
Ask HN: Any job boards and age-friendly companies for older developers? - nonines
I&#x27;ve spent last year interviewing only to find out that I&#x27;m considered too old (I&#x27;m 45) for most shops around. They won&#x27;t spit it out directly of course but people talk and what they say is that I need to be stellar or young to be hired. Companies won&#x27;t invest in me the slightest bit, so the moment I miss a question in the long interview process I&#x27;m out of the door without second thought.<p>So...<p>1. I might be banging the wrong doors. E.g. FAANGs don&#x27;t seem to be right. Any companies that don&#x27;t drink&#x2F;sell the youth cool-aid?<p>2. I might be searching at the wrong job boards. Any suggestions welcome.<p>3. Finally I might be better doing sth else altogether (but what?) rather than fighting a loosing battle against preconceptions that run so deep.<p>Anyway. Thanks for any non-insulting answers in advance.<p>PS: I&#x27;m based in EU and I&#x27;m a SW Dev working mainly in DevOps and Reliability.
======
travisgriggs
My experience is anecdotal and second hand. I've seen it twice now.

It began with a friend who was in the job market as a 50+. More on the
hardware side. This guy has some cool experience. He gets lots of interviews,
they go well, but no offers.

As his frustration grows, he grows desperate to try something different. He
dyes some color back into his hair, gets some tinted glasses, and lets his
daughter take him shopping for some more hip interview clothes.

A month later and he's in bidding wars for who to hire him. He said the
difference was night and day. He was now pointing out his age in interviews
"are you sure I'm not too old?" and the interviewers were like "no way man."

I wondered how one off this was. A year or so later, knew another guy who was
having this same struggle. We shared the story with him. He raised his
eyebrows, hesitated for a week or two, the colored his hair, got his niece to
take him shopping. And pretty much same thing.

Obviously, this is a small sample set. But the lesson I took from this (and
haven't had a chance to prove for myself yet) is that it's not your age that
will limit you, but your apparent age. If you are old, but look like a
younger/fresher version of yourself, you do well. If you appear "old", you
struggle.

Best of luck.

~~~
nonines
Is there a beard dye as well? (I can't believe I'm actually asking this)

~~~
fortran77
Yes! I use "Just for men" beard coloring.

~~~
hinkley
They are 33 this year, rapidly approaching old age themselves.

Maybe twenty years ago they introduced a new product line that I thought was
clever. The idea is you dye your hair with an inefficient dye, so after one
dye job you still have a lot of grey left. You keep applying it over and over
until the grey is gone, so you don’t just show up full silver one day and jet
black the next. You just age backward for weeks.

~~~
fortran77
That was "Grecian Formula." They don't make it anymore because it colored you
hair with lead! It looked like a clear liquid, but the lead in the lead
acetate it contained would bind with your hair, gradually darkening it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grecian_Formula](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grecian_Formula)

------
blunte
The age bias is real, but it may not be as big as the perception is. My
current position is with a company that pushes the "youth" message very
loudly; and for that reason, I ignored them until a recruiter convinced me to
allow myself to be presented.

During the first interview, I brought this up. The average age in the company
was 28, so why would they want me? The answer surprised me: they wanted me
because of my age, experiences (generalist), and wisdom. Lots of youthful,
intelligent people are an asset - but so are a few veterans to provide
perspective and keep a check on reality.

You are just as likely to get rejected for a reason other than age, so you
might as well just approach with enthusiasm any opportunity that interest you.
If you don't show up to an interview angry about age discrimination, you're
more likely to be accepted irrespective of your age.

Lastly, remember that companies are made up of people, and people come with
all sorts of mentalities. A few will indeed have a bias against people their
parents' age, but I bet it's not as many people with that attitude as you
might expect.

The only place we really cannot compete with is on salary (unless you're
willing to work at entry/medior rates). Experienced people generally cost a
good bit more, and the value proposition may not be there for some
candidates/situations.

~~~
artsyca
What's going to get you rejected as an older or experienced dev is whether you
fall or don't fall for the typical recruitment cons and how well you play
along with the usual interview game theory tactics i.e. prisoner's dilemma
scenarios.

Last summer I interviewed at a ton of companies and truly I rejected them way
before they rejected me but what I learned essentially is that if you fall for
the typical recruitment razzmataz as a more experienced dev then they'll
assume you're stupid and if you don't fall for it they'll assume you're too
smart, if you catch my drift.

Where once we were meant to show enthusiasm now we're supposed to play cool.
How many companies lead with "We're pretty casual around here" as if that
doesn't actually mean "we'll fire you on a dime"

You have to tread a very fine line that shows you're willing to play dumb
while at the same time showing you have the chops -- it's more about how much
cognitive dissonance or doublethink you can stomach than anything to do with
your vital statistics and all these technical interviews are bollocks compared
to fourth year courses in a world where most devs barely speak English but I
digress

I have literally seen everything in this industry from from y2k to working
with distributed overseas teams to getting tattooed in San Francisco and
there's nothing new under the sun except for rife imposterism and rampant
entitlement.

They're sizing you up the same way you're sizing them up with respect to the
developer stereotypes and management dramas and all that toxic crap while
testing you to see if you're willing to play along with their dysfunction and
so called "culture fit" aka groupthink mentality.

You can probably tell I have no love left for this lost generation of code
monkeys, after having fathered them along with an entire generation of misfits
and dreamers whereas now they're all trying to fit in and losing themselves to
the machine.

Once they learn how to do adulting maybe they'll learn to have more fun. Until
then they're just a bunch of lemmings at the gate.

I'd go further into this downward spiral but I'll show myself out. Think about
what you'll look like as a sixty year old wearing hoodies and t shirts and ask
yourself whether you've made the right life choices.

Cue the downvotes you filthy scoundrels.

~~~
mech422
I'm over 50, and I tend to agree - the perception of ageism seems to far
outstrip anything I've seen. I'm also not sure how much of 'ageism' is really
'hire cheap college grads'.

An interesting note: Since I no longer have to raise kids, I actually have a
lot more time and a lot less 'drama' then I used to. Makes it easier to keep
up on new tech...

~~~
downerending
I used to think that, but for whatever reason, I slammed into a wall at 52.
Don't assume that this will come on slowly.

~~~
mech422
I guess only time will tell. Though I have been lucky enough to work with a
lot of 'grey beards' in my career, so I'm hopeful :-)

------
nybblesio
I've been programming since 1979. So long that "programmer" has become an
integral part of my identity. I don't think I'll ever stop producing software.

However, starting around 2016, finding work started to become difficult. The
work I did find was no longer enjoyable. It took a few years, but I finally
did enough self introspection to realize: it's not them, it's me. I aged out
of the industry. I didn't notice it in the moment, it just happened.

I cannot work in open-office fishbowls. I cannot stomach Agile process and how
it has turned something I love into menial factory work (N.B. I get it, _your_
[A|a]gile shop is awesome. I only had such luck once). There are many more
things about modern software development shops with which I disagree.

Now, it hadn't occurred to me until later that this was showing through in my
attitude. Of course, I really _did not_ want to work on the 500th BBA in my
career with six Scrumm Masters all demanding 30 minute meetings every morning.
I did not want to write more JavaScript or deal with yet another hotness-of-
the-week library that does the same thing as the previous 10 such beasts. I
did not want to play Schedule Chicken yet again.

Is it my age? Sure, people change. I'm not bored with the programming I enjoy
but I did grow bored of modern corporate software slave shops. Hey, more power
to them. It's their shop; they can do what they want.

However, it does mean I have to move on. I'm not saying any of this is true
for the OP. Just something to ponder if you're constantly facing rejection.

~~~
nobleach
I like that Gary Bernhardt tweets every once in awhile something along the
lines of "we have no actual evidence that any software methodology actually
leads to better, less buggy software". We have people falling all over
themselves to sing the praises of XP, TDD, Agile/Scrum/etc, and yet, we can't
show software actually getting any better. I've been around long enough now to
see these trends rise and fall. One thing remains constant though. Humans make
errors. Humans try to find better ways to fix these errors (faster, more
effectively). Humans like trying to notice patterns. It's a good thing. But
trying to say any one of those patterns is more effective than another, is a
hard sell. The result is always the same. The ONE lesson I wish all young
developers could learn early:

You will learn new information that will cause you to question yesterday's
"best practices". So quit holding on to what you know now as the "one true
way". Be willing to learn from people you consider "old and irrelevant"...
they may actually know something.

