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Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

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Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#211

Post by cableshaft »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #34

I spent a long time in tech (not 40 yet but close), and my opinion is that technology creates a mechanical mindset that is sometimes a blind spot. Although it might be best for you to stay in it, I suggest testing the waters elsewhere for a bit in a more artistic area. It might be quite fun to take a break. I am frequently in the minority here but I do believe that spending all your life in a narrow domain like techn…

You can stay in tech but still do something more artistic. Like I was in the video game industry for a while, that tends to be pretty artistic (I still work on games in my spare time).

I was never in the ad industry (like the type that make interesting and flashy websites) but I suspect someone doing tech for ad companies would exercise those artistic muscles as well. When I was working for a video game publisher I did design a couple of ads for our games using Flash at the time, that played on sites like Kotaku and Gamefaqs, that involved some coding and artistic flair.

Working for a publisher did have very little coding though, and I sometimes wonder if I would have had a more fulfilling life if I stuck with a game producer role. But I was also feeling my coding skills atrophying and I didn't feel comfortable with that either at the time. Still stayed with the publisher until we had a couple releases that unfortunately lost money and the company was shut down by the board of directors, though.

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#212

Post by ryandrake »

drchopchop wrote: post #139
justanother wrote: post #50

As someone comin up on 50 myself, I have to say age has yet to be an issue with my career. Maybe I don't go out of my way to advertise it (cut the resume down to the past 10 or so years, don't have a face full of white hair), but I'm still landing plenty of the same ole gigs with Typescript, Ruby on Rails, Python, whatever the flavor of the month is. So I guess my advice is to just ignore it? Of course, trying not to…

Not advertising it is key. I'm also coming up on 50, and people constantly are surprised when they inevitably find out how old I am. Ageism can unconsciously creep in when you have more than 15 years of experience visible on your resume, even for higher management-level positions. Also - if you're a mid-level IC in your 40's you should start asking yourself what's stopping you from being higher up on the IC or manage…

A lot of places will not consider you for management unless you have prior management experience, so it's a catch22. Happened to me several times despite my career aspirations being clear to my manager. I suppose it's safer to hire someone externally who's already a manager than to promote someone internally who you also need to keep doing the grunt work.

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#213

Post by michaelgburton »

stickfigure wrote: post #186
yodsanklai wrote: post #99

I don't think anybody can answer this question for you. At 40, you can still do the exact same jobs as someone who's 25 (at least in tech) if you put your heart in it. I don't know what's the expiry date for a SWE, but it's not 40. I'm a median IC in big tech at almost 50 and don't feel discriminated against yet, and for the most part, don't feel incompetent or behind, and feel I'm having the greatest time of my care…

Maybe I'm misreading, but this sounds like a defeatist take. Why would a 50yo be slower? I'm in my early 50s and at the absolute top of my game. I'm a principal eng at a medium-ish company and spend a lot of my time mentoring the "kids" and providing direction to engineers that don't have the same well of experience to draw on. I would naturally assume that an IC in their 40s or 50s is much faster than someone in the…

A buddy of mine introduced me to the concept pair of Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence. That's the short answer to your question. An older dev will have more accumulated experience and will be able to make decisions based on experience much better, but a younger dev will adopt new tools and learn new frameworks faster, and the latter tends to be the heavier load for the average job-lifetime (say 2-5 years) in the modern tech industry.

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#214

Post by troyvit »

For me it was after 50, but maybe it'll apply to you. Nonprofits are desperate for knowledgeable workers. If you can afford the pay-cut the reward is worth it. From my experience:

Pros:

* The environment is more laid back.

* More people over 40 there already compared to lots of other places.

* Weirder people too, which I like.

* Smaller non-profits can't afford AI-powered HR B.S., so you can worry less about gaming them.

* Somebody of your experience and talents would be a star.

* You get to pick an industry you believe in, and maybe even influence.

* Tech is in a period of rapid change, and if you have the skills you can multiply those changes for your non-profit.

* You feel like less of a cog since many non-profits are smaller.

Cons:

* As somebody said to you, "Google is the place you go to retire after 40", I feel the same is for non-profits but more so.

* Weird politics by mission-driven people vs corporate politics which can at least almost always be attributed to money.

* It takes forever to change things.

* Shoestring budgets don't just mean lower salary, but often crappier hardware and fewer retreats and stuff. I miss big, hedonistic corporate retreats.

