
Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice? - nextstep40plus
So many recruiters are looking for senior developers like me to join their early stage team and to do development and assist junior devs via knowledge sharing.<p>But I don&#x27;t want to exhaust myself helping other people. I want to do things for myself and for a client. I would prefer to get a more rewarding position:<p>* Not in an open office
* Possibility to work from home
* Android + Spring Boot
* Not so many meetings
* No incompetent managers who induce stress to people
* Colleagues who are calm and quiet but enough sociable to perhaps grab an occasional beer and have a nice chat<p>Do these kinds of jobs exist? Do you suggest I go solo and take on development jobs myself? I think part of the problem is that many companies around expect the workplace to have open office and so on and many cannot provide me with a work environment I can thrive in.<p>I&#x27;m 40 years old without any children and would like to be able to not be stressed and work overtime and solve hard technical problems and move towards a more rewarding job where it&#x27;s not so stressful but interesting creatively and my work is valued so that I can balance well with my life.<p>Do you understand my question? I don&#x27;t want to take on roles that people want me to do but find jobs (by your insightful ideas) that suit me better.
Thank  you!
======
oppositelock
I'm in my mid forties and I've been working for pay in tech since '96, so this
puts me in a similar demographic like yours.

I think you're being too picky and greatly limiting your job choices. I miss
the days of private offices, but those days are over in any moderately cutting
edge companies. You'll find offices in Cisco, Juniper and Oracle, you'll find
open seating at Google, Facebook, and startups. WFH friendly companies
generally expect you to become productive before they're ok with fill time
WFH. As a senior engineer, you are expected to mentor junior engineers and
participate in broad design and architecture, that's much harder to do from
home. Unlike you, I have kids, which puts severe constraints on my time, and I
find myself WFH quite a bit, but my company is ok with it, since I'm
productive. Open offices suck, I agree, but find a coping mechanism - for me
it's a noise canceling headset, a pile of music on my phone, and a very
careful arrangement of whiteboards to pretend I have some privacy. I'm not
doing anything strange at work, just the activity around me is distracting.
It's sad, but for the time being, private offices are extinct.

As a senior engineer, you also spend more time in meetings - precisely because
that's how you disseminate knowledge to other people in a corporate
environment.

If you've been working for a while, you probably have deep expertise in some
area, find companies which need that and are willing to pay for it. No strange
startups with low salary and high equity, etc. I don't know about you, but
over my career, I've made hundreds of professional connections. It's difficult
to walk in the front door with grey hair for a fair interview, since in our
field, people view us older folks as has-beens. Call in those former
connections.

Anyhow, good luck! Try not to get stuck being too curmudgeonly.

~~~
kalecserk
Hello!

I am currently 36, working for pay as a software developer since 1999, father
of three -- and I would like to reiterate oppositelock's comment: "you're
being too picky"

I totally understand your frustration with all this "helping other people"
buzz but... Ultimately this is the job to be done by you right now :)

About the entire open-office culture, since I am a manager I have been granted
a private office - which I have immediately converted into a shared quiet
space to work for whoever might need it. I actually _prefer_ to be where
things get done.

I really think the problem lies in the engineering culture and maturity of the
teams you had the chance to work with. Keep on looking!

Best,

~~~
person_of_color
You didnt go to college?

~~~
allworknoplay
Plenty of talented software engineers didn't go to college. I've got a few
close friends who fall into this category. I went to college for something
entirely unrelated and self-taught with side projects years after. Not sure
where you are, but I've found the industry in the US (my experience is mostly
NYC/SF specifically) incredibly receptive to people who are very smart,
hardworking, and humble regardless of pedigree.

Curious what your experience is that makes you skeptical.

------
Yenderman
When I was 30, people just looked at me and assumed I was a competent software
engineer because I looked exactly like a very senior software engineer, and I
presented myself in that way. But I was very junior, having made a recent
career change. Yet they paid me like a prince, and I rose so rapidly through
the ranks that I became an executive.

Now I'm 50, and my company folded and I went to the curb, and am looking for a
new job. Now I don't look like that bright young engineer. I look like an old
has-been who is stuck in a rut and stuck in my ways. Except I'm not. I'm
highly experienced, an innovator, get along great with many kinds of people
and can contribute at all levels of an org, from production support to
development to architecture to the boardroom.

But the first question I get asked on interviews is "Are you technical?"

My over-40 career advice for you is to remember what they do to engineers that
are over 40.

~~~
jensv
That's insanity. What is wrong with this industry????

~~~
toomuchtodo
Being ageist cost nothing and is hard to prove.

~~~
noname120
Of course it does cost something. If there is unjustified ageism, then the
market value of older people is _lower_ than it should be. In this case,
hiring a younger person will cost you more if adjusted for output.