~~~
thewebcount
I agree with most of what you say, but this strikes me as wrong:

> We have people falling all over themselves to sing the praises of XP, TDD,
> Agile/Scrum/etc, and yet, we can't show software actually getting any
> better.

Software is absolutely better today than it was in the 80s and 90s. I used to
have to reboot my computer 2 or 3 times a day due to unrecoverable crashes and
taught myself to constantly save work after every minor change. Now my
computer stays up for weeks to months at a time only being rebooted to install
updates occasionally. Documents are often autosaved, and I don't even need to
save anything when I quit an app. The next time I launch it's all there.

I agree that we may not be able to measure that any given methodology is
better than any other one, but we've made significant progress along the way.
Better tooling, like static analyzers and profilers have helped, too. I do
think automated testing can be shown to improve things _when used
appropriately_. (The drive for 100% test coverage seems fanatical to me,
though.)

------
mark_l_watson
I retired a year ago, but before retiring in 2013 I was invited to work at
Google on a Knowledge Graph project and I don’t feel like there was any age
discrimination. In 2017 I interviewed at Capital One for a deep learning team
manager job, which I got, and I never felt like there was any real age
discrimination there either.

So, try those two places.

I did feel like I was the target for extreme age discrimination at WikiMedia
Organization. All the phone interviews went great until one was a video call
and the interviewer literally started laughing when he saw me and he quickly
ended the call, and their HR immediately sent me a no thank you, thanks for
applying email. The same thing happened at Electronic Arts about 15 years ago.
They kept calling me with invites to come up to Vancouver for an interview.
Three of people, when they saw me and realized that I was in my 50s, they
literally started to laugh.

So, I would say to stick with quality companies and you will have better
results.

~~~
artsyca
I had an interview once with a team that was all remote and the person on the
other end had literally just crawled out of bed a few minutes earlier

I treat interviews as a two way street hence the word "inter" and it
definitely behooves both sides to be on best behaviour.

You'd think that an industry full of analysts and theorists would have
understood the game theory of interviews by now?

~~~
vmlinuz
> I had an interview once with a team that was all remote and the person on
> the other end had literally just crawled out of bed a few minutes earlier

Earlier this year, I had an interview with a fairly serious company which
shall not be named. They'd sent a mass email on LinkedIn a couple of weeks
earlier, so that was my contact with them. After a chat with their in-house
recruiter, they asked me to do a couple of tests, one a simple server
application, one an intermediate-complexity SQL query. I'm willing to say that
my SQL is competent, but it's not a focus for me, so while I got the idea, my
query didn't actually work. The recruiter told me that it would be a good idea
to be ready to explain why, and how I would fix it, for the technical
interview. I rustled up a couple of acquaintances with better SQL than I, we
worked through it, I knew what I'd done wrong and was ready to discuss it.

Technical interview came, on Zoom, and it was a car crash. There were two
interviewers, one was on time, one was late - the late one was also only on
audio, and it turns out mixing one audio-only interviewer with one on video
was a bad idea. They mostly asked me about my background and experience for
about half an hour, then ended the interview - never asked about my tests,
didn't go into anything technical at all.

I didn't hear anything back, so I pinged the recruiter a week later, only for
him to tell me he wasn't working there anymore, but he'd pass on a message for
me. I then pinged the one other person I'd had any actual contact with at the
company, the HR/admin who'd setup the Zoom call, to be told "we will not go
for further process as rejected by hiring team."

I was pretty unimpressed.

~~~
artsyca
Exactly the same scenario! You'd think we could at least salvage some personal
relationships out of it but nope too busy being false corporate

What irks me is that the real ones like the people on this forum are losing to
the fake ones like the bozos on that call

I have some interview horror stories bro but seriously it really boils down to
basic game theory how do we get it so wrong?

But I mean wow exactly the same scenario -- hit it off with the recruiter,
their engineering team is a shitshow, recruiter leaves, HR tells you suck it

Definitely not you, it's them but the injury of being rejected is added to the
insult that it's a band of fools doing it.. think of it as dodging a bullet

You know in some hiphop tunes where they say they love their haters?

Think about how many bullets you've dodged on account of your haters and be
grateful to them.. It's twisted but it's true

------
epc
No great advice other than to look for tech roles in non–tech companies.

The FAANG gang will never see your resume or application as their automated
screeners will silently reject you. Startups will advise you that you cannot
possibly understand the complexity of the problem space they are solving
because no one in the history of the industry has ever tried building complex
software, which is why they are writing their own version of make in two week
sprints.

I wish I had better advice but after seven years of trying I’ve moved on and
out of the industry.

~~~
mabbo
> The FAANG gang will never see your resume or application as their automated
> screeners will silently reject you

I'm an interviewer at a FAANG company. I've interviewed plenty of candidates
who were over 30, over 40, and never once seen anyone rejected based on age.
I've worked with guys hired in their 40s, generally very solid devs.

The key thing I have seen is that if you've been in the industry for 20+
years, we expect you to be at a senior level. If decades of experience doesn't
make you any better than a college grad, what have you been doing for 20
years?

I'd love to have a senior dev with 20 years experience join my team.

~~~
eastendguy
Thanks for being honest. I get your point. But in other words, you reject
_equally_ qualified candidates just because they are older. So the old guy has
to be _better_ then the young guy to get hired.

That pretty much confirms what the OP said.

~~~
kyran_adept
In a FAANG you need to be competitive. If you are junior and 40+, you probably
had different priorities and struggles in life, so you might not be willing to
have the dedication required.

It also creates problems for both you and your peers - you will have a very
ambitious 28 yo giving guidance, from a management or senior position, to a
40+ yo. You might feel bad in that situation and it's not going to be easy for
the younger person having to guide you.

~~~
mondoshawan
It's amazing the amount of prejudice and wrong data being spewed in this one
sentence:

> In a FAANG you need to be competitive.

I've worked at Google since 2006 and have done well over 250+ interviews here,
competition is assureadly _not_ a quality we select for. In fact, as an
interviewer, I tend to bias against that behavior.

> If you are junior and 40+, you probably had different priorities and
> struggles in life, so you might not be willing to have the dedication
> required.

"probably" and "might not" are strong words when talking about assumptions and
prejudices. What "dedication" are you talking about? The interviews FAANGs use
are amongst the most gruelling in the industry -- if a candidate expresses
through them that they have the skills and are interested in the job, and the
corp needs it filled, it should be filled regardless of age, sex, gender,
background, race, creed, or color. Full stop.

I'll also note, most of Google's upper management is 35-40 years old, if not
older, and the younger managers are trending closer to 35 these days, and
actually not as prevalent as they used to be.

I've managed older folks underneath me in the past -- I never had a problem
with guidance or behavior. In fact, they were often the most hands off because
they usually already knew what was needed next.

------
swalsh
I find myself biasing towards older devs. The old guys tend to trend towards
reliable tech, reliable architectures. They're done playing around. They have
families at home, so they want to get the work done... and go home. They do
things that they know will work. They might not be using whatever the fad of
the day is... and sometimes there are missed opportunties from that. But more
often it means the stuff they build has less bullshit issues that comes from
untested, immature technology.

That said, older devs can be very stubborn. If in the interview I detect that
I'm not going to be able to work well with the person. I might pass.

~~~
danieltillett
Stubbornness is the killer. The young just don’t have anything to be stubborn
about, but for a manager one greybeard who knows how to cause problems by
digging their heels in will make your life hell. The fact that they are
probably right just adds to the pain.

~~~
gedy
> The young just don’t have anything to be stubborn about

Haha, that never stops the ones I work with. They just dig in on the exciting
idea they had.

~~~
danieltillett
The young have lots of passion, but they can be distracted by the next shiny
thing. Managing passion is easy compared to managing the stubbornness gained
from experience.

------
drchopchop
40+ here. There is definitely unconscious age-ism going on, and if you want to
beat it:

* If you have 20 years of experience in the software industry, let's be real, you kinda need to be at a senior/lead level (whether IC or manager track). If you're not, then people are going to wonder why you aren't, and whether you're stuck reliving the old days

* Decades of experience in C/Java is not going to work at a React shop. Either learn (and be opinionated about!) frameworks built in the last 5 years, or stick to somewhere within your expertise

* Don't make yourself appear ancient on your resume, but don't lie either. If you got a degree in the 90's then it should be apparent from reading your resume, and if they want to discriminate they'll do so right from the start and not waste your time.

