Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice?

[nextstep40plus]

So many recruiters are looking for senior developers like me to join their early stage team and to do development and assist junior devs via knowledge sharing.

But I don't want to exhaust myself helping other people. I want to do things for myself and for a client. I would prefer to get a more rewarding position:

* Not in an open office * Possibility to work from home * Android + Spring Boot * Not so many meetings * No incompetent managers who induce stress to people * Colleagues who are calm and quiet but enough sociable to perhaps grab an occasional beer and have a nice chat

Do these kinds of jobs exist? Do you suggest I go solo and take on development jobs myself? I think part of the problem is that many companies around expect the workplace to have open office and so on and many cannot provide me with a work environment I can thrive in.

I'm 40 years old without any children and would like to be able to not be stressed and work overtime and solve hard technical problems and move towards a more rewarding job where it's not so stressful but interesting creatively and my work is valued so that I can balance well with my life.

Do you understand my question? I don't want to take on roles that people want me to do but find jobs (by your insightful ideas) that suit me better. Thank you!

[oppositelock]

I'm in my mid forties and I've been working for pay in tech since '96, so this puts me in a similar demographic like yours.

I think you're being too picky and greatly limiting your job choices. I miss the days of private offices, but those days are over in any moderately cutting edge companies. You'll find offices in Cisco, Juniper and Oracle, you'll find open seating at Google, Facebook, and startups. WFH friendly companies generally expect you to become productive before they're ok with fill time WFH. As a senior engineer, you are expected to mentor junior engineers and participate in broad design and architecture, that's much harder to do from home. Unlike you, I have kids, which puts severe constraints on my time, and I find myself WFH quite a bit, but my company is ok with it, since I'm productive. Open offices suck, I agree, but find a coping mechanism - for me it's a noise canceling headset, a pile of music on my phone, and a very careful arrangement of whiteboards to pretend I have some privacy. I'm not doing anything strange at work, just the activity around me is distracting. It's sad, but for the time being, private offices are extinct.

As a senior engineer, you also spend more time in meetings - precisely because that's how you disseminate knowledge to other people in a corporate environment.

If you've been working for a while, you probably have deep expertise in some area, find companies which need that and are willing to pay for it. No strange startups with low salary and high equity, etc. I don't know about you, but over my career, I've made hundreds of professional connections. It's difficult to walk in the front door with grey hair for a fair interview, since in our field, people view us older folks as has-beens. Call in those former connections.

Anyhow, good luck! Try not to get stuck being too curmudgeonly.

[kalecserk]

Hello!

I am currently 36, working for pay as a software developer since 1999, father of three -- and I would like to reiterate oppositelock's comment: "you're being too picky"

I totally understand your frustration with all this "helping other people" buzz but... Ultimately this is the job to be done by you right now :)

About the entire open-office culture, since I am a manager I have been granted a private office - which I have immediately converted into a shared quiet space to work for whoever might need it. I actually prefer to be where things get done.

I really think the problem lies in the engineering culture and maturity of the teams you had the chance to work with. Keep on looking!

Best,

[binarycrusader]

Actually, you won’t find offices at Oracle — they have or are moving to open space layouts for the most part.

[forgot_old_user]

Checking in from Cisco, its unfortunately all open space here now

[Yenderman]

When I was 30, people just looked at me and assumed I was a competent software engineer because I looked exactly like a very senior software engineer, and I presented myself in that way. But I was very junior, having made a recent career change. Yet they paid me like a prince, and I rose so rapidly through the ranks that I became an executive.

Now I'm 50, and my company folded and I went to the curb, and am looking for a new job. Now I don't look like that bright young engineer. I look like an old has-been who is stuck in a rut and stuck in my ways. Except I'm not. I'm highly experienced, an innovator, get along great with many kinds of people and can contribute at all levels of an org, from production support to development to architecture to the boardroom.

But the first question I get asked on interviews is "Are you technical?"

My over-40 career advice for you is to remember what they do to engineers that are over 40.

[khazhoux]

> My over-40 career advice for you is to remember what they do to engineers that are over 40.

No offense personally intended, but as a mid-40s engineer/manager who knows many 40s/50s engineers, I can't relate to this sentiment. We have a couple of older engineers who are kinda useless, but we also have some useless young engineers too. Some of the older engineers dominate the engineering org, leading large architectures and more-often-than-not seeing technical issues very clearly and making good calls. Their defining characteristic is that they're good, not that they have gray hair.

My over-40 career advice for everyone is to stay sharp.

[itgoon]

I've had a lot of success with having Github projects to answer that question. "Look for yourself" is a great comeback.

It doesn't even have to be original, or particularly useful. Just something that shows that you understand what modern development is about: neat code, good docs, unit tests, regular commits. Use modern libraries and idioms.

