Pixels don’t care

(Author here)<p>Just wanted to clarify, since it seems a lot of people seem to think I'm frustrated with being discriminated against. I'm not. It's a fact of life. I got over it pretty early in life. I love being short, it's fucking awesome. If ever you meet me, you'd probably agree I don't have an issue with it.<p>I wrote this article to illustrate the power of the internet and this industry we work in. I used two examples of actual stories that I've lived through to show a dichotomy. This is not to say there were people set out on destroying me because I was short. That's crazy. I wanted to point out an amazing thing the internet has brought on, and especially how amazing it can be for people who deal in pixels for a living.<p>That being said, if ever you find yourself telling someone who talks of discrimination that it's <i>their</i> problem, you should probably re-evaluate your stance. This is why discrimination is so difficult to counteract — it's rarely a conscious or malicious process. I discriminate against people every day, and I'm discriminated against every day. To think otherwise is absurd.

I started out as a 13-year-old entrepreneur selling stuff on eBay (which was pretty new at the time). There was a loophole when they first opened where you could sign up under someone else's name and switch all of the records over to your name; that way you didn't have to be 18 to register.<p>I first grew to love the Internet as the only real meritocracy I experienced in life. No one knew I was 13. When I talked to people in person I would get a pat on the head and a "you'll do great some day," but the little eBay company I had started was taken very seriously. It's still around today, and it makes just over $2 million/year in net profit (not on eBay any more).<p>While the Internet is no longer as anonymous, and I am no longer with the aforementioned company, I believe product still speaks for itself. While it's true that investors may be looking for a dropout Stanford grad student, if you create something people love you can grow a company regardless of what anyone thinks about you as a person. Hell, I raised half a million dollars as an 18-year-old kid, not because I looked or acted like the quintessential entrepreneur, but because I could show numbers. If you can show someone, "Here's a black box where you put in $1 and $10 comes out," finding money isn't hard. Even if you're 18.<p>You don't know who I am from this comment (unless you stalk my bio and find me on Twitter). If you like it you'll upvote it. That's exactly (one of the many reasons) why I love the Internet.

Silicon Valley has a strange fixation on age which waffles between discrimination and fetishisation.<p>I started working as a trader at a Swiss bank in New York when I was 20. There were lots of jokes cracked about "traders south of the drinking age" and the number mattered more to some than others, but in the end it was meritocratic.<p>When I was 21 (after leaving the bank), I interviewed at a well-regarded Palo Alto-based tech firm and painfully remember <i>every</i> round of the interview bringing up that I didn't go to a prestigious enough university and that I looked "baby-faced". Granted, I look older in a suit, but it's a curiously consistent cultural artefact. You don't find anyone lauding over 22-year old hedge fund or energy venture founders as VCs do over over their 19-year old "rock stars".

I had the totally same experience with early online communities (Everything2, Slashdot), and for a long time made a conscious effort of keeping my avatar off the Internet.<p>It's a little utopian, yes, but being able to deal with people based on their ideas, ideals, and quality of work, and develop fast friendships without ever being aware of so much (Great line: "How could the internet know you were gay? 80 years old? Hispanic? Transgender? Karl Rove? It just didn’t matter.") is what made the pre-Facebook net magical for me and so many others, and what, in many ways, makes the rash of so many social-mobile-local startups so boring: They trade personal flare for personal expression, let users show off badges instead of actual achievement.

Reminds me of the Malcolm Gladwell anecdote about how orchestra auditions are usually biased unless they hide the musicians behind a screen, so that the music is judged free from distraction.<p>You can see the same principle at work on a new TV show called The Taste, where contestants cook up and serve a single bite of food that the judges eat without knowing who the contestants are. So far the home cooks have been not only holding their own but beating out the pro chefs.

"For the first time in human history, it’s possible to be represented (almost) solely through the merits of your work."<p>I enjoyed the piece, but this is overstated. Represented by an agent that protects anonymity, or just working by correspondence only, writers have enjoyed this ability for a long time.<p>George Eliot and J.K. Rowling obscured their gender and let the work speak for itself.

