61–70 of 199 posts
Recently laid off at age 48. Less than a month later, had multiple offers with better compensation. Still in tech sector. Two years ago we switched from PHP to Go, which definitely helped.
I'd hate to think that readers over 50 feel the need to consider leaving the tech workforce, and I know perhaps hundreds of successful engineers over 50. Those that have a hard time getting back in are often a victim of discrimination not truly based on age, but on stagnation. A 50 year old who has worked on five interesting diverse projects in the last 10 years will find work. A 50 year old who spent the last 20 yea…
>A 50 year old who spent the last 20 years working for the same company using old tech may struggle, and by the time you realize you need to retool it can be too late. Basically, stay up-to-speed with Javascript if you do web development. It's the only landscape that changes significantly enough to warrant the effort, mainly because it's a huge melting pot of coding styles and frameworks and managers of these project…
I think the hole that older developers fall into is that their particular skills are out of date, and they have not expanded their skill set. I've talked to C++ developers who can't speak to anything beyond writing C++03 code for the last decade. You're basically looking for a niche position with that resume.
I lost my last permanent job in London at the end of 2008, at the beginning of the financial crisis in the UK. I applied for about two thousand roles in 2009 alone, and from 2008-2013, about 3,500 roles in total... In about 6-8 countries in multiple disciplines. I averaged 30+ applications _per day_ at first... and 1 interview per year. From 2009 to 2013 I got 2 months of paying work in total. Reason? I think it's be…
When applying to those roles how did they discover you were 41?
You should keep this fact in mind as you write a resume and decide which jobs to include, which jobs to perhaps delete, and whether you want to include your graduation date. It isn't necessary to include a graduation year or all of your jobs, so you can usually shave some years off your age "on paper" without being considered as deceptive.
Sometimes I'll add a line "Previous experience included..." to indicate that there is prior work experience, but I don't list the years.
I'd hate to think that readers over 50 feel the need to consider leaving the tech workforce, and I know perhaps hundreds of successful engineers over 50. Those that have a hard time getting back in are often a victim of discrimination not truly based on age, but on stagnation. A 50 year old who has worked on five interesting diverse projects in the last 10 years will find work. A 50 year old who spent the last 20 yea…
> discrimination not truly based on age, but on stagnation I can't speak in general, but I have observed in my circles that this is at least somewhat true, and for altogether natural reasons. Most people, once they hit their late 30s or 40s, family (if they have one) takes priority and they don't have as much time to dedicate to going to Meetup groups, conferences or late nights spent gaining proficiency in new techn…
When I advise clients on career topics like this, I usually weigh whether the day job provides the client with a marketable skill set. If not, that person needs to consider doing things outside of work to maintain marketability. If the day job provides challenges and the proper set of tech, no real need to invest much additional time to learning.
I lost my last permanent job in London at the end of 2008, at the beginning of the financial crisis in the UK. I applied for about two thousand roles in 2009 alone, and from 2008-2013, about 3,500 roles in total... In about 6-8 countries in multiple disciplines. I averaged 30+ applications _per day_ at first... and 1 interview per year. From 2009 to 2013 I got 2 months of paying work in total. Reason? I think it's be…
When applying to those roles how did they discover you were 41?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> discrimination not truly based on age, but on stagnation I can't speak in general, but I have observed in my circles that this is at least somewhat true, and for altogether natural reasons. Most people, once they hit their late 30s or 40s, family (if they have one) takes priority and they don't have as much time to dedicate to going to Meetup groups, conferences or late nights spent gaining proficiency in new techn…
Good points, but also keep in mind that if your employer is giving you a steady diet of interesting projects using technologies that are highly relevant, you don't have any need to go home and do personal projects at night. When I advise clients on career topics like this, I usually weigh whether the day job provides the client with a marketable skill set. If not, that person needs to consider doing things outside of…
Absolutely, and if they are not, one can either ask for them or switch jobs. The latter unfortunately is less of an option in smaller metro areas where the job market is limited. I've friends in smaller cities are who are stuck because there are only a few games in town.
That said, remote work is an option these days.
But there is still the inertia and difficult of switching jobs (an HN post a couple of days ago speaks to the difficulty in moving to a new tech job).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would be very curious to see how many 50 year old engineers are doing web development. I'm only 34 and my experience the past 5 years is that experience is not respected and being out of your 20s makes you a poor culture fit for most web companies. > If you do C#/Java/Go/Rust/C++/C, you're probably not going to be left behind. I wouldn't be so sure. The landscapes don't change as quickly as web dev does, but they d…
I'm mid-thirties and was recently asked to teach a 50 yo best practices for development in Node. And not like Node specific patterns, but more like how to handle http requests. I'm pretty sure that guy is way above my skill set - he's smart and he has 15 years of work experience on me. I turned the offer down since I would have looked like a fool, like a kid teaching an adult how to drive. The age bias is real.
While humans are growing up, we're accustomed to view our "elders" as our superiors in all respects. Childhood teachers encourage this view. However, at the point when you enter the workforce, in my opinion you should set these ideas aside and treat everyone as a peer; and keep your mind open to the idea that both people may have something to learn from the other.
I lost my last permanent job in London at the end of 2008, at the beginning of the financial crisis in the UK. I applied for about two thousand roles in 2009 alone, and from 2008-2013, about 3,500 roles in total... In about 6-8 countries in multiple disciplines. I averaged 30+ applications _per day_ at first... and 1 interview per year. From 2009 to 2013 I got 2 months of paying work in total. Reason? I think it's be…
Sorry, those 3500 recipients could not have known that you're 41 and tossed the application on that basis. There is just some problem other than the one you imagine. > I used to mainly work in support, from 1st/2nd/3rd line to sysadmin, systems design and spec, network architect, everything. I do Windows, Linux, Mac OS, networking, comms, some programming knowledge, training, all sorts. But I'm too old to get work as…
I'd hate to think that readers over 50 feel the need to consider leaving the tech workforce, and I know perhaps hundreds of successful engineers over 50. Those that have a hard time getting back in are often a victim of discrimination not truly based on age, but on stagnation. A 50 year old who has worked on five interesting diverse projects in the last 10 years will find work. A 50 year old who spent the last 20 yea…
> discrimination not truly based on age, but on stagnation I can't speak in general, but I have observed in my circles that this is at least somewhat true, and for altogether natural reasons. Most people, once they hit their late 30s or 40s, family (if they have one) takes priority and they don't have as much time to dedicate to going to Meetup groups, conferences or late nights spent gaining proficiency in new techn…
I try to keep an open mind when interviewing these folks, and we even have some great employees with that background, but so very few of them surprise me positively.
I sincerely hope they get rescued from their dead end jobs some how. It's such a shame. So much talent just getting wasted (IMHO).