So...
1. I might be banging the wrong doors. E.g. FAANGs don't seem to be right. Any companies that don't drink/sell the youth cool-aid?
2. I might be searching at the wrong job boards. Any suggestions welcome.
3. Finally I might be better doing sth else altogether (but what?) rather than fighting a loosing battle against preconceptions that run so deep.
Anyway. Thanks for any non-insulting answers in advance.
PS: I'm based in EU and I'm a SW Dev working mainly in DevOps and Reliability.
It began with a friend who was in the job market as a 50+. More on the hardware side. This guy has some cool experience. He gets lots of interviews, they go well, but no offers.
As his frustration grows, he grows desperate to try something different. He dyes some color back into his hair, gets some tinted glasses, and lets his daughter take him shopping for some more hip interview clothes.
A month later and he's in bidding wars for who to hire him. He said the difference was night and day. He was now pointing out his age in interviews "are you sure I'm not too old?" and the interviewers were like "no way man."
I wondered how one off this was. A year or so later, knew another guy who was having this same struggle. We shared the story with him. He raised his eyebrows, hesitated for a week or two, the colored his hair, got his niece to take him shopping. And pretty much same thing.
Obviously, this is a small sample set. But the lesson I took from this (and haven't had a chance to prove for myself yet) is that it's not your age that will limit you, but your apparent age. If you are old, but look like a younger/fresher version of yourself, you do well. If you appear "old", you struggle.
Best of luck.
Note: this also applies to personality - if you give off a "grumpy old person" vibe, or are far off the mark culture-wise, you're gonna have a rough time.
It's very, very easy to get into a "grumpy old fart" mindset, where anything new or changing is dismissed out of hand. I've had to fight hard to stop this from happening, and it's still my first response to anything new.
Having said that, there are sometimes good reasons for dismissing something new. But only after taking the time to understand it and why everything else thinks this is cool.
If I'm interviewing a 50+ for a job, I want to see evidence that they haven't fallen into Grumpy Old Fart syndrome.
The converse is also true - if I'm interviewing someone younger, I want to see evidence that they're not caught up in tech fads. Too many times I've seen good tech thrown away because it's not in the hip-and-happening language/framework/platform/etc. And there's a lot to learn from the mistakes of the past ;) And having some idiot kid explain to me why Mongo is soo awesome and SQL is obsolete gets tiring fast [0].
But to be honest, I'd be worried if I had to interview for a role. It'd be a sign that my network wasn't where I'd like it to be. Keeping that up to date is as valuable as keeping the tech skills sharp.
[0] example at random cough
I'm a younger guy, but I know I try to pick my outfit carefully when going for an interview. I don't have a totally different interview wardrobe or anything, but I pay a little more attention to matching colors and generally looking more put-together.
You may not even need to get your kids to dress you - just find a friend your age who cares about fashion some to help. Even if you think you dress well, having someone else check you over or make small suggestions can help.
Some people will benefit from rising to the middle.
That said, one of the most influential people I know at a FAANG dresses like a mechanic. But he already has the juice.
a grey beard will protect you from accepting positions where looks might be more important than skills.
No slight against your friends, if they needed the money they did what they had to do. But if one doesn't, there is nothing wrong with letting your beard guide you: somewhere out there is a lisp codebase just waiting for your love and attention.
OTOH if someone thinks you're a wizard because you have a grey beard, that's also looks above skills.
The compressed interview process means that after the usual preambles, you get <30 minutes to convince a zoom conference of 2-3 engineers that they want to work with you. It leaves no time for you to overcome prejudice and preconceptions.
The book recommends what your friend did – go shopping for younger clothes (the book author recommends hiring a stylist every five years) and making sure you don't have grey hair.
I don't get this reference. Can you explain it or show an example?
There was a time where a popped collar was a sign that you were a problematic person. Probably still is in a certain context. I think people are going to do some pattern matching with your clothing and people they've met/seen in the past. It's just a bit of human nature.
Maybe everyone should dress like Mr. Rogers or something.
Did she proudly admit her terrible judgement to her peers in hiring review and meeting, or confide in your later that she tried to sabotage you? Did she still interview?
Good luck to you
Seriously, thanks for the anecdotes. I could imagine companies are a bit afraid of a grumpy old geezer having a bad influence on the company's work atmosphere. This may be less of a concern if they feel the person is trying to keep up with the younger people also for non-work related stuff.
Supplementing Biotin worked well for me, and I've talked to others with similar experiences.
I think part of the problem is that with experience comes integrity, and integrity is the last thing most employers want to deal with.
you're right of course, just depresing that we've essentially not made much progress in the past 50 years... especially since the people who kicked off this whole thing were some of the least presentable first-impression guys you could ever find (see early photos and descriptions of jobs, gates, etc.)
It's weird that employers are so superficial. But maybe they're looking for someone flexible and energetic, and if you look too old, and give off "old man" vibes, they fear you may lack that energy.
The FAANG gang will never see your resume or application as their automated screeners will silently reject you. Startups will advise you that you cannot possibly understand the complexity of the problem space they are solving because no one in the history of the industry has ever tried building complex software, which is why they are writing their own version of make in two week sprints.
I wish I had better advice but after seven years of trying I’ve moved on and out of the industry.