What a strange claim. "Looking back", he can't help but feel discriminated against due to his height.<p>It couldn't possibly be because of his "no formal eduction, no experience with any big clients", could it?

?<p>I, too, am short. I'm 5'6". I have always worked on teams with people much older than me (seems like a 15-20 year average). When I was in my early 20s and in sales selling high dollar value equipment I recognized that my age wasn't going to help. It took a few moments to dispel that once I began talking with someone as I just needed to overcome the view that I was inexperienced (As that would be associated with my age). It definitely did not hold me back and I'm fairly sure that if I lost a deal it was because of something other than my height.<p>We all face challenges and each are unique to us.<p>I meet a lot of people and I don't know anyone who would actively discriminate against someone short. I read through the article and based on it alone I got the sense that these challenges my stem from within the author rather than something external. I didn't read an examples of a situation that you'd reason resulted due to his height. Just interpretations.<p>"Ultimately, your greatest competition is yourself." - Guy Kawasaki

I started doing freelance work when I just turned 17 and learned just the opposite thing:<p>“It's up to you to tell the story.”<p>I was able to turn my age into advantage, and the contrast between my obviously teenage avatar and a convincing portfolio helped me distinguish myself from most other freelancers.<p>It was the same with my first job: I just approached a guy after he gave a lecture and asked him questions he found interesting. He was a CTO of an outsourcing company, and I asked if they were looking for C# programmers. I sent a very pompous resumé and got hired despite its silliness—it made them curious enough to land me an interview where I was able to show I'm a normal guy.<p>If you're seriously different from the rest, you can turn this into an advantage as long as you stress this point and make it an integral part of your story—not something you hide. People appreciate honesty and some humour too, and that's especially true in freelancing.<p>Exposing your vulnerability (yes I'm young, yes I'm a minority, etc) while showcasing your great work makes you look humane and more likely to be a great person to work with. You'll attract better customers—I experienced this myself. People you'll enjoy working for.<p>Your work speaks for yourself in either case, but in the end it's <i>how you market your work</i> that determines if the one evaluating you feels excitement (“This guy's so young but his work kicks ass, he must be a real prodigy”) or doubt (“This work is great but he's so young so we shouldn't hire him”).<p>Of course getting a <i>lot</i> of signed positive reviews is important, and pricing can be tricky too.

Late last year, an artist by the name of Captain Murphy dropped a mix tape, "Duality". Duality had phenomenal production quality and very talented rapping. Everyone from "future beats"-type listeners to gangsta-rap afficionados wanted to know who Captain Murphy was.<p>Turns out, the biggest name in all of modern experimental hip hop, Flying Lotus, was behind the project, along with a wealth of his friends. When asked why he didn't release the music as Flying Lotus, he replied (paraphrased) that he didn't want people to say, "Oh, he's rapping now", and he wanted to be respected more for his talent than for his legacy, or who people thought he was.

I've always heard of this happening but I never really had a problem with it. I thankfully learned early on about getting things in writing, agreements, etc. after seeing people getting screwed over. I learned that if people didn't want to work with you because of your age, you shouldn't want to work with them either. I heard Zeldman say that he only works with clients that he personally likes. Something to that effect, but it rang true for me even to today. Only work with people you like. Don't get stuck in a crappy job like OP. You can get out there and do it if you try hard enough.<p>I'm 19 now and it hardly affects me at all. In fact I feel behind. I am cofounding a startup and working full time at another startup, and I still haven't had my great succes yet. I work hard everyday and that's all that matters. Work hard, meet the right people, and use your gut. What really inspirers me are the ones that have gone out there and just killed it at a young age, it means that it is possible if you find the right way.

