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If you're unemployed (and wanting that situation to change) you need to pivot. If you've had ten years being a manager at BigCorp, maybe you'd better sharpen up

If you're unemployed (and wanting that situation to change) you need to pivot. If you've had ten years being a manager at BigCorp, maybe you'd better sharpen up your coding skills, or you B.A. skills. If you've been coding something nobody uses anymore, time to switch areas. It bothers me that we treat unemployment as somehow a failure of the system. As if economies only exist to provide jobs for everybody, whether those jobs make sense or not. It's much more the situation that the world economy is evolving. All of us had better get our asses in gear and catch up. Spend more time getting experience and learning strategies you can put on a resume and less time taking silly courses and waiting for the tooth fairy to come along. I am very sorry that our education system is completely out of whack with what we actually need. There area lot of folks with great credentials who are lining up to create "jobs" programs that will have very poor results. But if I'm an unemployed person, I can't help any of that. The only thing I can do is to take responsibility, keep busy, and start my personal marketing/sales machine. I said that in a pretty cranky fashion because there's another point that's missing in a lot of this discussion: I find as I get older my tolerance for bullshit decreases. The first time you work for a bad PM who is destroying the project you kind of buckle down, maybe struggle along, but generally put up with it. After all, you have nothing in your life experience to give you context. But after a while, it seems to be a lot more important to tell people they are wrong -- nicely, of course -- than to spend six months on a death march. I find that these conversations require a level of trust that younger folks have difficulty giving older folks, and vice-versa. You either become too "grumpy" or you become so passive as to be not worth a damn. In many teams I have seen older workers tell the team that they have these worries that are being unaddressed. In each case, it was way too easy for the team to say "Old Jim is just a grumpy old guy, cranky and he has a bad attitude" than it was to meet Jim half-way and go forward. I think there is a real and measurable communication problem in technology teams between age groups. I'm not sure what the magic bullet is going to be. Or if there is one.