I'm an interviewer at a FAANG company. I've interviewed plenty of candidates who were over 30, over 40, and never once seen anyone rejected based on age. I've worked with guys hired in their 40s, generally very solid devs.
The key thing I have seen is that if you've been in the industry for 20+ years, we expect you to be at a senior level. If decades of experience doesn't make you any better than a college grad, what have you been doing for 20 years?
I'd love to have a senior dev with 20 years experience join my team.
That pretty much confirms what the OP said.
Regardless. I refreshed all that and more. But still there always seems to be a guy somewhere in this long way that will throw the odd question (open 'the Linux programmer interface' at a random page and shoot). I mean it is very easy to find a quirky question to ask and then use my flawed or 'I don't remember this off hand (but I can damn sure find it and understand it in 5 mins if you let me) to throw me out of the window.
I've seen the same play at least 6 times (wannabe startups emulate this hiring process - if google does it then it must be correct).
OTOH dunno - perhaps I just don't cut it. Perhaps the competition has been turbocharging while I was working. Dunno.
After 20 years you may go in circles - most places don’t offer Alan Kay style work, so you process invoices for company A and create api integrations for company B etc. You always learn but I don’t think it’s an exponential rise for most. Can it be?
In other companies that's not always the norm. I worked in companies with senior folks in their late 20 / early 30s while a few 50+ developers were software engineers (not senior).
An industry mentor of mine who runs a R&D for a large, and successful software/hardware business unit once explained their approach to building teams in a really interesting manner to me. They explained that they wanted to have experienced folks on the team, so that they didn't re-learn lessons that the team should already have learnt, and instilled the culture and best practices of good developers -- but they wanted junior engineers on the team to drive a healthy disregard for what was asserted to be impossible, or written off as folly based on prior experiences. Their experience was that this balance helped grow great engineers from the junior folks, whilst keeping the senior folks on their toes -- seeing that their bias against an idea wasn't always the right thing.
Something that stuck with me from this conversation: We naturally become more conservative in terms of what we view as possible as we become more experienced -- after all, we tried X before, and it really didn't work out -- let's not waste our time doing X again...!
I interviewed 10s of candidates at a FAANG last year. A significant number of them were older than me. A non-trivial proportion of those were interviewing for positions that were more junior to me. Of those folks we hired a good number of them. If you see age-bias in the interviewing process, it's already a red-flag as to the team not clearly understanding how to make the best of the pool of engineers that they can potentially hire, and I'd avoid them for that reason.
I'd also love to hire experienced folks into my team. A great thing about the FAANG that I'm at, is that we're explicitly empowered in the hiring process - and hiring managers really _have_ to care about what interviewers think. I would encourage not writing this class of company off as being only youth-focused. :-)
My understanding is that you probably won't get the job
I doubt there is any such person. Even fairly crappy programmers with 20 years of experience have seen a lot, both technical and otherwise, and occasionally it makes a big difference.
It helps to have people on your team that can hear the faint hoofsteps of impending disaster.
Am I in the Twilight Zone?
At a certain point, I just realized that no one seemed to want me anymore. I mean, I helped take three companies, with multiple complex software systems, to acquisitions. But, you know, that just doesn’t matter. At 39, I was hammered with job offers. But, now, I just get endless interviews.
Luckily, I saved a lot. So, I’m able to do something new. But, a lot of my colleagues are on a sad and downward path. I really hope you youngsters are saving.
Some of the best "mentoring" I ever got as a young software developer was about saving and investing money. I was pretty late coming around, but at least I did.
I try to get younger developers to understand this; few care. It's probably the same percentage as when I was their age.
Firstly, congrats on that accomplishment. Curious why you arent specifically looking for companies who need this very valuable experience (or are you?) If I had a company in this stage, i'd want to specifically find experience such as yours.
What are you doing now? Where do you see good opportunities for people with good tech skills that don't fit the mold of what FAANG recruiters are looking for?
This describes every project here https://github.com/uber
While this is indeed a sad state of affairs your articulation of it made me laugh out loud. Thanks for that.
I don't have a CS degree, which is an immediate filter. I don't have any patents (due to a corporate edict). I made a small but apparently vocal group of enemies in a previous role (which I've written about previously but…never be the apex point of contact/control for a new technology in a F100 company if you can avoid it). On all the credential axes that recruiters / companies evaluate I'm a paper tiger.
To anyone offering advice to me personally: it’s been seven years since I worked FTE. Almost all companies (US at least) will not consider you for employment if you have not worked in the past three months, let alone six months or seven years. I know what your policies are, I'm just telling you what your practices are in reality.
I'm not looking for work. I am fine where I am. The industry is happy to pay to relearn the lessons I and others have learned instead of just…you know…paying people who’ve already had the experience.
And I'm at peace with that at this point.
So, try those two places.
I did feel like I was the target for extreme age discrimination at WikiMedia Organization. All the phone interviews went great until one was a video call and the interviewer literally started laughing when he saw me and he quickly ended the call, and their HR immediately sent me a no thank you, thanks for applying email. The same thing happened at Electronic Arts about 15 years ago. They kept calling me with invites to come up to Vancouver for an interview. Three of people, when they saw me and realized that I was in my 50s, they literally started to laugh.
