31 ms·

What Happens to Older Developers?

• gambiting 13y ago
  >>5.If you lose your job and your assets, you'll lose medical care too and the issues may become serious. I hate every system which allows that to happen to people. It's disgusting that there are societies which allow it and can't see how this is the first thing that should be changed, pronto.
  • OldCoder 13y ago
    It'll happen over time. I'm not sure of the right answer, but people on all sides are aware that changes are needed.
  • dsirijus 13y ago
    First thing I do each time I get access to money - get a systematic check-up by GP, fix teeth, eat well, and use free time to get exercise. That's basically the only reason why I'm not a complete mess body-wise.
  • kashkhan 13y ago
    if the government isn't stepping up to help old developers, shouldn't there be a developers' union to take care of them? Old age and ill health can happen to anyone. Even crack developers.
    • cuillevel3 13y ago
      Yes, but we are doing sooo well in our twenties and thirties, why would we unionize....
      • kashkhan 13y ago
        it's the usual thing. we all want to be zuck. we don't want to cramp the lifestyle of zucks by unionizing in case it hurts us when we become one. Like lottery ticket buyers oblivious to the fact that buying a ticket is an expected negative.
  • tluyben2 13y ago
    Guess point 5 is very much for US workers at the moment? Might happen in the EU in the future, but that's not going to be soon.
    • SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
      In the UK, it could be fairly soon.
      • tluyben2 13y ago
        I have a lot of close personal acquaintances from the UK and ask them quite often if it's built-in that people from the UK are so conspiracy, negatively, gloomy driven. More than most countries I've been to, Brits are overly negative about most things and admit they are if you ask. Almost with pleasure they explain soon pensioners houses on the coast of Spain will be demolished, soon pensions will end, soon hospitals outside the UK will stop helping UK citizens (but ONLY UK citizens!). Then the go on that the UK is the most expensive, horrible, crappy country to live in, the NHS sucks, all hotels are bad, a cup of coffee costs gbp 20 and real ale isn't real anymore. And more expensive than in the rest of the world. It won't happen soon in the UK. It's just your and your fellow country folks' nature to think that.
        • lotsofcows 13y ago
          Try asking your friends if they read the Daily Mail. Then get some new friends. I'm glad that I don't know anyone that remotely fits your description.
          • tluyben2 13y ago
            Asked one of them who is online now and he said his parents do but he would never touch it :) So I guess he's been raised with that kind of talk around the dinner table.
        • arethuza 13y ago
          To be fair I think that's a minority of people in the UK who think like that - one cause is that reading the Daily Mail rots the parts of the brain capable of positive thinking. Meanwhile, my family has had excellent experiences with the NHS recently, I live and work in the center of a fantastic city (Edinburgh), I know plenty of excellent hotels and restaurants, I don't drink expensive coffee, I know plenty of good beers and outside the sky is blue... [Amused to see the other comment mentioning the Daily Mail - it really is poison.]
• leapinglemur55 13y ago
  As a CS major in college, this just does wonders for my self confidence over the long term...
  • OldCoder 13y ago
    You've got plenty of time to figure things out. And I made mistakes that you'll be able to avoid.
    • kashkhan 13y ago
      if you took a year to brush up on your algorithm books, and learned all the in-vogue developer buzzwords, couldn't you get some remote work? On the internet no one knows your age.
      • dools 13y ago
        Unless your IRC nick is OldCoder...
  • kashkhan 13y ago
    be prepared. make sure you that by the time your turn comes there is a network to support you.
• phoen 13y ago
  Please allow me to preface with this: I figure your intent is not to demean the tasks of other professions, and none of what I'm saying is rhetorical. That said, why not take the job of caring for the elderly relatives? Use it as a way to buy yourself some time while you become a specialist? (I know a couple of people who have worked as certified nursing assistants for about ten years, among other things, scooping poop. They like excrement about as much as, I presume, most other people in existence; for them, it's a fact of life, though, and they're able to support their family well enough.)
  • OldCoder 13y ago
    I intended no disrespect. The person who was considering hiring me was the one who used the term. It was a casual discussion. And I will consider caregiver. I do well with older people.
    • phoen 13y ago
      I understand, and figured as much. The positions you mention just didn't work out, then?
      • OldCoder 13y ago
        There were two such positions. Both involved relatives of friends. In one case, the family doesn't feel that it's needed yet. In the other, my friend's business has grown more slowly than he'd hoped, so he lacks funds for new expenditures.
• vermontdevil 13y ago
  They never die. They just byte the dust. (Heard this from another older developer long ago)
  • OldCoder 13y ago
    Old Coders never die Old Coders simply sigh An Old Coder never bytes the dust Instead he or she dusts the bytes :D
• alien3d 13y ago
  most programmer will stop at age 35 and become management level.kinda wastefull because experince can speed up deployment and debugging.
  • hessenwolf 13y ago
    Okay, I hit 35 on June 2nd, and become a 'Risk Manager' on June 1st. Why? Because I realise that, in corporate life, technical skills are a serious roadblock to a career. (Okay, I'm drafting a business plan on the side for a consultancy. I am hoping the non-programming job will allow me capacity to work outside my liberal flexitime hours. All advice welcome)
    • toolslive 13y ago
      "technical skills are a serious roadblock to a career". You've discovered Putt's law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putt%27s_Law_and_the_Successful_Technocrat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putt%27s_Law_and_the_Successful...
    • taude 13y ago
      Software engineers shouldn't undervalue having vertical business domain knowledge.
    • ams6110 13y ago
      Beware of the "Peter Principle" though (people rise to their level of incompetence).
  • SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
    > most programmers will stop at age 35 and become management level. That's not going to happen to "most" anything. There are always fewer spaces at the next level up the pyramid. Usually drastically so. What's the "programmer" to "manager" ratio where you are?
    • taude 13y ago
      A common misconception here is that we all get to be CTO someday.
• thebenedict 13y ago
  This post is confusing to me and a little scary. The linked resume is far more extensive than mine, and I often turn away inquiries for reasonably well-paid freelance web app development because I don't have the bandwidth. What happens? There must be more to it. Why are no similar opportunities available to industry veterans? Pride? Burn out? Likely others... Most of the work I do is intellectually beneath someone with 30+ years of experience in C, and below their theoretical earning potential, but if the alternative is near poverty it seems like it should be workable.
  • OldCoder 13y ago
    I figure that I'll work it out. I've made some mistakes and, though it's late in the game, I've learned from them. As with other people who are starting out, you've got plenty of time to plot a course. Remember to add to your skill set when you can.
    • Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
      As an aside I think your resume could be better. To me at least it reads as a bit unfocused. You've clearly got a mass of experience but for any individual job much, if not most, of it isn't relevant. It's a CV that says "look at all the experience I've got" but doesn't really do a great job of saying why you'd be good for any specific role. I'd look at three or four resumes, each more focused around a specific skill, industry or problem type. Maybe one as a hardcore Linux developer, one with a more web / multimedia focus and so on. Pick out three or four projects relevant to each one and write a few lines about them. While the fact you've got 35 years of C is impressive and maintain your own Linux distro, it's not going to be relevant for roles focusing on a higher level language and is just distracting from your abilities which are relevant. Also, personally I'd put it on two pages and space it out far more. Larger font, larger borders, more white space generally. TL;DR: You're probably better than 90% of devs out there but you're not selling it well. Overall aim for less content but with more punch and make it nicer to read.
      • eru 13y ago
        As a small hack: Write your resume (or variants thereof) in LaTeX. That look can give you a slight boost with some people.
• tormeh 13y ago
  Oh boy, I'm often reminded of how lucky I am, being born in a Scandinavian country. I'm basically set for life; there's simply a comfortable lower bound on how bad things can get. I am just so completely unfairly privileged that I sometimes feel guilty about it.
  • seivan 13y ago
    It's getting worse though... I think only healthcare is the biggest advantage.
  • tinco 13y ago
    Don't feel too guilty about it, we pay our taxes and are proud of it. It's their own choosing, they have three major political parties that are all right wing (reps, dems, libs). If a political leader even hints at raising taxes the only valid excuse for it would be to go to war. They despise caring for your citizens so much, they made a slur out of the word 'social'. I'm sorry for making such harsh generalisations about the U.S. folk, but from a European standpoint U.S. anti-social culture is just so outlandish.
