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Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

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Re: Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

#161

Post by SomewhatLikely »

username3 wrote: post #146
rdiddly wrote: post #137

A - private office B - WFH C - Android D - few meetings E - good management F - mellow, friendly (probably older) colleagues G - no training of underlings H - low stress I - interesting work Independent contracting/consulting satisfies A and B; some subset satisfies C; D it likely fails; E is orthogonal or maybe slightly negatively correlated (some portion of those who hire consultants, have to do so because they're…

Reading variables is hard.

I think it's a learned skill. Reading academic papers is impossible without it. Perhaps a happy medium would be two or three letter acronyms.

Re: Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

#162

Post by walshemj »

jvagner wrote: post #19

The bigger companies I worked for in the Bay Area were more like this than the smaller. As a late 40-something who started his own marketing & technology agency to get out of the "working for others and their bad boss habits" conundrum, the one thing I can strongly recommend is that you have to interview companies as carefully as they interview you. I've directly hired more than 100 people in my career, and it was al…

well the initial interview is do I goto the interview or even let my cv go forward

Re: Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

#163

Post by JohnBooty »

zmmmmm wrote: post #152
ddebernardy wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They eventually get fired because too old/too expensive. Get into management/team leadership in a way or another asap. You're probably not feeling this right now because the economy is overheated. But be wary of the next recession if you're still doing the same job - however much better - than a junior for several times their salary. (If you've specialized and valuable skills that are extremely hard to replace you sh…

> having seen the difference in productivity, I'd hire a 40+ senior over 3 juniors in a heartbeat most of the time Honestly I think it's not directly ageism, but indirectly, many people are afraid of managing people with significantly more experience or just plain older than them. So if the team lead is 35 with 10 years eng experience, they will probably be worried about a 45 y/o with 25 years eng experience who will…

    > So if the team lead is 35 with 10 years eng 
    > experience, they will probably be worried about 
    > a 45 y/o with 25 years eng experience who will 
    > challenge their authority and possibly prevent 
    > them from leading the whole team the way they want.
This was a huge factor at my last job, with myself and other engineers who were much more experienced than the people who were (inexplicably) placed in charge.

We had a VP who was so green that he didn't know what he didn't know.

He was still in that phase of life where he knew 10% of everything, and since he didn't know the other 90% even existed... he thought his knowledge was 100%. Very difficult to work with, much less for.

(And that's even without a "power struggle" happening. Us 40-ish types were explicitly disinterested in becoming management. Nobody wanted to undermine him; we literally just wanted to do our jobs without his incompetent micromanagement)

Re: Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

#164

Post by allworknoplay »

person_of_color wrote: post #132
kalecserk wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello! I am currently 36, working for pay as a software developer since 1999, father of three -- and I would like to reiterate oppositelock's comment: "you're being too picky" I totally understand your frustration with all this "helping other people" buzz but... Ultimately this is the job to be done by you right now :) About the entire open-office culture, since I am a manager I have been granted a private office - w…

You didnt go to college?

Plenty of talented software engineers didn't go to college. I've got a few close friends who fall into this category. I went to college for something entirely unrelated and self-taught with side projects years after. Not sure where you are, but I've found the industry in the US (my experience is mostly NYC/SF specifically) incredibly receptive to people who are very smart, hardworking, and humble regardless of pedigree.

Curious what your experience is that makes you skeptical.

Re: Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

#165

Post by gwbas1c »

person_of_color wrote: post #132
kalecserk wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello! I am currently 36, working for pay as a software developer since 1999, father of three -- and I would like to reiterate oppositelock's comment: "you're being too picky" I totally understand your frustration with all this "helping other people" buzz but... Ultimately this is the job to be done by you right now :) About the entire open-office culture, since I am a manager I have been granted a private office - w…

You didnt go to college?

