13 ms·

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 engineerin

• 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.
      • yukichan 13y ago
        Honest question, how well do you do in programming interviews? Do you blow data structures and algorithm, etc CS questions out of the water?
        • OldCoder 13y ago
          In everyday situations, outside of job interviews, if I feel confident about a situation, and I'm not under time pressure, I often come across as polished. I've been mistaken for an attorney repeatedly over the past few decades. At least twice, people have thought that I was a government official of some type. If the confidence isn't there, I do poorly. And I haven't felt confident in interviews because of the types of questions that you're referring to. I don't memorize data structures and algorithms. I start with projects and learn what's needed in each case. Coding tests are another problem for me. If you review my GitHub repos or technical site (oldcoder.org) you'll see that my code is reasonably good. But it involves flow. If I drop into flow, I can do anything. But it's difficult to reach that state while somebody is waiting. I understand, of course, that companies have their processes, and that I need to be the one to adapt as opposed to the other way around.
  • tomp 13y ago
    Still, you should be preferable than any college graduate in any kind of junior role. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't a junior role mean 100K in SV? Or do you want a more senior position?
    • insertnickname 13y ago
      >Or do you want a more senior position? From the post it doesn't sound like he's picky.
    • OldCoder 13y ago
      I'd be pleased with a junior role if it's a good match for both sides. That's important to me.
    • hrktb 13y ago
      There is a bias against having highly experienced people in middle level jobs. Apart from the stereotype of the jaded guy that has seen too much shit, there is the power balance between a youngish manager and a very experienced programmer. Sometimes the programmer will see a flurry of incoming problems very soon and flood the manager with them, and the latter won't know how to deal with this kind of situation. He'll be relying a lot on the more experienced person, but the power balance is reversed and the responsibilities as well, and it takes a lot of tippy-toeing and ego swallowing to sail smoothly. It's tricky on both sides, and company would prefer to avoid that kind of situation.
      • gress 13y ago
        This is highly unfortunate and seems like the problem is with the younger managers not having adequate support. In my early 30's I had the the privilege of being able to recruit 50+ developers onto two separate teams at a startup. These were people who's experience vastly outweighed my own. I was still responsible for guiding my teams to meet the business needs, but what I learned from these people literally changed my life.
        • hrktb 13y ago
  • tluyben2 13y ago
    I agree with that; I think people undervalue generalists, get stuck with a specialist which is nice while you are in that particular field, but the world changes. Specialists are specialists because they spent a lot of time on one thing; depending on your age that means you didn't spend a lot of time on anything else and that might turn out to be VERY difficult when you get older. I don't know many PHP 'specialists' above 30 who can actually 'change' their calling. They have an extremely hard time picking up anything else as they have been coding PHP (and a tiny bit of JS) only for the last 15+ years. It takes serious effort to switch at that point if you're not used to that flexibility in your brain. Keeping up with the market is a big thing though; as someone who was in the dotcom boom and who did backends at the time, I only noticed that everything changed years 'too late'. It wasn't really too late, but my eye wasn't on the ball for sure as I had a cushy position anyway I didn't need to, but when I sold my stock and went looking for the next interesting thing to do I noticed that the world changed significantly.
  • avenger123 13y ago
    I don't deny that getting older has an impact but your statements above are applicable to anyone and probably more so to older developers. Reading over your story the main thing that stuck out with me is that you've had a it rough for the past few years and its obviously had an impact on the career. What I would add is to focus on your health. I don't know what problems you have but if you can work on the diet, work on the fitness, get on some kind of weight training program. The better you feel, the more energy you have will make you more effective everywhere else.
    • OldCoder 13y ago
      I started a few days ago. It hasn't been a good week for medical issues but things are looking up. I've been to the Emergency Room twice since Sunday. And I had a fever of 102 degrees just a few hours ago. But I'm feeling O.K. and I'm scheduled to go back in a few hours to nail down what's happening physically. Due to recent changes in U.S. laws, I might be able to qualify for medical care now. If it works out, this will be a big help.
  • jmspring 13y ago
    You mention social network, I think it is also critical to build up a good professional network. The group I am part of has a couple of individuals in their 50s, one a specialist and one more of a generalist. They joined the company through professional connections they had worked with before. I'm purposefully making a distinction between "a random set of contacts" and a more targeted group of people who you have worked with, know your strengths, and want to work with you again.
