Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry • Hacker News Board

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#81

Post by spoonie » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 4:18 PM UTC

witty_username wrote: post #30

tjic wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, the way to compete with someone who's charging $10/hr for crappy code is to do what they can't or won't do: * be an excellent communicator * be high bandwidth. F2F, skype, etc. * be a whole stack developer * manage "up". Think of things before your manager does, alert the manager to dangers and problems, give expert advice, avoid the problems. Managers love people who solve the total problem; they hate people w…

timezone 12 hours away from where? US?

SE Asia/Australia are 8-16 hours ahead of either Europe or the US.

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#82

Post by nedsma » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 4:19 PM UTC

sAuronas wrote: post #68

Old (40) geek here. I think I have two pennies-worth to share here. I came to the industry at 38. I left real estate development when I couldn't overcome the unemployment history gap in my resume, despite working for KB Home, Toll Brothers and on the largest redevelopment project in Chicago history (Stateway Gardens housing project to Park Boulevard). I was living in the Bay Area at the time I made the transition (fi…

What a great story. Also, I believe that geek fellows here and HNers shouldn't be concerned about switching jobs, as they're immersed in this industry all over their heads. It's folks who do coding just for living and don't really want to invest in new technologies, or have early stopped trying out new things that might have more issues finding new prospects.

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#83

Post by abz10 » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 4:19 PM UTC

I worked at Microsoft Redmond in 2009. They have a private uber like transport system. Around once a week the driver would hand me their resume and ask that I pass it on to my manager. It turns out that many of them had worked in the industry and were trying to get back in. They had a lot of experience and big important job titles etc. Mostly from the 2001 tech boom. That was my wake up call. If I'm not careful someday I will be the one handing out resumes to passengers.

So I focused on skills and went into contracting as soon as I could. Now the reason I don't work for startups is that they keep trying to pay me with a mystery box of stock options and I'm not buying it.

Another bonus about contracting, apart from the money and flexibility, is that you get left out of company politics.

So tl;dr... Life doesn't owe you anything. And I recommend contracting as a career / lifestyle choice.

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#84

Post by hour_glass » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 4:20 PM UTC

cmbaus wrote: post #73

tjic wrote: post #2

I think that the "Bay Area scene" is different from much of the world. I think that part of human nature is that people like people who are like themselves, so you sometimes get these insular / discriminatory sub cultures that judge people on superficial traits instead of the quality of their minds. From both this article and the tales of many friends, San Francisco strikes as one of these low-tolerance / high-discri…

Like there are no bigots in NH. When I lived in Central NH I had a long hair and almost got run out of town for being a "fucking long haired hippie"

Haha mind if I ask where you were?

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#85

Post by debaserab2 » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 4:20 PM UTC

SadWebDeveloper wrote: post #21

tjic wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing people happens after 20 years in the industry. It may very well be that the best way to kick start your career is to move to SF or some other big city. So be it. I did the first 20 years of my career in the Boston area. I have no idea what you mean about websites being racist. For picking lower cost developers? It seems odd to call people who give work to people in other countries "racist". Isn't doing that e…

Just try to win a project on any modern "freelancing" website and you will understand... personally i used to make solid money on Rent-A-Coder even before getting my CS degree and when they sell us to Freelancer, i started losing bids and the great bids were "closed" to only accept bid "first world developers" (ie US Developers) or limited to people that already paid for the website membership to get in so pretty muc…

So why not pay for a membership if it gets you access to more exclusive contracts?

Or establish relationships with people instead of lowest common denominator platforms and let the quality of your work sell itself?

Word of mouth and personal recommendations are worth more than how many stars you are on a platform.

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#86

Post by highd » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 4:21 PM UTC

daxfohl wrote: post #75

Half of a coder's value is understanding "unspoken" requirements. In other words, "having experience in the industry". Or "domain-specific knowledge" Back in the day, there were different industries to have experience in. Jet engines, medical devices, etc. Beyond that, nothing had/needed/understood software. For better or worse, it was a pinnacle. These days "the industry" is "teens using snapchat". The further you a…

I wouldn't say "teens using snapchat" is "the industry", I would say it is "a industry". If you look at the S&P 500, a tiny fraction of the companies there are "social media", and even software-only companies are a small fraction.

