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Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

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Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#21

Post by reaperducer »

Tech is everywhere. You don't have to work at a "tech" company to work in tech.

Try healthcare, banking, pharma, or any other industry that has been around longer than the internet.

Many big, established companies are used to people who have worked in one place for decades. That means middle-aged people. It's not weird for them, and their experience has taught them to value experience.

Protip for anyone: When you interview for a new job, ask how many retirement parties the company had in the last five years. That will tell you a lot about the company.

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#23

Post by tecleandor »

jvanderbot wrote: post #18
pseingatl wrote: post #3

After 40, it's musical chairs. The music will stop and there won't be a chair for you. McKinsey comes in and says "cut staff." HR comes in, says "cut 5% and replace them with Desi H1-B's." Your best bet is to take a deep breath and build another start-up. In the meantime, take any job of any nature.

I try to say this gently, but this comment would make more sense if it came from lots of direct experience, rather than (what appear to be) repeated tropes. Have you seen this repeated in your own over-40 experience or the experience of people you know?

Sounds a bit like IBM. Or like a company going through a private equity acquisition.

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#24

Post by reaperducer »

jvanderbot wrote: post #18
pseingatl wrote: post #3

After 40, it's musical chairs. The music will stop and there won't be a chair for you. McKinsey comes in and says "cut staff." HR comes in, says "cut 5% and replace them with Desi H1-B's." Your best bet is to take a deep breath and build another start-up. In the meantime, take any job of any nature.

I try to say this gently, but this comment would make more sense if it came from lots of direct experience, rather than (what appear to be) repeated tropes. Have you seen this repeated in your own over-40 experience or the experience of people you know?

Have you seen this repeated in your own over-40 experience or the experience of people you know?

I can't speak for the parent, but that exact thing has happened to me.

It's no trope.

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#25

Post by jebarker »

dddddaviddddd wrote: post #16

This should be about what you want in your career now, and not about your age. Once you can clearly answer the first question, it will be easy to find the right place.

You're making an assumption that OP has the financial security to follow their desires rather than needs.

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#26

Post by markus_zhang »

pjmlp wrote: post #20
eru wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google was relatively cozy when I was working there about ten years ago. (But that was as an SRE and in Sydney. I believe the Americans make more of a show of long hours? They always seemed more exhausted in any case.)

Might be, apparently doing less than 60h or not being reachable during the already short holidays is not doing enough, if the memes are to be belived.

What about non-SREs? I get SREs need to be always on-call but I'm not sure about other positions.

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#27

Post by jvanderbot »

I'm 40+ though I try not to act like it. My most recent gig, which is my favorite job to date, is working at a small startup as "The X guy", for an X I've worked on for years and years. I suspect you can similarly specialize, if you think carefully about what you did for 10 years.

If my current gig weren't an option, I'd try for some of the DoD startups where X is applicable, or I'd try to move into consulting, as others have mentioned, or I'd open my own shop for small businesses nearby, in an unrelated field. Small time one-stop consultants in my area charge more for database admin than I do for X in my PhD field.

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#28

Post by eludwig »

It really depends on the type of environment and work you are looking to do.

At 59, I applied for a “full stack” (ugh..not my favorite term) job at a large Asia-based multi-national corporation working on support software (web apps) for their entertainment appliance platform. I got the job after a blessedly short interview process that did not involve any leet coding problems.

I am on an amazing senior team at a company with a great, relaxed work culture! This work is many things: fun, challenging, predictable, boring. Devs will understand how it can be all these things at once lol.

Find yourself a situation that meets your current drive/ambitions. There are a ton of places out there. Probably harder now (I got the job in 2018), but there are still people hiring.

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#29

Post by weatherlite »

> Google is the place you go to retire after 40

I don't get this honestly. About 1%-2% of devs will manage to work at a FAANG, that's it (correct me if I'm wrong). The rest of us will grind code somewhere else.

I'm 40 and I'm staying put in the startup I'm currently working for because I like the people and it's not a sweatshop. Eventually I'll find something else. I'm more worried about A.I making me irrelevant than my age.

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#30

Post by scrumper »

I have a couple ideas for you from my own experience.

There's about a bajillion C/D+ stage 100-500 person software companies in any B2B vertical you could mention who would fight hard for your type of experience. Not necessarily SaaS click-and-drool tools for corporate drones, but unique and opinionated products that have some significant engineering innovation inside. Those companies have essentially no ability to attract talent organically, anyone interested in FANG would turn up their noses, and their number one problem is quality people. In many cases the CEO/CTO leadership is incredibly strong and smart; the colleagues are happy, motivated, intelligent, and disciplined; and the work/life balance is good for the middle aged. They're vital to their customers but under continuous competitive pressure so it is far from a snoozy place to serve out time - it's a mission and a struggle every day, things change often, the pace is fast. It can be very rewarding and compensation is decent. The tradeoff is the big exit is vanishingly unlikely.

Second idea is go into consulting/professional services. Not Accenture or anything horrible like that, but dozens of boutique/smaller firms with decently inspiring leadership and a very high standard of colleague. Work is variable in interest and environment, pressures are somewhat unfairly around whether you are billable or not which is not really in your control as an engineer.

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