------
rdiddly
A - private office

B - WFH

C - Android

D - few meetings

E - good management

F - mellow, friendly (probably older) colleagues

G - no training of underlings

H - low stress

I - interesting work

Independent contracting/consulting satisfies A and B; some subset satisfies C;
D it likely fails; E is orthogonal or maybe slightly negatively correlated
(some portion of those who hire consultants, have to do so _because_ they're
bad managers); F doubtful; G yes (just don't sign a scope-of-work that
includes it); H probably not, unless you're itching to wear more hats
including, especially, sales; I yes

Working at any of the big trendy companies: A no way; B maybe; C sure; D no; E
orthogonal/tossup; F no; G probably unavoidable; H doubtful; I maybe

Working at a startup: A no way; B maybe; C sure; D likely; E tossup; F no; G
no; H no; I maybe

Working at a boring, big, established company that surfs on a river of money:
A possible but receding; B possible; C sure, for some subset; D you're out of
luck; E, as always, a tossup (picking up a pattern?); F more likely; G
possible but it depends; H yes; I probably not, but it depends more on you and
what you find interesting.

Anybody else think of any work paradigms that satisfy more of these
conditions?

~~~
username3
Reading variables is hard.

~~~
SomewhatLikely
I think it's a learned skill. Reading academic papers is impossible without
it. Perhaps a happy medium would be two or three letter acronyms.

~~~
qorrect
And so much of reading variables is about context.

------
jvagner
The bigger companies I worked for in the Bay Area were more like this than the
smaller.

As a late 40-something who started his own marketing & technology agency to
get out of the "working for others and their bad boss habits" conundrum, the
one thing I can strongly recommend is that you have to interview companies as
carefully as they interview you.

I've directly hired more than 100 people in my career, and it was always
notable to me how many people show up for an interview, answer questions, ask
just a few, and then accept a position in a company without any qualifying
process of their own. People take jobs that are offered to them, more or less.

~~~
illumin8
I'm a 44 year old senior engineer, and the one thing I've noticed is that bad
managers are almost universal in technology. I've had about 20 managers in my
career and I can count only 2-3 that I would consider great managers, the rest
ranged from mediocre to incredibly incompetent.

This, to me, is the #1 reason I gain much more satisfaction from doing
consulting work on the side: I'm my own manager, and I can make decisions that
are right for the customer, instead of getting told by an incompetent manager
that he knows better than I do, which leads to bad outcomes for myself and the
client.

I'm much more selective as well, and no longer tolerate bad leadership. This
is the biggest challenge with finding the right job. I've discovered that
almost 90% of your job satisfaction depends on having a good manager. You can
actually enjoy a job that doesn't pay as well, and doesn't have as much
meaningful work, if you have a great manager, because they can actually help
you to make the work meaningful in the right context.

~~~
wisam
Why do think is the reason that most managers in technology are bad? I tend to
think of management as abstraction. A mid-level manager provides an
abstraction of the work for high-level management and at the same time is
provided an abstraction of the work by the low-level managers or engineers.
Assuming that my understanding is right, are these abstractions leaky? is the
lack of technical knowledge the reason why managers are bad?

~~~
Joeri
The thing with managers is that they have to understand the work being done
well enough to make decisions about direction and resource allocation, while
also having tons of people skills. In tech you either get a manager who
doesn't have a technical background and just doesn't understand the thing
they're managing, or you get someone with a technical background who
stereotypically doesn't have the necessary people skills to manage well (it's
a stereotype, but I find it to also be true, including about myself).

Part of it is also that as a programmer you learn to micromanage what the
computer is doing, to be very precise with your instructions so the program
won't fail. When managing people for the first time the instinct is to do the
same: give very precise instructions even an idiot could follow. That's
exactly the wrong approach to manage effectively (except for a few rare
circumstances). That's why programmers tend to make bad managers who
micromanage, they've been trained wrong by their prior work.

~~~
tomp
AFAIK many hospitals have a "MBA manager" and a "doctor manager" \- I don't
know exactly how they relate to one another (who's the "boss boss"), but the
idea is that they each bring their part of superior skills to the table.

Would the same idea work for IT? Or, another idea would be, to take a look at
how _traditional_ (non-IT) engineering companies work (although the main
difference between both medicine and engineering, and IT is that the former
are both very _high-risk_ industries that move much slower than IT).

~~~
goliatone
Ive worked at places with a Product Manager and Engineering Manager, at the
end of the day after adjusting for company “culture”, product etc what makes a
difference is the individual

------
matt_the_bass
I think these jobs exist. Mine does. We’re a small company that makes high
value physical items with a large software component. We encourage remote
working but not remote only. I know this is not a popular view on HN, but I
think there is huge value with regular irl interaction. It doesn’t need to be
every day, but it does need to be regular. We also offer mostly single person
offices (interns are currently 2 per room). We also have a culture of
opensuggestions and critique regardless of official positions. I’ve always
worked this way so maybe it is survivor bias. I fully admit I could make more
money elsewhere but that is not my primary success metric. I already make more
money that most in my area (though it is easy to believe I don’t based on some
of the material things I see around my general location).

My only concern hiring older engineers is that they are stuck in a rut. But
I’m my area most senior devs work for huge defense contractors. So maybe that
is more an environmental factor.

~~~
wai1234
"My only concern hiring older engineers is that they are stuck in a rut."

Wow, better check that bias.