* Avoid the "grumpy old programmer" stereotype at all costs. Instead, you want to be the "bad-ass wizard" that people need to solve hard problems, and people want Gandalf, not Saruman

~~~
Lendal
Are there people who only want to spend their lives doing the same thing every
day?

Decades of experience in C and Java ought to work just fine for someone who
wants to try something new, like React. I learned React after decades of
experience in other things, and I loved it. I don't see why it should matter
what I did in the past. Was I successful? Did I enjoy it? Will I come to work
every day energized and ready to work on new things? Those are the things that
matter.

~~~
drchopchop
Well, I spent years doing C, then Java, and now I'm a CTO at a tech company
that's a React/Typescript/Ruby shop. However, I needed to sit down and spend
the time to actually _learn_ those technologies.

What you don't want is to interview for a React job with only a
cursory/tutorial knowledge of it, and try to fall back to "well I'm an expert
at 10 other languages, it's all easy". A lot of companies are looking for that
expertise now, not to spend 6 months training you on the job, especially at a
big salary and title.

~~~
vonmoltke
> What you don't want is to interview for a React job with only a
> cursory/tutorial knowledge of it

The problem I encountered as I hit the 10-year mark is that it is hard to
_get_ the interview when you have extensive professional experience and none
of it is in $TECH the company is looking for.

~~~
ghaff
I'm not sure that's unreasonable in general and it goes beyond just $TECH. I
have experience and skills in a lot of different areas and, sure, I could pick
up new skills in related areas of business and tech fairly quickly. However,
if a company is looking for a senior person to "hit the ground running" in an
area where I have at best peripheral experience, I wouldn't seriously expect
to get hired--especially as an IC.

The details matter of course. If $TECH is something relatively new without a
lot of experienced practitioners, it may be reasonable to hire someone with a
lot of experience in somewhat related techs. But no matter how skilled the
person is, you're probably not going to hire someone for front-end or mobile
development who has only ever worked on back-end infrastructure.

~~~
drchopchop
Right, it's not so much a reflection of age-ism as it is just not having the
skills in the job description. It doesn't matter if you're 25 or 45 - if they
need X years of language Y, it's for a reason and 20 years of generic dev
experience is not usually an acceptable substitute.

~~~
vonmoltke
I don't understand the point you were making in the original post then.

> What you don't want is to interview for a React job with only a
> cursory/tutorial knowledge of it, and try to fall back to "well I'm an
> expert at 10 other languages, it's all easy"

Of course I would expect someone who claimed professional experience with
React to have more than "a cursory/tutorial knowledge of it". In the post that
started this chain, though, you said

> Decades of experience in C/Java is not going to work at a React shop. Either
> learn (and be opinionated about!) frameworks built in the last 5 years, or
> stick to somewhere within your expertise

I take that (in combination with the above) to mean that you somehow need to
get a job where you can use React in order to get a job where you use React.
I'm not sure what the point of that advice is, then. Perhaps I'm
misunderstanding something here.

------
scarface74
Not saying your situation isn’t real, but this is more of a general reply to
all of the comments. I am 45 and have had no trouble getting your standard
enterprise senior engineer/lead/architect roles in a major metropolitan area
on the east coast of the US.

After staying at one company way too long when I was 34, I’ve been able to
quickly get jobs at 34, 37, 40, 43, and 44 years old.

Pre-Covid, there were a few conversations I had with managers of consulting
firms for full time roles as an overpriced “enterprise architect”, “solutions
architect”, “digital transformation consultant” type jobs. I just wasn’t in a
position to travel for family reasons until my youngest graduated.

Now, actually I am targeting the three major cloud providers for an SA type
position. I should be able to get into at least one of them according to my
contacts.

But another thing I’ve found about many older developers who scream ageism is
that they haven’t stayed up to date on the latest trends and they haven’t
nurtured their network.

~~~
nonines
latest trends - not an issue for me.

Nurturing my network though. I might be too arrogant or proud but I think I
have worked too hard to be dependent on my network for a job. I should be able
to move to a nice job without any network push.

~~~
scarface74
How’s that working out for you?

I can honestly say that I have never in over 25 years gotten a job based on
blindly submitting my resume. My first paid development gig in 1990 was based
on someone at another college reaching out to me based on some Mac shareware
they found on the ftp Info Mac archives (yeah I’m that old).

My first job was based on an internship I had the year before from bugging the
career center at college.

Every subsequent job has been based on either former coworkers recommendations
or working with local external recruiters.

~~~
cmrdporcupine
So true. I've been trying to drive this home to my wife, who has been out of
the job market for almost 10 years. She's getting discouraged because she is
getting no responses to her applications. Her resume is strong (almost 10
years marketing/design at Apple, went back to school got highest GPA possible
in anthropology, now is taking UX design/research courses, acing them), but
it's just not going to get looked at without mining her networks.

But it's really hard to go knocking on the door of people you haven't worked
with or talked to in almost a decade. It's easy to assume they won't be
interested in connecting. Or if one doesn't respond, assuming the rest will.

Like you I've never had a job that didn't come from some kind of personal
connection. It's really the key.

~~~
scarface74
I’ve met all three of my former managers for lunch at least once since I left
the company where I worked for them just to keep the network warm. I also try
to meet former coworkers for lunch when I can.

One of the questions I ask them when I turn in my letter of resignation is
what do they need me to do so if I need to call them for a reference in two or
three years, they will give me a good referral.

I don’t think I would have any problems getting hired by but one of my former
managers.

I’ve also met _local_ recruiter for lunch and always respond to non shady
recruiters.

But as far as your wife, I would hope that most of her female former coworkers
would be able to relate to the fact that some mothers take a break in their
career to be caretakers and that most of her former male coworkers wouldn’t be
knuckle draggers and understand too.

------
exdsq
I've worked in companies that have had numerous developers your age or higher
so don't worry, you will find somewhere. One thing I'd suggest is looking at
consultancies in your area where experience is important. I've heard banking
tends to have a slightly higher average age too. And finally, consider
contracting! A senior experienced developer can earn a good bit of money and
being 45 works for you rather than against!

FWIW, the consultancy I worked at that had multiple 'older' developers was
[https://oxfordcc.co.uk](https://oxfordcc.co.uk). They did some pretty cool
stuff :)

~~~
ciguy
I second this. I am much younger than you (Early 30s) but very old looking for
my age. People regularly guess that I'm 10 years older than I am. This has
only worked to my advantage in the consulting space.

Companies want young naive employees who will work lots of unpaid overtime but
when they hire consultants they want someone who's done the work before. There
is a poise and sense of assurance that comes with age as well which you can
definitely use to your advantage.

~~~
overqualified
Right until some mid-level prick wants a bonus and cuts costs, so your project
is closed and contract terminated :-) Been there ...

 _But_ , the good thing is that nobody can fire you from your own business.

Give them a finger and use existing make, along with other binutils.

Good luck and don't pay attention to arrogant idiots.

~~~
ciguy
Oh totally. You have to view consulting like running a business and be
constantly looking for new clients, there is no job security at all. But if
you are decent with marketing and selective with your clients it can be super
fun and rewarding.

It's also one of the least risky paths to starting a business if that's your
thing. I ended up building a consulting agency out of it
([https://startopsgroup.com](https://startopsgroup.com)) so it has definitely
served me well.

------
djtalia
MITRE. (www.mitre.org)

When I joined at 43 the average age of the company was in the late 50's. It's
dropped a bit, but not much. And I run the DevOps group in my department, so
we do things that would interest you. We're strong engineers, but we value
expertise over the latest buzz words. Trust me, I plan on retiring here.

~~~
Cilvic
I have a hard time understanding what MITRE is or does from their website.
Wikipedia helped:

>The Mitre Corporation is an American not-for-profit organization based in
Bedford, Massachusetts, and McLean, Virginia. It manages federally funded
research and development centers (FFRDCs) supporting several U.S. government
agencies.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitre_Corporation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitre_Corporation)

~~~
chaosbutters314
They do non partisan research for the government. They are meant to give them
the info to make decisions. They're business is primarily run on govt dollars

------
jordanpg
Perhaps impolitic to mention, but to the extent that it's possible, appearing
younger can affect perceptions.

Consider everything: clothing, haircut, facial hair, smells, and especially
fitness.

My intuition is that the appearance of fitness and especially "spryness" goes
quite a long way in people seeing past your age. Our monkey brains are easily
fooled, up to point.

