Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: My 56-year-old father is a developer having a tough time finding a job

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 232 posts

Re: Ask HN: My 56-year-old father is a developer having a tough time finding a job

#101

Post by GrahamGRG »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #67

I don't know if his will help: I am 63, and I realize that I might not be as effective as I once was. What I do is offer a really low rate for telecommuting from home, and a much larger rate when working on site. So, for the last many years, I work cheaply from home and occasionally work on site (most recently at Google) for a much better consulting rate. I don't know if your father has the financial flexibility to f…

With age you can become more effective! As a 64 year old Developer I tell clients that my USP is 'grey hair'. Younger developers may produce slicker code and better SQL structures - but having run businesses I can look at the requirements from a Directors/Owners point of view and guide them on how to get the most benefit for their organisation from the technology.

Re: Ask HN: My 56-year-old father is a developer having a tough time finding a job

#102

Post by pjgomez »

zerr wrote: post #97
lacker wrote: post #86

"Spain" seems like the magic phrase here. Unemployment in Spain is 24.5% right now. https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e... Meanwhile unemployment in the UK is 6.2% right now. https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e... I suggest looking for a job in London. A lot of tech companies are hiring there.

>Unemployment in Spain is 24.5% right now. Yes, but AFAIK developers are exceptions - at least in Catalonia. Especially experienced ones. Depends on how much salary is acceptable. As I researched, for senior devs, it is 35-45K EUR/annual, which is rather low... He may as well consider consulting.

I agree, I don't think there is crisis in IT in Spain as a whole, but our recent banking industry restructuration is dumping into the market a good amount of middle-age experienced developers and analysts.

Re: Ask HN: My 56-year-old father is a developer having a tough time finding a job

#103

Post by ivanche »

BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #21

>"they can actually hire five young developers for the price of one senior dev" I'm sure your dad's experience warrants a premium over others but anybody asking 5x what other devs make are going to have difficulty finding a job unless they have exceptional reputation, contacts and some luck.

You have to consider that in some countries devs with no experience are willing to work for $300-400 a month...

Re: Ask HN: My 56-year-old father is a developer having a tough time finding a job

#104

Post by ExpiredLink »

The situation for developers in Europe currently isn't good. Forget those nonsense 'skilled worker shortage' articles. Europe's economic recovery does not proceed as fast as expected, forecasts are even lowered due to the sanctions against Russia. The 'best' you can do is sit and wait until next spring because spring usually is the high season of the IT job market.

Re: Ask HN: My 56-year-old father is a developer having a tough time finding a job

#107

Post by moconnor »

lacker wrote: post #86

"Spain" seems like the magic phrase here. Unemployment in Spain is 24.5% right now. https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e... Meanwhile unemployment in the UK is 6.2% right now. https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e... I suggest looking for a job in London. A lot of tech companies are hiring there.

This. Our UK office has hired and relocated two developers from Spain over the past year or so. EU employment law makes it easy to move to a new country and work there and low-cost flights make it cheap to visit home.

Re: Ask HN: My 56-year-old father is a developer having a tough time finding a job

#108

Post by ch_123 »

lacker wrote: post #86

"Spain" seems like the magic phrase here. Unemployment in Spain is 24.5% right now. https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e... Meanwhile unemployment in the UK is 6.2% right now. https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e... I suggest looking for a job in London. A lot of tech companies are hiring there.

Dublin too. Even while Ireland's unemployment is quite high, there's a large amount of dev positions available.

Re: Ask HN: My 56-year-old father is a developer having a tough time finding a job

#109

Post by humanrebar »

MicroBerto wrote: post #78

This is crazy. Were I hiring, I'd kill to have someone that experienced and with likely far fewer "life liabilities" (I'm doubting he's going to start having babies or go absolutely insane over some girl he can't get out of his mind... or disappear playing video games for two weeks straight) Have him keep at it. Someone will appreciate what he's got.

Your intention is probably admirable (reassuring someone about a rough situation), but your list of life liabilities basically appeal to other prejudices based on age, gender, and possibly relationship status.

I'm not particularly impressed by this logic.

Re: Ask HN: My 56-year-old father is a developer having a tough time finding a job

#110

Post by mqsiuser »

zerr wrote: post #98
flinkblinkhink wrote: post #90

The advice is the same to everyone. Work hard on personal projects, get them online and live and running and impressive. Join a well known open source project and do 200 commits. Tweet, blog regularly. Prove you know your stuff. Same advice for everyone. Almost no one does this stuff and those that do greatly increase their chance of getting work. People sit around hoping not to have to do the hard yards, hoping they…

The thing is, if I have some interesting personal project that is useful for some group of people - I'd make a small business from it rather than dumping it online and just mentioning it on my CV ;)

No! - You likely won't, because of Spolsky [1]

And... your parent commenter is right: "When it comes to hiring, I'll take a Github commit log over a resume any day.", jeresig [2]

[1] The development abstraction layer (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/DevelopmentAbstractio...)

[2] John Resig on Twitter (https://twitter.com/jeresig/status/33968704983138304)

Post reply on HN