The social web startup is sexy still because of the romanticism of the Zuckerberg-dorm-room-hacking-to-$B story, but it's a relatively insignificant component of the economy. Jet engines and medical devices haven't become less popular.

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#87

Post by danielvinson » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 4:21 PM UTC

makecheck wrote: post #56

I think that age is correlation, not causation. What’s really happening is two things. First, companies typically don’t like paying people lots of money (even if they are great at blowing millions on other mindless things). Second, these companies do not understand that their unwillingness to hire expensive people is causing months of bug-chasing and monkey-patching in their products. When your organization is under…

This matches my experiences well. Many of the people I know who are devs in the Bay Area that don't work at Google/FB aren't making more than $80k. The companies pull in grads who couldn't quite make the top companies who don't realize that they will never get a raise or promotion, and many of these people stay for 5-6 years before they realize how hard they are getting screwed.

These companies would NEVER hire an older, experienced developer because they know they wouldn't be able to retain them.

Its worth noting that I work on a dev team where the average age is about 40 (I am 27). We have multiple members of the team nearing retirement. Having the older guys around makes my job much easier and gives me resources that I wouldn't have otherwise. We are able to keep these guys around because we work on interesting projects, don't work more than 40 hours a week, and have a great manager.

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#88

Post by norea-armozel » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 4:24 PM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #34

tjic wrote: post #2

I think that the "Bay Area scene" is different from much of the world. I think that part of human nature is that people like people who are like themselves, so you sometimes get these insular / discriminatory sub cultures that judge people on superficial traits instead of the quality of their minds. From both this article and the tales of many friends, San Francisco strikes as one of these low-tolerance / high-discri…

> Personally, I dislike places where people are provincial and close-minded, so I'll stick to the rural countryside and leave SF to the bigots. I like that quote. Copied it to my notes for future reference. To expand more on the topic, I wonder if remote workers are a good way to bring some revival for smaller rural communities. I visit some of those places and many have a beautiful setting, everyone knows each other…

If I could get a reliable car so I could get to a metro when I needed to see an endocrinologist I would definitely do my work remotely from a rural community. I know that parts of Kansas have FTTH (it's not gigabit but it's reliable and has no datacaps) which are very cheap to live in.

Edit: It looks like Nex-Tech now offers gigabit internet. It's around $200 a month with cable and phone but to be fair it's rural Kansas. I use to pay $65 for their 10/5 when that was the mid-tier Internet only package. So they've really improved their service.

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#89

Post by tclancy » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 4:25 PM UTC

cmbaus wrote: post #73

tjic wrote: post #2

I think that the "Bay Area scene" is different from much of the world. I think that part of human nature is that people like people who are like themselves, so you sometimes get these insular / discriminatory sub cultures that judge people on superficial traits instead of the quality of their minds. From both this article and the tales of many friends, San Francisco strikes as one of these low-tolerance / high-discri…

Like there are no bigots in NH. When I lived in Central NH I had a long hair and almost got run out of town for being a "fucking long haired hippie"

Well sure, Central NH. Or Northern NH. Or Western NH. But down here on the Seacoast . . . well, that's why I live away from everybody too.

Re: Old Geek Jobs: fighting against ageism in the industry

#90

Post by madgar » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 4:26 PM UTC

cmbaus wrote: post #73

tjic wrote: post #2

I think that the "Bay Area scene" is different from much of the world. I think that part of human nature is that people like people who are like themselves, so you sometimes get these insular / discriminatory sub cultures that judge people on superficial traits instead of the quality of their minds. From both this article and the tales of many friends, San Francisco strikes as one of these low-tolerance / high-discri…

Like there are no bigots in NH. When I lived in Central NH I had a long hair and almost got run out of town for being a "fucking long haired hippie"

When I lived in central NH there was someone who lived in the town who proudly drove a white sedan covered in racial epithets using magic marker and scratched into the paint. A hangman's noose was scratched into the trunk along with the phrase "linch all n* * * *rs".

Naturally that's just the most extreme example; far more commonplace was casual ignorant small-talk generalizing about "the blacks"/"the coloreds"/"the hispanics" in gas stations/convenience stores/the barber/etc. And the soft bigotry of low expectations absolutely permeated an area where people could and did go months, years without seeing a nonwhite individual in person.