[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Been writing code for 40 years and can't get...
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Ask HN: Been writing code for 40 years and can't get hired
Merry Christmas to all! I would like to ask the advice of those
who have possibly been in my situation: I am over 50, and have
been developing software since the late 70's. Over the years I
switched from being a full timer at Hughes Aircraft in LA to a part
time consultant in Hawaii. Things went pretty well for decades, but
after a family loss I lost interest in work for several years.
Since then, and after my skills no doubt became somewhat outdated,
it is absolutely impossible to find work. The continuous news
articles about the "great quit" where many folks are leaving work,
as well as the claims that hirers are having great difficulty
finding employees seem to be fictional from my POV. Over the past
few years I have been only interviewed once or twice a year by
anyone who seemed interested, most notably Google and Facebook, but
neither decided I was a worthy hire. At this point it seems
impossible to get even a junior developer job! The only interest I
ever see is from recruiters overseas, who seem to be matching my
resume up with job listings by keyword only. Does anyone have any
advice for a developer who has been writing (and delivering) code
for over four decades on how to find a job? How do I make someone
believe they are hiring a developer who can deliver? I know it
sounds ridiculous, but that's the situation I am in!
Author : therealdavesky
Score : 47 points
Date : 2021-12-26 18:07 UTC (4 hours ago)
| tomcam wrote:
| Some tough love here, from the parallel universe you. It was
| people like you in the late 1970s who inspired me to be a
| programmer (literally, talking to Hughes aircraft programmers on
| the bus to high school about the JOVIAL language), but one thing
| I knew by the time I was about 12, say, 1973 or so, was that
| aerospace engineering in the Hughes aircraft world was boom and
| bust. I did not learn programming until I was 21(completely self-
| taught), in the early 1980s, but what I understood from the
| beginning was that I had to keep my skills up.
|
| Ever since then, even after getting a job as a program manager at
| Microsoft in the mid-1990s, I have continued until this day to
| assume that I would be fired and would have to find another job.
| Which means that I have studied every day for almost 40 years
| because I knew someday I would get old and less easy to hire. For
| the last two decades, I ran an extremely lucrative business, yet
| continue to keep my skills up.
|
| But I haven't heard from you is that you have tried to adjust to
| the market. The simple fact is, if you want to get paid what
| programmers get paid these days, you need to know what
| programmers know these days. After all, you made a good living in
| the 1970s because you had a special set of skills for that era.
| The easiest thing for you to learn at this point would be
| database backed web development, perhaps in python or (my
| favorite), Go. You could learn what you need to learn part time
| in about a year.
| artificial wrote:
| Getting up to speed with Go coming from another language isn't
| a hard ride. I really liked Bill Kennedy's approach, if you've
| got access to Oreilly (has a 10 day trial) his lectures are
| available there and you can power through those.
| black_13 wrote:
| therealdavesky wrote:
| swift seems like a good choice for me, and i am about to
| release an AR app in swift that produces algorithmic music ...
| what do you think about swift?
| matmatmatmat wrote:
| I have this same mindset and the same plan: Keep working, and
| keep learning. Do you have any insight from your many decades
| of experience that you would like to share? I would appreciate
| it.
| cc101 wrote:
| I have two suggestions. I'm 75 with 54 years programming
| experience. I got a job because the employer (a university)
| couldn't find anyone to do the work at a pathetic salary. That's
| suggestion number one: find an employer who is desperate. The
| misconceptions and prejudices of the employment system would
| prevent my resume-application from ever reaching the person
| making the hiring decision.
|
| The second suggestion is present yourself as a solution to an
| employer's diversity issue. You would have to lean very hard on
| this diversity angle to get past the recruiter and the HR office.
| Once you reach the actual decision maker switch to the benefits
| offered by a long and diverse career.
|
| Good luck
| therealdavesky wrote:
| thanks. i hear you on the desperate employer thing, that got me
| a job in 2001 working for DigiEffects when their code broke
| going from iOS9 to OSX
| DamonHD wrote:
| Get involved in some open source work so you can point it out?