~~~
mehh
It is really quite simple to assess if someone is 'in a rut', even more so
when they have more experience, as it becomes more obvious. Even with mid-
career developers I check for this.

So "My only concern hiring older engineers is that they are stuck in a rut."
doesn't come across well, anyone reading this should be very clear that to
adopt that thinking when interviewing would be very lazy on your part!

Not trying to bash you personally, and I suspect you just didn't express what
you meant so well :)

~~~
matt_the_bass
Yes. Thanks. Please see my other replies for clarification.

------
throwaway172852
Speaking as someone who is a 40+ IC Eng at one of the FAANG companies (and
previously worked for another) let me give you some advice:

\- First, at the risk of being blunt, you come across as someone who needs to
get off their high horse with your list of "demands".

Take the open office. This is the norm. IME this has always been manageable
with headphones. YMMV.

\- The biggest issue is not wanting to exhaust yourself helping others.
Helping others is about your best value add. What's more, helping people is a
pretty good way of earning the gratitude of your colleagues.

Some general thoughts on working as a 40+ IC in these companies. Again YMMV:

\- I don't tell people my age. Nor do I allow people to infer it by, say,
mentioning when I graduated college or make references that would otherwise
indicate my age. Now I don't look 25 but do people assume I'm old looking in
my 30s or in my 40s? I have no idea. I think it's in my best interest not to
find out.

\- Ageism is very real and it's subtle. I've had directors tell me "I like new
grads so I can mold them" without realizing that's brazen ageism.

\- Culture fit is another common proxy for ageism. You can say that
millennials will naturally gravitate to those of similar age or background.
Grads from one college will tend to prefer grads from the same college. Common
experience is one reason for this but another is people can overvalue the
social proof of, say, being an MIT or Stanford alum as that by extension
increases their own value.

Culture fit is problematic on many fronts and tends to exclude those of
nonstandard backgrounds for which age is but one factor.

\- With or without justification you will have to alleviate the concern that
you aren't an old dog who can't learn new tricks. Some older workers will
expect deference based on age (as a proxy for seniority/experience) but it's
the nature of the beast that in FAANG companies you may end up reporting to
some wunderkind who is 2-3 years out of college and may be 20+ years younger
than you. If you get hung up on that you're going to have a bad time.

\- Likewise older workers will have to fight the stereotype that you'll be
less committed because of other responsibilities (typically meaning family).
The way you're wording things here does you no favors because it can come
across as entitled and inflexible.

~~~
loco5niner
> Take the open office. This is the norm. IME this has always been manageable
> with headphones. YMMV.

As someone who has developed tinnitus from this, I disagree.

------
GlenTheMachine
Some government jobs fulfill many of your requirements. Not all, to be sure,
but some.

I am a roboticist at a government research lab. It's a good gig. The nice
things about it are steady work hours (I'm not actually legally allowed to
charge more than 40 hours a week, and none of my bosses over the years has
ever pressured me to work unpaid overtime). No open offices, anyone with
seniority has an actual office with a door. Everyone else gets a fairly decent
cubicle. Many (not all) government jobs let you telecommute, at least part of
the time. Colleagues tend to be competent and not stress-inducing.

We admittedly do have more meetings than I'd prefer, but I'm currently working
on a rather large program, 200+ engineers, and I'm sort of the scientific
representative to program management so it's not surprising. There have been
times when I had one meeting a week or fewer.

------
codingdave
Those types of jobs exist, but usually not with young companies. Look for
older, established companies that either have high internal tech needs, or are
a tech-based business.

I had 2 jobs that matched your description, each of which lasted 5 years - one
was internal software development for a large energy company. The other was
working for a small SaaS shop that had been around for more than 10 years.

On the flip side, the least satisfying jobs I've had were open-office startups
with inexperienced managers and CEOs. I didn't last a year at the three of
those I've done, and I think I've finally learned my lesson to never try
again.

To be clear, there is a place in this industry for young startups led by
ambitious but inexperienced leadership teams. I think positively of the people
from those places and wish them well... I just agree that those of us who have
been around this block for more than a couple decades don't fit well in such
places.

------
ydnaclementine
My first job out of school was with a consulting company (think
SapientRazorfish, Accenture, Deloitte). What I found interesting is the vast
majority of my colleagues were 'older' (35-40+), and these positions are
primarily remote WFH. Consultancies love more experienced developers because
they know they'll get the work done. The pay is definitely above average too.