    • steego 13y ago
      Two parties. (Dems = libs)
      • lylejohnson 13y ago
        He may have been referring to "libertarians" and not "liberals", but I'm not sure it really affects the GP post's point.
      • ap22213 13y ago
        I think he means libertarians, maybe?
        • tinco 13y ago
          I do yes :)
• cottonseed 13y ago
  You say hiring is weighted against older generalists, but in your resume you call yourself a generalist on the second line and call yourself OldCoder everywhere. Maybe you aren't doing yourself any favors? The best job hunting advice I ever read was from Nick Corcodilos' book Ask the Headhunter: Reinventing the Interview to Win the Job. The takeaway is that companies are trying to make money, and if you can demonstrate how you'll contribute to the bottom line, they'll have no choice to hire you. If the interview or recruiting process isn't giving you a chance to demonstrate that, then you need to restructure the interaction. (Oldish coder.)
  • OldCoder 13y ago
    You've made two good points here. I'm inclined to keep the nick but I think I'll purchase the book you've mentioned.
    • ry0ohki 13y ago
      If you're currently a jobless transient, you might want to consider the library instead of purchasing books...
• selmnoo 13y ago
  I don't get it. This guy's resume says he's a double major of math/CS from Berkeley with high honors -- and apparently he's worked on pretty hardcore engineering projects. I've created a Linux distro of my own. Original and not a fork. See articles on website. Geared towards CLI engineers. Patched and built about 1,800 packages myself. Supported and customized standard distros as well. Double Bachelors in Math and Computer Science from U.C. Berkeley. High Honors and Honors. Worked with Open Source since the 1980s. Led small teams in startup and similar environments. Considered to be good at writing and analysis of problems. Experience includes: Agile, Assembly, Back-End, BSD, C, CSS, Debian, FOSS, GIMP, HTTP, Java, Linux, Mathematics, Mint, MySQL, Octave (similar to Matlab), Open Source, Parser, Perl, PHP5, Python, Recruiting, Regex, Shell, SQLite3, Support, TCP/IP, Ubuntu, UNIX, Tcl/Tk, Teaching, Training, Transcoding, VPS, Writing, XML, XSLT What is wrong with Silicon Valley today that a person like him can't get a reliable job, and therefore is unable to live with medical healthcare, a reasonable place of residence, etc.? edit: on the bright side, now that this post is on HN frontpage, I hope someone seeks this guy out and gives him a job. From what I can grasp, the quality of his code is pretty damn good.
  • OldCoder 13y ago
    Well, you're overlooking mistakes that I made. I feel that generalists should be valued more highly; this is a significant issue. However, I should have built more of a social network, taken better care of myself physically, diversified my investments more, and kept up more with how the market was changing.
    • selmnoo 13y ago
      So what's your plan going forward here on out, to secure financial and medical stability for yourself?
      • OldCoder 13y ago
        If I stay in the S.F. Bay Area, I think that a junior tech position here might work out. Above entry level and below lead. The trick will be staying above water long enough to find a good match. I'd expand my options, both tech and non-tech, if I took the right courses and obtained certifications. I'm seriously considering doing something like this. For example, the person who did my LiveScan recently (it was a background check for a tutoring job) teaches an EKG Technician class and said that it might work out for me. A police detective who I phoned by mistake one night told me that I should consider getting a Digital Forensics certificate. He seemed to feel that I might be a match for that. Note: The story of the call is on the same weblog as tonight's post. The medical care issue may be looking up. I had to go to the Emergency Room the other day. Didn't wish to, but no choice. I learned that the laws changed in January and that I might qualify for assistance after 10 years without care.
• ohsnap 13y ago
  Dump all the references to your age on your resume. Starting your resume with a first sentence as 'SW developer from the 1970s' ensures regular deletion. You seem a little oblivious that you live in a world that discriminates older developers. Don't mean to be harsh but I can definitely see why your having a hard time. I think it sucks not to be able to get a job in something you obviously have a lot of ability in
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• RoboTeddy 13y ago
  In http://christfollower.me/#D140311GUIDO http://christfollower.me/#D140311GUIDO, OldCoder says, "I'm shy about talking to new people. I'm autistic and, actually, not high functioning. I communicate decisively when it's necessary, ..." I don't know much about autism, but if it tends to affect careers, it may be a relevant difference between OldCoder's career and that of a typical programmer. Please note that I'm not making any judgements or claims here -- I'm too uneducated on these topics to do that -- I'm just pointing out a conceivably-relevant factor.
  • OldCoder 13y ago
    Yes, it's relevant. It was part of the reason that I never built a social network. Additionally, in some face to face interviews, it was a significant factor. However, in recent months, I've done better. Four random strangers that I've talked to this year, in a bar, a photo processing shop, a LiveScan facility, and a phone store, all talked about doing business with me. Whether or not anything comes of it, this is encouraging. It had to do with coming across as confident and relaxed. If you Google (tm) the article "Topological Theory of Autism", you'll read about something called compensating. I think that, as I speak with more people, I'm improving at that.
    • ef47d35620c1 13y ago
      You are on the path to understanding why this is difficult for you. If you touch it deeply and think a great deal on it, you can learn to acknowledge and overcome it. You may like to read some of Thich Nhat Hanh's books. He teaches people how to transform their suffering into peace and joy.
    • humanrebar 13y ago
      Perhaps you should talk to subject matter expert about whether you apply for social security disability. From what I read, it's possible to qualify if you are unable to find work due to mental health issues. Good on you if you'd rather make it on your own, but it's better than being homeless and it's pretty much what the program is for.
• gexla 13y ago
  This was after I was reading on HN last week about 12 year olds freelancing. Bottom line, you have to learn how to hustle. You find a way, or you don't. If you can't get employment as developer, then create your own job. Or don't. As a freelancer, nobody knows my age. They don't ask. I work from the Philippines, but as long as I'm reasonably available, people don't care. I have friends doing the same thing who aren't nearly as technical or knowledgeable as I am making a good living in the most expensive cities in the world. Reid Hoffman is co-author of a book called "The Start-up of You." I haven't read the book, but the title says it all. You have to treat yourself as a start-up and put in the same sorts of blood, sweat and tears that you read about other people doing here. Maybe you have a job that you can coast in and have work-life balance. Maybe you are nearly on the street and one notch above being completely fued. If you are the latter, then you probably need to be doing some serious disaster mode action. Really, what else do you have to do? Being a transient gives you a lot of time to think, but that gets old. But it's all about people, really. A developer who is just okay at dealing with computers but great at selling to people is probably in a better position than someone who is the opposite.
  • wyclif 13y ago
    The Philippines could shape up (or maybe is already shaping up, judging from your remarks) as one of the best places in the world to freelance from. Cost of living is low, and the culture in the RP is friendly to outsourcing. But most of those jobs aren't software engineering. The biggest hurdle in the RP is infrastructure—being somewhere that has fibre optics and broadband internet. But that's something that can be solved with enough investment. I agree with your overall point: increasingly it's not going to matter how old you are, what nationality you are, or where you live. It's just down to "can you get the job done?"
    • aragot 13y ago
      Sorrt, what is RP?
      • phpnode 13y ago
        Republic of the Philippines
• praptak 13y ago
  My takeaway from this is: save. Resist the temptation to match your spending to your salary, you don't need all that crap anyway. I hope to have enough assets by the time I'm 50 that permanent unemployment at the time will be at worst the difference between uncomfortable retirement and comfortable one - not between hungry+homeless and food+shelter.