| Yes, those keyword-driven recruiter things are a nonsense, but
| maybe that would trigger a useful one?
|
| Also, contracting, as suggested before.
| johnea wrote:
| therealdavesky I'm over 60, became employed recently for the
| first time in 11 years. I've been independent 1099 for about 1/2
| of my career. My history is mostly in C language embedded
| systems.
|
| Just keep hammering on indeed, or whatever other site you're
| applying on.
|
| It took me 6 months to get employed. With many many multi-
| interview companies not offering in the end.
|
| Just keep at it, you'll find a match...
| smitty1e wrote:
| Question to the audience:
|
| Given the prevalence of Stackoverflow, Reddit, &c, and the launch
| of https://repost.aws , has anyone gotten on there and
| demonstrated enough technical heft to turn into an interview?
|
| I get the occasional ping on LinkedIn, but haven't really
| followed up on that.
|
| Answer to the author: You probably know the deal about cleared
| work as government contractor. Relatively stable gigs, but nearly
| impossible to stay cutting edge. You may need to take a "murder"
| job for long enough to kick-start the resume, but you'd have to
| satisfy yourself as to why you'd eat the indenture.
| smorgusofborg wrote:
| Someone else already mentioned it but I also think it is a good
| idea to look for University IT/DevOps positions, or maybe
| scientific computing, etc. They are generally much more
| interested in reliability over risk and are much happier with
| someone who will hold things together for a few decades than
| someone who will bring in fads and then get hired away.
| wackget wrote:
| As a web developer who works almost exclusively in PHP/SQL and
| devops, if I was presented with a "Leetcode" challenge or any
| other intentionally esoteric / purely theoretical bullshit
| interview technique I would immediately but politely excuse
| myself from the process.
|
| That nonsense is utterly non-representative of what the average
| programmer will be doing on a daily basis.
|
| Even Leetcode's most "easy" problem just seems utterly ridiculous
| to me: https://leetcode.com/problems/two-sum/
|
| What next? "Vim golf" scores in interviews?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Even Leetcode's most "easy" problem just seems utterly
| ridiculous to me
|
| Generalized slightly from the specifics, "return the indexes of
| the elements, one from each list, constituting a tuple
| satisfying a predicate" is not an utterly ridiculous task
| unrepresentative of things real programmers need to understand
| how to do. Yeah, usually it won't be lists of integers or the
| sun operation returning a particular value as the predicate,
| but none of that is particularly significant to the task.
| therealdavesky wrote:
| I don't remember the problems Google asked me to solve, there
| were 5 of them during a daylong interview in Mountain View. WRT
| Facebook, the problems were a schedule organizer (iOS) and a
| contact tracer (iOS). The FB second problem was a NSRange
| intersection problem.
|
| I agree that leetcode-esque problems used to decide aptitude
| are a poor judge of overall performance, and it may show a bit
| of desperation (and slacker behavior) coming from the HR
| departments of MANGA companies
| globular-toast wrote:
| You think finding two numbers in an array is ridiculous? How do
| you think software like the OS, web browser etc. is made?
| Someone has to do stuff like this...
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean for outdated skills? Where I work we
| don't usually hire for tech stack or languages, we test more
| design pattern, principles, architectural knowledge even
| knowledge about paradigms, which are like not things that change
| often, I guess you have to know what pattern becomes an
| antipattern. I think maybe you might have found some javascript
| developers that to me have always felt very stuck and
| introvert(?) with their tech stack or last framework hunting, but
| I think to be able to give you an informed opinion one should
| know also what kind of knowledge you have and what have you
| built, and what kind of positions you're applying to
| Flankk wrote:
| Big tech is very much ageist. It goes beyond discrimination
| during the interview process. Companies like this will take steps
| to weed older folks out of their company for good, it's awful.
| What programming languages and skills do you have on your resume?
| dave333 wrote:
| Whenever companies lay off a significant amount of people they
| have to be very careful they don't fire more older people or
| they run into problems with Dept of Labor. Most FAANG big tech
| hasn't had to layoff much if ever yet but it's true for older
| companies like Sun, Cisco, Yahoo etc.
