My father, who is a 56-years old software engineer and introduced me to software development, got unemployed some months ago and is having an extremely tough time getting a job here in Spain.
In his whole life he has worked as a developer, businessmen and executive at various companies such as Xerox. However, he went the developer path these past decades instead of moving on to something more 'senior oriented' such as being a project manager.
He has been always learning new stuff, so right now he has a MongoDB certification and is totally fluent in Django. But most of the companies he applies to just see his age and step back. And I'm also worried because here in Spain large companies are seeing the crisis and the really high youth unemployment as an opportunity to hire youngsters under really poor conditions, and they can actually hire five young developers for the price of one senior dev.
So I'm not really sure how I can help him, I actually know a lot of people in the startup ecosystem but startups usually want people in their 20s and 30s. I have also read a lot of posts regarding 'old developers', and he has read them as well.
He has a fresh mindset, wants to move to another city/country if it's required, and has tons of experience, so it's very hard for me to see him having this tough time... Any tip would be very helpful
Thanks a lot