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Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

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Re: Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

#191

Post by dj43nq »

ngngngng wrote: post #32
samstave wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but people also take jobs because they really need the money. I don't know if you have spent any meaningful amount of time without a job/money - but this world REALLY fucking sucks when you have no income.

A good strategy in this scenario is to take the first job you can when you need money, but keep interviewing. This way you can be more selective since your needs are already being met.

Agreed. Employers don't necessarily deserve loyalty unless they earn it. They often fire people on a whim to rapidly lower costs for this quarter. Meanwhile someone has missed time with family etc to meet an arbitrary deadline that only really benefited someone in marketing anyway.

Employers afraid of losing employees should be reminded that employees aren't property. Employees are often stuck with employers for multiple hard reasons and employers know this and exploit it. I've encountered many employers who actively select for employees based on their ability to be manipulated for these kinds of reasons, eg student / mortgage debt as handcuffs.

Re: Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

#192

Post by dj43nq »

wheaties wrote: post #36
ngngngng wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good strategy in this scenario is to take the first job you can when you need money, but keep interviewing. This way you can be more selective since your needs are already being met.

Sorry but that's a very good way to hurt your career. The community is surprisingly small. As in, I swear it's less than 3 hops from me to most people who might cross my desk when recruiting. I can tell you we know who have done this and we shy away from them. They're a waste of time.

I've been criticised because I was only at a job for 12 months. I've also been criticised for staying 3 years.

Apparently I'm a terrible employee who left too early and stayed too long. I'm so glad I'm no longer an employee - hiring is horribly broken.

Re: Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

#193

Post by khazhoux »

Yenderman wrote: post #56

When I was 30, people just looked at me and assumed I was a competent software engineer because I looked exactly like a very senior software engineer, and I presented myself in that way. But I was very junior, having made a recent career change. Yet they paid me like a prince, and I rose so rapidly through the ranks that I became an executive. Now I'm 50, and my company folded and I went to the curb, and am looking f…

> My over-40 career advice for you is to remember what they do to engineers that are over 40.

No offense personally intended, but as a mid-40s engineer/manager who knows many 40s/50s engineers, I can't relate to this sentiment. We have a couple of older engineers who are kinda useless, but we also have some useless young engineers too. Some of the older engineers dominate the engineering org, leading large architectures and more-often-than-not seeing technical issues very clearly and making good calls. Their defining characteristic is that they're good, not that they have gray hair.

My over-40 career advice for everyone is to stay sharp.

Re: Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

#194

Post by randycupertino »

I think you absolutely can find a position that fulfills your requirements (mainly because I have one like that and love it!), however it's either going to take just getting lucky and striking gold randomly, or networking like crazy with your network and having them tell you about what the work atmosphere at their office is like and back channeling you with their HR. Great companies with great work cultures exist, but they're like exclusive rent control apartments... we tend to fill openings with internal referrals because the talent brings their best colleagues from their previous jobs.

How I got into where I am was I dumb-lucked into it by connecting with a great recruiter and randomly having the hiring team like me a lot. I've been there two years and have recruited two of my best previous coworkers from other jobs to come join us. We are all loving life.

Anyways... work your network! Good luck and don't give up!! I would say stay away from newbie startups and go to midsize profitable firms.

edit: I don't have my own private office, but I have a really big high walled private cube with a door. big enough to leave my bike inside it and do yoga inside. I love it. I feel dorky in a cube but it is really nice!

Re: Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

#195

Post by scarface74 »

Yenderman wrote: post #56

When I was 30, people just looked at me and assumed I was a competent software engineer because I looked exactly like a very senior software engineer, and I presented myself in that way. But I was very junior, having made a recent career change. Yet they paid me like a prince, and I rose so rapidly through the ranks that I became an executive. Now I'm 50, and my company folded and I went to the curb, and am looking f…

I completely disagree with this sentiment. I have a group of six friends from a former company that I still keep in touch with and we meet for lunch at least once a month , the youngest is 42 and the oldest is in his late 50s. The guy in his late 50s, hired all of us at our former company. He “self demoted” to a developer after his kids graduated.

None of us have any desire for management. We all keep up with the latest technology and any of us regularly get jobs within a month or two depending on how picky we are being.

I am in my mid 40s, been developing professionally for over 20 years and it’s never taken me more than a month to get a job from the time I start looking. I am nowhere near the west coast but I do live in s major metropolitan area.

Re: Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

#196

Post by scarface74 »

ddebernardy wrote: post #112
jcroll wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> remember what they do to engineers that are over 40. May I ask what do you mean by this? I'm an engineer entering my late 30's, what is it exactly that I have to prepare for by the time I enter my 40s?

They eventually get fired because too old/too expensive. Get into management/team leadership in a way or another asap. You're probably not feeling this right now because the economy is overheated. But be wary of the next recession if you're still doing the same job - however much better - than a junior for several times their salary. (If you've specialized and valuable skills that are extremely hard to replace you sh…

If you've specialized and valuable skills that are extremely hard to replace you should be fine. But if you're doing generic stuff it's time to take a cold hard look at what your career will be in the next 25 years.

