Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 232 posts

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

#141

Post by flinkblinkhink »

zerr wrote: post #117
mqsiuser wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Github isn't your CV but one of the realities of human nature is that public recognition increases your standing in the eyes of job interviewers.

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

#142

Post by zerr »

mqsiuser wrote: post #136
zerr wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

On "the ethics of unpaid labor": YOU haven't been to a good university ? And on "Why github is not your CV": Your animated gif is not advancing the discussion AND nobody said that github=yourCV. You can bend reality (to your favour) but just not too much!

> Your animated gif is not advancing the discussion

Hmm, sorry, when I opened it used to be an article actually (and it is not mine). Here is the cache:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:yFBroqO...

>You can bend reality (to your favour) but just not too much!

This might be reality in some hipster web startup scene. I'm glad I'm not in that domain.

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

#143

Post by peterb »

My advice is to apply his engineering skills to the job hunt itself. Send out CV's every day, network, hunt, analyze data, look for patterns, etc. As he is discovering, job hunting is a full time job.

In Canada, there are organizations for older job hunters that help with resume preparation and cover letters, job hunting techniques, how to network effectively, etc. Working with others in a similar situation is great for your morale. I wish him good luck.

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

#144

Post by mqsiuser »

flinkblinkhink wrote: post #141
zerr wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Github isn't your CV but one of the realities of human nature is that public recognition increases your standing in the eyes of job interviewers.

Europe is very conservative: Standing out might be even a downer.

But generally good public (e.g. on github) standing should justifiy you a job (maybe even a highly paid one)

EDIT: Wow, thanks for the downvotes: Just to let you know: I LIVE (and work since almost 10 years) IN Europe! I have 2 (relevant!) projects on github and usually don't talk about them at hiring situations (though they are mentioned in my CV and are actually used (and appreciated) by people out there)

But look... you may just know better (and I am eager to hear your reply) !

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

#145

Post by secfirstmd »

majc2 wrote: post #130
[deleted] wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

> A 56 year old man with a family is going to struggle to just up and leave Spain and move to London though, isn't he? No more than a 30 year-old or 26 year-old with a family. It might even be the case that he's in a better position becasue his kids are grown up now. We don't know - so we should take the OP at their word that they're willing to move.

Market in London is pretty good at the moment.

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

#146

Post by prima-facie »

Is moving to somewhere like London an option for him? There's a lot of demand for good developers in London and the companies tend to not discriminate. I'm talking about more established companies especially. Source: I previously worked for a company that hired a 55 year old developer.

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

#147

Post by phillc73 »

tw04 wrote: post #66

He's worked as an executive, but never moved onto something more senior like a project manager????

In Europe the term "executive" when applied to a job title may mean something different to your perception. e.g. a Sales Executive is less senior than a Sale Manager.

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

#148

Post by Kurtz79 »

zerr wrote: post #97
lacker wrote: post #86

"Spain" seems like the magic phrase here. Unemployment in Spain is 24.5% right now. https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e... Meanwhile unemployment in the UK is 6.2% right now. https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e... I suggest looking for a job in London. A lot of tech companies are hiring there.

>Unemployment in Spain is 24.5% right now. Yes, but AFAIK developers are exceptions - at least in Catalonia. Especially experienced ones. Depends on how much salary is acceptable. As I researched, for senior devs, it is 35-45K EUR/annual, which is rather low... He may as well consider consulting.

Unfortunately it seems to me that consulting is not really a thing in Spain.

There are a lot of consulting jobs, but they are usually the domain of consulting companies (known as "cárnicas", meat factories, among developers), that do little more than acting as a middlemen between the hire and the actual company, pocketing the substantial difference between the consulting fees and paid salary.

But I work in a more traditional environment and possibly this is different in the case of web development.

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

#149

Post by asax »

gridspy wrote: post #72
mark_l_watson wrote: post #67

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…

Don't undersell your experience. You might not realise it, but occasionally an insight to use a particular approach might shave days to weeks off the development timescale. It's not all about how fast you can hammer out bits and bytes.

Wwwwwdzdd

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

#150

Post by jtheory »

mblevin wrote: post #28

Remote work online is absolutely going to be his best bet, and it will pay better. Check out: https://weworkremotely.com/ http://hnhiring.com/ (search for "remote") http://remotenation.co/blog/top-5-sites-for-finding-a-remote...

This is what I did; I live in central France but work in the UK (fully remote; I fly up once or twice a year normally for social gatherings).

I found the company where I'm not CTO via HN "who's hiring" in 2010.

My colleagues are scattered as well, and I don't know their ages. I haven't even met several of them in person, though we know each others' voices quite well by now!

Note to OP: it's worth posting a bit more about your father's experience; we're only sort-of hiring (and so haven't been posting to the threads on HN) but we're not doing Django or MongoDB... so it's hard to say if we'd be interested. No hard in sending a CV my way, anyway (see profile).

Post reply on HN