want to make for yourself and work from there. Python is one of the better options to start from. JS is my personal favorite, second is now Rust, but they're harder to jump into as a beginner.
https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/
The first online book linked from the author's homepage is:
MATHEMATICS OF THE DISCRETE FOURIER TRANSFORM (DFT) WITH AUDIO APPLICATIONS SECOND EDITION
IMHO the author does a brilliant job of presenting the mathematics with rigor, but with accessible "on-ramps" via examples.
Most old people don't learn as many new things as younger ones, which makes it harder for older people who do to get the chance to prove themselves.
"Most old people don't learn as many new things as younger ones..." - this is demonstrably ageist. People performing a mid-life career change can be as focussed and driven to succeed in IT as anyone; the determination to acquire and master new skills is, in my view, a personality thing, not an age-related thing.
Most old people don't need to learn as many new things. It's called "experience."
... are you sure about that? I'd avoid sweeping generalizations, it does not help your argument.
But yeah, just today there was a comment here on Hacker News saying (I'm paraphrasing): I learnt C then C++ then Java, then enough was enough. Which is just sad, that's like going from oatmeal to porrige.
They have the largest amount of scandals, the largest amount of settlements for not meeting what they promised and the largest financial drop of any major Danish IT company.
This could be happening for a range of reasons. With hiring practices like that, their management is probably questionable, but hiring young certainly doesn’t seem to have helped them much.
A proper team has a mix of old and young, because they bring different skills to the table. Young people tend to be more energetic and enthusiastic, while older people have already learned that you don't store customer passwords unencrypted and check that backups are being done.
The plaintiffs may have settled because they thought it was unlikely they would prevail if this went to trial, so it would be better take a guaranteed payout.
Google may have settled because they figured that the PR hit of a lengthy age discrimination trial would be worth more than $11M, regardless of whether they won.
"Fair" isn't as hard. It's not fair, if (as I suspect) Google is guilty of age discrimination. There should be greater consequences than just trying to pay people what they might've lost financially from the discrimination.
Or, to put it another way: Google deserves to be punished if this was actually happening.
Why is Google still making denials and statements after settling the action?
You know that thing we totally denied? Now that we've settled, we can admit it.
Cue four thousand new lawsuits
That's why.
This is standard in any settlement, which is typically a release of liability. Part of the boilerplate in these contracts is that both parties are compromising not because of guilt but because of the uncertainty of litigation.
Even were Google in the right, a long protracted legal battle against claimed discrimination will constantly remind people that there’s alleged age discrimination. Nipping the negative PR in the bud is probably clearly worth it.
As an aside, ageism is pretty apparent in most companies where I’ve worked. There’s a huge expectation of “up or out”. I was on a hiring committee where I’m ashamed I didn’t stand up for a candidate who the committee decided had too much “experience” to be slotted at level X and therefore not offered any job. At least that shame gave me the courage to speak up the next time I ended up in that position.
(The top email basically said: why are you emailing me this. This is illegal. Don't create a paper trail!!)
See Reid v Google where Brian Reid, a key developer of the tech we use, was told his ideas "were too old to matter" and that he was an "old fuddy duddy."
Google fought it and lost.
https://www.law.com/therecorder/almID/1202464321723/?slretur...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Reid_(computer_scientist...
We may also get more insight if/when Google goes after Federal contracts which have reporting requirements and stronger applicant protections.
Right, this is why it confuses me because it's been declared settled, a formal resolution outside of the court, the matter is resolved independently between the parties. It seems odd to settle this kind of class-action allegation while continue making statements about it after the fact.
Is my understanding of this incorrect?
In 2 days, I’ve got a very dismissive letter from Google, which amounted to “we decided that your profile and experience is no match for this position — and by the way, don’t bother applying to other similar positions at other Google offices. Case closed”.
My CV only got better since my last interview at Google, and while I didn’t pass it with flying colors, it wasn’t completely bad, too. I wonder if my current age played the part. Meanwhile, at Google jobs site, there were many positions marked as “fresh alumni of 2019 only” — perhaps that’s their perfect target.
we had a huge response launching here on HN and I believe it’s a hidden problem we need to tackle.
"JK Scheinberg, the engineer who spent 21 years working at Apple and is best known for persuading Steve Jobs to move the Mac from PowerPC to Intel in 2005, was rejected from a job at an Apple store a few years later. "
I wonder if Woz himself would pass the muster :)
Isn't this just discrimination against a different demographic?
So from that respect, they probably opened themselves up for further scrutiny from future applicants whether they engaged in ageism or not.
I suspect they feared during the discovery process things would be found in the internal communications that do show some kind of -ism or other things that would just look bad for them, so throwing $11m at the problem to go away quickly seemed better.
In fact, I'm somewhat dubious that there's any googler who doesn't have a reasonably close colleague hired above the age of 40.
> Of the $11 million payout in the settlement, $2.75 million will go to lawyers representing the class, Bloomberg reports. Fillekes will get an extra $10,000 as the lead plaintiff. The remaining cash works out to around $35,000 per plaintiff.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/07/google-pays-11-m...
Perhaps the law firm had final say?
