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Santa, I'll be 55YO in a few days. All I want is a better job. Thanks.

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Re: Santa, I'll be 55YO in a few days. All I want is a better job. Thanks.

#51

Post by gtani »

MichaelCrawford wrote: post #45
gtani wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, part of the game is accomodating HR and non-technical managers in most companies that have gone beyond the 30 person startup stage, unless you have widely recognized expertise in some relatively rare skill. There's three hurdles to being hired (and HN has hashed this over before), so the technical chops are there, it sounds like, but then they ask - is he/she willing to sacrifice for our success? - "fi…

I don't have a problem with non-technical HR and managerial people, nor sales, marketing, production staff and so on. I remain dumbfounded that their HR didn't understand that work I did on other platforms, contributes a great deal to my ability to code for Mac OS X. Consider that OS X drivers are all written in C++. I've done quite a lot of C++ work on Windows and embedded platforms, and a little on Linux. Yet their…

I wasn't clear, that was supposed to be a purely mechanical calculation of amortizing the time costs of preparing for screens and onsites over how much you want the gig, which for me always includes tailoring a resume for each company and other stuff which is basically a waste of time.

You reminded me of the 4th, newest hurdle to getting hired at a lot of places, a decent grounding in linear algebra, prob/statistics, calculus, with the odd category theory curveball question.

I was taught physics the other way, BTW, my Dad decided around 8th grade was the right time to start developing intuitions for ODE's and linear algebra, with illustrations from real life. Made absolutely no sense to me.

Re: Santa, I'll be 55YO in a few days. All I want is a better job. Thanks.

#52

Post by steven2012 »

MichaelCrawford wrote: post #50
steven2012 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just from your responses in this thread, I think it's more your personality rather than your age. It probably a lot more of a factor than you believe.

In meatspace, I am in reality quite mild-mannered, reserved and polite. As I said, the consummate professional. Quite likely you and the others who raise objections, have never been subjected to age, racial, religious or sexual discrimination. Those who have know what I'm talking about. When was the last time you met a Mexican-American computer programmer? One who actually had a job? The education in Mexico, I unders…

lol I'm in my 40s, work at a YC startup, and we have 3 Hispanic engineers out of 15. So, in short, you're wrong.

I'm pretty sure that you believe you are mild-mannered, but you probably aren't. Your opinions and the things you say betray the fact that you are likely hard to work with. You said that you would not respect people based on their choice of technology. That itself is a red flag about your personality. So I'm telling you, it's probably not your age, it's your personality. You sound like someone who is very hard to work with if they dare to say something you disagree with.

Re: Santa, I'll be 55YO in a few days. All I want is a better job. Thanks.

#53

Post by MichaelCrawford »

steven2012 wrote: post #52
MichaelCrawford wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In meatspace, I am in reality quite mild-mannered, reserved and polite. As I said, the consummate professional. Quite likely you and the others who raise objections, have never been subjected to age, racial, religious or sexual discrimination. Those who have know what I'm talking about. When was the last time you met a Mexican-American computer programmer? One who actually had a job? The education in Mexico, I unders…

lol I'm in my 40s, work at a YC startup, and we have 3 Hispanic engineers out of 15. So, in short, you're wrong. I'm pretty sure that you believe you are mild-mannered, but you probably aren't. Your opinions and the things you say betray the fact that you are likely hard to work with. You said that you would not respect people based on their choice of technology. That itself is a red flag about your personality. So I…

You claim to disprove a general phenomenon with anecdotal evidence.

I'm a Physicist, I know all about this stuff. That Hispanics are not commonly employed as software engineers is very well-established. Go have a look at companies other than your own.

I do applaud you for employing them. I think highly of Hispanic people.

And yes I really am quite easy to work with. That's why I post like this on the Internet, because it enables me to be quite blunt when I want to be.

In the workplace I work hard to play nice in the sandbox.

Do you know what the term "passing" means? Consider that I am quite profoundly mentally ill. Having Bipolar-Type Schizoaffective Disorder is much like being Manic-Depressive and Schizophrenic at the same time.

I would not be able to get a job at all, were I not able to pass as someone who was not mentally ill. It is quite uncommon for those I encounter in person, to ever figure out that I am mentally ill in any way, unless I specifically tell them.