Echoing the article and everyone else that this was an issue for me as well. I had an interview at a small-town agency once with the two owners. They talked to me for awhile, and then walked out of the room to speak privately. When they came back, one of them said he loved my work and he'd hire me today, but his co-founder wasn't comfortable with hiring someone "so young without any formal education" and wanted me to come back after I'd done so (haha, right). They actually bickered quite a bit between themselves on the issue right in front of me (which made me feel good), but settled on not giving me the gig. I went about my way, happier that I didn't have to put up with someone who cared more about paperwork than work on paper.<p>A few years later I was working at another agency where my art director was pleading with me <i>not</i> to go to college and to stay with the company (which, honestly I would have had it not been for the keylogger I found implemented by another manager). "School is a waste of time for talent," he said, "You'll be miserable. Stay here and do real work." Feeling like I'd rather see for myself than regret the opportunity, I went. It wasn't the private art schools I wanted (I couldn't afford something like that), so I ran into nothing but mediocrity and decade-old lesson plans. Underwhelmed, pissed, and broke, I went back to working.<p>Meanwhile, a girl I know that spent the better part of 10 years receiving design/multimedia degrees has little to show for it by way of skills. While she acquires jobs easily, she doesn't keep them for very long as her talents are so many years behind what people are expecting that she can't do what she wants to/what her degree seemed to "promise" her.<p>These days you'll see portfolios splattered with "~young designer~" or "~budding developer &#38; entrepreneur~" and it completely goes against the spirit of being merited on your strengths rather than your accomplishments-by-age (ironically, I enjoy when kids/younger teens post their age in the titles of their ShowHNs). While it might make the kid feel more competent, acknowledging it is just asking to be underpaid because they know you won't know any better or inherently believe you aren't worth it.

This is one of the most transformative things of the Internet. It is also one of the most definite things I dislike about, say, the post 2005 closed web. Age/gender matters so much to people, even hackery types. It didn't seem to matter as much.

Good for him. My brother had a similar experience selling things online. If you are able to write professionally, people are more willing to trust you - even if you are 13.

Kinda crazy to think about, but when China gets up to speed and communications between our countries are open, the scale of what he mentioned at the end will be huge. Today, you could be one of the most sought out programmers in the west. Imagine competing against another intelligent millions of programmers from the east too. I can't wait.

What a beautiful blog post. I think too often we lament the anonymity of the internet without understanding that there are some serious upsides, too.<p>It's almost like a social Turing test: A good person is someone you identify as such based purely on messages written on slips of paper and passed under a door.

I totally agree with the "too young" thing. I'm 15 and been freelancing since I was 12, and this gets in the way <i>all the time</i>. People try to take advantage of you once they realize that you're young(er) than most in the field.

I know some incredibly talented younger people. People who without a doubt will be brilliant developers, much better than me I am sure. Would I hire them into a senior position right now, no chance.<p>Sometimes being good or even gifted is simply not enough. You need to know when to be pragmatic. When to let someone else win. When to look at everything, not just the lines of code or the pixels but the commercial implications of your decisions.<p>For example:<p>&#62; For every hour I worked, the agency billed my time out at a 2,083% markup. To the client (who couldn’t see my height), my time was worth over 20x the amount I was worth to the agency.<p>That's because they're not just billing for your time. They're billing for the time of the sales person who chased the lead, the time of the team who read the brief and developed the proposal, the time of the people who travelled to the client to deliver the presentation, the time of the secretary who handled the callback and the time of all the people who did all the same things the half a dozen other times where you DIDN'T get the job.

I know how it feels... I'm 22, 5'4", and look like I'm 17. This post reminds me of the Hacker Manifesto, by The Mentor: we exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias.

I had more or less the same experience doing freelance work early on.<p>Clients who judge you based on your age, instead of the value you provide to their business. Clients who are uncomfortable taking suggestions from a 20 year old, and instead, would rather get lower quality work from someone older, and more "experienced".<p>Glad to hear you're doing well now, keep it up!

I had a similar experience when I bought my first new car. I was 23 at the time, but could have passed for younger.<p>I went into the dealership and waited around until FINALLY someone came and talked to me. I talked a little, asked some questions and eventually got to do some test drives. I was already pretty sold on a certain car, but they didn't have any on the lot in the color I wanted. So I ask about it, the salesman tells me that what they have on the lot is all that's available (shipments were delayed by the tsunami in Japan) and that was that. I didn't buy a car that day.<p>Now, at that point I was borrowing my parents car, and would need to return them the car at some point. Luckily the dealership in my parents town had the car in the right color (according to their website) so I called them up and said I wanted it.<p>Unfortunately for me, it was already gone. But the guy bent over backwards for me trying to find a new one at other dealerships in the state that matched what I wanted and he eventually found one.<p>I always wonder how the second dealer would have treated me if he would have seen me before we made the deal.