| therealdavesky wrote:
| I didn't expect so many replies, thanks for the help! Over the
| years my skills have been spread across a variety of platforms:
| >>Most types of UIs: text based, old school assembly code, weak
| in react but strong in iOS >>2D / 3D interfaces and data
| visualization: 3D simulators and demos for aerospace
| >>Multimedia / Transmedia : After Effects plugins, music
| videos, analog studio expertise >>VRML visuals: did lots of
| live EDM shows on Maui in the nineties, the app is called
| SpacePark, but only runs in VRML
|
| My "real world" resume i.e. "what have you done for me lately?"
| can be seen on the app store (iOS) huedoku
| (its a color game) huedoku pix (sharable games)
| oogiecam (synaesthetic app, converts colors to sounds)
|
| again thanks for the input
| Flankk wrote:
| Most of those skills are still applicable today. I'm gonna go
| against what others are saying, I don't think you need to
| upgrade anything. I wouldn't apply to web companies unless
| they need an iOS dev. Objective-C is high pay but you should
| stay in the music industry if that's what you like. It's not
| like you only know ASM or COBOL.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Oh, iOS experience? Your skills are in demand in the
| e-commerce space. The past two companies I worked for were
| always looking for iOS/Swift developers. Keep applying!
| anovikov wrote:
| I would absolutely recommend contracting. Contracting world is
| full of bs and of profoundly unqualified people still getting
| paid well. Someone with a track record like yours will clearly
| stand out there.
| therealdavesky wrote:
| sorry, i wasnt clear enough. the last half of my career was
| exclusively doing freelance work, Hughes laid me off in 1998.
| aaronrobinson wrote:
| Build a side project using modern tech. You'll learn a bunch and
| then you can put those skills on your CV. I'm happy to look over
| your CV and guide you on stuff I would look out for. There are
| also programmes for people that have been out of the industry for
| a while.
| therealdavesky wrote:
| here are two side projects, please let me know what you think:
|
| huedoku.com (and the app on itunes)
|
| oogiecam (on itunes)
|
| thanks!
| thehaze wrote:
| +1 on this. Code some project on a pro bono basis using the
| latest tech, then use that as your ticket.
| navyad wrote:
| +1 learn, build and show.
| austincheney wrote:
| Think like an insecure beginner. Learn to write React JavaScript
| framework.
|
| Don't overthink this and don't think like a technologist. If you
| can write small declarative code islands to put text into a
| browser you can get hired for six figures. You have to be willing
| to be trendy and preference tools over code while working with
| people in their lower 20s who may or may not value programming
| experience.
| therealdavesky wrote:
| i hear you, but i need to think more iOS for the time being,
| what about swiftUI? is it still too early in swiftUIs life to
| write real apps?
| w_t_payne wrote:
| Maybe getting contracting gigs might be easier than finding perm
| roles?
| therealdavesky wrote:
| contracting jobs are great, and I love them. its all about
| getting referrals, that has been the best route to new jobs, at
| least for me
| musesum wrote:
| Have been writing code since the mid '70s. But, that has been
| mostly with startups. YMMV
|
| Two years ago, I ran out of money. So, I started interviewing.
| One example was interviewing for the Apple Watch team. My
| experience included the design and code lead of an Apple Watch
| product, which was featured by Apple. But, I failed the Coderpad.
| Why? The interviewer wanted me to use a new Swift generic syntax,
| which I had never seen before. With an unfamiliar code editor. In
| under 10 minutes. Did it matter that I had an Apple Watch
| product, which he could download from the AppStore and ran super
| fast on a Series 0? Nope. Did it matter that he could download a
| 29K Swift based functional ontology that I wrote? Nope.
|
| The point is that there are two skills: writing code and getting
| past the interview. The latter is often conducted by a
| 20-something, just out of college. So, there is more emphasis on
| tacit knowledge of the tools and techniques. It feels more like
| passing a finals exam.
