
What Happens to Older Developers? - dsirijus
http://christfollower.me/D140313ADVICE
======
selmnoo
I don't get it. This guy's resume says he's a double major of math/CS from
Berkeley with high honors -- and apparently he's worked on pretty hardcore
engineering projects.

    
    
        I've created a Linux distro of my own. Original and not a fork. 
        See articles on website. Geared towards CLI engineers.
        Patched and built about 1,800 packages myself. Supported 
        and customized standard distros as well.
        Double Bachelors in Math and Computer Science from U.C. Berkeley. 
        High Honors and Honors. Worked with Open Source
        since the 1980s. Led small teams in startup and similar environments.
        Considered to be good at writing and analysis of problems.
        Experience includes: Agile, Assembly, Back-End, BSD, C, CSS, Debian,
        FOSS, GIMP, HTTP, Java, Linux, Mathematics, Mint,
        MySQL, Octave (similar to Matlab), Open Source, Parser, Perl, PHP5,
        Python, Recruiting, Regex, Shell, SQLite3, Support,
        TCP/IP, Ubuntu, UNIX, Tcl/Tk, Teaching, Training, Transcoding, 
        VPS, Writing, XML, XSLT
    

What is wrong with Silicon Valley today that a person like him can't get a
reliable job, and therefore is unable to live with medical healthcare, a
reasonable place of residence, etc.?

edit: on the bright side, now that this post is on HN frontpage, I hope
someone seeks this guy out and gives him a job. From what I can grasp, the
quality of his code is pretty damn good.

~~~
gexla
So, if I saw a job description like that I would smell BS and never apply.
Maybe handing off a resume like that gives the same smell.

You don't give resumes like this, you tailor your pitch to the company which
is hiring.

If you are applying to a PHP job, then remove all the fluff and tell the
employer that you are a PHP developer. Generalists dont' get hired, then don't
be a generalist. Touching up your PHP skills should take a couple of weeks. ;)

~~~
300bps
I don't think there is a single thing right with his resume. Let's take the
first line of his overview:

 _Software developer since the 1970s._

First of all, any development experience from the 70s is at best meaningless
and at worst detrimental. Try teaching a Cobol programmer OOP and you'll find
that they learn it slower than someone without that procedural coding
experience. Second of all, the first line of your resume should not be to
announce what protected class(es) you are in. Your resume shouldn't have
"senior citizen" on it anymore than it should have your race, creed, religion
or any other irrelevant facts on it.

 _Linux work started with the first kernel releases and continued through
Slackware_

So what? I used Slackware extensively in 1996 but the experience is
meaningless. If I had that on my resume now it would tell anyone reading it
that I'm probably resting on my laurels and probably have for decades.

 _Experience includes: Agile, Assembly, Back-End, BSD, C, CSS, Debian, FOSS,
GIMP, HTTP, Java, Linux, Mathematics, Mint, MySQL, Octave (similar to Matlab),
Open Source, Parser, Perl, PHP5, Python, Recruiting, Regex, Shell, SQLite3,
Support, TCP /IP, Ubuntu, UNIX, Tcl/Tk, Teaching, Training, Transcoding, VPS,
Writing, XML, XSLT_

I've seen dozens of resumes that list dozens of technologies like this. Not
even so much as a bold font weight to say the things they are masters of as
opposed to "experience with". Early in my management career I hired a
developer that had TCP/IP programming listed as a skill on her resume. After
hiring her, I gave her the IP address of the server to do some TCP/IP
programming. She asked, "What is IP address?"

As someone who is in their 40s, my advice to to someone without a job later in
life is to drop all the extraneous things and focus on what you've done
lately. Lose the moniker "old coder". Lose any technologies older than a
decade from your resume. Lose any references to "35 years of experience
with...". Take off your hobbies. Take off your reasons for leaving your past
employment. There are too many other fixes needed to go into.

~~~
OldCoder
The interest is appreciated. However, we have different perspectives.

My 'C' experience dates back to 1976 and is probably still relevant. FWIW I
never did much COBOL though my firm did have a COBOL-Lint.

I don't think that your 20 years of Linux experience, or mine, is
"meaningless". Not if the experience has been continuous. And, in my case,
I've not only used Linux almost daily since before Slackware existed, I've
developed my own distro, I maintain copies of nearly 2,000 packages, and many
of my copies have patches of my own design.

Regarding the "masters of" issue, I may not have made the "generalist" point
in the post clear enough. I'm only a "master of" a few things. But I'm very
good at getting back up to speed on the things that I've had "experience
with".

This is what a generalist does.

I agree with the "Take off your reasons" point. I'm going to keep most of the
rest. The difficulties that I'm facing are partly due to my own foolish
mistakes. But they aren't about the fact that I've listed hobbies on my resume
or that I have a nick that implies age.

I'm not going to pretend to be a twenty-something specialist. It isn't what I
am. I'm a highly experienced generalist. In this context, the decades that you
feel that I ought to hide are relevant.

~~~
loup-vaillant
You sound like a "T-shaped" guy: Broad knowledge and skills, with actual
expertise of a few areas. Some companies, such as Valve, actually seek that.
Have you sought _them_ out? (I'm guessing that you have, but who knows…)

~~~
OldCoder
T-shaped is a good term. Thanks, I'll remember it.

I'm only now learning the ropes as far as some things go. I haven't sought out
firms of that type yet and advice would be appreciated.

------
ecopoesis
His problem isn't his age, it's his resume.

Here are the reasons I would circular file this resume

1) Fix your website. Leading (or including at all) the story about your family
squabble makes me think you're a nutter.

2) Overview section is useless. I don't care about your Linux distro: I care
about how your skills help my company. In the modern world, that means you
should talk about the server code you've built, or the clients (web or native)
you've developed. If you're truly a generalist, you've done these things.

3) Pare down experience/key points. I don't care if you used DOS or AIX. Only
list things that matter now, and only list things you know well. When I see
lists this long, I assume you've just written every keyword you can think of.
Also, get rid of nontechnical crap. I know you can write, I'm reading
something you wrote.

4) No one measures code in pages, which makes me think you have no idea what
you're talking about.

5) Give me more information about what you did at more jobs. I don't care
about what the product did, I care about what you contributed. For example,
the Grumman job has a lot of fluff. I hate fluff. Distill it down to what you
really did: "wrote a Perl simulator of the CRM-114 for automated testing"
would be much more interesting then the paragraph you've written.

Fix up your resume, and cleanup or hide your web presence, and you'll have a
better chance.

~~~
kabdib
I'm a 53 YO developer who reads a lot of resumes.

You want to tailor a resume like this. Indeed don't mention essentially
obsolete things like DOS or AIX unless they help you get the job you're
applying for. I don't mention that stuff at all now.

"Reason for leaving" isn't necessary.

I also like to see metrics. "I did X, Y and Z and we got Q fewer support
calls" or something like that.

I'd also like to see some evidence of teamwork ("worked with Frobozz group and
got Z shipped with important feature F").

~~~
clubhi
Interesting that you like metrics. I always consider them B.S. Especially the
ones where they say they saved the company X millions of dollars.

~~~
drone
Chiming in here -- some metrics are B.S. metrics (like how much money you
saved company, I gloss over these myself), but some are valuable. For example:
"designed and developed system Foo which ran in production for X years and
processed Y events per second utilizing Z nodes."

~~~
yawz
I agree. Some projects have SLAs. It could be beneficial to mention that those
were met or expectations were exceeded.

------
sparky_twofort
You seem to say two contradictory things -- first, that you're getting a lot
of "algorithms" interviews, and second, that being a "generalist" is hurting
you. It seems to me that you're getting a lot of generalist interviews, but
they're asking questions you're not prepared for.

As a female coder in her late 40's working at <Big Famous Software Company>,
my advice to you is -- please, please pick up your algorithms book, and just
study! I just helped a guy aged _60_ ace the famously difficult interview at
my company -- he's now working as a dev there. Basically, my role was to
relentlessly tell him to study algorithms, and write code on a white board.
Algorithms do NOT discriminate by age.

It seems to me that your biggest problem is that you want these guys to take
all your experience into account, and they just want to know if you can code
and do algorithms. There is _no reason_ older coders can't do algorithms --
just study!

When I got the job at <my big company>, in my early 40's, I took three months
off and pounded CLRS, even read a bit of Knuth on hash tables, and wrote code
on white boards. These interviewers don't _want_ to discriminate -- they're
going to be old, too! You just need to give them what they are looking for.
And you can do it!

~~~
captain_mars
From a programmer approaching his 40s, thank you for the great advice, and for
the inspiring story of your 60-year-old friend.

------
gexla
This was after I was reading on HN last week about 12 year olds freelancing.

Bottom line, you have to learn how to hustle. You find a way, or you don't.

If you can't get employment as developer, then create your own job. Or don't.

As a freelancer, nobody knows my age. They don't ask. I work from the
Philippines, but as long as I'm reasonably available, people don't care. I
have friends doing the same thing who aren't nearly as technical or
knowledgeable as I am making a good living in the most expensive cities in the
world.

Reid Hoffman is co-author of a book called "The Start-up of You." I haven't
read the book, but the title says it all. You have to treat yourself as a
start-up and put in the same sorts of blood, sweat and tears that you read
about other people doing here. Maybe you have a job that you can coast in and
have work-life balance. Maybe you are nearly on the street and one notch above
being completely fu __ed. If you are the latter, then you probably need to be
doing some serious disaster mode action. Really, what else do you have to do?
Being a transient gives you a lot of time to think, but that gets old.

But it's all about people, really. A developer who is just okay at dealing
with computers but great at selling to people is probably in a better position
than someone who is the opposite.

~~~
wyclif
The Philippines could shape up (or maybe is already shaping up, judging from
your remarks) as one of the best places in the world to freelance from. Cost
of living is low, and the culture in the RP is friendly to outsourcing. But
most of those jobs aren't software engineering. The biggest hurdle in the RP
is infrastructure—being somewhere that has fibre optics and broadband
internet. But that's something that can be solved with enough investment.

I agree with your overall point: increasingly it's not going to matter how old
you are, what nationality you are, or where you live. It's just down to "can
you get the job done?"

