Savings are getting low, and I'm going to be struggling to pay rent soon. I'm curious what other kinds of work other former developers got into and if they like it. Cheers.
One thing that I do is that I keep writing code in my favorite languages Common Lisp, Haskell, Racket, and Python (Python only for deep learning). I also still write.
I envisage myself coding for another 45 years (I'm in my 50s now), but I worry about my ability to concentrate on a single task for long spells, think creatively yet realistically enough to find solutions; to learn the latest fads and tools, and maintain my enthusiasm to keep up with the latest fads and tools. Will my hands get too unsteady to type, my eyes too weak to focus; how long will I be able to sit (or stand) up and work in a session. No-one knows I'm a dog, but they will if I have to turn on the camera or go to the office, so, will I necessarily be transitioned to more results-driven work assignments via tasking sites?
(I guess these are the typical prejudices that a hiring team will make when considering an older candidate.)
Prepare me. Share your wisdom. What challenges has aging presented to your ability to code?
Alzheimer's disease.
It says something about society that asks people to work well beyond their retirement age.
I hope you are only looking because it gives you purpose rather than doing it because it’s necessary (ie, medical bills, rent). If it’s the latter, very dystopian and on par for this neoliberal economic hellhole we live in.
Personally, if I get to that age. I am cashing in my chips. No way I am working for soulless corporations, whether that’s part time or full time.
I would much rather “retire” and work on my own open source projects or contribute to FOSS projects I like. Worst case scenario, I become a wood worker ;)
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.
So I released my application to the App Store this month, and while savings are dwindling, things are starting to finally move into the other direction now.
Well that's me. My theory is that it is not age that makes one unemployable in the software industry, but the unwillingness to put up with shit cooked up by bunch of 25 year old CEOs, CTOs, and the like.
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.
Prior to that, starting at 45 y/o I was a part time dev and full time firefighter-paramedic (14 years total). Covid scared me to becoming a FT dev.
Most successful businesses and ventures tend to be at our age, and even someone like myself have experienced why.
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 lost my mom, marriage of 18 years, Grandma, and sanity a bit last year... but I'm doing great mentally now, just need financial to align, I'm trying to enroll in WGU for CS and then ai/ml masters and I want to double major with psychology...I want to work with therapy ai things as I've hacked my growth with ai to amazing results...
I'm going back to school to get higher paying jobs and be more sought after... and loans can float me rent for the duration of school...
I've got an RV I can live in (loaner from a friend) but nowhere to park it...I want to outfit it with solar panels but that's pricey.
Wishing you the best.
Would love to hear more about this if you’re willing to share
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.
The point is not that an outdoorsy job is great for you, but that you may want to consider what kind of things make you happy and see if you can find a job doing something like that. These folks loved being outdoors before become engineers and were happy to go back to being outdoors for work.
This is great advice for job satisfaction, but given current events this sort of move is unlikely to result in an increase in job security or ease in finding a new job.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-forest-service-fires-340...
There’s a humongous amount of BS out there about trading or day trading but the fact is that people do it and make it, and my best friend being a consistently profitable trader for the last 4 years didn’t help my skeptic case…
At any rate, turns out that the challenge of trading is less of a technical or financial one. Sure, one needs to understand stuff like price action and market structure and such, but the core of the thing is kind of like developing this complete disregard towards money. Making and losing money can’t mean anything or have any emotional impact, one needs to just see numbers, statistics and trust on one’s strategy.
I’m not sure I’m comfortable recommending this to anybody because it requires a weird commitment to failing but still striving and it is hard but not in any way I was familiar with. It’s hard in losing X% of my trading account and waking up next day with a clear head to do the same thing again.
I've known many poker players who end up taking this to the extreme and basically think of every hour of their life in terms of their per hour expected value at the table.
Like, "Is it worth it to go to dinner with friends or should I play for those 2 hours instead?"
There are definitely happy and well adjusted poker pros as well who can shut it off at the end of the day, but that's a learned skill that doesn't come easy to many.
Maybe this is less of an issue with trading because the market has set hours?
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.
He may have discover a relatively unknown niche than he can exploit, or he is plain lucky. The question is: are you confident that you can replicate his success. For most people that I'm aware of the answer is often 'no'. Most people loose money and will rarely talk about it.
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.
Game is rigged for big players. You are gambling.
> best friend being a consistently profitable trader for the last 4 years didn’t help my skeptic case…
Last 4 years have been a boon for day traders. Any idiot with a decent sized portfolio and appetite for risk can make a living. However you are literally staring at graphs all day. Not very fun or rewarding or contributing much to society tbh.