• nightski 13y ago
  "Jobs" are highly overrated. I would truly push any older developer to consider consulting. So much freedom, I have more than quadrupled my pay, work is generally interesting and I have plenty of free time to work on what I want. I don't think I'll ever be able to go back.
  • OldCoder 13y ago
    Most contract jobs that I see seem to be apps or webdev. I expect to get up to speed more on native apps and/or web apps. So I've got a shot at this side. I've done basic webdev. I might be able to make a go of small sites. But I don't know much about building a client base. Note: I've held onto an octocore server with 32GB RAM, so I could probably combine webdev and hosting.
    • ams6110 13y ago
      Take that server and learn OpenStack and/or (preferably and) Docker. Private clouds and containers are the hotness in enterprise computing now.
  • bberrry 13y ago
    That does sound nice. Did you start your own consulting company or are you employed?
    • nightski 13y ago
      Initially subcontracted for a friend to help his business out on a couple of contracts. His business grew and in a different industry, so I took them over and started my own business eventually. It took time, but 2 years into it I still consider it the best decision I have made.
• gexla 13y ago
  So, if I saw a job description like that I would smell BS and never apply. Maybe handing off a resume like that gives the same smell. You don't give resumes like this, you tailor your pitch to the company which is hiring. If you are applying to a PHP job, then remove all the fluff and tell the employer that you are a PHP developer. Generalists dont' get hired, then don't be a generalist. Touching up your PHP skills should take a couple of weeks. ;)
  • weland 13y ago
    > You don't give resumes like this, you tailor your pitch to the company which is hiring. [...] Generalists dont' get hired, then don't be a generalist. IMO this is stupid, self-destructive for companies and likely the result of cargo cult management. My "generalist" palette is exactly what got me hired at each one of my previous jobs. I learned programming as a hobby long before going to university, and I got a degree in Instrumentation Engineering with what essentially amounts to a minor in Power Electronics. During the last two of my undergrad years I worked in a research team at my university and did a fairly good job (papers and all) in a third field, computational electromagnetism, mainly with applications in microelectronics. This means, on one hand, that I can be very helpful to anyone in my team. I can help those of my colleagues who lean more towards software than hardware troubleshoot their instruments and development boards, and I can serve as a buffer between the hardware designers and the programmers. I can make good trade-offs between circuit-level design and high-level programming abstractions and I can design applications for low-power operation instead of writing something and tweaking it until it has decent battery life. What this also means, though, is that people in management are ecstatic about how they can give me pretty much anything to work on, and I'll munch it, or stick me in the same room with people who think JS is the best thing and people who think computers are evil and still understand what each of them says. This enthusiasm comes from precisely the same people who whine about candidates who are "miles wide, inches deep", and I know of at least one instance when the lead developer who interviewed me had to kick and scream to get me hired because my CV painted me "undecided" and "not having a good career discipline". It's even more ironic considering that the people who whine about it are typically millimeters wide and deep. I often hear this kind of discussion in the middle management circles. Our people are way too specialized and it makes communication and collaboration difficult; we could use people with a more diverse range of skills; we depend too much on one or two people doing this thing, but they're the only ones in the team who can do it. This is especially problematic in teams of people who have been in the company since they were juniors. Well no shit it is, since they just spent four out of the six years of their careers doing precisely the same thing. And no, "side projects" are not a good solution to this, and I've walked out of interviews because of HR folks strongly implying that my side projects are for learning skills the company needs. Fuck off. Thinking and learning aren't free. You want it, you pay me.
• zimpenfish 13y ago
  Not a clue but I shouldn't imagine he'd have any trouble picking up a contracting gig in London (which isn't specifically helpful to OP, I know) - his resume is much better than mine and I do ok at 42.
• jsvaughan 13y ago
  yeah but it also says: "Bug fixes, manuals, mock-ups for investors, ..., IT, web and FTP sites (both servers and content), support calls, sales calls, marketing" and at that point you are thinking was this really the best use they could make of this guy? IMO even if you did this stuff, just remove it, unless you want to be doing more of it. Make more of the "GUI and Internet layers for old products, design of new products" bit. Also, maybe because I'm British, I think the tone of some of the stuff is a bit off. I would remove all the "Reason for leaving bits" And maybe you should make a call as to whether you want to do software development or system administration, and trim or include the "my own distro" bits as appropriate, and put in more about software you have built.