That really gets me down, so I don't make any attempt whatsoever to hide my mental illness on the Internet.

Re: Santa, I'll be 55YO in a few days. All I want is a better job. Thanks.

#54

Post by bbcbasic »

lingua_franca wrote: post #24
stblack wrote: post #5

This resonates profoundly. But I'll tell you who I REALLY feel sorry for. I feel sorry for today's 20- and 30-somethings who will likely never know the $1000-$2000 days many of us knew in the 80's, 90's and 00's. Back in the days when FedExing diskettes across the planet was a normal thing. Take today's 20 and 30-somethings and project forward 20-years, I wouldn't want to trade positions.

wake up, many guys in their 20's make $300k to half million a year at Google/Facebook/Amazon these days...

Bear in mind that "many" is only "tiny fraction" of the "helluva lot" of programmers who don't earn that much.

Re: Santa, I'll be 55YO in a few days. All I want is a better job. Thanks.

#55

Post by steven2012 »

MichaelCrawford wrote: post #53
steven2012 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol I'm in my 40s, work at a YC startup, and we have 3 Hispanic engineers out of 15. So, in short, you're wrong. I'm pretty sure that you believe you are mild-mannered, but you probably aren't. Your opinions and the things you say betray the fact that you are likely hard to work with. You said that you would not respect people based on their choice of technology. That itself is a red flag about your personality. So I…

You claim to disprove a general phenomenon with anecdotal evidence. I'm a Physicist, I know all about this stuff. That Hispanics are not commonly employed as software engineers is very well-established. Go have a look at companies other than your own. I do applaud you for employing them. I think highly of Hispanic people. And yes I really am quite easy to work with. That's why I post like this on the Internet, becaus…

I'm sorry for your mental illness. However, I feel like you would be insulted if I avoided replying to you because of it, so I won't.

I think you must be doing really well for someone who is passing as someone without mental illness, so that it probably why you believe people don't notice it. However, my bet is that it leaks through, and there is something off about your behavior that you can't pick up on. Just because you're mild-mannered doesn't mean that there isn't something that rubs people the wrong way about your behavior. I've worked with a lot of people who were mild-mannered who behaved strangely and caused people to not like working with them.

My bet is that this is likely the reason why you aren't getting job offers, as opposed to age. Because you are doing so well as someone passing as someone who doesn't have mental illness, you are probably hardcoded to believe that that's not the reason, but I would revisit that belief.

Re: Santa, I'll be 55YO in a few days. All I want is a better job. Thanks.

#56

Post by trcollinson »

MichaelCrawford wrote: post #50
steven2012 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just from your responses in this thread, I think it's more your personality rather than your age. It probably a lot more of a factor than you believe.

In meatspace, I am in reality quite mild-mannered, reserved and polite. As I said, the consummate professional. Quite likely you and the others who raise objections, have never been subjected to age, racial, religious or sexual discrimination. Those who have know what I'm talking about. When was the last time you met a Mexican-American computer programmer? One who actually had a job? The education in Mexico, I unders…

I realize from your comments below that you would like to fight this idea that there are no Mexican-American computer programmers. But the census says otherwise, and they are known to be relatively accurate. These numbers may seem quite low, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that approximately 6.4% of computer and mathematical occupations are made up of Hispanic or Latino populations. If we extrapolate that out to the data on how many software engineers are in the US from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, ~600,000, we will find that there are ~36,000 hispanic and latino software engineers. There are also quite a few female engineers of various races, and of course, other races besides hispanic and latino.

Oh, and anecdotally, I know quite a large number of hispanic and latino software engineers. They actually have jobs.

[1] http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.pdf [2] http://www.bls.gov/oes/2002/oes_nat.htm

Re: Santa, I'll be 55YO in a few days. All I want is a better job. Thanks.