• netcan 13y ago
  foreword: this is not a statement of political or moral judgment. Just musings. Part of the parcel of a dynamic competition based job market is that people get as much as possible of the total that others are willing to pay for their work. At present this means rapidly improving wages for certain categories of tech jobs where employees are scarce. There are lots of ways this can go right or wrong. Here is a middle of the road story: A family member of mine was a programmer in the mid 80s. By the 90s he had moved into management in a big enterprise software company. By mid 00s he was managing very big clients/projects that were billing for big software and thousands of engineering hours. The last time he had really programmed for a living, it was in COBOL and even then the tech was dated and very specialized. At some point the clients he was working on went onto a different model handled by a different division of the company in a different country. He was offered a relocation, but it did not appeal. He had kids in high school, etc. About 50 years old. He had made good money for years but not rockstar money. He owned a valuable house and had savings and investments so he could last a year or two unemployed. His first next job was at a startup-like thing that petered out. Then a long period trying to make his way freelancing and applying for jobs paying far less than his last. Now he runs a business. I still imagine it's far from his peek salary, but it's definitely not a bad income by general standards. It can just be tricky adjusting especially if you had to use savings to bridge for a few years. There are all sorts of ways of looking at this. For me the lesson I got from it is that we have a strange assumption: your salary will go up over time and peek near retirement. Realistically one person might earn more in total by the age of 45 than his neighbor earns by 65, even in after tax earnings. I imaging you can find those neighbors in almost any street. The richer neighbor could theoretically retire at 45 at the same retirement income the other would have at 65. On paper it might be easier even though the richer younger neighbor has longer to live of his retirement savings. He also had 20 year to spend out of his lifetime earnings so there would be more in the piggy bank if they lived the same lifestyle. At 45 it's a lot easier to supplement your retirement income and medical expenses are lower. Obviously this rarely happens. Wealth is in a very real way relative to standards you consider normal. Part of that normality standard is an expectation for rising income throughout your life.
• bgarbiak 13y ago
  A few of "Silicon Valley stories" that showed up lately (this one, the one about jobless Satoshi Nakamoto, the one about sexism and harassment in GitHub, or about Google/Apple wages conspiracy, or falling FX studios in Hollywood) got me wondering: why developers put so much faith into libertarianism, free market, and a good will of corporations and their HR departments; and/or are so strongly against state social protection, labor unions, etc. - basically all that uncool "heavy industry" stuff that could help in these and many other cases? Are there any labor unions in Silicon Valley? I know about one in Apple, but it is (was?) formed mainly by the folks working at Apple retail stores, not the devs.
  • roel_v 13y ago
    Maybe because some people put morals over personal gain? 'Hey everybody vote socialist, you'll get free stuff!'
    • MartinCron 13y ago
      Weird how the "morals over personal gain" argument works as both a pro- and anti- libertarian point.
      • roel_v 13y ago
        Not so weird I think - without wanting to start an 'moral objeectivism vs relativism' discussion, I think we can all agree that there are, between people, wildly varying interpretations of what 'morally good' means.
  • humanrebar 13y ago
    Not being able to afford healthcare without a full-time job at a megacorp isn't because markets are too free. Also, if devs that are older (or women or parents) are undervalued, there is a competitive advantage waiting to be seized by companies that can create business models around that. In other words, being bigoted is not profitable in a free society. Only companies resting on their laurels (or otherwise abusing people) can afford that sort of nonsense in the long run.
• smikhanov 13y ago
  Interesting. Some (if not most) of the problems author describes would be a non-problem should he live in some of the more prosperous EU countries, so strictly speaking they are not linked to author's profession. Few hints he gives in the description of the interview process ("you'll be asked about algorithms", "you'll be asked why aren't you a CTO", etc) imply that he's interviewing for "Just A Programmer" positions -- is this the case? It looks like most of the difficulty in finding a job came from the disconnect between the position the author was applying for and his experience. JAP positions, even if they are advertised as "senior" normally require just the basic coding skills (i.e. you don't have to be really smart, mediocre is just fine) and therefore majority of applications will be much younger than the author, thus forcing the HR to ask the questions above. In a broader context of discussion about older developers, what's more interesting for me are two things: 1. Why there are so few roles being advertised for truly senior developers? There are plenty of complicated commercial software around. For example, Apple works on a novel mobile operating system with its own set of technical challenges, so I would expect kernel specialists to be in demand, but those openings are rarely visible (even at apple.com/jobs). 2. What do truly senior engineers employed by major companies do on a daily basis? How mere mortals like us can get closer to their expertise set? I'm talking about Guido van Rossum at Dropbox, Brian Goetz at Oracle, Michael Stonebraker (though I'm not sure he hasn't moved to academia full-time), etc.
  • OldCoder 13y ago
    Some of my friends have told me I'm too literal about job listings. They echo a key point that you've made here, "JAP positions normally require just the basic coding skills". But if I apply for positions that need specific frameworks, plenty of people who have those frameworks are likely to apply as well. I've got experience, but won't applicants who match the checkboxes in job listings be more likely to obtain interviews?
    • humanrebar 13y ago
      Don't say no for them. That's their job. If you think you would do the job well and enjoy it, apply anyway. Just be upfront about the things you'll need to learn about as you go, so they know what they're getting themselves into.
• biesnecker 13y ago
  It's basically fear of this that finally drove me to management, and improving the skills that being a good manager requires. They're actually many of the same skills as being a good programmer -- communication and organization being two that immediately come to mind -- but they're applied differently, and there are other things around leadership and change management that I've had to learn from scratch, more or less. Not that management is the panacea and everything will be all right from here on out -- I'll still have to hustle my ass off -- but I think I have a longer runway than I would otherwise.
• sparky_twofort 13y ago
  You seem to say two contradictory things -- first, that you're getting a lot of "algorithms" interviews, and second, that being a "generalist" is hurting you. It seems to me that you're getting a lot of generalist interviews, but they're asking questions you're not prepared for. As a female coder in her late 40's working at <Big Famous Software Company>, my advice to you is -- please, please pick up your algorithms book, and just study! I just helped a guy aged 60 ace the famously difficult interview at my company -- he's now working as a dev there. Basically, my role was to relentlessly tell him to study algorithms, and write code on a white board. Algorithms do NOT discriminate by age. It seems to me that your biggest problem is that you want these guys to take all your experience into account, and they just want to know if you can code and do algorithms. There is no reason older coders can't do algorithms -- just study! When I got the job at <my big company>, in my early 40's, I took three months off and pounded CLRS, even read a bit of Knuth on hash tables, and wrote code on white boards. These interviewers don't want to discriminate -- they're going to be old, too! You just need to give them what they are looking for. And you can do it!
  • captain_mars 13y ago
    From a programmer approaching his 40s, thank you for the great advice, and for the inspiring story of your 60-year-old friend.
• moron4hire 13y ago
  I would suggest rewriting your resume. It is very verbose on the Where You've Showed Up and very sparse on What You've Accomplished. After reading it closely, I am still at a loss for what you actually do. You can find a starving English student easily that will pick your resume apart for you for very few dollars. But that's secondary to a more important issue: we are entering a post-resume economy. Most people in the hiring mechanism view the resume as having very marginal utility. I don't know what will replace it, but I do know that the current tactic of doubling-down on recruiters with gigantic databases ripped off from LinkedIn profiles isn't cutting the mustard. No, it's not very equitable, but you have probably already noticed that life isn't fair. I keep holding out hope that some enterprising individual will recognize the absurdity of the situation and destroy all competitors when he or she realizes there is a huge, untapped market of the women, minorities, and "seasoned" developers that Silicon Valley just won't touch. I'd do it myself, but I don't have the funding yet. The last 3 people I hired to do work, I never once looked at their resumes. One was a stranger on Freelancer.com, where I was essentially rolling the dice on certain prejudices of mine for a weekend chore of a project I didn't want to do myself, and the other two were friends. And even that wasn't perfect, the one friend I had actually worked with before did a sloppy job (I was quite happily surprised by the Freelancer.com person). Unfortunately, my budget got cut and I had to let them go. Fortunately, they weren't full-time yet. In my own career, I've gotten very few jobs from my own applications to the positions. The only jobs I've gotten where I didn't already have some kind of acquaintance give a recommendation were setup by recruiters, and I eventually learned to hate those jobs. Perhaps there is something to be said about not being able to fulfill your hiring requirements through recommendations of your current employees being indicative of the quality of the company overall. Even the one job I liked, that I thought I was going in completely blind on, turned out to have one of my college friends and project mates already working there. He had told my interviewer he knew me and I was the best coder he had ever met. I showed up 2 days later and ran into him in the hall. So the it seems the only way to get a job anymore is to build a network. Go hang out at Linux User Groups and talk about your distro. Go to meetups and conferences, and hang out with people at the bars afterwards (drink ginger ale if you have to). If you look more like Steve Wozniak, change up your wardrobe to look more like Paul Graham. Those are the sorts of places to say the things you've said on your resume. And just keep an ear open. Get a reputation for being a helpful, friendly, delightful person, even if you're just connecting two other people who can help each other and it doesn't help you directly. Don't be pushy, don't hand out business cards unless you are clear they want to get into contact with you. Think of it a bit like dating: the desperate guy wreaks. People love nothing more than talking about themselves and complaining about their problems. In very short order, you will meet someone who complains about a problem you can fix. The third or tenth such person might actually even be able to pay you, too.
