5 ms·

I'm 55 and still getting interviews... got my last job at 52. The whole "omg, I'm 40 - no tech will hire me" is a bit overblown...

Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
I'm glad it is like that, I'm concerned for anything at 60+, in the end 5 years of income is quite a bit, hence why I am trying to plan ahead for retirement
- mech422 3y ago
  sounds like a good plan :-) Trick is to be on the edges - either leading edge or trailing edge. That's where the competition is lowest and the compensation is highest. I do cloud architecture/infrastructure atm, but I figure I'll fund my retirement by being the last living COBOL programmer :-P
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
    That's way harder to accomplish unfortunately. Unless I study COBOL too
    - mech422 3y ago
      Hehe - yeah.. by the time millennials retire I'm not sure what it would be ... Java maybe ?
      - Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
        I thought about that, but Java is also the most widespread language, so I don't know if it will be similar to COBOL (I don't know how widespread COBOL was)
        mech422 3y ago
        COBOL was very widespread - there used to be more lines of COBOL in production then any other language (Mostly mainframe and (super-)mini computer stuff (banks, govt, insurance, etc.) In another 20-30 years, Java might be a lot less popular then Go, Rust, Python, Ruby, etc? So lots of Java that needs maintenance and not many people left to do it??
        ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
        Unpopular stance, but the Fishtank Graph[0] tells the story. PHP is actually a good bet. [0] https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/programming_language/ms/y https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/programmin...
        Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
        PHP is a good bet, but it still powers 50% of the internet. That's A LOT of websites...
        mech422 3y ago
        oh yeah - Can't believe I forgot about Perl and PHP !! Those could be good bets too. Always fun to speculate whats still gonna be around in 20-30 years :-D
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
I was a manager. That was a big problem, looking for an IC job. My employees were close to my age, and got jobs, but it took years. These were top-shelf C++ geeks. I was treated pretty badly, and decided it wasn’t worth it.
- mech422 3y ago
  Wow man - Sorry you had such bad time :-/ Hopefully you got something fun now :-) I have noticed over the years that interviewing has gotten more onerous and ghosting has gotten more common. There's never any reason to treat people badly/ghost them. Even a thanks-but-no-thanks is better then radio silence.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago

I'm glad it is like that, I'm concerned for anything at 60+, in the end 5 years of income is quite a bit, hence why I am trying to plan ahead for retirement

mech422 3y ago
sounds like a good plan :-) Trick is to be on the edges - either leading edge or trailing edge. That's where the competition is lowest and the compensation is highest. I do cloud architecture/infrastructure atm, but I figure I'll fund my retirement by being the last living COBOL programmer :-P
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
  That's way harder to accomplish unfortunately. Unless I study COBOL too
  - mech422 3y ago
    Hehe - yeah.. by the time millennials retire I'm not sure what it would be ... Java maybe ?
    - Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
      I thought about that, but Java is also the most widespread language, so I don't know if it will be similar to COBOL (I don't know how widespread COBOL was)
      - mech422 3y ago
        COBOL was very widespread - there used to be more lines of COBOL in production then any other language (Mostly mainframe and (super-)mini computer stuff (banks, govt, insurance, etc.) In another 20-30 years, Java might be a lot less popular then Go, Rust, Python, Ruby, etc? So lots of Java that needs maintenance and not many people left to do it??
        ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
        Unpopular stance, but the Fishtank Graph[0] tells the story. PHP is actually a good bet. [0] https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/programming_language/ms/y https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/programmin...
        Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
        PHP is a good bet, but it still powers 50% of the internet. That's A LOT of websites...
        mech422 3y ago
        oh yeah - Can't believe I forgot about Perl and PHP !! Those could be good bets too. Always fun to speculate whats still gonna be around in 20-30 years :-D

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago

I was a manager. That was a big problem, looking for an IC job. My employees were close to my age, and got jobs, but it took years. These were top-shelf C++ geeks. I was treated pretty badly, and decided it wasn’t worth it.

mech422 3y ago
Wow man - Sorry you had such bad time :-/ Hopefully you got something fun now :-) I have noticed over the years that interviewing has gotten more onerous and ghosting has gotten more common. There's never any reason to treat people badly/ghost them. Even a thanks-but-no-thanks is better then radio silence.