|
| A few years ago my CEO hired Gayle Laakman to prep the team for
| an acquisition by a FAANG. I loved the puzzles and read her book
| [1] cover to cover. But, I hated the premise of avoiding "false
| positives". A famous false negative is Max Howell [2] (who went
| on to write Apple's Swift Package Manager)
|
| So, how did I get a gig? I kept trying. Learned new frameworks.
| Focused on jobs interviews which had a take home. During the on-
| site, I insisted on using my own laptop. An often overlooked
| factor in achieving a coding flow-state is muscle memory.
|
| I've been told that some companies are shifting from whiteboard
| to take-home -- particularly during covid. Post covid, if the
| option is available to you, try moving to the Bay Area or Austin
| and attend every single hackathon that looks interesting. If you
| don't want to leave HI, maybe contribute to an open source
| project in some way.
|
| Or perhaps, start a company. Maybe there's an opportunity in
| refactoring Aerospace code? I dunno. Now, I'm guessing ...
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-
| Programming...
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9695102
| dave333 wrote:
| I was in a similar situation in 2007 having been out of
| programming work since the dot com bust in 2001. I got hired at a
| small startup where I happened to do well on the interview - I
| aced a couple of brain teaser like interview questions and just
| happened to be a cultural and personal good fit with the
| interviewers. I then got to choose the front end framework for
| the company and chose ExtJS and that keyword on my resume got me
| headhunted into a major tech firm 6 months later. So pick some
| current hot tech stack/framework and get some experience with it
| even if you have to work on open source or pro bono for a bit.
| bradlys wrote:
| You'll need to get up to speed with modern interviewing
| practices. Unless you know someone - people don't care what
| you've done. They care about how you perform in the interview.
|
| True with most of the top paying companies. I'd suggest doing a
| 100 problems on LC (try the subject study guides first) before
| interviewing again.
|
| Doesn't sound fun but that's how it is now. The bar is high for
| all candidates - at least for top paying companies. Haven't seen
| one yet that lets you skip the bs unless you know someone high
| up.
| champagnois wrote:
| LC?
| artificial wrote:
| LeetCode
| kjksf wrote:
| I second that.
|
| LC is https://leetcode.com/
|
| There are other similar websites for practicing interview
| questions. The important thing is to use at least one of them.
| gopher_space wrote:
| > people don't care what you've done. They care about how you
| perform in the interview.
|
| I think OP is expecting a level of competence from interviewers
| that simply doesn't exist anymore. He's from a time when the
| initial conversation would be engineers only and absolutely
| focused on past projects.
| mavelikara wrote:
| > I think OP is expecting a level of competence from
| interviewers that simply doesn't exist anymore.
|
| No. OP has not realized that the job market has plenty of
| charlatans who can talk well, but can't do the job.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| There's a lot of banks in Europe that have Cobol and M4 legacy
| systems which need maintenance. Banks tend to pay well and
| there's few young people competing for these boring jobs.
|
| I'd say double down on the fact that you have experience with old
| technology. Then find a good headhunter / recruitment firm to
| work with you. If you're willing to start out as an external
| contractor, they might get you started working without any
| interview at all.
|
| Also, do some projects just for fun. Nothing screams "fake" like
| a self-proclaimed experienced coder with no battle stories.
| yuppie_scum wrote:
| Just quick perspective check: Facebook and Google are high bars
| to set for yourself. With some hyperbole we could say that's like
| saying you've been paying the guitar for 40 years but neither the
| Beatles nor Stones would hire you. You could have a great and
| lucrative career playing guitar for, like, the Pretenders or
| something.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Each of those hire thousands of employees and they are saying
| that 40 years experience is less important than 6 months of
| leetcode. The analogy doesn't fit
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Yes I have done this in my 40s: Go to a coding boot camp. Sure,
| you will be possibly the oldest one there, but do it. Do the
| work, stay humble. Choose a focus (front end, full stack,
| backend) and sharpen on the latest tech.
