I'm in my 50s, and I used to say that I never saw age discrimination. Then a couple of weeks ago, I interviewed for an Internet company, and my age and experience was commented on by the majority of the interviewers. Which is fine, since most of the comments were positive (e.g., we need people with more experience because we have so many new graduates), but it was still a bit strange.
Then the technical interview came, and one of the interviewers was instantly hostile as soon as he saw me. It was weird. Weird to the point where the other tech interviewer started playing good cop, saying things like "he just covered that" and "no, that's true". Whiteboard coding is strange enough, but doing it with zero feedback and a hostile interviewer who keeps trying to push you in bad directions (inheritance over composition, singletons, etc.) is, well, interesting. The application came back with the inevitable "good skills but bad culture fit" euphemism.
As with all discrimination, the unnerving part is just not knowing. Was it really age discrimination? Or maybe I just looked like this guy's hated father or ex-boyfriend or something. Or maybe he's just a bad interviewer with low skills, and really didn't understand the stuff I was telling him (I usually sneak in a couple of technical questions for the interviewer and he blew those questions); that's hard to judge when there's no follow-up questions. Or maybe at the end of the day it was just money and the company didn't want to admit it. Who knows? I'll never know, and I suspect the company won't either.
Then the technical interview came, and one of the interviewers was instantly hostile as soon as he saw me. It was weird. Weird to the point where the other tech interviewer started playing good cop, saying things like "he just covered that" and "no, that's true". Whiteboard coding is strange enough, but doing it with zero feedback and a hostile interviewer who keeps trying to push you in bad directions (inheritance over composition, singletons, etc.) is, well, interesting. The application came back with the inevitable "good skills but bad culture fit" euphemism.
As with all discrimination, the unnerving part is just not knowing. Was it really age discrimination? Or maybe I just looked like this guy's hated father or ex-boyfriend or something. Or maybe he's just a bad interviewer with low skills, and really didn't understand the stuff I was telling him (I usually sneak in a couple of technical questions for the interviewer and he blew those questions); that's hard to judge when there's no follow-up questions. Or maybe at the end of the day it was just money and the company didn't want to admit it. Who knows? I'll never know, and I suspect the company won't either.