~~~
aragot
Sorrt, what is RP?

~~~
phpnode
Republic of the Philippines

------
StevePerkins
I have spent half of my career around developers in their 50's. It's true that
in a lot of cases the work becomes less exciting. Of those who don't exit into
management, many become "solutions architects" (i.e. the technical guy who
tags along with the sales guy, and makes bad promises that some other
developers have to deliver on later). Others tie their career to particular
vendor products... and spend their older years tweaking Oracle Financials,
SAP, WebSphere Commerce, etc.

However, there are also plenty who have kept their skills current along the
way, and wind up coding on cool projects well into their 60's. They generally
work for large companies rather than start-ups, and that entire world is a
blind spot for most people on HN.

I'm going to go way out on a limb and assume that the original poster's REAL
problems are:

* His resume looks terrible. It's a one-page bucket of random meaningless buzzwords (e.g. skills include "open source", "parser", "VPS"... wtf?!?). He puts more energy into highlighting his age than he does his relevant skills. If he wasn't constantly reminding me that he's near-60, I would assume at first glance that this was a junior-level recent grad's resume.

* His email, website, GitHub account, etc are build around his "brand name" of "OldCoder". That's a pretty horrible brand.

* He's blogging from the domain name "christfollower.me". Nothing against anyone's religion... but politics, religion, etc do not mix with professional career-related writing. Even if it is religion or politics that match my own, it's still a turn-off to see someone wearing it on their sleeve during the recruiting/interviewing process.

Nationwide, the United States has a NEGATIVE unemployment rate for computer
programmers. Almost every large company is filled with middle-age and older
developers. I'm not saying that ageism doesn't exist, but if you are a "near
homeless" computer programmer then you are doing something very wrong. You
might have a bad resume, or be a bad interviewee. You might live in a small
market, and be unwilling to move to where the jobs actually are. Your salary
expectations may be out of whack with your current market value, and you're
not willing to hear that. Etc.

~~~
humanrebar
> but politics, religion, etc do not mix with professional career-related
> writing. Even if it is religion or politics that match my own, it's still a
> turn-off to see someone wearing it on their sleeve during the
> recruiting/interviewing process.

I hope you realize that this is a bigoted attitude as some religions _require_
their practitioners to literally wear their religions, though perhaps on their
heads or faces instead of their sleeves.

Likewise, prejudice against "old" people is also a bad thing.

That being said, your conjecture that some sort of -ism might be at fault here
is apt. And a reasonable person could believe that someone should hide his
identity in the service of getting a job. However, if it's a tragedy that Jew
or homosexual has to hide their identity and lifestyle to get by in the world,
why would you want to force a middle-aged Christian into the closet?

~~~
StevePerkins
I'm sorry that I did not paint a real-world picture with sufficient tears to
satisfy you. My comment was not directed at the way the would "should be"...
but rather at the way the world "is", if you want to maximize the
effectiveness of your faceless resume on a pile of them.

Besides, I didn't say that you have to "hide" your identity or opinions on the
job. Just that it's dumb to mix your personal identity with your professional
identity in materials that fall solely in the latter realm (e.g. resumes,
TECHNICAL blogs, etc).

A significant portion of my colleagues over the years have been Sikh, and
another significant portion have been non-heterosexual. Who cares? We work in
one of the most diverse fields on the planet. However, if your blog about
Node.js is hosted on "sikh-time.com", or if you list "homosexual" as the
mission statement on your LinkedIn profile, then you are not "refusing to
hide". You're just being flaky. It's not the identity that's the issue, is the
signal you're sending about boundaries and judgement.

EDIT: Hmm... reading your comment more carefully, you may have had the
impression that I'm turned off by seeing outward appearances of religion
during a face-to-face interview. That could be an issue for certain religions,
such as Sikhs or Hasidic Jews, where outward appearance is a part of it.
However, to clarify... I was not talking about a face-to-face interview, but
rather the faceless materials such as resumes and technical blogs that are
seen prior to that stage. Again, the issue is not so much the identity as it
is the judgment. Moreover, if you share your politics or sexual orientation
during a face-to-face interview, then you're definitely doing it wrong.

------
justin_vanw
So the author of this post had a restraining order filed against him by his
parents. He hired a lawyer. He later accuses the lawyer of colluding with his
parent's lawyers, but he hopes that his former lawyer won't take that
accusation of professional misconduct too hard, since the author is only
making the accusation to further his goal of writing some kind of book, which
his former lawyer approved of.
[http://christfollower.me/topics/legal/130430_declaration.htm...](http://christfollower.me/topics/legal/130430_declaration.html)

To sum up, if the author is having a lot of trouble finding work, I think he
may want to look at the copious amount of documentation he has posted online,
much of it explicitly claiming that he is suffering from profound mental
illness.

Quote:

    
    
        It seemed possible that my attorney John Perrott was colluding with Opposing Counsel Michael Bonetto. It was clear regardless that John wasn't focused on my interests. He'd missed deadlines for filing paperwork and had told me things that weren't true.
    
        Note: No offense towards John is intended here despite the implications. It's my hope John remembers I'm working towards goals that he approves of. I've tried to do what's right from the start. This isn't a claim that most of the people involved in this situation can make.

~~~
selmnoo
In earlier posts he makes mention of being sexually/physically abused by his
parents. It seems (and I'm not very sure here - there's too much text), he
tried to "expose" them to their neighbors, peers, etc., which ensued the
restraining order.

Anyway, the thing is, everyone has family or relationship problems here and
there (Github's co-founder's wife story this week?), everyone says pretty
screwey shit one time or another (Zuck calling his users dumbfucks for
trusting him with their data) -- it's a hard one to deal with. What is one
supposed to do when this stuff surfaces? There's really not much that one can
do.

Indeed, according to the current version of social code, you're supposed to
keep it hidden and distant - or make some effort to keep it hidden. This guy
isn't doing that too well. He probably should. Just don't air your dirty
laundry. No-one (besides your close friends or whatever) needs to know the
minute details of your family problems.

------
gambiting
>>5.If you lose your job and your assets, you'll lose medical care too and the
issues may become serious.

I hate every system which allows that to happen to people. It's disgusting
that there are societies which allow it and can't see how this is the first
thing that should be changed, pronto.

~~~
tluyben2
Guess point 5 is very much for US workers at the moment? Might happen in the
EU in the future, but that's not going to be soon.

~~~
OldCoder
Yes, it's U.S. specific. I don't think it will happen in the EU. The EU may go
through some changes, but I feel that health care will continue to be seen as
something that countries need as part of a sound infrastructure.

~~~
bad_user
Unfortunately the change is inevitable, just as with pensions, because the
population is aging and there isn't enough youth left to pay for it. And due
to automatization or outsourcing, cheap labor is less and less needed anyway
and high unemployment rates will be pretty common.

This reality in fact highlights another reality - our economic models based on
scarcity don't work anymore and we need to either transcend it, maybe with
technological improvements that drops the price of basic necessities, like
food, energy and medical healthcare, or we're fucked.

~~~
humanrebar
> our economic models based on scarcity don't work anymore

Wait, isn't the premise of your comment that healthcare is too scarce?

~~~
bad_user
Well, yes. I also believe it shouldn't be.

------
cottonseed
You say hiring is weighted against older generalists, but in your resume you
call yourself a generalist on the second line and call yourself OldCoder
everywhere. Maybe you aren't doing yourself any favors?

The best job hunting advice I ever read was from Nick Corcodilos' book Ask the
Headhunter: Reinventing the Interview to Win the Job. The takeaway is that
companies are trying to make money, and if you can demonstrate how you'll
contribute to the bottom line, they'll have no choice to hire you. If the
interview or recruiting process isn't giving you a chance to demonstrate that,
then you need to restructure the interaction.

(Oldish coder.)

~~~
OldCoder
You've made two good points here. I'm inclined to keep the nick but I think
I'll purchase the book you've mentioned.

~~~
ry0ohki
If you're currently a jobless transient, you might want to consider the
library instead of purchasing books...

------
tormeh
Oh boy, I'm often reminded of how lucky I am, being born in a Scandinavian
country. I'm basically set for life; there's simply a comfortable lower bound
on how bad things can get. I am just so completely unfairly privileged that I
sometimes feel guilty about it.

~~~
tinco
Don't feel too guilty about it, we pay our taxes and are proud of it.

It's their own choosing, they have three major political parties that are all
right wing (reps, dems, libs).

If a political leader even hints at raising taxes the only valid excuse for it
would be to go to war.

They despise caring for your citizens so much, they made a slur out of the
word 'social'.

I'm sorry for making such harsh generalisations about the U.S. folk, but from
a European standpoint U.S. anti-social culture is just so outlandish.

~~~
BugBrother
USA has 300 million people, the problems to organize a society does not
increase linearly with the population size. I doubt the Scandinavian solutions
work even in Scandinavia, long term! It is typically Swedish to judge that
different places by your own irrelevant standards.

~~~
tinco
You say that, even though the U.S. is actually composed of 50 largely self-
governing states, most of which are within the scale size of a scandinavian
country.

Just assuming a more social system wouldn't work just because the U.S. is
larger seems rather speculative to me. Have they tried, and did they fail?

