<story><title>Ask HN: Why are we accepting ageism in tech as something immutable?</title><text>This week alone I had 2 interviews with 2 different companies where in the first one of the interviewers asked me my age, directly followed by &amp;quot;why hire you over a younger graduate?&amp;quot; (which isn&amp;#x27;t the same as &amp;quot;why hire you over someone smarter than you?&amp;quot; because why even ask this). In the second one I was also asked for my age, followed by whether I plan to get married anytime soon.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m under the impression that the industry needs to learn to treat amateurs as amateurs regardless of their age. It feels like I&amp;#x27;m not allowed to be an amateur professional simply because I&amp;#x27;m over 30 years old. Instead of seeing people as &amp;quot;a guy with 2 years of experience&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;a woman with 4 years of experience&amp;quot; we see &amp;quot;a 40 year old guy with 2 years of experience&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;a 34 year old woman with 4 years of experience&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;It feels like there&amp;#x27;s an implicit expectation of expertise in doing something that comes with my age. It&amp;#x27;s almost as if I&amp;#x27;m not allowed to learn and get good in something that I want, simply because I was late into &amp;quot;the party&amp;quot;, where party can be whatever but since I&amp;#x27;m a web developer that&amp;#x27;s what &amp;quot;the party&amp;quot; is.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve had multiple people telling me that &amp;quot;we saw people with fewer and less polished projects get jobs&amp;quot;. I&amp;#x27;ve been seeking for 8 months, I&amp;#x27;m almost at the point where I might as well freelance to bypass the discrimination. I get barely any calls back, and the one interview that felt somewhat fair was because I had my former manager from a completely unrelated field introduce me to someone looking for web developers, and that didn&amp;#x27;t worked out because they wanted me to learn their stack and build an assignment within a week, which failed gloriously.&lt;p&gt;Is there something that we can do so that people can just be amateurs regardless of age? I&amp;#x27;m sure since we&amp;#x27;re making SOME progress against sexism and racism we could somehow do something for ageism too, because I can&amp;#x27;t blame Zuckerberg&amp;#x27;s opinion anymore.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>chadash</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; I&amp;#x27;ve had multiple people telling me that &amp;quot;we saw people with fewer and less polished projects get jobs&amp;quot;.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have a few projects on github. NO... ONE... EVER... LOOKS. &lt;i&gt;Maybe&lt;/i&gt; they will do a cursory glance, but I&amp;#x27;ve never had anyone actually look through them in any detail.&lt;p&gt;Sure, if you created a library with some decent traction and have a good amount of stars, it might help. But for your average developer with personal projects, no one has the time to look at your code. Even for someone with a hit project, they are still probably just looking at your stars as a proxy for your ability to write production code and not your actual code. There is so much HN advice focusing on having projects to show people and I think it&amp;#x27;s mostly bad advice.&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s my two cents:&lt;p&gt;1) Pay someone professional to look over your resume. If you aren&amp;#x27;t getting interviews this might be a factor. It&amp;#x27;ll cost you a few hundred dollars and may potentially earn back many many times that amount. Bonus: Have them look over your linkedin profile as well.&lt;p&gt;2) Find companies on linkedin that you&amp;#x27;d potentially want to interview with. Send messages to developers there. This might required a paid linkedin account for a few months, but again, think of it as an investment. Have your resume on dropbox or similar and then include a URL with a link to your resume in there, since I don&amp;#x27;t think linkedin allows attachments.&lt;p&gt;3) Interview, interview, interview. The interview process is very imperfect and it sucks. But every time you fail, go back and see where you went wrong. Eventually you will see that a lot of companies ask the same questions with small twists, so practice makes perfect here.&lt;p&gt;4) Don&amp;#x27;t sweat it when you get rejected. Remember it&amp;#x27;s a numbers game. More interviews == more chances to get an offer. You only need one job at a time.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>the_only_law</author><text>I’ve straight up brought up my projects in an interview, only to be rid “we don’t care, we want to hear about your professional experience” (though not in those words)&lt;p&gt;It’s sucks because my professional experience is a bunch of droll bullshit. My projects tend to at least be interesting bullshit.&lt;p&gt;Note that the last time I heard this was in the context of a “tell me about a time” context regarding technical challenges. This wasn’t a case where they wanted to hear about my professional work because of non technical ability (think ability to ship under ever changing requirements, etc.) because they were equally unimpressed with that.