Very good point! In truth we are in the market for almost all skill sets but in particular design, front end dev and mobile dev. Drop us a line at hello@teddle.com if you are interested.
I had an extremely bad experience with Developer Auction. Ultimately using the site got me fired from my job and the team at Developer Auction was extremely non-responsive/uncaring about it all. Matt Miszewski in particular was extremely callous.
It's pretty common for someone to be fired when discovered interviewing elsewhere. Usually, though, they draw up one of those horrible "performance improvement plans" and you'll be able to move on before it closes.
Worst is when you're trying for internal transfer and get PIP'd because of it. Then you have to get a job elsewhere, because the PIP fucks up your internal mobility.
"I don't see the connection between the title and the graph."
My thought was that startups target younger devs as they believe that they'll be more 'liberal' engineers. I think the graph shows that to be false.
edit: well I don't think the graph shows anything - but it suggests that age and liberalism are not correlated. Many people have suggested that the survey is flawed - and that Yegge's original post is biased against conservatives.
The whole thing is wonky - there is no software "liberalism" vs "conservatism".
I always assumed startups target younger devs because they generally fit startup culture more: cheap, work horses, full of energy, willing to take on risk.
I think they target younger devs for a few reasons.
When you've got a family you're more likely to want real cash instead of equity. Many startups are cash poor and they wish they could get some geniuses who'd live on ramen noodles for two years in hope of a future payout. A 40 year old programmer who's good can get a job with good salary and benefits and doesn't want to hear about it.
I think many IT employers like younger workers because they're easier to intimidate. If you've lived through a few "charge of the light brigade" projects, you eventually learn how to say "no".
Yeah. Also while I think that premature optimization is the root of all evil, I don't think it is simply true that rigid schemas slow down development. They slow down certain phases and types o development and it is a tradeoff.
Please, now that you have a half-billion records in Mongo, I want a report on statistics of these in ways you hadn't thought of before on my desk tomorrow...
My thought is that startups tend to target 'liberal' developers so they can iterate fast and innovate rapidly. It's the 'fuck it ship it' kinda attitude.
The thing that keeps a 40-something like me from wanting to be in an SV type of startups relate more to priorities. I've been through the grind from the first bubble, and would rather not go through it again.
I'm talking about:
* Giving up salary for equity/options/signing bonuses. No thanks.
* Working stupid long hours that bring my effective hourly rate down to a fast-food restaurant manager's hourly rate. Because of this, I'd probably be flagged as someone who has "no passion" for what I do. No, I just like a balanced life.
* Working in a "frat house" environment. I've been there and had fun in those environments, but I'm past it, and prefer a more diverse workplace.
* Working in a VC-funded company - at least in my past experience - usually means the focus shifts from ramping up quickly vs. building value and/or a solid business model
If you don't want to be in a startup, fine, that's not ageism. The problem is if you're turned away because of your age if you do. There's a perception that older folks are going to be "stodgy", overly concerned with outdated engineering principles and less with cool new features, and that startups need the latter. This attribute seems to map reasonably well onto Yegge's conservative/liberal framework, and to the degree that it does (and the degree to which the survey is representative) this seems to not be the case empirically.
It doesn't preclude the possibility, of course, that there may be other reasons someone might not be a good fit that age may predict.
Having been part of that hiring process during the first bubble, we'd drop a lot of older, skilled candidates for "cultural fit", which was related to the exact same things as to why I wouldn't really want to be in a SV startup at my current age.
* Candidate asks about overtime? Probably won't work late with us during crunches.
* Candidate won't take equity in lieu of a pay cut? Doesn't get at all what our mission is.
For me, that is behind a login screen. I heard a little while ago about users who have a google account but aren't logged in being unable to access G+ pages; I'll edit after a cookie-clear and refresh (which may or may not help).
EDIT: De-cookieing helped, and I can now read the article without problems. Screw you, Google. Observers be warned.
EDIT 2: Is the downvote for any particular reason? My point was not unhelpful nor especially off topic; help, anyone?
I'm the shirtless guy in the top-left photo. I feel pretty bummed that something we did to parody the ridiculous 'brogrammer' movement was used in this context : (
