Ask HN: Former devs who can't get a job, what did you end up doing for work?

Alzheimer's disease.

I work because I like it. I like being around smart people doing smart things. But in a couple of years, I will stop working and just spend time lifting weights, practicing bjj and painting.

I dont think that's what's going on here. If you click on OP's profile you'll see that he's written a bunch of books. He also mentions Common Lisp and Racket, not exactly go to languages for soul-less corporations. My take is he's doing it for the love of the craft.

I aspire to do this too when I'm at that age. I've been through a few career iterations with the only constant being is that I love to make things.

EDIT: and by changed, I don't mean improved. I was a huge advocate of agile and eXtreme Programming early in my career, and I even worked in shops where it seemed to be really having good results. Now I see everyone using SCRUM and... it's garbage and I want to gouge my eyes out in the meetings.

I see a lot of talking but not a lot of code getting written. And where the code gets written, it's always a pile of ego-boosting needless complexity.

Much later I told my skip boss about the kind of feeling of disregard that may have fostered as he pushed me for insights. And he remarked that it sounded like I had a chip on my shoulder. All I could come up with was 'guess I was born with it.'

Yeah cynical. And much happier working on my own things that are meaningful and interesting.

But this industry is also, in my eyes and experience, madness at times.

"experience" seems to mean between nothing and everything depending on the previous company, the whims of the "hiring market", who/whatever reviews your resume and other nebulous forces subject to change at any time.

I've worked with people with loads of "experience" that are not particularly good that have managed to string together a career well-enough, and I know folks too with fancy resumes and experience that matches roles identically that can't get interviews for identical positions with referrals.

At any given time, what any party responsible for hiring "values" seems to change on a whim.

It's infuriating.

I don't have a "premium" resume, but when I can exceed all the expectations for a several job listings and I have a few years experience at a "fancy" company, you'd think I could at least get some calls back somewhere, right?

This makes the prospect of investing in any software skills for the purposes of employment a total contradiction.

(and yes, I understand the market is an has been very "bad" for a few years, but this kind of thing has existed since I've been doing this for the better part of a decade)

You haven't seen the shit written by 50++ senior and principal 'developers'. Imagine local variables names 20-40 chars long. Then they are passed into function call, like 15-20 of them. While actually these are just 3 structures. I.e. 'gurus' unroll them into individual elements and pass. Long names to make the code what they call 'self-documented'. No comments at all. And all this is in a big project with other devs working on it for years. It's absurdly slow for the project of this size and resources. But with almost no competitors this can last for decades and it actually does.

I think this begins to be visible even sooner, 38 if you graduated at 23. The majority of the job market requires very very few 15+ years experienced engineers. 5 to 10 years of experience is a sweet spot - you will be easily hired. Everything below and beyond is a struggle, especially for the latter since very few companies need and are willing to pay for those skills.

And that's how you become unemployable with the irony of being at more or less what would be the peak of your technical capabilities. In years later on, people start to lose the drive.

On the other hand, I just got hired at 55 and it wasn't difficult.

The baseline requirement of technical competence for extreme financial success in tech is so low that most big tech companies don't even hire rank-and-file engineers whom don't meet that requirement half-way.

that is, a 50 year old isn't even asked what their salary expectations are, it is simply assumed to be higher than what they want to pay, or rather, they can't bring themselves to pay someone like that less than they think is appropriate for their age. combine that with the perception that older people are less flexible and unwilling/unable to learn new stuff, and you end up with the belief that older people are expensive and useless or overqualified.

And as time marches on, there’s more and more competition for those roles.

- Minor health issues accumulate and become a distraction. Especially insomnia.

- Having worked on many projects and technologies that went nowhere, my enthusiasm for the work is diminished, making me less focused.

I decided to return to the last work that I found meaningful, which was as a software developer in the U.S. civil service.

I think this was the right move, although Trump and Musk are doing their very best to make me question that.

How about an angel investing firm for 40+ founders only?

I'm planning on adding a bunch of prompt examples and outcomes... my favorite thing is like I'll have tough feelings and I'll ask chatGPT to ferret out the trauma behind it and help me release the things... use RTT, DBT, and CBT to reprogram my brain, ask I've question then follow up questions based on answers...

this is with a custom gpt that has a bunch of self help bullet point PDFs as well as a bunch of journal entries and previous therapy chat threads (got too long)... major things I break out into their own document or PDF as a source for the gpr.

But you are right, trading certainly makes one A LOT more aware of risk/reward just in general life, which can be good or bad. Also, it is very easy to gamble instead of speculate, that is to trade something one "hopes" would work vs. trading something that has a statistical percentage of working, and the difference between the two is purely emotional, because one can convince oneself of quite literally anything! Come with a bullish bias and everything looks bullish... take a step back and reconsider and see how easy is for one to see what one wants to see.

When one starts thinking about how to look at all those factors and when one starts thinking about how to measure those factors (what is volatility? What high or low? Compared to what baseline? Does the baseline move?) it becomes clear that the problem is a bit more complicated to measure and implement in code than it is to train oneself and trade discretionary.

With very fast execution (think server collocation on the exchange and direct fiber network access to the exchange server) the possibility of market making opens, I think of the things that Jane Street does, and look how crazy profitable they are. But very few people have access to that.

This is funny tho

> Game is rigged for big players. You are gambling.

That’s the whole point of the thing, I’m not playing their game! Look at, say, wheat… a report comes out with adjusted supply/demands (USDA releases those), then if players need to buy/sell a few million bushels of wheat… well, you don’t buy/sell a couple million bushels of wheat without paying on slippage…

I’ve made money exactly that way from “big players”. We are not playing the same game at all!

