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Surviving as an ‘Old’ in the Tech World

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Re: Surviving as an ‘Old’ in the Tech World

#121
post #77
post #29

> Team social events shouldn’t require physical prowess or alcoholic excess—so forget paintball and bar crawls. As a 57 year-old backend engineer I would like to keep the bar crawls, thanks.

None for me, please: https://web.archive.org/web/20130808111450/http://ryanfunduk...

What an irritating blog post.

I don't disagree with the overall point (have experienced it myself, for sure, at times).

"instead walked around DC, sober, talking and enjoying the great weather with my beautiful wife" why does it have to be pointed out that his wife is "beautiful"? Seems a little hypocritical to me. And some of the stuff he picks on people having done (like posting a Twitter msg with a picture pf a bunch of empty beer bottles) is really scraping the barrel.

Shame really - started off quite well.

Re: Surviving as an ‘Old’ in the Tech World

#122
post #29

> Team social events shouldn’t require physical prowess or alcoholic excess—so forget paintball and bar crawls. As a 57 year-old backend engineer I would like to keep the bar crawls, thanks.

I love paintball. You can definitely play without physical prowess — plenty of people sit in the back of speedball fields to "spray or pray" or call out upstream opponent positions to their team. Likewise with the woodsball setting even more so. It's much less physically demanding than one might think... you can be successful at recreation level without running. I've never been athletic but I was stable able to play…

It's "spray and pray" old man, not "spray or pray" lmao.

Re: Surviving as an ‘Old’ in the Tech World

#123
Bias toward less experienced but highly technical staff seems to be an artifact of the portfolio management style of the investors and board members. Shotgun investments in a space mean shotgun incentives for managers, which yield shotgun solutions from engineering teams, to whack-a-mole product market fit problems - with randomized, exponential returns.

Profitable, revenue funded companies are more accommodating to the Olds because things like discernment are rewarded. Mature companies (5+ years) that act like startups are as Jerry Seinfeld once quipped, "dressing their best decade." You can usually tell within 15 minutes of entering an office whether it's a place of growth.

Young people are perfect for the former style because they can apply technical know-how without any broader criticism about likelihood of success, strategy, or sustainability. As an old, it can become more difficult to maintain the cognitive dissonance required to thrive in these environments when you have a mental horizon longer than 5 years.

I've worked with olds, and the successful ones recognize the story is no longer about them. They recognize that young people are also like a portfolio of long term investments, so they manage it prudently, and the best ones have learned how to get short.

If you are still doing startups as an employee in your 40s, you are there for the rush and because you love doing it. We should all admit that working for early stage companies is a lifestyle, not a plan. There is nothing wrong with experienced people. They aren't malformed and do not need correction. Some might need more awareness of what they are involved in, but adopting a "fixer upper," mentality is the beginning of death.

Re: Surviving as an ‘Old’ in the Tech World

#124

As a salesman who is constantly told he is "too young" and is habitually underpaid/fired, I can tell you that age discrimination is both real and highly arbitrary. If anybody out there can see the value in having an enthusiastic customer advocate, rather than just another sales guy, please do reply :)

I know a lot of folks hiring. Happy to pass your resume around. Email me: Hn (at) strapr (dot) com Also check out Albert’s List on Facebook. There are a lot of non tech jobs posted on there.

Thanks so much for writing, I will email you shortly!

Re: Surviving as an ‘Old’ in the Tech World

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The preferred nomenclature is "wrinkly"

In the UK, we have "twerly" (derived from the free bus trips available to pensioners, but only after 10am, hence "Am I too early?")

Excellent - I'm in the UK, but haven't heard that one. Not that far from a bus pass myself

Re: Surviving as an ‘Old’ in the Tech World

#127
post #62
post #33

I'm in the opposite of this situation, I'm among the 10% of the youngest employees in the company, when around 60% of the company will be retiring within a decade. We're also in one of those high cost housing markets, and while I'm very well paid comparatively to others in my particular part of the technology sector - its still not enough to buy a house, or settle down - but they're somewhat unsympathetic when I talk…

If it makes you feel any better, it wasn’t until I was 30 that my wife and I had enough for a downpayment for a house. When I graduated, my salary was $40k. And, 3-bedroom houses, in my economically-attractive, but not extravagent, area were around $300k. Rent for a 2br was about $1000 / month, so saving $60k took quite a few years. Of course, several co-workers had well-off parents who bought them their first house…

Oh man, I read this and realize how fortunate I was to never move to California! I've had it so good in the Mid-Atlantic and now the Midwest. My take on all things like this is if your plan is putting you through hell, make a new plan.

