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Old Techies Never Die; They Just Can’t Get Hired as an Industry Moves On (2012)

nytimes.com

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Re: Old Techies Never Die; They Just Can’t Get Hired as an Industry Moves On (2012)

#111

Post by cryoshon »

IndianAstronaut wrote: post #75
danieltillett wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is certainly true. The reason why is most of the "bioinformatics programmers” come from a biology background and switch over to development. It is far quicker to go from biology -> cs than cs -> biology. The real problem with biology is the salaries don’t rise as fast you become more more senior. Biotech is certainly not the easy way to wealth.

The time to market difference is huge in regular software than research. Also, the risks of failure are very high. So incomes are cut, except with blockbusters where the rewards flow to the top. One reason I am glad I got out of biotech.

I'm in biotech now, thinking of leaving due to generally poor pay conditions in the industry. Have any other reasons to share?

Re: Old Techies Never Die; They Just Can’t Get Hired as an Industry Moves On (2012)

#112

Post by markbnj »

kspaans wrote: post #36
markbnj wrote: post #7

So I turned 55 years old last Monday, am employed as a senior software engineer for a startup in the voter education and civic engagement space, and I guess I'm qualified to comment on this. I read this same refrain over and over, and if I peer just a little bit between the lines I think I perceive a common pattern. A lot of these people are just not up to keeping up. Learning the next thing is a wearisome burden for…

Have you found that your salary followed a trend of increasing ~10%/year? (I read that somewhere as the target amount you should receive as a raise annually.) Give-or-take fluctuations due to lay-offs, taking opportunities over salary, etc.

In my own case absolutely not. I think if you want to see those kinds of increases year over year you have to climb the corporate ladder. If you stay in engineering in a hands on role you're going to peak. My own salary probably peaked ten years ago, but it peaked at a pretty high level and has kept up with inflation. Money has never been the main thing, which is one indicator of why I am still hands on.

Re: Old Techies Never Die; They Just Can’t Get Hired as an Industry Moves On (2012)

#113

Post by vonmoltke »

mikekchar wrote: post #60
jordanb wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a 34 year old I always like hearing of people who actually manage to pull off a long career, it gives me hope. If you notice, a lot of these people in that article are in hardware design: electrical engineering, probably Verilog and the like. A lot of that work has successfully been outsourced which I think is the real cause of the decline. I suspect it didn't look like it was a particularly bad field to be in unt…

After 20 years doing a mix of embedded and application development, I spent 5 years teaching English. I went back into IT at the age of 45. My first interview was absolutely horrible (sorry about that if you are reading ;-) ). After that I was fine. I ended up getting a web development position without much prior experience in the area (just whatever I had hacked around on in my own time). Of course with 20 years of…

The trick is getting the opportunity to sell yourself that way. If you can't get the interview in the first place, how well you can sell yourself is irrelevant.

This begs the question: how did you manage to get those interviews?

Re: Old Techies Never Die; They Just Can’t Get Hired as an Industry Moves On (2012)

#114

Post by HillaryBriss »

lsc wrote: post #86

Now, this is just my impression... I have no statistics to back this up. But I've been working in IT for 20 years, and eh, it is changing. The sort of person who gets hired is changing. My impression is that the industry is changing... not really in the tools we use (UNIX is older than I am; we keep re-hashing some combination of C and lisp, it seems that virtualization tech is on a one decade cycle. It's the same sh…

When the investing community saw Facebook pull a shit ton of cash directly out of the sky, it said "We must be 'social.' Social is the way, the truth and the life."

Couple that with the following realization: the folks in pure product innovation roles at startups -- the people who are supposed to be insightful oracles creating compelling visions and perfect shortlists of vital user stories for killer apps -- these people are not ... really ... that ... good. (Even the ones from Stanford.)

So, now programmers must define the product, create the product AND sell the product (with their cool, unshaven, youthful faces).

All programmers must now be brogrammers. The pure nerd work is sent overseas.

