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64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant

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Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can't quantify the value you're adding to an organization, are you adding any at all? The problem with that line of thought is that it's not at all easy (or even possible) to quantifiably measure performance on an individual basis. This is especially true for roles like PM's whose job is to enable the labor and talent of others.

Many roles are difficult to quantifiably measure. The same is true for software engineers-- suppose two developers are shipping code, but one writes 2x as many lines of code. Do we say they're twice as productive, or delivering twice as much business value? Not necessarily. But there should be something that can be measured, even if it's imprecise, to at least show that something's being done. How do you measure the…

Measure and "quantifiably measure" are two different things. I agree that performance can and should be evaluated, however, for many jobs that is an intrinsically subjective task.

There's nothing wrong with that. It's just the nature of such roles.

You still evaluate, you just don't boil it down to one "score".

Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant

#282
post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the catch though? Higher stress during 20s and 30s?

High earning job and living well below means with a good amount of luck

Look into index funds and Bogle heads lazy portfolio. There are communities dedicated to financial independence (FIRE) on the internet that can help you with these goals.

Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant

#283
post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That being the case, isn't meritocracy still the correct ideal that we should be doing a better job of striving for? I would actually say no, at least when it comes to when arguments for a meritocracy are used as arguments against redistribution of wealth from the more "meritocratic" to the less. Consider, as a thought experiment, if instead of features like intelligence, communication skills, self-confidence, etc.…

I'm not sure that "fairness" is exactly the right ideal if our goal is the most health and wealth for the most people? I want my doctor to be really great--to be in that job because he is the best at it. I don't want someone placed there by a truly random lottery, and I do want the guy who won the intelligence DNA drawing to be the one I talk to. I also want wealth to motivate people to get into that job, as it is so…

Fairness in opportunities, which you just disqualified by assuming the best Dr need to be a MALE and GENTICALY PREDETERMINED SMART.

My (short) experience working in health care suggest both are very bad qualifications for a health professional.

Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument for meritocracy is what a real communist will tell you about communism now. It works basically for anything that we don't have good working examples for right this second. Given that there are no good working examples and/or haven't been any so far, how would we fix the problems that we have seen and can foresee? Given those concerns, I think it is not reasonable to just say "we need to try again and tr…

I feel like misquoting Churchill here and saying meritocracy is the the worst system except for all the alternatives.

You'd also be doing injustice to his saying. A (liberal) democracy gives every one the same opportunity. This isn't the case with so called meritocracy.

Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It won't be, because different groups answer questions differently. One famous result ( http://web.pdx.edu/~mev/pdf/PS471_Readings_2012/Lizotte_Sidm... ) is that woman hold themselves to a higher threshold of certainty before claiming to know something. An interesting solution would be to score differently based on known biases; but that would be a can of worms in itself. Meritocracy is a lie used by the privileged.…

> It won't be, because different groups answer questions differently. And the common currently practices don't control for that any better. The parent's idea (blind or double-blind screening of candidates) seems like it would, to me, be inherently better if we can figure out how to deal with the logistical complexities it adds. (E.g., how does on-site work? Are there on-sites?) If anything, it would be interesting to…

> I'm not part of the problem by treating people equally,

If you (think) treat people equally, you are part of the problem. When one group is more vocal than the other, you have to amplify the other group. If not, you're just keeping the current bias in place.

Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant

#286
post #247

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It's unfortunate. Especially in agile, a good project (err.. product...) manager is worth their weight in gold. I have to be honest, I've had my hand slapped here on HN for conflating project managers with product managers. I admit that I do this because from an agile software development perspective you need a variety of skills. One of the biggest problems I've seen on agile projects is a lack of analysis. Often "ag…

what is the difference between a project and a product manager? a lot of what your describing sounds like an engineering manager or ever lead developer to me.

Of course, none of this is set in stone. Different organisations do things differently. I can tell you my reasoning for categorising things the way I do, but I don't think there is any meaning to having a canonical system.

First lead developer. To me a lead developer is the person on a team that leads the technical direction of the team. Programming is all about judgement calls and long term success on the technical side depends on getting those judgement calls right more often than wrong. Some lead developers like to make all technical decisions, but this can create a bottle neck and also piss off the rest of the team. For those reasons, I don't like that approach and prefer to have the lead developer act as a technical coach, leading by example. The lead developer should have the final say on technical decisions and should be aware of all of the decisions being made on the team, but they should avoid making decisions if they can. On political matters, they should refrain from being too active, but rather defer to the development/engineering manager if there are any problems. Lead developers should also write a lot of code IMHO.

The sound clip is, though, the lead developer should be a 10x developer by virtue of doubling everybody else's productivity. However they do that is fine.

I tend to use the term "development manager" rather than "engineering manager" for arbitrary reasons, but they mean the same to me. A development manager ideally should make no technical decisions. That should be left to the lead developer. In some organisations, the team is not deep enough to have an effective lead developer, so sometimes the development manager has to take on that role too. In other organisations, there is no development manager and so the lead developer has to take on that role. It's not optimal, but it really depends on the size and depth of the organisation.