• tluyben2 13y ago
  This all is true, but it's actually a lot worse for non-developers. Sales, most middle management jobs, generally MBA's are utterly worthless after 50 and no-one would hire them even if they have skills (they apparently didn't prove them otherwise they would be big successes before). And that's only talking about people who work with their brain; working with your hands is worse than that even. I think the most important thing to do; if you have a job make sure you keep it after 50; don't toy around or give anyone reasons to drop you. And make sure you have a huge network; make sure different people ask you for advise or ask you to work for them at least a few times per year. Besides that there is not much you can do if you are not outwardly hugely successful at what you do; if you are a dev, that means specialize, write books and get them published about what you specialized in, create workshops and seminars, even next to your job but especially at your job. I must say that it became slightly easier though for people who are willing to reinvent themselves a bit; besides making sure that you have medical private insurance just always (and yes, you can afford that when you are young; make sure you keep it going even if your job provides insurance as well; and when you are young you feel invincible until you get something which could've disabled/kill you; after that, if you didn't have insurance before it, no-one will ever take you so it's important not to think you are invincible ;), you can work remotely and then age doesn't really count at all. I have many 'older' friends who work online as coder for people they have never seen or met and they are doing fine. No they won't get the insane amounts they were once used to, but maybe you shouldn't get used to that wastefulness anyway; they can do what they like (which happens to be coding) until they die basically and make enough money to pay for health insurance etc. Most of them are 60-somethings who make enough that way to lead a really good life.
  • OldCoder 13y ago
    Doesn't experience count with Sales regardless of age? But you're correct in general. Age discrimination is probably more significant in some non-tech sectors than in tech. And I agree that the social network issue is crucial.
• stkni 13y ago
  I don't want to pass judgment here, but browsing through the christfollower.me site suggests to me that OldCoder wears his internet heart on his internet sleeve. Long ago, when I was a hiring manager, we routinely searched for online presences of candidates and I would guess this ultra-common practice still today. As a result, we turned up some fairly odd material on a number of candidates and as a result we declined them. Whether that is right or wrong you can't expect people NOT to make judgements based on information that they may find about you online. Indeed the recruitment process is difficult because there are a lot of candidates and only a limited amount of information on each of them. My advice would be take the site offline during the hiring process. This might concentrate the hirer on the resume rather than the ancillary information.
  • pekk 13y ago
    What is "odd" material? Is it that much of a liability to be old, or have a religion?
    • stkni 13y ago
      No, no, nothing to do with that. The particular example that comes to mind is the case of someone who published a very heartfelt disagreement with a previous employer. Since we would potentially be a new employer for this person it gave us a sense that this person might be much more difficult to manage than the 'normal' programmer. I should also point out that were most likely wrong in our assessment of the individual because they ended up becoming pretty successful at what they do! But it certainly didn't help that person get our job ...
      • gohrt 13y ago
        And that experience didn't make you rethink your prejudices?
• Nursie 13y ago
  The only plan I have (I'm 35 now) is to be running the show by the time this becomes an issue. I've started contracting/freelancing already, I'm growing my expertise in a few fairly niche (though highly useful) areas, within a few years I either want to be a highly paid independent consultant (getting there) or running a small software company I own. I've never felt that there's room for being an employee at most places when you're older, and to be honest I don't want to be one either. Of course the alternative is to find a quiet corner in a corporate giant and wait out retirement...
  • gtirloni 13y ago
    This is becoming more and more apparent to me also (a sysadmin at 31, generalist). Independent consultant + some company selling a (web) product is in the plans. The only route for keeping the same lifestyle I have at 50, in a corporation, is management. All that Y career talks looks just like words. I don't see anybody around old and technical, so I'm not counting on it as much as the HR dept would want me to.
    • maxerickson 13y ago
      Keep in mind that the world is going to change an awful lot over the next 19 years. Not just technology and stuff, things like boomers retiring in far more substantial numbers and the ever increasing proportion of people that are 50 (or 60) and in pretty good health.
• mgkimsal 13y ago
  "There are few job listings that say “a bit of everything”." And yet... they all seem to require it.
• ta20140319 13y ago
  Two points: My manager will not interview any candidate who states on resume or any public profile their age, religion, or any other factor that could be considered a legally-protected basis for discrimination. This even extends sometimes to graduation dates if they are in the distant past. He simply states that even interviewing such a candidate creates the potential for lawsuits (candidates claiming they were not hired due to these factors). Right or wrong, I'm sure this is even more prevalent among HR-savvy hiring managers. Your resume and/or public profiles mention both your age and your religion. Secondly, you mention that people have disagreements about the value of generalists. While this is true, it does seem there is consensus on the fact that as the field has developed over past decades, jobs have become more specialized, and failing to cater your resume to the type of position you are seeking is a huge part of the reason you are not getting interviews. I can understand not wanting to "throw away" all the stuff you've done over the years; wanting that to be acknowledged is a very human thing, very understandable. This stuff belongs on your personal website, though, not your resume. Your resume is a targeted sales pitch, and those interested in learning more about you will be able to see the rest of the (less relevant) stuff you've worked on in your career on your website.
• notastartup 13y ago
  How could this engineer have prevented this? By starting his own company or a consultant? How could have moved up into the managerial position?
  • OldCoder 13y ago
    Manager positions wouldn't have worked at the initial firm or the dot-com because both firms kicked the bucket. What I should have done is understand that things change and prepared for changes in advance.
    • mistermumble 13y ago
      Not too late. You have a good foundation to build upon. Just need to pick one of several possible directions: * system admin -- your linux background is impressive, but need to pick up windows admin skills (most small shops require both), firewalls, proxy servers, caching, CDN * front-end coder -- learn Javascript and related technologies (jquery, Node, requireJS, browserify, handlebars, etc) * Wordpress specialist -- learn PHP, themes, responsive design, theme frameworks, etc * other specialties: Drupal, Django, Rails In addition to freshening up skills, do some networking through meetups. Also flesh out your online presence. Have an active Github profile. Also Stack Overflow. Check out TopCoder. Lastly, lose the "OldCoder" label. You can only get away with that if you are Kernighan, Ritchie, Guy Steele, or Dave Cutler.
• james1071 13y ago
  Not a good idea to define yourself as Old Coder.
• DanielBMarkham 13y ago
  I haven't done this in a long while, but I'll bet you a hundred bucks that the average programming generalist can go to the nearby small town (not large one) and start knocking on business's doors, offering to help them with any computer issues they have -- and generate enough money to live on. If you can make a web page, update a computer, tweak some configuration settings, show somebody how to use their phone, or configure all that new stuff they bought last week? You'll make money. Making money is simply friends helping each other out. If you're 55 and know a lot of stuff about computers, you should be able to help other people out. Now, you probably won't make that million you used to be worth, but you're not in the soup line, either. It gets more difficult in large cities because it's harder to reach business decision-makers, and there's so much competition. But there's no doubt in my mind that there isn't a huge and growing need for the tech equivalent of day laborers. And we don't have to be 25 and have a strong back. Be very careful that the attitudes and prejudices you pick up as you age don't hurt you a lot worse than your skill choices or work history.
• wayanon 13y ago
  Agree with the comments about having a resume that doesn't summarise your skills but instead shows why they would be useful in that role.
• ry0ohki 13y ago
  The title should be "What Happens to Older Developers Who Don't Keep Their Skills Up To Date". No offense OldCoder, but that seems to be the root of the problem, leaving the workforce doesn't help either. I know quite a few 50+ developers who are doing fine, so I don't think it's the "old" so much. This can happen in any industry.
• hawkharris 13y ago
  One thing to understand is that developers today must actively invest in order to retire. Saving money isn't enough. Yes, investing comes with risk (as the author's experience illustrates), but over time a diversified portfolio far exceeds money sitting in the bank.
• taude 13y ago
  There's age bias all the time, I'm not sure why people try to say otherwise: given the choice between hiring a twenty-something and a 50-something for a given position, and a similar skillset (especially easy to do in technology since skillsets get out dated so quick), most will hire the younger person. It's human nature to not be influenced like this. Also, what most people here need to remember, too, is that not everyone's career path is going to put them on a trajectory to becoming CTO. The number of CTO/executive/engineering directors, etc. is quite small compared to the rank and file programmer positions. I think someone else mentioned this, but sales people have it even rougher than software engineers.