Heck, I don't think anyplace has even tried the code.

[scarface74]

I completely disagree with this sentiment. I have a group of six friends from a former company that I still keep in touch with and we meet for lunch at least once a month , the youngest is 42 and the oldest is in his late 50s. The guy in his late 50s, hired all of us at our former company. He “self demoted” to a developer after his kids graduated.

None of us have any desire for management. We all keep up with the latest technology and any of us regularly get jobs within a month or two depending on how picky we are being.

I am in my mid 40s, been developing professionally for over 20 years and it’s never taken me more than a month to get a job from the time I start looking. I am nowhere near the west coast but I do live in s major metropolitan area.

[jcroll]

> remember what they do to engineers that are over 40.

May I ask what do you mean by this? I'm an engineer entering my late 30's, what is it exactly that I have to prepare for by the time I enter my 40s?

[jensv]

That's insanity. What is wrong with this industry????

[madeuptempacct]

The prospect of being a senior dev and 40 is terrifying to me. The only ones who are treated with any respect are the "real" wizards - i.e. the guys who spent every spare second if their life breathing tech.

The guy who decompiles third party code at 4 am to see why their update caused an error in our system (real recent story).

The other (very competent) older people get actively harassed. Some little *es from my company tried to get an older guy fired for being "too slow", when he is anything but. And I think the company I work for now is one of the friendlier environments for older devs.

Dunno, it's a genuinely scary prospect. Not trying to put anyone down, just what I see around me.

I hear its even worse on the coasts. I am in a flyover and have never worked in San Fran.

[paulgrant999]

40+ and I can tell you, this is the case. basically industry just wants to suck the life out of you from 20-40, then dump your ass hard. just the way it is. last week I was talking to an Indian working two jobs, because his take home pay was < 20k, billable at 60k, for a job that market pay is 120k at entry-level.

So when somebody tells me to "take a paycut", I tell them to go fuck themselves. Particularly if they are the CEO banking millions of dollars, and block-busting labor with H1B's under slave conditions.

The crazy thing? I asked the Indian guy, do you even want to live in the states and he doesn't care. He actually prefers India. So they're coming over here, ruining the job market, and they don't give a shit if they're even here. Mentally I'm going "then why the fuck are you here?"

If they totally repealed the H1B, I would be a happy camper. They already transferred the tech to India and China; but do they have to kill/give away the next generations of tech?

[rdiddly]

A - private office

B - WFH

C - Android

D - few meetings

E - good management

F - mellow, friendly (probably older) colleagues

G - no training of underlings

H - low stress

I - interesting work

Independent contracting/consulting satisfies A and B; some subset satisfies C; D it likely fails; E is orthogonal or maybe slightly negatively correlated (some portion of those who hire consultants, have to do so because they're bad managers); F doubtful; G yes (just don't sign a scope-of-work that includes it); H probably not, unless you're itching to wear more hats including, especially, sales; I yes

Working at any of the big trendy companies: A no way; B maybe; C sure; D no; E orthogonal/tossup; F no; G probably unavoidable; H doubtful; I maybe

Working at a startup: A no way; B maybe; C sure; D likely; E tossup; F no; G no; H no; I maybe

Working at a boring, big, established company that surfs on a river of money: A possible but receding; B possible; C sure, for some subset; D you're out of luck; E, as always, a tossup (picking up a pattern?); F more likely; G possible but it depends; H yes; I probably not, but it depends more on you and what you find interesting.

Anybody else think of any work paradigms that satisfy more of these conditions?

[jvagner]

The bigger companies I worked for in the Bay Area were more like this than the smaller.

As a late 40-something who started his own marketing & technology agency to get out of the "working for others and their bad boss habits" conundrum, the one thing I can strongly recommend is that you have to interview companies as carefully as they interview you.

I've directly hired more than 100 people in my career, and it was always notable to me how many people show up for an interview, answer questions, ask just a few, and then accept a position in a company without any qualifying process of their own. People take jobs that are offered to them, more or less.

[illumin8]

I'm a 44 year old senior engineer, and the one thing I've noticed is that bad managers are almost universal in technology. I've had about 20 managers in my career and I can count only 2-3 that I would consider great managers, the rest ranged from mediocre to incredibly incompetent.

This, to me, is the #1 reason I gain much more satisfaction from doing consulting work on the side: I'm my own manager, and I can make decisions that are right for the customer, instead of getting told by an incompetent manager that he knows better than I do, which leads to bad outcomes for myself and the client.

I'm much more selective as well, and no longer tolerate bad leadership. This is the biggest challenge with finding the right job. I've discovered that almost 90% of your job satisfaction depends on having a good manager. You can actually enjoy a job that doesn't pay as well, and doesn't have as much meaningful work, if you have a great manager, because they can actually help you to make the work meaningful in the right context.