Consulting can sometimes lead to more hours depending on stage of project (so
be strict on work/life balance) and there might be a lot of travel depending
on the project/client. But the clients will be brands you know and the project
will be technically interesting and worth millions of dollars. I figure if I
ever get tired of the startup game when older, I'll move back into that space.

~~~
sailfast
Perhaps, but you are almost guaranteed a terrible manager and many, many
meetings in this scenario.

------
ttarabula
The sentiments in this thread are surely one of the major driving factors
behind techies being some of the most enthusiastic in the FIRE movement
(financial independence, retire early). I often wonder why true lifelong
career planning isn't part of formal secondary education programs. I've
noticed a trend where especially in the software dev world, the reality seems
to hit people like a ton of bricks in their mid to late thirties, seemingly
with very little reflection on the likely paths earlier on, and FIRE seems
like it is sometimes as much about saving face as it is about career and
financial planning. Is it part of our inward nature spending much of our time
trying to get in to a flow state to solve difficult problems that causes us to
push away the messy and more difficult, human cantered, and politically loaded
long term career development stuff in those early career years until that
avoidance bites back?

------
davidxc
Consider the defense industry / government contractors. I'm not sure what kind
of salary you're looking for, but the defense industry / gov contractors pay
fairly well (I'd guess ~150k ish for someone with your background) and checks
most of your requirements.

------
somid3
If you can code in Java, optionally using the Play Framework, ebeans, etc. I
can hire you at $100k per year as a contractor. Email me at omid at colibrin
dot com —- I don’t care about your age.

------
maxxxxx
There are a lot of small, specialized, stable companies that fit your
description. The challenge will be to find these companies and get hired.
Usually their turnover is pretty low and they don't grow much so there is not
much hiring going on.

~~~
nextstep40plus
This is so true and I will not jump ship until this kind of job shows up. I
suffer from IBS which might be stress induced so a changed work lifestyle is
not just a luxury request for me. I want to focus and work in a relaxed
customer focused remote position.

~~~
dev1n
Related to IBS, IBD, etc., I've found this subreddit [1] to be super helpful
(not for me but for someone I know)

[1]:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/CrohnsDisease/](https://www.reddit.com/r/CrohnsDisease/)

------
vaibkv
Sure, we have a team just like you mentioned. Quiet, no stupid gossips, etc.
Focused on work and individual contribution. Very less to almost no meetings
for developers. We always for look for creatively solving the problems, rather
than preferring manual labor intensive solutions. And the team is small. But
it's not Android related. We are big data development and mostly use Scala.
Email me at panghal.vaibhav@gmail.com if you want to apply. We are Austin,
texas based and domain is healthcare.

------
avip
I'd hesitate to "go solo" if what you'd like to do is _Android + Spring Boot_.
Because it's a cold, cold world of a race to bottom out there. I have fiverrs
doing apps for me for 5$/h and, contrary to what may be a common belief, they
are _not_ x10 worse than me. They are almost as good, and once they become
fully on par they start asking 15-20$/h - which is insanely low. Only do that
on top of some baseline employment that keeps you going.

------
utopkara
Given your requirements, I would suggest a consultant/contract developer
position for large/established companies building enterprise solutions. Large,
because they will have challenging business problems that they cannot deliver
through their normal project development process. Enterprise solutions,
because the problems will be better defined and your experience will be better
appreciated.

------
liangzan
Well I'm the founder of a startup, funded, and actively hiring. I'm considered
old myself(late thirties), so I see the value of experience.

Going through the variables.

A - no. B - no. I tried that in my previous company, it won't work unless
everybody buys in. C - no. D - yes. E - toss up. The average age of the
management is in the late 30s, the average age of the whole team is in the
mid-late thirties. No twenty plus young kids(rarity in startups nowadays).
We've seen shit, made many mistakes, so we're hopefully on the way to becoming
better managers F - hell yes. Both founders have kids. Principle is "Work
hard, and go home" G - Unavoidable I - Blockchain

Please reach me(check my username)!

------
lowlevel
I think you're going to be most happy running your own show.. I've seen a lot
of this anyway. Open plan because the boss wants to see everyone in one spot
the 3 hours he is in per year. Focus unattainable due to noise/talking.
Resistance to WFH arrangements. Train young people so we can have
redundancy...Old guy quits and now you have 4 people doing what 1 used to, 3
of which are looking to quit because face it, they don't want to work hard ;)
Good luck my friend.

------
danielvf
Other than a different tech stack, I've got all of these. This is totally
doable as a freelancer.

I can't offer any magical advice, other than that, I've made it my policy to
never work with anyone who might be a jerk, and to stop working with anyone
one who got past the first filter and turns out to be one.

So yes, if you actually want control over your work environment and who you
work with, your options are usually either freelancing or owning you company.

Good luck, and you aren't asking for too much!

------
raarts
I can not advise you I can only offer my own experience.

The older you get the harder it will become to get a programming job. I am
pushing 60, and lucky enough to end up with a lot of experience as CTO/CEO in
multiple companies and now doing technical due diligence for investors, and
coaching young CTOs.

But although I'm very up to date on everything new and shiny I would not want
to be searching for a programming job right now. The word 'senior' used to
mean someone with grey hair, but now means people around thirty and there just
are no words available for 40+. Which doesn't make things easier for
recruiters by the way.

Even though middle aged people are very experienced, the IT field changes fast
and it's very hard to have a family life AND keep your skills current. I only
know of a few people being successful with that. On the other hand those
people are extremely valuable and few companies know it.

Face it, the future for programmers is bleak, ageism is rampant and it's also
true that many aren't current and stuck in their ways.

So maybe it's best to move into management and at least don't be a PHB, or
start your own company, it seems older people have a better succes rate than
young ones with that at least.

~~~
tayo42
> The word 'senior' used to mean someone with grey hair, but now means people
> around thirty and there just are no words available for 40+. Which doesn't
> make things easier for recruiters by the way.

