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64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant

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Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant

#221

Post by kamaal »

scarface74 wrote: post #123
quicklyfrozen wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, there's a pretty big difference between mid 40s and over 50. Companies may be hungry, but they've also become more selective.

How will they tell the difference between if I am 45 and 50 before they make an offer? I haven’t put my date of college graduation on my resume since I was 35 and now I only put the last ten years worth of work experience. Let’s say I’m back in the job market when I am 50 in 2024 and I just keep my experience from 2008 or 2012 depending on the company I am interviewing for.

>>How will they tell the difference between if I am 45 and 50 before they make an offer?

They have eyes, and age shows. Wrinkles, greying hair etc.

Its not that hard to spot old people.

Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant

#222

Post by WalterBright »

Novashi wrote: post #152
csa wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out jobs with the federal government and/or with government contractors. The work might not be as sexy or as lucrative (although sometimes it is), but the pay is stable (lolol... shutdowns notwithstanding) at a middle-class level. The government is desperate for people who can code.

>The government is desperate for people who can code. Not desperate enough to teach people to code who want to learn though. But I bet half the need is from mountains of shit code anyway. The contracting and procurement processes are fucked (source: friend who works in gov't IT contracts -- stay far away from any dev positions involving Dept. of VA). Demand for good devs is going to be won by companies. We clearly ca…

> Not desperate enough to teach people to code who want to learn though.

There's endless free material online for those who actually want to learn.

Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant

#223

Post by dragonwriter »

csa wrote: post #40
towaway1138 wrote: post #15

I'm only in my 50s, but this is very relateable. Did a couple dozen interviews a year or two ago before finally getting a bite. Somewhat amazingly, even passed the hiring committee at a FANG, only to get swatted down by a rare strike from the executive level. In one interview, was asked to produce a class that could serialize and deserialize a list of numbers, to/from a string of chars. Sure, it's not that hard. Took…

Check out jobs with the federal government and/or with government contractors. The work might not be as sexy or as lucrative (although sometimes it is), but the pay is stable (lolol... shutdowns notwithstanding) at a middle-class level. The government is desperate for people who can code.

> The government is desperate for people who can code.

If it was desperate, the pay would be better.

Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant

#224

Post by WalterBright »

peterwwillis wrote: post #172
segmondy wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This defeatist attitude is what's going to make this come true for you. McDonald? really? How about consulting? Starting your own shit? Perhaps looking outside of the West Coast and other places you might be appreciated? How about the govt, schools, hospitals, banks, big ol boring enterprises? How about other countries? Seriously, you have option and everyone does. If you are smart enough to pass the hiring committee…

This unrealistic anti-pep-talk isn't helping anyone but yourself. When you're actually painted into a corner in life, and really are facing a bad situation with no support whatsoever, you get defeatist . It happens. Human beings have feelings, and no amount of vapid self-actualization bullshit is going to make you stop feeling those feelings. And sometimes there really aren't any other options. If you have no money,…

> How is somebody with no money, no contacts, and no collateral, supposed to pull those off?

The ones I know who did it started by contributing to open source projects and developing a reputation. Employers often canvas open source projects looking to hire the better contributors.

Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant

#225

Post by eps »

burtonator wrote: post #64
towaway1138 wrote: post #15

I'm only in my 50s, but this is very relateable. Did a couple dozen interviews a year or two ago before finally getting a bite. Somewhat amazingly, even passed the hiring committee at a FANG, only to get swatted down by a rare strike from the executive level. In one interview, was asked to produce a class that could serialize and deserialize a list of numbers, to/from a string of chars. Sure, it's not that hard. Took…

Link to your resume and I'll take a look. All this bullshit about inclusivity. What we SHOULD be doing is blinding the candidate and interviewer. No name. Just the last 2 years of job history. That's it. You don't know their gender. Don't know their age. Don't know their race. Just complete meritocracy.

You must evaluate personal traits too. This is a given when hiring into a team.

Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant

#226

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

Justsignedup wrote: post #70
perryh2 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In today's world of agile development, I haven't met any project managers worthy of anything. I feel that strong product managers are capable of managing development as well. I can't believe there are actual people getting paid to move JIRA tickets around full-time.

Good project management is invisible. They just make projects happen. They make sure everyone is talking. They make sure decisions are made. Everyone knows what to do when to do it. Etc. I seen good project management. It is magical. Then the manager left. Everything slowed down to a crawl.

Invisible makes it sound intangible. If you can't quantify the value you're adding to an organization, are you adding any at all?

Making sure "the right people are talking", "decisions are made", etc. do sound like things that can be tracked to confirm if a PM is indeed adding value.

Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant

#227

Post by aiyodev »

scarface74 wrote: post #74
myresume wrote: post #16

I have experienced this myself. I am going on 50. I am actually looking for work now. And I have kept up and I am using modern tech stacks. http://geoffreycallaghan.com

I don’t know where you are. But with that skillset, recruiters should be throwing jobs at you in most major American cities. I know for a fact that recruiters in Atlanta would be salivating at the chance to placd you. As I said before, I am in my mid 40s.

“He has all those skills but doesn’t have a job? Must be something wrong with him. I know several people his age and they all have jobs.”

Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant

#228

Post by lsc »

segmondy wrote: post #162
towaway1138 wrote: post #15

I'm only in my 50s, but this is very relateable. Did a couple dozen interviews a year or two ago before finally getting a bite. Somewhat amazingly, even passed the hiring committee at a FANG, only to get swatted down by a rare strike from the executive level. In one interview, was asked to produce a class that could serialize and deserialize a list of numbers, to/from a string of chars. Sure, it's not that hard. Took…

This defeatist attitude is what's going to make this come true for you. McDonald? really? How about consulting? Starting your own shit? Perhaps looking outside of the West Coast and other places you might be appreciated? How about the govt, schools, hospitals, banks, big ol boring enterprises? How about other countries? Seriously, you have option and everyone does. If you are smart enough to pass the hiring committee…

>If you believe you can, you can, if you believe you can't, you can't.

As a technical individual contributor, what matters is what you can do, not how you feel.

Edit: Yes, yes, all absolute statements are wrong; Attitude does matter some for technical jobs. But what you can do is overwhelmingly more important than your attitude in tech jobs, just like your attitude is overwhelmingly more important in management and sales.

Yes, at interviews, you must act engaged, and you must display what you can do, and that is kind of sales, but it's really easy mode sales.

Sure, I mean, it depends on job role. In sales? yeah, that attitude is required.

(To be clear, even in sales, that attitude is not sufficient. While it is absolutely necessary to project that sort of confidence, that unshakable self-belief, it is not sufficient. You still need to sell. Attitude is sometimes required; it is never enough.)

More specifically to the person you are responding to? when it comes to individual contributor technical roles? As long as you are engaged and interested in the technical questions? It's cool. Having a ridiculous Tony Robins kind of attitude can actually hurt you there; Most technical people don't want to work with a person who's true calling was sales. When I'm interviewing someone like that, every instinct I have is telling me to get them out of the office. I mean, I do my best to overcome my prejudices, and I will still evaluate them on technical merit, but man, it's not easy.

I think that outside of sales and management (note, that's a big part of running a business) defeatist talk and feeling are kinda normal, and unless they are overwhelming for too long, not really a problem.

This is the difference with technical work. What matters is not how you feel or what you project, but what you can do

While getting out from under my business I was super depressed and engaged in a lot of "negative self-talk" in public. And yeah, it probably hurt me on selling that business (I mean, I think I still got a fair deal for what the business was at the time.) but just because I wrote like I was depressed online, as long as I kept going for interviews (and acting engaged during those interviews) I don't think it hurt my prospects as a technical individual contributor much.

I mean, sales is... a different world from technical work. And yeah, I am going to have to come up with a new attitude if I want to go into management ever again But as a technical individual contributor? Ability is key, not attitude.

Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant

#230

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

austincheney wrote: post #145
zmmmmm wrote: post #24

It's tragic and I wish younger devs could have even a small understanding of how pernicious this phenomenon is. No, you won't escape it because you're awesome, or because you love learning new things etc etc. I'm lucky: I switched into a role where deep domain experience is essential, I did a PhD, I'm one of the top experts in a growing field - I'm more or less insulated from this. Indeed, now I hire people and I'm a…

The presumption about the junior level role is accurate but for reasons different than what you are thinking. It’s less about the work and more about the people. Some junior developers have the potential to be great senior developers. They listen to mentorship and independently weigh decision criteria. Many juniors don’t have this potential and some shouldn’t even be there in the first place. The need for recognition…

I take it you've worked with some junior engineers that brought neither the social nor the technical skill to their role.

Instead of considering them to be "so bad", an adept senior would work to develop these people. As a senior, use your social acuity, and bring your emotional intelligence to the table. If your juniors feel threatened, talk about it. Assuage their fears -- point out where they are doing well, and where they can improve. Work through the difficult problems, most likely individually, but through team retrospectives too (when appropriate-- never give individual feedback in a group setting).

This sounds like the approach is to avoid juniors as much as possible. And it's challenging to foster a high-performing team environment if that's the mindset one employs going into it.

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