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I still require to work in a company where my manager/boss/CTO know much more than me. I'm almost 40. It's really hard to work for a 20-something guy who has al

I still require to work in a company where my manager/boss/CTO know much more than me. I'm almost 40. It's really hard to work for a 20-something guy who has almost no experience and is happily making all the mistakes he could read in books about. Still, finding a job where my boss would know more is more and more problematic. When I was 33 I was rejected by a recruiter with "you know, here I have dozens of resumes of people 10 years younger than you, who have lots of experience in managing teams. There must be something wrong with you, so I cannot pass your papers to the client." Still, looking for a job is a very traumatic experience. The companies are looking for unicorns: young, cheap, without family (aka drinking in evenings, working on weekends), with lots of experience, and academic knowledge (which will never be used). A couple of times I heard from guys, who would be my managers "oh, I'd love to have your experience"... the rest of the interviews went smoothly. In all the places I even didn't get to the step where they asked for the money requirements. They just didn't answer. I'm looking for a remote job now. I even made a nicely stripped resume on one page. My normal has 3 pages. It's a very traumatic experience, especially that most of the remote companies require knowing almost only some new stuff, totally ignoring my 18 years of experience in everything else. Btw... a surgeon of my age is usually not experienced enough to make surgeries on his/her own. A programmer of my age is usually a useless resource, which is happily replaced with someone just after the college. All this makes me sad. The experience is not valued here. So what is? The lack of experience?

aryehof 7y ago
> The experience is not valued here. So what is? The lack of experience? Experience in software development is sadly irrelevant for much of the software development industry. Instead what is today valued is knowledge of some new framework, the ability to describe data structures and algorithms (for interviews only), and the ability to pick-up (hack) at things quickly and without complaint. All of these things are equally well done by a newcomer, of which there are ever increasing numbers. What future does someone increasingly older have over time, in an industry where the only qualifications (really) sought are "smart, eager, compliant, cheerful, and quick to learn"?
scarface74 7y ago
My resume has always been one page. I hate looking over 3 page resumes. I don’t care what you did in the 90s. No one cares that I wrote C for DEC VAX and Stratus VOS mainframes in the late 90s or the systems I wrote with a combination of C++/COM and Vb6 in the early 2000s. I only go back 10 years. In fact, I negotiated not to be a team lead at my current job.
- matwood 7y ago
  Not only that, but I don't want to be hired to fix some old VB6 app or write Crystal Reports. If I'm ever desperate for a job I would change my tune, but that's a different situation.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    I took off anything related to C for a similar reason. While C and C++ have a special place in my heart, I was interviewing for a C# position around 4 years ago and I had an interviewer spend 5-10 minutes on C minutiae even though it had nothing to do with the job just to prove how smart he was. I got the job. But, when I interview there are certain things I want to emphasize and that wasn’t one of them.
- maxheadroom 7y ago
  >My resume has always been one page. I hate looking over 3 page resumes. I don’t care what you did in the 90s. This is very culture specific. Example: Like you, I usually keep a revolving ~10 years history on my CV. As the years progress, I drop anything > 10 years, as it's really no longer relevant. Anyways, I was pointedly asked one time during an interview, recently, for a company in a different country, "Where's the rest of your work history since university?" That was almost 20 years ago, now. You have any idea just how long my CV would be, now, with all of that information? /tableflip.gif
  - steverb 7y ago
    My solution to this has generally been to add a "1997 - 2000 Various Previous work history available upon request" at the bottom. And then just carry a copy or two of the full CV with you to the interview. If someone wants to see it, let them. Generally interviewers have just been curious.
tmwprkej 7y ago
> "you know, here I have dozens of resumes of people 10 years younger than you, who have lots of experience in managing team So they are 23 year olds write lots of managing experience? Sometimes I just dislike this industry with its title inflation. I am 33 having been a recruiter for a short stint, I can tell you most of them just checkbox candidates because they have no idea what they are hiring. As they say, no one ever got fired buying an ibm.
- aiisjustanif 7y ago
  > As they say, no one ever got fired buying an ibm. No one ever got fired going Big Blue... I know a director or two lol.
- madengr 7y ago
  There are 23 year olds who don’t have the technical chops, so rather than being fired, they are put on a management track. This started to happen around 2000. Back when I hired into my company in ‘96 (I’m 47 now and 23 years at the same place), all the managers were in their 50’s and 60’s, who had done real engineering. Then they become younger and younger, and eventually my manager was an idiot in his late 20’s whose relevant technical experience was “designing a power supply for an FPGA”, with me in my 40’s and an expert in my field. I told them I was leaving, so they gave me a promotion, and now I report to a 50 something female. She is a good manager. Fortunately I’m at they point now where I’m the graybeard in the basement who gets to solve all the hard problems.
dba7dba 7y ago
> a surgeon of my age is usually not experienced enough Forget surgeons. My dentist is nearing retirement age and a younger dentist was brought in to be groomed to replace him. The youngish dentist on more than a few occasions mentioned he couldn't/wouldn't do certain procedures because one with more experience was necessary. The 'young' dentist is no more than 30 years old. And in coding world, if you are over 30, you are considered over the hill. > The experience is not valued here. So what is? The lack of experience? What is valued is someone who can get productive with new trendy framework right away, while receiving minimal pay.
- stagger87 7y ago
  "And in coding world, if you are over 30, you are considered over the hill" Pure hyperbole.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
mavelikara 7y ago
Aren't some of your earlier bosses and colleagues able to make introductions?
sokoloff 7y ago
> I still require to work in a company where my manager/boss/CTO know much more than me. I'm almost 40. This is a hard requirement to meet because as you go up the hierarchy of positions, the first level leader initially knows more than the junior contributors, but that pretty rapidly flips. Maybe the second level of leadership still knows more than the first, but almost never after that. How could someone be an expert practitioner in all the varied disciplines that they likely oversee? It skews towards general tech leadership quite quickly.
MRD85 7y ago
Is this in the US? The way you structure your writing makes me think you're not a native English speaker. What you could be describing is either a bias against hiring non-Americans (i.e. they should be cheap labour) or it's an issue from another country.

