That's hilarious. In medicine, a 30-year-old MD is too young to make some more complicated operations alone. In IT a 30-year-old programmer is just too old to be hired.
The funniest interview I had was with some blonde girl in her twenties, who read through my CV and said: "Oh, you see. We cannot send your application to our client. You see, here I have hundred of applications from people at your age, who are managers in their thirties, and you are not. There is most probably something wrong with you." And it was a position for a programmer, not a manager.
And it was when I was in my early thirties, not forties.
Currently, I'm almost 40, and I seek only for remote work (family issues). I have been paid for programming for the last 14 years. I had different jobs like sysadmin, dba, programmer; using over 10 different languages.
And despite all that searching for work is really hard. Usually, it stops at the recruiter who is only interested in an answer to "how much do you want to get?". After that, there is no counter offer, no negotiation, nothing. Sometimes there is an answer like "you want too much, but don't negotiate at this recruitment step".
When I get to the technical part of the interview, I usually get some Yeti-Level programs to write. Yeti-Level, because you are not going to write anything like that in those time restrictions in that jobs. A good example is implementing a program which gets input from a file, in the input, there are domino tiles, and a function needs to match them and find the longest chain... all must be super optimized from the beginning. And you have 5-10 minutes to do everything, including reading the task description, examples and writing tests.
The funny fact is that this company is searching for candidates for months. The sad fact is that due to such strange recruitment process, good old experienced programmers will starve.
I really think that I did very bad choice with my career. There are so many other jobs where people are not removed because of age, and experience is really appreciated. In IT you just need to accept that companies want young inexperienced kids, who want to get little figures, but a game room is a must.
It probably depends on local culture or corporate culture. I'm 43 and have no problem finding work. Recruiters are constantly calling me to see if I'm available, and many tell me my CV very attractive. I don't think my CV is anything special, though I did switch between a couple of different languages (C++ to Java to Ruby to Groovy to js/Angular and now back to Java), but 16 years of experience is exactly what empployers and clients want.
One of my co-workers at my current project is 47 and just learning front-end development after a career as system administrator. So they're certainly not doubting his ability to learn.
> The funny fact is that this company is searching for candidates for months.
If they can't find anyone while rejecting perfectly valid candidates, the problem is absolutely their own choice. They are clearly idiots. Sucks for you of course if all companies in your vicinity are like that.
> 16 years of experience is exactly what empployers and clients want.
Which area of the country is this?
edit: oh. Based on other comments, you're a freelancer. What companies want in a freelancer/consultant are wildly different from what companies want in a full time salaried dev.
edit2: And you live and work in Amsterdam. I hear the european job markets do indeed value experience. The American job market doesn't.
> I really think that I did very bad choice with my career.
Sadly, I have come to a similar conclusion: tech is a great way to earn money early (because the wages rise quickly), but the ceiling hits early and is quite hard to break through. Use those early years to save up money, then switch to something else.
That is a really sad thought. I am currently leading the technology team at a 4 year startup (~ 30 technical people, 80 total employees). About a year ago I hired as DevOps a guy who is in his early 40's, who had been working in lots of stuff.
Shit, that has been the BEST decision I have even made. This guy has been helping us mature in our processes and the way we do things. Before him, we were just kiddos playing the technology startup game. We knew what we were doing, but we had no idea of how a big company did things.
What 40+ people can give you is a really huge amount of experience. These guys have seen things and the majority of problems are not new for them. I am myself in 35, and still consider myself kind of a noob in a lot of real life development processes.
I worked with a freelancer once when he was brought in to help pick up the slack due to two people going on paternity leave, guy was being paid more per day than the two guys were getting in a week.
Contract work has interested me since then, but it looks like a real hard slog to get good income.
My first year I made € 8000 (though that was mostly due to trying to make my own product). I recommend building a buffer before you take the leap, though once I'd had my first big project, it's been fairly smooth sailing.
- Open source projects (the more GitHub stars, the better).
- Tech blog (the more followers, the better).
- Experience working for at least one hot Silicon Valley startup.
- Experience working for at least one large corporation.
- Momentum: Proof that your career has been going upwards recently, not downwards or stagnating.
If you're older, they may also want:
- Proof that you're adaptable and open to criticism.
Unfortunately, it's extremely competitive and companies are obsessed with getting "The best" and they will not admit to themselves that they don't actually know what that means.
- Open source projects (the more GitHub stars, the better).
- Tech blog (the more followers, the better).
What other professions do this? Do accountants need to do pro-bono work in their spare time to be hireable? Do lawyers just sue people for fun and blog about it?
Most photographers and other artists probably have a portfolio of some sort. The point of open source here is just that it makes it easy to see what your code looks like (e.g. you can show off parts of a tool/product that you are selling, and use a license that makes it practically useless to competing businesses).
> Currently, I'm almost 40, and I seek only for remote work (family issues). I have been paid for programming for the last 14 years. I had different jobs like sysadmin, dba, programmer; using over 10 different languages. And despite all that searching for work is really hard.
