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Ask HN: Am I dead meat already?

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Re: Ask HN: Am I dead meat already?

#41

Post by cafard »

ackseq wrote: post #18
brudgers wrote: post #14

Is your career over? Probably not. But if you want to write Go, write go on your own time and use your day job to support your creative practice. The more experience you have the more advantage there is to getting jobs through people you know, and the more disadvantage there is to looking to strangers for employment. Because looking for employment from strangers raises the legitimate question, "why doesn't this perso…

"why doesn't this person have work through their professional network?" Where I am from this is called nepotism and is frowned upon. Also a sign of a flawed job market.

Finding work though a "family network" would be nepotism. Finding work through a professional network is entirely another matter. If the professional network consists of golfing buddies, no, that would not be a good thing. If it consists of peers one knows through prior work, conferences, etc., I see no reason for anyone to complain.

Re: Ask HN: Am I dead meat already?

#43

Post by piva00 »

gizajob wrote: post #20

Lie about your age and fabricate new skills on your resume/CV. Put “I code in C/Java/Go/Python/Javascript/whateverYouNeed”. Also you’re in the EU so could feasibly move to where needs your exact skill set. But web/frontend/backend is needed everywhere so it’s likely worth adding that to your C skills.

> Also you’re in the EU so could feasibly move to where needs your exact skill set.

Uprooting your life when you are 25-30 is easier, can be a fun adventure, etc. Doing that when you are 50 is many layers more complicated.

Lying is absolutely a no-no, there's no upside, you will be forever in debt about a lie and in the case of something as easily detected as your age you will lose all credibility for a stupid reason.

Re: Ask HN: Am I dead meat already?

#44

Post by fenomas »

ackseq wrote: post #18
brudgers wrote: post #14

Is your career over? Probably not. But if you want to write Go, write go on your own time and use your day job to support your creative practice. The more experience you have the more advantage there is to getting jobs through people you know, and the more disadvantage there is to looking to strangers for employment. Because looking for employment from strangers raises the legitimate question, "why doesn't this perso…

"why doesn't this person have work through their professional network?" Where I am from this is called nepotism and is frowned upon. Also a sign of a flawed job market.

GP is talking about getting jobs via professional colleagues that know you're good at what you do. Nepotism is the opposite of that - getting a job from connections that aren't work-related.

Re: Ask HN: Am I dead meat already?

#45

Post by ch_123 »

I learned Go "on the job" - I wrote a codebase during a company hackathon, and it ended up being shipped into production not long after. The good thing about Go is that the tooling and libraries quickly steer you towards using the language in a particular way, meaning that you learn how to write idiomatic Go quite quickly. In my case, my Golang code was reviewed by those with years of Go experience and they were surprised to find out that it was my first Go codebase.

I suspect that most half-decent Golang shops will know this and be open to hiring an experienced C developer.

Re: Ask HN: Am I dead meat already?

#46

Post by [deleted] »

gizajob wrote: post #20

Lie about your age and fabricate new skills on your resume/CV. Put “I code in C/Java/Go/Python/Javascript/whateverYouNeed”. Also you’re in the EU so could feasibly move to where needs your exact skill set. But web/frontend/backend is needed everywhere so it’s likely worth adding that to your C skills.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Am I dead meat already?

#47

Post by SillyUsername »

With your C skills I'd consider a parallel market in embedded or low level work to expand your skills in those areas. You might be able to move from that up to to mobile development etc. Tech stacks there tend to be Java, Swift, C, React Native (similar to React web) so it opens a lot of areas.

P.S. I'm not far behind in age but I code in 2 different tech stacks daily at work, on FE and BE, and stick my nose into parallel stacks to get that experience, specifically so I don't get COBOL'd (do one thing my entire career, and then that one thing no longer has developer demand).

Re: Ask HN: Am I dead meat already?

#48

Post by codingdave »

v3ss0n wrote: post #22
dakiol wrote: post #19

You could spend some working hours brushing up your knowledge about whatever tech stack companies nowadays ask for. You don’t need to become an expert in X, Y and Z, a bit of exposure and understanding of the fundamentals is enough to put it on your CV. I have done this many times. For example, I didn’t know k8s, and I wanted to switch jobs: I spent around 1-2 months learning k8s at work and at home, I learnt the fun…

As a Founder , I believe it is not fair for someone to look for job applications on company time and sharpening your skills for next job - in time and resources that your company had paid for. Since you have problems with upper management - tough it up , talk about it face to face in a polite manner and highlight their toxic behavior . Tell them you don't like the way you are being treated and you can't continue this…

No, if you have problems with upper management, you should do something about it, but nobody owes their management a discussion about it. If leadership doesn't know how to build a healthy work environment, then people will decide for themselves whether to "manage up" to try to correct it, or to just step out of that environment in whatever way works for them.

That doesn't always mean quitting - I personally try to just change my job role and find that I often can adjust the work to avoid the toxic leaders. But if that cannot be done, leaving the job is a reasonable action.

And "as a Founder", if you think your staff is obligated to pull you out of any holes you dig, you are going to be in for a surprise when you find out just how many people are happy to let toxic leaders fail.

Re: Ask HN: Am I dead meat already?

#49

Post by mihaaly »

Yes.

I am 52, having a good workplace but terrible job (bad quality desktop system to maintain, very frustrating like pissing into headwind against a hill), so I am looking around. If you do not have that _specific_tech_stack_ right now with 3+ years day to day proven professional experience (i.e. already working with it 8 hours or more per day for years), knowing its tricks the interviewee finds essential for that particular position among the hundreds out there (good practices) then don't even dream of competing with the dozen plus eager youngsters live and breath obscure tests and open to do anything told, like instant relocation or shady clause in the contract and whatnot - e.g. pretend and lie as some suggest here -, for less than you, because you have a family with needs.

We need luck finding the last places still suitable for the dying breed. Like maintaining a bad quality desktop system among nice people ... maybe I should stick what I have and pray the new owner of the company will keep me after the retiree management sells to.

Re: Ask HN: Am I dead meat already?

#50

Post by dhoe »

tHrOwAwAyXQWE wrote: post #11
uyzstvqs wrote: post #9

The European tech job market is... not great. You're not alone in this issue, it doesn't have to do with you, companies are extremely picky. Best advice I can give is to stop applying for vacancies and start networking.

I'm not even in European market. I'm in a clown job market of a fringe European state.

I sympathize, and I think this is a bigger problem than the skills/experience/age issues. I'd do what I can to either move to a more dynamic place, or get a remote job for a US company. I know it's hard, but it's better than investing two years to become a pro in a different stack - and still be stuck in the same socioeconomic trap.
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