Older job seekers get fewer offers on LinkedIn but a younger profile photo helps

You can have a younger picture, you can remove older jobs on your resume to appear younger. It gets you the interview, you can pass the coding test but then get told that they don&#x27;t think you&#x27;re a &#x27;cultural fit&#x27;.<p>I think the underlying reason is when you have far more experience than your future boss they are intimidated by you.

The most consistent pattern I have observed as an older developer with some years on a resume is absolute utter astonishment when I don&#x27;t want to waste time on a bunch of confused newb shit like sickly bloated frameworks with a million dependencies. Its weird to hear people acknowledge that I have just so much experience on paper and yet be so amazingly dumbfounded surprised that I would be focused on less junior things.<p>I haven&#x27;t yet found the proper words to converse through that, but a team of similarly older developers sharing similar concerns adds tremendous value.

&gt; “A younger-looking face creates impressions of higher physical and mental fitness,” the authors write. “Our results suggest that these impressions may indeed be a powerful driver of favorable employment outcomes.”<p>It is possible that there are other explanations. Older developers may want better salaries, better working conditions, be harder to manipulate, etc.<p>Good leadership is going to hire people that fits in the culture of the company and have the needed skills. Whenever the candidate is younger or older does not matter.<p>Bad leadership wants cheap employees that obey orders and don&#x27;t challenge authority. Younger, more inexperienced developers will fit this category, even if they are technically skilled.<p>This is as good a theory that any other one to explain the fact that recruiters want younger developers.

For front-end dev - some older developers are really tired of the constant churn. This can be a good thing if you can &#x2F; already are off the endless new frontend bandwagon. But since a lot of junior folks are into the &quot;latest and greatest&quot; it can be very hard internally (and cement a perhaps resistance to change stereotype).<p>I&#x27;m a bit tired of folks saying older devs are not resistant to change. Reality - with experience some stuff just seems faddy at times over the course of longer career arcs. So yes, older devs can be bit resistant to jumping onto the latest bandwagon.

I&#x27;m just now coming out of my not-junior-but-not-senior period of overengineering and wish there were more older devs in my shop to consort with instead of a bunch of other not-junior-but-not-quite-senior devs (if we&#x27;re being serious and not using senior to mean &quot;I&#x27;ve just been doing this a long time&quot; instead of &quot;I&#x27;ve been doing thing a long time and I&#x27;ve <i>learned</i> from my experiences and here&#x27;s what specifically&quot;).

55 year old software engineer , with extensive RF&#x2F;analog background with dual EE&#x2F;CE degrees. I can’t begin to count the number of interviews gleaned from LinkedIn where the first 45 minutes of the interview was a late 20’s early 30’s person telling me all about their wonderful work and how great they are. Not a word about the job, nothing about the company, all about them and the places they’ve worked, what they have done. Just who the hell is being interviewed? When this happens, it is all I can do not to walk out of the interview or kill the call&#x2F;Zoom session.<p>The moment some places figure out you’re over 45, it is over. Except for very forward looking start-ups who want to grow very quickly.<p>That is where I have been working for the past 10 years..best time of my life. But I also know, this is my last employer.

I don&#x27;t know how many offers other people are getting, but I&#x27;m 52 and I get on average about 8 messages from recruiters every day. Maybe that&#x27;s because I look younger in my profile picture... :D

&gt; In terms of practical implications, the authors say these results reconfirm why photographs are usually absent from traditional resumes or CVs. As such, they suggest that removing photos from LinkedIn might make job-seeking fairer. The lack of photos might cause recruiters to focus more on information that is more relevant to the job.<p>I would be curious if Linkedin penalizes profiles missing a photo in their algorithm or whatever. I.e. I seem to recall getting badgered to add a photo when I didn&#x27;t have one, and the implication that my profile was &quot;incomplete.&quot; I suppose a way around this would be a completely unrelated photo, or a drawing of yourself, etc.<p>I&#x27;d love to see the same type of experiment with the person&#x27;s race and gender, but that&#x27;s probably too inflammatory of an experiment.

