Ask HN: Been writing code for 40 years and can't get hired • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by Gunax » Mon, Dec 27, 2021, 3:19 AM UTC

martinbooth wrote: post #130

mwattsun wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tim…

I conduct interviews for Facebook and we do not discriminate on age. I assume the recruiter just got the impression you really didn’t want to interview with us. I only do the coding interviews but every piece of interview feedback I write is focused on the same criteria and that definitely does not consider age. We don’t even refer to the gender of an applicant in the feedback, and comments on an applicants age would…

There is a feeling that you (being big tech) discriminate.

Not trying to say its true or false... Just saying that it's no different than race or gender.

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

#132

Post by sigsergv » Mon, Dec 27, 2021, 3:52 AM UTC

martinbooth wrote: post #130

mwattsun wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tim…

I conduct interviews for Facebook and we do not discriminate on age. I assume the recruiter just got the impression you really didn’t want to interview with us. I only do the coding interviews but every piece of interview feedback I write is focused on the same criteria and that definitely does not consider age. We don’t even refer to the gender of an applicant in the feedback, and comments on an applicants age would…

Your coding interviews are THE filter that discriminates older people. They designed in leetcode-manner and that's clearly a sign that you want younger developers.

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

#133

Post by brutus1213 » Mon, Dec 27, 2021, 3:52 AM UTC

gentleman11 wrote: post #19

yuppie_scum wrote: post #7

Just quick perspective check: Facebook and Google are high bars to set for yourself. With some hyperbole we could say that’s like saying you’ve been paying the guitar for 40 years but neither the Beatles nor Stones would hire you. You could have a great and lucrative career playing guitar for, like, the Pretenders or something.

Each of those hire thousands of employees and they are saying that 40 years experience is less important than 6 months of leetcode. The analogy doesn’t fit

I think the analogy is quite correct. I am a fairly accomplished technologist but have failed every google/facebook interview I've had. I just can't do leetcode, and study for the interview. After a few failed interviews, I just don't accept interviews from such companies any more. I still make a decent living. Could I become rich at a FANG? Of course .. but there are other things more important to me to study (I study all the time .. just follow my curiosity .. not for tests). So my one piece of advice for the OP is aim a bit lower... there are tons of companies that are not fangs and still pay reasonably well for hard working, smart techies.

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

#134

Post by kamaal » Mon, Dec 27, 2021, 4:24 AM UTC

gopher_space wrote: post #53

bradlys wrote: post #20

You’ll need to get up to speed with modern interviewing practices. Unless you know someone - people don’t care what you’ve done. They care about how you perform in the interview. True with most of the top paying companies. I’d suggest doing a 100 problems on LC (try the subject study guides first) before interviewing again. Doesn’t sound fun but that’s how it is now. The bar is high for all candidates - at least for…

> people don’t care what you’ve done. They care about how you perform in the interview. I think OP is expecting a level of competence from interviewers that simply doesn’t exist anymore. He’s from a time when the initial conversation would be engineers only and absolutely focused on past projects.

Well, yeah, tough luck. There are people out there who keep complaining about talent shortage, and not finding people to do anything at all. But you go through their hiring process and it's all about 10 rounds of questions on OJ sites like LC. Plus they have a bar raiser round which is just basically more of the same.

This actually makes the problem much worse because the only people who are acing these tests are people who are investing their time in acing these tests and not people who are actually good at their jobs. If you found a job there is little incentive to do any thing at work, and you are just better off continuing to practice interviewing further, so that you can quit to grab another 50% raise in 6 months.

Ironically these kind of people are considered to be in high demand. Most of them haven't done one single turn key project their whole lives, and wouldn't know or even stay to do one if needed. The real ones who have proven track records of delivering projects aren't even considered hiring because they don't know a dozen ways of inverting a tree.

The world is an unfair place, most companies with these hiring processes, have moats which are pretty much an infinite gravy train, so its ok to do all this. This is the game, We just have to deal with this as we go.

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

#135

Post by ratorx » Mon, Dec 27, 2021, 4:43 AM UTC

pfp wrote: post #32

icsa wrote: post #8

The churn rate of current software development practice is quite rapid. When you took several years off, you "fell out of the job market". In effect, you need to reboot your skill & tool set to make current. In addition, you must reboot your interviewing skills. I've been a professional software interviewer (600+ interviews) and have seen most very experienced software developers do quite poorly during interviews. Th…

> I've been a professional software interviewer (600+ interviews) and have seen most very experienced software developers do quite poorly during interviews. So... you've 1) realized you're dealing with experienced people and 2) yet discarded them based on irrelevant "interview skills"? How does this serve the company trying to hire someone? FWIW, the couple of times I've interviewed someone -- I've always given the g…

Interviews at FAANG don’t really work like that. The typical interviewer has very little say in metrics used to evaluate the candidate. Their job is to evaluate the candidate based only on those metrics, with little room for anything else.

Part of the reason is standardisation. There is lots of training given to avoid bias. I think you’ve misunderstood what the parent meant by interview skills. The criteria don’t select for social skills (beyond the basic), but rather for algorithmic skill. However, most day-to-day development will not require as much of it, which is the parent’s point.

