I sympathize with anyone that have convinced themselves they are stuck even though conditions for success is at an all time high. Chin up and either network or build something usefull yourself.
The Unemployable Programmer
91–100 of 464 posts
Re: The Unemployable Programmer
#92"But they're not talking about people like me, they're talking about twenty-something Ivy League post docs with stellar CVs." We're trying to recruit a devops with AWS experience. We really don't care about which uni you went to or didn't go to. Probably no good for you as we're in Manchester, UK but I don't think we're that unique.
He probably wants to be a developer rather than a support though.
This is goofy and a little insulting. At my clients, I write more code than plenty of developers. Turns out it tends to be necessary when you're developing (key word) build pipelines and tooling. I also get to touch a lot more of the stack.
Re: The Unemployable Programmer
#93I think being around 40 with a decade of dev experience should be pretty attractive, at least if the programming experience is somewhat modern. 10 years OO-programming should be translatable to any OO language with ease, regardless of what you actually used before, for example. There are "unemployable" developers out there, but they are 10-20 years older and have 15 years of niche in-house platforms in some huge ente…
I've interviewed people like this though not as extreme. Basically person gets a job. They learn the job in about 3-6 months and now repeat the same job for years without ever learning anything else. So on paper it shows 5-10 years experience, but in reality they still have about 3-6 months experience.
Part of the blame lies on the company for not giving the employee a growth path, but the largest part lies on the employee for not continuing to grow on their own. Software as a profession is one where you have to constantly be learning. People need to know going in that it is ultimately their responsibility to keep their skills growing and up to date.
Re: The Unemployable Programmer
#9420 somethings aren't comfortable hiring 40 somethings. That's the bulk of it, and if you think this isn't true you're lying to yourself.
Re: The Unemployable Programmer
#95I once found myself unemployable as well, maybe what I did can help someone. This was quite a few years ago when the ColdFusion job I had just ended and the job I had before that was in Visual FoxPro (and a few other even less known technologies). Talk about unemployable. Also I am not in a major city, so I was getting pretty much no responses to my resume. After a few months I realized I was unemployable and set out…
I chose to write a hugely boring open source product that no one in their right mind would bother with. Old tech, competing with a ton of other similar projects. I focused on the documentation, make it as simple as 'cut and paste this code to get it working' every time someone had a question, bam - a cut and paste example.
Did some serious SEO and soon was racking up a couple of thousand hits a week. This soon hits the million mark. That gets me interviews, even with people who don't want that old tech, they just see results.
I am currently doing a bit of Drupal for a client, there are a TON of half baked modules. Take some of them and make them work. Make them work with the backup module, the restore, the import.... then your CV is padded with a ton of neat stuff.
This is super common advice, the trick is to actually take it. Get all OCD about it and make it work.
Re: The Unemployable Programmer
#96Degrees only matter for "serious companies" and are used as a filter by often clueless HR employees without technical background. As long as you can prove practical experience, you should be fine. Your network, on the other hand, becomes more important as you get older. Hiring an unknown person in his/her 40s or 50s has a much lower risk/reward ratio than hiring a random developer in his 20s who will a) do whatever y…
One of the biggest problems -- speaking as a former technical hiring manager myself -- is that a lot of those "serious companies" have HR policies that explicitly forbid hiring managers from pursuing candidates on their own. They are 100% at the mercy of whatever recruiters find for them, which is an awwwwwwwful, horrendous situation.
Really? All the big corps I worked at had a referral program. Friend want a job? Send his resume to HR. If he got hired, some kind of referral bonus (500 to 5000 depending on job market)
Not the same as a direct hire of a friend but I know referrals were assumed better qualified than a random who applied online.
Re: The Unemployable Programmer
#97> Being able to get work in this field without a fancy background is still possible, but only if you have the right connections. Like I said: it's no longer sufficient to be able to do the job This sentiment regularly comes up on HN, and I find it a little exasperating. Human interaction has always been an important part of career. There's a subtle (or not so subtle) contempt for soft skills in these laments. You can…
In most cases we need to sort CVs somehow. If we sort by degree there is a high chance that someone in the top 10 fits the position. Interviewing dozens of candidates is very resource consuming. I can emphasise with his story, but is all game of numbers in the end.
> all game of numbers in the end
Personally, I am always wary of this rationalization (and I say that generally being on the winning side of it). It's not "all numbers", it's people, and the second one loses sight of that one starts to let in the door all sorts of evil crap.
Re: The Unemployable Programmer
#98Hmm... I'm a 35 year old programmer and I work in Defense/Aerospace. If you think finding a good developer is hard, try finding a good developer who also holds a security clearance. If you're any good at all, you will always be employed and well compensated. The work can be dull, with Vogon-esque processes and procedures, but I have side projects to keep me sane :) Every couple of years (ok, at least every year) I'll…
Problem there is you can't just go get a security clearance - you have to be ... sponsored(?) - is that the word - by a company already. At least, that was my reading of the situation a few years back. I gave up applying to defense positions years ago because every one required existing security clearance. It's the defense industry version of "you have to have experience before we'll hire you to get the experience".
They will say existing security clearance required, because that greatly speeds up their hiring process. However there really is a severe drought of qualified developers with clearance, to the degree that even the worthless ones don't really get fired if they show up and don't anger security. And while for some of the jobs that may indeed be a hard requirement, for most of them its more of a preference. If you are a good programmer and fairly confident you will be able to be cleared, then they will sponsor you through the clearance process. Pro-tip just don't lie about shit and should be able to get clearance, they will look over most past issues if you acknowledge them and state that they are no longer an issue.
Re: The Unemployable Programmer
#99I get where the OP is coming from, but it was his responsibility to move on sooner. I worked DoD for a time and lasted 9 months before I left out of a) boredom and b) feeling my skills completely rot away. I chalked it up as a retirement job I would go back to when I was ready to hang out from 9-4 every day.
I had another job where I learned a lot, but after a couple years the job became repetitive with no further learning opportunities. At that point it was time to leave, because if you are not moving forward you are moving backwards.
People need to take control of their own careers.
Re: The Unemployable Programmer
#100[deleted]