Chinese tech firms are throwing out applicants over the age of 30

https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/611067/chinese-tech-firms-are-throwing-out-applicants-over-the-age-of-30/

by monsieurpng • 7 years ago

118 123 7 years ago

jerf4• 7 years ago

Well, as ways to ensure that China never really becomes competitive technically go, this seems to be one of the faster ones.

I mean, the idea that people get better with experience... ludicrous! Beyond ludicrous! Unpatriotic!

Not entirely sure I buy it as a industry-wide phenomenon, though. I'd guess this is a particular subset of the industry or something, just as it is in the West.

Buttons840• 7 years ago

There is some karma here at least, as those 20 year olds who establish a culture of age discrimination will themselves become old and be discriminated against.

jerf4• 7 years ago

My go-to argument against age discrimination on those occasions when I see a ~20-25-year-old in my area spout the idea that the old fogies just can't keep up with those hot young whippersnappers is to ask them point blank, "do you honestly see yourself not getting any better and learning anything in the next ten or twenty years? You seriously believe that you are, right now, as good as you will ever be?" It occurs to me as I write this out right now that I should also add "If so, please put me in contact with your manager as I'm sure they will be overjoyed to hear that you do not ever expect to deserve a raise, and, indeed, expect to be paid progressively less over the next few years as your skills rot away and you become steadily less effective."

It doesn't help that as near as I can tell, the undergraduate computer science education has barely changed in the 20-25 years since I took it. This is generally a good thing, not a criticism; it shouldn't be chasing every fresh hot trend, that's not its job. But if the fresh young whippersnappers are supposed to be picking up the hot skillz that will put this 20+-year veteran to shame, it's not clear to me exactly where they are supposed to be getting these hot skillz from. It certainly isn't from their undergraduate education.

geoka9• 7 years ago

They'll all be rich by that age and won't need to work.

jandrewrogers• 7 years ago

What could possibly go wrong when your hiring processes preclude most people with in-depth real-world experience? Learning lessons the hard way is expensive.

cheez3• 7 years ago

People who think this way are missing the forest for the trees.

The trees: fire anyone above 30.

The forest: Many development processes that required experience are being outsourced to companies like Amazon, Google, via their cloud computing platforms.

It is now possible to read some docs, follow some tuts and have a service that scales. If the inside is ugly, no one cares. That's the forest.

The problem is that this is how management thinks all over the world because it is short-term profitable.

Find another industry, seriously.

rightbyte• 7 years ago

That's a universal problem not just programming. Imagine if sleezy fast food restaurants raised the wages abit so they could keep employees longer before they go for a 'real' job.

But no, instead you set the wage so that anyone with a choice leaves.

I think the main reason for these places that are mainly hiring young programmers are that they are way less expensive if you count in unpaid overtime you can force them into. Older programmers that agree to that are desperate and not sought after anyway. Young programmers need experience so that they can become older programmers and agree to it.

JustSomeNobody• 7 years ago

This works if you're selling a $20 IoT device and need a cloud access. This doesn't cover all development, though. There are still industries that need people with domain knowledge and experience. You may not make FAANG money, but you won't lose your job on your 30th birthday, either.

organsnyder2• 7 years ago

The tech is no longer the hardest part (if it ever was). Meeting a market fit or business need is hard, and benefits from experience.

WrtCdEvrydy• 7 years ago

Find another industry

Nah, roll in, make some money, fuck off in two-three hours.

jimbokun2• 7 years ago

"If the inside is ugly, no one cares."

Yeah, so now your inexperienced developer just deployed something that takes 10 or 100x more resources than it should, and now you have a massive AWS or GCP bill to pay.

(Which brings up an interesting question, at what point does your cloud computing bill reach a point where it's worth it to pay the slight premium for a more senior engineer to come in and clean up the obvious inefficiencies?)

"The problem is that this is how management thinks all over the world because it is short-term profitable."