I am also not swedish :P

~~~
doyoulikeworms
> You say that, even though the U.S. is actually composed of 50 largely self-
> governing states

Each war and crisis has ratcheted up centralized power, typically by way of
granting war time powers that never seem to completely fade away.

To help illustrate, money is an important proxy to government power, and the
federal government spends roughly twice that of all state governments combined
($3.8T vs $2T).

> Have they tried, and did they fail?

The federal government has welfare programs that can be augmented by the
states. California, for example, does this with food stamps (SNAP to
CalFresh), health care for the poor (Medicaid to MediCal), and welfare for
families (TANF to CalWORKS). To fund these, among other services (e.g., the
University of California system), California has the highest state income tax
in the nation (topping out at 13.3% for those earning over $1M).

I imagine that some states do not go much beyond the minimal federal programs.

For example, starting in 2014, Medicaid (health care for the poor) was
expanded to cover those earning under 138% of the poverty line (a perfect
example of the confusing way in which assistance is determined). Many states
chose not to expand Medicaid, so they will not receive additional federal
funding for the program. States that did, however, will.

On the health care front, some states have attempted to introduce universal
health care. California successfully passed a bill, only to be vetoed by
Arnold Schwarzenegger. Only two successful instances come to mind: Vermont and
Massachusetts.

Vermont passed a single-payer universal health care system in 2011.
Unfortunately, I am ignorant of details on its implementation.

Massachusetts has "RomneyCare," which has since been augmented to strongly
resemble (in my eyes) the Swiss health care scheme. Insurance is mandatory,
but coverage cannot be denied. Private insurance is subsidized by government.
Health care costs are heavily regulated.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
> For example, starting in 2014, Medicaid (health care for the poor) was
> expanded to cover those earning under 138% of the poverty line (a perfect
> example of the confusing way in which assistance is determined). Many states
> chose not to expand Medicaid, so they will not receive additional federal
> funding for the program. States that did, however, will.

It's worth noting that the law as written, did not leave much of an option for
the states to not expand Medicare. However, the law was gutted by the court
system, so most of the right-leaning states chose not to expand it.

------
bgarbiak
A few of "Silicon Valley stories" that showed up lately (this one, the one
about jobless Satoshi Nakamoto, the one about sexism and harassment in GitHub,
or about Google/Apple wages conspiracy, or falling FX studios in Hollywood)
got me wondering: why developers put so much faith into libertarianism, free
market, and a good will of corporations and their HR departments; and/or are
so strongly against state social protection, labor unions, etc. - basically
all that uncool "heavy industry" stuff that could help in these and many other
cases?

Are there any labor unions in Silicon Valley? I know about one in Apple, but
it is (was?) formed mainly by the folks working at Apple retail stores, not
the devs.

~~~
bad_user
Living in an European country and having some experience with unions by
hearing stories and watching the news - first of all, unions are highly
political and aren't really meant for the protection of the employees.

Also, the existence of unions ends up working against the public's interest.
Tell me, what scenario is better for the economy, for taxpayers, for you - (a)
company fires 10,000 people and survives, (b) company goes bankrupt, or (c)
company receives government bailout and execs go home with fat bonuses.

In the end, it's a harsh world we live in and we have to cope with it. I don't
know what I'll do when I'll be 50, but seeing all the morons that do have
jobs, I have high hopes that even if I won't be able to do software
development anymore, I'll be able to change my line of work - because
seriously, software developers are amongst the most adaptable people of all
industries - think about how many times you had to go in depth to understand a
business model, in order to build some software for it.

Or maybe I'll be fucked. But one thing I did learn in my 10 years of
experience is that successful people in general find time to market
themselves, to do networking, etc... even if they don't need to do it.

~~~
bgarbiak
_having some experience with unions by hearing stories and watching the news_

That's not really an experience, is it? Yeah, I heard lot of dark stories
about unions as well (corruption, nepotism, violence, dirty politics, mafia
connections - usually it's one out of these), and there's a lot to improve but
then again: unlike governments and corporations unions don't own powerful
media outlets to fix their PR, do they? Also, who says the developers' union
has to be like the other unions. After all we are the people who "think
different".

Anyway, just take a look how it works in Hollywood. Basically the only
profession there which doesn't have its strong union/guild are the special
effects people. And while the movie mega-corporations make billions on
superhero franchises the FX companies go bust one after another.[1][2] Do you
remember the Writers' Strike?[3] The corporations agreed to share their
profits with writers only after 12 000 union members were striking for over 3
months.

Another example: the case of Julie Ann Horvath at GitHub. She asked HR to be a
mediator between her and the company's founder[4]. She cried during that
meeting and HR did nothing. I wouldn't blame them, they too risked their
employment there. That's unions job, that what unions are needed for: to
protect you from your employer.

 _In the end, it 's a harsh world we live in and we have to cope with it._

So, why don't we make things a bit easier for ourselves? Historically, every
major technological advancement (industrial revolution, introduction of cars,
and so on) poured vast new wealth into the hands of entrepreneurs and
investors, while common workers either lost their jobs or had to work much
harder. That's when unions were "invented", that's when eight-hour working day
was fought for[5] - basically that's when current shape of the Western society
was molded. We have various means that protect the existence of the middle
class[6] to this day. Yet, we now observe a new industrial revolution and -
that amazes me - the hard-workers that propel this revolution are voluntarily
waiving their most valuable rights. Not only that, they (we!) are more eager
to defend billion dollar corporations' not paying a cent of taxes than to ask
for medical aid for a colleague.

 _software developers are amongst the most adaptable people of all industries_

When you're 40-50, got over 20 years of experience, two kids in high
school/college and a mortgage the last thing you ever want is to adapt to a
new line of work and start from scratch. This one, I believe, don't need a
citation.

1)
[http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142412788732386430...](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323864304578316414057909902)

2) [http://www.ibtimes.com/vfx-oscars-march-visual-effects-
worke...](http://www.ibtimes.com/vfx-oscars-march-visual-effects-workers-plan-
academy-awards-protest-hollywood-corporate-welfare)

3)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007–08_Writers_Guild_of_Americ...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007–08_Writers_Guild_of_America_strike)

4) [http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/15/julie-ann-horvath-
describes...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/15/julie-ann-horvath-describes-
sexism-and-intimidation-behind-her-github-exit/)

5) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-
hour_day](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day)

6) [http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/who-owns-the-future-jaron-
la...](http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/who-owns-the-future-jaron-
lanier/1114146780)

~~~
bad_user
When I said stories, I'm speaking of stories of close acquaintances and
family.

When I said news - I'm speaking of mass protests of employees from the public
administrative sectors, that blocked the city I live in several times for,
tam, tam, political reasons, right before the elections, with their only
purpose being to show up on TV - while the people that pay their salaries, the
rest of us, didn't have the time to organize protests against them, since we
actually have to work for a living. I'm also speaking of teachers in public
schools that are paid with dirt and their union doesn't do shit about it, with
my old high-school teachers literally worrying about putting food on the
table.

> _Historically, every major technological advancement (industrial revolution,
> introduction of cars, and so on) poured vast new wealth into the hands of
> entrepreneurs and investors, while common workers either lost their jobs or
> had to work much harder._

I totally agree that this sucks. I'm not convinced about unions as the
solution. Maybe you're right.

------
RoboTeddy
In
[http://christfollower.me/#D140311GUIDO](http://christfollower.me/#D140311GUIDO),
OldCoder says, "I'm shy about talking to new people. I'm autistic and,
actually, not high functioning. I communicate decisively when it's necessary,
..."

I don't know much about autism, but if it tends to affect careers, it may be a
relevant difference between OldCoder's career and that of a typical
programmer.

Please note that I'm not making any judgements or claims here -- I'm too
uneducated on these topics to do that -- I'm just pointing out a conceivably-
relevant factor.

~~~
OldCoder
Yes, it's relevant. It was part of the reason that I never built a social
network. Additionally, in some face to face interviews, it was a significant
factor.

However, in recent months, I've done better. Four random strangers that I've
talked to this year, in a bar, a photo processing shop, a LiveScan facility,
and a phone store, all talked about doing business with me. Whether or not
anything comes of it, this is encouraging.

It had to do with coming across as confident and relaxed. If you Google (tm)
the article "Topological Theory of Autism", you'll read about something called
compensating. I think that, as I speak with more people, I'm improving at
that.

~~~
humanrebar
Perhaps you should talk to subject matter expert about whether you apply for
social security disability. From what I read, it's possible to qualify if you
are unable to find work due to mental health issues. Good on you if you'd
rather make it on your own, but it's better than being homeless and it's
pretty much what the program is for.

------
stkni
I don't want to pass judgment here, but browsing through the christfollower.me
site suggests to me that OldCoder wears his internet heart on his internet
sleeve.

Long ago, when I was a hiring manager, we routinely searched for online
presences of candidates and I would guess this ultra-common practice still
today. As a result, we turned up some fairly odd material on a number of
candidates and as a result we declined them.

Whether that is right or wrong you can't expect people NOT to make judgements
based on information that they may find about you online. Indeed the
recruitment process is difficult because there are a lot of candidates and
only a limited amount of information on each of them.

My advice would be take the site offline during the hiring process. This might
concentrate the hirer on the resume rather than the ancillary information.

~~~
pekk
What is "odd" material? Is it that much of a liability to be old, or have a
religion?

~~~
stkni
No, no, nothing to do with that. The particular example that comes to mind is
the case of someone who published a very heartfelt disagreement with a
previous employer. Since we would potentially be a new employer for this
person it gave us a sense that this person might be much more difficult to
manage than the 'normal' programmer.