But I finally stuck with MotiveWave, so much so that I actually paid for a full license even though there are a bunch of great free platforms. Main thing, works on Linux and macOS, where as many other platforms are exclusive Windows.

Also, the SDK is quite nice too!

As for commodities, I've found some success in agricultural commodities but I also dabble in currencies and indexes. Agricultural though have some interesting characteristics given than they have an actual physical thing behind them as opposed to how stocks move... which varies depending on which side of the bed the CEO of the company woke up!

I also started with the idea of doing algo trading, my tests results looked amazing! then I learned about slippage, commission, over fitting my stuff to my test data... trading is not a computer problem, is a market problem and once one understands those building an algo makes more sense. I use some tools I coded myself but I still have no idea how to quantify what I see on a chart, why one "signal" I'm fine trading, and another is a no inspite of being the same signal (think stuff like SMA crossing)

Good luck!

I think people often conflate "being a <trade>" with "owning a <trade> business." A W-2 electrician earns a median salary of $62k in the USA. A guy who runs a business as an electrician might bill out $250k a year for his work, but he'll have to pay expenses like insurance, vehicles, gas, tools/tec, FICA, taxes, rent, on call services, and probably salaries for his assistants (which may include an unpaid secret assistant like a spouse who coordinates appointments). So their take home isn't nearly that much.

Why? Electricians aren't doing intense labour, and I'm 99% certain that being in a job where you move around a lot (as opposed to sitting at your desk) has long term health benefits, without even getting into carpal tunnel syndrome and other RSIs associated with being at a computer.

I can relate. It's sort of "Hell is other people." I work very effectively on my own, but the scope is limited. Big things require teams.

I realize how fortunate I am, that I could afford to retire. I don't have as much money as I would, with another ten years under my belt, but I should be OK.

It absolutely stuns me, that young folks are getting paid more out of school, than I made, in my entire career, and have less to show for it.

My fear when looking at jobs that lean too heavily on a tech stack or tool list is that the job is too focused upon delivery in a narrow repeatable context as opposed to solutions delivery. That’s a huge red flag for me that just screams low confidence. I don’t want to work with people who are constantly afraid to do their jobs. That’s what most of my career feels like.

I don’t want to go back to a low confidence environment. It’s just too negative, too irrationally defensive, and too hostile. I would rather do something else, even for less money.

Just gotta start figuring out this "networking" thing

Did my premed coursework a decade ago when I did neuroscience. Just needed biochem, and about 800 hours of self-study for the MCAT. Interview two weeks ago, fairly optimistic about this cycle but if not, I think next cycle will go well.

Everyone focuses on the amount of schooling and training that this requires. I am happy when I am helping people and constantly learning new things, and I'm already doing both.

There are a lot of other options than just med school, tbh you can make as much money with way less schooling as an anesthesiology assistant.

Rarely. A quick search indicates that only 3% of older employees file complaints, and, out of that, less than 1% result in lawsuits.

And that is pertaining to people who are already employed somewhere. What we are talking about here is finding a job. In that case the situation is likely far worse and also likely unknowable (in terms of stats).

This is why I say it feels like society discards you as useless after a certain fuzzy point in time.

This has to be a cultural change over time. I say this because, as a young engineer, I wanted to work with older, more experienced, engineers. In fact, I seriously benefitted from many mentors who were ten to twenty years older than me --lessons that have stayed with me to this day.

Not so today. I have been at companies where you might as well be at a college campus. I'll name one: SpaceX. I don't know the stats, but I remember going through there and thinking that the ratio of 20-somethings to older engineers has to be in a range between 50:1 and 100:1. The only way that happens is if you actively reject older candidates. I cannot dispute their success rate and what they have accomplished. I am just using this as a real example of just how bad it can be out there for older technologists.

Note that I am not proposing forced diversity of any kind. I think that is wrong. However, work and opportunities should be available based on experience, merit and capabilities and not at the exclusion of older candidates because they are not frat boys.

Once again, I will point at least one finger squarely at YC. I think they blatantly practice age discrimination. There is no fucking way older, experienced and capable engineers and scientists cannot innovate and launch successful startups. There's so much talent and potential out there being discarded. And, of course, there is no such thing as filing a lawsuit against an investor for age discrimination.

On my end, once I understood this reality I chose to exit the race and run my own business. Here I get to use my skills and experience to plot my own future, with the help of those who join me. And I most definitely appreciate the value of experience. There's nothing better than working with people who are better than you are and bring enough insight and experience to the table to help you steer clear of a long list of things you should not do.

Yep. That ended and brought the entire bloated economy crashing down. Now the narcissist psychos who rode to the top of that economy are gutting everyone and everything including their own companies to float the stock prices.

No. Absolutely not.

If I am 60 and you are 30, I can do the job and do it well, I should not be excluded because of my age. You can replace age with any other category that makes sense, like race, disability, sexual orientation, etc. Candidates should not be excluded this way.

A basketball team should not include me because I am not tall and exclude someone who is significantly taller and better qualified (experience and skills).

Another proper basketball team does not exclude me because I am not super tall. They evaluate my skills and experience and compare it that to others who might be taller or shorter than me. If I can do the same or a better job than the others --if I can deliver the required value-- they could hire me. If I cannot compete with others, they should not.

It's interesting how the term "inclusion" turned out to deliver discrimination...precisely what we thought we set out to eliminate from society.

Age discrimination is an easy and silent form of discrimination that has lots of victims while few perpetrators are brought to task for practicing it.

If this is too difficult to overcome, you're not going to make it.