flex hours may be challenging, however if she still remembers the basics there are still not so sexy jobs maintaining legacy software in languages that did not change that much in the past two decades.
Ask HN: How can an older worker going back to CS after a break find a position?
21–30 of 53 posts
Re: Ask HN: How can an older worker going back to CS after a break find a position?
#22In this case her Army experience is going to be the thing to focus on. She could look for small government contractors who need tech work (because they’re government, the tech lags cutting edge which is good for her) and subject matter expert work. If she can do both it’s a big win.
I agree. Defense contractors.
Or a smaller company that ether supplies defense contractors or takes subcontracts. A lot of these very small companies are robustly staffed with ex military already and may not exhibit the ageism you’ll find in the average tech company.
Re: Ask HN: How can an older worker going back to CS after a break find a position?
#23IIRC, Google had a program that originally targeted this demographic and has since broadened their scope. If the acquaintance talks to a recruiter there, ask about "engineering residency".
Re: Ask HN: How can an older worker going back to CS after a break find a position?
#24(Not speaking on behalf of my employer) IBM has offered “reentry” (my term, probably not the official or correct ones, my apologies) positions in the past for women who want to reenter the tech workforce. I don’t know the details or whether the program is currently active, but I recall seeing it and thinking “that’s a really smart and thoughtful thing to do”
Returnships are another common term, as a spin on internships. Many big name tech companies have an active program, including Apple, Amazon, etc.
Re: Ask HN: How can an older worker going back to CS after a break find a position?
#25I’m not sure how helpful this is but I worked Tech Support before applying to be a developer. If she wants good hands on training in sysadmin and programming there are support jobs (especially at startups) that are terrific for launching (or relaunching) a dev career.
Re: Ask HN: How can an older worker going back to CS after a break find a position?
#26I successfully helped a woman in a similar situation a few years ago. We thought what would help the most was to become familiar with the parts of a modern framework (controllers, ORMs, etc). She used _Agile_Web_Development_With_Rails to build a sample site, and then built another site with jhipster, studying the generated artifacts. This took about 4 months, and we met every other week so that she could ask questions and we could plot out where she should concentrate her efforts.
After that effort, she was able to get a job with a large stable company.
Re: Ask HN: How can an older worker going back to CS after a break find a position?
#27Have her check out Path Forward
https://www.pathforward.org/return-work-programs-around-us/
They specifically help people who left the industry for caregiving roles reenter the industry.
Re: Ask HN: How can an older worker going back to CS after a break find a position?
#28I think all of the FAANGs have some form on “non-traditional hires” apprentice things, though it’s probably pretty tough to get in. I know someone who changed careers later in life by attending a boot camp type class and applying after that. Example from LinkedIn: https://careers.linkedin.com/reach
Re: Ask HN: How can an older worker going back to CS after a break find a position?
#29I have interviewed and hired older workers and have worked with older workers in all of my previous companies. Age discriminatin is a real thing, and yet someone hired those older workers, so it's not an insurmountable thing. You often hear things like "well, you need to keep constantly learning new things", which is true, but older workers don't need to pretend to be younger workers as they have their own advantages…
> Do not hop from job to job
I disagree 100%. If you take a job and it's not a good fit, leave. You're not doing anyone any favors by sticking around & being miserable. Don't take a job w/ the intention of leaving, but certainly don't stay only because you feel guilty. The benefit of leaving a job you don't like if you relieve the company of retaining a bad fit, and you reward the new company w/ the experience you got at the old company. LIfe's too short to stick around when you're miserable.
Re: Ask HN: How can an older worker going back to CS after a break find a position?
#30Don't want to sound negative, but there needs to be at least some value proposition. An employer isn't going to be super impressed if the pitch is "I'd like flex hours, training, open to anything, gimme gimme gimme". Everyone is "willing to learn"; the difference is who talks the talk and who walks the walk. She needs to have some sort of target role and be at least able to demonstrate passing familiarity with some p…
> ...there needs to be at least some value proposition. This is spot on. I'd recommend signing up and completing a relatively well-known coding bootcamp. Edit to add, in 20 years a lot has changed outside of just specific CS skills: Cloud collaborative suites, conferencing systems, Slack/MSFT Teams, JIRA, git, just to name a few. 20 years ago, I was at my first role out of college--we used Outlook, MSFT VC++ 6.0, VSS…
MSFT Teams -- my condolences.