~~~
dirtydroog
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVp9rKF3hag](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVp9rKF3hag)

(NSFW-ish)

------
bryanrasmussen
My experience is that once I hit a certain age, and salary, almost nobody
wanted to hire me full time but lots of people wanted to hire me to consult.
General rule: Make sure you take at least 2 times as much per hour when you
consult.

------
vmlinuz
I'm a similar sort of age, and having trouble finding something this year -
not that this year isn't a terrible time to be looking for anyone, of course.
I was actually the oldest engineer in my previous place, out of over 70. I
seem to have found myself in a couple of catch-22 situations - I have both
wide/shallow experience and narrow/deep, but if I'm looking for senior
positions that means mostly only the deep experience counts, which means I've
got narrow skills. I'm also a Brit based in Hong Kong, who doesn't speak
Cantonese - not a huge barrier, generally, but it just further narrows my
opportunities. I've actually had a couple of people this week ask if I'd be
interested in something remote for a North American company, but working at
least partly in their timezone, which doesn't really seem sensible, given it
would mean destroying my social life and/or sleep...

I'm recently mostly a backend web/API dev working in PHP and Python/Django,
but I've done Unix kernel work, written a few Android apps, and a few other
random things. I've worked in large companies, in a local unicorn, and as a
solo freelancer.

I'm not necessarily sure it's age itself that's a problem, but maybe a
combination of factors where age is part of the cause/effect chain?

To be clear, as well as my thoughts, this is also a "hire me, please?" post!

------
misja111
I'm 50, living in the EU and have switched jobs three times during the last 5
years. My extra years of working experience were seen as an advantage by most
companies where I interviewed. I didn't interview at any FAANG though, maybe
those are different.

One tip: make sure you are good at what you do and what you will be
interviewed for. Because at our age, the roles that you will be hired for will
be senior roles, and the bar lies a bit higher there.

~~~
Lendal
Doing the same thing or new things?

I'm 51. After 20 years in SQL and C# I'm tired of it. Last year I got myself
on a Python project and I loved it. Then I got myself on a TypeScript project
and I loved that even more.

I imagine that if I interviewed for a Node.js job they'd probably look at me
like I was nuts. They'd probably think the worst possible thoughts, as people
do. After 30 years in software development, they'd think maybe I wasn't cut
out for it? Like it took me 30 years to figure out what they figured out in 30
seconds of looking at my face, because they're so much "smarter".

One thing you learn over 30 years working is that everyone thinks they're
smarter than everyone else. Another thing you learn is that if someone is good
at one programming language, they're probably also going to do well at other
technologies. Since certain types of people like to do different things and
not just the same thing their entire lives, HR ought to give those people a
break.

~~~
OldHand2018
> I imagine that if I interviewed for a Node.js job they'd probably look at me
> like I was nuts.

Look at them like they are nuts and tell them you'll help migrate to Deno.
It's a level playing field again!

------
netcan
One thing to note is that "front door" recruitment is generally more youth
oriented than back channels.

Most people apply for jobs out of college. As they age (a) they tend to switch
jobs less often and (b) they have accumulated former colleagues, clients and
such that can open back-channels.

Work back channels if you can. Otherwise, just keep in mind that the youth
bias you experience at the front door is worse than the actual bias.

For practical advice, I suggest you search outside of the software industry...
companies that make their money mostly from software. Most jobs are actually
in other industries, and I think they're less youth biased.

An "app factory" probably hires very young, mostly

------
jerzyt
The situation in EU may be different than in the US. We also have the age
issue, but I think the age is a red herring. People in tech change jobs so
often that nobody is hiring for lifetime employment anymore. The best people
leave in 2 to 3 years, because they get bored, get better opportunities, get
poached, etc. So at 45 this shouldn't be an issue at all. But it is. I think
that with age people become more aware of nonsense and are more reluctant to
work ridiculous number of hours per week. And this awareness is highly
correlated with age, the end result is the same. Have you been looking into
consulting scene, where the experience counts more?

------
wickerman
Have you tried applying for banks? Most of the contractors I worked with in
banking in Ireland were older, 40+ including some 60 something, all python
developers. I don't know what country you live in but both the UK and Ireland
have anti-discrimination laws, so they can't discriminate based on age.

------
ksec
Slightly Off Topic:

As someone who dont work in Silicon Valley. ( Edit: Opps it seems it is in EU
as well )

Why ageism?

Even assuming you start developing professionally in 20, you would need to be
at least 30 - 35 before you finally understand, everything you believe in so
strongly in your past 10 - 20 years were possibly a FAD and had finally
witness the industry moving from one FAD to another and start ignoring hype.

You would finally understand most code you once thought were short, concise
and clever, and others that once were long, boring, over the top _stupid_ code
are actually the _better_ code.

You would have learned KISS not because you love it, but you would have
hopefully understand this because it has been burnt deep into your memory.

And that Not doing something, or inaction, is possibly the best action.

Seriously I would have thought developers only _start_ to become productive
post 30+. And 40+ is still in their prime. I understand people older don't
like working long hours. But working hours have absolutely nothing to do with
productivity. Especially in software development.

~~~
toyg
Long hours are not the only way to exploit the naivety of youth. In fact, more
likely than not and particularly in Europe, the critical element is usually
pay. Older guys will have a family and an expensive lifestyle to support, they
might have seen how much higher-ups take home, they might have been burnt in
the past... so they will typically have higher demands for compensation.

Also, the young are more likely to give the benefit of the doubt to corporate
bullshit. Case in point: my first reaction nowadays, any time an exec calls
for a "all-hands meeting" is, we're going to get shafted or even fired, the
company must be in trouble, someone high-up needs more cashflow to go in their
pockets and not ours... And maybe I'm right and maybe I'm wrong, but the point
is, I'm not going to drink any koolaid. Younger folks struggle to understand
this attitude, and I don't blame them, because they lack the necessary
experience and trauma.

------
JackFr
1) Don't give up.

2) Try boring industries banks, insurance, local govt.

3) Be excellent at something and pretty good at everything else.

4) OK to be opinionated about tech, but more important to be current. It may
be a straight Java shop, but you should know what Clojure and Kotlin are if
your a Java guy who's current.

5) Maintain your personal & professional networks.

6) Although it's very hard, try to remain upbeat. Enter every interview with
the attitude that the interviewer is a friend who wants you to succeed.

Good luck. Its hard but doable. (53 yo who just started a new role)

------
cmrdporcupine
Why do you say FAANGs aren't right? I'm 45, work for Google, and while the
median age is lower than me there are lots and lots of people my age or older
around, and many of them are newer hires. I don't particularly like working in
a BigCorp, and it's tough to feel like you're ever actually getting anything
_done_, but at least I'm not having some 28 year old 'manager' demanding I
work weekends and rewiting to use his/her favourite new web framework...

I personally would love to do something else now, and go back to having
programming being my passion/hobby instead, but I don't think I can walk away
from the money.

And yes, the age bias is real. I hadn't interviewed in 10 years but did so
recently and while I am not visually old, my resume certainly shows it, and I
could feel the bullsh*t from the younger developers in the interview.

~~~
nonines
Well I was judging by the results mostly. Got the cold shoulder deep in the
hiring process from a lot of them.

I totally agree with the sentiment about the tech trends. It's particularly
evident in anything frontend which is why I mostly focus on backends and
reliability.

~~~
wyclif
This is a good point that I'd like to see someone with experience expand on,
maybe in a blog post: why backend or DevOps is better for older devs than
front end.

My TL;DR version would be that front end, especially JS, is a fast moving
target. Backend dev is based more on time tested and reliable platforms that
incentivize solid framework and design choices.

~~~
nonines
Yes, backend seems to be a little slower paced. With the notable exception of
cloud-native platforms, especially kubernetes ecosystem where seems to be one
new framework every week.

------
throwaway_sun
One possible factor when interviewing an experienced developer: how will they
share their experience? Some people want to lecture, but many people do not
want to be lectured at.