|
| I went in-person, but remote learning could work. I highly
| recommend choosing somewhere where there is code peer-reviews and
| instructor reviews. Self-learning is harder than it looks when
| you have a family.
|
| When I recently was hired, I noted they specifically wanted cloud
| programmers, not local desktop programmers. Therefore, make sure
| you choose a bootcamp that works with Heroku or AWS or Vultr,
| etc, to get that exposure.
|
| Also, consider going to local meetups that focus on coding
| (meetup.com or other channels). Listen to what they're talking
| about and what the latest trends are. Some even offer
| mentorships.
|
| You can do it. (And after you've done it, help others.)
| icedchai wrote:
| Maybe look for jobs at defense contractors?
| icsa wrote:
| The churn rate of current software development practice is quite
| rapid. When you took several years off, you "fell out of the job
| market". In effect, you need to reboot your skill & tool set to
| make current.
|
| In addition, you _must_ reboot your interviewing skills. I 've
| been a professional software interviewer (600+ interviews) and
| have seen most very experienced software developers do quite
| poorly during interviews. The interview skills required for
| FAANG-like companies and startups alike are _very_ different from
| the skills required to work as a typical software engineer.
|
| The interview is the gateway to getting the job. As such, good or
| great interview skills (i.e. algorithms, data structures, time &
| space complexity) are a pre-requisite to getting a job.
|
| I hope that the above advice is useful and helpful.
| ivanhoe wrote:
| > As such, good or great interview skills (i.e. algorithms,
| data structures, time & space complexity) are a pre-requisite
| to getting a job.
|
| This is so wrong. Headhunters are acting like typical
| bureaucrats and instead of adapting their approach to make it
| better at finding the actual talent (the whole point of their
| job), they push for developers to fit their stereotype tests
| better.
|
| Just like back in the school when we had to learn what
| professors want to see in essays, instead of learning to
| actually write better...
| therealdavesky wrote:
| absolutely on the skills evaluations! delivering code cant be
| summed up on a spreadsheet
| cc101 wrote:
| WTF! It's your job to find people who can do the work. It is
| NOT the applicant's job to fit your preferred interview design.
| Talk about arrogance!
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Maybe it is his job to execute the interview design.
| paulcole wrote:
| If an applicant needs the job more than the company needs
| that applicant, then yes it is the applicant who will have to
| blink first.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| There are thousands of people looking for jobs at any
| particular moment who "can do the work."
|
| If you are searching for your next position out of need, then
| you are not special. The employees who can afford to have
| egos are those who are being recruited.
| Koshkin wrote:
| I take it you have never heard about the Criteria Cognitive
| Aptitude Test (or similar) that every candidate has to take
| nowadays even before being invited for a technical interview.
| filoleg wrote:
| I've spent past 2 years interviewing at all sorts of
| companies (from FAANG to small startups to fintech) while
| working at my current place, and just recently accepted an
| offer.
|
| Only counting those where i got all the way to the final
| rounds, my sample size is roughly 15-20. Not even once have
| I encountered anything even remotely similar to the
| Criteria Cognitive Aptitude test, and neither have I heard
| of it from friends of mine who were interviewing as well. I
| had a couple "take home programming challenge" things as a
| filter before the initial interview, but they were either
| leetcode-like or project-based, not some diet coke version
| of IQ testing.
|
| With that in mind, it seems blatantly wrong to say that
| "this is everywhere these days". Out of curiosity, what
| type of companies did you encounter that tested you with a
| cognitive aptitude test? No need for company names if you
| arent comfortable sharing, just curious about what type of
| companies those were (e.g., small startups or big tech or
| non-tech big companies or etc.).
| hppb wrote:
| It's a description of reality. We can agree the situation is
| unfair, and that the big companies show an arrogant approach,
| but if you want to get hired you have to conform to what is
| asked and expected.
| spirodonfl wrote:
| I get what you're saying but this attitude is what
| essentially says "Developers are ok with this crap so keep
| doing it please". Or, in other words, you say it's unfair
| but then participate anyways and whatever you say no longer
| has value.