• DanBC 13y ago
  Resume advice in this thread is evidence that recruitment process is totally fucked. Someone gets an interview because they tweak their resume? Someone gets a job offer because they jump through certain hoops at interview? It's nonsense. There's zero evidence to support current recruitment practices and lots to show that interviews are a lousy way to select people. Google and FB and Apple and MS have lots of recruitment happening and lots of smart people to analyse the results, so I'd hope to see improvements there that trickle out over the years. Sadly, it is in their interest not to disclose better methods so their competitors continue using broken methods. Note: I agree that with the current broken system it is important to learn how to tailor a CV and how to jump through interview hoops. But the system is bafflingly bad.
  • motters 13y ago
    Having been through recruitment processes in the recent past I totally agree that it's lousy. It can be hard for good people to get hired simply because of the hoops, nonsense and clueless HR processes.
  • fecak 13y ago
    This is a statement on hiring and selection from the employer's side, but the advice about tweaking resumes and jumping through hoops is likely to help the job seeker. I don't think OldCoder is in a position to criticize hiring practices (beyond perhaps ageism) - he just wants a job. There are much better selection methods than resumes and interviews, but many companies have become quite adept at discovering what works for them. What works for Google may not work for the shop down the street.
    • DanBC 13y ago
      I reject the notion that companies have discovered what works for them. Companies stick with current processes because: 1) they need to demonstrate compliamce with anti-discrimination law 2) they're not brave enough to try any other process. Current process is chock full of biases and possible discrimination. This could easily be causing employers to hire worse people than other better systems. This doesn't mean that those worse hires are destroying the company. They're good enough. I just wish there was a bit more honesty. "This process is good enough at screening out people who will destroy our company, but we make no pretence that the people we hire are the best for the job nor that some of the people we reject were rejected weongly because the system sucks".
• ptype 13y ago
  At what stage do you fail? Do you have issues getting interviews?
  • OldCoder 13y ago
    Recently, I'm failing at finding listings that seem to be a match. Friends have urged me to simply apply for random jobs even if I'm missing experience in particular frameworks. I've been reluctant to do so. Instead, I've been looking for: (a) Junior positions that I'm clearly qualified for (b) Positions at firms that are seeking generalists (c) Positions where I'd be able to use the special skills that I do possess I'll probably need to build connections over time for this to work out. In the interim, a non-tech position might be the way to go.
• pviking 13y ago
  IMHO, that experience from the 70's has a lot of value. How to optimize, how to talk to hardware; all are forgotten skills now days. Not to mention the sheer value of remembering how things were done and why. The explosion of young, inexperienced programmers that refuse to acknowledge the triumphs and failures of the past put the profession into an infinite loop of rediscovering, re-implementing, and re-learning the lessons of the past. Those 1970's skills map directly to embedded work. They map to kernel and systems level programming. Guess what ? The same problems we had on a PDP-11 we have today. The scale is a bit different, but the fundamentals are not. Can you pass the fizz buzz test ? You would be amazed at the number of applicants that can talk "singleton observer model view controller association class" all day, and can't do fizz buzz. Or compile hello world from the command line. Or know the difference between a compiler error and a linker error. Focus on what you do best. I think you will find there is a demand for those skills.
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• shultays 13y ago
  "You know what they do with engineers when they turn forty? ... They take them out and shoot them." From Primer, I always thought that was the case
• ecopoesis 13y ago
  His problem isn't his age, it's his resume. Here are the reasons I would circular file this resume 1) Fix your website. Leading (or including at all) the story about your family squabble makes me think you're a nutter. 2) Overview section is useless. I don't care about your Linux distro: I care about how your skills help my company. In the modern world, that means you should talk about the server code you've built, or the clients (web or native) you've developed. If you're truly a generalist, you've done these things. 3) Pare down experience/key points. I don't care if you used DOS or AIX. Only list things that matter now, and only list things you know well. When I see lists this long, I assume you've just written every keyword you can think of. Also, get rid of nontechnical crap. I know you can write, I'm reading something you wrote. 4) No one measures code in pages, which makes me think you have no idea what you're talking about. 5) Give me more information about what you did at more jobs. I don't care about what the product did, I care about what you contributed. For example, the Grumman job has a lot of fluff. I hate fluff. Distill it down to what you really did: "wrote a Perl simulator of the CRM-114 for automated testing" would be much more interesting then the paragraph you've written. Fix up your resume, and cleanup or hide your web presence, and you'll have a better chance.
  • kabdib 13y ago
    I'm a 53 YO developer who reads a lot of resumes. You want to tailor a resume like this. Indeed don't mention essentially obsolete things like DOS or AIX unless they help you get the job you're applying for. I don't mention that stuff at all now. "Reason for leaving" isn't necessary. I also like to see metrics. "I did X, Y and Z and we got Q fewer support calls" or something like that. I'd also like to see some evidence of teamwork ("worked with Frobozz group and got Z shipped with important feature F").
    • clubhi 13y ago
      Interesting that you like metrics. I always consider them B.S. Especially the ones where they say they saved the company X millions of dollars.
      • 13y ago
• cjf4 13y ago
  This guy has to learn how to sell himself a little better. "Old Coder" and "70s" should not be the first two things on a resume.
  • OldCoder 13y ago
    It could be worse. I could be an Old Coder in his 70s :P But, in all seriousness, though age discrimination is very real, I don't feel that it's as significant a factor for me presently as my lack of a social network or the fact that I'm a generalist.
• StevePerkins 13y ago
  I have spent half of my career around developers in their 50's. It's true that in a lot of cases the work becomes less exciting. Of those who don't exit into management, many become "solutions architects" (i.e. the technical guy who tags along with the sales guy, and makes bad promises that some other developers have to deliver on later). Others tie their career to particular vendor products... and spend their older years tweaking Oracle Financials, SAP, WebSphere Commerce, etc. However, there are also plenty who have kept their skills current along the way, and wind up coding on cool projects well into their 60's. They generally work for large companies rather than start-ups, and that entire world is a blind spot for most people on HN. I'm going to go way out on a limb and assume that the original poster's REAL problems are: * His resume looks terrible. It's a one-page bucket of random meaningless buzzwords (e.g. skills include "open source", "parser", "VPS"... wtf?!?). He puts more energy into highlighting his age than he does his relevant skills. If he wasn't constantly reminding me that he's near-60, I would assume at first glance that this was a junior-level recent grad's resume. * His email, website, GitHub account, etc are build around his "brand name" of "OldCoder". That's a pretty horrible brand. * He's blogging from the domain name "christfollower.me". Nothing against anyone's religion... but politics, religion, etc do not mix with professional career-related writing. Even if it is religion or politics that match my own, it's still a turn-off to see someone wearing it on their sleeve during the recruiting/interviewing process. Nationwide, the United States has a NEGATIVE unemployment rate for computer programmers. Almost every large company is filled with middle-age and older developers. I'm not saying that ageism doesn't exist, but if you are a "near homeless" computer programmer then you are doing something very wrong. You might have a bad resume, or be a bad interviewee. You might live in a small market, and be unwilling to move to where the jobs actually are. Your salary expectations may be out of whack with your current market value, and you're not willing to hear that. Etc.
  • maxjones1 13y ago
    >Nationwide, the United States has a NEGATIVE unemployment rate for computer programmers. lol....
  • humanrebar 13y ago
    > but politics, religion, etc do not mix with professional career-related writing. Even if it is religion or politics that match my own, it's still a turn-off to see someone wearing it on their sleeve during the recruiting/interviewing process. I hope you realize that this is a bigoted attitude as some religions require their practitioners to literally wear their religions, though perhaps on their heads or faces instead of their sleeves. Likewise, prejudice against "old" people is also a bad thing. That being said, your conjecture that some sort of -ism might be at fault here is apt. And a reasonable person could believe that someone should hide his identity in the service of getting a job. However, if it's a tragedy that Jew or homosexual has to hide their identity and lifestyle to get by in the world, why would you want to force a middle-aged Christian into the closet?