I once worked with someone who explained to me every day -- and in great
detail -- all of the problems that my technical decisions would cause. He
wasn't wrong, but it was still a demoralizing experience.

But at least he was only criticizing my decisions, and not my right to make
them. In the same way that an older dev does not want to be perceived as
incapable of learning new things, a younger dev does not want to be perceived
as cavalier or irresponsible, and I have absolutely seen talented people
discounted solely because they haven't held a particular title for enough
years.

People are complicated, and we make a lot of assumptions about each other that
we don't want others to make about ourselves.

------
ssss11
How about applying to non tech industry companies... most big companies have
software engineers. Ive worked in shipping/logistics/warehousing, consumer
goods/manufacturing and legal all of which, in large companies, had older
software engineers. (These roles werent in SV - europe and apac)

------
popko
The hiring processes I personally experienced and have some meaning to me at
the same time, all favor these traits in general: 1\. Enthusiastic problem-
solving attitude usually in a specific platform or set of languages / tools
2\. Willingness to learn new things and to discover the unknown that a
candidate proactively executes by reading or trying new things 3\. Ability to
adapt technology-wise and ability to collaborate with different kind of
people, not necessarily just "the geeks" 4\. Willingness and ability to pass
or share knowledge in any area

Myself, I experienced it is harder for me to keep pace mainly with point 2.
and 3. because I already have learned a lot (full cup so to say) and having
less spare-time dedicated for such things (as I dedicate almost all my spare
time to family more than before).

There are also aspects directly favoring different candidates (not necessarily
correlating _only_ with age) I would like to emphasise, which unfortunately
are consciously or unconsciously considered: 5\. More skilled and experienced
people tend to ask for more money 6\. More experienced people tend to have
more hard-to-change habits which may be incompatible or hard to include into
the company culture / workflows / whatever else 7\. Cultural differences
between generations of people tend to create tensions

What I recommend to you is to embrace the above points (definitely not a full
list) and try to emphasise your best traits or think about how to sell them in
the context of the hiring process and at the same time try to mitigate the
problematic points.

In general, you have a big advantage you probably do not see now - life
experience and also tech experience. Younger candidates simply cannot compete
with your age. I think you need to find a way how to wire your hard-obtained
experience as "your output" that definitely has a value for any company.
Embrace those facts and build your self-confidence on them. It may be the case
that the job you apply for will be little different from what you experienced
up to now - more mentoring, more leading, more advisory work, more inter-
department communication (from/to tech language of the geeks) and so on.

And I sincerely wish you luck.

------
Cthulhu_
I'm 34 and I think I'm the youngest at my current employer; most of the
development team is well in their 40's to 60's. The domain is mobile
networking; these people used to work on things like SMS gateways and other
core technology throughout the history of mobile networks, since the first
technologies started to gain ground.

There's a lot to do still; right now 5G is on the roadmap, but we have to
provide support for 4 and 3G as well. There's a lot of domain and protocol
knowledge going on here.

Reliability yes, devops, not so much - our application is deployed as 'just'
some RPM packages on physical hardware.

~~~
chooseaname
I think a lot of HN lean more towards SV web dev type stuff. But there's a
world of software development out there beyond that. I work in the
transportation industry and there's a lot of cool things I get to work with
(my SO doesn't think it's cool that our office has antenna and sensors and
things that go beep randomly, though). Even being remote doesn't matter (I've
been remote for half a decade), they ship me the equipment I need.

~~~
theonething
That sounds so cool. I would love to learn more about that space. If you're
willing to connect, email's in my profile

------
yxhuvud
If you are in EU you should know enough to know that it is not a homogeneous
place. Where are you located?

Also, what do you have experience of? Different work places may have different
sources of people to employ.

------
Grustaf
I'm 42 in Scandinavia and have never felt that companies care about age, I've
been working both for tiny startups and a FAANG. Maybe you're in the wrong EU
country?

~~~
jeltz
Another anecdote: when my dad was laid off at 65 he managed to get multiple
offers without too much effort here in Sweden.

------
overqualified
Start your own business. Best thing to do ever. Life just starts at 45 :-)

------
Unklejoe
Come to the defense industry. If anything, the age bias is the other way
around, and contrary to popular belief, there are some very cool cutting edge
projects.

~~~
blaser-waffle
Yeah but you have to work for the military, with all of the ethical conundrums
that brings. Plus you usually need citizenship and a clearance.

------
S_A_P
I’m about your age and also didn’t get off the dev ops career path. I have
found, however that it’s not all bad news. I switched to contracting about 6
years ago and have had a better year every year since. Presumably you have a
lot of experience and expertise in some area and that is what you should
target if you want to go that route.

For me, I know myself well enough to realize that I like small disorganized
businesses that need help getting tooling and process in place. Once that
happens I lose a lot of interest quickly. That is often when get things done
mentality and trust the people you hire is replaced by process and politics.
Usually this takes 6-18 months and I know it’s time to move on. I also do
project work for enterprise software which has about the same life cycle.

The common thread of both types of work is that it’s temporary and I can bill
a pretty high hourly rate. I don’t have to deal with most employment bs and my
experience is generally respected and appreciated vs just being the old dev in
a team of fresh college grads. I don’t know what the contractor experience is
in the EU, but I’ve had colleagues do this in Germany and the UK so I know it
happens.

~~~
max_effort
Can I ask about how you made the switch to contracting? I also look at
contracting jobs but most ads only seem to want full-time staff.

~~~
S_A_P
Largely by a leap of faith. I had considered it for the 2 years prior, but it
didn't really happen until I set up the business and I started pitching myself
as an independent contractor. I do have a bit of a niche skill set that is
somewhat regional to energy hubs so having a network helped. Also there were
bumps along the road and a few times I had to tighten the belt as there wasn't
much work out there. Ads will usually only care about FTE, so you will have to
start with either a consulting company (and sleeve through their services
agreeement) or contact people in your network.

A few other tidbits I learned:

\- The client that wants you to cut your rate significantly is going to be
your worst and most difficult.

\- Don't adjust your rate significantly for any "extended contract". A vendor
I worked with didn't want to give me my normal rate after cutting it for a
long contract. You may not get a gig for being too expensive but when the
project is funded a difference of 30/hr means a lot more to you than it does
to the vendor/company paying you.

\- There is a lot of experience to be gained if you can find multiple part
time gigs. I had a lot of fun last year as I worked 3 clients about 10-15
hours per week. Lots of variety and it seems like your presence is appreciated
even more than just being the 6 month contractor.

\- Stay in touch with your network even if you just signed a 12 month
contract. Churn in business is real, so you need to know who can still hire
you and who you need to meet to get hired. Pipeline management is essential to
staying busy.

\- LinkedIn is pretty much useless for my level of contracting. I get tons of
inquiries and the second I mention my rate they either laugh or think that I'm
being difficult. Most of the companies that would contract you wont go through
LinkedIn to find you. I always lead with my rate for those interactions as it
generally ends with that and the contracting company will mostly leave me
alone for a while.

\- Ive had to learn to say "no" a lot more. Even to paying clients. Generally
I say it as something like "Anything is possible, but given time and budget
constraints you cant do this. We could do alternatives such as...."

\- Enjoy the gaps between employment. If you put away money and dont act like
you make your hourly rate you can be less than full time and not live hand to
mouth. Most of the work I do is always a project that is way too large in
scope for the time allotted. The stress is real(last year I billed 320 hours
in a month) so enjoy when you aren't working.

~~~
johnward
>"LinkedIn is pretty much useless for my level of contracting. I get tons of
inquiries and the second I mention my rate they either laugh or think that I'm
being difficult."

I've found this to be the norm for me also. I have highly specialized skills
and I know I'm top 5 in the world in my skills with this specific software. I
know this because I know basically everyone that does this type of work. When
these recruiting firms contacted me they always wanted like $60 an hour rate
when the company I used to work for would charge up to $300 an hour for my
time. I would always start at like $120/hour, which I feel is actually kind of
low for an enterprise software consulting, and they would either try to get me
to $60 or ghost me. I finally took a job as a full-time employee doing gov
consulting work at a pretty good salary for me.

------
nherment
If you want you can reach out to me by emailing the address present at the
bottom of this job offer: [https://www.portchain.com/careers/611/full-stack-
software-en...](https://www.portchain.com/careers/611/full-stack-software-
engineer/)

Nevermind the actual job post :) We're based in DK and looking for remote
employees.