I should also point out that were most likely wrong in our assessment of the
individual because they ended up becoming pretty successful at what they do!
But it certainly didn't help that person get _our_ job ...

~~~
gohrt
And that experience didn't make you rethink your prejudices?

------
bayareaguy
I'm about as old and I've lived in the bay area all my life. I've seen the
popularity of things on his resume rise and fall. I'm not on any social
network and my bank account has never exceeded five figures. I could be this
guy. Maybe I will be in a few years.

But even though he probably has plenty of skills that could be useful I doubt
I'd seriously consider this guy at my present employer. Why? Because his whole
signal to noise ratio is way too low. He's got a ton of red flags and "resume
smells":

    
    
      * Freelancer for 11 years
      * No mention of employers or marketable projects in last 5 years.  
      * Laundry list of antiquated technologies (some listed multiple times)
      * Lots of irrelevent stuff (reasons for leaving, college honors from distant past)
      * Random WTFs thrown in for good measure (oldcoder.org? christfollower.me?) 
      * No clear mention of goal, purpose, motivation or passion.  
      * Comments showing pride about being a "generalist"
    

You never get a second chance to make a first impression and unless you're
introduced by a trusted third party the impression your resume makes will be
the first. Each and every word should help a potential employer want to talk
with you. Your content should be informative and relevent. Writing it may not
be easy but remember what is written without effort is, in general, read
without pleasure.

------
ohsnap
Dump all the references to your age on your resume. Starting your resume with
a first sentence as 'SW developer from the 1970s' ensures regular deletion.
You seem a little oblivious that you live in a world that discriminates older
developers.

Don't mean to be harsh but I can definitely see why your having a hard time. I
think it sucks not to be able to get a job in something you obviously have a
lot of ability in

------
PopsiclePete
I don't get a good feeling about this. It sounds good overall, but there are
some red flags as well:

GIMP? Why even list that? Why would I (or anyone really) care if he likes GIMP
or Photoshop? Regex? XML? What does that mean? That he knows what a regex _is_
(which I'd expect anyone to know) or has he written an RE parser? XML - same
thing.

Mint, Debian, Ubuntu - just linux distros - again - shouldn't matter. Just put
"Comfortable in a UNIX environment", I'd know you meant 10-12 distress plus
Free/Open/NetBSD, no need to list them all...or if he _does_ list them, put
them next to each other.

Back-End - ? Assembly - which kind? x86, MIPS, ARM? Parser - definitely
interesting "Transcoding" \- buzz word Writing - ummm....not a _good_ skill
actually, don't put it there Recruiting...?

CSS/HTML/HTTP/TCP/IP - list them _next_ to each other maybe?

Here's what I'd do if I were him.

1\. Drop the buzz words and irrelevant info like "Writing" and "Transcoding"
2\. Don't list every single Linux distro you've played with - I've probably
used over a dozen and nobody cares as long as I don't panic at the sight of a
bash prompt 3\. Group things better. Web stuff, Database stuff, language
stuff, etc 4\. List the things that are relevant to the company you're
applying to first. Don't just mash them up wight the rest. They're actually
not equally important.

He's probably a very smart guy. But this resume sucks. To me, it reeks of
typical "old coder" syndrome - a guy looked up the latest 20 buzzwords and
dropped them in there then lectures me on how I need to write all my business
logic in PL/SQL.

This wouldn't be good for a mature, conservative company, but for Silicon
Valley, which is a culture that worships 20-something Rubyists who write
templating engines for fun, it's basically career suicide.

~~~
danielweber
It might be that he puts things on his resume because at some point in the
past he didn't get a job because "you don't know XML."

Which is the most brain-screamingly stupid reason to not hire someone, but the
only rational way for a job-seeker to respond is to put nonsense like "XML" on
the resume.

------
candybar
One big problem here is that his resume looks great to technical people, but
is mostly incomprehensible to non-technical people. My experience is that
technical managers are more biased towards younger people than non-technical
managers because that's how they, as managers, add most value and can get
credit for work done. Older, more experienced engineers are more likely to
threaten their authority and less likely to fit into their vision of how
development ought to be done or value their advice or mentorship.

On the other hand, non-technical managers, have much more of a need for
experienced leads they can trust that can manage the technical aspects and
offer advice so that they don't appear clueless to the rank & file and
management. Non-technical managers are also unlikely to be able to have the
ability to sort through resumes of inexperienced college graduates and
distinguish between good programmers and bad programmers.

Furthermore, at most non-software companies is that the further you go in your
career, the less likely that you will report to a technical manager because
experienced technical people are expected to able to deliver business value
directly, without having to go through a chain of technical management. All of
this means the older and more experienced you get, the more your resume has to
make sense to non-technical people. This is doubly true if you're not a
technical specialist that can solve difficult problems other technical people
encounter.

As it stands, the resume looks like an extrapolation of the kind of stuff that
people like to see when they hire a junior programmer out of school or
otherwise young programmers. This is why a lot of people here have a visceral
positive reaction. It looks good, but it's gone too far and it's a bit out of
character. We like to see hardcore technical stuff in young people's resumes
to distinguish contenders from pretenders but people who are hiring older
engineers usually don't care about that. It's also clear that he qualifies as
a specialist in some of the things he's done, but we don't know what they are,
because they are lost in the noise of everything he's ever done.

------
pnathan
Everyone has their own thing that they look for with resumes.

With your resume -

\- Link to your distro's webpage. Even if it's just a blogspot dedicated to
it.

\- Dont' do the technology wordlist. More than 6-10 technologies and I figure
you're just spamming acronyms (fair or unfair). I consider any tech listed on
a resume fair game for "okay, let's grill about it".

\- Drop the reasons for leaving. You left, I don't care why. Particularly if
it's a freelance job, you're just gonna be leaving places.

\- Your typical projects page is just not detailed enough. Nor are the
positions projects. Rather than just name them, throw down a link to a github
or your website where you remark on them a bit more.

\- Your nick advertises your age. That's a marketing diminishing move. You're
not _old_ , you're _experienced_. It's a marketing game to get the hiring
manager on the phone.

\-----

I would suggest StackOverflow Careers, some good leads come out of there, and
use that as a "resume 2.0" format.

I'm looking for something fairly specific in my evaluations of sw devs:

\- What you did, in some level of detail. Key projects and technologies should
be called out. Soft skills shold be called out.

\- What was the business goal accomplished?

This allows me to evaluate what you've done in a concise fashion.

\------

Fundamentally, I look for resumes that demonstrate acuity in the field. All
the information I look for is geared towards demonstrating that.

SV has a bad rep for being ageist. I'd look into getting a job elsewhere in
middle America where age has less disrespect.

------
DanBC
Resume advice in this thread is evidence that recruitment process is totally
fucked.

Someone gets an interview because they tweak their resume? Someone gets a job
offer because they jump through certain hoops at interview?

It's nonsense. There's zero evidence to support current recruitment practices
and lots to show that interviews are a lousy way to select people.

Google and FB and Apple and MS have lots of recruitment happening and lots of
smart people to analyse the results, so I'd hope to see improvements there
that trickle out over the years. Sadly, it is in their interest not to
disclose better methods so their competitors continue using broken methods.

Note: I agree that with the current broken system it is important to learn how
to tailor a CV and how to jump through interview hoops. But the system is
bafflingly bad.

~~~
fecak
This is a statement on hiring and selection from the employer's side, but the
advice about tweaking resumes and jumping through hoops is likely to help the
job seeker. I don't think OldCoder is in a position to criticize hiring
practices (beyond perhaps ageism) - he just wants a job. There are much better
selection methods than resumes and interviews, but many companies have become
quite adept at discovering what works for them. What works for Google may not
work for the shop down the street.

~~~
DanBC
I reject the notion that companies have discovered what works for them.

Companies stick with current processes because:

1) they need to demonstrate compliamce with anti-discrimination law

2) they're not brave enough to try any other process.

Current process is chock full of biases and possible discrimination. This
could easily be causing employers to hire worse people than other better
systems.

This doesn't mean that those worse hires are destroying the company. They're
good enough.

I just wish there was a bit more honesty. "This process is good enough at
screening out people who will destroy our company, but we make no pretence
that the people we hire are the best for the job nor that some of the people
we reject were rejected weongly because the system sucks".

~~~
fecak
I recruit engineers for startups and small companies around PA/NY, and I'm
likely part of what you would consider the problem. I've worked with companies
that had high turnover and horrible process, and some with almost no turnover
that continuously refined their process based on various conditions.

I think there is some fear of anti-discrimination law, but I don't think that
has a significant impact on process (at least within my clients over 15
years). I never got the impression any candidate was hired in order to fill in
some sort of diversity hire check box.

What other processes would you suggest companies are not brave enough to try?

There are undeniable biases in the system, but I think it's not bravery or
fear that are the problem. What methods are there to remove all biases? Any
examples to perfect the hiring process are likely adding significant cost
(time and money) to the process that most companies would deem unnecessary.

I think most companies would admit they don't always hire the best candidate,
and may have rejected some good ones. Dealing with a finite applicant pool,
some of these decisions (regarding best available) are not so difficult.

------
kstop
[Deep breath] Your resume is terrible. Not in the sense of not covering off
your skills and experience, but in the sense of making you seem like you care
about what I need as a hiring manager.

First off, it gives no sense of the importance to the business of anything
you've done. You could produce the best-engineered code in the world, but if
it's not fit for purpose or it doesn't help us achieve definable and
verifiable goals it's junk. You need to show that you understand that. The
best way to do that is to include accomplishments like "Wrote a Perl simulator
that improved test throughput by X% and saved Y hours of development time."
Even better are ones that include "made $Z million dollars". You have to
relate your achievements to the goals of the business.

Second, it's got things that would make me worried about even calling you for
an interview. Why do you feel the need to specify reasons for leaving
positions? That makes me nervous. Why do you need to tell me that your phone
handles SMS? That's weird.

This feedback's based on building and leading teams over the past decade or
so. I'm younger than you though not by too much. You will probably be dealing
with people of my age or younger who are going to be focused on the relevance
to the company if what they do, more so than its technical sweetness. You
should tailor your message accordingly. I do _not_ advocate dumbing down your
resume. I do recommend focusing it on relevance to the business.

I also recently struck out again first as a contractor and then in a purely
technical (no people management) full-time role. I got some time with a career
consultant which helped immensely, though they were useless when it came to
actual recruitment. I'd recommend you do the same, as they could help you
tailor your message to the industry.

(I also built a Linux distro back in the day btw (early 2000s), for an
PC104-board-based embedded systems project an acquaintance of mine was working
on. It's not on my resume, because that project didn't go anywhere, and isn't
really relevant to the kind of jobs I want now.)

------
Stratoscope
I'm 62 and just got a great offer from a biotech startup two miles from my
home.

I took a different approach from what many of the comments here recommend.
Instead of weeding down my resume to recent and "relevant" experience, I
emphasized the wide variety of projects I've worked on, and I listed
_everything_ in my LinkedIn profile, all the way back to my first programming
job in 1969. I got rid of my traditional resume entirely and let the LinkedIn
profile be my resume.

Also, I made up a new title/tagline for myself: "Low Level Full Stack
Developer". At the moment, I'm the only person in the world with that
particular description. :-)

I wanted to distinguish myself from the other common definition of "full stack
developer", which often seems to imply somebody who is an expert on website
scalability. That's not really my thing: I'm better at going _down_ the stack
into hardware and device drivers and such.

So I included some interesting side projects that were outside the usual web
developer arena, such as PdfChip where I took a PDF datasheet for an ARM chip,
connected it to a development board, and made the pinout diagram in the PDF
interactive so you could see the state of the pins in the PDF, and click on
pins to toggle them.

Then I started writing back to all the recruiters who had been pinging me,
including the ones that were way off like the place that was looking for a
"Drupal themer". Always be nice to recruiters; you never know when you'll need
one. :-) And indeed, some of them also had more relevant opportunities.

And these conversations helped me in my thinking about what I was really
looking for: something very different from the traditional web work I've been
doing for several years - something more hardware oriented (and I don't mean
just computing hardware).

I noticed that there were a couple of local biotech companies looking for full
stack developers. Wrote to one and never heard a peep back from them, not even
after a couple of followups. Wrote to the other and heard back from the CEO
right away. Got together with the team a couple of days later for a fairly
informal interview.

They didn't insult me with a coding test - they had already looked at some of
my code, and the questions I've answered on Stack Overflow. It probably also
helped that I had submitted a small but good quality pull request to one of
their open source projects the day before. :-)

Had lunch with the CEO a few days later to work out some of the details, and
they made the offer a few days after that.

I can't really disagree with the advice that you should focus your
resume/LinkedIn/whatever on recent and relevant experience, and I used the
introductory section of my LinkedIn profile to highlight those things.

But if admitting that my first programming job was in 1969 gives people a clue
that I'm old, so what? They will figure that out when they meet me! I would
rather work with people who see my 45 years of experience in a wide variety of
projects and think it means they can learn something from me - just as I can
learn some cool new things from them.

