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Many young people simply assume I am not up-to-date because of my age. In reality I invest a great deal of money in technical books, as well as time in reading

Many young people simply assume I am not up-to-date because of my age. In reality I invest a great deal of money in technical books, as well as time in reading them, and writing code for the exercises in the books.

japhyr 12y ago
That sounds good, but it sounds hard to show that to a potential employer and impress them. Have you built anything with what you've learned? I'm 42, and I performed unimpressively in an interview two years ago. That gave me some motivation to go back and polish the projects I'd been working on, so the projects would speak for themselves. Since then a number of professional opportunities have come up, largely based on the quality of the projects I've been building. It has a snowball effect as well; it's become easier to pick the work I want, and get work in that area.
- MichaelCrawford 12y ago
  I've built quite a lot with what I've learned, however it's not always possible to demonstrate that. Consider that I am not permitted to tell anyone at all what my most-recent project was, other than that it had something to do with OpenGL. This because the product was an in-house tool for a client of my client. The very existence of that tool is a closely guarded trade secret. I read Robert Ward's excellent "Debugging C" back in the day. In part as a result of that book, I am better at debugging just about anything than just about anybody. But what can I show to a potential employer or client? "Here's some code that doesn't have bugs in it." Similarly with Scott Meyers' "Effective C++" series. Three times I have applied to a certain company to write Mac OS X I/O Kit Kernel Extensions - what Apple calls device drivers. All three times, their HR refused to forward my resume to the hiring manager, unless I removed all the experience that wasn't directly related to Mac OS X. All three times I refused; I first learned to write device drivers by hand-coding LSI-11 assembly into octal, then entering the code into the LSI-11 kernel with an octal keypad and a profoundly primitive debugger called ODT, for "Octal Debugging Technique". That was in an Intro to Computer Architecture class at UC Davis that I took over the summer of 1981, while I was still in high school. Whoever it is who keeps telling me to remove my non-OS X experience, clearly does not understand how computers work. Each time I have refused; I don't want to work for idiots.
  - gtani 12y ago
    Unfortunately, part of the game is accomodating HR and non-technical managers in most companies that have gone beyond the 30 person startup stage, unless you have widely recognized expertise in some relatively rare skill. There's three hurdles to being hired (and HN has hashed this over before), so the technical chops are there, it sounds like, but then they ask - is he/she willing to sacrifice for our success? - "fit/culture", is s/he somebody we want to travel with/hang out, spend lots of time with, most of it involuntary
    - MichaelCrawford 12y ago
      I don't have a problem with non-technical HR and managerial people, nor sales, marketing, production staff and so on. I remain dumbfounded that their HR didn't understand that work I did on other platforms, contributes a great deal to my ability to code for Mac OS X. Consider that OS X drivers are all written in C++. I've done quite a lot of C++ work on Windows and embedded platforms, and a little on Linux. Yet their HR wanted me to delete all that from my resume. I didn't just turn down the jobs. Each time I explained to the recruiters - who generally are non-technical too - that all that other experience contributes to my ability to write OS X drivers. Yet the recruiters were unwilling to pass on the message to the HR. I've only known this to happen at just one company. Actually I am quite good at explaining difficult concepts to the uninitiated, as a direct result of my experiences with many of my teachers. I have a BA in Physics, with some graduate school. I had some courses that I regarded as quite easy, some were quite difficult. Quite often this was not the result of the material I studied, but the ability of the instructor to explain it. Consider that physics is commonly taught by working out mathematical derivations. That leads people who either don't know math, or don't like it, to regard physics as completely unapproachable. But physics can be taught in a purely conceptual way, with no math at all. For example, I once explained elementary particle physics to a Burgerville cashier by comparing it to the game of pool. "Suppose you cover the break" - the initial positions of the balls, in a triangle - "with a sheet of plywood. Your job now is to shoot the cue ball underneath the wood, then determine the shape of the break from the tracks of the balls after they scatter out from underneath the sheet of wood." She was quite pleased as she grasped it instantly.
__samb 12y ago
young people don't do this ;)
- MichaelCrawford 12y ago
  Touche. "So how could you contribute to our company?" "I have a goatee and look really good in tight blue jeans. Also I like to ride skateboards, and compose original minimalist piano music." "You're hired!"

japhyr 12y ago

That sounds good, but it sounds hard to show that to a potential employer and impress them. Have you built anything with what you've learned? I'm 42, and I performed unimpressively in an interview two years ago. That gave me some motivation to go back and polish the projects I'd been working on, so the projects would speak for themselves. Since then a number of professional opportunities have come up, largely based on the quality of the projects I've been building. It has a snowball effect as well; it's become easier to pick the work I want, and get work in that area.