coffee 15y ago
> But after a while, it seems to be a lot more important to tell people they are wrong Honestly, this is one of the main reason I see that a lot of hiring managers LOVE young, inexperienced, recent college grads. They do not want to be told they are wrong. They want these people to shut their mouths, buckle down, and just continue with the death march. Even if the end result is failure, which it typically is, it's way easier to fail in this manner than it is to work hard at succeeding...
- temphn 15y ago
  If the end result is failure, the company goes bankrupt and the hiring manager no longer has the ability to hire. Moreover, the guy who picked the job picked the wrong company, so he failed as well. Hard work is a necessary but not sufficient component of success. Too many older folks equate passion or hard work with "death march" and foment a negative, lazy, can't do attitude. That is particularly poisonous at a startup where persistence in the face of rapid change and uncertain requirements is key.
  - jasonwocky 15y ago
    >If the end result is failure, the company goes bankrupt In my experience, that rarely holds true in the non-startup world.
  - ChuckMcM 15y ago
    Sadly in manager buzzword bingo they are a success, they "built a team" and delivered " thousands of lines of code." Everyone needs to stay current. And people who do stuff in their own time often have no trouble finding work because the "off time" work often is more relevant in the next job than their 10 years of experience on their employers proprietary system. The warning sign should be if all you do when you get home from work is watch tv or play video games, you are falling behind the skill sets of those entering the market.
    - ootachi 15y ago
      So, in effect, you should work all the time. Half of the time you should work for free, so you can get hired again after you get laid off, and half of the time you should work for pay at your current job. What a wonderful industry we work in.
      - beachgeek 15y ago
        I don't think that's what Chuck meant. I think you need to have a passion for the industry and show it in some way. If you're not passionate about tech then maybe you should switch to some other industry. BTW Chuck I remember NIS+!
untog 15y ago
As if economies only exist to provide jobs for everybody, whether those jobs make sense or not. It's much more the situation that the world economy is evolving. But is there a breaking point in the system? Across the board, industries are becoming more efficient through technology, and require fewer workers. At the same time, the birth rate is increasing. What is the end game here? * Spend more time getting experience and learning strategies you can put on a resume and less time taking silly courses and waiting for the tooth fairy to come along.* That's very easy to say when you're employed. I suspect that a lot of people out there would love to pick up some experience, but have no means to do so. Especially when you rule out "silly courses", too.
- danmaz74 15y ago
  One possible, interesting and visible way to gain experience today is to contribute to an open source project. Or even create your own...
  - mcantelon 15y ago
    And volunteering as well. But these things take time and being able to spend this time requires income or savings which people may or may not have.
    - danmaz74 15y ago
      I guess that an unemployed software developer could find time to work on an open source project. I think that, on the other hand, it could be more difficult to find the motivation to do so (and not feel like you're wasting time), but it could also be considered an investment in your future - and probably a demostration that you're really an active/passionate developer.
- tomjen3 15y ago
  If it takes n workers to create a widget, which before took x*n workers, then with a more effective system we can create x widgets with the same workers. There isn't a hard limit on how much wealth can be created (at least not until everybody has everything they could ever want), so more workers are a good thing. The secret is to have a skill that somebody is willing to pay for -- and to keep looking for new things all the time.
_delirium 15y ago
> If you've had ten years being a manager at BigCorp, maybe you'd better sharpen up your coding skills This runs into the "overqualified" problem, though. If you haven't been a programmer for a while, you probably can't be hired as a particularly senior programmer just based on programming skills, but companies also aren't willing to hire you as a junior programmer if you have 10 years of managerial experience, because you're too senior for that. Even if you really genuinely are fine with an entry-level position, most companies won't be willing to hire you into one. Basically it's really hard to fake being a 25-year-old, even if you are 100% as qualified as a 25-year-old for a job (or even more qualified) and aren't asking for any more money than they are, because companies view the 25-year-old and the 55-year-old as fundamentally different when evaluating hires.
- beachgeek 15y ago
  My uncle was an engineering manager at a large multi-national. He's in his mid-50s, having worked there for over a decade. In 2008 his company moved all their engineering to India. He stuck around to complete the transition, train the Indian devs etc, and took the package just as the recession started. He had a helluva time finding a gig. But last I heard he went back to being a contract programmer (probably a pay cut) and he's working on a project on the side. Happy as can be.
- chernevik 15y ago
  Not what I'm finding. I'm midcareer myself, trying to build up consulting work, but without coding experience (I've teaching myself to code). Clients seem most interested in what I can do, and how reliably. It feels slow starting, but I've only been at it a couple months and I'm seeing traction. Mind, I don't worry much about rate just now. I'm more interested in the portfolio and the relationships. I figure if I can fill up my calendar, I can start to raise the rate. I suppose it sucks to be doing "junior" work, but you know something? At this stuff, I _am_ junior. If my background and experience and whatnot mean something to a client, then it will show in the work and relationships. They'll be that much more willing to find a rate that works for both of us as I get busier. But I certainly don't bother talking about them, because they have nothing to do with the relationship I'm proposing. Now if we're only talking about a coding _job_, no. I doubt could get one, and don't know how quickly I could grow the salary if I did. But I think even that might be be in a different position in a year or so.
zzzeek 15y ago
I think the migration of the entire technology manufacturing sector to asia, supported by what's essentially slave labor, is a failure of the system. The workers in this article are described as the types that would be running factory floors, so obviously they are no longer relevant.
beachgeek 15y ago