&#62;&#62;&#62;For the first time in human history, it’s possible to be represented (almost) solely through the merits of your work.<p>I don't want to detract from what he went through -- god knows short people and other physical "non-conformists" are too often treated differently (for bad <i>and</i> good) -- but Andrew Carnegie was short too. What we're all suffering under is image indoctrination from mass media, from magazines, movies, TV. Every time I hear someone say something like, "S/he <i>looks</i> the part," I want to reach for an imaginary gun. Life is not effin <i>Central Casting.</i> And it's all gotten worse in just the past 10-20 years, with everyone on mass screens seemingly all having the same damn jaws and jawlines, looking like they all came from the same limited gene pool. It didn't used to be that way. Anyway, Napoleon was also short. Don't let anyone push you around.<p>EDIT: After reading a sales-related comment here, I was reminded that Ross Perot is also short. He made out OK.

This is an argument that there's no discrimination in tech? Or less discrimination than in other industries?

This is not news to me as I've had jobs offered by simply posting to debian and *bsd mailing lists from out of the blue once they read my posts on hunting kernel bugs. Mailing lists are still a secret gold mine for employment. I also didn't have to send a resume or anything was hired right away each time<p>Also +1 for IRC. Thankfully something social still exists where you don't have forced real identities, a whole profile of bullshit musical interests nobody cares about (i don't care that you love obscure hipster sweater and beard acoustic), or forum circle jerking and post count worshipping.<p>Plus it isn't monitored by your employers looking to fire somebody for slight twitter or fb breaches of conduct, and best of all the media and oprah have no idea what IRC is

Being self-taught, I too have had to deal with the lower than everyone else wage. It's hard work on a daily basis when you spend a portion of your time helping out other "learned" members of the team by fixing mistakes that you /facepalm at.<p>What is worse are the ones that use your lack of a degree as evidence that you don't know what you're talking about... it usually comes back to bite them in the ass when their systems collapse due to the issues raised months prior, you know the ones they never listened to you about.<p>If and when I get around to hiring my own staff, I will be doing it based on what they have done, not what they can do (on paper).

I've felt the same way for years. When I was younger I was on IRC all the time. I remember spending a bunch of time helping people out with Gentoo, and occasionally other code issues. It was funny one day after I helped a 35 year old guy out with a Javascript problem he was having for work, when he found out that I was 14. Haha, age has always felt like my biggest hurdle with my career, but it's not too bad, I'm far better off than others my age. I have always wished people would judge me more for my knowledge and abilities than for my age.

I'm going to hazard that they didn't pay you less because you were young- they paid you less knowing that, because you were young, that was your market value. In other words, they paid you a rate competitive with what they thought you could get elsewhere, which tends to be lower when you are younger.<p>I'm still debating this in my head, whether it is discrimination or not if they are saying "This guy is young, his market rate is lower". (Rather than "This guy is young, he must be no good") Because it generally <i>is</i> an accurate assessment.

It's a perspective thing. I think he missed an alternate reaction to his position. He could have been pleased with the money he was paid, honoured by the responsibility he was given, and driven to do the best he could. Instead he spent most of his time feeling hard done by. That's the kind of attitude problem that people pick up on when they consider people for a position - will this guy work his ass off for me? Oh, he thinks too much of himself? No thanks.

This is a great article.<p>As a student of mathematics about to finish his studies and looking potentially at a job in software development, this gave me a boost in confidence, reminding me that I should not be afraid too much on competition from people that have the proper academic background (although one might say that I'm not that in a disadvantaged position, I do know a lot less about the technical core stuff of computing).<p>Everything is still possible!

In interviews with agencies I've been told "You're not a designer" and "I hate personnel." In many cases the old agency curmudgeons are threatened by younger people with talent. This sounds like a similar example.<p>On the up side, this is an excellent indicator that you don't want to work for these people. There's always a better option.

