Then you'd guess wrong. Take it from somebody in their forties - and I'm fortunate enough to be mistaken for being in my 30s quite often (the fat hides the wrinkles ;-)
I'm pretty skeptical that many startup entrepreneurs have a "if you're over 40 we don't want to talk to you policy" but instead decide based on 50 year olds coming into their door telling them in their interview how relational databases were figured out in the 70's
And there is the problem in a nutshell. That is ageism.
The assumption is that they're saying it because they are old. Not because their an idiot (or not ;-). It's http://xkcd.com/385/ - but for age not sex.
There are older developers who suck. But it's not because they're old. It's because they suck.
Huh? How is that ageism? I wouldn't say it's a matter of sucking or not sucking. It's a matter of perspective and sometimes inexperience plays to your benefit when doing a startup. Experienced engineers can identify known unknowns. Inexperienced ones have many more unknown unknowns. Ignorance hurts you in most situations in life, but in the case of startups, a little ignorance is often what it takes to try problems that everyone else has ignored because they thought they were "solved."
Okay - I seem to have misread you. Sorry. When you said:
"I'm pretty skeptical that many startup entrepreneurs have a "if you're over 40 we don't want to talk to you policy" but instead decide based on 50 year olds coming into their door telling them in their interview how relational databases were figured out in the 70's"
I read it as roughly: "Young entrepreneurs don't have a <40 policy. They're making a rational decision not to hire old people after encountering lots of old people telling them things they think are incorrect because of their age.". Which, I think, we both agree is dumb logic.
Yeah I was more pointing out that the things touched upon in an interview environment for inexperienced and experienced engineers can be wildly different. For inexperienced engineers, the interview can be spent talking about "new" technology, "new" ideas, and so on with excitement (despite the fact these things might altogether not be new or may be flawed.) For experienced engineers, at least in my experience, interviews tend to be more sobering and focused on blowing holes in ideas and talking about how they were bit by such-and-such an issue.
It's a hard balance. In the long haul, you often want people who are careful and diligent and have experience that tempers their urge to jump into things too quickly. But, this type of attitude can actually hurt in startups. In an interview where the particular 3 or 4 things you touch upon are extrapolated (correctly or not) to be the main self-identifying traits of how you work and how you think about problems, if you tell even just one story about superior databases from the 70's or seem to be overly-pedantic when it comes to blowing holes in ideas this can be a 'red flag.'
In a startup environment, I'd rather have the engineer who I think will fall in a hole 3 times and figure out a solution eventually than another who I think will think too hard and fall in one in 3x the time due to their fear built up from previous failures. In an interview, if I am spending my time with the person mostly talking about things that have gone wrong and how everything new is old, I will worry they will be too paralyzed to just hack on and break things -- and this type of focus, while obviously invaluable in many situations, tends to come from more experienced engineers since they have seen more shit go wrong.
Then you'd guess wrong. Take it from somebody in their forties - and I'm fortunate enough to be mistaken for being in my 30s quite often (the fat hides the wrinkles ;-)
I'm pretty skeptical that many startup entrepreneurs have a "if you're over 40 we don't want to talk to you policy" but instead decide based on 50 year olds coming into their door telling them in their interview how relational databases were figured out in the 70's
And there is the problem in a nutshell. That is ageism.
The assumption is that they're saying it because they are old. Not because their an idiot (or not ;-). It's http://xkcd.com/385/ - but for age not sex.
There are older developers who suck. But it's not because they're old. It's because they suck.