Fascinating analysis. I am in my mid-40s. My group at BigCo had exactly the PM you describe: younger and better looking than anyone else in the group. but somewhat clueless :-( I tried hard to help in a nice way, but looking back I'm pretty sure I came across as a pretty grumpy guy. But what do you do if the product is being flushed down the toilet? Its hard to sit back and say "OK its just a paycheck", unless you're waiting around for a green card, or you're too young to know any better. I was right, because the product has been canned and myself along with it. I got lucky though because I have ~3 offers even before the layoff has been announced publicly. To summarize for us middle-aged/old farts I would say: 1. Keep that network going. 2. Keep your skills up to date. 3. Transition into a customer-facing role if you can because there is no better way to figure out where the market is headed. Moving forward I'm not going to worry about seeming grumpy, patronizing etc. Its better to be the old jerk who complained about a bad product than the cynic who just sat around collecting their paycheck.
mcantelon 15y ago
Does the system tell people the kind of things that you've just said? Nope. So while it's not necessarily a failure of the system, the system is complicit in continually trying to convince people that things haven't fundamentally changed. The system is willing to sell people this destructive notion because it really doesn't care about or need the excess humanity that has been made redundant by globalization and mechanization. The system's concern for these people generally runs so far as to the potential political threat they'll create in the future when they organize.
bjelkeman-again 15y ago
I don't care how old you are, or where you live (well PST to GMT+5 is ok). We span from 30 to 50 years old in our developer team. If you are good at a combination of (any combo will do): Java, Google app engine, python, Django, HTML/CSS/JavaScript, dev/ops, Linux sys admin, QA, Wordpress (themes/plugin building/php); well, then I have open positions. Half time to full time. Working from home. Will post these new positions at the end of the week, but here is where you can find us, and where these positions will be posted: http://www.akvo.org/web/jobs http://www.akvo.org/web/jobs
- bartonfink 15y ago
  Quite interesting. How, might I ask, is your work funded? Do you sell your products and services to various governments and NGE's? Do you get funding from the same to distribute to worthy causes and products?
  - bjelkeman-again 15y ago
    Yes, pretty much. We develop open source software which we run as a service. We are about to expand into some interesting use of mobile phones in data collection for monitoring and evaluation of program effectiveness in the field. The majority of our funding is in the form of grants, against which we deliver services on a contract. We also have some grants which are more of an investment to allow us to scale up and expand. We also do some CSR work and consulting work. We don't distribute funds to worthy causes ourselves, but our partners which are part of our trusted network do. We just provide the software and services to make it easy to do so and see the results.
bitops 15y ago
I guess I'm a young person, but I agree with what you're saying here. Thoughts from the other side of the divide. I think it's universally true that young people don't have the benefit of experience (by definition) and so they regularly get into trouble. If they would wise up and listen to their elders, things would likely go better. There are a lot of "older" technologists out there who are still doing innovative things and schooling the youngsters in how to do things right. On the other hand, and this depends completely on the individual, some older folks are...well, old. Meaning that they've gotten stuck in a particular way of thinking and doing things, and they've become so accustomed to it that they can't open up to a new perspective. Sometimes - and I'm certainly guilty of this - young people spout off all kinds of craziness that should be rightly ignored. But sometimes, from the mouth babes, as the saying goes. From the younger generation to the older: what I've observed really helps are when the senior engineers step into a mentorship role. That often means slowing down and being less productive, but if you're willing to coach, us youngsters can learn pretty fast (and we have to, in order to be relevant). In fact, if any of us think the tech market is competitive now, just wait another 30-40 years. It's going to be much tougher and much more competitive. Certainly more people will code, but it won't be as unusual as it is today (outside our Bay Area bubble). So, there's no magic bullet. But it's a fact of life that older people are generally expected to be more mature, and so have to endure the foolishness of us young people. Until we (hopefully) get smart enough to listen.
kamaal 15y ago
If you have spent a decade as a manager at a BigCorp, you are probably seasoned irreversibly to never ever go back to the nerdy life you describe. Expertise is not something you just get one day decide to be something and voila within a month of effort your are. If it were that easy, most of us would be composing symphonies or we would all be astronauts by now.It can give you a good head start but nothing much apart from that. So 'polish your coding skills' doesn't work, because its not just about coding skills. There is a whole ecosystem you need to understand and get in tune with. Writing code is something just representing solution in terms of syntax, the actual work that is symbolic notation to problem solving with tools in hand is a craft that takes ridiculous amount of time to learn. Most managers are tuned to way of life, a spending driven lifestyle which is properly matched to their earnings. They have a home, bills to pay, kids to take care of. They are going in a stream of life, going off track from that might be impossible. Also in our society managerial positions are considered to be positions of authority and coders et al are supposed to be both designation and pay wise inferior to them. Unless you don't care about the world. For most managers this is like going backwards in their career.
devs1010 15y ago
This is all too true. I have seen exactly this go on where there is a young(ish) PM and at least one developer who is much older. The older dev really should be the one leading the project but they don't have any interest in managing as they prefer to just be a developer. The older dev has been around the block a few times and sees the shortcomings of a project and points this out but, just as you say, they are cast aside only to be proven right.
gaius 15y ago
you've had ten years being a manager at BigCorp, maybe you'd better sharpen up your coding skills Strawman. FTA: many of the companies shedding jobs are technology manufacturers, while most of the companies that are hiring are Internet-based LOL at the thought of today's Ruby "rockstar ninjas" learning chip design overnight, when the market swings back again. Everyone think's they're invincible when they're young. These guys in the article thought it too. They didn't plan on becoming obsolete...