• justin_vanw 13y ago
  So the author of this post had a restraining order filed against him by his parents. He hired a lawyer. He later accuses the lawyer of colluding with his parent's lawyers, but he hopes that his former lawyer won't take that accusation of professional misconduct too hard, since the author is only making the accusation to further his goal of writing some kind of book, which his former lawyer approved of. http://christfollower.me/topics/legal/130430_declaration.html http://christfollower.me/topics/legal/130430_declaration.htm... To sum up, if the author is having a lot of trouble finding work, I think he may want to look at the copious amount of documentation he has posted online, much of it explicitly claiming that he is suffering from profound mental illness. Quote: It seemed possible that my attorney John Perrott was colluding with Opposing Counsel Michael Bonetto. It was clear regardless that John wasn't focused on my interests. He'd missed deadlines for filing paperwork and had told me things that weren't true. Note: No offense towards John is intended here despite the implications. It's my hope John remembers I'm working towards goals that he approves of. I've tried to do what's right from the start. This isn't a claim that most of the people involved in this situation can make.
  • selmnoo 13y ago
    In earlier posts he makes mention of being sexually/physically abused by his parents. It seems (and I'm not very sure here - there's too much text), he tried to "expose" them to their neighbors, peers, etc., which ensued the restraining order. Anyway, the thing is, everyone has family or relationship problems here and there (Github's co-founder's wife story this week?), everyone says pretty screwey shit one time or another (Zuck calling his users dumbfucks for trusting him with their data) -- it's a hard one to deal with. What is one supposed to do when this stuff surfaces? There's really not much that one can do. Indeed, according to the current version of social code, you're supposed to keep it hidden and distant - or make some effort to keep it hidden. This guy isn't doing that too well. He probably should. Just don't air your dirty laundry. No-one (besides your close friends or whatever) needs to know the minute details of your family problems.
• robodale 13y ago
  They get sick of working for some douche and go start their own company. Example: me.
• mbubb 13y ago
  The resume is good (experience is amazing). It is LaTeX, no? With older coders I recommend familiarity with github and LinkedIN - check and check. I might separate out blogs. Create a landing spot just for the resume. The related blog entries are personal and don't tell a story about work and coding. I think some greater detail on "teaching coding on IRC" would help. Also - things like Hackerrank to get some visibility. Mentoring younger coders adds value... This guy looks very employable -
• fecak 13y ago
  This, put simply, is likely a marketing and sales problem. Someone can have all the skills in the world and suffer unemployment if they don't know how to package and sell them. Conversely, there are some poor developers who always have a job, because they perform well in interviews, may be popular, and know how to write a résumé. You have to tailor your message to your audience to some degree. To be frank, some of the problems are likely related to ageism, and there are several ways to minimize the possibility of ageism without lying. We aren't required to list every job in our career, nor are we required to list graduation dates. If they want to confirm a degree they will do it after having met you. Job search for older engineers becomes challenging on several levels. Topics like energy and effort are a non-issue for most of the industry. Mentioning on a résumé that you were able to live off investments for a period will lead people to think that you might not "want" or need to work, which will also raise eyebrows. For these engineers, it is all about demonstrating that they can solve your problems. If you can show that, most of the other worries will go away. OldCoder, I just emailed you to offer some advice on the marketing side of things. I'm a recruiter (in NY, no clients out west) and writer on job search topics. I can't get you a job, but I think I can help improve the packaging if you're interested.
• PopsiclePete 13y ago
  I don't get a good feeling about this. It sounds good overall, but there are some red flags as well: GIMP? Why even list that? Why would I (or anyone really) care if he likes GIMP or Photoshop? Regex? XML? What does that mean? That he knows what a regex is (which I'd expect anyone to know) or has he written an RE parser? XML - same thing. Mint, Debian, Ubuntu - just linux distros - again - shouldn't matter. Just put "Comfortable in a UNIX environment", I'd know you meant 10-12 distress plus Free/Open/NetBSD, no need to list them all...or if he does list them, put them next to each other. Back-End - ? Assembly - which kind? x86, MIPS, ARM? Parser - definitely interesting "Transcoding" - buzz word Writing - ummm....not a good skill actually, don't put it there Recruiting...? CSS/HTML/HTTP/TCP/IP - list them next to each other maybe? Here's what I'd do if I were him. 1. Drop the buzz words and irrelevant info like "Writing" and "Transcoding" 2. Don't list every single Linux distro you've played with - I've probably used over a dozen and nobody cares as long as I don't panic at the sight of a bash prompt 3. Group things better. Web stuff, Database stuff, language stuff, etc 4. List the things that are relevant to the company you're applying to first. Don't just mash them up wight the rest. They're actually not equally important. He's probably a very smart guy. But this resume sucks. To me, it reeks of typical "old coder" syndrome - a guy looked up the latest 20 buzzwords and dropped them in there then lectures me on how I need to write all my business logic in PL/SQL. This wouldn't be good for a mature, conservative company, but for Silicon Valley, which is a culture that worships 20-something Rubyists who write templating engines for fun, it's basically career suicide.
  • danielweber 13y ago
    It might be that he puts things on his resume because at some point in the past he didn't get a job because "you don't know XML." Which is the most brain-screamingly stupid reason to not hire someone, but the only rational way for a job-seeker to respond is to put nonsense like "XML" on the resume.
• candybar 13y ago
  One big problem here is that his resume looks great to technical people, but is mostly incomprehensible to non-technical people. My experience is that technical managers are more biased towards younger people than non-technical managers because that's how they, as managers, add most value and can get credit for work done. Older, more experienced engineers are more likely to threaten their authority and less likely to fit into their vision of how development ought to be done or value their advice or mentorship. On the other hand, non-technical managers, have much more of a need for experienced leads they can trust that can manage the technical aspects and offer advice so that they don't appear clueless to the rank & file and management. Non-technical managers are also unlikely to be able to have the ability to sort through resumes of inexperienced college graduates and distinguish between good programmers and bad programmers. Furthermore, at most non-software companies is that the further you go in your career, the less likely that you will report to a technical manager because experienced technical people are expected to able to deliver business value directly, without having to go through a chain of technical management. All of this means the older and more experienced you get, the more your resume has to make sense to non-technical people. This is doubly true if you're not a technical specialist that can solve difficult problems other technical people encounter. As it stands, the resume looks like an extrapolation of the kind of stuff that people like to see when they hire a junior programmer out of school or otherwise young programmers. This is why a lot of people here have a visceral positive reaction. It looks good, but it's gone too far and it's a bit out of character. We like to see hardcore technical stuff in young people's resumes to distinguish contenders from pretenders but people who are hiring older engineers usually don't care about that. It's also clear that he qualifies as a specialist in some of the things he's done, but we don't know what they are, because they are lost in the noise of everything he's ever done.
• corresation 13y ago
  As is often the case, I don't think the difficulties in this case have much to do with age: If everything else was the same (within the possible, of course, meaning job history changes a bit), and the candidate was 26, I think most people would still reject the resume with little consideration. There is ageism. There is sexism. There is racism. But there are also many cases for all of those where someone uses it as an easy explanation for any other difficulties they face, which is self-destructive because it avoids real self-reflection.
• kohanz 13y ago
  How can someone go from $1M net worth to transient in a decade? Seems like it would be difficult to do that without some level of financial mismanagement.
  • nilkn 13y ago
    Whatever investment made him that money probably also tanked later on. It sounds like he invested in stocks and waited too long to cash out.
    • kohanz 13y ago
      Agreed that a tanked investment (stocks or real estate) is the likely explanation, but that is my point. A decade ago he was 45 years old. To have the vast majority of his net worth tied up in volatile investments is what I would call financial mismanagement.
      • VLM 13y ago
        The problem is there are no non-volatile investments anymore. Real estate? LOL. If you want non-volatility there are plenty of govt bonds paying well under the inflation rate, but I wouldn't describe that as an investment.
        • kohanz 13y ago
          Bonds and the like (e.g. savings account) are investments, it's just that they have low reward paired with a low risk. This case demonstrates the utility of that low risk. Certainly falling behind a bit to inflation is a minor concern compared to losing $1M in 10 years.
• tibbydude 13y ago
  Late fourties , started off as Unix C developer/sysadmin for a big retailer until they replaced most of their systems with SAP or outsourcing. Still coding at same company but in ABAP (SAP dev lang).