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: Why are we accepting ageism in tech as something immutable?</title><text>This week alone I had 2 interviews with 2 different companies where in the first one of the interviewers asked me my age, directly followed by &amp;quot;why hire you over a younger graduate?&amp;quot; (which isn&amp;#x27;t the same as &amp;quot;why hire you over someone smarter than you?&amp;quot; because why even ask this). In the second one I was also asked for my age, followed by whether I plan to get married anytime soon.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m under the impression that the industry needs to learn to treat amateurs as amateurs regardless of their age. It feels like I&amp;#x27;m not allowed to be an amateur professional simply because I&amp;#x27;m over 30 years old. Instead of seeing people as &amp;quot;a guy with 2 years of experience&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;a woman with 4 years of experience&amp;quot; we see &amp;quot;a 40 year old guy with 2 years of experience&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;a 34 year old woman with 4 years of experience&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;It feels like there&amp;#x27;s an implicit expectation of expertise in doing something that comes with my age. It&amp;#x27;s almost as if I&amp;#x27;m not allowed to learn and get good in something that I want, simply because I was late into &amp;quot;the party&amp;quot;, where party can be whatever but since I&amp;#x27;m a web developer that&amp;#x27;s what &amp;quot;the party&amp;quot; is.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve had multiple people telling me that &amp;quot;we saw people with fewer and less polished projects get jobs&amp;quot;. I&amp;#x27;ve been seeking for 8 months, I&amp;#x27;m almost at the point where I might as well freelance to bypass the discrimination. I get barely any calls back, and the one interview that felt somewhat fair was because I had my former manager from a completely unrelated field introduce me to someone looking for web developers, and that didn&amp;#x27;t worked out because they wanted me to learn their stack and build an assignment within a week, which failed gloriously.&lt;p&gt;Is there something that we can do so that people can just be amateurs regardless of age? I&amp;#x27;m sure since we&amp;#x27;re making SOME progress against sexism and racism we could somehow do something for ageism too, because I can&amp;#x27;t blame Zuckerberg&amp;#x27;s opinion anymore.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>chadash</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; I&amp;#x27;ve had multiple people telling me that &amp;quot;we saw people with fewer and less polished projects get jobs&amp;quot;.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have a few projects on github. NO... ONE... EVER... LOOKS. &lt;i&gt;Maybe&lt;/i&gt; they will do a cursory glance, but I&amp;#x27;ve never had anyone actually look through them in any detail.&lt;p&gt;Sure, if you created a library with some decent traction and have a good amount of stars, it might help. But for your average developer with personal projects, no one has the time to look at your code. Even for someone with a hit project, they are still probably just looking at your stars as a proxy for your ability to write production code and not your actual code. There is so much HN advice focusing on having projects to show people and I think it&amp;#x27;s mostly bad advice.&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s my two cents:&lt;p&gt;1) Pay someone professional to look over your resume. If you aren&amp;#x27;t getting interviews this might be a factor. It&amp;#x27;ll cost you a few hundred dollars and may potentially earn back many many times that amount. Bonus: Have them look over your linkedin profile as well.&lt;p&gt;2) Find companies on linkedin that you&amp;#x27;d potentially want to interview with. Send messages to developers there. This might required a paid linkedin account for a few months, but again, think of it as an investment. Have your resume on dropbox or similar and then include a URL with a link to your resume in there, since I don&amp;#x27;t think linkedin allows attachments.&lt;p&gt;3) Interview, interview, interview. The interview process is very imperfect and it sucks. But every time you fail, go back and see where you went wrong. Eventually you will see that a lot of companies ask the same questions with small twists, so practice makes perfect here.&lt;p&gt;4) Don&amp;#x27;t sweat it when you get rejected. Remember it&amp;#x27;s a numbers game. More interviews == more chances to get an offer. You only need one job at a time.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sibeliuss</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s unfortunate about people not looking at Github more. Personally, I look in depth, but i&amp;#x27;m not responsible for hiring. If I were, I most definitely would not have hired many of the people that we have hired where I work. There IS a flipside to this however: many of the best devs I&amp;#x27;ve worked with have very little on Github, so its imperative to find a way to judge technical merit some other way.</text></comment>