Do you mean titles for levels in companies? Isn't staff, senior staff,
principal, what gets used now for experienced levels?

------
HelloNurse
Most of your requirements depend on the quality of each particular workplace;
the only aspect that is susceptible to advice is the alignment between
somewhat relaxed environment, more or less Android and web for technology, and
hard technical problems.

For that, I suggest companies that are as small as possible (you would be more
of a generalist and less of a cog), established (filtering out bad ideas and
incompetent teams, and ensuring the time to reach a high competence level),
product-oriented (to work on interesting improvements, customizations, support
requests of something you can become an expert of, instead of random low
quality consultancy projects).

As specific examples: machines of all sorts (likely computer-controlled and
with external management apps and other auxiliary software) or business
software at the intermediate scale at which customers are many enough to
ensure stability and variety, but large enough to need interesting kinds of
individual attention.

------
Yenderman
One thing you might consider is expanding that "Spring Boot" to "Full Stack".
It will give you some options when they decide they don't want a fussy gray on
the team and cut you loose.

------
mattdeboard
What you are looking for is a worker's co-op. [https://github.com/hng/tech-
coops](https://github.com/hng/tech-coops)

------
pjmlp
From another's mid-40 point of view, the only ways to avoid such management
like positions is to either go consulting, e.g. Android + Spring Boot expert
on your case, or accept a position at a company with lower pay but with those
perks that you list.

In either case it is an hard fight, as most HR departments and head hunters
try to offer management positions, so it is up to you to make your point about
what you really want, and accept it takes a bit longer to find such positions.

------
randycupertino
I think you absolutely can find a position that fulfills your requirements
(mainly because I have one like that and love it!), however it's either going
to take just getting lucky and striking gold randomly, or networking like
crazy with your network and having them tell you about what the work
atmosphere at their office is like and back channeling you with their HR.
Great companies with great work cultures exist, but they're like exclusive
rent control apartments... we tend to fill openings with internal referrals
because the talent brings their best colleagues from their previous jobs.

How I got into where I am was I dumb-lucked into it by connecting with a great
recruiter and randomly having the hiring team like me a lot. I've been there
two years and have recruited two of my best previous coworkers from other jobs
to come join us. We are all loving life.

Anyways... work your network! Good luck and don't give up!! I would say stay
away from newbie startups and go to midsize profitable firms.

edit: I don't have my own private office, but I have a really big high walled
private cube with a door. big enough to leave my bike inside it and do yoga
inside. I love it. I feel dorky in a cube but it is really nice!

------
wprapido
Contract work outside of the startup world (or for a well funded startup that
delivers real value) fits the description. Large companies, too.

------
clubm8
Many government contractors give private offices due to the nature of the
work. Sometimes they default to it even if working on non-classified work.
There's good work/life balance since you fill out a timesheet. And the work
can be very interesting. Maybe look into a contractor that deals with non
military entities like NASA?

------
rectang
There are many of us willing to leave money on the table in order to get
quality of life, but there are basically zero companies whose job ads
explicitly make that trade. Finding such companies is thus a frustrating and
inefficient process.

~~~
xchaotic
Basecamp seems to be an exception, see their latest book - "it doesn't have to
be crazy at work"

------
sytelus
If you are inclined to stay IC at 40+, get in to teams where someone needs to
write “impossible programs”[1]. Accelerated ray tracing, robotics, computer
vision, firmwares, deep learning/machine learning, orchestration stacks, OS
kernels, debuggers etc. These are sort of areas which I think benefits
tremendously from multi-decade expertise and complexity+stacks are usually
pretty high.

[1] [https://www.deconstructconf.com/2018/julia-evans-build-
impos...](https://www.deconstructconf.com/2018/julia-evans-build-impossible-
programs)

------
Yenderman
It doesn't match all of your wants, but you should consider living in the
inner city of a large metropolitan area and working for tech companies there.
In Los Angeles, a talented dev/arch with devops can make $185,000/yr with
benefits. Another possibility would be turning into a migrant fruit-picker,
stick your stuff in a storage facility and follow the contracts around the
country, looking for the $200/hr gigs.

Do all of the above, then retire early and spend your time developing your own
client list at your own pace at home, working 0 to 10 hours per week.

~~~
maxxxxx
"$200/hr gigs."

do these really exist in sufficiently large numbers? When I was freelancer
there seemed to be hard limit at $100.

------
donretag
"So many recruiters are looking for senior developers like me to join their
early stage team and to do development and assist junior devs via knowledge
sharing."

What I have encountered is that everyone wants to hire senior developers, but
no junior developers, so your "senior" role is the same as that of a junior
developer.