Not really, as so many early stage software companies are not interested in being profitable, short-term or otherwise. So cost management and profits are irrelevant, just resume padding for the next opportunity.

karlkatzke2• 7 years ago

I mean, it's great when you're trying to blow a bubble with VC money and then pump and dump anything your shotgun-oriented monkeys-with-typewriters approach managed to create. There's entire companies in the US that are based around these principles.

Where they don't work is long term, when investors (or acquisitors) realize that they've been taken hook, line, and sinker. And really, it doesn't even work if anyone did due diligence, but technical diligence is almost as difficult to do well as interviewing.

peteradio• 7 years ago

Old people are too expensive. NEXT!!!

wil421• 7 years ago

In my limited experience the companies that are doing this type of stuff usually don’t have people with in-depth experience. They were all likely new grads or close to it promoted by tenure or super fast growth alone (they were the longest there or ones who stuck around).

The ones in charge who are older have what I call a frat house mentality.

terryschiavo22• 7 years ago

More punitive OT laws help discourage this kind of behavior. You'd seek out more experienced workers if it meant avoiding the huge salaries you'd otherwise be paying younger workers working large swaths of OT.

nudpiedo• 7 years ago

The rest of the developed world is aging, I guess each society has to leverage their strengths.

marcinzm2• 7 years ago

As I understand it, China is aging more than the developed world rather than less. The one child policy has led to a massive disparity between generation sizes with proportionally fewer young people.

jackfrodo• 7 years ago

I recently was talking to a libertarian friend about this kind of thing (specifically the gender wage gap). He argued that if there were a group of people getting paid less for the same work, then any good business would only hire people like that, because it's cheaper.

Obviously this isn't the case, but I do find it curious that the market doesn't seem to prove a strong enough incentive for the people making hiring decisions to overcome their biases.

minikites• 7 years ago

Almost no person even resembles the "rational actor" we learn about in Econ 101. Environment, unconscious biases, and conscious biases have a large influence on most people's behavior.

karlkatzke2• 7 years ago

Libertarians are totally right ... when they only consider certain variables that are favorable to their arguments.

When you combine "wages are lower for women" with "the free market," you get "businesses will insist on hiring more women any way they can."

But when you add in "techbro bias against women (and mutual disgust at having to work with the techbro fraternity with constant harassment)" and reference again "women in tech get paid less" you get fewer women available in a market (because a free market goes both ways) and less chance of women being hired on despite HR and management constantly pushing for more women.

thorwasdfasdf2• 7 years ago

You are theoretically correct. To some degree that is already happening. But, I would imagine, the gap isn't large enough for it to overcome other factors: companies aren't always able to make perfect hiring decisions, there's a great deal of error involved. Alot of times highering decisions are just made based on the interviewer's feelings, or sometimes just the order in which the candidates were presented.

I've seen situations where the best candidate was interviewed first and failed (just because he was first). Then by the time the company got around to finish interviewing 5 more, several weeks later, the interviewees got so tired of interviewing they just accepted the last candidate, even though in my opinion there had been several better ones earlier.

luckylion2• 7 years ago

Obviously this isn't the case, but I do find it curious that the market doesn't seem to prove a strong enough incentive for the people making hiring decisions to overcome their biases.

Or the biases just aren't there in the way somebody from the outside perceives them, or the market would very much take care of it. This kind of reasoning ("the fundamental market mechanics totally don't apply" vs "my perception is probably flawed and things aren't as easy as they seem") reminds me of most people's early reactions when they encounter bugs: "this must be a bug in the OS/compiler/interpreter" vs "I must've made a mistake/misunderstood something". With more experience, they usually find out that it's somewhat unlikely to be the first person to encounter a super weird bug, and very likely to make mistakes.

jimbokun2• 7 years ago

""this must be a bug in the OS/compiler/interpreter" vs "I must've made a mistake/misunderstood something""

At a certain point, you start fervently hoping it's "I must've made a mistake/misunderstood something", because then you can fix it. But good luck waiting for the OS/compiler/interpreter to be fixed, or digging into an unfamiliar open source code base to fix it yourself.

duxup8• 7 years ago

A little bit like the US maybe?