coffee 15y ago

> But after a while, it seems to be a lot more important to tell people they are wrong Honestly, this is one of the main reason I see that a lot of hiring managers LOVE young, inexperienced, recent college grads. They do not want to be told they are wrong. They want these people to shut their mouths, buckle down, and just continue with the death march. Even if the end result is failure, which it typically is, it's way easier to fail in this manner than it is to work hard at succeeding...

temphn 15y ago
If the end result is failure, the company goes bankrupt and the hiring manager no longer has the ability to hire. Moreover, the guy who picked the job picked the wrong company, so he failed as well. Hard work is a necessary but not sufficient component of success. Too many older folks equate passion or hard work with "death march" and foment a negative, lazy, can't do attitude. That is particularly poisonous at a startup where persistence in the face of rapid change and uncertain requirements is key.
- jasonwocky 15y ago
  >If the end result is failure, the company goes bankrupt In my experience, that rarely holds true in the non-startup world.
- ChuckMcM 15y ago
  Sadly in manager buzzword bingo they are a success, they "built a team" and delivered " thousands of lines of code." Everyone needs to stay current. And people who do stuff in their own time often have no trouble finding work because the "off time" work often is more relevant in the next job than their 10 years of experience on their employers proprietary system. The warning sign should be if all you do when you get home from work is watch tv or play video games, you are falling behind the skill sets of those entering the market.
  - ootachi 15y ago
    So, in effect, you should work all the time. Half of the time you should work for free, so you can get hired again after you get laid off, and half of the time you should work for pay at your current job. What a wonderful industry we work in.
    - beachgeek 15y ago
      I don't think that's what Chuck meant. I think you need to have a passion for the industry and show it in some way. If you're not passionate about tech then maybe you should switch to some other industry. BTW Chuck I remember NIS+!

untog 15y ago

As if economies only exist to provide jobs for everybody, whether those jobs make sense or not. It's much more the situation that the world economy is evolving. But is there a breaking point in the system? Across the board, industries are becoming more efficient through technology, and require fewer workers. At the same time, the birth rate is increasing. What is the end game here? * Spend more time getting experience and learning strategies you can put on a resume and less time taking silly courses and waiting for the tooth fairy to come along.* That's very easy to say when you're employed. I suspect that a lot of people out there would love to pick up some experience, but have no means to do so. Especially when you rule out "silly courses", too.

danmaz74 15y ago
One possible, interesting and visible way to gain experience today is to contribute to an open source project. Or even create your own...
- mcantelon 15y ago
  And volunteering as well. But these things take time and being able to spend this time requires income or savings which people may or may not have.
  - danmaz74 15y ago
    I guess that an unemployed software developer could find time to work on an open source project. I think that, on the other hand, it could be more difficult to find the motivation to do so (and not feel like you're wasting time), but it could also be considered an investment in your future - and probably a demostration that you're really an active/passionate developer.
tomjen3 15y ago
If it takes n workers to create a widget, which before took x*n workers, then with a more effective system we can create x widgets with the same workers. There isn't a hard limit on how much wealth can be created (at least not until everybody has everything they could ever want), so more workers are a good thing. The secret is to have a skill that somebody is willing to pay for -- and to keep looking for new things all the time.