MichaelCrawford 12y ago
I've built quite a lot with what I've learned, however it's not always possible to demonstrate that. Consider that I am not permitted to tell anyone at all what my most-recent project was, other than that it had something to do with OpenGL. This because the product was an in-house tool for a client of my client. The very existence of that tool is a closely guarded trade secret. I read Robert Ward's excellent "Debugging C" back in the day. In part as a result of that book, I am better at debugging just about anything than just about anybody. But what can I show to a potential employer or client? "Here's some code that doesn't have bugs in it." Similarly with Scott Meyers' "Effective C++" series. Three times I have applied to a certain company to write Mac OS X I/O Kit Kernel Extensions - what Apple calls device drivers. All three times, their HR refused to forward my resume to the hiring manager, unless I removed all the experience that wasn't directly related to Mac OS X. All three times I refused; I first learned to write device drivers by hand-coding LSI-11 assembly into octal, then entering the code into the LSI-11 kernel with an octal keypad and a profoundly primitive debugger called ODT, for "Octal Debugging Technique". That was in an Intro to Computer Architecture class at UC Davis that I took over the summer of 1981, while I was still in high school. Whoever it is who keeps telling me to remove my non-OS X experience, clearly does not understand how computers work. Each time I have refused; I don't want to work for idiots.
- gtani 12y ago
  Unfortunately, part of the game is accomodating HR and non-technical managers in most companies that have gone beyond the 30 person startup stage, unless you have widely recognized expertise in some relatively rare skill. There's three hurdles to being hired (and HN has hashed this over before), so the technical chops are there, it sounds like, but then they ask - is he/she willing to sacrifice for our success? - "fit/culture", is s/he somebody we want to travel with/hang out, spend lots of time with, most of it involuntary
  - MichaelCrawford 12y ago
    I don't have a problem with non-technical HR and managerial people, nor sales, marketing, production staff and so on. I remain dumbfounded that their HR didn't understand that work I did on other platforms, contributes a great deal to my ability to code for Mac OS X. Consider that OS X drivers are all written in C++. I've done quite a lot of C++ work on Windows and embedded platforms, and a little on Linux. Yet their HR wanted me to delete all that from my resume. I didn't just turn down the jobs. Each time I explained to the recruiters - who generally are non-technical too - that all that other experience contributes to my ability to write OS X drivers. Yet the recruiters were unwilling to pass on the message to the HR. I've only known this to happen at just one company. Actually I am quite good at explaining difficult concepts to the uninitiated, as a direct result of my experiences with many of my teachers. I have a BA in Physics, with some graduate school. I had some courses that I regarded as quite easy, some were quite difficult. Quite often this was not the result of the material I studied, but the ability of the instructor to explain it. Consider that physics is commonly taught by working out mathematical derivations. That leads people who either don't know math, or don't like it, to regard physics as completely unapproachable. But physics can be taught in a purely conceptual way, with no math at all. For example, I once explained elementary particle physics to a Burgerville cashier by comparing it to the game of pool. "Suppose you cover the break" - the initial positions of the balls, in a triangle - "with a sheet of plywood. Your job now is to shoot the cue ball underneath the wood, then determine the shape of the break from the tracks of the balls after they scatter out from underneath the sheet of wood." She was quite pleased as she grasped it instantly.

__samb 12y ago

young people don't do this ;)

MichaelCrawford 12y ago
Touche. "So how could you contribute to our company?" "I have a goatee and look really good in tight blue jeans. Also I like to ride skateboards, and compose original minimalist piano music." "You're hired!"