Ask HN: Why won't start-ups hire older, experienced programmers?

If you have 10+ years of experience, then you're probably 30. If you're 30, you're probably married. If you're married, you probably have kids. If you have kids, you probably want to leave work at 5pm to go spend time with them. If you need to leave at 5pm, you probably aren't the right cultural fit for a startup.<p>It's just math, really.

Older, more experienced programmers are likely used to getting paid a real salary instead of equity, and eating more than just ramen.

At the end of day I think it is for essentially the same reason the 50 year old Harvard MBAs in grey suits prefer to hire other 50 year old Harvard MBAs in grey suits. Like attracts like. People are instinctively drawn to people with the same cultural values and background as themselves.

Startups do hire older, more experienced, developers. That they won't is a myth.

Easy: We're expensive, and we don't work 80-hour weeks. (Both generalizations, but both certainly far more true of older engineers than younger ones.)<p>That said, I've worked for two startups, one when I was 31 and one when I was 38. If you bring something to the table that they need badly enough to be worth the higher pay and lower time commitment, it can happen. As @steveklabnik said, it's just math, though the math doesn't always fall in favor of the young guy. Just usually.

I think they probably would hire an older, experienced programmer...<p>...but it might be interesting to turn this question around and ask if these older experienced programmers would want to be hired by a startup. Keep in mind, this is a very different question from asking if they'd want to work for, or at, a startup.<p>The old mantra I heard was "the founders get rich, the early employees get screwed, and the late employees get paid." Of course, not at all true in all occasions (even fairly "late" employees at google got rich, and at most startups, nobody gets rich). But I figure an older, experienced programmer would truly understand how illusory the stability of W-2 work at a startup really is. It'd better be a pretty great startup (and they are rarely as great as they think they are).<p>If you're going to tolerate that degree of instability in your life, there are usually much better options than taking an "interview you, hire you, assign you work" role as a programmer at a startup (consulting work, starting your own company if you seek high risk/rewards, bigco, gov't work if you want to interview for a job with a paycheck).

Price tends to be the biggest issue for our startup. I'd love to hire some senior programmers that I know can produce high quality solutions for any problem I throw at them. But from a cash flow perspective, we simply can not afford them. And with older programmers having wives/kids/house payments, they (I'm including myself in this boat) tend to be more risk adverse and not as willing to take the pay cut for potential payout later.<p>I think there is a network effect as well. When I was fresh out of college, everyone in my close network was all the same age. I always prefer to hire someone I've already worked with or someone that was recommended by a friend. So if the start up is founded by fresh college graduates, their network is going to mostly consist of other young developers.

There are several reasons. Depending on the startup, it may be one or more of these:<p>* Older and more experienced programmers may need a bigger salary, which startups cannot always afford.<p>* Older and more experienced programmers may be more suited to work in larger organisations with set procedures and practices, which is not suited for startups.<p>* Older programmers have other commitments which may prevent them from putting more energy in the startup. It may also be more of a risk (money wise) for them to join a startup which may or may not succeed.

I'm 35 and I've never not worked at a startup. I don't think that many older guys apply to startups because the pay is usually shit.

I have found that older programmers are out date in terms knowledge and skills. It sounds ageist but that us my experience.