~~~
andarleen
Not OP but I always found it odd that danish companies don’t post salaries in
job ads. Just an observation vs the UK where it is common practice. Wondering
if it’s one of the reasons, along with tax, salaries are so much lower in that
country. Either way very kind of you to help OP, I highly recommend denmark as
a country and culture.

~~~
cpach
Same thing in Sweden. Does US employers post the salaries in the ads?

~~~
lotsofpulp
Generally, the US does not. If they do for a higher paying position, I would
find it weird and/or a sign that they aren’t open to negotiation, which I
would take to mean they aren’t competitive (but that means you also have to be
desirable enough to have options).

------
parasight
Where in the EU are you? I'm 43, living in Berlin and working as a software
engineer. From what I can tell there is not much age bias here. Some German
companies I know have an average age beyond 45 in dev teams.

I even interviewed with a FAANG for a Berlin-based engineering position 2
years ago but canceled the process myself. Being over 40 did not seem to be an
issue at all.

~~~
nonines
I'm in Dublin but I'm looking to either move up to a FAANG (well that plan
went the Titanic way) and/or relocate to Germany. My impression too is that
German IT companies don't care so much about age but there are other handicaps
for me there (e.g. not speaking German).

Not much age bias in Berlin IT job market? Weird. I mostly see start-ups
there. That might be interesting.

------
godzillabrennus
If you were in Silicon Valley then I’d recommend
[https://www.careeractions.org/index.php](https://www.careeractions.org/index.php)

It’s from a group of successful business people who help older folks find work
at tech companies using insiders.

FYI - if you work at a tech company consider joining to help older but
qualified people find work.

------
mD5pPxMcS6fVWKE
Try large companies concerned about their public image and diversity
statistics. They would sometimes hire more color/gender/age challenged people.
At my last job before retirement, the manager explicitly told me, please don't
quit or that will leave us with only young people of a certain race :)

------
psmithsfhn
I got a job after 18 months of looking

I'm doing some bullshit specialty software i hate but that I happen to know
pretty well

The lesson there, to me, is think about specializing. Why?

Because...why not?

Outside of that

My advice to older folks looking for IT work is

It is not going to happen -- think about stocking shelves or anything you can

Once you come to terms with the situation, then you can get real about what is
really required to get a job

A miracle and tons of hard work of the type you don't want to do

I've seen lots of good advice on here that I think is pretty good

Like

Look younger Act younger Dress younger Be younger

Reach out on LinkedIn and other places -- it won't help but I think it is
important to check the boxes -- it's a pretty good way to quickly get to rock
bottom shame or shamelessness -- completely remove your ego from the equation

Even busted my ass for an AWS cert -- worthless

I've started losing weight and people are noticing

I figure each 10 lbs you lose takes off a year or two of age

What would I do if I got shitcanned tomorrow?

I would probably become an 'out' specialist in this particular software I know

I _hate_ this gd software

But a job is a job

There have also been sites that claimed to specialize in helping to hire older
workers

I figure it was just a scam but I would also check it out

I did occasionally get play from startups that I was actually interested in --
by writing authentic-ish notes of interest

But yeah nobody but the 1%ers are getting jobs in this market

And that is some weird mix of the geniuses, connected, etc.

Nobody else getting hired -- I don't care if you are 25 yo or 75 yo -- not
happening

~~~
nonines
>> But yeah nobody but the 1%ers are getting jobs in this market

You mean the current and looming crisis or the IT job market in general.

>> Even busted my ass for an AWS cert -- worthless

Thought about that too but then occurred to me that I'd also need to go for a
K8S one and perhaps one of the security ones and ... this never ends whilst I
might land in a job where I just need to know bash and basic python. (Also
these certs seem to offer little basic knowledge and a lot of shopping-list-
like details.

------
d33lio
I'm 25 and bald (not by choice by genetics haha - I don't really mind it at
this point). Oddly I think this has gotten me hired as a "diversity" hire,
even though I'm a white male. I've only had one experience at a "cool" media
startup in LA where I think I was passed up because I wasn't "cool" enough -
PM if you want the name of the startup. But LA sucks, so who cares!

I do worry about my looks as I get older in terms of work, but tbh I'm already
pretty average or ugly looking anyways. If anything, this post has given me
more energy to dump into my side-hustles in order to avoid having to deal with
this shit at all.

Anyone else who's bald at a young age get discriminated in interviews?

------
Do4oolu5
Sorry to hear that. It's indeed an unfair situation and nothing is wrong with
you, it's the industry that has a problem.

Have you considered building your own company? That's quite a change of
skills, but that's what I've seen most "older" developers do.

------
chooseaname
This is my perspective from the US. I think it depends on the industry. Two
industries I've been in that don't care what age you are; Transportation and
Healthcare. There are interesting jobs in both depending on what _your_
interests are. I'm near 50 now and nobody is ushering me out the door yet. I
do think that as you get older people expect more of you. You need to
understand the business and be able to provide solutions to real business
problems. You'll be in contact more often with upper management/CTO and you
need to be on point.

------
orwin
Devops and reliability will be usefull with the new DIH European initiative.
My advice is looking at companies that position themselves as DIH, as they are
often wiser than young startups.

~~~
sam_lowry_
Those EU-funded projects are really not the place to be for developers. I've
been in a few of them and I always ended up doing paperwork and sitting in
useless meetings. Before COVID-19 one would choose to work on such projects
because of travel opportunities. Why now?

------
tarsinge
I'm a bit younger and it may not be the only solution but the one that worked
for me was to stop positioning myself and competing for a pure SW dev role
altogether.

In my opinion one of the key strength you get with experience is perspective
on solving problem efficiently in a no bullshit way, and more importantly in
the business context. There is a limit on how much value a developer can bring
by working on assigned stories and tickets, and experience after a few years
plateau (and age discrimination start to kick in), but go higher in the chain
and suddenly you experience becomes very valuable. I don't know how it is at
FANNGs but even there are huge architecture decisions really made by young
developers?

Most companies burn millions on poorly driven software projects, with layers
of useless abstractions and accidental complexity. Execs love when you bring
them a working solution no matter how you did it, e.g. the dashboard they are
dreaming of all the while the official team and the consulting company that is
costing $$$ are stuck in their big-data/blockchain/whatever grandiose project.

So I would look either expert small shops, or consulting companies with a
career track for experts. Anecdotal but you can have a better time in a
consulting company as "the guru" moving from projects to projects every few
months than stuck in a mono product company for years.

------
ssdevda
Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon experience, you are not alone.

This isn't a plug, it is something I am passionate about. The company I co-
founded (restless.co.uk) is working really hard to change perception and age
discrimination across the entire employment market in the UK. Many of our
members have similar stories to yours, although we are largely aimed at 50+,
we hear the same from 45+ too. Sadly I don't think this is something that will
change overnight, changing societal opinions is never easy and takes
persistence, which we are committed to. We are engaging with our membership
base and listening to their experiences in order to better educate employers
on the importance of an age-diverse workforce and how to ensure that's
happening for them. We are making an impact but as you have seen there is a
long way to go!

I know that doesn't help you right now, I'm sorry. However, we do write a lot
of content in this space that may help, restless.co.uk/career-advice/. We're
always keen to hear feedback, so drop us an email if you have any.
Incidentally, I am the CTO at Rest Less, and my first hire was a 58-year-old
software engineer so I hope that gives you a boost. Although we're not looking
for someone in your specific area of expertise at the moment I'd be interested
in having a conversation, please reach out if that's something you'd be
interested in doing.

Personally, and this is obviously my own opinion, I don't think you should be
looking to change career if it's something you enjoy.

Best of luck.

------
xavk
I'm one of the founders of [https://otta.com](https://otta.com) \- we're
specifically focused on helping people find exciting roles at fast growing
tech companies in London (but we don't include FAANGs).

Anecdotally, DevOps and Reliability is definitely a space where experience is
valued and, although there might be the assumption that many of these startups
drink the youth cool-aid, I think you might be pleasantly surprised.

------
mcv
My impression has always been that the EU is much less ageist about this than
Silicon Valley. I have no problem finding anything, and I'm 46. My brother is
48 and has recently switched jobs a few times after being with the same
employer for 25 years.

Of course it helps if you have more experience than a young developer, and you
know how to apply that experience. And you should always stay up to date with
new developments. Although there are tons of companies still working with
older systems.

Also, developer salaries in the EU are often terrible. My income has gone up
quite a lot since I became a freelancer. I'm currently considering becoming an
employee of a client (because I want to continue working on the project and
they have rules about how long they can hire a freelancer), but I'm
encountering a lot of resistance negotiating the pay I think I'm worth.

My approach as a freelancer has been very simple: My CV is on Linkedin, and
recruiters find me there.

In the distant past when I had regular jobs, I tended to find them mostly
through Monster and CVBank (Netherland). Or sometimes a recruiter; Linkedin is
still useful.

------
gwbas1c
I'm 39: I recently interviewed at a FAANG and almost every engineer who I
interviewed with was visibly older than me. I was afraid that I was _too_
_young_ for the job!

Ironically, I've had age discrimination go the other way. In my early 30s I
looked like I was in my mid-20s, and I had to push for pay in line with my
experience. I still get carded when I buy beer.

------
crypt1d
Send me your CV along with a desired rate (my email is in my profile).

I can't guarantee anything but we do occasional have contractual work where
age doesn't really matter (in my opinion), its all about the attitude and
getting the job done. I would even consider your age an asset as you have
field experience that a lot of people dont.

------
dvtrn
In this thread: an uncomfortable amount of straight up denial right in the
faces of people expressing the affects they've felt of age discrimination.
What do the deniers get from denying any experience other than their own
experience as 'untrue' or 'doesn't happen', I wonder.

------
peterbozso
Have you considered freelance consulting? If you are good, nobody will care
about your age, since they are not bringing you in to be truly part of their
team, but to solve a hard problem they cannot on their own. Of course it
doesn't fit everybody, but still an option.

------
alkonaut
I keep getting more and more recruiter spam the older I get (41). This
probably relates to e.g. how many linkedin contacts have etc, but I make a
point of not accepting invitations by people I don't know such as recruiters.

If you are interviewing and they think 45 is "too old" then there is a risk
that everyone there is 30 or younger so you might not want to work there
anyway (I wouldn't).

If you find a company that's at least 30 years old, and has an average
retention of over 10 years - then that company is probably a nice place to
work, and has old people too (because even 30year olds are 40 once they worked
there 10 yearrs).

------
thaumasiotes
Huh. What happened to oldgeekjobs.com? ("Domain currently for sale")