_delirium 15y ago

> If you've had ten years being a manager at BigCorp, maybe you'd better sharpen up your coding skills This runs into the "overqualified" problem, though. If you haven't been a programmer for a while, you probably can't be hired as a particularly senior programmer just based on programming skills, but companies also aren't willing to hire you as a junior programmer if you have 10 years of managerial experience, because you're too senior for that. Even if you really genuinely are fine with an entry-level position, most companies won't be willing to hire you into one. Basically it's really hard to fake being a 25-year-old, even if you are 100% as qualified as a 25-year-old for a job (or even more qualified) and aren't asking for any more money than they are, because companies view the 25-year-old and the 55-year-old as fundamentally different when evaluating hires.

beachgeek 15y ago
My uncle was an engineering manager at a large multi-national. He's in his mid-50s, having worked there for over a decade. In 2008 his company moved all their engineering to India. He stuck around to complete the transition, train the Indian devs etc, and took the package just as the recession started. He had a helluva time finding a gig. But last I heard he went back to being a contract programmer (probably a pay cut) and he's working on a project on the side. Happy as can be.
chernevik 15y ago
Not what I'm finding. I'm midcareer myself, trying to build up consulting work, but without coding experience (I've teaching myself to code). Clients seem most interested in what I can do, and how reliably. It feels slow starting, but I've only been at it a couple months and I'm seeing traction. Mind, I don't worry much about rate just now. I'm more interested in the portfolio and the relationships. I figure if I can fill up my calendar, I can start to raise the rate. I suppose it sucks to be doing "junior" work, but you know something? At this stuff, I _am_ junior. If my background and experience and whatnot mean something to a client, then it will show in the work and relationships. They'll be that much more willing to find a rate that works for both of us as I get busier. But I certainly don't bother talking about them, because they have nothing to do with the relationship I'm proposing. Now if we're only talking about a coding _job_, no. I doubt could get one, and don't know how quickly I could grow the salary if I did. But I think even that might be be in a different position in a year or so.

zzzeek 15y ago

I think the migration of the entire technology manufacturing sector to asia, supported by what's essentially slave labor, is a failure of the system. The workers in this article are described as the types that would be running factory floors, so obviously they are no longer relevant.

beachgeek 15y ago

Fascinating analysis. I am in my mid-40s. My group at BigCo had exactly the PM you describe: younger and better looking than anyone else in the group. but somewhat clueless :-( I tried hard to help in a nice way, but looking back I'm pretty sure I came across as a pretty grumpy guy. But what do you do if the product is being flushed down the toilet? Its hard to sit back and say "OK its just a paycheck", unless you're waiting around for a green card, or you're too young to know any better. I was right, because the product has been canned and myself along with it. I got lucky though because I have ~3 offers even before the layoff has been announced publicly. To summarize for us middle-aged/old farts I would say: 1. Keep that network going. 2. Keep your skills up to date. 3. Transition into a customer-facing role if you can because there is no better way to figure out where the market is headed. Moving forward I'm not going to worry about seeming grumpy, patronizing etc. Its better to be the old jerk who complained about a bad product than the cynic who just sat around collecting their paycheck.

mcantelon 15y ago

Does the system tell people the kind of things that you've just said? Nope. So while it's not necessarily a failure of the system, the system is complicit in continually trying to convince people that things haven't fundamentally changed. The system is willing to sell people this destructive notion because it really doesn't care about or need the excess humanity that has been made redundant by globalization and mechanization. The system's concern for these people generally runs so far as to the potential political threat they'll create in the future when they organize.