#57

Post by __samb »

MichaelCrawford wrote: post #31
smoyer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I turned 50 last summer and the last time I was looking, I had no problem finding a good job ... perhaps the best job I've ever had. But to survive the interview process, you can't act 50 (or 55 or 51). You need to be current and make it obvious you've kept yourself up-to-date. To a lesser degree you can't look 50 either - I'm fortunate to have been dirty blond when I was younger and my hair doesn't seem to be greyin…

Many young people simply assume I am not up-to-date because of my age. In reality I invest a great deal of money in technical books, as well as time in reading them, and writing code for the exercises in the books.

young people don't do this ;)

Re: Santa, I'll be 55YO in a few days. All I want is a better job. Thanks.

#58

Post by nostrademons »

MichaelCrawford wrote: post #40
japhyr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds good, but it sounds hard to show that to a potential employer and impress them. Have you built anything with what you've learned? I'm 42, and I performed unimpressively in an interview two years ago. That gave me some motivation to go back and polish the projects I'd been working on, so the projects would speak for themselves. Since then a number of professional opportunities have come up, largely based o…

I've built quite a lot with what I've learned, however it's not always possible to demonstrate that. Consider that I am not permitted to tell anyone at all what my most-recent project was, other than that it had something to do with OpenGL. This because the product was an in-house tool for a client of my client. The very existence of that tool is a closely guarded trade secret. I read Robert Ward's excellent "Debuggi…

As a side note - I wish more interviewers would ask debugging related questions. I had a couple coworkers at Google who would try them ("Here's some code with some bugs in it. Identify them, or talk me through how you would identify them"), but they were definitely in the minority. Debugging is its own skill, very different from writing green-field code, and yet a large portion of the time we spend as professional software developers is spent debugging.

Re: Santa, I'll be 55YO in a few days. All I want is a better job. Thanks.

#59

Post by MichaelCrawford »

gtani wrote: post #51
MichaelCrawford wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a problem with non-technical HR and managerial people, nor sales, marketing, production staff and so on. I remain dumbfounded that their HR didn't understand that work I did on other platforms, contributes a great deal to my ability to code for Mac OS X. Consider that OS X drivers are all written in C++. I've done quite a lot of C++ work on Windows and embedded platforms, and a little on Linux. Yet their…

I wasn't clear, that was supposed to be a purely mechanical calculation of amortizing the time costs of preparing for screens and onsites over how much you want the gig, which for me always includes tailoring a resume for each company and other stuff which is basically a waste of time. You reminded me of the 4th, newest hurdle to getting hired at a lot of places, a decent grounding in linear algebra, prob/statistics,…

All I Ever Really Needed To Know About Designing Nuclear Weapons, I Learned In Linear Algebra When I Was Seventeen.

Seriously, a whole lot of Physics really does ultimately distill down to linear algebra.

Just yesterday I learned through an HN link that Statistics is among the top-ten most valued skills among employers. That's implied by listing my physics degree on my resume, but those who don't have a clue about physics won't know that. I'll make it more clear in my next revision.

Re: Santa, I'll be 55YO in a few days. All I want is a better job. Thanks.

#60

Post by MichaelCrawford »

nostrademons wrote: post #58
MichaelCrawford wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've built quite a lot with what I've learned, however it's not always possible to demonstrate that. Consider that I am not permitted to tell anyone at all what my most-recent project was, other than that it had something to do with OpenGL. This because the product was an in-house tool for a client of my client. The very existence of that tool is a closely guarded trade secret. I read Robert Ward's excellent "Debuggi…

As a side note - I wish more interviewers would ask debugging related questions. I had a couple coworkers at Google who would try them ("Here's some code with some bugs in it. Identify them, or talk me through how you would identify them"), but they were definitely in the minority. Debugging is its own skill, very different from writing green-field code, and yet a large portion of the time we spend as professional so…

Cisco had a written test in which I was asked to debug a C++ program that had thirty lines or so of source.

Note that I did this with paper and a ballpoint pen - no computer.

That same test also had me reverse-engineer a network protocol packet, given a hex dump.

I have only had one other written test that I can recall. With that one I was given the assembly instruction architecture for a hypothetical CPU, then the source to a program, with the problem being for me to write down what the output of the program was. It was a huge PITA, and took me several hours, due to multiply-nested loops, recursion and the like.

I didn't get an offer from Cisco, but I did at that other company. The owner never tells anyone how they did on the written test though, other than that you get a job offer or you don't.

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