~~~
tinodotim
thought I was the only one remembering it ->
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12506232](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12506232)

surprised nobody bought it for that price (or potentially even less).

------
janbernhart
This is a very difficult topic. Since discriminating on age is illegal in most
countries, there aren't (much) sites/platforms where age is an actual explicit
factor. Generally speaking, startups/scaleups are more inclined to hire
younger folks. Older companies are more open to hire older engineers.

The bypass might be, looking for companies that have a lot of engineers with
15+ years of experience. You can do so with paid LinkedIn accounts. I'm happy
to help with some specific searches if you don't have a paid LinkedIn account
yourself.

~~~
OJFord
You might be right that's why they don't exist, but if so I'm not sure it's
well-founded. The same legislation prevents discriminating on gender, but
there's no problem (that I'm aware of, and there seem to be plenty of them)
with women-specific recruitment/careers things.

You can't use age (resp. gender) as a factor in your decision making (bloody
difficult to prove one way or the other most of the time I imagine) but that
doesn't mean you can't run jobs4oldies.com or Women's Careers Day with Special
Guest Sheryl McHighflyer.

That doesn't mean you _should_ , but I'm pretty sure it's not illegal (in the
UK, or generally against the spirit of similar legislation). IANAL.

~~~
janbernhart
It's indeed not illegal to do so. I'm just trying to explain why most job
boards/ platforms don't register/work with age. Why there are a lot of
initiatives around woman in tech and not oldies in tech? I'm afraid the answer
is; there's a lot of karmapoints to be won first the former, while the latter
will hurt your image/brand as the next best thing where magic happens.

(Not saying I agree with this or I like it, it's just what I see).

------
craftinator
Interestingly, I've been hitting the age bias from the other end. I mostly
work with factories and NDT companies, retrofitting old CNC systems. I have a
hard time getting work at certain types of companies because they think that I
"look too young" to be experienced enough to work with their systems; granted,
I do look pretty young for my age.

It's kind of funny to hear it coming from the other side, but I imagine at a
lot of pure-software companies, the age biased is reversed from what I've
experienced.

------
mathattack
Look for bosses 40 and over who will appreciate the experience.

------
groby_b
Where does your idea come from that FAANGs aren't right?

I'm 50, doing fine at a FAANG. My team has a good chunk of 40+ people on it as
well. I see a good number of 40+ people on other teams, too. I get regular
pings from other FAANGs about recruiting.

So, def. try for FAANGs. Just invest a couple of weeks into prepping for the
interview process. Yes, it's stupid, but "behold my algorithmic chops" is what
they want to see, so you cram algorithmic chops.

------
taffronaut
I changed jobs when I was over 50 and it was certainly tough. Hiring via the
front door process didn't work for me. My best performances were typified by
(i) the recruiter would push me as a good fit for a difficult-to-fill (ugly
even) role because I had maturity and gravitas as well as technical skills,
(ii) the shop had grey heads/beards already, (iii) I was known and vouched for
by someone already on the inside.

------
yters
What about self identifying as a 20 year old?

Not entirely facetious, I saw someone in Europe took such a case to court, so
he could self indentify as younger on dating apps.

------
wbsun
Hmm, DevOps+Reliability experience, I am surprised Google is the wrong door.
Did you try SRE role at Google London or Zurich office? I can help forward the
resume if you'd give G a chance. Contact me at <my HN username> AT google.com.

Edit: can't represent all Googlers but people I know and have worked with
(including the SREs in EU offices) don't give a sh*t on how fancy/normal/bad
you look or wear.

------
2rsf
Another anecdotal case here, I am based in Sweden and around your age, I
didn't have any problem finding new jobs in the last years.

Same for many of my colleagues around the same age when our local office was
closed.

I mainly used Linkedin and a few connections, but i doubt if it matters.

The only exception I have seen is for cookie cutter type of developers, it is
easy to prefer young unmarried ones if they have the exact same qualifications
as you.

------
znpy
You might be better off applying to companies directly through linkedin.

I've seen many positions that require seniority and had many colleagues even
older than you.

~~~
jph98
In my experience of senior positions, they're typically ignored if you apply
through Linkedin. You're better off going direct with a nice cover letter.

~~~
dominotw
> a nice cover letter.

Do people seriously read cover letters. I've often debated if its worth the
time ivestment.

~~~
theonething
I used to always write custom cover letters to companies I was interested in
and got responses often. This time, I got lazy and started submitting
applications with resume only. The response rate stayed about the same. Cover
letters don't really matter for me

~~~
znpy
I see cover letters as the the same as CVs/résumés: it can be a vector of
either bs or interesting content.

I wouldn't write a cover letter unless the company explicitly asks me to, or
unless I can add additional information that wouldn't be fit into the CV. For
example, when I applied to Digital Ocean my cover letter was the correct place
(in my opinion) to say that I've been a customer if theirs since 2014.

For the record, they were interested until I said I would have liked to work
remotely (since they bragged extensively about remote work on their careers
webpage).

------
sys_64738
A lot of startups want just young people as they don't have families, don't
know any better, and will burn out after a few years. Do you really want to
work there?

Same with an inherently young demographic at a company. My last place I was
one of the older ones in a very young crowd who liked to hit the bars after
work. Not my scene any more. I prefer to be the younger person in an older
work environment.

------
DelaneyM
Independent of age, there are a number of areas in tech which are heavily
biased towards experience and perspective (usually correlated with age),
particularly in SRE/DevOps.

I know we're struggling to find folks in EU with that kind of background - DM
me for the specific positions, or consider areas where your experience is a
tremendous asset.

