7 ms·

Santa, I'll be 55YO in a few days. All I want is a better job. Thanks.

36 points by bjpcjp 12y ago

MichaelCrawford 12y ago
Me Too. I'll be 51 in a couple months. Age discrimination is widespread in this industry. I get lots of interviews, but quite commonly I find that my interviewer starts finding reasons not to hire me, the very instant they see me in person, and so can see I have grey hair. Discriminating against employees or candidates over 40, for reasons of age, is flatly illegal under US Federal Law, as well as the laws of all the States that I know about. However, such age discrimination is quite widespread.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- smoyer 12y ago
  I turned 50 last summer and the last time I was looking, I had no problem finding a good job ... perhaps the best job I've ever had. But to survive the interview process, you can't act 50 (or 55 or 51). You need to be current and make it obvious you've kept yourself up-to-date. To a lesser degree you can't look 50 either - I'm fortunate to have been dirty blond when I was younger and my hair doesn't seem to be greying yet but if it was and I was interviewing, I'd change it. Five hundred pounds and rolled into the interview in an oversized Aeron chair? You probably look older than you are to the interviewers. I don't think most age discrimination is conscious but even where it is, don't help them out by acting or looking old/older. Note: Since I have no idea how @MichaelCrawford looks or interviews, this comment is not aimed at him but is rather responding to a pattern I see when we interview people my age.
  - mud_dauber 12y ago
    Completely agree. Like you, I have fortunate genes & much younger mindset.
    - smoyer 12y ago
      One more anti-pattern to avoid during interviews - don't be the naysayer during your interview! If they say they're going to be trying "technology/algorithm/framework X", don't immediately say "that will never work!". Sure you've got 30 years of experience and you've tried that and failed with it 15 times but they're young and impressionable and they can do anything. Plus they might be right in this instance! Instead, you're the flexible guy who balances his experience, intuition and caution with the realization that while X might have failed you in the past, there might be situations where it's the right fit. So play the wise sage and say something like "that's an interesting idea, I'd be careful about Q, R and S but if it's implemented correctly that might be exactly the right plan (for instance, sometimes people really do need a NoSQL database, but often it should be put next to an RDBMS ... don't just choose one!). And you'd certainly like to be on the team working with X right? (you are presumeably at the job interview to get the job). So the right play during the interview is to look like you'd be a valuable member of the team. Once you've joined the team you can help guide them to a proper solution - whether or not it includes X. Bonus: Do not in ANY CIRCUMSTANCES get drawn into flame wars during your interview. Editors, IDEs, editors versus IDEs, languages and frameworks are tools - your position is that you use the one that best fits the project and maximizes productivity.
      - MichaelCrawford 12y ago
        I often get into flame wars during my interview. If the hiring manager says something that indicates he is a jackass, I will quite bluntly inform him of that fact. For example, Apple's CoreEdit is profoundly nonportable, as well as clearly designed to implement vendor lock-in. There are all manner of ways to store structured data that are quite portable. So if my interviewer asks me if I have experience with CoreEdit, I will quite emphatically tell them "No, because it's nonportable," then supply some portable solutions such as SQLite. I don't want to work for a bad manager. What I have a problem with is someone making assumptions about me, just because they see my grey hair, and the wrinkles in the skin of my face.
        devopsproject 12y ago
  - MichaelCrawford 12y ago
    Many young people simply assume I am not up-to-date because of my age. In reality I invest a great deal of money in technical books, as well as time in reading them, and writing code for the exercises in the books.
    - japhyr 12y ago
