“Experienced” people often have higher personal burn rates and sometimes you’ll need to pay them more, but remember that great companies are not usually created by experienced people (with the exception of a few roles where it really matters a lot.)
Scary statement for me to read. I'm getting older and worry that the above thinking will eventually cut off cool and even just new opportunities for me. Also hard to audition for longer periods as suggested, but I'm definitely in favor of building a strong professional network and having a good portfolio of work.
Ageism should scare you--and it should scare the author of this post. The inevitable forward progress of time means that literally every, single one of us will be on the wrong end of this equation at some point.
The (possible) saving grace is that a lot of people who came up in the 2000s tech scene are now on the "other side of 30" and becoming quite "experienced" themselves. Hopefully, that group's attitude will change these biases. Too often though, you can read between the lines and discover what they're really talking about is: "You can't convince experienced people to take less money to work obscene hours--especially when their perception is likely that much of their job will cleaning up for all the 'inexperienced' folks you hired."
The idea that "great companies are not usually created by experienced people" strikes me as exceptionally hyperbolic and based more on the publicity of Wall Street Darlings than any evidence that highly experienced people can't (or don't) build something great.
[edit: Just thought that I'd add that I agree with just about every other point made in this post and focusing on one issue generally isn't constructive so I apologize for going down the rant hole without first acknowledging that the post, overall, is quite spot on.]
On the flip side, as an old friend once said, "Do you have ten years of experience, or one year of experience ten times?"
Highly experienced people can be priceless because they have dealt with similar situations before (and it's not the technology, it's the situations). But if they didn't learn from their experiences, it doesn't help. And imho a majority of the old hands are still doing things wrong - sometimes due to management interference, sometimes due to ignorance, but mostly due to simply not making the effort to do better.
One of my own interviewing mantras is, "I don't care so much what you know how to do, as how you deal with what you don't know how to do." But honestly, this mantra taken to its logical extreme massively favors raw intelligence and flexibility over experience. That's not always a Good Thing.
I am right in the middle of this right now. In my 40s, looking for a job at the moment. My interviews have been decent to downright bizarre. The trend of the interview approach is very curious to me.
I've been looking at a variety of lead engineer/architect positions to development manager. Many of these positions come with some immediate needs, i.e. addressing large systems as part of a business expansion.
I find myself being interviewed by individual engineers asking heavy comp-sci questions, mostly in the academic sense. In several cases, during the interview, the individuals were focused on specific answers to questions that could hold several interpretations. Ambiguity is a great way to assess individuals and critical thinking, but when someone is looking for the answer...well, it doesn't necessarily pan out.
The kicker, after these meetings, is interviewing with the C-level folks who explain how their technical team can't get product out the door, and wonder how I'm going to help to that end. I've been shipping products for multiple years, in many cases longer than the individuals on the teams I'm interviewing with have been in the industry.
What's funny to me is that I'm a guy that prides myself on being current in technology. I'm not that old dude who is resistant to the latest thing -- I really enjoy seeing where the industry is going.
I'd love to get to depth on my experience -- why we built something the way we did, decisions we made, difficulties and how we addressed those -- it's like those questions are irrelevant. At the last interview, I was asked how much I enjoy playing "Dominion". I like Dominion, but really.
I understand how you feel. I went on some intensely technical interviews a few years back (late 30s). Many of the questions were the sort of thing you'd expect on an undergraduate data structures and algorithms class, though there were a few brain teasers thrown in there for good measure.
My interviewers were young, and at lunch, I tried to talk to them a bit about the business problems they were trying to solve. Their knowledge about this seemed very thin. I pressed a bit, and finally was told that this is what the "product managers" are for.
In short, I realized that they were asking me about these CS-related questions, at least in part, because this is the bubble of their work life.
One interviewer seemed unengaged in the discussion, waiting for a pause. Then he asked "how would you swap two integers without creating a third integer?" At lunch, in between two 3-4 hour blocks of technical interviews.
I'm done with these interviews. Well, ok, if my family was looking at foreclosure and going without health insurance, I'd subject myself to them again. But it is a priority of mine not do do another one of these interviews again.