I was already in a technical field, was laid off after a company buyout, I changed careers and took a coding bootcamp.

A few like minded classmates and I would compare notes after we did interviews.

The other two older guys and I got a lot of "culture" related questions. One dude was actually told by the recruiter that they were worried he was too old, he was surprised they'd actually say it to him so he asked ... and the recruiter repeated herself happily.

Meanwhile the younger classmates reported hearing nothing about "company culture" in any of their interviews...

The description of culture was often pretty benign ("we like to have fun" and so forth) but I couldn't help but wonder if it wasn't just a placeholder for some bias. On one occasion I got a description of "we're a young office".

sf_rob• 7 years ago

Wow, I've received frighteningly little interviewer training, but the "things to not say/consider" talking point has been reiterated strongly. That said, I can't say I'm surprised.

sevensor• 7 years ago

I once sat next to an HR manager as he asked a room full of entry-level candidates who they thought should win the next presidential election. The woman from HR who was sitting on his other side turned and gave him a horrified look. A minute later when he tried to ask about their religion, she shut him down.

codesushi42• 7 years ago

In a weird way, it may have been for the best. It is incredibly frustrating to work with arrogant 20 somethings who don't know squat. Youth doesn't just mean inexperience, it can also come with a lot of ego with nothing to back it up.

agentultra• 7 years ago

I can confirm this. I was 20-something once. I have the blog posts to prove how arrogant I was.

duxup8• 7 years ago

I hear ya there.

At least one place never shipped a product and closed down... but god damn they had a lot of toys in their office and everyone was having a great time playing with them. ;)

Meanwhile I got a job at a place along side a younger guy who straight up was a way better programmer than me, but he really struggled with stuff like working independently without being told exactly what to do, and just understanding customer business logic / what questions to ask and so forth. Good kid but just needed more experience working. He moved on to a better place for him where he could get more structure.

onion2k• 7 years ago

In my experience you get arrogant developers who are horrible to work with at all ages and experience levels.

njepa• 7 years ago

At least from my perspective the environment changed a lot over the last 10 years. Companies (and societies) that invested in people used to be a lot more common. You had at least a chance to get a semi-private office, experienced colleagues and a longer development cycle so you could learn things. Today if you don't adopt a self-serving attitude you aren't going to have a good time commuting to your open office were management just sent you four e-mails trying to disguise their next opportunistic move. I think the reason we often complain about the young is because they are more clairvoyant about what reality is being served. A reality which often reflects badly on us.

doctorpangloss2• 7 years ago

Part of the competitive advantage of the technology industry may be that young people can be management. It could be, indeed, the exact opposite of what you're saying.

In literally everything else, hierarchy is by age.

Consider that a bad computer program business can still make a bajillion dollars. Maybe the fact that its CEO is young enough to understand the problem matters. Or maybe it's as simple as, young people who are more skilled than older people, and now can be in charge. Most of the value may be tied up in something else, but most of the competitive advantage may be tied up in the age.

My feeling is, the ability for young people to be in charge is similar to (but not as impactful as) other historic opening-of-opportunities for people in the workforce.

whateveracct• 7 years ago

The sniff of ego, arrogance, exceptionalism, etc is a turnoff for me when job hunting. Sadly you don't always see that stuff until you join. And it also feels a bit inevitable - feels like every VPE I encounter does a lot of spouting answers instead of asking questions.

mr_overalls2• 7 years ago

I'm mid-40s and probably sound like it on the phone.

I've been subtly persuaded by a recruiter from applying to a company via persistent "culture fit" questions. The recruiter _kept_ reiterating how awesome the office's on-tap beers, foosball tables, and casual culture made it a fun place to work.

I'd steer the question back to benefits, remote work, policies, etc. Only to have the recruiter hammer again on the "fun" stuff, talk about how the co-workers enjoy getting a beer together after work. Eventually I got the hint.

