Rules of thumb for a 1x developer

Interesting, though subjective perspective.

My experience (no STEM degree, self-taught except for a few classes)--> You get out what you put in.

Want success?

Work + Strategy + Skills => Success

(Not skills from 20 years ago. Skills you built recently, on contemporary, in-demand areas of knowledge.)

Having studies a little statistics, I understand that outputs are typically the result of several inputs ("factors"), some of which we are aware of, some of which we are not aware of/which are not analyzable ("lurking" variables).

So, for example:

The output you look for: to be hired as a software developer

Some potential factors which are responsible for the success in yielding the desired output:

- Current skills relative to the currently in-demand skills (i.e. are you a COBOL developer? Good luck-- look at the top 10 programming languages, perhaps choose to learn one from the top 3, such as Javascript, Python, etc.)

- Geographic area. (i.e. are you expecting a web dev job in West Virginia, Kentucky, etc? Or are you actually looking in places with "competitive advantage" in the technology domain, such as San Francisco Bay Area, Washington DC Area, New York City area?)

- Your personality. (i.e. are you pleasant to be around?)

- How well you interview. (i.e. are you good at presenting yourself?)

- How much time you put into marketing yourself (i.e. do you have a portfolio website? do you have open source code projects whereby you have code examples on github?)

- Are you actively learning new, popular languages/frameworks/libraries?

- How well are you targeting job descriptions with your skills and resume (i.e. "product-market fit" where you are the product, and the jobs you apply to are the market. Are you applying to jobs where you meet 70% of desired requirements, or just doing "spray and pray" type of applications?)

>I used to get called a 10x developer, I was also called a rockstar and a ninja and a 100x dev and every other compliment that was hip.

The 10x developer talk is just hype by unscrupulous employers to entice young engineers to have an unhealthy work life balance. Of course they don't tell that to older developers because they would call you on their bullshit.

I know a lot of professional developers that are in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. What keeps these engineers employed is not how great they are technically, but that they are humble, flexible, willing to share their experience, and are social inside and outside of work (large networks).

>Make a backup plan now. Agreed you should always have a plan B.

Here are a few ideas:

1) Ageism is real no denial of that, but so is racism, sexism, ableism. We all have to work through that nonsense. Don't give up.

2) There are a shit-ton more well paying technical jobs that need coders than just software developer roles, expand your horizons.

3) There are public/private sector employers that need software developers badly who are willing to be flexible. (see NJ needs COBOL developers)

4) Remote developer work is taking off. I think they care less about where you live, what you look like, or how old you are.

No one would ever call me a 10x engineer and I am in your same age group, yet I find that there are plenty of jobs out there for me (or at least there were pre-pandemic). What could explain why I can get interviews and job offers and you cannot? Because it's not age. Maybe stack? I'm all JavaScript. Maybe region? I work remotely (out of state) now but most of my ~5 year career has been in the Bay Area.

I am almost 40, and I fully expect this to be my last software development job. Likewise, I've never had a negative performance review and am usually the top task-killer and bug-destroyer; but when recruiters call and find out I'm married with kids they can't seem to hang up fast enough.

I'm saving as much as I can. The end is nigh.

> married with kids

Can't you just lie about this? It's none of their business.

Or tell white lies -- kids, but "pretty old" or "at college" or whatever.