You know, for the longest time, the fact that I look quite young for my age bothered me (I&#x27;m in my early 40s and recently someone I&#x27;d just met exclaimed they thought I was 25). But ageism in the industry is starting to make me grateful for my luck in the genetic lottery...

Why is this controversial? Such a bias will almost always exist. There is an anecdote from Hamming&#x27;s famous &quot;You and your research&quot; [0] talk which I&#x27;ll reproduce in full:<p>&gt; Another personality defect is ego assertion and I&#x27;ll speak in this case of my own experience. I came from Los Alamos and in the early days I was using a machine in New York at 590 Madison Avenue where we merely rented time. I was still dressing in western clothes, big slash pockets, a bolo and all those things. I vaguely noticed that I was not getting as good service as other people. So I set out to measure. You came in and you waited for your turn; I felt I was not getting a fair deal. I said to myself, ``Why? No Vice President at IBM said, `Give Hamming a bad time&#x27;. It is the secretaries at the bottom who are doing this. When a slot appears, they&#x27;ll rush to find someone to slip in, but they go out and find somebody else. Now, why? I haven&#x27;t mistreated them.&#x27;&#x27; Answer, I wasn&#x27;t dressing the way they felt somebody in that situation should. It came down to just that - I wasn&#x27;t dressing properly. I had to make the decision - was I going to assert my ego and dress the way I wanted to and have it steadily drain my effort from my professional life, or was I going to appear to conform better? I decided I would make an effort to appear to conform properly. The moment I did, I got much better service. And now, as an old colorful character, I get better service than other people.<p>Anecdotally, I&#x27;ve been on the job search train recently. Even though recruiters say that dress code is &quot;casual&quot;, what I&#x27;ve found is that if I take some time to wear fitting clothes and make sure that my video background is either blurred out or nicer looking, the results are very different.<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cs.virginia.edu&#x2F;~robins&#x2F;YouAndYourResearch.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cs.virginia.edu&#x2F;~robins&#x2F;YouAndYourResearch.html</a>

I am much more aware of appearing attractive, fitter, and younger to other tech peers as I age. I’m curious if anyone else feels this pressure?

I have been following a simple pattern of learning a new tech stack every five years. It&#x27;s not easy, but that&#x27;s what pays the bills and keeps me in the game.

&gt; Those stereotypes include being seen as less competent and less adaptable, particularly when it comes to using new technologies.<p>Anecdotally, I have encountered the latter a few times. I&#x27;ve known older developers (&gt; 40) who didn&#x27;t want to move to Angular&#x2F;React and would rather have stayed on jQuery (for complicated brand new web apps) or didn&#x27;t want to learn beyond Java 8.

I never make a secret of my age, but I am also not looking for a job.<p>Corporations are obviously terrified of us oldsters. Not 100% sure I know all the reasons.<p>I was just reading another HN front page story, about this poor woman that was fired for not writing an app that really required an experienced engineer.<p>Lot of that, going around. Wonder why?

IMO so much of age bias is because so many people are in terrible physical shape as they age.<p>If you are visibly in really good shape, I think you get a bias in your favor as an older person.<p>Not really an age bias but a perfectly rational probability of a lack of energy bias.

Eventually job interviews will be done by AI bots that are programmed not to have any gender&#x2F;race&#x2F;age&#x2F;appearance&#x2F;sexual orientation&#x2F;weight&#x2F;attractiveness bias.

Which is why I don&#x27;t have a photo on Linked in.<p>IMHO the EU should ban the practice unless is for models &#x2F; Actors.

Unsurprising. Older job seekers switch jobs less often, so recruiters target young ones to maximize ROI.

Reading about all the ageism anecdotes on HN over the years really pushed me towards self employment. I&#x27;m still in my 30s, but my 40s will hit sooner than I think and I don&#x27;t want to be caught with my pants down.

Older devs should just work on their own ecommerce stuff and squeeze expenses to maximize their runway until they takeoff. Interviewing is a waste of time past a certain age - I was 53 the last time I got hired.

Or none at all.