Later I found out that the company has a reputation locally for constantly hiring new college grads and burning them out via overwork, shifting project requirements, and random changes of software infrastructure. Guess I dodged a bullet. But it's interesting that probably many of their problems could be solved just from hiring a few experienced devs, data engineers, and project managers.

vkou• 7 years ago

Eventually I got the hint.

The hint wasn't that you're a bad culture fit, the hint was that there are no benefits.

You don't have to be over 40 to need benefits.

Asooka• 7 years ago

You could fire back with "Well of course, that [foosball, beer] is a given, that's how my last workplace was. Can we talk about what unique perks your company offers?"

HeyLaughingBoy• 7 years ago

On the flip side, the recruiter for the place I now work at mentioned couple of times that the company preferred "seasoned" employees and there was subtle hint of "make sure you're OK with that."

It definitely skewed older at the time I joined, although we've hired quite a few people in their 20's/early 30's since then.

It's a difficult situation for a good recruiter. On one hand, you don't want to discriminate illegally, but on the other hand, you want the company you're working for (and the candidate) to be happy with your results.

usgroup• 7 years ago

Think of it this way, if this thing is real (and I doubt it is) then smart companies will make themselves the exception and buy hard into the 30+ market, and have much better employees as a result.

30+ women/men are the staple of science, and if they are not the staple of software engineering then you’re making a big mistake.

ramraj07• 7 years ago

Hardly generalizable though. Went through a data science / engineering fellowship for phds and the first people to get placed were the ones who did a PhD decades ago and were doing something else for a longtime and now wanted to get back into tech. There are definitely places in the US that value experience and wisdom and others that don't.

duxup8• 7 years ago

No question there are places that value that kind of thing.

I really don't know what any of the places I interviewed at are REALLY thinking too. Just suspicions.

neilv3• 7 years ago

A little bit like the US: http://anewdomain.net/dont-hire-anyone-30-ageism-silicon-val...

You can also look at HN. Ageism topic posts usually have comments that a proper HR person could sense from across the building, fast enough to slam the emergency power cutoff button, mid-sentence.

It seems like there's often also an upvoted comment by a claimed middle-aged person, saying how they're so dumb now (which we who make a living with our brains should find alarming).

T-hawk2• 7 years ago

HN has those comments and HR doesn't explode because: Ageism is legal in the US except for specific prohibitions.

The Age Discrimination In Employment Act only prohibits discrimination against workers age 40 and older. There is no federal restriction against disfavoring workers at age 39 for being too old, nor against favoring workers over 40 at the expense of younger ones.

jerrycruncher• 7 years ago

If your friend has proof of the "you're too old" response and is at all litigious, that's a slam dunk age discrimination lawsuit. Like, instant settlment.

duxup8• 7 years ago

We talked about that fact, but being in a position changing careers ... not sure what the long term outcome might be.

tyingq• 7 years ago

It may have been an independent recruiter just offering up their experience with that particular company. In that case, I'd welcome the insight.

T-hawk2• 7 years ago

Nope, if he's in the US and not over 40. The Age Discrimination In Employment Act only prohibits discrimination against workers age 40 and up. Disfavoring workers of age 39 or under is perfectly legal federally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_Discrimination_in_Employme...

jdietrich• 7 years ago

Older workers expect higher wages and are less willing to tolerate unpaid overtime. They're harder to bullshit with cheap "perks" like foosball tables and beer on Friday. An experienced developer might be better, but who cares when you can get two junior devs for the same price and they'll work 14 hour days during your quarterly "crunch"?

Bad managers operate on the assumption that writing software is like making widgets - it's just a matter of man-hours. They don't believe in the 10x developer, they don't even believe in the 1.1x developer; their employees are just meat in a seat.

liquid153• 7 years ago

"meat in a seat" lol, gonna have to steal that from you

prolepunk• 7 years ago

The other opposite is where companies only believe in '10x' developers at the expense of everyone else.

dictum• 7 years ago

A little bit like the US maybe?