~~~
jakejake
Congrats on the new gig! Being somewhat older myself and in a position of
hiring (seeing a lot of young developers) I would have to say that you are
just doing a few simple things that make your age a non-issue.

The negative thing about older developers to me is when I see that they simply
haven't kept up. They don't have the interest anymore (or perhaps never did).
Their resume reflects that as well as just, lack of an online presence.

You mention answering questions on stack exchange. You sent pull requests on
github. You're re-appropriating the somewhat recent "full stack" title. These
are simple things that current developers do without thinking much of it. But
developers who kinda checked out 10 years ago and have been coasting - they
are sometimes not even aware of this stuff going on. They don't have github
profiles. They're not contributing. You, on the other hand, are out there
doing things.

To me I'll hire a developer of any age that is out there doing things,
learning, teaching and continuing to be curious.

~~~
Stratoscope
Thank you! I really appreciate your message.

I think you hit the nail on the head: It's not the number of years, or how old
you are, but whether, as you say, you are out there doing things.

I've always figured a good developer should be learning new languages every
year or so, just to help shake up your thinking about how to program.

I love helping other developers learn how to troubleshoot and how to write
better code, and I really like learning from other people too.

And I plan to keep doing all that as long as I can. :-)

------
phoen
Please allow me to preface with this: I figure your intent is not to demean
the tasks of other professions, and none of what I'm saying is rhetorical.

That said, why not take the job of caring for the elderly relatives? Use it as
a way to buy yourself some time while you become a specialist?

(I know a couple of people who have worked as certified nursing assistants for
about ten years, among other things, scooping poop. They like excrement about
as much as, I presume, most other people in existence; for them, it's a fact
of life, though, and they're able to support their family well enough.)

~~~
OldCoder
I intended no disrespect. The person who was considering hiring me was the one
who used the term. It was a casual discussion. And I _will_ consider
caregiver. I do well with older people.

~~~
phoen
I understand, and figured as much.

The positions you mention just didn't work out, then?

~~~
OldCoder
There were two such positions. Both involved relatives of friends. In one
case, the family doesn't feel that it's needed yet. In the other, my friend's
business has grown more slowly than he'd hoped, so he lacks funds for new
expenditures.

------
Nursie
The only plan I have (I'm 35 now) is to be running the show by the time this
becomes an issue.

I've started contracting/freelancing already, I'm growing my expertise in a
few fairly niche (though highly useful) areas, within a few years I either
want to be a highly paid independent consultant (getting there) or running a
small software company I own.

I've never felt that there's room for being an employee at most places when
you're older, and to be honest I don't want to be one either.

Of course the alternative is to find a quiet corner in a corporate giant and
wait out retirement...

~~~
gtirloni
This is becoming more and more apparent to me also (a sysadmin at 31,
generalist). Independent consultant + some company selling a (web) product is
in the plans.

The only route for keeping the same lifestyle I have at 50, in a corporation,
is management. All that Y career talks looks just like words. I don't see
anybody around old and technical, so I'm not counting on it as much as the HR
dept would want me to.

~~~
maxerickson
Keep in mind that the world is going to change an awful lot over the next 19
years. Not just technology and stuff, things like boomers retiring in far more
substantial numbers and the ever increasing proportion of people that are 50
(or 60) and in pretty good health.

------
ta20140319
Two points:

My manager will not interview any candidate who states on resume or any public
profile their age, religion, or any other factor that could be considered a
legally-protected basis for discrimination. This even extends sometimes to
graduation dates if they are in the distant past. He simply states that even
interviewing such a candidate creates the potential for lawsuits (candidates
claiming they were not hired due to these factors). Right or wrong, I'm sure
this is even more prevalent among HR-savvy hiring managers. Your resume and/or
public profiles mention both your age and your religion.

Secondly, you mention that people have disagreements about the value of
generalists. While this is true, it does seem there is consensus on the fact
that as the field has developed over past decades, jobs have become more
specialized, and failing to cater your resume to the type of position you are
seeking is a huge part of the reason you are not getting interviews. I can
understand not wanting to "throw away" all the stuff you've done over the
years; wanting that to be acknowledged is a very human thing, very
understandable. This stuff belongs on your personal website, though, not your
resume. Your resume is a targeted sales pitch, and those interested in
learning more about you will be able to see the rest of the (less relevant)
stuff you've worked on in your career on your website.

------
fecak
This, put simply, is likely a marketing and sales problem. Someone can have
all the skills in the world and suffer unemployment if they don't know how to
package and sell them. Conversely, there are some poor developers who always
have a job, because they perform well in interviews, may be popular, and know
how to write a résumé.

You have to tailor your message to your audience to some degree. To be frank,
some of the problems are likely related to ageism, and there are several ways
to minimize the possibility of ageism without lying. We aren't required to
list every job in our career, nor are we required to list graduation dates. If
they want to confirm a degree they will do it after having met you.

Job search for older engineers becomes challenging on several levels. Topics
like energy and effort are a non-issue for most of the industry. Mentioning on
a résumé that you were able to live off investments for a period will lead
people to think that you might not "want" or need to work, which will also
raise eyebrows.

For these engineers, it is all about demonstrating that they can solve your
problems. If you can show that, most of the other worries will go away.

OldCoder, I just emailed you to offer some advice on the marketing side of
things. I'm a recruiter (in NY, no clients out west) and writer on job search
topics. I can't get you a job, but I think I can help improve the packaging if
you're interested.

------
nilkn
Ageism is rampant. There's really no doubt about this, and it's especially
true in Silicon Valley. You can't change your age, but you can change how you
present yourself.

Your problem is one of marketing. You're putting your age front and center in
your entire persona. This is a huge mistake. Your resume is large and hard to
sift through, and many of your listed skills don't necessarily seem relevant
anymore. This only exacerbates the problem.

I recommend a vast simplification to the way you present yourself online and
to employers. Completely eliminate the OldCoder persona. Eliminate all drama--
don't mention family problems or reasons for leaving past jobs.

When applying to jobs, always produce a short resume that is custom-made for
that company. This might not be necessary for a fresh college graduate, but
when you have 30 years of experience built up you have to learn to present the
aspects of your experience that are most relevant to the employer and nothing
else.

Don't concern yourself so much with finding a perfect match. You're not really
in a position right now to only consider jobs that seem perfect for you.

Brush up on algorithms.

Finally, if you are in severe financial trouble, it is plain folly to limit
your search to one geographic area. Scared 18 year old kids move cross country
for college. You can move for a job. From experience I can say that ageism is
less prevalent outside of Silicon Valley. Companies in medium-sized cities
also receive fewer resumes, which means there's less competition, which means
you have a much better chance at standing out if you learn to present yourself
in a compelling way.

------
smikhanov
Interesting. Some (if not most) of the problems author describes would be a
non-problem should he live in some of the more prosperous EU countries, so
strictly speaking they are not linked to author's profession.

Few hints he gives in the description of the interview process ("you'll be
asked about algorithms", "you'll be asked why aren't you a CTO", etc) imply
that he's interviewing for "Just A Programmer" positions -- is this the case?
It looks like most of the difficulty in finding a job came from the disconnect
between the position the author was applying for and his experience. JAP
positions, even if they are advertised as "senior" normally require just the
basic coding skills (i.e. you don't have to be really smart, mediocre is just
fine) and therefore majority of applications will be much younger than the
author, thus forcing the HR to ask the questions above.

In a broader context of discussion about older developers, what's more
interesting for me are two things:

1\. Why there are so few roles being advertised for truly senior developers?
There are plenty of complicated commercial software around. For example, Apple
works on a novel mobile operating system with its own set of technical
challenges, so I would expect kernel specialists to be in demand, but those
openings are rarely visible (even at apple.com/jobs).

