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

Ask HN: Over 60 = no engineering jobs?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 304 posts

Re: Ask HN: Over 60 = no engineering jobs?

#161

Post by Pfhreak »

iamdave wrote: post #144
kareemsabri wrote: post #137

I think a lot of startups are, frankly, ageist. They worry about "culture fit" from an older guy. There's a lot of twenty-something running around. They may also worry you don't want to put in the late nights and long hours they want due to perhaps family obligations, or that you may want more than they can afford to pay. If you're still on the market, we're hiring, and not ageist. I'm the CTO, 34.

They may also worry you don't want to put in the late nights and long hours they want due to perhaps family obligations Unless there's something broken, a system down, or a critical issue that needs to be fixed yesterday, I got news for you: I ain't staying late either. I'm 32 with a dog and a highly opinionated cat. Hire me, or don't. Plenty of other companies out there that respect work life balance and don't insis…

I started insisting on this when I was ~30. I've never had a problem with establishing that boundary early and holding to it strictly. No one has ever held me back in my career as a result.

I have put in long hours in the following circumstances:

* I really, really loved what I was doing, and I just wanted to do more of it

* There was an emergency and I was needed to resolve it. I'm happy to do this if my org has a culture of post-mortems, root causing, and following through on fixes.

* Annual review/perf season. I'm a manager of engineers (as well as an engineer). The one thing I'm willing to bend my boundaries on is making sure my people are well represented at perf time. Ideally I'd get this done in work hours, but I can't always, but I can't let someone lose recognition for their work because I couldn't find the time to write them up positively for it.

Re: Ask HN: Over 60 = no engineering jobs?

#162

Post by anonOver60 »

honkycat wrote: post #29

I feel like Google / Amazon / IBM / any of the larger companies would love to have you on board. Maybe look bigger instead of going for start-ups which are often run by children. Anymore people like hiring young inexperienced devs they can abuse and pay poorly. And then they wonder why we have to take months and months to pay off technical debt... Hiring managers and inexperienced management think anybody can learn t…

I've applied to Apple several times over the last 10 years for jobs requiring some very specific and rare skills that I have. They have never responded.

I've gone through the interview process at Google twice and was "close but rejected".

Re: Ask HN: Over 60 = no engineering jobs?

#163

Post by wins32767 »

As a hiring manager, we've found that there isn't a ton of good quality resumes that come in via applications; referrals then recruiters are the best sources of high quality candidates for us.

You may be getting circular filed because you're direct applying. Try reaching out to someone you know at the company or talk to a recruiter and your response rate will go up quite a bit.

Re: Ask HN: Over 60 = no engineering jobs?

#164

Post by southphillyman »

joewee wrote: post #17

Speaking from experience you need two resumes (I’m much younger, but with a long career). One that’s management focused and one that’s developer focused. Use the appropriate resume for the role you are applying for. Even though I’m a hands on engineer people didn’t want to consider me for roles because I had management experience and they thought the engineering role would be too boring, and vice versa. Reduce your r…

Interesting, I'm in my mid 30s and removed the dates of graduation when I was looking 3-4 yrs ago. The person I had reviewing my resume said removing the dates was a dead give away and they may assume I'm even older than I am so I put it back. Age hasn't been an issue for me yet but I have had people say things like "You don't look like you have a kid that old" and other strange things when we talk about personal things and they find a little about me. Now that I'm even older I may just remove education completely and try to get extra sleep leading up to any interviews to minimize my eye elasticity.

Re: Ask HN: Over 60 = no engineering jobs?

#165

Post by gaius »

gargarplex wrote: post #87
joewee wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need dates on jobs because they want to identify gaps in employment. The only exception would be if you are a contractor and all of the engagements were under your company. You would list the start and end of your consulting practice in that case.

I've screened thousands of resumes and I've never searched for gaps in employment. Some companies may do this but I haven't witnessed it. The things I search for all things obviously within a person's control: consistent formatting, sane file format & filename, and flawless grammar.