      That sounds good, but it sounds hard to show that to a potential employer and impress them. Have you built anything with what you've learned? I'm 42, and I performed unimpressively in an interview two years ago. That gave me some motivation to go back and polish the projects I'd been working on, so the projects would speak for themselves. Since then a number of professional opportunities have come up, largely based on the quality of the projects I've been building. It has a snowball effect as well; it's become easier to pick the work I want, and get work in that area.
      - MichaelCrawford 12y ago
        I've built quite a lot with what I've learned, however it's not always possible to demonstrate that. Consider that I am not permitted to tell anyone at all what my most-recent project was, other than that it had something to do with OpenGL. This because the product was an in-house tool for a client of my client. The very existence of that tool is a closely guarded trade secret. I read Robert Ward's excellent "Debugging C" back in the day. In part as a result of that book, I am better at debugging just about anything than just about anybody. But what can I show to a potential employer or client? "Here's some code that doesn't have bugs in it." Similarly with Scott Meyers' "Effective C++" series. Three times I have applied to a certain company to write Mac OS X I/O Kit Kernel Extensions - what Apple calls device drivers. All three times, their HR refused to forward my resume to the hiring manager, unless I removed all the experience that wasn't directly related to Mac OS X. All three times I refused; I first learned to write device drivers by hand-coding LSI-11 assembly into octal, then entering the code into the LSI-11 kernel with an octal keypad and a profoundly primitive debugger called ODT, for "Octal Debugging Technique". That was in an Intro to Computer Architecture class at UC Davis that I took over the summer of 1981, while I was still in high school. Whoever it is who keeps telling me to remove my non-OS X experience, clearly does not understand how computers work. Each time I have refused; I don't want to work for idiots.
kasey_junk 12y ago
Not to downplay the age discrimination angle (because I believe it is a real problem) but what constitutes a "better" job? Is it a compensation issue, a work/life balance thing, a new technologies thing? Conversely, are you willing to lower your compensation, work/life balance, technology choices, etc. to accomplish that? Hard for Santa to fix these problems without knowing the tradeoffs...
- ojbyrne 12y ago
  That sounds like you want him to have a worse job.
- mud_dauber 12y ago
  Hi Santa, thanks for asking. It's a lack-of-challenges (read culture) thing. My employer unfortunately tolerates mediocrity & isn't under investor pressure to improve. It drives me crazy, but can't leave until I have a new gig lined up. I live in Austin & work as a product manager, FWIW.
  - smoyer 12y ago
    You're in a position where you can improve your own job ... don't tolerate mediocrity in yourself, then don't tolerate it in your work products. There's nothing to say your employer would complain if things improved - in fact, it's likely you'll be able to point to an ROI on those improvements eventually. Most employers WILL notice when the money improves and will want to do more of whatever caused it.
stblack 12y ago
This resonates profoundly. But I'll tell you who I REALLY feel sorry for. I feel sorry for today's 20- and 30-somethings who will likely never know the $1000-$2000 days many of us knew in the 80's, 90's and 00's. Back in the days when FedExing diskettes across the planet was a normal thing. Take today's 20 and 30-somethings and project forward 20-years, I wouldn't want to trade positions.
- CmonDev 12y ago
  I would trade a position with a 20-year old. They have a bigger chance of becoming immortal.
- mathattack 12y ago
  Much easier to learn to program and do bigger things today. Professional life (and life in general) is much better today than 25 years ago. 20 years ago: - It was hard to find books on technical subjects. - Computing time was so scarce you had crazy internal chargeback systems. (Though this is sort of coming full circle with AWS) - You had to worry about every level of the stack to do the simplest things. (Weak abstraction) - No meetups or other technically assisted socializing. - In most cities if you wanted to grab a beer, the cost involved coming home smelling like smoke.
  - pmorici 12y ago
    You realize it will be 2015 in two weeks right? 20 years ago it was 1995 computing time wasn't "scarce" the PC had already been around for 10+ years 20 years ago.
    - mathattack 12y ago