  • OldCoder 13y ago
    Heh. I had to do all that at the dot-com because they fired everybody else after the money ran out. I was the only rank and file employee left except for one left-over junior marketing person. I turned him into a coder and he wrote a GUI for one of the CLI products. I did pretty much everything else for a couple of years. I think you're right about the "Reason for leaving bits" The "my own distro" part is about more than sysadmin. I'm fairly proud of it and recruiters have sometimes contacted me specifically because of the project.
    • JohnBooty 13y ago
      The "my own distro" part is about more than sysadmin. I'm fairly proud of it and recruiters have sometimes contacted me specifically because of the project. Yeah, I agree that this is really impressive. Everybody's advising you to trim older things off of your resume and perhaps that's good advice but starting/maintaining your own distro seems like something to leave on. One question: why not name the distro on your resume so people can check it out and verify and/or be impressed by it?
      • ams6110 13y ago
        What I would say is rather than trim old stuff indiscriminately, focus on what it is you want to do (or what is relevant to the position you are applying for) and remove stuff you've done but don't want to do again (I've done COBOL programming but I've NEVER put that fact on a resume). Resumes do not need to be exhaustive lists of everything you've ever done. I would suggest applying for university IT jobs. Their salaries will pale compared to what SV pays, but you will be able to live, the hours are sane, the work environment tends to be decent, the benefits tend to be excellent, and if you are at least moderately competent and ethical you're unlikely to get fired.
• clukic 13y ago
  Resumes are like landing pages, you've got to hook people and then get them to commit or dig deeper. If I've got a stack of 50 resumes on my desk, several meetings scheduled, and some actual work to do, I'm going to be doing some serious thin slicing. I'm sure lots of strong candidates get eliminated before they even come in for an interview, but I don't want a strong candidate I want the guy I'm going to hire. But really all that aside. I think hiring managers probably just Google your name and get scared off by the legal drama. I know you can't help that, but there it is.
• jt2190 13y ago
  The quoted text is a classic example of not talking to your audience, i.e. the person who is actually able to sign your paycheck and who wants to know "what do I get?" Take the first item: I've created a Linux distro of my own. Original and not a fork. See articles on website. How did this help anybody? Did it save the company time? Give them a competitive advantage? Did it increase server uptime, increase developer productivity, increase the price of the packaged product? SHOW ME THE MONEY.
  • OldCoder 13y ago
    A targeted resume, intended to present me as a specialist in Linux, would zoom in and do precisely this. However, if I tried to add this level of detail to everything on the resume at once, I'd end up with dozens of pages. Remember that I've done hundreds of projects. In the 1990s, I tried to produce a complete resume. The result was a short novel :P I'm kidding, but it did take me years to get the thing down to a single page.
    • garrettgrimsley 13y ago
      The point is that you should be highlighting your Linux skills for a company that is seeking someone with Linux capabilities. Applying to a Java shop? Same deal, highlight your Java capabilites and projects. Instead, you are highlighting nothing. Another issue is that you have been out of work for a long time. I can't find a reference right now, but being out of work reflects poorly on you. Perhaps you could fill that period in with "Freelancing?"
    • jt2190 13y ago
      > However, if I tried to add this level of detail to > everything on the resume at once, I'd end up with dozens > of pages... If we saw a function in a program that was twelve pages long, we'd think there was a problem: The code is trying to do too many things at once. Resumes are a bit trickier because they have several purposes these days: 1. It lets the hiring manager *quickly* scan the resume to see if it's a good fit for an *already open* position. 2. It lets the recruiter/HR database index all of the keywords for future candidate searches. 3. It lets hiring manager use it as a template for *creating* a job description to give to the HR manager that they've already selected the candidate to fill. Note that (1) and (2) presume that you're applying for a job the traditional, ineffective way. (3) presumes that you've actually had a face-to-face conversation with the hiring manager, have convinced them that you can help out, and left them with a copy of your resume as a courtesy. You definitely want to be doing (3). (There are many, many books and articles on how to tap into the "hidden" job market that will help you with (3).)
• wobbleblob 13y ago
  What's wrong with his resume is that the last work experience seems to be 5 years ago, and that his skill set doesn't list anything that hasn't been around at least since the 90's. Age discrimination is a real thing, I have seen it happen, and this resume implies 'probably expensive and not quite up to date'. It's a little unsettling, because I'm probably not that much younger. It could have been me.