I agree completely. After ignoring my career and staying at one job for 10 years, I woke up in my mid 30s and realized I was way behind the times. I was a C/C++ bit twiddler.

I started over, took a lateral salary move on a path of being a .Net “Enterprise Developer”. Eight years, 4 jobs, a lot of studying, and humbling myself under much younger team lead, I got a job as a dev team lead responsible for building a software development department.

After that, I again saw the writing on the wall and knew I needed to make another pivot. I had a choice between another job as an architect leading a team of 10 on a Windows/.Net product paying $15K+ more or being “just a developer” in title making $7K more but with a chance to work with tech that the cool kids were doing. I chose the latter.

At this point, all of the standard “full stack developer” jobs are paying less than I make now. But I still need to learn $frontend_framework_of_the_week along with Node to add onto my architecture experience.

Re: Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

#197

Post by scarface74 »

madeuptempacct wrote: post #76
Yenderman wrote: post #56

When I was 30, people just looked at me and assumed I was a competent software engineer because I looked exactly like a very senior software engineer, and I presented myself in that way. But I was very junior, having made a recent career change. Yet they paid me like a prince, and I rose so rapidly through the ranks that I became an executive. Now I'm 50, and my company folded and I went to the curb, and am looking f…

The prospect of being a senior dev and 40 is terrifying to me. The only ones who are treated with any respect are the "real" wizards - i.e. the guys who spent every spare second if their life breathing tech. The guy who decompiles third party code at 4 am to see why their update caused an error in our system (real recent story). The other (very competent) older people get actively harassed. Some little *es from my co…

The prospect of being a senior dev and 40 is terrifying to me. The only ones who are treated with any respect are the "real" wizards - i.e. the guys who spent every spare second if their life breathing tech.

I’m not a wizard, my work/life/exercise balance is pretty good and I’m in my mid 40s.

I would hate to be “just a senior developer” competing with younger people who could do just as well for less money.

I feel my value add is architecture. I’m a hands on developer by choice, but I can also step in and lead projects, do Devops, speak to CxOs, I know AWS from a development, Devops, and netops perspective pretty well.

That does mean that only certain types of companies will pay me for that skillset - mostly smaller companies without dedicated people for all those areas.

Re: Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

#198

Post by joejerryronnie »

hellogoodbyeeee wrote: post #159
gallerdude wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course - for the better or worse, money fuels life. I'm just afraid of sticking with my first company for the rest of my life because I'm half satisfied where I'm at, when I could do much more interesting things elsewhere. Maybe I'll just be happy enough with my life that I won't feel a need to take risks. Maybe I'll be courageous enough to pursue greater net happiness.

I think it is important to work for as many different companies as you can during your twenties so you can figure out what is important to you. Then spend your thirties trying to find your way back to your favorite environment so that you can spend your forties in it.

Words of wisdom grasshopper.

Re: Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

#199

Post by paulgrant999 »

Yenderman wrote: post #56

When I was 30, people just looked at me and assumed I was a competent software engineer because I looked exactly like a very senior software engineer, and I presented myself in that way. But I was very junior, having made a recent career change. Yet they paid me like a prince, and I rose so rapidly through the ranks that I became an executive. Now I'm 50, and my company folded and I went to the curb, and am looking f…

40+ and I can tell you, this is the case. basically industry just wants to suck the life out of you from 20-40, then dump your ass hard. just the way it is. last week I was talking to an Indian working two jobs, because his take home pay was So when somebody tells me to "take a paycut", I tell them to go fuck themselves. Particularly if they are the CEO banking millions of dollars, and block-busting labor with H1B's under slave conditions.

The crazy thing? I asked the Indian guy, do you even want to live in the states and he doesn't care. He actually prefers India. So they're coming over here, ruining the job market, and they don't give a shit if they're even here. Mentally I'm going "then why the fuck are you here?"

If they totally repealed the H1B, I would be a happy camper. They already transferred the tech to India and China; but do they have to kill/give away the next generations of tech?

Re: Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

#200

Post by paulgrant999 »

zmmmmm wrote: post #152
ddebernardy wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They eventually get fired because too old/too expensive. Get into management/team leadership in a way or another asap. You're probably not feeling this right now because the economy is overheated. But be wary of the next recession if you're still doing the same job - however much better - than a junior for several times their salary. (If you've specialized and valuable skills that are extremely hard to replace you sh…

> having seen the difference in productivity, I'd hire a 40+ senior over 3 juniors in a heartbeat most of the time Honestly I think it's not directly ageism, but indirectly, many people are afraid of managing people with significantly more experience or just plain older than them. So if the team lead is 35 with 10 years eng experience, they will probably be worried about a 45 y/o with 25 years eng experience who will…

Its directly ageism. Because it happens as soon as you hit 40. Sports has the same thing. So does the military (passed over 3 times for promotion in x amount of years, you leave the military).

Military does it for competence. Sports does it for physical reasons. But is there a reason to throw away 20+ years of experience in an engineer, so you can cut payroll? Particularly when those engineers built the industry, your busy making unicorn-money off of?

The whole thing is ridiculous.

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