51–56 of 56 posts
At first everyone kind of smiled, but then smiles disappeared, as it turned out he was much better than most in class. Additionally he had a better job than the rest in the class as well.
So I agree, the answer is yes -I guess.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the cruelty of age discrimination. By the time you're any good, opportunities start disappearing. (At 30, you're still quite hireable, but you do start losing options. Most of the options that disappear from 22 to 30 are of horrendously low quality. I hope that is also true from 30 to 40, 40 to 50, etc.)
As someone who is changing careers from support/ops into dev at 30, age discrimination terrifies me. I'm already having problems in my current career when prospective employers google me and find out I'm building up my GitHub account. They either think I'm going to leave immediately or they think that I'm trying to backdoor my way into a dev position at their company. This happened to me twice this week and both plac…
Wow. It sounds like those are some crappy companies. Where are you located?
After 30, the quality of jobs that is available becomes higher but the quantity is lower. That has a lot to do with capitalism's pyramidal shape. There just aren't as many good, age-appropriate jobs, as there are bad ones.
Thus, you need to be open to a national search. I'll warn you ahead of time that many startups are absolutely shitty when it comes to relocation: either none or some ridiculously small amount like $2,500 (pre-tax!)-- a full-service move, for a 1BR apartment, will burn up more than that. If you ask for 2 months' spousal unemployment to be included in your relo-- which is just a reasonable request at "a certain age"-- most startups will balk. So you need to save up for that.
After 30, every job search might be national. Sometimes you need to go into a beastly expensive tech hub to get the job you want, and sometimes the best move is to get out of those places. Strategically, the best thing to do (if you can stomach the moves) is often to switch between being a bigger fish in a smaller pond and vice versa-- similar to the dynamic of alternating between tech jobs to bid up your autonomy level and technical achievement and finance jobs to bid up your salary.
I think there is an additional question here, which is if you can return to a tech career that you started early on but abandoned when you forayed into management. But one day you realize that your hobby of programming is so much more satisfying. I am trying this right now, but it's not easy, especially since people think that you are moving downwards if you're going back into tech.
I'm in a similar situation to yours. Although I did start programming at around 13 (BASIC and Z80 assembly on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum), I moved into product management and marketing (in the technology industry) around a decade ago. I've always been a programmer though. I have CS degrees both undergrad and at grad school and even as a marketer I would write code at home to explore technology and as means of recreation…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who is changing careers from support/ops into dev at 30, age discrimination terrifies me. I'm already having problems in my current career when prospective employers google me and find out I'm building up my GitHub account. They either think I'm going to leave immediately or they think that I'm trying to backdoor my way into a dev position at their company. This happened to me twice this week and both plac…
I'm already having problems in my current career when prospective employers google me and find out I'm building up my GitHub account. They either think I'm going to leave immediately or they think that I'm trying to backdoor my way into a dev position at their company. Wow. It sounds like those are some crappy companies. Where are you located? After 30, the quality of jobs that is available becomes higher but the qua…
I've been working remotely for the last 5 years now and wanted to keep that up.
I'm pretty comfortable with relocating and don't have the life-baggage that would make it expensive but I'm not going to do it for the career I'm about to leave. When I start looking for dev work I plan to do exactly what you said.
I think there is an additional question here, which is if you can return to a tech career that you started early on but abandoned when you forayed into management. But one day you realize that your hobby of programming is so much more satisfying. I am trying this right now, but it's not easy, especially since people think that you are moving downwards if you're going back into tech.
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So what do you want to do instead?
There are other things besides tech out there. I think too many people get caught up in the bubble. I'd love to be able to make hip hop beats, or learn music production, or travel, or learn how to play the guitar. Those are all things that I think are more beautiful than programming or tech startups.