|
| It really doesn't take much effort. Non compliance to this
| kind of interview BS would make at of these unfair
| practices go away.
| therealdavesky wrote:
| you are right, but maybe if they asked me "whats your best
| area"? and then asked me to do something imaginative in that
| area then perhaps that would reveal more of a developer's
| talent than mere algorithm testing...??
| gregoriol wrote:
| If you "have seen most very experienced software developers do
| quite poorly during interviews" then you are the problem.
| Change the way you interview.
| irvingprime wrote:
| +100
| therealdavesky wrote:
| thanks. that is a good observation. tomorrow i will be
| talking with a meta recruiter who has already emailed me that
| i am "100% what they are looking for" ...but ... maybe would
| you like passing these coding tests first???
| pfp wrote:
| > I've been a professional software interviewer (600+
| interviews) and have seen most very experienced software
| developers do quite poorly during interviews.
|
| So... you've 1) realized you're dealing with experienced people
| and 2) yet discarded them based on irrelevant "interview
| skills"?
|
| How does this serve the company trying to hire someone?
|
| FWIW, the couple of times I've interviewed someone -- I've
| always given the guy a 2nd chance if I've seen he's obviously
| nervous or just not on a good day, but has the material. Even
| an autistic nerd like myself can spot that and have the common
| decency to look past trivial human weaknesses.
|
| Besides, I'd rather pick a genuine human being as a colleague
| rather than some overbearing, over-social, potentially arrogant
| prick whose competitive urges are liable to disrupt technical
| decision making down the line. Those types belong in the suite
| & tie department, not in tech.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| I agree, we interviewed some potentially skilled people that
| just didn't interview well. Even when I interview, I must have
| someone give me several warm up interviews.
| tester756 wrote:
| > The interview skills required for FAANG-like companies and
| startups alike are very different from the skills required to
| work as a typical software engineer.
|
| What are those start up skills?
| thalis wrote:
| Merry Christmas. I'm Software Engineer, near 50 and I faced the
| same problem with you. I propose to you two paths. The first and
| is what I did. I moved in a field that I was not very famirial
| with and it concerns industrial programming and especially in
| CODESYS (ST programming). This is a relatively new technology but
| the way you design and programming is similar to those of
| previous decades. The second is to start your own company related
| or not to your field, taking advantage of your knowledge,
| experience and skills. I wish you the best.
| luhego wrote:
| Practice Leetcode for a couple a months. Then apply again to
| Facebook, Google and similar companies. There is a lot of luck
| involved when passing those interviews. So to increase your
| chances, increase your interview skills and increase the number
| of interviews. Good luck in your search.
| therealdavesky wrote:
| i did that for the first FB interview, spent 6 weeks writing
| leet puzzles down by hand, thinking them over 3X before coding,
| and then solving the problems.
|
| But then the interviewer hit me with a topic i didnt cover.
| wups!
| adamredwoods wrote:
| I can relate. I don't enjoy the "pop quiz" type of interview
| questions, asking weird coding questions that never come up
| in the job. If it was just to find out how extensive my
| knowledge is and use it to converse on topics, that's fine,
| but they (Ama$on) use it as a all-or-nothing filter. One miss
| and you're out. We all have gaps.
| lkrubner wrote:
| One possibility is to chose a specialty that is in high demand,
| and where you are not competing directly with large numbers of
| younger people. So, for instance:
|
| 1. Don't focus on frontend work. There are large numbers of young
| people going through development bootcamps and there specializing
| in front end work.
|
| 2. Maybe focus on devops. Right now, in New York City, the top
| devops people are charging between $200 and $300 an hour. And, in
| my experience (and with some notable exceptions) devops people
| tend to be older. But this strategy would require you to push
| yourself very hard to come up to speed on modern devops, which is
| a vast subject. It really depends on your own self-discipline. If
| you don't know much about this topic, you'll need to study 12
| hours a day for 6 months to come up to speed. But presumably you
| already know some of the languages that play a large role.
| Ideally, you already know Python, as Ansible still plays a large
| role in devops.