So, I would say to stick with quality companies and you will have better results.
So I set a timer, and started working on it, and got a simple solution working, which ran using Docker so that I could package the dependencies... (some ruby gems, the test's stock files, etc.) I included a readme that said 'simply docker build and docker run'. At the 3 hour mark, I stopped iterating and sent the github link.
The recruiter called me the next day and said that the person who looked at the code said it didn't run, when he looked at it, it was the worst code they'd ever seen, I didn't use object-oriented design and didn't unit test it.
Wut? A 3 hour script to sort some files should be properly structured OOP with unit tests, and the examiner didn't know how to run docker?
Wow, I guess I dodged a bullet there.
Thanks
I treat interviews as a two way street hence the word "inter" and it definitely behooves both sides to be on best behaviour.
You'd think that an industry full of analysts and theorists would have understood the game theory of interviews by now?
Earlier this year, I had an interview with a fairly serious company which shall not be named. They'd sent a mass email on LinkedIn a couple of weeks earlier, so that was my contact with them. After a chat with their in-house recruiter, they asked me to do a couple of tests, one a simple server application, one an intermediate-complexity SQL query. I'm willing to say that my SQL is competent, but it's not a focus for me, so while I got the idea, my query didn't actually work. The recruiter told me that it would be a good idea to be ready to explain why, and how I would fix it, for the technical interview. I rustled up a couple of acquaintances with better SQL than I, we worked through it, I knew what I'd done wrong and was ready to discuss it.
Technical interview came, on Zoom, and it was a car crash. There were two interviewers, one was on time, one was late - the late one was also only on audio, and it turns out mixing one audio-only interviewer with one on video was a bad idea. They mostly asked me about my background and experience for about half an hour, then ended the interview - never asked about my tests, didn't go into anything technical at all.
I didn't hear anything back, so I pinged the recruiter a week later, only for him to tell me he wasn't working there anymore, but he'd pass on a message for me. I then pinged the one other person I'd had any actual contact with at the company, the HR/admin who'd setup the Zoom call, to be told "we will not go for further process as rejected by hiring team."
I was pretty unimpressed.
To be completely honest, I've been brought on interviews myself for this reason... in a sea of fucking business guys, I ended up being the person from engineering they wanted on the interviews.
Wow. I have a hard time imagining being an interviewer and literally laughing at the face of a candidate before he even said anything. Unless he's dressed as a clown or something...
However, starting around 2016, finding work started to become difficult. The work I did find was no longer enjoyable. It took a few years, but I finally did enough self introspection to realize: it's not them, it's me. I aged out of the industry. I didn't notice it in the moment, it just happened.
I cannot work in open-office fishbowls. I cannot stomach Agile process and how it has turned something I love into menial factory work (N.B. I get it, your [A|a]gile shop is awesome. I only had such luck once). There are many more things about modern software development shops with which I disagree.
Now, it hadn't occurred to me until later that this was showing through in my attitude. Of course, I really did not want to work on the 500th BBA in my career with six Scrumm Masters all demanding 30 minute meetings every morning. I did not want to write more JavaScript or deal with yet another hotness-of-the-week library that does the same thing as the previous 10 such beasts. I did not want to play Schedule Chicken yet again.
Is it my age? Sure, people change. I'm not bored with the programming I enjoy but I did grow bored of modern corporate software slave shops. Hey, more power to them. It's their shop; they can do what they want.
However, it does mean I have to move on. I'm not saying any of this is true for the OP. Just something to ponder if you're constantly facing rejection.
You will learn new information that will cause you to question yesterday's "best practices". So quit holding on to what you know now as the "one true way". Be willing to learn from people you consider "old and irrelevant"... they may actually know something.
> We have people falling all over themselves to sing the praises of XP, TDD, Agile/Scrum/etc, and yet, we can't show software actually getting any better.
Software is absolutely better today than it was in the 80s and 90s. I used to have to reboot my computer 2 or 3 times a day due to unrecoverable crashes and taught myself to constantly save work after every minor change. Now my computer stays up for weeks to months at a time only being rebooted to install updates occasionally. Documents are often autosaved, and I don't even need to save anything when I quit an app. The next time I launch it's all there.
I agree that we may not be able to measure that any given methodology is better than any other one, but we've made significant progress along the way. Better tooling, like static analyzers and profilers have helped, too. I do think automated testing can be shown to improve things when used appropriately. (The drive for 100% test coverage seems fanatical to me, though.)
I don't think I can make it to retirement at this rate.
Next, I had to honestly explore other aspects of myself. What else held interest for me besides electronics and software?
Further, of these other interests, which of them were reasonably "safe" from outsourcing, offshoring, and automation? I do not want to transition into new currency acquisition activities that are themselves a race to the bottom. Tangentially, I considered the perceived prestige of each of these. I could give two shits personally, but I've learned the hard way that the perceived prestige of an activity impacts how others will treat you.
Finally -- as I am a software engineer -- how can I use this skill to augment my effectiveness in performing any of these new activities?
This is an ongoing process for me. I've always had an interest in the law. Law school is out of the question, so I've looked into paralegal work and how I could provide a unique service in this space.
Additionally, there are mundane dirty jobs -- specialized trash hauling, electronic recycle brokering, etc. -- that are poorly serviced in many localities. I believe I'll end up doing something here as well.