I always ask what the team structure is during the phone screen. If it is all
senior developers, which is becoming the norm, then I stop the interview
process. You will be the defacto junior developer as the newbie on the team.

~~~
joezydeco
Well, let’s be clear about the term “senior”.

These days “senior” means “3-5 years experience” and a salary to match.

When you have 20+ years experience, they don’t know what to do with you.

------
fuzzieozzie
These kind of jobs DO exist. This is pretty much exactly our value proposition
to our developers (we are a team of 9 in six countries!) Unfortunately for you
we are focused on back-end Java developers. (search for CompilerWorks on who's
hiring
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17902901](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17902901))

------
varjag
Working on hard problems is rarely stress free.

------
trebligdivad
Yes they exist. I'm Mid 40's; been working from home for ~5 years for a large
international software company as a dev. If you're doing remote, make sure
it's in a team where there's a fairly large chunk of remotees - being the only
remotee is a bit weird (fortunately at this job most of the team are remote).

------
jonathankoren
Not finding an open office plan is going to be tricky. That’s been the fashion
for well over a decades now. Buy headphones.

Complaining about colleagues and managers, is well... a bit sad. You’ve been
around the block a few times. You know how people act. There’s no perfect
place, you just decide what pile of problems you want to deal with.

------
RickJWagner
I work in support. Many of my colleagues work remote, and you are increasingly
rewarded for deep technical knowledge.

It's not for everybody, but it's been great for me. Many of your 'wish list'
items seem aligned.

Good luck.

(Edit: I am in my 50s. I feel it's possible to continue in a similar role
'till retirement age.)

------
aussieguy1234
The average age of a successful startup founder is 45:
[https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-
succes...](https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-successful-
startup-founder-is-45)

------
kranzky
I suggest you read "Bullshit Jobs: A Theory", by David Graeber.

He explains that apprentice -> journeyman -> master no longer holds; we all
get stuck at journeyman, working in the service of others for our entire
career.

You, my friend, need to start your own company.

------
softawre
Where are you located?

I might have a job that would interest you. You might be able to be remote
part time , at least until we get to know you.

We hit all of your marks (devs have offices, laid back, we all WAH 3 days a
week). We are near Indianapolis.

------
eranation
Did you consider pre-sales/professional services consulting. Most folks who do
this that I know are in their forties. Good pay, interesting work, and relies
a lot on soft skills

~~~
nextstep40plus
Yes I consider that but I'm an introvert so developer jobs are more suitable.

------
mikestew
Well, Goldilocks, you’re going to have to pick which of your list you’re
willing to give up to have the other. Do such jobs exist? You bet they do, I’m
working a job that fits your list to the letter. I’m also making considerably
less than I could. That’s fine, it was a compromise I was willing to make. But
I’m not working on mobile, either.

In a macro sense, though, you’re going to have to come to grips with the fact
the work environment has changed. I’ll bet the fact that you don’t want an
open office knocks out 60-70% of Seattle-area prospects right off the bat.
Quiet colleagues? Tech bros are where it’s at...bro! You’ll have at least one
in 50% of the remaining prospects. Managers are not getting any more
competent, so whack off another 25%. The quiet, professional workplace with
offices is largely gone, so prospects that fit your parameters are less common
than in the past.

That all said, my brief flirtinsg with embedded and the reports from others
indicate that it is a field with higher instances of what you’re looking for.

~~~
teuobk
Embedded is definitely a place where this sort of Goldilocks environment can
be found. I suspect it's because embedded -- and I mean really low-level
stuff, not "We run embedded Linux!" level -- requires a lot of EE knowledge in
addition to software engineering skill to do it well. That, in turn, requires
test instruments and such, which lends itself to an office or at least a
dedicated section of lab bench rather than an open office. In addition,
embedded often seems to be sort of voodoo for managers, so I've found they
tend to keep their hands off more than on, say, front-end web dev projects.
Lots of guys doing it remotely, too. There are guys (and gals) in their mid
20s who are doing it and good at it, but I'd say overall it skews towards late
30s or older.

Or maybe I've just been lucky.

~~~
mikestew
_Or maybe I 've just been lucky._

Well, it’s not just you. I didn’t want to act like I know what I’m talking
about, given that I’m eight months into my only “real” embedded job (I’ve
previously consulted on projects, but they didn’t let me near the low-level
stuff.) The only difference in our situations is that our remote solution
(GoToMyPc, no VPN) sucks. :-)

------
mikekchar
I'm 50 and work remotely from rural Japan. I work with a good team and I
genuinely like the people I work with. I'll try to respond to each of the
points you make in relation to my job:

\- I work from home. My wife volunteers most days so I have the place to
myself most of the time. However I work in Japan and my colleagues are in the
UK, so this means I often work nights. In our small apartment, it's hard to
separate myself from what my wife is doing. I try my best to do work where I
need to concentrate during the day and then collaborate with people during the
evening. It's hard to juggle, though.