One way humans learn to be less awful is when they observe the same bad behaviors they've been engaging in on their rivals or frenemies.

The opposite seems to be true in corporations and nation-states: any bad behavior by a competitor is an excuse to adopt the same practice and lobby for lax laws when regulations prevent that; competitiveness trumping societal sustainability.

gvand• 7 years ago

That recruiter should have been praised for his honesty... I would have interpreted that as a warning for a company full of twenty-something imbeciles.

No one wants to be an unpaid part-time kindergarten teacher in addition to the normal job.

Culture fit is a problem with younger colleges only when "culture" implies "juvenile behaviour".

true_religion• 7 years ago

Is that a west coast thing? On the east as a young dev you hear about company culture all the time, and ther are some firms which tilt to hiring mostly older folk.

duxup8• 7 years ago

I suspect it is a company to company thing at the very least.

reilly3000• 7 years ago

Younger workers are less likely to take moral positions on company activities. I worked at a mortgage lead generation site in the 2000's and bought everything management sold. I can't see myself doing anything like that at this stage in my life.

marcinzm2• 7 years ago

At the same time older employees have more to lose by protesting and getting fired. They may have health issues, kids to support, mortgage to pay, etc. They also tend to be more conservative so they'd protest less against certain things.

I'd argue that protesting is tied to how easy it's to find a new job which tends to be easier with experience.

rxhernandez• 7 years ago

I mean I avoid the weapons industry like the plague as I dont want there to be a strong chance my work will be used to kill anyone. I also dont think I've ever ate up anything management has told me that would begin to go against what I morally believed. Maybe some parents raise their kids to be a lot more skeptical of the world?

Moreover, it seems unintuitive that someone with a mortgage and kids to feed could be more discerning about where their paycheck comes from.

SketchySeaBeast• 7 years ago

Younger workers are less likely to take moral positions on company activities.

Is that actually the case? When I think of protests, I don't think of the elderly.

yardie• 7 years ago

My experience so far, the younger crowd are more likely to take a moral position. But, whoa, are they woefully unprepared for any kind of organized protest.

luckylion2• 7 years ago

This. Older people have families and long-term obligations. They usually can't afford to lose their job over politics or ethics.

mdtancsa• 7 years ago

Not sure. It might be younger people are more likely to take stronger positions so that they go out and protest? If you use voter participation as a proxy for moral engagement, kids as a whole dont seem to care as much as older people. https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/newsroom/press-kit...

bluGill2• 7 years ago

It goes both ways. Young people have always - throughout recorded history (most likely before) been more progressive, but the progressive is not always good. Young people can be suckered into support evil things because they haven't been around enough to think through what the unintended consequence might be.

Middle aged people get more conservative in part because they learned from their mistakes in their younger years: there often is a good reason for the things done in the past and change can be for the worse as often as for the better - they know how to handle the problems of today and don't want to learn how to handle the new problems.

The elderly have a decline in ability (which they often don't want to admit). They need to be conservative because without their habits they cannot handle life. They also need to trust others to help them do things they no longer can. They thus tend to be too trusting because they have no choice but trust someone without knowing if that someone is trustworthy.

Note that I did not put ages above. People go through things at different stages. People can be taught wisdom to some extent. There are thousands of different things to apply the above too: once you get past about 5 years old you are probably simultaneously in each stage for different things you deal with.

jswizzy• 7 years ago

You should look at who backed the Vietnam. The Silent Generation and Greatest Generation where isolationists. Boomers only started protesting after the draft and the Tet offensive.

chungleong• 7 years ago

Younger workers are less likely to recognize pointy haired bosses for what they are, I say. Young people are happy just being treated like adults. "Invitation to a strategy meeting? Wow, I'm a grown-up now!"

SkyPuncher2• 7 years ago

As I get older, I see the opposite happening. At least with individual contributor roles.

Young workers bring naivety with them. They think they can "make a difference" and have little to risk by pushing back.

