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Ask HN: My 56-year-old father is a developer having a tough time finding a job

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111–120 of 232 posts

Re: Ask HN: My 56-year-old father is a developer having a tough time finding a job

#111
Ask him to email me. I have 100% success rate to find people like your father jobs, and I do not charge them anything, in fact I will pay him $1000 if I can't find him a job. zq@nemcv.com. I have helped other people on hacker news and never failed yet

How do I do this? Because I change the mindset away from looking for a job based on skills to showing the value your father can add to a company

Re: Ask HN: My 56-year-old father is a developer having a tough time finding a job

#112
Full respect for your father learning MongoDB and Django. I do not see his age as an issue with that mindset. Maybe he can work remotely? Also may I recommend joining relevant IT recruitment interest groups on LinkedIn and Python/Django on Meetup.com.

Re: Ask HN: My 56-year-old father is a developer having a tough time finding a job

#113
post #76
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really less effective ? I would assume that experience would be a big help in making a developer more effective? Or are you saying you may be as effective, but not as able to work the crazy hours that still seem to be far too common in the industry?

Yeah I get a lot more done in a shorter amount of time at 42 than 19, but the 20 hour days are really punishing, although offset by being able to work some of it remote, but for companies that chart success by sheer number of hours and face time clocked rather than projects completed these are in general a poor match for any effective developer.

Don't work 20 hrs; that's 8hrs productive, 6 hrs at 50% and 6hrs probably making a big mess. Followed with 8hrs at 50 % and 12hrs making a big mess.

Have the courage to stop, sleep, eat and then come back with a fresh mind.

Re: Ask HN: My 56-year-old father is a developer having a tough time finding a job

#114

>"they can actually hire five young developers for the price of one senior dev" I'm sure your dad's experience warrants a premium over others but anybody asking 5x what other devs make are going to have difficulty finding a job unless they have exceptional reputation, contacts and some luck.

In practice, you can get five young devs in Spain for any arbitrary number you may suggest. Many of them are still landlocked due to lower English proficiency and lack of valuable experience.

Re: Ask HN: My 56-year-old father is a developer having a tough time finding a job

#115

Has he looked into finance? The UK banking scene is predominately in his age group (not that it matters). I'm 24 and worked in a team of people ranging from 30-60 i suppose. Also the sector is moving towards noSQL so it could be a good fit

Please tell me that the banks are not running Mongo?

Re: Ask HN: My 56-year-old father is a developer having a tough time finding a job

#116

Ask him to email me. I have 100% success rate to find people like your father jobs, and I do not charge them anything, in fact I will pay him $1000 if I can't find him a job. zq@nemcv.com. I have helped other people on hacker news and never failed yet How do I do this? Because I change the mindset away from looking for a job based on skills to showing the value your father can add to a company

Wow that sounds great! Could you maybe provide some examples of how you did that? It might be really useful...

Re: Ask HN: My 56-year-old father is a developer having a tough time finding a job

#117
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, if I have some interesting personal project that is useful for some group of people - I'd make a small business from it rather than dumping it online and just mentioning it on my CV ;)

No! - You likely won't, because of Spolsky [1] And... your parent commenter is right: "When it comes to hiring, I'll take a Github commit log over a resume any day.", jeresig [2] [1] The development abstraction layer ( http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/DevelopmentAbstractio... ) [2] John Resig on Twitter ( https://twitter.com/jeresig/status/33968704983138304 )

At least you should try. Maybe start small (and stay small..), there is always some path to escape from cubicle nation.. ;)

As for "github is your CV" hype:

http://www.ashedryden.com/blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-an...

https://blog.jcoglan.com/2013/11/15/why-github-is-not-your-c...

Re: Ask HN: My 56-year-old father is a developer having a tough time finding a job

#118

I don't know if his will help: I am 63, and I realize that I might not be as effective as I once was. What I do is offer a really low rate for telecommuting from home, and a much larger rate when working on site. So, for the last many years, I work cheaply from home and occasionally work on site (most recently at Google) for a much better consulting rate. I don't know if your father has the financial flexibility to f…

Mark, I think you're undercharging. May I ask you, have you tried higher rates and had problems with finding clients? i.e. how did you arrive on your current rates...

Re: Ask HN: My 56-year-old father is a developer having a tough time finding a job

#119
post #115

Has he looked into finance? The UK banking scene is predominately in his age group (not that it matters). I'm 24 and worked in a team of people ranging from 30-60 i suppose. Also the sector is moving towards noSQL so it could be a good fit

Please tell me that the banks are not running Mongo?

Actually some are..... 10 gen have a very effective sales force I guess!

Re: Ask HN: My 56-year-old father is a developer having a tough time finding a job

#120

Has he looked into finance? The UK banking scene is predominately in his age group (not that it matters). I'm 24 and worked in a team of people ranging from 30-60 i suppose. Also the sector is moving towards noSQL so it could be a good fit

No, he has not! Didn't know about that, but I'll tell him to definitely look into UK banks and apply. It might be a great match as he knows all the old tech banks are based upon but also the new stuff they could use to make their systems better. Thanks for the insight :)

Drop me a line, I work in a bank that's always looking for python devs. Contract rates in London are excellent too (easily > £500/day).

I'm ben perurbis com

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