      I'm aging myself. Maybe I should say 25. :-) When I was in school, computing time was a pain in the ass. Same with my first job after. I'm not talking run a little Excel, more like "Create the data cube for a company's monthly sales numbers" computing.
- wyldfire 12y ago
trcollinson 12y ago
I certainly don't want to debate that there is age discrimination in this industry. There is. It's entirely illegal. I worry about it myself, a lot! However, a few key people in the industry are amazing and give me hope. In no particular order: Israel Gat, Diana Larsen, David Spann, Woody Zuill, Ward Cunningham, Robert Martin Actually, as I make the list, it just keeps getting longer. Those are all people I have worked with or associated myself with in the last 12 months professionally. They are all extremely fantastic engineers as well as speakers, managers, and educators. Each one of them. The difference between them and the standard engineer is they have built a personal brand around themselves. They write, speak, and help with open source projects. Instead of being thought of as "older" they are thought of as the sages of the industry, filled with wisdom that can only be purchased with decades of industry experience. And companies bang down their doors to hire them. I happen to personally know that one person in that list makes a day rate of $10,000 and honestly, that person wishes they would get FEWER calls for work. Keep going! Build your personal brand and you'll get the job you want.
rip747 12y ago
That is why i'm working to get all the certifications I can to become a full time DBA (database administrator). For some reason companies want young programmers, but old time database administrators. I guess when it comes to data integrity, experience and being stuck in your ways counts more.
- bsg75 12y ago
  DBAs tend to be a little less to jump on the bleeding edge. Development is (sometimes) about trends, being closer to the marketing, where DBA are the keepers of the gold. That said, being a DBA is not always a stable life. Depending on the organization (or the lack of it) there can be late night firedrills, off hours maintenance / migrations, calls to fix data wounded by bleeding edges. A good DBA can mitigate these problems, given adequate support by management - IOW given the authority to do so.
- davelnewton 12y ago
  This is at least partially because young people don't want to be DBAs.
sph130 12y ago
Just make sure you stay current with the latest trends, technology, usability, target demographics for your space. Kids out of college and recent grads inherently have this because it is what they learned. So when putting two people side by side regardless of their metrics - looking at what they know. Far often the person who is in the know and up to date rather than complaisant will have the edge. (At least in my experience)
eyeareque 12y ago
Good luck, I hope you find something that makes you happy.
- mud_dauber 12y ago
  Thanks. Appreciate it.
smoyer 12y ago
There are truly horrible jobs - I said it just to get it out of the way but ... The rest of this comment doesn't apply to convenience store clerks with degrees in computer science. Many times when I hear people say something like this, they're working in a job they hate because they're making good money. If you can't make job change because you're expecting the same wage, that's a different problem (Dear Santa - please include personal budgeting software). Fortunately, unless you have one of those truly horrible jobs, there's a better way to get the job you want. Change your own job - and you start with changing your own behavior. This method requires a lot more work than sitting in your cube all day (playing with your red Swingline stapler) but broadly try this (not every problem will require all the steps): 1) Exceed your bosses expectations but still be on time. 2) Change how you do the job so that you're enjoying yourself. 3) Learn something new in the process of doing 1 and 2 above. 4) Use an appropriate new technology to replace something old - make sure you can justify why you replaced the old (presumably working) way. 5) Teach others in your office how you achieved more by doing things this new way. This makes a few changes: 1) You think differently about your job and the enjoyment you get from it. 2) Your boss thinks differently about you. 3) Your coworkers think differently about you. Don't underestimate the important of your perceptions - you can probably do your current job in a way that you find enjoyable if you tweak the job and change your attitude!
- mud_dauber 12y ago
  Upvote for the Swingline ref. I needed that.