I view this transition as open ended. It's no longer about "career" but staying in a lateral thinking mode about combinations of possibilities.
I've been around long enough to recognize that older, more experienced people are incredibly valuable to learn from. They also have one thing you can't shortcut: perspective, and knowing where the bullshit is and how to avoid it. There's shit I'm just not willing to put up with anymore, that I would have been eager to do in my twenties. It wears you down.
I followed you in the mid-80s, and one thing that bugs me is the lack of 'geeks' in coding these days. What used to be a passion you could make a career, is now a 9-to-5 shuffle for a lot of people. Seems like there's as many coders that are 'just in it for the money' as there are stock brokers. I guess that's to be expected with the growth of the industry over the years, but I still find it sad.
To what, though? I came to the same conclusions a few years back, but I'm at a loss as to what to do next. So I plug along, take what work I can find, shake my head and watch the exact same cycle happen to React as happened to Flex.
You simply can't expect to remain employed as a programmer until the conventional retirement age. Especially for younger developers, FIRE (Financial Independence and Retire Early) principles are essential to learn.
This is the hardest part. I think a lot of people feel this way, but it's taking that next step. Is it sys admin (or Zeus help you Dev Ops)? Is it some kind of database work?
The hard truth is development pays pretty well or at least better than average. Finding something similar at middle age is a challenge.
That said, older devs can be very stubborn. If in the interview I detect that I'm not going to be able to work well with the person. I might pass.
You wouldn’t (I hope) write something ascribing specific behaviors to all female devs, or Indian devs, right? So please don’t do the same for older ones.
I’m in my forties and quite capable of getting caught up in the excitement over a new technology. On the other hand I think I’ve matured out of the stubbornness I had in my twenties. I’ve met young developers who get so caught up in the mastery of their first tech stack that they aren’t ready to go back to being a beginner again, and haven’t seen enough ways of solving problems to recognize that what they think is the only right way to solve a problem could possibly have an alternative.
If you’re looking for ‘use boring technology’ enthusiasts and people open to changing their mind, go out and interview and hire for those attributes, wherever you find them - but don’t assume they’re only going to be found in older developers. And if you’re looking for someone to explore new technology, consider that an older dev might be just as enthusiastic as a junior, rather than assuming.
... except that "things should be done RIGHT", "my professor would hate these hacks", "why are you using boring-tech when everyone else on the intertubes is using OMGTEKK", etc etc.
I think the "stubborn" label on older men is very similar to the "bitch" label on women: whenever one meets a person who can actually fight his/her corner with calm and rationality in a way that is not easily assailable by "common feelings", it is rationalised as s/he being fundamentally unreasonable, not as my arguments being weak.
100% true. It's the dichotomy of leadership. Typically in engineering environments, the debate will be to take a risk or not. Risks can have rewards, but they can also have costs. The old guy knows the costs, but the rewards are less certain. The young guy only has a fuzzy idea on the rewards and the risks. As a leader, you have to look at both sides and assess if the reward is worth the risk. Sometimes that means telling the old guy, you're right... but I want to try anyways.
Haha, that never stops the ones I work with. They just dig in on the exciting idea they had.
That's because they have experiences, the experiences from past failures. I don't think that's anything wrong.
During the first interview, I brought this up. The average age in the company was 28, so why would they want me? The answer surprised me: they wanted me because of my age, experiences (generalist), and wisdom. Lots of youthful, intelligent people are an asset - but so are a few veterans to provide perspective and keep a check on reality.
You are just as likely to get rejected for a reason other than age, so you might as well just approach with enthusiasm any opportunity that interest you. If you don't show up to an interview angry about age discrimination, you're more likely to be accepted irrespective of your age.
Lastly, remember that companies are made up of people, and people come with all sorts of mentalities. A few will indeed have a bias against people their parents' age, but I bet it's not as many people with that attitude as you might expect.
The only place we really cannot compete with is on salary (unless you're willing to work at entry/medior rates). Experienced people generally cost a good bit more, and the value proposition may not be there for some candidates/situations.
Last summer I interviewed at a ton of companies and truly I rejected them way before they rejected me but what I learned essentially is that if you fall for the typical recruitment razzmataz as a more experienced dev then they'll assume you're stupid and if you don't fall for it they'll assume you're too smart, if you catch my drift.
Where once we were meant to show enthusiasm now we're supposed to play cool. How many companies lead with "We're pretty casual around here" as if that doesn't actually mean "we'll fire you on a dime"
You have to tread a very fine line that shows you're willing to play dumb while at the same time showing you have the chops -- it's more about how much cognitive dissonance or doublethink you can stomach than anything to do with your vital statistics and all these technical interviews are bollocks compared to fourth year courses in a world where most devs barely speak English but I digress
I have literally seen everything in this industry from from y2k to working with distributed overseas teams to getting tattooed in San Francisco and there's nothing new under the sun except for rife imposterism and rampant entitlement.
They're sizing you up the same way you're sizing them up with respect to the developer stereotypes and management dramas and all that toxic crap while testing you to see if you're willing to play along with their dysfunction and so called "culture fit" aka groupthink mentality.
