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Ask HN: Why is that 10+ years experience folks struggle to find work

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Re: Ask HN: Why is that 10+ years experience folks struggle to find work

#31

Post by mindcrime »

csmdev wrote: post #19
facorreia wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, there's a difference between having 10 years of experience and having 1 year of experience repeated 10 times doing the same thing. Me, personally, I enjoy learning a lot and I get restless if I don't feel I'm developing my skills and keeping current.

You do realize that you're basically dismissing experts because they specialize instead of learning the basics for another technology each year. Or has one year become enough to be an expert on something?

I didn't read that post that way... I don't think "the same year of experience repeated 10 times" actually leads to expertise. That phrase, at least the way I've always used it and the way I feel I've seen it used, is more like saying "somebody who just keeps doing the same thing over and over again and doesn't even attempt to learn anything new". Ie, it isn't just about not learning new skills, it also includes not improving existing skills and knowledge.

At least, that's the way I always interpreted it.

Re: Ask HN: Why is that 10+ years experience folks struggle to find work

#32

Post by mindcrime »

ayers wrote: post #14
mindcrime wrote: post #2

I haven't found that, or anything even close to that, to be the case at all. Maybe it's a geographical thing? I'm on the East Coast and from what I can see, if you have a "hot" skillset (Hadoop/Big-Data, MongoDB, Clojure, Node.js, Angular/Ember, etc.) you won't have any problem finding a job, regardless of your age. Personally, I'm 41 with 15+ years of IT experience and I have never felt any sense of age discriminati…

Keeping your skills current is probably the most important point here. Could you please explain when you do this. Are you in a job that allows this within production projects? Or is this all on your own time outside of your day job? I know some companies run internal projects with the specific aim to help upskill employees in new technology.

At this exact moment, I'm fortunate enough to have a dayjob where I get to do a lot of different things and learn new technologies, etc. But in the past, when I didn't have that option, I just worked on my own open source project(s) and did stuff at night and on weekends, to fill that void.

Re: Ask HN: Why is that 10+ years experience folks struggle to find work

#33

Post by mindcrime »

csmdev wrote: post #18
mindcrime wrote: post #2

I haven't found that, or anything even close to that, to be the case at all. Maybe it's a geographical thing? I'm on the East Coast and from what I can see, if you have a "hot" skillset (Hadoop/Big-Data, MongoDB, Clojure, Node.js, Angular/Ember, etc.) you won't have any problem finding a job, regardless of your age. Personally, I'm 41 with 15+ years of IT experience and I have never felt any sense of age discriminati…

So basically be a freelancer. Market yourself heavily and learn whatever language or technology your employer uses. At this point, why get a job? You can easily earn more as a freelancer or contractor.

Yeah, that's a very good point.

Re: Ask HN: Why is that 10+ years experience folks struggle to find work

#36

Post by robodale »

csmdev wrote: post #13

Employers want cheap workers and experience is seen as expensive. This is why most companies have one or two real developers and dozens of juniors learning on the job. If you're experienced, you're better off building a startup.

I'm 41. This is what I am doing (doing consulting to keep me going until my startup actually starts-up and stays up).

Re: Ask HN: Why is that 10+ years experience folks struggle to find work

#37

Post by codeonfire »

hcho wrote: post #15

I suspect most 10+ years experience guys are actually 10 * 1 year experience guys. When you have someone like that in front of you in an interview, it is quite difficult to look past the fact that the person has no respect to his job.

This is such a dishonest meme that's of course popular because it plays on natural biases and there are way more people without ten years of experience. An equivalently dishonest statement would be "anyone who repeats the 10 is really 10*1 meme are just junior devs trying to compensate for their lack of skill and experience." Which of those broad generalizations is probable more true?

Re: Ask HN: Why is that 10+ years experience folks struggle to find work

#38

Post by geebee »

mindcrime wrote: post #2

I haven't found that, or anything even close to that, to be the case at all. Maybe it's a geographical thing? I'm on the East Coast and from what I can see, if you have a "hot" skillset (Hadoop/Big-Data, MongoDB, Clojure, Node.js, Angular/Ember, etc.) you won't have any problem finding a job, regardless of your age. Personally, I'm 41 with 15+ years of IT experience and I have never felt any sense of age discriminati…

This is a good strategy. However, it does seem to raise a new question - why is this more common in IT than other fields (which may beg the question, is it in fact more common in IT than other fields)?

Lawyers and Physicians, Dentists, Nurses, and Dental Hygienists, they all do have to stay current - in fact, I believe that they are legally required to stay current. Now, HN is a tech board, so we don't hear from nearly as many Dental Hygienists here, but I'm going to operate on the assumption that DH's, at age 41, don't encounter the same issues of obsolescence as software developers do.

I think that a big part of this may be something Michael O Church described as "dimensionality" (in an essay on the relative scarcity of women in programming).

http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/09/21/dimensionalit...

The dimensionality may be a factor here… just as the path to becoming a programmer is much more vague and subjective than in many other fields, so is the path to remaining relevant as a programmer. It's not that it's strictly harder, it's that it's much more ambiguous.

Re: Ask HN: Why is that 10+ years experience folks struggle to find work

#39

Post by dragonwriter »

geebee wrote: post #38
mindcrime wrote: post #2

I haven't found that, or anything even close to that, to be the case at all. Maybe it's a geographical thing? I'm on the East Coast and from what I can see, if you have a "hot" skillset (Hadoop/Big-Data, MongoDB, Clojure, Node.js, Angular/Ember, etc.) you won't have any problem finding a job, regardless of your age. Personally, I'm 41 with 15+ years of IT experience and I have never felt any sense of age discriminati…

This is a good strategy. However, it does seem to raise a new question - why is this more common in IT than other fields (which may beg the question, is it in fact more common in IT than other fields)? Lawyers and Physicians, Dentists, Nurses, and Dental Hygienists, they all do have to stay current - in fact, I believe that they are legally required to stay current. Now, HN is a tech board, so we don't hear from near…

> Lawyers and Physicians, Dentists, Nurses, and Dental Hygienists, they all do have to stay current - in fact, I believe that they are legally required to stay current. Now, HN is a tech board, so we don't hear from nearly as many Dental Hygienists here, but I'm going to operate on the assumption that DH's, at age 41, don't encounter the same issues of obsolescence as software developers do.

Because they are required as a condition of professional licensing to stay current (and have a documentary trail of staying current that matches and profession-wide accepted definition of what "staying current" means), which means that while there is some risk of being in a specialization for which demand is reduced, it is virtually impossible to not stay current in the manner expected in the industry without voluntarily choosing to abandon the profession. Consequently, its harder to have covert age discrimination with "not being current" as an excuse.

> The dimensionality may be a factor here… just as the path to becoming a programmer is much more vague and subjective than in many other fields, so is the path to remaining relevant as a programmer. It's not that it's strictly harder, it's that it's much more ambiguous.

Sure, but I don't think that is anything inherent in the subject matter ofprogramming that is less clear cut than, e.g., law, in those terms. Its just a difference in the social and regulatory context.

Re: Ask HN: Why is that 10+ years experience folks struggle to find work

#40

Post by pkinsky »

hcho wrote: post #15

I suspect most 10+ years experience guys are actually 10 * 1 year experience guys. When you have someone like that in front of you in an interview, it is quite difficult to look past the fact that the person has no respect to his job.

How do you distinguish between 10*1 years experience and 10 years experience? Is the former assumed until proven otherwise?
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