It's not that I won't do a technical interview per se - there's a wide range of what counts as a technical interview, and not all of them are equally unpleasant. But I will view it as a personal...letdown if I find myself at the whiteboard showing how to add a branch to a binary tree ever again in my life. Or, to put it another way, I don't want to reload data structures and algorithms into "exam ready" memory in my own head again. I know where to find these things when I need them.
The reason I say letdown is that I most definitely do see my own personal role in this. If I fail to establish enough of a personal reputation for competence that people are asking me to do this, then that is, at least in part, my "fault". However, it does come with the territory - as far as creative fields go, software development is an area where the programmer's contributions are fairly obscured (unless they are working on open source projects).
Exceptionally well put; and good that you're aware of the shortcomings of looking too closely at dealing with the unknown. I love the succinctness of, "It's not the technology, it's the situations."
Obviously, crappy people with 10 years of experience are useless in any situation--it's just easier for them to blend in at Big Company X where they are one of a hundred. The rest of the article already applies well to how to weed those people out. Sadly, they're not always super-easy to spot.
When doing tech interviews, I always prefer to interview experienced people. I find that digging into a project that they did before was all I need to figure out if the candidate is worth going forwards with. My big red flag is when the candidates have "leading project X generating Y revenue or Z customer engagement" in their resumes, but are not able to articulate the system/product architecture, or tell me what the biggest technical challenge encountered.
"The average and median age of U.S.-born tech founders [of companies that have more than $1 million in sales, twenty or more employees, and company branches with fifty or more employees] was thirty-nine when they started their companies. Twice as many were older than fifty as were younger than twenty-five."
"but remember that great companies are not usually created by experienced people"
What he is saying is that startup shot in the dark companies are not created by experienced people I am guessing. But then again from what I can tell the one company that the author created essentially failed. Now his job is to invest and give advice to others.
Anyone who thinks experience doesn't matter in the real world has (for lack of a more graceful way to put this) a screw lose somewhere.
I've also yet to run into anyone who has ever told me that they were better at what they did when they were younger than when they got older and had more experience. To be sure experience can also jade you and prevent you from taking chances and be a negative in some cases but that's no reason to not hire the most experience people you can. The fact is that some of the best people out there have nothing to do with the "startup" community.
Experience itself is usually a good thing; the problem for startups comes when that experience brings with it things that cause issues with the startup--for example, much higher salary requirements.
"Experienced" employees are also more likely to need/want that cliched work-life balance. They may not want more money, but they may not be willing to work incredibly long hours indefinitely.
> Also hard to audition for longer periods as suggested
He did follow that up by saying you should pay the candidate for the "audition" as a contractor. I've personally experienced this, and love it, and I advocate it strongly if not outright insist on it going forward. It's the employment equivalent of dating before marriage. And it's about Getting Real as much as you can, as early as you can.
If someone is working a full time job (the currently employed are definitely targeted in the article), and are 'experienced'/older, and thus more likely to have other demands on their time like wife/kids, contracting, even in off hours, becomes more difficult.
It won't be impossible to 'audition' but it will definitely be tougher.
(To say nothing of the intellectual property issues if the possible employee is in a related field and the employer is peeved at them leaving.)
If I was at a stable, good job, and wasn't looking, and someone was trying to poach me with the siren call of 'contract to hire' or 'work this weekend', well, it'd be an uphill battle for the poacher.
Maybe that's why I'm not in the Bay area, working for a startup :).
It'd depend on what the incentives are. If you're trying to lure a highly experienced person from a secure enterprise job to the uncertainties of a startup, what are you offering them? Money? They can make a lot more than a startup can offer by going into consulting, if they're good. Freedom? Maybe. A mission? Maybe. But you'd better have something.
For an example of other conditions... I have a friend I'd love to poach away to work for me. But he's the sole breadwinner with five young children. Besides money, I'd have to make sure I can provide good health benefits.
Scary statement for me to read. I'm getting older and worry that the above thinking will eventually cut off cool and even just new opportunities for me. Also hard to audition for longer periods as suggested, but I'm definitely in favor of building a strong professional network and having a good portfolio of work.