You can probably tell I have no love left for this lost generation of code monkeys, after having fathered them along with an entire generation of misfits and dreamers whereas now they're all trying to fit in and losing themselves to the machine.
Once they learn how to do adulting maybe they'll learn to have more fun. Until then they're just a bunch of lemmings at the gate.
I'd go further into this downward spiral but I'll show myself out. Think about what you'll look like as a sixty year old wearing hoodies and t shirts and ask yourself whether you've made the right life choices.
Cue the downvotes you filthy scoundrels.
An interesting note: Since I no longer have to raise kids, I actually have a lot more time and a lot less 'drama' then I used to. Makes it easier to keep up on new tech...
I have always preferred hoodies over hats and scarves because they are easier and more effective.
And to me t-shirts are also easier and more comfortable than dress shirts. I am from California so maybe that has something to do with it.
How do you communicate that though? Isn't it considered wrong to just say it because that indicates a lack of confidence?
Say like I'm willing to start at the 25th percentile for a Cloud Computing Analyst in exchange for an upward career path over the next 3-5 years or something like that
When I joined at 43 the average age of the company was in the late 50's. It's dropped a bit, but not much. And I run the DevOps group in my department, so we do things that would interest you. We're strong engineers, but we value expertise over the latest buzz words. Trust me, I plan on retiring here.
>The Mitre Corporation is an American not-for-profit organization based in Bedford, Massachusetts, and McLean, Virginia. It manages federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs) supporting several U.S. government agencies.
Now that you mentioned it, I believe you guys have been imbibed with years of valuable experience, it is an absolute pleasure to interact with your team.
* If you have 20 years of experience in the software industry, let's be real, you kinda need to be at a senior/lead level (whether IC or manager track). If you're not, then people are going to wonder why you aren't, and whether you're stuck reliving the old days
* Decades of experience in C/Java is not going to work at a React shop. Either learn (and be opinionated about!) frameworks built in the last 5 years, or stick to somewhere within your expertise
* Don't make yourself appear ancient on your resume, but don't lie either. If you got a degree in the 90's then it should be apparent from reading your resume, and if they want to discriminate they'll do so right from the start and not waste your time.
* Avoid the "grumpy old programmer" stereotype at all costs. Instead, you want to be the "bad-ass wizard" that people need to solve hard problems, and people want Gandalf, not Saruman
Especially with a Senior/Principal Engineer, I'm looking for someone who can make the case for our decisions as a team to the company at large, and speak with authority about it. However, that can't just involve them being a dictator to the team about how everything must be done in their favorite/preferred way.
Decades of experience in C and Java ought to work just fine for someone who wants to try something new, like React. I learned React after decades of experience in other things, and I loved it. I don't see why it should matter what I did in the past. Was I successful? Did I enjoy it? Will I come to work every day energized and ready to work on new things? Those are the things that matter.
Fair enough, but that's kind of hard to show in an interview. My typical experience is that the first couple of months on a job, I'm soaking the whole place up (i.e., figuring out their unique accumulated horrors), and my bosses typically have no idea what I'm doing (and are thinking they made a mistake hiring me).
Then suddenly (to them) I start becoming really productive, and in short order they realize I'm the guy who can solve the problems no one else can. Once had a boss cry when I turned in my notice.
But how do you sell that?
FWIW, the consultancy I worked at that had multiple 'older' developers was https://oxfordcc.co.uk. They did some pretty cool stuff :)
Money-wise, I will loose, but I like the job, and good jobs are scarce nowadays.
Companies want young naive employees who will work lots of unpaid overtime but when they hire consultants they want someone who's done the work before. There is a poise and sense of assurance that comes with age as well which you can definitely use to your advantage.
Consider everything: clothing, haircut, facial hair, smells, and especially fitness.
My intuition is that the appearance of fitness and especially "spryness" goes quite a long way in people seeing past your age. Our monkey brains are easily fooled, up to point.
Don't do that - young chicks dig older boys :-), use that advantage!
As someone who dont work in Silicon Valley. ( Edit: Opps it seems it is in EU as well )
Why ageism?
Even assuming you start developing professionally in 20, you would need to be at least 30 - 35 before you finally understand, everything you believe in so strongly in your past 10 - 20 years were possibly a FAD and had finally witness the industry moving from one FAD to another and start ignoring hype.
You would finally understand most code you once thought were short, concise and clever, and others that once were long, boring, over the top stupid code are actually the better code.
You would have learned KISS not because you love it, but you would have hopefully understand this because it has been burnt deep into your memory.
And that Not doing something, or inaction, is possibly the best action.
Seriously I would have thought developers only start to become productive post 30+. And 40+ is still in their prime. I understand people older don't like working long hours. But working hours have absolutely nothing to do with productivity. Especially in software development.
Also, the young are more likely to give the benefit of the doubt to corporate bullshit. Case in point: my first reaction nowadays, any time an exec calls for a "all-hands meeting" is, we're going to get shafted or even fired, the company must be in trouble, someone high-up needs more cashflow to go in their pockets and not ours... And maybe I'm right and maybe I'm wrong, but the point is, I'm not going to drink any koolaid. Younger folks struggle to understand this attitude, and I don't blame them, because they lack the necessary experience and trauma.
