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Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

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Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#91

Post by Suzuran »

prettyblocks wrote: post #56
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…

Lots of doomers on here, yet somehow I keep meeting highly technical people still working on interesting things that are in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and older. I think HN probably skews really young and tech tends to fetishize youth, so this is the mentality you get.

I am 46. I am more or less describing my present situation, except I haven't yet been fired. I say "yet" because my employer's products are government-facing and the incoming administration has priorities incompatible with the usage of our products.

I am told I work on interesting things, but the interesting things are my hobbies and not anything related to my employment. My day job is largely a slowly losing battle against technical debt.

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#92

Post by sarabande »

smithbits wrote: post #57

For me it was management. I was an SDE who started caring more about the users of my code than about the code itself and that led me to a team lead position and that led to management at a small company and that led to management at a big company. I found I really like mentoring junior engineers and I'm a good sounding board for senior engineers. I got to spend a lot of time saying variations on "Hey, let's not do th…

Can you share more about your experience regarding how management at a small company lead to management at a big company? Was the switch voluntary, and how did you do it?

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#93

Post by limaoscarjuliet »

sreekanth850 wrote: post #80

Iam at 41, but I learned 100X in my last 2 years than i was at working in sales for a domestic company for 10 years. Currently pursuing my passion - Startup in workplace collaboration. Moral: Age is just a Number.

Up to a point and then you start feeling getting older. I started noticing while approaching 50. I can no longer push as much as I used to. I need to take breaks. Etc.

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#94

Post by tomrod »

dhd415 wrote: post #82
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…

My longest employment stint was at such a company and it was a very good experience for me. That said, even though I worked at such a company for a while, I don't have a very good idea how I would go about identifying other such companies with open roles. Any suggestions on how to do that?

I wonder if Crunchbase would be useful here?

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#95

Post by vuggamie »

cwiz wrote: post #75

Indie gamedev. It will feel like early day startups again. And gamedev is so special that every one in a while you switch to a new project, and that again feels fresh. But gamedev is demanding.

Are you building your own products and launching them as a single developer? What platforms are you targeting and what kind of games are you making? How's the revenue?

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#96

Post by Suzuran »

plagiarist wrote: post #48
Suzuran wrote: post #42

It is my understanding that if you are older than 35, have no C-suite social connections, and you lose your tech job, your tech career is over. Your only opportunities will be entry-level since none of your original education will pass automated filters, no entry-level hire is paid anything above subsistence wages, and at 35+ your rapidly-increasing medical issues (the piper's due for 20+ years of treating your body…

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…

I am not sure I would call what I am doing "okay", but I am still here. I can't say the same for many of my friends.

It was full renal failure in my case. I had no insurance. My savings were gone in the first two days. My entire medical debt is now such that it would take somewhere between three and four full lifetimes at the highest wage I earned during my career to pay it all down, and that assumes that no further debt was incurred in those extra lifetimes.

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#97

Post by quesera »

9rx wrote: post #59
jebarker wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Neither desire or need was mentioned, only want, which addresses both desire and need. If financial security is what the OP wants, the parent comment already has him covered.

If you can coherently differentiate "want" from "desire", I'd love to hear it. :)

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#98

Post by willseth »

softwaredoug wrote: post #10

What software communities[1] are you a part of and who are you helping in those communities? Do you contribute there in the form of (code, documentation, blog posts, conference talks, helping juniors, etc)? At 40 I think you do well to have a decent network in a focused set of communities of people you've mentored, supported, and worked with. IE folks in a specific discipline, project, thing where you might expect th…

If someone is looking for a job at 40 and they haven’t already built a big network, it’s not helpful to tell them they should build one. But if you’ve been working for about 20 years you probably do have at least some friends or colleagues you can (and should) reach out to for opportunities.

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#99

Post by yodsanklai »

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 career (although it's demanding). I have no issue learning the same new techs as the younger guys when I need to. I may be a bit slower but it hasn't came up as an issue so far. I also have a few colleagues older than me and they're still going strong.

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#100

Post by LambdaComplex »

billwear wrote: post #74

At 60, I applied to Canonical and got hired. The hiring process is thorough but very fair, all WFH, and they generally don't care about personal attributes. Gave me 20% above my asking price and a higher starting rank than expected.

> The hiring process is thorough but very fair

I thought Canonical was the place where every candidate had to write a bunch of essays and talk about how they did in math in high school (regardless of how long ago that was).

Glad you had a good interview experience there, but it's genuinely the first time I've heard of it happening.

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