2\. What do truly senior engineers employed by major companies do on a daily
basis? How mere mortals like us can get closer to their expertise set? I'm
talking about Guido van Rossum at Dropbox, Brian Goetz at Oracle, Michael
Stonebraker (though I'm not sure he hasn't moved to academia full-time), etc.

~~~
OldCoder
Some of my friends have told me I'm too literal about job listings. They echo
a key point that you've made here, "JAP positions normally require just the
basic coding skills".

But if I apply for positions that need specific frameworks, plenty of people
who _have_ those frameworks are likely to apply as well. I've got experience,
but won't applicants who match the checkboxes in job listings be more likely
to obtain interviews?

~~~
humanrebar
Don't say no for them. That's their job. If you think you would do the job
well and enjoy it, apply anyway. Just be upfront about the things you'll need
to learn about as you go, so they know what they're getting themselves into.

------
varelse
"After the dot-com shut down, 2003, I made $1M in the stock market. Lost most
of it afterwards"

TLDR: the person in question's advice is best ignored because he is in need of
serious psychological help.

No I am not being sarcastic.

What's wrong with this guy? A complete lack of common sense and grasp of
reality. After having lost $1M and failing to find a job, rather than go broke
and become transient, he could have applied to something like Trader Joe's or
Costco and worked his way back up to financial stability. There's plenty of
opportunity for skilled labor, especially skilled labor willing to learn hot
skills as they emerge.

But don't take my word for it, read the story of his ongoing legal travails
with his family. The root cause here is psychological, not financial.

------
taude
There's age bias all the time, I'm not sure why people try to say otherwise:
given the choice between hiring a twenty-something and a 50-something for a
given position, and a similar skillset (especially easy to do in technology
since skillsets get out dated so quick), most will hire the younger person.
It's human nature to not be influenced like this.

Also, what most people here need to remember, too, is that not everyone's
career path is going to put them on a trajectory to becoming CTO. The number
of CTO/executive/engineering directors, etc. is quite small compared to the
rank and file programmer positions.

I think someone else mentioned this, but sales people have it even rougher
than software engineers.

------
leapinglemur55
As a CS major in college, this just does wonders for my self confidence over
the long term...

~~~
OldCoder
You've got plenty of time to figure things out. And I made mistakes that
you'll be able to avoid.

~~~
kashkhan
if you took a year to brush up on your algorithm books, and learned all the
in-vogue developer buzzwords, couldn't you get some remote work?

On the internet no one knows your age.

~~~
dools
Unless your IRC nick is OldCoder...

------
shultays
"You know what they do with engineers when they turn forty? ... They take them
out and shoot them."

From Primer, I always thought that was the case

------
thebenedict
This post is confusing to me and a little scary. The linked resume is far more
extensive than mine, and I often turn away inquiries for reasonably well-paid
freelance web app development because I don't have the bandwidth. What
happens? There must be more to it. Why are no similar opportunities available
to industry veterans? Pride? Burn out? Likely others...

Most of the work I do is intellectually beneath someone with 30+ years of
experience in C, and below their theoretical earning potential, but if the
alternative is near poverty it seems like it should be workable.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
"Most of the work I do is intellectually beneath someone with 30+ years of
experience in C, and below their theoretical earning potential, but if the
alternative is near poverty it seems like it should be workable."

I think there is something here.

While software developers get better with time (and if you're smart that never
stops), the _need_ for people with 25 years of experience is minimal. Assuming
that they've kept up to date, those people will do a job better than someone
with 10 years experience, but probably not massively and probably not enough
to warrant a higher salary. After all, a bulk of commercial software
development simply isn't that difficult - it's CRUD apps, data processing and
automating dull repetitive jobs in a way that saves money.

I think part of the skill with staying employed as you get older is to ensure
that you aren't simply looking for work which justifies your massive
experience as if you do you're going to be fishing in a very small pool. You
need to accept that some (maybe not all but certainly a lot) of the work
you're going to do is work that could be being done by a less experienced
developer and adjust expectations (including salary) accordingly.

~~~
JohnBooty
Exactly!

    
    
      I think part of the skill with staying employed as you
      get older is to ensure that you aren't simply looking for 
      work which justifies your massive experience as if you do 
      you're going to be fishing in a very small pool. 
    

Yes. Experienced coders might need to accept that their experience is
valuable, but that their experience and savvy does not equate to genius and/or
the ability to succeed at programming tasks that only the top __% of highly-
paid coding whizzes can aspire to work on.

Heck, a coder with 30 years of experience isn't even likely going to
outproduce some offshore rent-a-coder in the short term.

Which is fine, really, because like you said: a bulk of commercial software
development simply isn't that difficult in any technical sense. A lot of times
it comes down to integrating various disparate systems and managing people (as
well as avoiding pitfalls we learn to avoid over time) and those are places
where somebody with experience can really shine.

Older coders should really work on people skills. Even if you're still an in-
the-trenches coder, as you get a bit older, people are going to expect some
leadership. Even if it's just some informal guidance of other team members.

The 20 year-old coding away with his headphones and never talking to anybody
on is potentially charming; a 40 year-old doing it is just weird.

------
pistle
You don't curate a resume. They need to be tailored to the position you are
applying for. Blanketing won't yield happiness or wealth. Be selective, then
optimize.

What do you really want to do? (and are demonstrably capable of doing?)
Distill that, optimize the rate for your audience to absorb it. Use the F
shape, font size, spacing, etc. to provide a 10-second, 1-minute, 10-minute
document. Make the reviewers' jobs easy. The gate-keepers need to see the
checklist of acronyms they were told to filter on. The manager will need to
see "plays well with others and does productive, self-directed work." The
technical manager/senior tech interviewer will want to see a little of
themselves and/or something admirable or ambitious in you.

Spending another 8 hours blanketing resumes and cover sheet/emails to every
potential listing is time away from engaging in work that keeps your skills
sharp and involved in a community.

OldCoder. Stop calling yourself old. In tech, that's not going to sell - and
you are selling. You could be a CTO and call yourself old (battle-hardened
general), but it has no utility if you are out of work. Age without wisdom is
old. Be wise, experienced, adept, efficient, proficient... not just old.
Knowing that there is a severe ageism in software dev especially, don't self-
identify as old. It hints at rigidity, staleness, apathy.

Generalists likely seem to have no opinion, no passion, no fire.

------
TimPC
If this post doesn't work, try and find a good recruiter (they are rare but
they do exist). Make a direct call and try and get a meeting. They will charge
a 20% fee on the employer side which can lower the salary you could otherwise
negotiate up to, but compared to the current alternatives that sounds like a
near non-issue. Get them to help you with tweaking the resume for the specific
roles and make direct calls to sell you for a role they are trying to fill,
they generally will have more inside information than anyone here and you'll
have a far better chance than through resumes. If you get a sense the
recruiter you try isn't helping, try another one. A lot of people hate the
spammy push approach of recruiters, but some of them are really great when
you're the pull service. Get advice on the best way to sell why you're
experienced talent applying for positions that don't match the resume. If I
saw this resume for a general software engineer or junior engineer position my
alarm bells would go off, I'd expect someone who had those skills to be
applying for senior engineers or architect. When you list those skills for a
junior or intermediate programming position people assume that you've covered
them in a course in university and not much else.

------
DanielBMarkham
I haven't done this in a long while, but I'll bet you a hundred bucks that the
average programming generalist can go to the nearby small town (not large one)
and start knocking on business's doors, offering to help them with any
computer issues they have -- and generate enough money to live on.

If you can make a web page, update a computer, tweak some configuration
settings, show somebody how to use their phone, or configure all that new
stuff they bought last week? You'll make money.

Making money is simply friends helping each other out. If you're 55 and know a
lot of stuff about computers, you should be able to help other people out.
Now, you probably won't make that million you used to be worth, but you're not
in the soup line, either.

It gets more difficult in large cities because it's harder to reach business
decision-makers, and there's so much competition. But there's no doubt in my
mind that there isn't a huge and growing need for the tech equivalent of day
laborers. And we don't have to be 25 and have a strong back.

Be very careful that the attitudes and prejudices you pick up as you age don't
hurt you a lot worse than your skill choices or work history.

------
pviking
IMHO, that experience from the 70's has a lot of value. How to optimize, how
to talk to hardware; all are forgotten skills now days. Not to mention the
sheer value of remembering how things were done and why. The explosion of
young, inexperienced programmers that refuse to acknowledge the triumphs and
failures of the past put the profession into an infinite loop of
rediscovering, re-implementing, and re-learning the lessons of the past.

Those 1970's skills map directly to embedded work. They map to kernel and
systems level programming. Guess what ? The same problems we had on a PDP-11
we have today. The scale is a bit different, but the fundamentals are not.

Can you pass the fizz buzz test ?

You would be amazed at the number of applicants that can talk "singleton
observer model view controller association class" all day, and can't do fizz
buzz. Or compile hello world from the command line. Or know the difference
between a compiler error and a linker error.

Focus on what you do best. I think you will find there is a demand for those
skills.

------
praptak
My takeaway from this is: save. Resist the temptation to match your spending
to your salary, you don't need all that crap anyway. I hope to have enough
assets by the time I'm 50 that permanent unemployment at the time will be at
worst the difference between uncomfortable retirement and comfortable one -
not between hungry+homeless and food+shelter.

------
ry0ohki
The title should be "What Happens to Older Developers Who Don't Keep Their
Skills Up To Date".

No offense OldCoder, but that seems to be the root of the problem, leaving the
workforce doesn't help either. I know quite a few 50+ developers who are doing
fine, so I don't think it's the "old" so much. This can happen in any
industry.

------
segmondy
I hate to say this, but his resume sucks. Generalize, but don't generalize
your resume.

Listen, if you can code in Haskell, Lisp, ML, and spit out binary code by
hammering it via Hex, no one cares if all they want is a PHP or Ruby
programmer.

Specialize your resume, if they want PHP, explain what you have done with PHP.
If they want C/C++, highlight your C/C++ experiences, if they want a sysadmin,
they don't care about your coding skills. You can show those off in the
interview, and let them know you have other skills.

What this means is you need to have about 5-6 different resumes targeting the
jobs you are going for.

