3 ms·

I find most of the advice too narrow to be useful. - It over-emphasizes the normativity of job security and not having missed a paycheck but if your calculus i

I find most of the advice too narrow to be useful. - It over-emphasizes the normativity of job security and not having missed a paycheck but if your calculus is at the level of paychecks in an era where developers are paid this handsomely, you might be optimizing for the wrong thing. Financial security and job security should not be that tightly coupled for an industry that pays above average and where switching jobs every 4 years is not a bad thing. Ride the bull in the sense of riding the bull market and get a financial advisor, save up on that surplus and give yourself your own "paycheck"s if need be. - It over emphasizes "be a good guy and go the extra mile for your boss" which is another way of saying be willing to be underpaid for the work done in the name of a fallacious goal of "not getting laid off". Having been in a massive, no-prisoners lay-off by a big name company early in my career cleared any illusion of control and loyalty. You can sing all the songs and do the dances for your employer, if say the market decides asset/profit ratio is going to be a certain number, you're out. This is a harsh reality people find difficult coming to terms with and make superstitions around what might protect them from the wrath of the market gods. You can't, and that's OK. - Branding; the transferability of your branding is overemphasized. Your purple-heart beyond-the-call-of-duty bug fixes is not likely to make it out of your manager's mind to your new recruiters. XX% of software engineers won't have any constant supply of widely applicable plus novel insights to blog about, and that is not a bad thing. Let your previous accomplishments, salary, level and title be your branding. We call that a CV and that does 99% of the work in a high labor demand market.

UncleOxidant 5y ago
> It over-emphasizes the normativity of job security and not having missed a paycheck but if your calculus is at the level of paychecks in an era where developers are paid this handsomely, you might be optimizing for the wrong thing. Note that it's called "The Old hackers guide" and he mentions he started in '86 (roughly about the same time I started in tech, I'm in my late 50s). Job security definitely becomes more of the issue as you get into your 50s. The handsome pay is usually going to the folks in their 30s. The FAANG corps that pay handsomely aren't hiring devs in their 50s. > switching jobs every 4 years is not a bad thing I've had a lot of jobs over the last 5 years and a lot of downtime as well. If I didn't have to switch jobs every year or two, I wouldn't as interviewing is awful at my age - once they see that you're "old" you definitely feel that they have no intent to hire you. Mostly I only end up working for people who are my age or a bit older as they don't have biases against people in their own age group. But my contacts are retiring and there are less people around the industry in my age group every day. At this point I'm considering myself semi-retired. Fortunately I'm in a position to afford to be semi-retired. tl;dr: the view someone in their 30s sees ("aim for handsome pay") might be very different than the view someone is seeing in their 50s ("it's getting tough to find gigs at all").
- acituan 5y ago
  What about phone interviews and remote work? Especially this year I’ve interviewed tons of folks without having seen their faces or knowing their ages. I don’t deny your experience by the way, but without hard data isn’t it hard to say if people were rejected for age vs other reasons?
  - UncleOxidant 5y ago
    You hired people based on the phone interview alone?
- emodendroket 5y ago
  Plus jumping around to increase pay is a strategy that gets less effective after a few hops, if you're doing it right.

UncleOxidant 5y ago

> It over-emphasizes the normativity of job security and not having missed a paycheck but if your calculus is at the level of paychecks in an era where developers are paid this handsomely, you might be optimizing for the wrong thing. Note that it's called "The Old hackers guide" and he mentions he started in '86 (roughly about the same time I started in tech, I'm in my late 50s). Job security definitely becomes more of the issue as you get into your 50s. The handsome pay is usually going to the folks in their 30s. The FAANG corps that pay handsomely aren't hiring devs in their 50s. > switching jobs every 4 years is not a bad thing I've had a lot of jobs over the last 5 years and a lot of downtime as well. If I didn't have to switch jobs every year or two, I wouldn't as interviewing is awful at my age - once they see that you're "old" you definitely feel that they have no intent to hire you. Mostly I only end up working for people who are my age or a bit older as they don't have biases against people in their own age group. But my contacts are retiring and there are less people around the industry in my age group every day. At this point I'm considering myself semi-retired. Fortunately I'm in a position to afford to be semi-retired. tl;dr: the view someone in their 30s sees ("aim for handsome pay") might be very different than the view someone is seeing in their 50s ("it's getting tough to find gigs at all").

acituan 5y ago
What about phone interviews and remote work? Especially this year I’ve interviewed tons of folks without having seen their faces or knowing their ages. I don’t deny your experience by the way, but without hard data isn’t it hard to say if people were rejected for age vs other reasons?
- UncleOxidant 5y ago
  You hired people based on the phone interview alone?
emodendroket 5y ago
Plus jumping around to increase pay is a strategy that gets less effective after a few hops, if you're doing it right.