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Ask HN: Ever faced difficulties pivoting your job or career later in your life?

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Re: Ask HN: Ever faced difficulties pivoting your job or career later in your life?

#31

Post by kv-1 »

joshaidan wrote: post #13

This is the situation I am currently finding myself in. I work as a telephone switch administrator for an independent phone company in Canada. I've had this just for 13 years now, it was the only job I've had since university. My undergrad is in computer science. I ended up with this job because the company bought out a friend's ISP that I was helping run when I was in high school. It was a good job, nice company, th…

I'm 32 and I was in a similar situation a few years ago, so I decided to do a masters with focus on embedded systems hoping that would help me land a job in that area. I've been applying for positions in the embedded industry (mostly entry-level) for the last 5 months and haven't gotten a single invitation to interview yet. The answers I get are similar to what the OP described.

At this point I'm feeling like those two years could have been better spent working on side projects.

Re: Ask HN: Ever faced difficulties pivoting your job or career later in your life?

#32

Post by rafaeladel »

murrayb wrote: post #30

I am in my late forties and on my third career pivot. My progression was from electronics technician to unix system administrator to project manager with some short stints in other occupations between "real jobs" - I worked as a high school cleaner for a while and as a grave digger. Last pivot (to PM) was just over 5 years ago. I wouldn't rule a fourth (or more!) pivot out, though it is more likely to involve going f…

> My progression was from electronics technician to unix system administrator to project manager with some short stints in other occupations between "real jobs" - I worked as a high school cleaner for a while and as a grave digger.

I take my hat off to you, sir.

Re: Ask HN: Ever faced difficulties pivoting your job or career later in your life?

#33

Post by innomansland »

zeptomu wrote: post #29
innomansland wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be clear, I was never told that I am "too old" but simply wasn't a "culture fit". Note that particular reason was given probably 1 out of every 10 times and the other 9 times, it is usually along the lines of "we did not find you a good fit for the role". Funny enough, I do have a particular industry (actually two) that I am extremely interested in - FinTech and Cloud Computing/Hosting. Neither which I have a…

> Funny enough, I do have a particular industry (actually two) that I am extremely interested in and that is fintech and cloud hosting. Fintech and cloud hosting are very broad terms, but assuming you like the domain of financial tech, the question remains what you would like to spend your time on: Programming? Writing market analysis reports? Talking to customers?

Customer Support or Operations.

I see where you are going with this! I always thought I knew exactly what I want to be in but what may be specific for me may be vague to someone else.

Re: Ask HN: Ever faced difficulties pivoting your job or career later in your life?

#34

Post by innomansland »

joshaidan wrote: post #13

This is the situation I am currently finding myself in. I work as a telephone switch administrator for an independent phone company in Canada. I've had this just for 13 years now, it was the only job I've had since university. My undergrad is in computer science. I ended up with this job because the company bought out a friend's ISP that I was helping run when I was in high school. It was a good job, nice company, th…

Hey, thanks for sharing your story. Hearing all these personal experiences does put things into perspective for me and realising there are many people like you out there.

I don't think you should get too hung up about having big name companies on your resume. As a anecdotal data point, I worked in 5 companies till now and 3 of those companies are internationally well-known yet even I am in your shoes - no callback or interviews.

As others have said in the thread, before considering doing a masters just for the sake of it, spend some time:

- persisting with your job applying. Sometimes it is just a numbers game.

- start working on your own personal side projects.

- get involved in the local meetups, communities, conferences, etc

Good luck!

Re: Ask HN: Ever faced difficulties pivoting your job or career later in your life?

#35

Post by whack »

innomansland wrote: post #20
mikekchar wrote: post #10

If you were in the same industry (potentially the same company) for 12 years, you may be getting tagged with a bit of a "career employee" stigma. I'm 49 now and took 5 years out between the ages of 39-44 to teach English in Japan. I'm back in the industry now. It took me about a month to get a job when I came back. The key is really flexibility. If you have a a very narrow focus, you will have difficulty getting work…

This is gold! Can't thank you enough for your input. Just as a side note, while my professional life is very "narrow", I have been doing stuff on the side! I own 3 dropshipping sites (WooCommerce & Shopify) and 2 pseudo-SaaS sites (one MEAN stack and the other Meteor.JS). I started these projects last year just so that I can get my hands dirty in the latest web technologies (last time i made a full fledged website, I…

Off topic but I had the same experience as well. I had a side project which was twice as challenging and impressive as anything I had developed in my 9-5 job. But for some reason, interviewers only ever wanted to know what I did 9-5. I never did figure out why. My best guess is that they figure it can't really be all that great if no one paid you for it.

Re: Ask HN: Ever faced difficulties pivoting your job or career later in your life?