| mattlondon wrote:
| Despite various laws etc, don't mention your age on your resume,
| and only list a few previous roles (perhaps the last 5-8 years
| max with "more details available on request" or something vague).
| Don't put your graduation date etc. Don't list job history going
| back decades. Basically don't give people any ammo to think you
| are "old".
|
| Bias - unconscious or otherwise - is real. It sucks but you may
| need to try to work around it and play the games. Don't lie, just
| don't mention it or bring it up.
|
| Good luck.
| zamalek wrote:
| I would never work at a FAANG unless I had no other option. They
| will pay you handsomely, but they will take their pound of flesh.
| It's also extremely monocultural: your life, your world, your
| culture, is about their bottom line.
|
| Personally, if I was presented with a leetcode interview (I was
| interviewing a few months ago), I bowed out pretty damned
| quickly.
|
| You really need to catch up on the tech. In addition to what the
| other comments are saying, look into contributing:
| https://github.com/MunGell/awesome-for-beginners
|
| Obviously, FAANG is for some people. You seriously need to have a
| very hard think if that is you.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| What you are saying is true of only a handful of business units
| in these companies. The rest of the supporting engineering
| staff does like 5-30 hours of actual work per week and some of
| the most stress comes from feeling under utilized or
| unimportant.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Yeah idk what model the OP has of FAANGs in his/her mind, but
| it's totally misaligned with reality.
|
| _Some_ roles at Amazon fit that model. But most roles at
| bigcorps are where you go to coast, vs startups where you
| have to actually show results and put in a full 40 (at least)
| hours a week.
| kgc wrote:
| It's probably nothing to do with your actual age. Your skillset
| matters most. You can either upgrade your skillset or look for
| jobs where your existing skillset puts you at an advantage.
| fdsfre4532 wrote:
| You should contact a technical recruiter. There are I'm sure
| thousands of software development openings in your area from
| companies you have never heard of but with salaries that are
| 60-80% of FAANG.
| therealdavesky wrote:
| i forgot to indicate where I am. if I was in silicon valley it
| may be a bit easier to get references, currently i am in the
| rainforest on the big island and they sub out all their tech to
| the mainland here.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > Since then, and after my skills no doubt became somewhat
| outdated, it is absolutely impossible to find work.
|
| This seems like the obvious problem here. You need to make sure
| that you have skills that are relevant for the current job
| market. If you're an experienced developer then it shouldn't take
| you very long to get up to speed, but you can't expect to just
| not learn anything new and walk into a job.
|
| I would recommend picking a technology, spending 4-6 weeks
| learning it (in this time you can also produce some sample
| project code that you can use to convince potential employers of
| your skill), then start applying for jobs.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| I agree. As a follow up, the OP might benefit from posting the
| skills they emphasize on their resume and maybe we can confirm
| whether or not they are indeed outdated, and make suggestions
| on what new technologies they can learn.
| mtk0 wrote:
| same! oh the stories i could tell...
| armchairhacker wrote:
| How many applications are you sending out and who are you
| applying to? Are you contacting recruiters? That's important
| information missing here.
|
| I suggest looking at startups as I imagine the number of
| applicants is much less and interviews are less
| "leetcode"-oriented. Also as someone else suggested, you can look
| for consulting work, then if you want to transition to full-time
| you will have up-to-date experience.
| octobus2021 wrote:
| My situation is somewhat different but there's similarities.
|
| Also over 50 (barely), skills are not exactly outdated (Azure
| data engineering/analytics), but been looking for a job since
| being laid off early in the pandemic (going on 1.5 years gap on
| the resume). Took a few months hiatus in 2020 since the job
| market was pretty much dead and got a few certifications. Just
| this month got 4 rejections, partly because of big gap on the
| resume (specifically mentioned in one of the rejections). Being
| older white non-veteran male doesn't help either.
|
| What I'm finding interesting is how people surprised that it has
| been difficult to find a job if you were laid off during or right
| before the lockdowns. I don't think people realize how difficult
| it has been to find a job in this environment.