aryehof 7y ago

> The experience is not valued here. So what is? The lack of experience? Experience in software development is sadly irrelevant for much of the software development industry. Instead what is today valued is knowledge of some new framework, the ability to describe data structures and algorithms (for interviews only), and the ability to pick-up (hack) at things quickly and without complaint. All of these things are equally well done by a newcomer, of which there are ever increasing numbers. What future does someone increasingly older have over time, in an industry where the only qualifications (really) sought are "smart, eager, compliant, cheerful, and quick to learn"?

scarface74 7y ago

My resume has always been one page. I hate looking over 3 page resumes. I don’t care what you did in the 90s. No one cares that I wrote C for DEC VAX and Stratus VOS mainframes in the late 90s or the systems I wrote with a combination of C++/COM and Vb6 in the early 2000s. I only go back 10 years. In fact, I negotiated not to be a team lead at my current job.

matwood 7y ago
Not only that, but I don't want to be hired to fix some old VB6 app or write Crystal Reports. If I'm ever desperate for a job I would change my tune, but that's a different situation.
- scarface74 7y ago
  I took off anything related to C for a similar reason. While C and C++ have a special place in my heart, I was interviewing for a C# position around 4 years ago and I had an interviewer spend 5-10 minutes on C minutiae even though it had nothing to do with the job just to prove how smart he was. I got the job. But, when I interview there are certain things I want to emphasize and that wasn’t one of them.
maxheadroom 7y ago
>My resume has always been one page. I hate looking over 3 page resumes. I don’t care what you did in the 90s. This is very culture specific. Example: Like you, I usually keep a revolving ~10 years history on my CV. As the years progress, I drop anything > 10 years, as it's really no longer relevant. Anyways, I was pointedly asked one time during an interview, recently, for a company in a different country, "Where's the rest of your work history since university?" That was almost 20 years ago, now. You have any idea just how long my CV would be, now, with all of that information? /tableflip.gif
- steverb 7y ago
  My solution to this has generally been to add a "1997 - 2000 Various Previous work history available upon request" at the bottom. And then just carry a copy or two of the full CV with you to the interview. If someone wants to see it, let them. Generally interviewers have just been curious.

tmwprkej 7y ago

> "you know, here I have dozens of resumes of people 10 years younger than you, who have lots of experience in managing team So they are 23 year olds write lots of managing experience? Sometimes I just dislike this industry with its title inflation. I am 33 having been a recruiter for a short stint, I can tell you most of them just checkbox candidates because they have no idea what they are hiring. As they say, no one ever got fired buying an ibm.

aiisjustanif 7y ago
> As they say, no one ever got fired buying an ibm. No one ever got fired going Big Blue... I know a director or two lol.
madengr 7y ago
There are 23 year olds who don’t have the technical chops, so rather than being fired, they are put on a management track. This started to happen around 2000. Back when I hired into my company in ‘96 (I’m 47 now and 23 years at the same place), all the managers were in their 50’s and 60’s, who had done real engineering. Then they become younger and younger, and eventually my manager was an idiot in his late 20’s whose relevant technical experience was “designing a power supply for an FPGA”, with me in my 40’s and an expert in my field. I told them I was leaving, so they gave me a promotion, and now I report to a 50 something female. She is a good manager. Fortunately I’m at they point now where I’m the graybeard in the basement who gets to solve all the hard problems.

dba7dba 7y ago

> a surgeon of my age is usually not experienced enough Forget surgeons. My dentist is nearing retirement age and a younger dentist was brought in to be groomed to replace him. The youngish dentist on more than a few occasions mentioned he couldn't/wouldn't do certain procedures because one with more experience was necessary. The 'young' dentist is no more than 30 years old. And in coding world, if you are over 30, you are considered over the hill. > The experience is not valued here. So what is? The lack of experience? What is valued is someone who can get productive with new trendy framework right away, while receiving minimal pay.

stagger87 7y ago
"And in coding world, if you are over 30, you are considered over the hill" Pure hyperbole.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

mavelikara 7y ago

Aren't some of your earlier bosses and colleagues able to make introductions?

sokoloff 7y ago

> I still require to work in a company where my manager/boss/CTO know much more than me. I'm almost 40. This is a hard requirement to meet because as you go up the hierarchy of positions, the first level leader initially knows more than the junior contributors, but that pretty rapidly flips. Maybe the second level of leadership still knows more than the first, but almost never after that. How could someone be an expert practitioner in all the varied disciplines that they likely oversee? It skews towards general tech leadership quite quickly.

MRD85 7y ago

Is this in the US? The way you structure your writing makes me think you're not a native English speaker. What you could be describing is either a bias against hiring non-Americans (i.e. they should be cheap labour) or it's an issue from another country.