I think most people are aware that the system is not perfect, but the process of determining the metrics (as far as I understand it; I’m a fairly new interviewer) is pretty data based. It’s been optimised to hire people without relying heavily on the interviewers all being very experienced (because that doesn’t scale enough for FAANG).

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

#136

Post by batguano » Mon, Dec 27, 2021, 5:05 AM UTC

thehaze wrote: post #9

aaronrobinson wrote: post #6

Build a side project using modern tech. You’ll learn a bunch and then you can put those skills on your CV. I’m happy to look over your CV and guide you on stuff I would look out for. There are also programmes for people that have been out of the industry for a while.

+1 on this. Code some project on a pro bono basis using the latest tech, then use that as your ticket.

One problem with this is that when you learn a new technology on your own, you’re likely to use patterns and idioms of the language/tech you know best, and not the appropriate ones that an experienced developer would use. When the prospective employer looks at the code, it will often seem completely naive.

As an example, when I was trying to make the transition from C and Python to C++, I wrote a moderately sized interactive, real time, visual programming language. I didn’t ever show it to anyone, but I went back and looked at it a year later: I totally facepalmed because it was filled with glaring indications that I totally wasn’t a C++ programmer. For example, I often accessed an object’s members with “this->bar” (like in Python, where you use “self.bar”).

I certainly learned a lot, so it wasn’t a waste of time (and it was a fun project for me anyway). If I had a really good friend or mentor who would have been willing to invest the time to do an extensive code review first, then it might have been a useful demo. But at the time, I had no idea just how little I knew!

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

#137

Post by mwattsun » Mon, Dec 27, 2021, 5:08 AM UTC

martinbooth wrote: post #130

mwattsun wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tim…

I conduct interviews for Facebook and we do not discriminate on age. I assume the recruiter just got the impression you really didn’t want to interview with us. I only do the coding interviews but every piece of interview feedback I write is focused on the same criteria and that definitely does not consider age. We don’t even refer to the gender of an applicant in the feedback, and comments on an applicants age would…

I said "You know I'm over 60, right?" in a friendly and informative way in case that could be an issue. The correct response would have been your comment, but instead was a quick exit and putting me on the no call list. You may not age discriminate, but that doesn't mean everyone one at Meta (Facebook at the time) does not.

I was aware of Mark Zuckerberg's comment which is why I brought up my age.

“I want to stress the importance of being young and technical,” he said. “Young people are just smarter. Why are most chess masters under 30? I don’t know. Young people just have simpler lives.” -- Mark Zuckerberg, Stanford University in 2007

https://www.quora.com/Is-that-true-that-Mark-Zuckerberg-dont...

Edit: I believe you when you say you don't age discriminate. That's because everyone is watching everyone else, including internal lawyers, to make sure you don't so as to avoid law suits. However, the person that called me was on a private phone call with me that wasn't being recorded, so they could get away with it.

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

#138

Post by gigglesupstairs » Mon, Dec 27, 2021, 5:16 AM UTC

octobus2021 wrote: post #55

My situation is somewhat different but there's similarities. Also over 50 (barely), skills are not exactly outdated (Azure data engineering/analytics), but been looking for a job since being laid off early in the pandemic (going on 1.5 years gap on the resume). Took a few months hiatus in 2020 since the job market was pretty much dead and got a few certifications. Just this month got 4 rejections, partly because of b…

Slightly going on a tangent here but how does one even approach the HR which has suddenly ghosted you after multiple rounds of what looked like good interviews and what looked like a good match? I guess I’m not really looking for an answer here but some parallel experiences perhaps if you can share.

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

#139

Post by bradknowles » Mon, Dec 27, 2021, 5:42 AM UTC

gopher_space wrote: post #100

mavelikara wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think OP is expecting a level of competence from interviewers that simply doesn’t exist anymore. No. OP has not realized that the job market has plenty of charlatans who can talk well, but can't do the job.

That’s why you need competent interviews. Charlatans don’t make it past engineers.

With respect, most of the charlatans I’ve seen over the years have been the people conducting the interviews.

Fortunately, that hasn’t always been the case, otherwise I wouldn’t be in the job I am today. But that does seem to be the exception rather than the rule.

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

#140

Post by bradknowles » Mon, Dec 27, 2021, 5:46 AM UTC

zamalek wrote: post #24

I would never work at a FAANG unless I had no other option. They will pay you handsomely, but they will take their pound of flesh. It's also extremely monocultural: your life, your world, your culture, is about their bottom line. Personally, if I was presented with a leetcode interview (I was interviewing a few months ago), I bowed out pretty damned quickly. You really need to catch up on the tech. In addition to wha…

I must confess, I was recently hired by AWS. I didn’t see any LeetCode.

Maybe I’m lucky, but the hiring process is actually quite involved from what I’ve seen, and they have some very specific processes that they go through to try and make sure you’re a good fit for the team and will likely be able to do the job well.

Maybe some of the more dev-focused jobs do have a shared coding environment that they want you to use for the examples they will want you to go through, but they also tell you in advance what that environment is so that you can play around with it before the interview and so that it won’t be totally alien to you.