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#215

Post by Suzuran »

bloomingkales wrote: post #115
plagiarist wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you're doing okay because this is pretty bleak. I also have a bleak outlook on the future, the healthcare costs in particular. I don't want to spend years building up money and then have cancer wipe it all out in just months. I haven't (yet) added "tech career ends at 40" to my set of looming tragedies. I'm currently more worried for people starting their careers, they seem replaceable by LLMs. Perhaps I have…

This person sounds incredibly negative and delusional. We're not animals that put people into a job in there 20s and say your career is over in 15 years. If your worldview is that people are animals, then yeah, you know. Work on yourself.

You are correct, we are not animals. I do not view us as animals, but it is not my view that matters. The view that matters is that of the corporations who do the hiring, and for the most part they view us as expendable resources (I mean, come on, it's literally in the term "Human Resources") to be acquired and used until all possible value has been extracted from us, at which point we are discarded.

This, I feel, is ultimately where ageism comes from. 40 is not just some number they pulled out of their collective asses, it's the approximately-average age where the cohort that joined the DP/IT workforce in the 80s and 90s is burned out and used up.

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#216

Post by nejsjsjsbsb »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #66
scrumper wrote: post #30

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 a…

This. I'm now working at a small- to mid-sized (~80 people) local B2B company. Pay is fine, they offer 100% WFH if you want, but they also have nice offices, they make good and stable revenue with reasonable growth targets, the actual work is somewhere between interesting and mind-numbingly stupid (e.g. integrating with poorly documented enterprise software - can be fun, but can also be aggravating), people are mostl…

Ymmv. Small companys can change fast culturally and are still figuring out their management layers. Maybe there are some filtering interview questions but this company profile (like any comoany profile) is not a panacea.

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#217

Post by nejsjsjsbsb »

40 doesn't matter. There may be some pockets of ageism but ignore it (a rejection is always a mystery anyway). So go for what you want. You need a you-compatiable job not a 40s-compatiable job.

That said I am happy 40's person working at a 10k-100k person tech company. It turned out good so far. There is a bit more bureaucracy but happy to pay that small tax. Also you have to like microservices :)

It is very interesting. I have technically interesting work and a humble smart team.

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#218

Post by RaftPeople »

eludwig wrote: post #168
Secretmapper wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting, are you based in Asia? I've found companies similar to what you're mentioning but they're all based in America while I wanna stay in Asia.

Actually in Los Angeles, but they have offices all over the world. The home office is in Tokyo.

Fujitsu?

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#219

Post by cableshaft »

jghn wrote: post #209
cableshaft wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I've been working at a smaller consulting firm for the past three years and doing fine. Also helped me update my skills, especially cloud skills as all my previous jobs were onprem. I've been mostly getting away with just over 40 hour weeks, although if I was on any other client at the company I'd be expected to bill 45 hours. PTO is very flexible as long as I'm meeting my utilization for the year (working 85% o…

How much unbilled time do you have? If you're expected to bill 40 hours/week, right of the top that means you have a more than 40 hour work week because by definition you can't be going to the bathroom or eating lunch. Then if you ever have an unbilled meeting or something, that adds even more. Where I am now we're not expected to bill quite as much for this reason. Although I did once work somewhere where there was…

I always report more than 40 hours a week for my internal company tracking (because there's usually a couple of internal firm meetings during the week), but it's never usually more than 45 hours. We've been pretty meeting-lite lately so I'm usually just reporting 42 hour weeks lately.

That being said, I don't worry about tracking bathroom breaks, or the occasional mental break here and there. My client is happy, I'm getting done what they're wanting to get done when they're wanting it to be done, I just bill 8 hours for the day and it's not a big deal (obviously it isn't, they've been willing to pay for me for almost three years at this point on two different projects and I get glowing reviews whenever I request feedback from them to pass along to my boss).

I work 8:30 to 5:30 so that includes an extra hour for lunch, by the way, so that's not counted, no. But I'm at home, so it doesn't feel like work anyway, just an hour to relax, have a sandwich, let the dogs out, and maybe throw a recipe in the slow cooker for dinner.

I'm actually in the middle of a 3.5 week break because I had so much built up time at the end of the year. I knew my client does a two week furlough for consultants at the end of the year so I was already planning for that, and also was planning a week for a wedding trip for a wedding ceremony/reception that had to be cancelled because a recent hurricane pretty much destroyed the town it was going to be held in. And I took a week off for vacation earlier this year.

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#220

Post by gosub100 »

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?

It's not a trope.
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