  • JoeAltmaier 13y ago
    So, get up to date. The victim mentality is not helping. Programming skills are maybe unique, in that everything you need to get better is actually available from the internet. Try learning plumbing that way.
    • OldCoder 13y ago
      If I'm going to become a specialist, this is entirely correct. But is this the right path? Or is there a way to salvage a generalist career?
      • JoeAltmaier 13y ago
        Sure. Learn something specific and up-to-date. Then get a job. Then apply the generalist skills to out-perform expectations.
      • wobbleblob 13y ago
        I think you should polish your CV. Maybe one of those recruiters can help you prune out a bit of the fluff, and expand on things that are relevant. Also, since the CV clearly implies you're coming back from retirement, you should probably mention it explicitly and make what you have been doing the past 5 years sound good. I don't know how to do that, but those recruiters probably do.
    • wobbleblob 13y ago
      Do you list things as experience on your CV after you've followed a tutorial and played around with it as a hobby? If you include those, the list would be pretty long. Anyway, what I wanted to say is not that it's a bad skill set, but that it's a bad CV. Maybe one of those recruiters can help him polish it
• mncolinlee 13y ago
  Another story on the same page suggests he is autistic. Isn't it possible that all of the factors work against him? Subtle age discrimination, inability to interview and seem "normal" due to his disability, and the fact he's been out of work a while and seems indigent. Trained HR recruiters would see red flags even if they knew to suppress them. And who claims recruiting as a skill when seeking a coding job?
• ballard 13y ago
  Feedback on this from both sides of the table. Every dev esp. entry level students list the same keywords: Java, Oracle, Apache, ... Zzz. Recent specific accomplishments that furthered tech or business plz. What makes you uniquely relevant to the role?
• ballard 13y ago
  0. Ageism is rampant. A research dept I worked at briefly fired an admin for being "old." 1. Lack of persistence (hustle) on the candidate's part. 2. May or may not have personality or skills issues.
• julie1 13y ago
  IT industry is in a bubble since 10 years or so. To sustain its economy it needs to generate so called new technology that obsoletes in a few years. It is called progress. Our web pages in Perl became web apps powered by frameworks like rails, that became apps on mobile written in C. They are fundamentally the same. Just using more and more resources, more unstable, less secure. That's the price to pay for not having an industry anymore and keeping people that took a 90k$ loans employed. Old programmers are a pain: they have knowledge. Sack them all.
• mathattack 13y ago
  I wonder how much of this is age discrimination. A common complaint I've heard against older workers is, "Why isn't someone they're already worked with eager to hire them?" It gets to the point of networking, and once you've had a bad spell, it's tough to recover.
• thothamon 13y ago
  As a former hiring manager, and a middle-aged guy myself, I see hiring as (basically) a two phase process. The first step is to get noticed, and the second step is to close the deal (get hired). You get noticed by appealing to what your prospective employer is looking for. In this context, everything on your resume either helps get you noticed, or it's a nice-to-have, or it's a negative. Extraneous technical experience and a great college background are pretty much always nice-to-haves. Recent, relevant experience and accomplishments are generally the real things that get you noticed. Once you're in the door, you close the deal by demonstrating that you can kick butt on whatever your prospective employer needs to get done, and fit in well with the team while doing so. It's true that different people want different things, but if you can show you're an expert at what your employer needs, and if you are pleasant to be around and work with, your odds of getting an offer go up tremendously. The OP is right that if you fall off the job ladder, it's much harder. Your first priority should be to get some kind of job doing what you want to do, at the best salary you can negotiate. But, you're negotiating from a position of weakness, and that probably means you won't initially make as much money as you want. I don't have a magic bullet here. You have to get back on the horse, put in your time, build your resume, and from there you have much better prospects in future job negotiations. Note that all these things are true regardless of your age. No doubt, age is a factor sometimes (just like, say, ethnicity is a factor sometimes). But if you sell yourself right, and if you can really do the work in an awesome way, ultimately that will carry the day, regardless of age.
  • eru 13y ago
    > You get noticed by appealing to what your prospective employer is looking for. In this context, everything on your resume either helps get you noticed, or it's a nice-to-have, or it's a negative. Too much volume of things is negative in itself, even if all of them would be nice to have by themselves.