36 points by bjpcjp 12y ago

Me Too. I'll be 51 in a couple months. Age discrimination is widespread in this industry. I get lots of interviews, but quite commonly I find that my interviewer starts finding reasons not to hire me, the very instant they see me in person, and so can see I have grey hair. Discriminating against employees or candidates over 40, for reasons of age, is flatly illegal under US Federal Law, as well as the laws of all the States that I know about. However, such age discrimination is quite widespread.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
smoyer 12y ago
I turned 50 last summer and the last time I was looking, I had no problem finding a good job ... perhaps the best job I've ever had. But to survive the interview process, you can't act 50 (or 55 or 51). You need to be current and make it obvious you've kept yourself up-to-date. To a lesser degree you can't look 50 either - I'm fortunate to have been dirty blond when I was younger and my hair doesn't seem to be greying yet but if it was and I was interviewing, I'd change it. Five hundred pounds and rolled into the interview in an oversized Aeron chair? You probably look older than you are to the interviewers. I don't think most age discrimination is conscious but even where it is, don't help them out by acting or looking old/older. Note: Since I have no idea how @MichaelCrawford looks or interviews, this comment is not aimed at him but is rather responding to a pattern I see when we interview people my age.
- mud_dauber 12y ago
  Completely agree. Like you, I have fortunate genes & much younger mindset.
  - smoyer 12y ago
    One more anti-pattern to avoid during interviews - don't be the naysayer during your interview! If they say they're going to be trying "technology/algorithm/framework X", don't immediately say "that will never work!". Sure you've got 30 years of experience and you've tried that and failed with it 15 times but they're young and impressionable and they can do anything. Plus they might be right in this instance! Instead, you're the flexible guy who balances his experience, intuition and caution with the realization that while X might have failed you in the past, there might be situations where it's the right fit. So play the wise sage and say something like "that's an interesting idea, I'd be careful about Q, R and S but if it's implemented correctly that might be exactly the right plan (for instance, sometimes people really do need a NoSQL database, but often it should be put next to an RDBMS ... don't just choose one!). And you'd certainly like to be on the team working with X right? (you are presumeably at the job interview to get the job). So the right play during the interview is to look like you'd be a valuable member of the team. Once you've joined the team you can help guide them to a proper solution - whether or not it includes X. Bonus: Do not in ANY CIRCUMSTANCES get drawn into flame wars during your interview. Editors, IDEs, editors versus IDEs, languages and frameworks are tools - your position is that you use the one that best fits the project and maximizes productivity.
    - MichaelCrawford 12y ago
      I often get into flame wars during my interview. If the hiring manager says something that indicates he is a jackass, I will quite bluntly inform him of that fact. For example, Apple's CoreEdit is profoundly nonportable, as well as clearly designed to implement vendor lock-in. There are all manner of ways to store structured data that are quite portable. So if my interviewer asks me if I have experience with CoreEdit, I will quite emphatically tell them "No, because it's nonportable," then supply some portable solutions such as SQLite. I don't want to work for a bad manager. What I have a problem with is someone making assumptions about me, just because they see my grey hair, and the wrinkles in the skin of my face.
      - devopsproject 12y ago
- MichaelCrawford 12y ago
  Many young people simply assume I am not up-to-date because of my age. In reality I invest a great deal of money in technical books, as well as time in reading them, and writing code for the exercises in the books.
  - japhyr 12y ago
    That sounds good, but it sounds hard to show that to a potential employer and impress them. Have you built anything with what you've learned? I'm 42, and I performed unimpressively in an interview two years ago. That gave me some motivation to go back and polish the projects I'd been working on, so the projects would speak for themselves. Since then a number of professional opportunities have come up, largely based on the quality of the projects I've been building. It has a snowball effect as well; it's become easier to pick the work I want, and get work in that area.
    - MichaelCrawford 12y ago
      I've built quite a lot with what I've learned, however it's not always possible to demonstrate that. Consider that I am not permitted to tell anyone at all what my most-recent project was, other than that it had something to do with OpenGL. This because the product was an in-house tool for a client of my client. The very existence of that tool is a closely guarded trade secret. I read Robert Ward's excellent "Debugging C" back in the day. In part as a result of that book, I am better at debugging just about anything than just about anybody. But what can I show to a potential employer or client? "Here's some code that doesn't have bugs in it." Similarly with Scott Meyers' "Effective C++" series. Three times I have applied to a certain company to write Mac OS X I/O Kit Kernel Extensions - what Apple calls device drivers. All three times, their HR refused to forward my resume to the hiring manager, unless I removed all the experience that wasn't directly related to Mac OS X. All three times I refused; I first learned to write device drivers by hand-coding LSI-11 assembly into octal, then entering the code into the LSI-11 kernel with an octal keypad and a profoundly primitive debugger called ODT, for "Octal Debugging Technique". That was in an Intro to Computer Architecture class at UC Davis that I took over the summer of 1981, while I was still in high school. Whoever it is who keeps telling me to remove my non-OS X experience, clearly does not understand how computers work. Each time I have refused; I don't want to work for idiots.

kasey_junk 12y ago

Not to downplay the age discrimination angle (because I believe it is a real problem) but what constitutes a "better" job? Is it a compensation issue, a work/life balance thing, a new technologies thing? Conversely, are you willing to lower your compensation, work/life balance, technology choices, etc. to accomplish that? Hard for Santa to fix these problems without knowing the tradeoffs...

ojbyrne 12y ago
That sounds like you want him to have a worse job.
mud_dauber 12y ago
Hi Santa, thanks for asking. It's a lack-of-challenges (read culture) thing. My employer unfortunately tolerates mediocrity & isn't under investor pressure to improve. It drives me crazy, but can't leave until I have a new gig lined up. I live in Austin & work as a product manager, FWIW.
- smoyer 12y ago
  You're in a position where you can improve your own job ... don't tolerate mediocrity in yourself, then don't tolerate it in your work products. There's nothing to say your employer would complain if things improved - in fact, it's likely you'll be able to point to an ROI on those improvements eventually. Most employers WILL notice when the money improves and will want to do more of whatever caused it.

stblack 12y ago

This resonates profoundly. But I'll tell you who I REALLY feel sorry for. I feel sorry for today's 20- and 30-somethings who will likely never know the $1000-$2000 days many of us knew in the 80's, 90's and 00's. Back in the days when FedExing diskettes across the planet was a normal thing. Take today's 20 and 30-somethings and project forward 20-years, I wouldn't want to trade positions.