#36

Post by ghettoCoder »

joshaidan wrote: post #13

This is the situation I am currently finding myself in. I work as a telephone switch administrator for an independent phone company in Canada. I've had this just for 13 years now, it was the only job I've had since university. My undergrad is in computer science. I ended up with this job because the company bought out a friend's ISP that I was helping run when I was in high school. It was a good job, nice company, th…

Fellow Ottawan (is that what we call ourselves?) here who also relocated from Northern Ontario many moons ago. The thing about Ottawa is it's a government town so most of the local tech firms (not including Shopify Mitel, etc...) are for professional services or are small early-stage startup (for some reason our startups typically get acquired, or fail). The Feds' fiscal year starts in April which means that contract money is either currently frozen or non-existent until then. After April all departments will start hiring again and you should have some luck if you get yourself into one of the better professional services company.

The other "problem" in Ottawa is that ALL of the professional services firms will do a hard filter-out on keywords in your resume/cover letter. And they expect a certain format due to what the Feds want in their submission.

Disclaimer: I don't work for the Feds. I know better.

Re: Ask HN: Ever faced difficulties pivoting your job or career later in your life?

#37

Post by hunterjrj »

joshaidan wrote: post #13

This is the situation I am currently finding myself in. I work as a telephone switch administrator for an independent phone company in Canada. I've had this just for 13 years now, it was the only job I've had since university. My undergrad is in computer science. I ended up with this job because the company bought out a friend's ISP that I was helping run when I was in high school. It was a good job, nice company, th…

Apply to the CSE. Your telco experience combined with your education in CS will be considered quite valuable to them.

https://www.cse-cst.gc.ca/en/careers-carrieres/professionals...

Re: Ask HN: Ever faced difficulties pivoting your job or career later in your life?

#38

Post by innomansland »

ysr23 wrote: post #14

Yes. I had a lot of problems. In my late 30s, I worked at a large multinational for 10 years doing... some kind of middlemanagement sharepoint stuff that makes my brain fall asleep just thinking about it. For about the last 4 years i knew i had to get out, but never did. Eventually redundancy was offered and i went for it, all eager to throw myself far away from microsoft vista, sharepoint and balanced scorecards int…

Interesting (and very uplifting) story! I love this bit:

> i submitted the 42875th iteration of my cv

I have to say this, I chuckled loudly at that cause I think i am at the low hundreds at this point!

That confidence thingy is a very interesting perspective. I think i am confident with myself but it probably just applies to my current industry and it is possible that I do not come across that when I apply for jobs outside of my forte and industry. I do note that with the constant rejections, I am noticing more and more that I am feeling dejected.

Re: Ask HN: Ever faced difficulties pivoting your job or career later in your life?

#39

Post by ghettoCoder »

hunterjrj wrote: post #37
joshaidan wrote: post #13

This is the situation I am currently finding myself in. I work as a telephone switch administrator for an independent phone company in Canada. I've had this just for 13 years now, it was the only job I've had since university. My undergrad is in computer science. I ended up with this job because the company bought out a friend's ISP that I was helping run when I was in high school. It was a good job, nice company, th…

Apply to the CSE. Your telco experience combined with your education in CS will be considered quite valuable to them. https://www.cse-cst.gc.ca/en/careers-carrieres/professionals...

Yep. CSE or CSIS

https://csiscareers.ca/available-jobs/3

Re: Ask HN: Ever faced difficulties pivoting your job or career later in your life?

#40

Post by fecak »

This could be a number of things. For context, I've been in recruiting for ~20 years (mostly software startups) and I also write resumes and consult/coach job seekers on a number of topics.

Getting rejected without getting to the interview stage could be for several reasons.

Ageism - not all that likely in your early 30s, depending on your audience.

Resume - if your resume doesn't convey your background well enough for the job you applied for, obviously nobody is going to interview you. If your resume is too bulky, nobody is even going to read (or skim) it. If you'd like it looked at by a professional, I'm easy to find.

Overqualified/not a fit is often code for something else. It's much easier to tell a candidate "you're overqualified" (i.e. our work is below you) because that is flattering. It's much harder to tell someone "the team genuinely didn't like you", as that is not only insulting to some people but also may cause you to ask follow-up questions. Tell someone they're overqualified and it's hard to follow-up - tell someone they "aren't a fit" and they don't usually ask "why?", because it's rather ambiguous.

Sometimes overqualified means "paid above what we can afford".

You mention twice you're in a niche industry, so I am guessing it's pretty niche. Your problem is likely a marketing issue. How do we package your background in order to make it attractive to a wider audience? What are the elements of your background that we can make more 'universal' to people out of your industry? Does your resume speak too much to the people in your industry, and does it assume that readers will understand some of the terms and acronyms that may not be part of the wider tech lexicon?

Could be tons of things.

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