381–390 of 451 posts
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The startup sector is centered here because the money (VC firms) is here. The reason for that is largely historical accident.
Money can easily move. Money chooses to be there due to wanting to be there, good weather, terrain, politics, etc. There is some due to historical effects, but more people than not consider CA coast weather to be pretty ideal, hence the higher cost of living.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The startup sector is centered here because the money (VC firms) is here. The reason for that is largely historical accident.
Money can easily move. Money chooses to be there due to wanting to be there, good weather, terrain, politics, etc. There is some due to historical effects, but more people than not consider CA coast weather to be pretty ideal, hence the higher cost of living.
And, weather doesn’t adequately explain the high CoL anywhere outside California or Hawaii. “It’s where the jobs are, so everyone wants to be there does,” and it also explains California. (Hawaii is special— it’s an archipelago, so, cost of shipping goods plus weather is really the best explanation, given the lack of a compelling employment story.)
I'm 47 and have run my own companies, exited some of them with handsome returns, enjoyed many cool start-up projects, worked for some fortune-50 companies, have an IQ that is through the roof, but despite everything, since around 7 years am unable to get a job. Mostly I'm "overqualified" or "just too old" ... never mind I am still hands-on and happy to just get paid whatever the Junior gets, but nobody is interested.…
I am close to this point, in my early 50s. I'm still housed, and my home life is okay, which is a damn miracle, since I have been unable to rejoin the supposedly "hot" SF Bay Area tech industry. I can get interviews if I whack 15 years off my web development career on my resume. I don't pass the in-person or video interview stage, because then the employer sees that I'm older than 35. Many of your points resonate wit…
I'm 47 and have run my own companies, exited some of them with handsome returns, enjoyed many cool start-up projects, worked for some fortune-50 companies, have an IQ that is through the roof, but despite everything, since around 7 years am unable to get a job. Mostly I'm "overqualified" or "just too old" ... never mind I am still hands-on and happy to just get paid whatever the Junior gets, but nobody is interested.…
My deepest sympathies to you and your family. You mentioned that you exited a few companies you ran. If I may ask, were you able to save any money from the companies you exited?
I'm 47 and have run my own companies, exited some of them with handsome returns, enjoyed many cool start-up projects, worked for some fortune-50 companies, have an IQ that is through the roof, but despite everything, since around 7 years am unable to get a job. Mostly I'm "overqualified" or "just too old" ... never mind I am still hands-on and happy to just get paid whatever the Junior gets, but nobody is interested.…
Forgive me for going against the hackernews age discrimination rhetoric, but... > have an IQ that is through the roof Who talks like this? I would never unironically mention my own IQ. I can't help but feel something's missing in this suspiciously heartfelt story. Still, I'm sorry this happened, if it happened.
Can someone tell me where the older software engineers in the Bay Area have gone? I recently moved into the software industry (after years in the telecom industry), and the lack of older software engineers is disconcerting in a Soylent Green type of way. I guess some have moved into management, and others have made enough money to retire, or they've moved somewhere with better value than the Bay Area. They're likely…
I don't have precise numbers, but based on a cursory scan of my linked-in connections, some of my cohort has followed that path and moved out. Another big subgroup is the people who went to google or some other Big N. In particular a lot of the high performance people did this.
Another person who replied to you suggested that CS/programming is just a lot more popular now and I think that is big part of the reason why it skews young. When I graduated (in 1997), CS was not a popular study. As a consequence, startups back then had a wide age range (20-60+), but still were quite youthful overall.
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I did this for 4 years and went back to full-time management. Even in NYC, I struggled as I (as a DevOps guy) never had the latest tech. If they needed AWS, I got AWS (experience and certs) but then they wanted Docker. Now Kubernetes. Despite years of programming experience in three languages, I still get whiteboarded. The point is, I was being treated like a full-time employee in consultant interviews. A few smaller…
What "interviews" are you talking about? Your track record is supposed to speak for itself. The interview boils down to sitting down with a client and figuring out what they need and whether you can do it. Because you're a contractor you can be fired effortlessly, so there's very little risk for the client. You can also fire the client, so there's little risk for you. I think you either don't have the right track rec…
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Orlando, FL. Same cost as Atlanta with a 15 min commute and places like disney/seaworld/etc
I have a friend who worked in Orlando. I got a chance to see what life was like in Orlando as a non tourist. It’s a nice place.
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Interesting background - any story behind leaving IBM 18 years ago at the young age of ~33? As an aside, ultimate responsibility for IBM's corporate websites does not _sound_ very similar to the CTO role at a tech company.
I was burned out after 5 years of 7x24x365. Days were filled with conference calls and escalations about conference calls, nights were filled with the technical work I was supposed to be doing during the day. I was prohibited from filing patents due to some sort of corporate reporting arcanity, which derailed my technical career. I had (and apparently still have) an extremely negative reputation in the executive rank…
Nothing to do whatsoever with CTO. It's not event relevant to anything executive or management.
I hope that you can describe your position in a more positive light than this text and without alluding to being CTO, because both will get you rejected fairly quickly in any interview.
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The assumption that there exists some price at which the older worker is preferable is assuming that all software workers have a positive contribution and the only task is to value and compensate it roughly in proportion. My experience suggests that a fair chunk of the population of software developers are incapable of sustainably creating positive business value overall (even if they were paid nothing). If that mode…
So you're saying that older workers being in the position of looking for a job are signaling that they're a scratched off lottery ticket for which the expected value of a jackpot is zero?
I’ve not found age to be a good proxy for capacity or capability; I know exceptionally good (and many poor) coders at every age range I’ve seen in our field.
As for “looking for a job”, that’s a normal thing. Most experienced candidates will have a network to help, but moving to a new area or new field is also normal and hurts networking effectiveness.