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Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

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Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#191

Post by grajaganDev »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #66
scrumper wrote: post #30

I have a couple ideas for you from my own experience. There's about a bajillion C/D+ stage 100-500 person software companies in any B2B vertical you could mention who would fight hard for your type of experience. Not necessarily SaaS click-and-drool tools for corporate drones, but unique and opinionated products that have some significant engineering innovation inside. Those companies have essentially no ability to a…

This. I'm now working at a small- to mid-sized (~80 people) local B2B company. Pay is fine, they offer 100% WFH if you want, but they also have nice offices, they make good and stable revenue with reasonable growth targets, the actual work is somewhere between interesting and mind-numbingly stupid (e.g. integrating with poorly documented enterprise software - can be fun, but can also be aggravating), people are mostl…

A reasonable interview process is huge - avoid the Leetcode charade.

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#192

Post by InsideOutSanta »

xivusr wrote: post #179
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I'm now working at a small- to mid-sized (~80 people) local B2B company. Pay is fine, they offer 100% WFH if you want, but they also have nice offices, they make good and stable revenue with reasonable growth targets, the actual work is somewhere between interesting and mind-numbingly stupid (e.g. integrating with poorly documented enterprise software - can be fun, but can also be aggravating), people are mostl…

This is a great job ad - are they hiring?

Yes, but there's a 99.9% chance they can't hire you, because you live in the wrong country :-)

What I would do is look at local governments, at local municipalities. They often have public calls for bids for software projects, like digitizing some forms or processes. Stuff that's too small for big corporations to care about. Look at the companies that apply for these projects. They're often small, local, stable, and starved for good software engineers.

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#193

Post by grajaganDev »

pc86 wrote: post #166
scrumper wrote: post #30

I have a couple ideas for you from my own experience. There's about a bajillion C/D+ stage 100-500 person software companies in any B2B vertical you could mention who would fight hard for your type of experience. Not necessarily SaaS click-and-drool tools for corporate drones, but unique and opinionated products that have some significant engineering innovation inside. Those companies have essentially no ability to a…

The question I always run into for your first point - how do you find these companies? If I want to move into a brand new business vertical, by definition I don't know any of the players or know where to look for that - for lack of a better word - audience.

Imagine that you are a customer of that vertical and search accordingly.

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#194

Post by antisthenes »

scrumper wrote: post #30

I have a couple ideas for you from my own experience. There's about a bajillion C/D+ stage 100-500 person software companies in any B2B vertical you could mention who would fight hard for your type of experience. Not necessarily SaaS click-and-drool tools for corporate drones, but unique and opinionated products that have some significant engineering innovation inside. Those companies have essentially no ability to a…

> and the work/life balance is good for the middle aged

> under continuous competitive pressure so it is far from a snoozy place to serve out time - it's a mission and a struggle every day, things change often, the pace is fast

How do you reconcile these 2 statements? Maybe there's something else you mean by work/life balance?

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#195

Post by david-gpu »

remoquete wrote: post #184
david-gpu wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many in my field think AI will take their job — I think otherwise. I'm now working as a Documentation Engineer, using LLMs daily to speed up my work. Say that LLMs are increasing your productivity by 20%, just for argument's sake, and that a company used to have six technical writers, but one of them recently left. Why hire a new a replacement when the five remaining LLM-augmented writers can now do the job that si…

Yeah, the increase in productivity thanks to LLMs makes the need to hire a junior writer or a contractor less pressing. Way less. I guess that's why I'm developing my coding lifeboat on the side.

Good luck! These are difficult times for workers. Our societies will eventually figure something out, but until then it is best to adapt to these rapidly changing circumstances to the extent of our abilities.

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#196

Post by jghn »

toast0 wrote: post #187
jghn wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the UK. As someone who is themselves in the same age range, as a hiring manager it's been eye opening to see the clusters of resumes from older candidates. It continues to boggle my mind how many resumes out there are people who have spent the last 20+ years working on the same set of problems, using the same tech. The reason a lot of these people aren't getting jobs is not that they're old. It's that t…

On the other hand, a lot of big tech is solving the same sorts of problems over and over. Someone could be working on instant messaging or a/v conferencing for the past 30 years. Or anything in sales and advertising. Etc.

There's nothing wrong with that per se, especially for a company.

I'm only referring to hireability in new roles. If someone is staying in such a role that entire time, especially if their niche hasn't evolved such that it indicates refreshing tech skills from time to time, they shouldn't be surprised if the rest of the world has moved on from where they've stayed.