A development manager's responsibility is political in nature. First they must evaluate and track the progress of the members of the team (usually working closely with the lead developer to get insight). They will ideally decide on the head count of the team, choose the members of the team, organise hiring if necessary and arranging for movement out of the team (whether that is a transfer or dismissal) if necessary. The development manager is responsible for the conduct of the team. If there are behavior problems, the development manager must find a solution (usually working with the lead developer) to those problems. The development manager is responsible for tracking performance of developers, negotiating raises, managing career progression, finding appropriate training, allocating resources (for example computers, desks, chairs, internet), etc. They are also responsible for ensuring that outside problems are dealt with effectively. A big part of that is making decisions about how to deal with external requests for development, allocating people to deal with problems, etc, etc. They must work with the project manager(s) to track performance and ensure that there are adequate people available to do the work that is necessary. The must work together to track work completion and adjust expectations for delivery dates, etc.

Where the lead developer is looking at the tactical view about how to best accomplish a series of tasks, the development manager is looking at the strategic view of plotting the current location and direction of the team (as well as dealing with the people problems and political fall out from that).

I wrote earlier about what I see the project/product manager doing, so I won't get into it too much, however I'll talk a little bit more about the communication/politics role the product/project manager needs to do. Unless the company is small, there are usually a lot of other departments, many of which dwarf the IT group. These groups include (but are not limited to) marketing, sales, documentation, customer service, etc. In some organisation you even have a separate IT group from development usually called "services" that does custom development for large customers. The project manager has to coordinate all of these groups. This is a big job. They need to listen to all of these groups to gather requirements. They need to coordinate with marketing and sales to keep them synchronised for timing. They have to constantly update everybody as business needs and requirements change. They need to make sure that marketing aren't putting together a campaign for something that you aren't building. They need to stop sales from selling things that you don't have. They need to coordinate the development of documentation. In some industries they need to arrange for and plan certification. I could literally type for pages on this kind of thing. You need at least one person dedicated to this job for each project in most large companies.

The main difference between a project/product manager and a development manager is that one if focused on the project/product and one is focused on the performance of the team. You can merge these roles in a small company, but there are desirable separations of concerns in these roles. Especially (and it's a bit hard to say this politely), there is plenty of latitude for abuse if both of these roles is performed by the same person.

You will notice that I haven't answered your first question. I don't make a distinction between project and product managers. However, many people do. I think the best way to look at the situation, though, is that you almost always need someone who is responsible for the artefact that you are building. They "own" the requirements for that thing. I will say that just like the lead developer position, I prefer a technique where as "owner" you don't actually make all the decisions. Instead you are aware of all the decisions and you make the final decision when there are problems. It's the ownership of the responsibility, really, rather than the ownership of each individual choice. Otherwise you get into the same position of becoming a bottle neck, or pissing off the rest of the team who has to pay for your mistakes, even though they have no say in the matter. It's a hard job, though, because you really have to travel around talking to people all day and make sure that you understand every decision being made.

On the other hand, just like there is a separation of tactical and strategic goals in development, you can do the same in the project management side. So you can have a project/product "owner" and a project/project manager, who may be responsible for the strategic view of how all these tings are fitting together. In a very large company, you almost certainly need this role. Most of my career has been spent in organisations with less than 200 developers and in those organisations, I've never really seen the need. YMMV.

Edited to fit into a reply (apparently I typed too much).

Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is somebody with no money, no contacts, and no collateral, supposed to pull those off? The ones I know who did it started by contributing to open source projects and developing a reputation. Employers often canvas open source projects looking to hire the better contributors.

I used to assume this was a path. The two luminaries I know (more famous than you even) did not seem to have luck with it. My advice would be to do personal projects for the pure enjoyment of it, and for learning. I wouldn't expect great career payback, though.

It would need to be a fairly high profile open source project, one that would attract the attention of recruiters. Of course, you'd be compared against the other high profile contributors to it, but what better way to show you can do it?

There are other ways to raise one's profile. One could join the C++ Standard committee and actively participate in it. The top C++ companies will notice you. Or the standards committee of your favorite language.

One can submit papers to relevant conferences. Companies often attend conferences for the specific purpose of recruiting.

Even better, you can do the above without needing to relocate, and with minimal investment of funds.

Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“He has all those skills but doesn’t have a job? Must be something wrong with him. I know several people his age and they all have jobs.”

It could be the places he’s applying, he’s could be blindly submitting resumes, it could be anything. But out of all the things it could be, we don’t know if it’s about age.

"blindly submitting resumes"

Please explain what this is and why it would be a problem.

Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant

#289
post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that "fairness" is exactly the right ideal if our goal is the most health and wealth for the most people? I want my doctor to be really great--to be in that job because he is the best at it. I don't want someone placed there by a truly random lottery, and I do want the guy who won the intelligence DNA drawing to be the one I talk to. I also want wealth to motivate people to get into that job, as it is so…

Fairness in opportunities, which you just disqualified by assuming the best Dr need to be a MALE and GENTICALY PREDETERMINED SMART. My (short) experience working in health care suggest both are very bad qualifications for a health professional.

So, first off, fair point for calling out that I said "guy." I tried to edit it once I saw my mistake, but the post was locked.

I'm curious, though, why you would not want someone who was genetically smart? Why would you want a "dumb" healthcare professional treating you? Do you not believe intelligence to be related to genetics?

Also, how does being male make one a worse healthcare professional?

If you are saying you want fairness in opportunities, then isn't discriminating on the basis of someone being male the opposite of fairness?

Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be the places he’s applying, he’s could be blindly submitting resumes, it could be anything. But out of all the things it could be, we don’t know if it’s about age.

"blindly submitting resumes" Please explain what this is and why it would be a problem.

Submitting a resume online that just goes through an application tracking system instead of using a local recruiter that has a relationship with the hiring manager.

There is never a time that my application goes in a black hole. I always know where I am in the process.

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