In my experience the distribution of talented developers tends to be bimodal at all ages it's just the older ones stand out more because they should know better. Also as mentioned else where in the thread, the best developers build up network so they tend to self select out of bad deal start ups and the normal hiring processes so you're not even sampling randomly from the population if you're just doing open hiring.
I even interviewed with a FAANG for a Berlin-based engineering position 2 years ago but canceled the process myself. Being over 40 did not seem to be an issue at all.
Not much age bias in Berlin IT job market? Weird. I mostly see start-ups there. That might be interesting.
The bypass might be, looking for companies that have a lot of engineers with 15+ years of experience. You can do so with paid LinkedIn accounts. I'm happy to help with some specific searches if you don't have a paid LinkedIn account yourself.
You can't use age (resp. gender) as a factor in your decision making (bloody difficult to prove one way or the other most of the time I imagine) but that doesn't mean you can't run jobs4oldies.com or Women's Careers Day with Special Guest Sheryl McHighflyer.
That doesn't mean you should, but I'm pretty sure it's not illegal (in the UK, or generally against the spirit of similar legislation). IANAL.
Having the technical chops definitely helps as a manager. And knowing what the managers expect and be able to talk their language helps as an engineer. If you reach certain level its easy to jump between them. But they require a different set of skills and the work is different.
If you like it, there are a lot of rewards. If you don't, it can be soul-sucking.
After staying at one company way too long when I was 34, I’ve been able to quickly get jobs at 34, 37, 40, 43, and 44 years old.
Pre-Covid, there were a few conversations I had with managers of consulting firms for full time roles as an overpriced “enterprise architect”, “solutions architect”, “digital transformation consultant” type jobs. I just wasn’t in a position to travel for family reasons until my youngest graduated.
Now, actually I am targeting the three major cloud providers for an SA type position. I should be able to get into at least one of them according to my contacts.
But another thing I’ve found about many older developers who scream ageism is that they haven’t stayed up to date on the latest trends and they haven’t nurtured their network.
Nurturing my network though. I might be too arrogant or proud but I think I have worked too hard to be dependent on my network for a job. I should be able to move to a nice job without any network push.
One tip: make sure you are good at what you do and what you will be interviewed for. Because at our age, the roles that you will be hired for will be senior roles, and the bar lies a bit higher there.
I'm 51. After 20 years in SQL and C# I'm tired of it. Last year I got myself on a Python project and I loved it. Then I got myself on a TypeScript project and I loved that even more.
I imagine that if I interviewed for a Node.js job they'd probably look at me like I was nuts. They'd probably think the worst possible thoughts, as people do. After 30 years in software development, they'd think maybe I wasn't cut out for it? Like it took me 30 years to figure out what they figured out in 30 seconds of looking at my face, because they're so much "smarter".
One thing you learn over 30 years working is that everyone thinks they're smarter than everyone else. Another thing you learn is that if someone is good at one programming language, they're probably also going to do well at other technologies. Since certain types of people like to do different things and not just the same thing their entire lives, HR ought to give those people a break.
I personally would love to do something else now, and go back to having programming being my passion/hobby instead, but I don't think I can walk away from the money.
And yes, the age bias is real. I hadn't interviewed in 10 years but did so recently and while I am not visually old, my resume certainly shows it, and I could feel the bullsh*t from the younger developers in the interview.
I totally agree with the sentiment about the tech trends. It's particularly evident in anything frontend which is why I mostly focus on backends and reliability.
There's a lot to do still; right now 5G is on the roadmap, but we have to provide support for 4 and 3G as well. There's a lot of domain and protocol knowledge going on here.
Reliability yes, devops, not so much - our application is deployed as 'just' some RPM packages on physical hardware.
For me, I know myself well enough to realize that I like small disorganized businesses that need help getting tooling and process in place. Once that happens I lose a lot of interest quickly. That is often when get things done mentality and trust the people you hire is replaced by process and politics. Usually this takes 6-18 months and I know it’s time to move on. I also do project work for enterprise software which has about the same life cycle.
The common thread of both types of work is that it’s temporary and I can bill a pretty high hourly rate. I don’t have to deal with most employment bs and my experience is generally respected and appreciated vs just being the old dev in a team of fresh college grads. I don’t know what the contractor experience is in the EU, but I’ve had colleagues do this in Germany and the UK so I know it happens.
Nevermind the actual job post :) We're based in DK and looking for remote employees.
I'm doing some bullshit specialty software i hate but that I happen to know pretty well
The lesson there, to me, is think about specializing. Why?
Because...why not?
Outside of that
My advice to older folks looking for IT work is
It is not going to happen -- think about stocking shelves or anything you can
Once you come to terms with the situation, then you can get real about what is really required to get a job
A miracle and tons of hard work of the type you don't want to do
I've seen lots of good advice on here that I think is pretty good
Like
Look younger Act younger Dress younger Be younger
Reach out on LinkedIn and other places -- it won't help but I think it is important to check the boxes -- it's a pretty good way to quickly get to rock bottom shame or shamelessness -- completely remove your ego from the equation
Even busted my ass for an AWS cert -- worthless
I've started losing weight and people are noticing
I figure each 10 lbs you lose takes off a year or two of age
What would I do if I got shitcanned tomorrow?