Ageism is a thing here, too, but there are now so many Boomers retiring that suddenly companies have been eager to hire in a fashion I have not seen in quite awhile. I'm about to start at a Fortune 10 company and I'll be a Tech Lead at age 45 and we'll see where that goes. I've never been much for being a ladder climber as I'm fairly well off (not quite confident enough to FIRE yet) but working a lot of hours has never really appealed to me because of that. In five more years I'm going to go do something completely different with my life.

One thing that 20+ years of working in tech has taught me is that the industry as a whole is a giant boondoggle--it's at least 80% hype. It's about greasy MBAs finding ways to make loads of money using the talents of techies while heaping on mountains of bs. I did work at a couple of startups in past years, they were okay, but one folded and another got bought out by Carl Icahn and I left soon after that as I was not part of the inner circle of people who made out well on that deal.

I also tried my hand at starting my own business a couple of different times, but found that it's not for me--my ideas weren't that great and the stress of putting in all that work just ate me up. I'm not a Steve Jobs type of character and not good at lying to people. There were other issues, too: Patents. The world of IP is a minefield, and I won't say anymore than that. One of my colleagues from a past job made out very well with his startup, he created a DevOps tool that is very well known right now. I'm very happy for him and to have known someone who made it.

Re: Surviving as an ‘Old’ in the Tech World

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not go get a job at Google? If you’re good the received wisdom seems to be to inhale Cracking the Coding Interview and the Algorithm Design Manual. If they don’t have any open positions where you’d like to work that’s one thing but why not take the extra money if it’s there?

It is not just about the interviews. Google and others in the big five also evaluate "career trajectory". That means you need to show continuous progression in your career as a non-entry-level hire. Someone who has reached a plateau in salary usually doesn't have that, a "grizzled" tech veteran won't be able to show continuous career progression after surviving ups and downs in the industry (layoffs, failed companies…

That's a misunderstanding.

They want you to show growth at Google, and if you are hired as an entry-level engineer. It isn't about what you did up to that point.

Source: did a lot of hiring at Google.

Re: Surviving as an ‘Old’ in the Tech World

#129
post #114
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you spent 4 weeks drilling basic CS problems do you think you will pass the interview? When I look into them I feel like I can pick it back up quickly. On a tangent: which city are you looking in?

I am passing them now, after having gone through a few. I do still make stupid mistakes more than I would have in my youth. Four weeks drilling would definitely more than do it. I think the bigger problem is none of the other skills I have seem to even matter for Google/Amazon/Facebook hiring. I would rather practice those skills and find niche openings which value people like me than do prep for a broken process. Pl…

Thanks a lot for taking the time to reply.

How do you and yours look for jobs? In other words, where would I need to advertise to have you find me and apply?

Here I posted an ad for a principal engineer, and it drew zero responses [1]. What could I do differently to get attention of (someone like) you and your friends?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16055897

Re: Surviving as an ‘Old’ in the Tech World

#130

WTF: "an Old" Is that supposed to be "millennial" lingo?

I don't have a definitive memory of this by any means, and searching old websites in 2018 is like pulling teeth now that Google "unlaunched" custom date ranges (yet another step on the long journey toward making Google search the pinnacle of vapid "relevance"). However, I seem to remember first seeing it on left-leaning political blogs in the early '00s as mockery of the pattern of complaining about "the gays", "the Jews", "the blacks", etc.. So when pundits complained about welfare, it was paraphrased as ranting about "the poors", when they railed against pensions or Medicare they were angry with "the olds", and so on. It's a very short hop from there to people posting comments that start like "As a poor, [...]".
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