• evolve2k 13y ago
  You've coded and done tech work for all these years and rightly earn't your stripes. Your resume reads as if it's like please hire me I can do much things. What it doesn't say is what you really are seeking and who you are as a member of their team. My suggestions - Include a paragraph summarising your philosophy to programming and the way your approach achieves success. - Say outright what makes your ideal client. I would be worried in hiring this guy, that he's too advanced for what we need and too experienced for my little project. - Add more narrative at the top and tell a story. Sure you've done many things and are a generalist, but why hire you, boil down all this info into what it means I'll get from you. Words like these make good headings. Who I am My approach What Im committed to Boil down the essence of all this experience is my recommendation.
• TimPC 13y ago
  If this post doesn't work, try and find a good recruiter (they are rare but they do exist). Make a direct call and try and get a meeting. They will charge a 20% fee on the employer side which can lower the salary you could otherwise negotiate up to, but compared to the current alternatives that sounds like a near non-issue. Get them to help you with tweaking the resume for the specific roles and make direct calls to sell you for a role they are trying to fill, they generally will have more inside information than anyone here and you'll have a far better chance than through resumes. If you get a sense the recruiter you try isn't helping, try another one. A lot of people hate the spammy push approach of recruiters, but some of them are really great when you're the pull service. Get advice on the best way to sell why you're experienced talent applying for positions that don't match the resume. If I saw this resume for a general software engineer or junior engineer position my alarm bells would go off, I'd expect someone who had those skills to be applying for senior engineers or architect. When you list those skills for a junior or intermediate programming position people assume that you've covered them in a course in university and not much else.
• pistle 13y ago
  You don't curate a resume. They need to be tailored to the position you are applying for. Blanketing won't yield happiness or wealth. Be selective, then optimize. What do you really want to do? (and are demonstrably capable of doing?) Distill that, optimize the rate for your audience to absorb it. Use the F shape, font size, spacing, etc. to provide a 10-second, 1-minute, 10-minute document. Make the reviewers' jobs easy. The gate-keepers need to see the checklist of acronyms they were told to filter on. The manager will need to see "plays well with others and does productive, self-directed work." The technical manager/senior tech interviewer will want to see a little of themselves and/or something admirable or ambitious in you. Spending another 8 hours blanketing resumes and cover sheet/emails to every potential listing is time away from engaging in work that keeps your skills sharp and involved in a community. OldCoder. Stop calling yourself old. In tech, that's not going to sell - and you are selling. You could be a CTO and call yourself old (battle-hardened general), but it has no utility if you are out of work. Age without wisdom is old. Be wise, experienced, adept, efficient, proficient... not just old. Knowing that there is a severe ageism in software dev especially, don't self-identify as old. It hints at rigidity, staleness, apathy. Generalists likely seem to have no opinion, no passion, no fire.
• michaelochurch 13y ago
  Yes, he's terrible at writing resumes but the people tearing into that are clueless just-world wankers missing the forest for the trees. Ageism is a real issue that a lot of us will face. For most, it'll be milder than for him: a gradual loss of status after 40 due not to declining ability but the crassness of business culture. It's not inexorable, and some of us will outrun the bear (or at least the other guy) but the average trend is negative. As a person with cyclothymia (the mildest of the bipolar spectrum disorders) I would guess that he's clinically depressed, and that's probably hurting him more than his age. (Most of the middle age loss of "fluid intelligence" is undiagnosed depression. People of normal health don't begin declining, cognitively, until about 70 and some never do.) He feels a need to justify things in his past ("Reason for leaving") when he has reasonable job tenures. His writing is less than competent in organization. The self-pity is obvious. Some depression is completely endogenous and other varieties come from negative contexts (like mid-life un- or underemployment) and can be even harder to get out of. People can be assholes and it can really feel like they're kicking you when you're down, when in fact they're just being morally lazy and weak (i.e. people) but not malevolent in any targeted or personal way. It's easy to take the haughty libertarian view and say, "He should spend $350 and have his resume looked at by a professional." Okay, but he probably doesn't have the money, because he doesn't have a job. "He needs professional help." Probably true (again, I think he's clinically depressed, and who wouldn't be as an unemployed 55-year-old programmer?) but see above. The truth is that he's a capable person who's been fucked over, and while most of us will not be as badly fucked over or as early in our careers, we should be angry.
• justinhj 13y ago
  Saying you haven't looked at algorithms for 30 years is an excuse. Like it or not interviewers will down time on the classic CS algorithms and data structures. The things they ask have not changed that much since the 70s. For anyone interviewing I highly recommend taking a refresher course such as Princeton's algorithms on Coursera. At least if you are applying at the larger tech companies.
• kstop 13y ago
  [Deep breath] Your resume is terrible. Not in the sense of not covering off your skills and experience, but in the sense of making you seem like you care about what I need as a hiring manager. First off, it gives no sense of the importance to the business of anything you've done. You could produce the best-engineered code in the world, but if it's not fit for purpose or it doesn't help us achieve definable and verifiable goals it's junk. You need to show that you understand that. The best way to do that is to include accomplishments like "Wrote a Perl simulator that improved test throughput by X% and saved Y hours of development time." Even better are ones that include "made $Z million dollars". You have to relate your achievements to the goals of the business. Second, it's got things that would make me worried about even calling you for an interview. Why do you feel the need to specify reasons for leaving positions? That makes me nervous. Why do you need to tell me that your phone handles SMS? That's weird. This feedback's based on building and leading teams over the past decade or so. I'm younger than you though not by too much. You will probably be dealing with people of my age or younger who are going to be focused on the relevance to the company if what they do, more so than its technical sweetness. You should tailor your message accordingly. I do not advocate dumbing down your resume. I do recommend focusing it on relevance to the business. I also recently struck out again first as a contractor and then in a purely technical (no people management) full-time role. I got some time with a career consultant which helped immensely, though they were useless when it came to actual recruitment. I'd recommend you do the same, as they could help you tailor your message to the industry. (I also built a Linux distro back in the day btw (early 2000s), for an PC104-board-based embedded systems project an acquaintance of mine was working on. It's not on my resume, because that project didn't go anywhere, and isn't really relevant to the kind of jobs I want now.)
• mbubb 13y ago
  Lately, there have been intersting HN posts on the roles for non technical folks - what about mentoring coders at startups? Is there space for this? Would it be generally unwelcome? Sorry for the US football reference here but one of my favorite players from the Giants - Justin Tuck was recruited by the Raiders. He still has plenty of skill to play the position but is probably not going to be as dominant a player as he was. (All the younger defensive tackles are using Ruby, node.js and Clojure ). But he has been to a few Superbowls and knows how it is done so can mentor younger players and contribute on the field at the same time... Thus his services are more valuable to the Oakland Raiders (with a younger developing team) as compared to the Giants which is a veteran team...
• pnathan 13y ago
  Everyone has their own thing that they look for with resumes. With your resume - - Link to your distro's webpage. Even if it's just a blogspot dedicated to it. - Dont' do the technology wordlist. More than 6-10 technologies and I figure you're just spamming acronyms (fair or unfair). I consider any tech listed on a resume fair game for "okay, let's grill about it". - Drop the reasons for leaving. You left, I don't care why. Particularly if it's a freelance job, you're just gonna be leaving places. - Your typical projects page is just not detailed enough. Nor are the positions projects. Rather than just name them, throw down a link to a github or your website where you remark on them a bit more. - Your nick advertises your age. That's a marketing diminishing move. You're not old, you're experienced. It's a marketing game to get the hiring manager on the phone. ----- I would suggest StackOverflow Careers, some good leads come out of there, and use that as a "resume 2.0" format. I'm looking for something fairly specific in my evaluations of sw devs: - What you did, in some level of detail. Key projects and technologies should be called out. Soft skills shold be called out. - What was the business goal accomplished? This allows me to evaluate what you've done in a concise fashion. ------ Fundamentally, I look for resumes that demonstrate acuity in the field. All the information I look for is geared towards demonstrating that. SV has a bad rep for being ageist. I'd look into getting a job elsewhere in middle America where age has less disrespect.