I would probably become an 'out' specialist in this particular software I know
I _hate_ this gd software
But a job is a job
There have also been sites that claimed to specialize in helping to hire older workers
I figure it was just a scam but I would also check it out
I did occasionally get play from startups that I was actually interested in -- by writing authentic-ish notes of interest
But yeah nobody but the 1%ers are getting jobs in this market
And that is some weird mix of the geniuses, connected, etc.
Nobody else getting hired -- I don't care if you are 25 yo or 75 yo -- not happening
You mean the current and looming crisis or the IT job market in general.
>> Even busted my ass for an AWS cert -- worthless
Thought about that too but then occurred to me that I'd also need to go for a K8S one and perhaps one of the security ones and ... this never ends whilst I might land in a job where I just need to know bash and basic python. (Also these certs seem to offer little basic knowledge and a lot of shopping-list-like details.
surprised nobody bought it for that price (or potentially even less).
I've seen many positions that require seniority and had many colleagues even older than you.
If you pull a fast one on a younger person ("Can you come in this weekend? It will only be a temporary thing."), they are more likely to believe you.
You can apply every six months. Thing of each attempt as an opportunity to learn.
You're saying is that you're not a good fit technically and would need some investment in terms of either time or training, and companies are choosing not to go with that option. Why is that ageism?
I'm recently mostly a backend web/API dev working in PHP and Python/Django, but I've done Unix kernel work, written a few Android apps, and a few other random things. I've worked in large companies, in a local unicorn, and as a solo freelancer.
I'm not necessarily sure it's age itself that's a problem, but maybe a combination of factors where age is part of the cause/effect chain?
To be clear, as well as my thoughts, this is also a "hire me, please?" post!
Most people apply for jobs out of college. As they age (a) they tend to switch jobs less often and (b) they have accumulated former colleagues, clients and such that can open back-channels.
Work back channels if you can. Otherwise, just keep in mind that the youth bias you experience at the front door is worse than the actual bias.
For practical advice, I suggest you search outside of the software industry... companies that make their money mostly from software. Most jobs are actually in other industries, and I think they're less youth biased.
An "app factory" probably hires very young, mostly
2) Try boring industries banks, insurance, local govt.
3) Be excellent at something and pretty good at everything else.
4) OK to be opinionated about tech, but more important to be current. It may be a straight Java shop, but you should know what Clojure and Kotlin are if your a Java guy who's current.
5) Maintain your personal & professional networks.
6) Although it's very hard, try to remain upbeat. Enter every interview with the attitude that the interviewer is a friend who wants you to succeed.
Good luck. Its hard but doable. (53 yo who just started a new role)
I once worked with someone who explained to me every day -- and in great detail -- all of the problems that my technical decisions would cause. He wasn't wrong, but it was still a demoralizing experience.
But at least he was only criticizing my decisions, and not my right to make them. In the same way that an older dev does not want to be perceived as incapable of learning new things, a younger dev does not want to be perceived as cavalier or irresponsible, and I have absolutely seen talented people discounted solely because they haven't held a particular title for enough years.
People are complicated, and we make a lot of assumptions about each other that we don't want others to make about ourselves.
Myself, I experienced it is harder for me to keep pace mainly with point 2. and 3. because I already have learned a lot (full cup so to say) and having less spare-time dedicated for such things (as I dedicate almost all my spare time to family more than before).
There are also aspects directly favoring different candidates (not necessarily correlating only with age) I would like to emphasise, which unfortunately are consciously or unconsciously considered: 5. More skilled and experienced people tend to ask for more money 6. More experienced people tend to have more hard-to-change habits which may be incompatible or hard to include into the company culture / workflows / whatever else 7. Cultural differences between generations of people tend to create tensions
What I recommend to you is to embrace the above points (definitely not a full list) and try to emphasise your best traits or think about how to sell them in the context of the hiring process and at the same time try to mitigate the problematic points.
In general, you have a big advantage you probably do not see now - life experience and also tech experience. Younger candidates simply cannot compete with your age. I think you need to find a way how to wire your hard-obtained experience as "your output" that definitely has a value for any company. Embrace those facts and build your self-confidence on them. It may be the case that the job you apply for will be little different from what you experienced up to now - more mentoring, more leading, more advisory work, more inter-department communication (from/to tech language of the geeks) and so on.
And I sincerely wish you luck.
Also, what do you have experience of? Different work places may have different sources of people to employ.
It’s from a group of successful business people who help older folks find work at tech companies using insiders.
FYI - if you work at a tech company consider joining to help older but qualified people find work.
Have you considered building your own company? That's quite a change of skills, but that's what I've seen most "older" developers do.
I do worry about my looks as I get older in terms of work, but tbh I'm already pretty average or ugly looking anyways. If anything, this post has given me more energy to dump into my side-hustles in order to avoid having to deal with this shit at all.
Anyone else who's bald at a young age get discriminated in interviews?
In my opinion one of the key strength you get with experience is perspective on solving problem efficiently in a no bullshit way, and more importantly in the business context. There is a limit on how much value a developer can bring by working on assigned stories and tickets, and experience after a few years plateau (and age discrimination start to kick in), but go higher in the chain and suddenly you experience becomes very valuable. I don't know how it is at FANNGs but even there are huge architecture decisions really made by young developers?