I've never searched for gaps in employment.

Several companies I’ve worked for have had a checkbox on the HR paperwork for interviews, have all gaps in the candidates CV been explained Y/N?

Re: Ask HN: Over 60 = no engineering jobs?

#166

Post by tombert »

justinhj wrote: post #95
joewee wrote: post #17

Speaking from experience you need two resumes (I’m much younger, but with a long career). One that’s management focused and one that’s developer focused. Use the appropriate resume for the role you are applying for. Even though I’m a hands on engineer people didn’t want to consider me for roles because I had management experience and they thought the engineering role would be too boring, and vice versa. Reduce your r…

I've instinctively done this for the last little while (I'm approaching my 50s). I list the last handful of jobs and no dates on the university courses etc. I don't put a huge list of languages and technology I've used, just the most recent and relevant. Not having problems so far.

I don't have nearly as much experience as you, but I've been doing the same thing. After giving a ton of interviews to people who put "concurrency" or "multithreading" as a skill on their resume (yes, really), I realized it's better to keep the information clear and relevant; listing off a million languages or vague skills is an easy way to make an interviewer look for reasons to call bullshit.

The recruiters I've dealt with usually want to slap on a bunch of crap like "Web scala Java OOP web-scale MEAN STACK" onto the resume before they submit it, but the solution to that is to do it all in LaTeX so that they don't know how to work with it :)

Re: Ask HN: Over 60 = no engineering jobs?

#168

Post by Permit »

honkycat wrote: post #29

I feel like Google / Amazon / IBM / any of the larger companies would love to have you on board. Maybe look bigger instead of going for start-ups which are often run by children. Anymore people like hiring young inexperienced devs they can abuse and pay poorly. And then they wonder why we have to take months and months to pay off technical debt... Hiring managers and inexperienced management think anybody can learn t…

>Maybe look bigger instead of going for start-ups which are often run by children.

If you are personally having difficulties interacting with people <30 years old a good first step would be not to patronize them.

Re: Ask HN: Over 60 = no engineering jobs?

#169

Post by rightbyte »

mattlondon wrote: post #73
infecto wrote: post #55

Serious question. Is ageism a huge deal? I am not arguing it does not exist but I think about what I have seen in the interviews I have done. We all have biases and I will never be completely unbiased but I try to at least be aware. I sometimes feel that ageism is actually the filter. I notice people I have worked with they at some point stop caring and they kind of give up. They don't stay relevant with whats happen…

With respect I think that those characteristics could equally apply to anyone - old, young or somewhere in the middle. I wouldn't say any of those are specific to people approaching their retirement age. For example I interviewed someone in their early 20s a little while ago who knew Angular 1 inside-out and to the absolute finest detail, but that is obsolete now that we're on Angular 6/React etc - they had never use…

Obsolete? Is this sarcasm? Angular 1 vs 6? Like, how can the burden of getting up to speed in a later version of the same framework even compare to that of getting your head into all legacy company code and how the coffe machine at the office is refilled?

"Oh, .Net 3.5 you say? We do 4.0 here. We call you back."

Coding has barely changed since the 60s. The screens are bigger.

It's the programs that have evolved not the programmers really.

Re: Ask HN: Over 60 = no engineering jobs?

#170

Post by pvarangot »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #30
joewee wrote: post #17

Speaking from experience you need two resumes (I’m much younger, but with a long career). One that’s management focused and one that’s developer focused. Use the appropriate resume for the role you are applying for. Even though I’m a hands on engineer people didn’t want to consider me for roles because I had management experience and they thought the engineering role would be too boring, and vice versa. Reduce your r…

So if you've been in and out of management and technical roles (like myself), how do you make those gaps between two resumes not look like gaps? Or, do you simply address it in interviews when asked?

In some management roles sometimes you hop between technical tasks and have more managerial months interleaved, specially in startups or mid to small firms. Sometimes they are not really gaps.
Post reply on HN