• nilkn 13y ago
  Ageism is rampant. There's really no doubt about this, and it's especially true in Silicon Valley. You can't change your age, but you can change how you present yourself. Your problem is one of marketing. You're putting your age front and center in your entire persona. This is a huge mistake. Your resume is large and hard to sift through, and many of your listed skills don't necessarily seem relevant anymore. This only exacerbates the problem. I recommend a vast simplification to the way you present yourself online and to employers. Completely eliminate the OldCoder persona. Eliminate all drama--don't mention family problems or reasons for leaving past jobs. When applying to jobs, always produce a short resume that is custom-made for that company. This might not be necessary for a fresh college graduate, but when you have 30 years of experience built up you have to learn to present the aspects of your experience that are most relevant to the employer and nothing else. Don't concern yourself so much with finding a perfect match. You're not really in a position right now to only consider jobs that seem perfect for you. Brush up on algorithms. Finally, if you are in severe financial trouble, it is plain folly to limit your search to one geographic area. Scared 18 year old kids move cross country for college. You can move for a job. From experience I can say that ageism is less prevalent outside of Silicon Valley. Companies in medium-sized cities also receive fewer resumes, which means there's less competition, which means you have a much better chance at standing out if you learn to present yourself in a compelling way.
• segmondy 13y ago
  I hate to say this, but his resume sucks. Generalize, but don't generalize your resume. Listen, if you can code in Haskell, Lisp, ML, and spit out binary code by hammering it via Hex, no one cares if all they want is a PHP or Ruby programmer. Specialize your resume, if they want PHP, explain what you have done with PHP. If they want C/C++, highlight your C/C++ experiences, if they want a sysadmin, they don't care about your coding skills. You can show those off in the interview, and let them know you have other skills. What this means is you need to have about 5-6 different resumes targeting the jobs you are going for. Drop ancient and basic things out of your resume too, I saw MSDOS, HTML, CSS, GIMP, HTTP, XML, etc in his resume. He has the technical skills, but not the marketing skills. He is in the business of selling himself, all those skills oversells himself and makes many companies afraid that he would want a ridiculously high salary and that they can't afford him.
• bayareaguy 13y ago
  I'm about as old and I've lived in the bay area all my life. I've seen the popularity of things on his resume rise and fall. I'm not on any social network and my bank account has never exceeded five figures. I could be this guy. Maybe I will be in a few years. But even though he probably has plenty of skills that could be useful I doubt I'd seriously consider this guy at my present employer. Why? Because his whole signal to noise ratio is way too low. He's got a ton of red flags and "resume smells": * Freelancer for 11 years * No mention of employers or marketable projects in last 5 years. * Laundry list of antiquated technologies (some listed multiple times) * Lots of irrelevent stuff (reasons for leaving, college honors from distant past) * Random WTFs thrown in for good measure (oldcoder.org? christfollower.me?) * No clear mention of goal, purpose, motivation or passion. * Comments showing pride about being a "generalist" You never get a second chance to make a first impression and unless you're introduced by a trusted third party the impression your resume makes will be the first. Each and every word should help a potential employer want to talk with you. Your content should be informative and relevent. Writing it may not be easy but remember what is written without effort is, in general, read without pleasure.
• VLM 13y ago
  They're going to lie to you and claim the job is all about (insert list of acronyms) and they need an experienced rock star. You need to lie right back, that you're an experienced rock star in the field of (insert list of acronyms). There are laws about filtering applicants based on IQ tests and reading comprehension tests and the like. This whole system is a stealth end-around to give applicants an IQ test along with a reading comprehension and writing test. Can you tune your resume to match our advertisement? No, then bye bye. If yes, well, lets talk. Then later in the process when at the interview, they provide another stealth intelligence test when its assumed you'll know the list of requirements is made up and out of date and you should at the interview express deep knowledge of "scripting language of the month" and the like. To prove you're in touch with the actual job requirements. There are other stealth intelligence tests, like crud app developers and web graphics artist types being dragged thru the wringer about the intimate details of b-tree data structures and sorting algos. Its an intelligence test that has nothing (usually) to do with the job unless they have a horrific NIH mismanagement problem. There's nothing immoral or unethical about stretching the truth because they only care about the intelligence test aspect anyway, and the "list of acronyms" changes constantly including the time interval between publishing the advertisement and when they talk to you, and of course on the job you'll be expected to learn anything new instantly. Just make sure to add an excuse to your list of skills like "also other job related skills" (BTW this is in itself part of the intelligence test). Or at least have a great interview response along the lines of why that wasn't included on the resume and maybe you're leaving things off your resume like felony convictions or something. Also know that once you get past the first couple gatekeepers, your competition is people with skills who only have to lie a little, and really excellent skilled liars. So your honesty level should increase over time thru the process. Again this is yet another intelligence test aspect of the process. If you said "duh" WRT the above, you're a good candidate, if not, well, maybe not a "good fit" or whatever. You do need an actual list of your skills for private use only. That's probably what the OP posted. Never give that full list to a HR rep or a computerized keyword scanner.
• billyhoffman 13y ago
  Just a thought to the author of the OP (OldCoder): perhaps tone down the very public ordeal that is happening with your family I mean no disrespect or to suggest that victims should hide their past or not confront their offenders. But some of the top results that come up when I search your name is your various websites. On these, on the top of all the pages I have seen, is a large disclaimer box discussing your lawsuits/situation. Your intense feelings about your family shows through quite clearly. Anyone doing even the slightly due diligence on a prospective employee would find this. As a human being I feel for you. As a potential employer, I would take one look at that and say "I'm not going to bring that level of drama into my company."
• Stratoscope 13y ago
  I'm 62 and just got a great offer from a biotech startup two miles from my home. I took a different approach from what many of the comments here recommend. Instead of weeding down my resume to recent and "relevant" experience, I emphasized the wide variety of projects I've worked on, and I listed everything in my LinkedIn profile, all the way back to my first programming job in 1969. I got rid of my traditional resume entirely and let the LinkedIn profile be my resume. Also, I made up a new title/tagline for myself: "Low Level Full Stack Developer". At the moment, I'm the only person in the world with that particular description. :-) I wanted to distinguish myself from the other common definition of "full stack developer", which often seems to imply somebody who is an expert on website scalability. That's not really my thing: I'm better at going down the stack into hardware and device drivers and such. So I included some interesting side projects that were outside the usual web developer arena, such as PdfChip where I took a PDF datasheet for an ARM chip, connected it to a development board, and made the pinout diagram in the PDF interactive so you could see the state of the pins in the PDF, and click on pins to toggle them. Then I started writing back to all the recruiters who had been pinging me, including the ones that were way off like the place that was looking for a "Drupal themer". Always be nice to recruiters; you never know when you'll need one. :-) And indeed, some of them also had more relevant opportunities. And these conversations helped me in my thinking about what I was really looking for: something very different from the traditional web work I've been doing for several years - something more hardware oriented (and I don't mean just computing hardware). I noticed that there were a couple of local biotech companies looking for full stack developers. Wrote to one and never heard a peep back from them, not even after a couple of followups. Wrote to the other and heard back from the CEO right away. Got together with the team a couple of days later for a fairly informal interview. They didn't insult me with a coding test - they had already looked at some of my code, and the questions I've answered on Stack Overflow. It probably also helped that I had submitted a small but good quality pull request to one of their open source projects the day before. :-) Had lunch with the CEO a few days later to work out some of the details, and they made the offer a few days after that. I can't really disagree with the advice that you should focus your resume/LinkedIn/whatever on recent and relevant experience, and I used the introductory section of my LinkedIn profile to highlight those things. But if admitting that my first programming job was in 1969 gives people a clue that I'm old, so what? They will figure that out when they meet me! I would rather work with people who see my 45 years of experience in a wide variety of projects and think it means they can learn something from me - just as I can learn some cool new things from them.
• varelse 13y ago
  "After the dot-com shut down, 2003, I made $1M in the stock market. Lost most of it afterwards" TLDR: the person in question's advice is best ignored because he is in need of serious psychological help. No I am not being sarcastic. What's wrong with this guy? A complete lack of common sense and grasp of reality. After having lost $1M and failing to find a job, rather than go broke and become transient, he could have applied to something like Trader Joe's or Costco and worked his way back up to financial stability. There's plenty of opportunity for skilled labor, especially skilled labor willing to learn hot skills as they emerge. But don't take my word for it, read the story of his ongoing legal travails with his family. The root cause here is psychological, not financial.
• leishulang 13y ago
  Jobs are for those cheaters who practices interview questions everyday while sending out resumes everywhere at work. If you are actually making worthy stuff at work, you might as well try to create yourself a job.