Drop ancient and basic things out of your resume too, I saw MSDOS, HTML, CSS,
GIMP, HTTP, XML, etc in his resume.

He has the technical skills, but not the marketing skills. He is in the
business of selling himself, all those skills oversells himself and makes many
companies afraid that he would want a ridiculously high salary and that they
can't afford him.

------
evolve2k
You've coded and done tech work for all these years and rightly earn't your
stripes. Your resume reads as if it's like please hire me I can do much
things. What it doesn't say is what you really are seeking and who you are as
a member of their team.

My suggestions \- Include a paragraph summarising your philosophy to
programming and the way your approach achieves success. \- Say outright what
makes your ideal client. I would be worried in hiring this guy, that he's too
advanced for what we need and too experienced for my little project. \- Add
more narrative at the top and tell a story. Sure you've done many things and
are a generalist, but why hire you, boil down all this info into what it means
I'll get from you. Words like these make good headings. Who I am My approach
What Im committed to

Boil down the essence of all this experience is my recommendation.

------
tluyben2
This all is true, but it's actually a lot worse for non-developers. Sales,
most middle management jobs, generally MBA's are utterly worthless after 50
and no-one would hire them even if they have skills (they apparently didn't
prove them otherwise they would be big successes before). And that's only
talking about people who work with their brain; working with your hands is
worse than that even.

I think the most important thing to do; if you have a job make sure you keep
it after 50; don't toy around or give anyone reasons to drop you. And make
sure you have a _huge_ network; make sure different people ask you for advise
or ask you to work for them at least a few times per year.

Besides that there is not much you can do if you are not outwardly hugely
successful at what you do; if you are a dev, that means specialize, write
books and get them published about what you specialized in, create workshops
and seminars, even next to your job but especially at your job.

I must say that it became slightly easier though for people who are willing to
reinvent themselves a bit; besides making sure that you have medical private
insurance just _always_ (and yes, you can afford that when you are young; make
sure you keep it going even if your job provides insurance as well; and when
you are young you feel invincible until you get something which could've
disabled/kill you; after that, if you didn't have insurance before it, no-one
will ever take you so it's important not to think you are invincible ;), you
can work remotely and then age doesn't really count at all. I have many
'older' friends who work online as coder for people they have never seen or
met and they are doing fine. No they won't get the insane amounts they were
once used to, but maybe you shouldn't get used to that wastefulness anyway;
they can do what they like (which happens to be coding) until they die
basically and make enough money to pay for health insurance etc. Most of them
are 60-somethings who make enough that way to lead a really good life.

~~~
OldCoder
Doesn't experience count with Sales regardless of age? But you're correct in
general. Age discrimination is probably more significant in some non-tech
sectors than in tech.

And I agree that the social network issue is crucial.

------
mbubb
Lately, there have been intersting HN posts on the roles for non technical
folks - what about mentoring coders at startups? Is there space for this?
Would it be generally unwelcome?

Sorry for the US football reference here but one of my favorite players from
the Giants - Justin Tuck was recruited by the Raiders. He still has plenty of
skill to play the position but is probably not going to be as dominant a
player as he was. (All the younger defensive tackles are using Ruby, node.js
and Clojure ). But he has been to a few Superbowls and knows how it is done so
can mentor younger players and contribute on the field at the same time...

Thus his services are more valuable to the Oakland Raiders (with a younger
developing team) as compared to the Giants which is a veteran team...

------
billyhoffman
Just a thought to the author of the OP (OldCoder): perhaps tone down the very
public ordeal that is happening with your family

I mean no disrespect or to suggest that victims should hide their past or not
confront their offenders.

But some of the top results that come up when I search your name is your
various websites. On these, on the top of all the pages I have seen, is a
large disclaimer box discussing your lawsuits/situation. Your intense feelings
about your family shows through quite clearly. Anyone doing even the slightly
due diligence on a prospective employee would find this.

As a human being I feel for you. As a potential employer, I would take one
look at that and say "I'm not going to bring that level of drama into my
company."

------
biesnecker
It's basically fear of this that finally drove me to management, and improving
the skills that being a good manager requires. They're actually many of the
same skills as being a good programmer -- communication and organization being
two that immediately come to mind -- but they're applied differently, and
there are other things around leadership and change management that I've had
to learn from scratch, more or less. Not that management is the panacea and
everything will be all right from here on out -- I'll still have to hustle my
ass off -- but I think I have a longer runway than I would otherwise.

------
mbubb
The resume is good (experience is amazing). It is LaTeX, no?

With older coders I recommend familiarity with github and LinkedIN - check and
check.

I might separate out blogs. Create a landing spot just for the resume. The
related blog entries are personal and don't tell a story about work and
coding.

I think some greater detail on "teaching coding on IRC" would help. Also -
things like Hackerrank to get some visibility. Mentoring younger coders adds
value...

This guy looks very employable -

------
justinhj
Saying you haven't looked at algorithms for 30 years is an excuse. Like it or
not interviewers will down time on the classic CS algorithms and data
structures. The things they ask have not changed that much since the 70s. For
anyone interviewing I highly recommend taking a refresher course such as
Princeton's algorithms on Coursera. At least if you are applying at the larger
tech companies.

------
hawkharris
One thing to understand is that developers today must actively invest in order
to retire. Saving money isn't enough.

Yes, investing comes with risk (as the author's experience illustrates), but
over time a diversified portfolio far exceeds money sitting in the bank.

------
vermontdevil
They never die. They just byte the dust. (Heard this from another older
developer long ago)

~~~
OldCoder
Old Coders never die Old Coders simply sigh An Old Coder never bytes the dust
Instead he or she dusts the bytes

:D

------
VLM
They're going to lie to you and claim the job is all about (insert list of
acronyms) and they need an experienced rock star.

You need to lie right back, that you're an experienced rock star in the field
of (insert list of acronyms).

There are laws about filtering applicants based on IQ tests and reading
comprehension tests and the like. This whole system is a stealth end-around to
give applicants an IQ test along with a reading comprehension and writing
test. Can you tune your resume to match our advertisement? No, then bye bye.
If yes, well, lets talk.

Then later in the process when at the interview, they provide another stealth
intelligence test when its assumed you'll know the list of requirements is
made up and out of date and you should at the interview express deep knowledge
of "scripting language of the month" and the like. To prove you're in touch
with the actual job requirements.

There are other stealth intelligence tests, like crud app developers and web
graphics artist types being dragged thru the wringer about the intimate
details of b-tree data structures and sorting algos. Its an intelligence test
that has nothing (usually) to do with the job unless they have a horrific NIH
mismanagement problem.

There's nothing immoral or unethical about stretching the truth because they
only care about the intelligence test aspect anyway, and the "list of
acronyms" changes constantly including the time interval between publishing
the advertisement and when they talk to you, and of course on the job you'll
be expected to learn anything new instantly.

Just make sure to add an excuse to your list of skills like "also other job
related skills" (BTW this is in itself part of the intelligence test). Or at
least have a great interview response along the lines of why that wasn't
included on the resume and maybe you're leaving things off your resume like
felony convictions or something.

Also know that once you get past the first couple gatekeepers, your
competition is people with skills who only have to lie a little, and really
excellent skilled liars. So your honesty level should increase over time thru
the process. Again this is yet another intelligence test aspect of the
process. If you said "duh" WRT the above, you're a good candidate, if not,
well, maybe not a "good fit" or whatever.

You do need an actual list of your skills for private use only. That's
probably what the OP posted. Never give that full list to a HR rep or a
computerized keyword scanner.

------
leishulang
Jobs are for those cheaters who practices interview questions everyday while
sending out resumes everywhere at work. If you are actually making worthy
stuff at work, you might as well try to create yourself a job.

------
tibbydude
Late fourties , started off as Unix C developer/sysadmin for a big retailer
until they replaced most of their systems with SAP or outsourcing.

Still coding at same company but in ABAP (SAP dev lang).

------
ptype
At what stage do you fail? Do you have issues getting interviews?

~~~
OldCoder
Recently, I'm failing at finding listings that seem to be a match.

Friends have urged me to simply apply for random jobs even if I'm missing
experience in particular frameworks.

I've been reluctant to do so. Instead, I've been looking for:

(a) Junior positions that I'm clearly qualified for

(b) Positions at firms that are seeking generalists

(c) Positions where I'd be able to use the special skills that I do possess

I'll probably need to build connections over time for this to work out. In the
interim, a non-tech position might be the way to go.

------
kohanz
How can someone go from $1M net worth to transient in a decade? Seems like it
would be difficult to do that without some level of financial mismanagement.

~~~
nilkn
Whatever investment made him that money probably also tanked later on. It
sounds like he invested in stocks and waited too long to cash out.

~~~
kohanz
Agreed that a tanked investment (stocks or real estate) is the likely
explanation, but that is my point. A decade ago he was 45 years old. To have
the vast majority of his net worth tied up in volatile investments is what I
would call financial mismanagement.

~~~
VLM
The problem is there are no non-volatile investments anymore. Real estate?
LOL. If you want non-volatility there are plenty of govt bonds paying well
under the inflation rate, but I wouldn't describe that as an investment.

~~~
kohanz
Bonds and the like (e.g. savings account) _are_ investments, it's just that
they have low reward paired with a low risk. This case demonstrates the
utility of that low risk. Certainly falling behind a bit to inflation is a
minor concern compared to losing $1M in 10 years.

------
cjf4
This guy has to learn how to sell himself a little better. "Old Coder" and
"70s" should not be the first two things on a resume.

~~~
OldCoder
It could be worse. I could be an Old Coder _in_ his 70s :P

But, in all seriousness, though age discrimination is very real, I don't feel
that it's as significant a factor for me presently as my lack of a social
network or the fact that I'm a generalist.

------
wayanon
Agree with the comments about having a resume that doesn't summarise your
skills but instead shows why they would be useful in that role.

------
mgkimsal
"There are few job listings that say “a bit of everything”."

And yet... they all seem to require it.