Probably a combination of internships and paid work while in high school

Re: Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

#166

Post by tayo42 »

raarts wrote: post #140

I can not advise you I can only offer my own experience. The older you get the harder it will become to get a programming job. I am pushing 60, and lucky enough to end up with a lot of experience as CTO/CEO in multiple companies and now doing technical due diligence for investors, and coaching young CTOs. But although I'm very up to date on everything new and shiny I would not want to be searching for a programming j…

> The word 'senior' used to mean someone with grey hair, but now means people around thirty and there just are no words available for 40+. Which doesn't make things easier for recruiters by the way.

Do you mean titles for levels in companies? Isn't staff, senior staff, principal, what gets used now for experienced levels?

Re: Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

#167

Post by PopeDotNinja »

kalecserk wrote: post #129
oppositelock wrote: post #94

I'm in my mid forties and I've been working for pay in tech since '96, so this puts me in a similar demographic like yours. I think you're being too picky and greatly limiting your job choices. I miss the days of private offices, but those days are over in any moderately cutting edge companies. You'll find offices in Cisco, Juniper and Oracle, you'll find open seating at Google, Facebook, and startups. WFH friendly c…

Hello! I am currently 36, working for pay as a software developer since 1999, father of three -- and I would like to reiterate oppositelock's comment: "you're being too picky" I totally understand your frustration with all this "helping other people" buzz but... Ultimately this is the job to be done by you right now :) About the entire open-office culture, since I am a manager I have been granted a private office - w…

> I am currently 36, working for pay as a software developer since 1999, father of three -- and I would like to reiterate oppositelock's comment: "you're being too picky"

Someone once taught me that effective lists have between three and five bullet points. On the list of A to H, I'd sort them from most to least important, and then focus on the top five. If that doesn't work, maybe the list doesn't really capture what OP finds important, and they need to draft a new list.

Re: Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

#168

Post by firebones »

wrs wrote: post #38
OldHand2018 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Experienced people advocating against good changes is a bad thing. Experienced people advocating against bad changes is a good thing. Inexperienced people advocating for a good change is a good thing. Inexperienced people advocating for a bad change is a bad thing. It's almost like it would be great if we knew what changes were good and what changes were bad before we started arguing about them. Any ideas???

One good filter I’ve found is whether the person arguing has a good understanding of both the old thing and the new thing. If an experienced person doesn’t seem to understand the new thing, or an inexperienced person doesn’t seem to understand the old thing, then they probably aren’t making a good argument. Both of those certainly happen —- the inexperienced will follow fads and the experienced will not want to deval…

Also known as "Chesterton's Fence". Before you tear down a fence, understand why it was put there in the first place.

Re: Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

#169

Post by i_made_a_booboo »

OldHand2018 wrote: post #17
wrs wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inexperienced people advocating change is not new either. They both have their pros and cons.

Experienced people advocating against good changes is a bad thing. Experienced people advocating against bad changes is a good thing. Inexperienced people advocating for a good change is a good thing. Inexperienced people advocating for a bad change is a bad thing. It's almost like it would be great if we knew what changes were good and what changes were bad before we started arguing about them. Any ideas???

You articulated this problem perfectly.

One of my central theses is 'Its almost impossible for people to determine what's true and equally as impossible to get them to admit it'.

Every single case you point out each actor thinks they are doing the right thing. Nobody knows what they are doing aside from one of those cases. The caveat being they have to fight against everyone else who believe they are also correct.

This all feeds into another central thesis 'the truth is at the very top of Maslow's hierarchy of "nice to haves"'

Re: Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

#170

Post by i_made_a_booboo »

wrs wrote: post #38
OldHand2018 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Experienced people advocating against good changes is a bad thing. Experienced people advocating against bad changes is a good thing. Inexperienced people advocating for a good change is a good thing. Inexperienced people advocating for a bad change is a bad thing. It's almost like it would be great if we knew what changes were good and what changes were bad before we started arguing about them. Any ideas???

One good filter I’ve found is whether the person arguing has a good understanding of both the old thing and the new thing. If an experienced person doesn’t seem to understand the new thing, or an inexperienced person doesn’t seem to understand the old thing, then they probably aren’t making a good argument. Both of those certainly happen —- the inexperienced will follow fads and the experienced will not want to deval…

As my old boss used to say "qualify your advisors"
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