\- These days lots of companies are doing office work with work at home a few
days a week. We do that, but because the company is growing fast, we ran out
of desks. This means that people _mostly_ work at home and hot swap when then
are in the office. The hot swapping is actually a real sore point with people
as they like to have their own space at work, but you can imagine that it's
hard for the company to justify having a floor 3/4 empty most of the time.
Still, before I moved back to Japan, I did the WFH one or two days a week and
IMHO, if you are close to your office this is really ideal -- lots of
opportunity to collaborate and lots of opportunity to put your head down. In
that kind of environment, _personally_ I'm happy to have open office, hot swap
setup. I differ from many people ;-)

\- Meetings are a function of company culture. Some companies value them, some
do not. I once worked in a company and my manager asked me what I'd like from
him (NB: managers, please do this!) I said, I don't ever want to go to a
meeting. Can you go to all my meetings and send me a quick email with the
result? He said, No problem! (Best manager _ever_ ) When you are shopping for
jobs, make sure to ask about what kinds of meetings people have and why they
have them. I like companies where meetings are for disseminating information
to large groups of people. I dislike companies where meetings are for
collaboratively coming up with a solution. Other people like the opposite.
Know what you want and find a compatible group to work with.

\- Incompetent managers. Sorry, no panacea for this one. Most managers are
terrible (sorry, but it's truly how I feel). It's a massively hard job, people
are not trained for it and often people get into management because they want
to bully people into doing what they say. I want a manager who feels their job
is to remove obstacles from me so that I can concentrate on work (see point
above). 90% of the time I don't get managers like that. It's hard for me to
complain too much because _I_ don't want to be a manager, even though I am
very opinionated about what managers should do. Again, pre-screen your
prospective employers. Specifically ask your potential manager what they think
a manager should be doing. I've never met a manager who would lie about that.

\- Colleagues: Let me preface this by saying again, I like my current
colleagues. As I get older, though, it gets pretty difficult. I'm the oldest
person in the IT department at my company. I'm double the age of most of the
people (we have a lot of junior people). I remember talking to a colleague
about Tenerife because we had both vacationed there. It's an amazing place,
but my colleague said that they didn't see any of it because they spent an
entire week in night clubs. All of the other people listening to our
conversation murmured with great appreciation. The industry is growing rapidly
so as you get older you often become a minority. Even though you were there
first, it's _you_ that is the "foreigner" in the group (me, especially, LOL).
You have to adapt to that culture rather than expecting people to adapt to
your culture. For me, that's extremely difficult. Having said that, I have
worked in a small startup where nobody was under the age of 35 (and we even
had a guy in his 60's) -- _I_ was the baby in that group! There _are_ some
founders who want only experienced people and are willing to pay extra money
up front to get it. Reach out through your contacts because probably you can
find them.

Now, I really like working the way I work (and the day after tomorrow I'm
actually going to the UK to meet and greet with the team, which I'm super
excited about!) However there are tons of downsides.

\- Working remotely for a non-remote team means that there is a definite power
differential. People who see each other in person regularly naturally have a
better rapport. As a remote person, you're always a bit of an outsider. It's
easy for people to forget about including you in discussions (especially if
you are in a different time zone!) There are sometimes bad actors in companies
too and if someone decides to _intentionally_ lock you out of decisions, there
is practically nothing you can do about it. You are at the mercy of others. I
spend a _lot_ of my energy trying to keep my relationships working well at
work -- tons more than I would need to if I worked in the office. That's why 3
days in 2 days WFH is such a nice setup (and really, I think all companies
should do something similar for programmers).

Working remotely and solo is a huge risk. However, if you want to take on that
risk, 40 is a really good time to do it. At 50, I've got 15 years left of my
career. I need to save for retirement (and I admit to neglecting that in order
to traipse around the world doing strange things). I've got savings, but if I
was out of work for a year or two, it would be rather bad for me. At 40 (or
earlier) you can take that risk a lot more easily because you can then put
your head down and do less risky things when you are older if you need to
(like me).

Especially since you are relatively young (still 25 years left of work!) and
you have no children, you are pretty flexible. Earlier I've been pointing out
the need to keep thinking about the work environment when interviewing. If
work environment is very important to you, make sure that you value that
_yourself_. Don't take a job for more money that has a worse environment.
Maybe there's a jerk that you have to work with, but you can still get your
job done acceptably -- don't give up that job. No job is going to be perfect,
so make sure you prioritise things appropriately.

If I were you, the strategy I would probably employ (because I'm hugely risk
averse) is to find a job with part time WFH that has the option to lead to
full time remote. Get a couple of years of experience with working from home
(and at least 6 months of full time remote). Then toy with the idea of doing
solo consulting (ideally fully remote). As you are learning to work remotely,
go to meet ups, etc to make contacts so that you have an avenue for solo
consulting. This may mean moving to a fairly large city if you don't already
live in one. Try out selling yourself and seeing if you have the character to
do that (because not everyone can be successful in that regard, and being solo
means you don't have anyone else to lean on). And finally, don't panic. You
have lots of time to sort this out. Good for you thinking about it now -- take
a few years trying different things and seeing how they work out. But don't
procrastinate. This is your time for exploring -- if you wait until you are
50, it gets much scarier (believe me!)

------
bruhwiler_ycomb
RadiaSoft offers that sort of work environment, with a small world-class team
and plenty of interesting work. David radiasoft.net

------
bergerjac
Nobody cares about your age as much as they care about what you can do for
them.

Sell the vision of what your experience can bring to the company.

------
meritt
> Do you suggest I go solo and take on development jobs myself

Yes.