The older workers seem to settle into happily getting their tasks done so they can go home and do something they enjoy - hobbies, family, etc.

purplezooey2• 7 years ago

But who got the Glengarry leads?

0815test• 7 years ago

Looks like SV is exporting techbro ageism to China, this will surely help with the trade deficit!

mzo123231• 7 years ago

Basically there are no senior developers in those tech firms. They are going to be running around in circles. I couldn't think of a worst idea.

logfromblammo• 7 years ago

Unfortunately, the current US immigration policy has made it unlikely that US tech firms would be able to take advantage of any prejudicial ageism bias in China.

It'd be nice to entice them to resettle in cities other than those on the west coast, too, but that might be a local culture problem, less amenable to remediation by legislation.

qaq• 7 years ago

Majority of large tech firms have dev. offices in EU and India so they sure can take advantage of this.

thorwasdfasdf2• 7 years ago

It's all symptoms of the same problem: a vast oversupply of educated talent. To some degree we have it here to in the US, but it's much greater in China. With an oversupply of labor/talent, companies can be arbitrarily selective.

In China, seasonal workers coming into the city actually earn more than college degree holders because there's just so many people with degrees. We something similar starting to happen in the US, as more and more people get bachelors degrees, those people get compensated less and less.

Loughla2• 7 years ago

We something similar starting to happen in the US, as more and more people get bachelors degrees, those people get compensated less and less.

Maybe 10 years ago you could say this. But today the statement needs to solidly be:

This is what the state of affairs has been in the US for years now. More people got bachelor's and were compensated less and less. More positions that previously required a high school degree now arbitrarily require a bachelor's. Students are flocking to trade schools in record numbers, and colleges/universities are almost all in a downward spiral right now.

TheGRS• 7 years ago

Maybe as a broad category of all employees, but if anything there aren't enough software developers in the US.

Employment of software developers is projected to grow 24 percent from 2016 to 2026, much faster than the average for all occupations. Employment of applications developers is projected to grow 31 percent, and employment of systems developers is projected to grow 11 percent. The main reason for the growth in both applications developers and systems developers is a large increase in the demand for computer software.

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

superhuzza2• 7 years ago

I don't think that's accurate:

"The proportion of high school students who earned three or more credits in occupational education — typically an indication that they're interested in careers in the skilled trades — has fallen from 1 in 4 in 1990 to 1 in 5 now, according to the U.S. Department of Education."

https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/04/25/605092520/high-pa...

anonlapwarmer• 7 years ago

Workers forget they're basically underpaid chattel.

AFascistWorld• 7 years ago

Considering what big tech firms do in China mostly is copying other people's ideas using their own guys then drive them out of business, cheaper is better.

syntaxing• 7 years ago

Interestingly enough,I'm having the opposite problem here in the US... I've been applying to multiple tech firms for hardware roles and keep on getting rejected since they are almost all trying to hire senior positions rather than mid-level at this time.

bluGill2• 7 years ago

when you have been around for a while you learn that senior people know something worth paying extra for. Then you start to demand only that until you discover all the senior people retire close to the same time and you don't have any organization depth coming up behind them.

Which is why when my department asked to hire a senior person to replace someone who transferred on leadership made us hire an entry level person to train up (then the next person left and we were allowed to hire a senior person).

IWeldMelons• 7 years ago

Because hardware is very conservative side of the hi-tech. CMOS NAND gates did not change much since 1970-s, they just got faster.

Bukhmanizer• 7 years ago

Why are the standards of evidence so much lower for trends in Chinese and Japanese culture?

First of all, the title of the article isn’t supported by the content.

Secondly, the evidence of the title appears to be a single unnamed recruiter.

Third, of course a vast majority of people in tech in China are going to be young. Do people not remember the economic situation of China 20-30 years ago?

mythrwy• 7 years ago

All firms? Some firms? Most firms? The biggest firms? China is pretty big place.