For every winner out there, there are always hundreds of losers. Something something, “survivorship bias”
> one needs to just see numbers, statistics and trust on one’s strategy.
In a vacuum, this makes sense. But the market can remain irrational much longer than you can remain solvent.
Good luck with grinding out there. The current POTUS is a massive grifter, and driven by pseudo scientific neoclassical economic theory. So your day trading days will likely be sustainable for the next 4 years.
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.
Yes, but I presume at a high physical cost in the long-term? (I mean, more than the physical cost of sitting in a chair)
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.
Canada?
I live in a subdivision with cookie cutter houses and a custom wood front door would be neat, assuming it passes wife and HOA approvals.
I've kept working, but I write free software, for folks that can't afford people like me.
I want to write software. But these days jobs don't want to pay me to write software. They want to pay me to write JIRA tickets. JIRA tickets about fixing other people's code. I keep trying again and again, but the industry has completely lost any magic for me.
Meanwhile I can pump out hundreds of lines a weekend on my own free software projects and actually feel like I'm getting things done.
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.
I should have moved away from JavaScript work much earlier in my career. I had on reverse beer goggles. I love JavaScript and writing programs in the language, but the problem is that almost nobody in work force liked JavaScript. All the cool JavaScript applications in the wild tend to be hobby projects, because at work most people struggle just to put text on screen. Employment writing JavaScript always felt like a race to the bottom. If I could go back in time and give myself career advise I would recommend an MBA and a PMP and just ignore programming as a career. It is absolutely a wonderful skill to have for personal use, but you will always do better in a more structured work industry.
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.
In my experience It's very hard to get back in once you've been out of tech a while. Not because you can't code, but it becomes harder if not impossible to convince someone you can and current oversupply.
However, the company is sliding downhill imo, there have been constant layoffs and eventually I am sure I will be caught in one of them
I'm really not happy about the idea of searching for a new job again, in this new "AI assisted morons" stage of bureaucracy
I'm strongly thinking about trying to pivot to independent consulting. I know it's a tough path to follow and I'm nervous about it, but I have 15 years of experience now and I know I can probably do more with it than most companies will ever let me
Just gotta start figuring out this "networking" thing
I'm back in an office now working in a contract tech role that involves a little bit of coding on the side and it's alright for now I suppose. It isn't glamorous, but I'm happy to be working to be honest. I wanted to respond to your post because I found that cold calling and networking was the way to go for opening doors. I needed to talk to real people and build personal relationships. It took time and some surprisingly interesting opportunities opened up here and there. No one gave me a hard time about looking for work. I met a lot of people who were more than willing to take time out of their day to talk to me. It took a long time to get back into a full time role - about 6 months.
I also applied to a couple hundred jobs online but that approach didn't lead to much. The couple of interviews that I did get weren't even genuine. I deleted my LinkedIn account and never looked back.
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.
Once you finish med school, complete all of the exams (STEP?), get a residency spot, and finally become an MD (or DO). The challenge doesn’t stop there.
Now you get to deal with a whole another beast: hospital and clinical based medicine in a neoclassical economic setting. Your patients don’t matter. Their outcomes (unless sued) don’t matter. What matters is pumping your billings at the end of the quarter, dealing with endless amounts of paperwork with private insurance.
Healthcare in the US is a mess and I am glad I switched early before getting myself into $250K+ or more worth of debt (med school is expensive af).
I started writing here about it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43107456
I can't name names but I can say that I touch DGX H200's and their peripherals on a daily basis.
I'm still grinding, haven't "made it" yet, and try to keep my remaining stash afloat by trading options. I also moved to my hometown just so I can minimize my burn rate. I'm more or less flat. I don't make, but I also don't lose money.
I would, however, accept part-time contract work (I'm a generalist with leadership tendencies), if I can find it. someone suggested looking around HN threads (but not in the jobs section), so far nothing notable
i try to register as driver for kind of uber with motorcycle but no success.
now i am trying to develop set of applications for specific market to platform as a service probably it will end up trash can without success :)
one of my friend from another profession change his career to driver as "uber eat", (we have different brands for it) at least his doing ok.
Instead I've certified as an Auriculotherapist (that's fancy speak for ear-acupuncture). I chance discovered auriculotherapy about 10 years ago by its potential to reduce stress by modulating the nervous system. And its been my passion since. The ear is way more than some funny cartilage sticking off your head. Its a complete map of the body with every part treatable via microscopic points on the ear surface. Kind of like a "keyboard" into the bodies "operating system".