------
mnishizawa
Not saying this is the case for you, but a lot of being older and more
experienced is also the fact that you are usually more expensive. The young
up-and-comers are cheaper, often come with more bluster but are also less
jaded... for lack of a better word. People like to feel like they are coming
up with something new. They don't like the old guy in the corner saying, "Oh,
that's just like X, I was doing that 30 years ago". Also, many smaller
companies, especially startups, bias toward action. They like seeing people
produce code. Experienced developers usually like to make smaller changes that
don't produce a lot of code and sometimes end up deleting more code than you
add. I finish just as many tasks/cards as anyone else, but my LoC is not even
close to my younger peers. So when I have a big number + I don't have a large,
quantifiable amount of code being produced + I tend to sound "pessimistic"
even though I say something isn't going to work based upon experience... I can
understand why that would be hard to justify. Even though the experience can
prevent them from making very costly mistakes that other people have already
failed at.

~~~
ikeyany
Not only are younger people cheaper ("We can't pay your bonus with money, but
we can pay you in warm labels like _rockstar_ and _ninja_."), they make less
noise when you squeeze them.

If you pull a fast one on a younger person ("Can you come in this weekend? It
will only be a temporary thing."), they are more likely to believe you.

~~~
blaser-waffle
They also don't have any excuses in the way that kids / pets / aging relatives
push older workers to get out of the office.

It's 5pm and I need to pick my kids up from practice -- so I'm out.

~~~
ikeyany
Even then, older people are less inclined to need an excuse to go home and do
other things like hobbies; they're more likely to value work-life balance in
general.

------
blockschreck
Ever thought about a management consulting company with a heavey it-focus?
target audience: banks, insurance companies.

------
tharne
I work in the financial services industry (insurance), and so far I've found
it to be very friendly to older developers. Sure, it's not the sexiest work,
but you're working on real products that people want or need.

I would recommend looking at insurance companies, banks and other financial
institutions.

------
miblon
I am 49, living in the Netherlands working as a self employed devops. Keep
trying. Solid companies will value your seniority. But you also need to remain
flexible and invest in much needed technology knowledge. Don't give up, be
confident that you have what it takes. Radiate your confidence.

------
slmkbh
In my company (DK Based), the youngest SW dev(not based in India) is 38, so
the companies are out there. I'm one of the youngest HW engineers at 35. My
guess is that we average close to 50 in R&D. Granted, we are in Medical
Devices, so young gun speed is not our thing, but still.

------
saadalem
A marketplace for retired professionals to post their resume and skillset for
part time work.

------
gldev3
This is something im very afraid of, i feel like as i get older my
oportunities of finding new places gets shorter and shorter, how do you people
deal with this?

Personally i have had the chance of working with older devs (50+) and it was
awesome.

------
lowbloodsugar
Interviewed at Amazon three times before getting hired. Last time I was older
than you. Got into a great team, in an incredibly important part of AWS.

You can apply every six months. Thing of each attempt as an opportunity to
learn.

~~~
nonines
TBH I kind-of self sabotaged my Amazon interviews as I was terrified by what I
was reading about working conditions there in Glassdoor. Half of my brain was
pulling me out the whole time.

------
racl101
It's times like this I'm glad I have an oily face. I'm 38 years old but people
think I'm 24. I guess an oily face helps keeps wrinkles at bay.

But also, let's not forget how important it is to get sleep.

------
ofcrpls
Look at Telcos/Semiconductor/Aeronautical industries if that's an option. They
are notoriously ageist in the opposite direction and value experience far more
than tech in general.

~~~
non-entity
On the other hand, dont they strongly value that experience from within the
same domain?

------
znepj
It's horrifying how fast the transition is between too young and too old. :(

40 years' IT experience and I don't even get a _reply_ , let alone an
interview.

------
remote_phone
I’m almost 50. I haven’t stopped getting calls from companies across the
board. I’m not worried as long as I keep up my skills and can be useful to the
company that I talk to.

------
metalforever
I work at a healthcare nonprofit as a developer and we have a lot of
developers in their 40s and 50s. I would suggest less trendy places and more
“get stuff done” places.

------
grewil2
Have you tried applying for a position in a public sector IT-department? The
public sector should not age-discriminate, at least in theory.

------
adamqureshi
Im working on this: [https://tryoldster.com](https://tryoldster.com)

------
Tade0
I suggest Roche or Pharmaceutical companies in general.

During my time in Roche (through a consultancy) at 29 I was one of the
youngest on board.

------
lproven
Look to the East.

I applied for some 3¾ _thousand_ jobs between 2009 (age 42) and 2013. I
averaged less than one interview per year and worked 2 months full-time in
that period.

In 2014 I landed a role in the Czech Republic and have only voluntarily been
out of work since. I am nearing the end of a 3 year contract, my 5th role over
here.

The former Communist bloc seems to have far less ageism than in the West.
Rates of pay are lower -- I make maybe ½ what in theory this kind of role
would pay in London. On the other hand, the cost of living is about ¼ so it is
very much worth it.

------
HorizonXP
I can’t find your contact info in your profile, but I am looking for DevOps
help right now. We should chat.

------
mr-developer
Reminds me of Creed from Office (US) coloring his hair black with printer ink
to look young !

------
eafkuor
You could try Atlassian, even though in the EU they only have an office in
Amsterdam

------
dustingetz
specifically what types of companies are you applying to e.g. what size,
industry?

------
mping
Send me an email, I know a nice company that may be recruiting. Remote
friendly.

------
xtracto
And yet here I am trying to find an experienced Sr DevOps engineer in
Mexico...

------
ttoinou
What about freelancing ? It'll be more flexible

------
brianmcc
Where in EU, and are you up for perhaps moving?

~~~
nonines
I'm currently in Ireland. Was looking to move to Germany but I interviewed in
Ire quite a bit as well.

~~~
dirtydroog
I'm Irish but have been living in London for 15 years. I think about moving
back occasionally but I fear about it being 'too small', and I don't
particularly want to live in Dublin.

I just turned 39 and this scenario is already on my mind.

------
BossingAround
Give me your email or let me know how I can contact you, we can think of
something.

------
jason0597
How about upgrading to management with your many years of experience?

~~~
loopbit
Management and engineering are two different careers, so I wouldn't call it
"upgrading".

Having the technical chops definitely helps as a manager. And knowing what the
managers expect and be able to talk their language helps as an engineer. If
you reach certain level its easy to jump between them. But they require a
different set of skills and the work is different.

If you like it, there are a lot of rewards. If you don't, it can be soul-
sucking.

------
GoToRO
Try automotive.

------
greys
tnx for recommendation guys

------
andarleen
What country are you in? Afaik in the UK you shouldnt have issues. When I was
a head of dev I personally NEVER discriminated based on age (or other reasons
such as race, gender, region, etc for that matter), and neither have others i
know nor have i heard people raising this issue.

~~~
dominotw
unconscious bias is by definition unconscious.

------
onion2k
_They won 't spit it out directly of course but people talk and what they say
is that I need to be stellar or young to be hired. Companies won't invest in
me the slightest bit, so the moment I miss a question in the long interview
process I'm out of the door without second thought._

You're saying is that you're not a good fit _technically_ and would need some
investment in terms of either time or training, and companies are choosing not
to go with that option. Why is that ageism?

~~~
brooklyn_ashey
It is ageism when a company _would_ hire a 25 year old with the same skill set
but would’t hire the 45 year old in those circumstances (or insert anyone in a
protected class). The point is, they arehappy to invest in young ppl but not
so-called “older” ones. The only way around this is collective action that
includes the young- other industries have unionized and sued again and again w
class actions to protect themselves and their futures. It’s how discrimination
became “illegal”

~~~
onion2k
_The point is, they arehappy to invest in young ppl but not so-called “older”
ones._

The OP didn't say that they are. He only said they're not willing to invest in
him. Based on the limited data in what was posted companies aren't hiring him
for roles he isn't qualified for, and they are hiring younger people. That's
his evidence for ageism. Maybe he's right. Maybe the younger people just don't
need that investment.

The point here is that the OP _has literally said he 's being rejected for
roles he can't do_. That changes what advice he should be getting
considerably. He's trying to fix the problem he wants (being discriminated
against) instead of the problem he has (applying for roles he's not going to
get).

I have no doubt ageism is a huge problem. I'm 43, and I've experienced it. One
company was quite open that I was rejected because I wouldn't be a good fit
culturally despite being the most experienced candidate. I don't think that's
the case here though.

~~~
nonines
That is not what I said. That is what you understood.

In any case my experience up to now is being rejected with no good reasons (at
least IMO) relatively far in the game. If you are looking for reasons to
reject someone it is easy to find them as you surely know.

From other sources I learned that my (older) age is working against me in this
game. How much so I do not know. Thus my questions.