Not that I don't believe it because things like that appear to happen informally in the US as well, but article would have been better with some supporting numbers.

Jonnax• 7 years ago

It's funny how executive leadership never consider themselves too old for the job.

sneakernets• 7 years ago

So experience doesn't matter anymore? Why even bother?

madengr• 7 years ago

You can always work in the military industrial complex. Lot’s of gray hair, including myself. Most under 35 don’t know WTF they are doing anyway; sometimes amusing to watch them flop, then $$$ for me to fix their mess.

itissid• 7 years ago

This would make a good study in Economics:

1. Given Large supply of Developers as compared to Demand.

1.1 What causes Poor Software Quality Control and Poor hiring practices(resume padding or tech hiring offloaded to non techies)?

Are things like Long/Odd Working hours, Poor wages(race to the bottom), Talent flight and High attrition rate, Poor productivity etc just enforcing a vicious cycle till things hit some sort of equilibrium(software that just works and is barely maintainable and business margin is based on things like PPP between countries)?

1.2 How do good things come about; Like Decent/Good Software Quality Control, Good Hiring practices? Perhaps these cases have just okayish wages but poor working hours/balance? And there is an implicit bias towards a Younger talent pool because of focus on productivity.

2. Given short supply of workers as compared to Demand I have seen similarities to 1.1 and 1.2, the only difference is that people have options and always gravitates towards better employers and work conditions; the wages are overall much better than case 1 period. There are still many interesting economic questions to be answered here, but likely different, more specialized ones as compared to (1).

alphamale619• 7 years ago

"They’re not able to focus on the high-intensity work" That is true. most 30 and over people with work experience know devoting 9-12 hours a day to a company is not worth it. While, a young engineer right out of college doesn't know any better. Burn them out after 2-3 years. rinse and repeat.

The main problem is employees are "at-will." Meaning they can be fired at anytime without reason. companies have no incentive to not overwork employees. Laws regarding "at-will" need to be changed

jondubois• 7 years ago

In the future, the majority of the world's population will be either hackers or mafia members. It will be a complete breakdown of human values. World governments will probably be forced to legalize crime. If we remove meritocracy, we'll end up with anarchy.

Eli_P• 7 years ago

I think oldsters will become that old guy from the dystopian movie Brazil (1985), who did the work he loved illegally and for free, because of insane bureaucracy.

atum474• 7 years ago

I need to watch that

known• 7 years ago

"If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." --Reagan

trhway• 7 years ago

the same reason why everybody drafts/conscripts youngsters into the army - the youngsters dont ask questions, dont hold theirs superiors responsible and with great enthusiasm do what they told to do. A very powerful sledgehammer style tool. Obviously been there myself - not the army, that i dodged by the way of ROTC (USSR/Russia), i mean i've been to that place of stupid(well, looking back it looks that way even though it is in significant part a result of inexperience) unquestioning enthusiasm.

thrownaway954• 7 years ago

Maybe for programmers, but for DBAs, Sys and Network Admins, most companies want older candidates in my experience.

mistrial9• 7 years ago

confirm -- recent first-person account by an American living in Vietnam capital city .. tech dev ads explicitly ask for under-30

atum474• 7 years ago

That kinda sucks. I was recently approached by two Google employees, one of them said he likes my projects on GitHub, that I'm Google material and if I would like for him to refer me to a job there. I was very excited, of course. Did all they asked, applied for 3 positions as the usual on their process and managed to not even pass to the first interview. I'm 34 and going to college for 2nd time, graduating this year. Maybe this isn't my case, but I can't help to wonder.

gregcrv2• 7 years ago

They are just trying to get a referral bonus.

atum474• 7 years ago

Is that a thing?

purplezooey2• 7 years ago

I don't like what we're doing to people over 30/40 at all. How long will this last? Is it a global fad of some kind?

dang• 7 years ago

This article is both shallow and basically blogspam of https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-02/china-s-t....

Note that the site guidelines include: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Chinese tech firms are throwing out applicants over the age of 30

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