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#197

Post by helix278 »

david-gpu wrote: post #160
remoquete wrote: post #151

I'm 42 and have been working as a technical writer since I was 26. I'd argue that technical writing is one of those fields where you can comfortably work until retirement. Many in my field think AI will take their job — I think otherwise. I'm now working as a Documentation Engineer, using LLMs daily to speed up my work. But I'm also learning Rust on the side. Guess it'll never be late for that move?

> Many in my field think AI will take their job — I think otherwise. I'm now working as a Documentation Engineer, using LLMs daily to speed up my work. Say that LLMs are increasing your productivity by 20%, just for argument's sake, and that a company used to have six technical writers, but one of them recently left. Why hire a new a replacement when the five remaining LLM-augmented writers can now do the job that si…

You're right, but history has shown that increasing the productivity also leads to increased demand, which is good news as long as humans remain involved for some percentage of the work

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#198

Post by jghn »

cluoma wrote: post #171
jghn wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the UK. As someone who is themselves in the same age range, as a hiring manager it's been eye opening to see the clusters of resumes from older candidates. It continues to boggle my mind how many resumes out there are people who have spent the last 20+ years working on the same set of problems, using the same tech. The reason a lot of these people aren't getting jobs is not that they're old. It's that t…

What would you look for to see if somebody is 'staying relevant'? Side projects? Personally, I would like to explore new technologies, and am still excited to learn, but feel limited by what is actually needed/required in my day-to-day which is unlikely to change.

It's more just that your day to day *should* change over the course of 15-20 years. What I'm referring to are situations like people who have current day to days that read exactly the same as it did in the early aughts. For instance poking at pre-generics Java to parse XML files, populating some enterprise beans, and pushing to a web page using whatever the heck framework was in vogue back then.

There's nothing wrong with someone turning their brain off and working in that role for 20 years. But they shouldn't be surprised if their experience is completely irrelevant in the modern job market. If one wants to develop new experiences and their job won't provide that over a long period of time (say 5-10 years of employment, not every 6 months!) then it's time to consider the tradeoffs you're making.

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#199

Post by cableshaft »

scrumper wrote: post #30

I have a couple ideas for you from my own experience. There's about a bajillion C/D+ stage 100-500 person software companies in any B2B vertical you could mention who would fight hard for your type of experience. Not necessarily SaaS click-and-drool tools for corporate drones, but unique and opinionated products that have some significant engineering innovation inside. Those companies have essentially no ability to a…

Yeah I've been working at a smaller consulting firm for the past three years and doing fine. Also helped me update my skills, especially cloud skills as all my previous jobs were onprem.

I've been mostly getting away with just over 40 hour weeks, although if I was on any other client at the company I'd be expected to bill 45 hours. PTO is very flexible as long as I'm meeting my utilization for the year (working 85% of potential hours) and can get approval from the client (which for me hasn't been an issue). Even the year where I was a bit under my utilization due to no fault of my own (they didn't have me staffed on a client for six weeks so I wasn't billing anything and then when they finally did at first I could only bill 10-20 hours a week) it didn't stop them promoting me that year and giving me a pretty decent bonus.

Also the only job I've ever had where I can expect an annual bonus worth a damn. I had one for one other job briefly but it was small and they took all bonuses away after two years to save money.

They do encourage working extra hours on internal initiatives and things like that, but I mostly haven't and it hasn't hurt much (maybe I get a slightly somewhat lower bonus and I'm getting promoted a bit slower).

While there's a lot of younger people at the firm, there's several older engineers here too, including a few guys in their 50s.

I'm also like 99% WFH. I go into the office every once in a while for quarterly parties or for some important in-person event, but otherwise I'm fully WFH. Which has been especially important this year as I've been having some issues with my legs and have had to have several medical procedures on them and work on the couch a lot to keep them elevated.

I don't think I could work for one of the Big 4, though, those sound completely exhausting. I hear 60+ hour weeks is often the minumum expectation there. I've got a life outside of work, including games I'm coding in my spare time, I don't need that shit.

Re: Ask HN: Where to Work After 40?

#200

Post by [deleted] »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #66
scrumper wrote: post #30

I have a couple ideas for you from my own experience. There's about a bajillion C/D+ stage 100-500 person software companies in any B2B vertical you could mention who would fight hard for your type of experience. Not necessarily SaaS click-and-drool tools for corporate drones, but unique and opinionated products that have some significant engineering innovation inside. Those companies have essentially no ability to a…

This. I'm now working at a small- to mid-sized (~80 people) local B2B company. Pay is fine, they offer 100% WFH if you want, but they also have nice offices, they make good and stable revenue with reasonable growth targets, the actual work is somewhere between interesting and mind-numbingly stupid (e.g. integrating with poorly documented enterprise software - can be fun, but can also be aggravating), people are mostl…

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