bjelkeman-again 15y ago

I don't care how old you are, or where you live (well PST to GMT+5 is ok). We span from 30 to 50 years old in our developer team. If you are good at a combination of (any combo will do): Java, Google app engine, python, Django, HTML/CSS/JavaScript, dev/ops, Linux sys admin, QA, Wordpress (themes/plugin building/php); well, then I have open positions. Half time to full time. Working from home. Will post these new positions at the end of the week, but here is where you can find us, and where these positions will be posted: http://www.akvo.org/web/jobs http://www.akvo.org/web/jobs

bartonfink 15y ago
Quite interesting. How, might I ask, is your work funded? Do you sell your products and services to various governments and NGE's? Do you get funding from the same to distribute to worthy causes and products?
- bjelkeman-again 15y ago
  Yes, pretty much. We develop open source software which we run as a service. We are about to expand into some interesting use of mobile phones in data collection for monitoring and evaluation of program effectiveness in the field. The majority of our funding is in the form of grants, against which we deliver services on a contract. We also have some grants which are more of an investment to allow us to scale up and expand. We also do some CSR work and consulting work. We don't distribute funds to worthy causes ourselves, but our partners which are part of our trusted network do. We just provide the software and services to make it easy to do so and see the results.

bitops 15y ago

I guess I'm a young person, but I agree with what you're saying here. Thoughts from the other side of the divide. I think it's universally true that young people don't have the benefit of experience (by definition) and so they regularly get into trouble. If they would wise up and listen to their elders, things would likely go better. There are a lot of "older" technologists out there who are still doing innovative things and schooling the youngsters in how to do things right. On the other hand, and this depends completely on the individual, some older folks are...well, old. Meaning that they've gotten stuck in a particular way of thinking and doing things, and they've become so accustomed to it that they can't open up to a new perspective. Sometimes - and I'm certainly guilty of this - young people spout off all kinds of craziness that should be rightly ignored. But sometimes, from the mouth babes, as the saying goes. From the younger generation to the older: what I've observed really helps are when the senior engineers step into a mentorship role. That often means slowing down and being less productive, but if you're willing to coach, us youngsters can learn pretty fast (and we have to, in order to be relevant). In fact, if any of us think the tech market is competitive now, just wait another 30-40 years. It's going to be much tougher and much more competitive. Certainly more people will code, but it won't be as unusual as it is today (outside our Bay Area bubble). So, there's no magic bullet. But it's a fact of life that older people are generally expected to be more mature, and so have to endure the foolishness of us young people. Until we (hopefully) get smart enough to listen.

kamaal 15y ago

If you have spent a decade as a manager at a BigCorp, you are probably seasoned irreversibly to never ever go back to the nerdy life you describe. Expertise is not something you just get one day decide to be something and voila within a month of effort your are. If it were that easy, most of us would be composing symphonies or we would all be astronauts by now.It can give you a good head start but nothing much apart from that. So 'polish your coding skills' doesn't work, because its not just about coding skills. There is a whole ecosystem you need to understand and get in tune with. Writing code is something just representing solution in terms of syntax, the actual work that is symbolic notation to problem solving with tools in hand is a craft that takes ridiculous amount of time to learn. Most managers are tuned to way of life, a spending driven lifestyle which is properly matched to their earnings. They have a home, bills to pay, kids to take care of. They are going in a stream of life, going off track from that might be impossible. Also in our society managerial positions are considered to be positions of authority and coders et al are supposed to be both designation and pay wise inferior to them. Unless you don't care about the world. For most managers this is like going backwards in their career.

devs1010 15y ago

This is all too true. I have seen exactly this go on where there is a young(ish) PM and at least one developer who is much older. The older dev really should be the one leading the project but they don't have any interest in managing as they prefer to just be a developer. The older dev has been around the block a few times and sees the shortcomings of a project and points this out but, just as you say, they are cast aside only to be proven right.

gaius 15y ago

you've had ten years being a manager at BigCorp, maybe you'd better sharpen up your coding skills Strawman. FTA: many of the companies shedding jobs are technology manufacturers, while most of the companies that are hiring are Internet-based LOL at the thought of today's Ruby "rockstar ninjas" learning chip design overnight, when the market swings back again. Everyone think's they're invincible when they're young. These guys in the article thought it too. They didn't plan on becoming obsolete...