|
| I'm also not observing "labor shortage" which is presumably the
| result of a "big resignation". Companies are taking their time
| responding to the applications and scheduling interviews,
| recruiters and HRs routinely disappear if you don't follow up, a
| huge percentage of my applications never get answered at all
| without a way to follow up (I only apply where I see some fit
| with my skillset), requirements are very specific and at times
| not realistic. Applied for a position which required min 5 years
| of experience with Azure Synapse which only went live in 2020.
| Another company was/is looking for BI director with experience in
| developing strategic roadmaps, setting up data governance, master
| data management, building and managing a distributed team, who
| also has recent 5+ years hands-on experience setting up new BI
| environment in Azure, designing the data model, building ETLs
| with Azure Data Factory, and building and maintaining PowerBI
| dashboards (I was deemed "not hands-on enough").
| therealdavesky wrote:
| that was a great way to describe the jobs paradox right now
| dbs wrote:
| Where are you based?
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Sorry to hear it's been rough. But it seems you are getting
| traction? My philosophy is that half the skill in finding a
| job, (at least in my recent experience) is luck. Keep trying.
| dpeck wrote:
| Tell us more about what you want to do. There's a lot of people
| on HN who hire developers.
|
| Do you have anything you want focus on or do you pride yourself
| on being a generalist?
|
| Architect, team lead, or pure development of a system from day to
| day?
|
| And business domains that you're especially familiar with or
| interested in? E-commerce, SaaS, aerospace, business systems,
| data engineering, etc.
|
| Give us a little more and someone here might take an interest and
| be able to help directly. The start of the year generally sees an
| uptick in hiring due to some pent-up demand from the previously
| 30-45 days when a lot of business processes slow down.
| PeterWhittaker wrote:
| I'll second that. We've got potential openings for either
| React/Node or C/SELinux/FPGA work.
| therealdavesky wrote:
| if anyone wants a lead engineer on a X-style project,
| something that is out in the fringes, a project with legacy
| code, unusual multimedia/3D projects, ATE (automated test
| equipment) projects i may be able to help you
|
| also can help in most multimedia projects involving studio
| equipment, audio sampling, video processing, MIDI software,
| and old-school graphics.
| therealdavesky wrote:
| forgot to mention, i am weak in react, i like it because it
| is similar to swiftUI but havent been able to come up with
| a good project involving react and the types of multimedia
| apps i am currently developing... if a good idea came up to
| me involving react and multimedia that's different.
| cevi wrote:
| Finance is one field which is desperate for good coders, and
| which is using tons of outdated software. I'm sure there are
| other fields like that, too - think really old companies with
| critical software that can't be ported to newer paradigms in case
| some tiny oversight breaks it.
| cyb_ wrote:
| In addition to the other great suggestions: think about how you
| present your attitude during the interview process.
|
| IME, many hiring managers want to see passion (desire to focus on
| the user/mission), drive (evidence you will work hard), and
| humility (ability to be a team player), in addion to technical
| skills.
|
| Displaing corresponding negative traits can really undermine
| their view of you. For example, cynicism, ignorance/resistance to
| hot/new tech/approaches, lack of interest in learning on your own
| time, condescension for decisions they have made, disdain for the
| hiring process, etc.
| therealdavesky wrote:
| ummm. also i have an iterview with meta tomorrow morning.
| beardedman wrote:
| Tech unfortunately moves at a blistering pace. Perhaps see where
| you'd like to pick things up and do a crash course of some sort
| (Udemy, etc).
| Tepix wrote:
| > _Over the past few years I have been only interviewed once or
| twice a year by anyone who seemed interested, most notably Google
| and Facebook, but neither decided I was a worthy hire. At this
| point it seems impossible to get even a junior developer job!_
|
| I don't see how you can have a mere two job interviews (that
| likely have many applicants each) and then arrive at this
| conclusion.
|
| How many jobs have you applied to? What are you doing to stay up-
| to-date or get back up to speed?
| therealdavesky wrote:
| obviously i havent applied enough. it is usually about 10 per
| month.
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