Ask HN: Am I obsolete?

I'm being constantly rejected at interviews. I was lazy not to change company early in my career. Now after 12 years when I finally started trying, I feel like I am obsolete and no company wants to hire me. Thing is I am not a worst programmer. I did receive many performance awards in my company and for most of the years received good salary hikes. In last few interviews I did well in coding questions but (I think) failed in design/architectural questions. I worked in a small company(300-500) for a very long time, where I never faced challenges that large or even medium size companies face. This has put me way behind other programmers with same number of years of experience.

I even tried applying for positions requiring 5-6 years experience, but for those I don't even get an interview call.

I'm so much depressed right now, I don't know what to do anymore. Is my career as a programmer over? What should I do?

A friend of mine just took 6+ months to find a job, and he's excellent. Sometimes that's just how it is.

My advice: find some other people's resumes, somehow. Compare them to yours. I had read my friend's, and thought it was okay. Then I had to read 10+ for my boss, weeding out the good/bad, and I realised that I was wrong. His was waaaaay too long and had waaaay too many words in long paragraphs.

It needs to be quick. Tell me, fast, what you do and what you're good at. Keep it short. Remember, I'm reading 10 of these in an hour under pressure - I don't have time for your life story.

Hope that helps in some way? Keep at it mate. It'll come good in the end if you skills are solid.

No you are not.

From experience, HR screeners often view people who stay in the same place as "coasters". You need your resume & approach to aggressively counter this storyline. Without even having seen your resume, I'm assuming you're not effectively doing that.

So, I think you need a great recruiter. Yes, yes, scum of the earth, bla bla. But: you clearly are not able to translate your experience into something droolworthy for the right employer, and I'm guessing you're not aggressive about getting feedback about why you're not getting callbacks or how you could improve in interviews (?)

A great recruiter will do that for you. I think you should just acknowledge that weakness and find a great recruiter. A great recruiter, not just any sucker who contacts you cold on linkedin.

How to find one? It's easier to find a great recruiter than it is to get hired for your full market potential: Ask around. Friends, ex-colleagues, etc. If you're absolutely dying email me: einar@vollset.com, and I'll try and help.

You'll be fine. I checked out your comments. You're an experienced Java Dev in Seattle. Have faith.

Just a FYI: Most interview calls come out of contacts and not by blindly mailing your resume to jobs@company.com. If you did just that, I am not surprised that you haven't gotten interview calls by simply sending emails to mailboxes nobody reads!

I did get some interviews through networking but I couldn't clear those. Till now I couldn't understand why, till my last interviewer told me since I'm from small company operating at small scale I'm not suitable for senior position.