Re: Old Techies Never Die; They Just Can’t Get Hired as an Industry Moves On (2012)

#115

Post by graycat »

puredemo wrote: post #51
graycat wrote: post #22

The article has "stay on the cutting edge". Ha! The real leading edge is work that is at least "new, correct, and significant" and published in a peer-reviewed journal of original research in information technology , yes, and also powerful and valuable in practice. So, put on resume that have published in original mathematical statistics for detecting zero-day problems, in artificial intelligence, and in optimization…

>Back to my startup -- a few good days and I should be able to go live. Read back on your posts a few pages, respectfully requesting to be put on your alpha list as well. My email address is on my profile here, for the time being.

You're on the list. Thanks.

Re: Old Techies Never Die; They Just Can’t Get Hired as an Industry Moves On (2012)

#116

Post by nlawalker »

jrumbut wrote: post #70
nlawalker wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do the opportunities come from? How do you market yourself?

Joining the various social networks, LinkedIn, Github, Twitter, HackerNews, etc is the place to start. Having your own website might be a decent idea too. If you post even the smallest of code samples you'be shown an employer two things that will not be true of all, or even most, candidates: that you can write working code in at least one language and that you use some of your spare time for skill development. Beyond…

Thanks, this might be the nudge that I need to actually start doing this stuff!

Re: Old Techies Never Die; They Just Can’t Get Hired as an Industry Moves On (2012)

#117

Post by WalterSear »

cpach wrote: post #93
WalterSear wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 44. I got my first 'real developer' job at 40 :)

Cool! Where you in IT before you started your dev job, or did you change career completely?

I was in tech but not directly IT, managing a video and event production team, got burnt out, got the coding bug, spent 6 months bootstrapping myself by making toy projects, and started interveiwing for jobs.

Re: Old Techies Never Die; They Just Can’t Get Hired as an Industry Moves On (2012)

#118

Post by HillaryBriss »

wwweston wrote: post #33
bburshteyn wrote: post #31

50+ here, starting https://www.trycryptomove.com . Some of the top cybersecurity advisors (and our increasingly growing list of pilot customers) seem to believe in me just fine. Age is just a number! Languages, tools, and frameworks evolve (including the brand new distributed programming language I invented, 'Hello', available at http://www.amsdec.com/ ). But good software architecture and engineering is an art that…

Which is why so many job postings request "generally good software architecture and engineering skills" instead of "5+ years with Amazeballs Framework and HotLang."

so true and so typical.

Amazeballs wasn't even invented until 2014. we all know that.

stupid recruiters.

Re: Old Techies Never Die; They Just Can’t Get Hired as an Industry Moves On (2012)

#119

Post by cafard »

NoCulturalFit wrote: post #71
markbnj wrote: post #7

So I turned 55 years old last Monday, am employed as a senior software engineer for a startup in the voter education and civic engagement space, and I guess I'm qualified to comment on this. I read this same refrain over and over, and if I peer just a little bit between the lines I think I perceive a common pattern. A lot of these people are just not up to keeping up. Learning the next thing is a wearisome burden for…

I'm 30 and I feel "unhirable". Pretty much up to speed on most platforms and languages. I guess it's for the better. Flipping burgers is probably in my future, and I am pretty happy with it.

Why do you feel unhirable?

Re: Old Techies Never Die; They Just Can’t Get Hired as an Industry Moves On (2012)

#120

Post by IndianAstronaut »

cryoshon wrote: post #111
IndianAstronaut wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The time to market difference is huge in regular software than research. Also, the risks of failure are very high. So incomes are cut, except with blockbusters where the rewards flow to the top. One reason I am glad I got out of biotech.

I'm in biotech now, thinking of leaving due to generally poor pay conditions in the industry. Have any other reasons to share?

I flat out had a tough time finding a job in biotech. I landed one and the pay was 30% less than what a regular tech company was offering. I still want to be in science, but now it is a hobby rather than my sole source of income.
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