Most companies burn millions on poorly driven software projects, with layers of useless abstractions and accidental complexity. Execs love when you bring them a working solution no matter how you did it, e.g. the dashboard they are dreaming of all the while the official team and the consulting company that is costing $$$ are stuck in their big-data/blockchain/whatever grandiose project.
So I would look either expert small shops, or consulting companies with a career track for experts. Anecdotal but you can have a better time in a consulting company as "the guru" moving from projects to projects every few months than stuck in a mono product company for years.
This isn't a plug, it is something I am passionate about. The company I co-founded (restless.co.uk) is working really hard to change perception and age discrimination across the entire employment market in the UK. Many of our members have similar stories to yours, although we are largely aimed at 50+, we hear the same from 45+ too. Sadly I don't think this is something that will change overnight, changing societal opinions is never easy and takes persistence, which we are committed to. We are engaging with our membership base and listening to their experiences in order to better educate employers on the importance of an age-diverse workforce and how to ensure that's happening for them. We are making an impact but as you have seen there is a long way to go!
I know that doesn't help you right now, I'm sorry. However, we do write a lot of content in this space that may help, restless.co.uk/career-advice/. We're always keen to hear feedback, so drop us an email if you have any. Incidentally, I am the CTO at Rest Less, and my first hire was a 58-year-old software engineer so I hope that gives you a boost. Although we're not looking for someone in your specific area of expertise at the moment I'd be interested in having a conversation, please reach out if that's something you'd be interested in doing.
Personally, and this is obviously my own opinion, I don't think you should be looking to change career if it's something you enjoy.
Best of luck.
Anecdotally, DevOps and Reliability is definitely a space where experience is valued and, although there might be the assumption that many of these startups drink the youth cool-aid, I think you might be pleasantly surprised.
Of course it helps if you have more experience than a young developer, and you know how to apply that experience. And you should always stay up to date with new developments. Although there are tons of companies still working with older systems.
Also, developer salaries in the EU are often terrible. My income has gone up quite a lot since I became a freelancer. I'm currently considering becoming an employee of a client (because I want to continue working on the project and they have rules about how long they can hire a freelancer), but I'm encountering a lot of resistance negotiating the pay I think I'm worth.
My approach as a freelancer has been very simple: My CV is on Linkedin, and recruiters find me there.
In the distant past when I had regular jobs, I tended to find them mostly through Monster and CVBank (Netherland). Or sometimes a recruiter; Linkedin is still useful.
Ironically, I've had age discrimination go the other way. In my early 30s I looked like I was in my mid-20s, and I had to push for pay in line with my experience. I still get carded when I buy beer.
I can't guarantee anything but we do occasional have contractual work where age doesn't really matter (in my opinion), its all about the attitude and getting the job done. I would even consider your age an asset as you have field experience that a lot of people dont.
If you are interviewing and they think 45 is "too old" then there is a risk that everyone there is 30 or younger so you might not want to work there anyway (I wouldn't).
If you find a company that's at least 30 years old, and has an average retention of over 10 years - then that company is probably a nice place to work, and has old people too (because even 30year olds are 40 once they worked there 10 yearrs).
It's kind of funny to hear it coming from the other side, but I imagine at a lot of pure-software companies, the age biased is reversed from what I've experienced.
I'm 50, doing fine at a FAANG. My team has a good chunk of 40+ people on it as well. I see a good number of 40+ people on other teams, too. I get regular pings from other FAANGs about recruiting.
So, def. try for FAANGs. Just invest a couple of weeks into prepping for the interview process. Yes, it's stupid, but "behold my algorithmic chops" is what they want to see, so you cram algorithmic chops.
Edit: can't represent all Googlers but people I know and have worked with (including the SREs in EU offices) don't give a sh*t on how fancy/normal/bad you look or wear.
Same for many of my colleagues around the same age when our local office was closed.
I mainly used Linkedin and a few connections, but i doubt if it matters.
The only exception I have seen is for cookie cutter type of developers, it is easy to prefer young unmarried ones if they have the exact same qualifications as you.
Same with an inherently young demographic at a company. My last place I was one of the older ones in a very young crowd who liked to hit the bars after work. Not my scene any more. I prefer to be the younger person in an older work environment.
I know we're struggling to find folks in EU with that kind of background - DM me for the specific positions, or consider areas where your experience is a tremendous asset.
I would recommend looking at insurance companies, banks and other financial institutions.
Personally i have had the chance of working with older devs (50+) and it was awesome.
But also, let's not forget how important it is to get sleep.
40 years' IT experience and I don't even get a reply, let alone an interview.
During my time in Roche (through a consultancy) at 29 I was one of the youngest on board.
I applied for some 3¾ thousand jobs between 2009 (age 42) and 2013. I averaged less than one interview per year and worked 2 months full-time in that period.
In 2014 I landed a role in the Czech Republic and have only voluntarily been out of work since. I am nearing the end of a 3 year contract, my 5th role over here.
The former Communist bloc seems to have far less ageism than in the West. Rates of pay are lower -- I make maybe ½ what in theory this kind of role would pay in London. On the other hand, the cost of living is about ¼ so it is very much worth it.
Not entirely facetious, I saw someone in Europe took such a case to court, so he could self indentify as younger on dating apps.