------
robodale
They get sick of working for some douche and go start their own company.
Example: me.

------
netcan
foreword: this is not a statement of political or moral judgment. Just
musings.

Part of the parcel of a dynamic competition based job market is that people
get as much as possible of the total that others are willing to pay for their
work. At present this means rapidly improving wages for certain categories of
tech jobs where employees are scarce.

There are lots of ways this can go right or wrong. Here is a middle of the
road story:

A family member of mine was a programmer in the mid 80s. By the 90s he had
moved into management in a big enterprise software company. By mid 00s he was
managing very big clients/projects that were billing for big software and
thousands of engineering hours. The last time he had really programmed for a
living, it was in COBOL and even then the tech was dated and very specialized.

At some point the clients he was working on went onto a different model
handled by a different division of the company in a different country. He was
offered a relocation, but it did not appeal. He had kids in high school, etc.
About 50 years old.

He had made good money for years but not rockstar money. He owned a valuable
house and had savings and investments so he could last a year or two
unemployed. His first next job was at a startup-like thing that petered out.
Then a long period trying to make his way freelancing and applying for jobs
paying far less than his last. Now he runs a business. I still imagine it's
far from his peek salary, but it's definitely not a bad income by general
standards. It can just be tricky adjusting especially if you had to use
savings to bridge for a few years.

There are all sorts of ways of looking at this. For me the lesson I got from
it is that we have a strange assumption: _your salary will go up over time and
peek near retirement_. Realistically one person might earn more in total by
the age of 45 than his neighbor earns by 65, even in after tax earnings. I
imaging you can find those neighbors in almost any street.

The richer neighbor could theoretically retire at 45 at the same retirement
income the other would have at 65. On paper it might be easier even though the
richer younger neighbor has longer to live of his retirement savings. He also
had 20 year to spend out of his lifetime earnings so there would be more in
the piggy bank if they lived the same lifestyle. At 45 it's a lot easier to
supplement your retirement income and medical expenses are lower. Obviously
this rarely happens.

Wealth is in a very real way relative to standards you consider normal. Part
of that normality standard is an expectation for rising income throughout your
life.

------
james1071
Not a good idea to define yourself as Old Coder.

------
moron4hire
I would suggest rewriting your resume. It is very verbose on the Where You've
Showed Up and very sparse on What You've Accomplished. After reading it
closely, I am still at a loss for what you actually do.

You can find a starving English student easily that will pick your resume
apart for you for very few dollars.

But that's secondary to a more important issue: we are entering a post-resume
economy. Most people in the hiring mechanism view the resume as having very
marginal utility. I don't know what will replace it, but I do know that the
current tactic of doubling-down on recruiters with gigantic databases ripped
off from LinkedIn profiles isn't cutting the mustard.

No, it's not very equitable, but you have probably already noticed that life
isn't fair. I keep holding out hope that some enterprising individual will
recognize the absurdity of the situation and destroy all competitors when he
or she realizes there is a huge, untapped market of the women, minorities, and
"seasoned" developers that Silicon Valley just won't touch.

I'd do it myself, but I don't have the funding yet. The last 3 people I hired
to do work, I never once looked at their resumes. One was a stranger on
Freelancer.com, where I was essentially rolling the dice on certain prejudices
of mine for a weekend chore of a project I didn't want to do myself, and the
other two were friends. And even that wasn't perfect, the one friend I had
actually worked with before did a sloppy job (I was quite happily surprised by
the Freelancer.com person). Unfortunately, my budget got cut and I had to let
them go. Fortunately, they weren't full-time yet.

In my own career, I've gotten very few jobs from my own applications to the
positions. The only jobs I've gotten where I didn't already have some kind of
acquaintance give a recommendation were setup by recruiters, and I eventually
learned to hate those jobs. Perhaps there is something to be said about not
being able to fulfill your hiring requirements through recommendations of your
current employees being indicative of the quality of the company overall.

Even the one job I liked, that I thought I was going in completely blind on,
turned out to have one of my college friends and project mates already working
there. He had told my interviewer he knew me and I was the best coder he had
ever met. I showed up 2 days later and ran into him in the hall.

So the it seems the only way to get a job anymore is to build a network. Go
hang out at Linux User Groups and talk about your distro. Go to meetups and
conferences, and hang out with people at the bars afterwards (drink ginger ale
if you have to). If you look more like Steve Wozniak, change up your wardrobe
to look more like Paul Graham. Those are the sorts of places to say the things
you've said on your resume. And just keep an ear open. Get a reputation for
being a helpful, friendly, delightful person, even if you're just connecting
two other people who can help each other and it doesn't help you directly.
Don't be pushy, don't hand out business cards unless you are clear they want
to get into contact with you. Think of it a bit like dating: the desperate guy
wreaks.

People love nothing more than talking about themselves and complaining about
their problems. In very short order, you will meet someone who complains about
a problem you can fix.

The third or tenth such person might actually even be able to pay you, too.

~~~
OldCoder
So it's mostly about social networks, which I talked about myself and which I
neglected to maintain.

A number of other people here are focused on the resume. You yourself suggest
a rewrite. But if it's of marginal utility I think that embracing the
generalist aspect might be the way to go.

And I'll need to find a non-tech job to pay the rent while I'm hanging out at
Linux User Groups, Doge Festivals, and so on.

~~~
moron4hire
Building a social network takes time, yes, but it's not actually a lot of
time. Parallelize your networking strategy. Yes, you're dealing with random
scenarios, but each has a non-zero probability of turning into work. The
faster you can get through scenarios, the faster the aggregate probability of
1 of them converting out of all of them converges to 1.

It is also helpfully self-limiting in regards to going overboard in one
particular group. You just won't have time to overstay your welcome at any one
place.

You also get to test the waters on many places at once and whittle down the
candidate set for ones that don't strike your fancy very quickly.

Also, stretch outside of your comfort zone. If you strictly go to meetups that
you _think_ you will like, then you are likely to meet people who think like
you. Finding work as a consultant takes putting yourself into environments
where _you_ are the odd duck, where _everyone_ has the same problem and nobody
within the group knows how to solve the problem.

This could mean something as simple as taking ballroom dancing classes, or
attending film enthusiast discussion groups. These sorts of places tend to be
populated by people who know each other from other places, such as work. Jobs
at which they might have problems you can solve.

------
alien3d
most programmer will stop at age 35 and become management level.kinda
wastefull because experince can speed up deployment and debugging.

~~~
hessenwolf
Okay, I hit 35 on June 2nd, and become a 'Risk Manager' on June 1st. Why?
Because I realise that, in corporate life, technical skills are a serious
roadblock to a career.

(Okay, I'm drafting a business plan on the side for a consultancy. I am hoping
the non-programming job will allow me capacity to work outside my liberal
flexitime hours. All advice welcome)

~~~
toolslive
"technical skills are a serious roadblock to a career". You've discovered
Putt's law:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putt%27s_Law_and_the_Successful...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putt%27s_Law_and_the_Successful_Technocrat)

------
michaelochurch
Yes, he's terrible at writing resumes but the people tearing into that are
clueless just-world wankers missing the forest for the trees.

Ageism is a real issue that a lot of us will face. For most, it'll be milder
than for him: a gradual loss of status after 40 due not to declining ability
but the crassness of business culture. It's not inexorable, and some of us
will outrun the bear (or at least the other guy) but the average trend is
negative.

As a person with cyclothymia (the mildest of the bipolar spectrum disorders) I
would guess that he's clinically depressed, and that's probably hurting him
more than his age. (Most of the middle age loss of "fluid intelligence" is
undiagnosed depression. People of normal health don't begin declining,
cognitively, until about 70 and some never do.) He feels a need to justify
things in his past ("Reason for leaving") when he has reasonable job tenures.
His writing is less than competent in organization. The self-pity is obvious.
Some depression is completely endogenous and other varieties come from
negative contexts (like mid-life un- or underemployment) and can be even
harder to get out of. People can be assholes and it can really feel like
they're kicking you when you're down, when in fact they're just being morally
lazy and weak (i.e. people) but not malevolent in any targeted or personal
way.

It's easy to take the haughty libertarian view and say, "He should spend $350
and have his resume looked at by a professional." Okay, but he probably
doesn't have the money, because he doesn't have a job. "He needs professional
help." Probably true (again, I think he's clinically depressed, and who
wouldn't be as an unemployed 55-year-old programmer?) but see above. The truth
is that he's a capable person who's been fucked over, and while most of us
will not be as badly fucked over or as early in our careers, we should be
angry.

------
corresation
As is often the case, I don't think the difficulties in this case have much to
do with age: If everything else was the same (within the possible, of course,
meaning job history changes a bit), and the candidate was 26, I think most
people would still reject the resume with little consideration.

There is ageism. There is sexism. There is racism. But there are also many
cases for all of those where someone uses it as an easy explanation for any
other difficulties they face, which is self-destructive because it avoids real
self-reflection.

------
notastartup
How could this engineer have prevented this? By starting his own company or a
consultant? How could have moved up into the managerial position?

~~~
OldCoder
Manager positions wouldn't have worked at the initial firm or the dot-com
because both firms kicked the bucket.

What I _should_ have done is understand that things change and prepared for
changes in advance.

~~~
mistermumble
Not too late. You have a good foundation to build upon. Just need to pick one
of several possible directions:

* system admin -- your linux background is impressive, but need to pick up windows admin skills (most small shops require both), firewalls, proxy servers, caching, CDN

* front-end coder -- learn Javascript and related technologies (jquery, Node, requireJS, browserify, handlebars, etc)

* Wordpress specialist -- learn PHP, themes, responsive design, theme frameworks, etc

* other specialties: Drupal, Django, Rails

In addition to freshening up skills, do some networking through meetups. Also
flesh out your online presence. Have an active Github profile. Also Stack
Overflow. Check out TopCoder.

Lastly, lose the "OldCoder" label. You can only get away with that if you are
Kernighan, Ritchie, Guy Steele, or Dave Cutler.

