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Ask HN: How can an older worker going back to CS after a break find a position?

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Re: Ask HN: How can an older worker going back to CS after a break find a position?

#51
Look for unglamorous "tech enabled service" companies. Companies who's main thing is the problem domain they are in, supported by the their special-sauce automation. They are more likely to need people who can do more than program, have a broader set of life skills, and aren't in the game of competing for hungry young coders who really want to get to FAANG. I have assessed many of these for my work in private equity acquisitions, and some of the most niche, unglamorous companies can be making boat loads of money. They are willing to pay well to hang on to their people, the technical bar is lower so you are more likely to be able to be a solid contributor early in a tech career, and they usually have an older and more broad-backgrounded staff. Many of them also seem like very nice places to work, where people go home at 5pm and don't have pager duty... :-)

From my conversations with them, a lot of them hire in non-traditional areas too, because they know they can't compete with FAANG. So look broadly for their posts.

Re: Ask HN: How can an older worker going back to CS after a break find a position?

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MSFT Teams -- my condolences.

I see this sentiment online, but using MS Teams at work, I have a great experience. 2-n way chat threads and video calls, team bulletin boards, and integrated apps like sharepoint, excel, custom internal software, etc. I use slack, zoom, and discord for a mix of school and personal use, and appreciate what each of these offer, but wouldn’t wish to switch off of Teams for work. I do wish you could message yourself on…

it's a lot better than using nothing, I'll give you that much. I think great is a stretch though.

However, the product is really rough around the edges and lacks the quality you'd find in other products (well, the other product, but there are also open source alternatives* that are worth looking at as well imo).

* https://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/fokrr7/opensour...

Re: Ask HN: How can an older worker going back to CS after a break find a position?

#53
post #34
post #5

Don'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…

My friend's father works with COBOL. Apparently it's quite lucrative. It isn't used much, but it's also hard to hire people for those jobs so they tend to be well paid.

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