So the IT business going batsh!t bonkers was my cue to jump out and start a new healthcare business. I regret nothing and feel that I'm now actually helping people. And people aren't getting less stressed these days.
Good luck to all when the genAI slop code needs fixing and there are no experienced dev's left.
>Instead I've certified as an Auriculotherapist (that's fancy speak for ear-acupuncture).
Out of curiosity, what do you earn?
I can't get a job, so I start a company. Not sure if it's super backwards.
One niche, there's lots of people looking for help coding stock/futures trading apps in sierra chart, ninja and multi trader, etc. These are in c++, c#/framework, python, mostly.
On the latter, work your network, seek out busines owners/managers who are in need of IT/web/database/email list type work and have people vouch for your tech cred/integrity (very important)
Speaking in general terms, age discrimination in tech (not just software development) is, in my opinion, a really serious problem. It's like society discards you after a certain point in time, even though you are likely more capable than most younger candidates.
I am going to point the finger squarely at YC on some of this, simply because they could be an important part of the change this attitude would require.
If I were to characterize the high-altitude view of YC funded startups, I'd say it's a college campus. Sure, of course, there might be a few corner cases here and there. PG even has an essay where he says the ideal age is between 22 and 38. I think I read that only about 2% of funded founders are above 38. Well, that's bullshit.
Again, society discards you because of a biological clock having nothing whatsoever to do with your capabilities.
Let's put it this way: I can't think of a single "older" founder that would have even thought about the down-right disgusting idea of a startup that treats factory workers like cattle and --even better-- nobody in that age group would think it sensible to actually promote this in social media.
Anyhow, getting back to your question. I have friends who have tried it all. Lie on their resume. Die their hair. Serious dieting and exercise. Take lower pay. Etc. The vast majority do not make it past the Zoom interview. That is, if they ever get one. These days researching people is very easy. Which also means you get to see how old they are. If that isn't used to disqualify, the zoom call certainly does it.
Of these friends, most chose to pursue personal interests or simply retire. On of them had been investing in real estate most of his life. He decided to manage his properties.
Another friend, who ended-up with no retirement or savings to speak of due to a nasty divorce, ended-up finding a job in the oil fields in New Mexico. He sits in a trailer in the middle of nowhere, by himself, 24/7. Every couple of hours he gets in his truck and does the rounds --checking measurements, turning valves, filling out forms.
He is making $250K a year for that.
Here's a guy who is an extremely capable technologist who was discarded by society (well, at least the tech side of society) and is now in the desert living in a trailer. This is horrible. Yeah, sure, he is making a lot of money. He is also as miserable as can be. If he was mentally weak I'd be worried about all sorts of things, from becoming an alcoholic to suicide. Thankfully that isn't his case. You can make a lot of money and still be miserable.
It's interesting how society has been up in arms over the years about providing opportunity for different groups (choose a classification) and yet, age discrimination in tech largely remains untreated...a perfect crime, if you will.
I don't know what to tell you. Widen your search space to uncover opportunities that might have nothing to do with tech. Better yet, perhaps look for something where the entry point isn't necessarily tech based but your tech capabilities will give you the ability to become invaluable. It's like being the person at the office who knows how to write Excel formulas and VBA code. At some point everyone needs you around.
Age discrimination has been one of the few successful discrimination based lawsuits that have been brought against companies in the tech world.
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.
Its been about exploitation, and control. They want people who will blindly follow orders while providing the value that is implicit in intellect for pennies. Slavery by any other name.
Its not about society either, because this wasn't a choice made by society, it was a choice made by people who have money. Less the people who earned it, and more the people who stole it through money printing non-reserve debt issuance.
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.
What people ought to be doing is moving to remote, rural, and low cost-of-living areas that have been completely ignored by investors and techies for decades. We live in a post-covid world. Starlink works great. There are simply no excuse. Clinging onto the vestiges of Silicon Valley circa 2014 is a fools errand and has been for multiple years. It's time to start opening mocking people for being delusional.
Interact with your new rural community, and really understand their problems. You can start sprinkling technology in to help and expand from there. These markets have been ignored for a long time because their treasures are not shiny enough for VCs to pay attention to—not because there isn't tremendous opportunity to do some good and making a living.
The people following this advise aren't complaining about the job market, quite the opposite.
[1] Currently bragging about leading a $50 million venture fund for the state which only matches private capital investment. Also, their previous star achievement was a 14% return over 26 years on some company Fender bought.
If this is too difficult to overcome, you're not going to make it.