Ask HN: Been writing code for 40 years and can't get hired

Two pieces of advice:

1) Think of getting hired as a numbers game, and think of applying for a job as a sales process. That means having a funnel for companies, e.g. "discovered -> openings available -> resume drop -> recruiter screen -> interview round 1,2,3 -> offer". Make a spreadsheet and start filling it; don't just list companies you know about, start googling tech you're interested in to find more companies you can add. If certain types of interviews seem to go better, look for similar companies you can add, too (as musesum suggested)

2) As others have said, gaming the interview process (with e.g. leetcode) can only help you. Perhaps unlike other commenters, though, my advice (based on a friend's long-term unemployment situation) is to focus on fixing "only interviewed once or twice a year" rather than "my skills no doubt became somewhat outdated," at least for a few months. If you do notice a big drop-off in your funnel (recruiter screen, first round interview) then focus on that part.

I'm 64 and been programming for 40 years. I am fortunate that I am able to not work due to a small military disability pension, plus I'll take social security soon.

My last experience was Facebook contacted me a few times, which I blew off because I knew they would never hire me. Finally I told them "You know I'm over 60, right?" and they got off the phone and never called back.

I'm thinking about doing some part time programming on one of the job sites. I'm not thrilled with throwing PHP together, so I haven't tried yet, and program for fun now. In the last couple of pandemic years I've learned Rust, Flutter and lately Blazor, which I just gave up on today. I installed Nodejs to learn React this afternoon. I'm looking for a pleasant way to earn money building front ends.

Well, I can't claim to be making a _good_ living, but if you look online at sites like Upwork or even reddit or various Discord channels, there is a lot of demand for programmers who are willing to work for cheap. And that may not be an option for someone with a family, but there are also a few clients here and there with real budgets.

One of the nice things about freelancing is that if I don't want to use React or Svelte or whatever the latest CSS framework is, there are projects who don't really care and let me do things how I want.

The other idea related to that is whatever business niche it is you have experience or interest in try to follow that community and see if there is any tool you can build.

> Charlatans don’t make it past engineers.

There is plenty of evidence that this just isn't true.

Hello from another greybeard. I've been in the same boat. I'm not a programmer, though. I was a sysadmin and senior tech-support guy (L3, but I can do anything.) I never specialised: I do Windows, Linux, Mac, and in the past, I did UNIX™, VMS, Netware, all sorts of long-dead stuff back to CP/M.

In 2007, I decided to switch from freelance to an office job before I turned 40. It took me about 500 applications to get my first interview, over the phone. I landed the job on that first phone interview. It was good, reasonable contract rates, shift-based but I needed the money.

Snag: I used to be a journalist, and I preferred it. A journo job came up, so I quit. The journo job ended about 4 months later, just as the Credit Crunch hit.

Over the next 5 years, I applied for over three thousand jobs. Not exaggerating. I was British and I also applied for roles in any country where I spoke enough of the language to write the cover letter: France, Spain, Germany, Norway, Sweden.

I averaged one interview a year, I got 2 roles, one of which lasted 10 days and the other 2 months.

Ready to give up, I managed to get a book deal, which paid enough to pay off the urgent bills and cover a one-month intensive training course to be a Teacher of English as a Second or Other Language. I planned to go abroad and travel as a TESOL teacher, as I figured I was too old to work in IT ever again.

Well, I told a friend, and that got me a referral for a technical writer job at a Linux vendor – but in Central/Eastern Europe, the former Communist Bloc. I'd never considered there.

Well, that job didn't last, but I found another quickly and easily – in fact, I was offered 2 roles by 2 different companies.

I have had half a dozen jobs since then, steadily increasing my pay. I moved cities to the capital.

Now, as it happens, I am back to journalism, but what I would say to you is this:

Ageism is very real and it's rife across the English-speaking world and the West in general. Kids (and you know what I mean by that) will deny this, and point out that it's illegal, which it is, but it happens anyway.

There's no escaping it.

But I found that it's not true in the former Communist Bloc. I didn't make as much as I did in Britain, but then, the cost of living is about a quarter of the West, so I lived very comfortably, thank you.

I successfully rebooted my entire career in my late 40s and now in my mid-50s, I own my own place outright, I have a young family with an adorable tiny daughter, a fulfilling job, a savings account and some investments, and I don't owe anything to anyone.

Get out of the collapsing West. Go East. Not necessarily Eastern Europe, but a lot of the developing world is crying out for English-speaking experienced people.

Sure, there are remote jobs, too, but at local pay, which won't go far in the West.

Pre-COVID I flew back to visit my aging relatives 3-4 times a year, which is a lot more often than I could afford to do when I lived in another part of the same country.

Ageism is not a worldwide problem, but you will have to travel far to escape it. But it's totally worth doing, and I'm glad I did. I even changed citizenship to make it simpler.