Good for him that he managed to get around that.<p>But personal, face to face interactions are much better are gauging how a person is going to be when joining a team. Any sort of team.<p>People on paper sound nice, but when you meet them they are a bit off. I have a scary knack for this and can call out caustic people after the initial interaction.

Daniel Suarez is this awesome writer who wrote "Dameon" which predicts a new form of government and organization that exemplifies this idea.<p>In a type of augmented reality where you are no longer seen as a person with an age or skin tone, but rather a person with a simple feedback rating based on your previous interactions.

I'm lost - where in the post is the discrimination for being short, and not just having the proper credentials?

it's great that this guy got his job and all but let's not pretend it's just about the quality of his work. he was hanging out in a chat room with these people. plenty of personality shows through.

If I read this correctly, the main negative point was that the author was not paid as much as his colleagues, though he did get the position. The author suggests this is because of his height. To me (a young professional in the software development industry) that screams that the author did not know his own worth and therefore did not negotiate a high enough pay. I'm young for the positions I have held, and am roughly of average height, but you can be sure that I will get paid the same or more than my colleagues, because I understand how much I am worth and I am willing to say as much.

sometimes age is on your side and sometimes not. If one thinks they are worth more than what they are getting they should go get their worth, period. You have to trust your ability and back it up with unflinching guts. We live in fabulous times where showcasing your work is easier and the reach global.

Well put kneath, well fucking put :)

If you look to history, you can see overtime we acquire new ways of changing ourselves. There was a time when there wasn't makeup, but nowadays people can use makeup and change their appearance. Same thing with dying your hair, getting a plastic surgery, or arguably even body building: by getting this down to a science, we can figure out how to best change our physique. But really, all of these methods are crude, really crude.<p>But I'm super excited about what the next of couple of decades will do change this. I think we're on the verge of being able to completely define ourselves, and I don't just mean in the sense of designer children, i.e. genetics. I'm also thinking more along the lines of augmented reality and new bionic bodies.<p>Even today, there is a woman, Aimee Mullins, who has prosthetic legs. In her TED talk (<a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/aimee_mullins_prosthetic_aesthetics.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/aimee_mullins_prosthetic_aesthetics...</a>), she talked about how she could redesign her legs however she wanted. For example, she could be 6 inches taller, or when she did a fashion shoot, she could have cheetah legs: <a href="http://img0.liveinternet.ru/images/attach/b/3/17/452/17452836_cheetah.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://img0.liveinternet.ru/images/attach/b/3/17/452/1745283...</a>. (NSFW?) At one point in the talk, a person from the audience shouted out "It's not fair!"<p>And this is epochal, right? This is just a sign of what's to come. You look at Second Life and you see these avatars people have designed for themselves, they have control over how big their chest is, what skin colour they are, height, whatever. I can't help but dream of that being extrapolated to the real world, where we have complete control over how we express ourselves physically. Everybody would feel comfortable in their skin, everybody would look super-sexy, and we would find radical new ways of expressing ourselves (personally I would love blue fur).<p>Now I know what some of you are thinking right now, isn't this really superficial? In Second Life we already see huge tits and perfect abs. In one sense, culture becomes magnified tremendously. The body almost becomes a blank canvas to extrapolate the mind onto. But also, it's not superficial at all, it's exactly the opposite.<p>Let me explain it by posing you this question: what defines you? I've thought long and hard about this, and I've come to the answer: you are defined by what you can't change. When OP can't change how tall he is, he's defined by that, especially so in his workplace. On the flip side, when you can change something about yourself, that is a means of expressing who you are. We can change the style and the colour of our hair, and this is a huge part of culture: just look at all those hair magazines.<p>So what we have here is you are defined by what you can't change and what you can change is a means of expressing who you are. But, and this is the point I'm trying to get at, when you can change something that you couldn't change before, what defines you becomes smaller. So when in the next couple of decades, when we can change our sex, skin colour, physique, species?, what will truly define us becomes an interesting question.<p>And it is in this sense how it is exactly the opposite of superficial.<p>There's a Buddha saying: "You are not your thoughts." And you are not your body either.