CmonDev 12y ago
I would trade a position with a 20-year old. They have a bigger chance of becoming immortal.
mathattack 12y ago
Much easier to learn to program and do bigger things today. Professional life (and life in general) is much better today than 25 years ago. 20 years ago: - It was hard to find books on technical subjects. - Computing time was so scarce you had crazy internal chargeback systems. (Though this is sort of coming full circle with AWS) - You had to worry about every level of the stack to do the simplest things. (Weak abstraction) - No meetups or other technically assisted socializing. - In most cities if you wanted to grab a beer, the cost involved coming home smelling like smoke.
- pmorici 12y ago
  You realize it will be 2015 in two weeks right? 20 years ago it was 1995 computing time wasn't "scarce" the PC had already been around for 10+ years 20 years ago.
  - mathattack 12y ago
    I'm aging myself. Maybe I should say 25. :-) When I was in school, computing time was a pain in the ass. Same with my first job after. I'm not talking run a little Excel, more like "Create the data cube for a company's monthly sales numbers" computing.
wyldfire 12y ago

trcollinson 12y ago

I certainly don't want to debate that there is age discrimination in this industry. There is. It's entirely illegal. I worry about it myself, a lot! However, a few key people in the industry are amazing and give me hope. In no particular order: Israel Gat, Diana Larsen, David Spann, Woody Zuill, Ward Cunningham, Robert Martin Actually, as I make the list, it just keeps getting longer. Those are all people I have worked with or associated myself with in the last 12 months professionally. They are all extremely fantastic engineers as well as speakers, managers, and educators. Each one of them. The difference between them and the standard engineer is they have built a personal brand around themselves. They write, speak, and help with open source projects. Instead of being thought of as "older" they are thought of as the sages of the industry, filled with wisdom that can only be purchased with decades of industry experience. And companies bang down their doors to hire them. I happen to personally know that one person in that list makes a day rate of $10,000 and honestly, that person wishes they would get FEWER calls for work. Keep going! Build your personal brand and you'll get the job you want.

rip747 12y ago

That is why i'm working to get all the certifications I can to become a full time DBA (database administrator). For some reason companies want young programmers, but old time database administrators. I guess when it comes to data integrity, experience and being stuck in your ways counts more.

bsg75 12y ago
DBAs tend to be a little less to jump on the bleeding edge. Development is (sometimes) about trends, being closer to the marketing, where DBA are the keepers of the gold. That said, being a DBA is not always a stable life. Depending on the organization (or the lack of it) there can be late night firedrills, off hours maintenance / migrations, calls to fix data wounded by bleeding edges. A good DBA can mitigate these problems, given adequate support by management - IOW given the authority to do so.
davelnewton 12y ago
This is at least partially because young people don't want to be DBAs.

sph130 12y ago

Just make sure you stay current with the latest trends, technology, usability, target demographics for your space. Kids out of college and recent grads inherently have this because it is what they learned. So when putting two people side by side regardless of their metrics - looking at what they know. Far often the person who is in the know and up to date rather than complaisant will have the edge. (At least in my experience)

eyeareque 12y ago

Good luck, I hope you find something that makes you happy.

mud_dauber 12y ago
Thanks. Appreciate it.

smoyer 12y ago

There are truly horrible jobs - I said it just to get it out of the way but ... The rest of this comment doesn't apply to convenience store clerks with degrees in computer science. Many times when I hear people say something like this, they're working in a job they hate because they're making good money. If you can't make job change because you're expecting the same wage, that's a different problem (Dear Santa - please include personal budgeting software). Fortunately, unless you have one of those truly horrible jobs, there's a better way to get the job you want. Change your own job - and you start with changing your own behavior. This method requires a lot more work than sitting in your cube all day (playing with your red Swingline stapler) but broadly try this (not every problem will require all the steps): 1) Exceed your bosses expectations but still be on time. 2) Change how you do the job so that you're enjoying yourself. 3) Learn something new in the process of doing 1 and 2 above. 4) Use an appropriate new technology to replace something old - make sure you can justify why you replaced the old (presumably working) way. 5) Teach others in your office how you achieved more by doing things this new way. This makes a few changes: 1) You think differently about your job and the enjoyment you get from it. 2) Your boss thinks differently about you. 3) Your coworkers think differently about you. Don't underestimate the important of your perceptions - you can probably do your current job in a way that you find enjoyable if you tweak the job and change your attitude!

mud_dauber 12y ago
Upvote for the Swingline ref. I needed that.