Unfortunately this isn't really unexpected. Between inexperienced kids with nothing to lose, ambitious graduates with strong short term experience, and experienced programmers specializing in one area it's hard to be competitive solely based on experience. The programming profession is very "free", but that also means you have to manage your own career and make sure that you're "selling" something that is relevant for the "buyer".
From an industry perspective the blondy is right. When you're in your mid-thirties you're expected to either to progress in your career to a role with greater responsibility, have an established career at larger companies or sell your services on the open market as a consultant/freelancer. Basically something that is using your experience. Anything else might not only not be competitive, but also a red flag.
This doesn't mean you aren't eligible for a job, just that it will be harder to find one.
(And I know that all this might sound arrogant which is why people won't really tell people how it is)
But my career progresses... but not in the management way. Just imagine a surgeon (who loves cutting people :)) and a hospital looking for one. Do you think it's OK to fail a great candidate just because she doesn't lead people?
Btw. going this way it looks like everybody in their thirties should be a leader. Who are they going to lead then? If we have a team of 10 great programmers, one will be a manager or a team leader... does it mean the rest will never find a new job because of that?
And side projects... a family, kids, jobs, and side projects - choose three of them unless you forget about sleeping.
"Hey, I'm a great surgeon, I love my job, in my free time I make operations on other people for free, I don't sleep, but here you have documentation of my free work. And no, I'm not going to work for you for free. And yes, I'm going to work for free after work. Oh, you ask about my kids. Who cares, I have my free work to do".
A surgeon will have something like four years of undergraduate school, four years of medical school and five years of relevant experience. People with an equivalent profile in software generally don't have a problems finding work.
Because the folks staying at a single company for decades or just moving around various "Programmer 1" and "Programmer 2" jobs are not good developers. In my experience socially and professionally, the best developers are very quick to move to another position at another firm. Whether it's for the money, the better title, fewer working hours in the week, or whatever I'm not sure is the point, but that they're not sticking around waiting for their current circumstances to change.
And most companies only have 3-4 levels of developer before you start leading teams, mentoring, etc. Even those that specifically have architecture tracks where you can do more senior-level technical work without any management or teaching overhead will only have a few of those positions as well.
Stagnation is death, and maintaining the same position for a decade is a pretty good definition of stagnation.
Why do the current circumstances have to change? What's bad about having a job that you actually have experience with.
That's like saying that you should divorce every few years because otherwise you seem like a bad husband... Rich people and prominents do it all the time, after all.
It's sad tho', interviewing is a pain in the backside, I would love to stay with and grow with an organisation for a solid chunk of time, 10+ years. But it seems impossible - far easier to get a promotion/raise/transfer whatever by moving. And this makes no sense for companies either!
Yea, maybe you are right. I was not writing about her intelligence... but I wrote 'blonde'. On the other hand, I would no write about the color of her skin the same way, and I'm not sure why.
Personal anecdote here, which may mean absolutely nothing in the bigger scheme of things.
I had encountered, from time to time, a certain category of recruiters who seemed to be hunting for brogrammers. The type looking for passionate ninja rockstar hackers to work for free beer, free food, and night life in an exciting high-energy startup. These recruiters just also happened to be young blonde women in low-cut tops who were rather overplaying their ditziness. They also preferred video conference to phone calls.
My assumption is this was all quite engineered to hit their mark.
The funniest interview I had was with some blonde girl in her twenties, who read through my CV and said: "Oh, you see. We cannot send your application to our client. You see, here I have hundred of applications from people at your age, who are managers in their thirties, and you are not. There is most probably something wrong with you." And it was a position for a programmer, not a manager.
And it was when I was in my early thirties, not forties.
Currently, I'm almost 40, and I seek only for remote work (family issues). I have been paid for programming for the last 14 years. I had different jobs like sysadmin, dba, programmer; using over 10 different languages.
And despite all that searching for work is really hard. Usually, it stops at the recruiter who is only interested in an answer to "how much do you want to get?". After that, there is no counter offer, no negotiation, nothing. Sometimes there is an answer like "you want too much, but don't negotiate at this recruitment step".
When I get to the technical part of the interview, I usually get some Yeti-Level programs to write. Yeti-Level, because you are not going to write anything like that in those time restrictions in that jobs. A good example is implementing a program which gets input from a file, in the input, there are domino tiles, and a function needs to match them and find the longest chain... all must be super optimized from the beginning. And you have 5-10 minutes to do everything, including reading the task description, examples and writing tests.
The funny fact is that this company is searching for candidates for months. The sad fact is that due to such strange recruitment process, good old experienced programmers will starve.
I really think that I did very bad choice with my career. There are so many other jobs where people are not removed because of age, and experience is really appreciated. In IT you just need to accept that companies want young inexperienced kids, who want to get little figures, but a game room is a must.