You don't want to help juniors. You don't want to waste your time in meetings
explaining things to "incompetent" managers. You only want to work in a
private office on your own schedule. You don't want to be stressed or asked to
put in extra hours. You only want to work on "hard technical problems" that
you find interesting.

~~~
nextstep40plus
You're getting really close to what I want. I just don't find it easy to get
this kind of job. Do you have experience working for your self helping small
clients with fun work and your description?

~~~
ilaksh
I have experience with something like that. I'm 40 years old and been working
remotely most of the time for maybe ten years.

I mostly find good projects online. Building prototypes helps get contracts.

However, the major problem I have had is finding those awesome low stress
remote jobs or gigs that _also_ have "US market rate" pay and that can sustain
it. I have certainly been successful in that to some degree but my current
startup hasn't had funding. And rather than give up when he started running
out of money, I cut my rate.

So in order to save money I recently moved to a beach area in Mexico. It has
an amazing view of the ocean and is affordable.

However there are downsides. I have discovered new types of diarrhea that I
did not know existed. The water was shut off for five days. And yesterday the
ATM had an error and just decided it couldn't give me my $170 even though my
account was debited.

So today I am trying to find an inexpensive place to live in the US again.

------
m23khan
Have you thought about working for IT department at a University?

Would like check off all the items on your wish list.

------
samstave
> __ _I 'm 40 years old without any children and would like to be able to not
> be stressed and work overtime and solve hard technical problems_ __

You have no kids... You can work overtime and do anything you want when you
want with respect to working and focusing on work without kids.

I'll assume those downvoting this comment dont have kids.

~~~
unit91
I have kids and down-voted your comment. Simply because a person has (or might
have) the capacity for working overtime doesn't mean this should be a
requirement. We're employees, not slaves.

~~~
samstave
Thats not what I meant - the OP stated "I dont have kids and I want to be able
to work overtime and focus on a project" \-- so, my comment was "well if you
dont have kids, you should be better able to work overtime and focus on a
project"

~~~
azangru
That’s really interesting. Reading the OP's post:

> I <...> would like to be able to not be stressed and work overtime and solve
> hard technical problems and move towards a more rewarding job

I cannot tell whether he is saying he would like to be able to work overtime,
or whether he doesn't want to <be stressed and> work overtime. I would assume,
"work overtime" has a tighter coupling with the preceding "not" than with the
preceding "would like to", but can't tell for sure.

------
liftbigweights
Why not retire and contribute to open source? You can set your own schedule
and speak to whomever you want or no one at all.

It amazes me that people in their 40s are working as software developers. Did
everyone gamble their money away?

20 years in software developement is easily a few million in the bank +
retirement account + home. Why not retire?

~~~
deanmoriarty
This is harsh but true. I am an average 32 years old software engineer in the
Bay Area, and in my average 8 years career I amassed roughly $1.2M by
diligently saving, investing in index funds and living frugally.

My real hope is that by the time I’m in my mid 40s this amount, including the
new savings, will have at least doubled (if not 3X), and I’ll be able to
retire or take some very light job in a cheaper area, not worrying about this
nonsense software engineering bias against age.

~~~
liftbigweights
Yeah. I'm surprised that I'm downvoted. If you are clearing six figures ( most
software devs should in this environment ), you could max out your
401k/ira/etc ( $40K ) to lower your tax basis and then save half the remaining
income easily. Especially if you are single with no kids.

My biggest problem was hitting the max and not being able to shelter more
income from taxes.

$40K per year in retirement + $20K or $30K in saving and interest + capital
gains will easily make you a multimillionaire over 20 years. I don't think
people understand how long 20 years really is and how consistent savings
starts to add up.

As long as you don't gamble away your money or do something stupid with it, a
six figure salary as a software engineer should make you are multimillionare (
in assets ) by your 40s.

~~~
deanmoriarty
Fully agree.

Just out of curiosity, is the $40k pre-tax including 401k contributions of a
spouse too? Otherwise, how can I, as an single person, achieve retirement
contributions of $40k?

In general, working for startups with crappy retirement plans, retirement
accounts have been a big pain point for me, a big portion of my assets are
actually held in taxable accounts, which is not too bad if you invest in tax
efficient funds which at most provide qualified dividends, and during a
downturn you can do some valuable tax loss harvesting, but I would gladly take
advantage of more tax deferred space.

------
alexashka
It may seem to you like you're asking for advice, but may come across to
others like you're complaining.

We'd all prefer a better work environment, with better people and less stress,
so that we can thrive and have better balance in life. You haven't mentioned
anything that you're doing to get there, besides asking somebody else (HN) to
hand you some sort of 'insightful' answer.

The insight may very well be that given your current skillset and level of
ambition and willingness to sacrifice, you are right where you deserve to be.
If you want something to change, the only variable you really have control
over, is you.

I'd give a 2pac quote, but it'd get flagged so I'll link it - the last line is
for you.

[https://genius.com/2pac-starin-through-my-rear-view-
lyrics](https://genius.com/2pac-starin-through-my-rear-view-lyrics)

~~~
nextstep40plus
Actually I've been actively searching and responding to recruiters and sent
spontaneous applications etc. You have no idea.

