How is it like being interviewed by those far junior to you?

I started programming professionally in 1978, so I have interviewed with people much younger and naturally less experienced.

My strategy, if you can call it that, comes down to focusing on the job and their expectations. Don't patronize, don't tell old war stories. Someone may have less experience than me but know about things that I don't. I try to keep it friendly and respectful, concentrate on my relevant skills and experience. In that kind of interview situation you don't want to act superior or condescending.

I don't have a problem working with younger programmers. I understand that the age difference means we will probably have very different interests. I have children the same age as some of the people who have interviewed me. I won't work 16 hours a day for pizza and beer anymore, so younger people may perceive me as a poor fit for their culture. As long as I can keep the interview focused on skills and work goals I think we can find common ground, but I have got the "not a good fit for our team" rejection a couple of times, which I can interpret as age discrimination, or maybe just not a good match. Interpersonal dynamics and common purpose make or break a development team so if you don't match by age you have to match on enough other common attributes to make age and experience differences less relevant.

I started freelancing when I got to 45, and as a freelancer no one really cares about my age. I work with people from 20 years old up to mid-60s and either we jell and get the job done, or we don't.

I have interviewed as a junior those who were senior than me.

It’s like I’m asking about their scope of work and what was their experience. I dig deep into what they did. And I try to learn as much I can about the path their careers took.

From there I ask questions after getting insight into them.

What I am looking for is a wholesome discussion. If they are holding back, or not being completely upfront, I know I won’t be able to have the patience to deal with them.

The most senior person I interviewed had 30 years of experience more than me.

I encourage juniors in my team to interview staff level engineers all the time.

A significant part of a staff level and higher engineer is mentoring. I am looking to you to help train the juniors.

If you appear intimidating, the juniors are not going to be comfortable reaching out to you for help. If you appear condescending, same effect.

I explicitly ask the juniors to not evaluate the candidate from a technical skills point of view. Obviously that's a waste of time and an insult to the senior person. Instead, I ask them to evaluate the candidate from a human perspective. Does the candidate use every opportunity to showcase his/ her seniority? Does the candidate put you at ease?

I was interviewed at Google by a complete noob. Interesting experience. Maybe they gave that job to weed out robots, no idea.

Guideline: Speak extremely slowly, let it repeat several times. Let it confirm. Give up after several failed attempts to explain basics to the junior.

I was on the other side of the table once. I was hired by a company. And then I had to interview people to fill the role of my manager :) I was the first hire of the team that was being newly formed.