[samstave]

Sure, but people also take jobs because they really need the money.

I don't know if you have spent any meaningful amount of time without a job/money - but this world REALLY fucking sucks when you have no income.

[gallerdude]

I've always noticed this as a weird development. In an ideal capitalist scenario, people will wind up with the job that suits their preferences to the degree that they have enough career capital to be picky. But in reality, people just kind of fall into whatever job they can get and stay longer than seems rational.

As a soon-to-graduate student, I hope I can hold onto the idea that the path of least resistance has a dangerous allure.

[walshemj]

well the initial interview is do I goto the interview or even let my cv go forward

[matt_the_bass]

I think these jobs exist. Mine does. We’re a small company that makes high value physical items with a large software component. We encourage remote working but not remote only. I know this is not a popular view on HN, but I think there is huge value with regular irl interaction. It doesn’t need to be every day, but it does need to be regular. We also offer mostly single person offices (interns are currently 2 per room). We also have a culture of opensuggestions and critique regardless of official positions. I’ve always worked this way so maybe it is survivor bias. I fully admit I could make more money elsewhere but that is not my primary success metric. I already make more money that most in my area (though it is easy to believe I don’t based on some of the material things I see around my general location).

My only concern hiring older engineers is that they are stuck in a rut. But I’m my area most senior devs work for huge defense contractors. So maybe that is more an environmental factor.

[wai1234]

"My only concern hiring older engineers is that they are stuck in a rut."

Wow, better check that bias.

[platz]

What does a rut look like, like what is the last recent tech rut folks use.

And what is an example of tech that non-rut folks have that rut folks don't have?

[gcb0]

have you considered you are in a rut, and it might not be a very good one, so people with seniority call you out, while the freshman/woman you keep hiring and doctronating just reinforce your own bias?

[Myrmornis]

> but I think there is huge value with regular irl interaction

a) People vary hugely in the extent to which they find irl interaction helpful. You can’t make a single statement like this and claim that it applies equally to everyone.

b) Huge value to whom?

[throwaway172852]

Speaking as someone who is a 40+ IC Eng at one of the FAANG companies (and previously worked for another) let me give you some advice:

- First, at the risk of being blunt, you come across as someone who needs to get off their high horse with your list of "demands".

Take the open office. This is the norm. IME this has always been manageable with headphones. YMMV.

- The biggest issue is not wanting to exhaust yourself helping others. Helping others is about your best value add. What's more, helping people is a pretty good way of earning the gratitude of your colleagues.

Some general thoughts on working as a 40+ IC in these companies. Again YMMV:

- I don't tell people my age. Nor do I allow people to infer it by, say, mentioning when I graduated college or make references that would otherwise indicate my age. Now I don't look 25 but do people assume I'm old looking in my 30s or in my 40s? I have no idea. I think it's in my best interest not to find out.

- Ageism is very real and it's subtle. I've had directors tell me "I like new grads so I can mold them" without realizing that's brazen ageism.

- Culture fit is another common proxy for ageism. You can say that millennials will naturally gravitate to those of similar age or background. Grads from one college will tend to prefer grads from the same college. Common experience is one reason for this but another is people can overvalue the social proof of, say, being an MIT or Stanford alum as that by extension increases their own value.

Culture fit is problematic on many fronts and tends to exclude those of nonstandard backgrounds for which age is but one factor.

- With or without justification you will have to alleviate the concern that you aren't an old dog who can't learn new tricks. Some older workers will expect deference based on age (as a proxy for seniority/experience) but it's the nature of the beast that in FAANG companies you may end up reporting to some wunderkind who is 2-3 years out of college and may be 20+ years younger than you. If you get hung up on that you're going to have a bad time.

- Likewise older workers will have to fight the stereotype that you'll be less committed because of other responsibilities (typically meaning family). The way you're wording things here does you no favors because it can come across as entitled and inflexible.

[GlenTheMachine]

Some government jobs fulfill many of your requirements. Not all, to be sure, but some.

I am a roboticist at a government research lab. It's a good gig. The nice things about it are steady work hours (I'm not actually legally allowed to charge more than 40 hours a week, and none of my bosses over the years has ever pressured me to work unpaid overtime). No open offices, anyone with seniority has an actual office with a door. Everyone else gets a fairly decent cubicle. Many (not all) government jobs let you telecommute, at least part of the time. Colleagues tend to be competent and not stress-inducing.

We admittedly do have more meetings than I'd prefer, but I'm currently working on a rather large program, 200+ engineers, and I'm sort of the scientific representative to program management so it's not surprising. There have been times when I had one meeting a week or fewer.

[codingdave]

Those types of jobs exist, but usually not with young companies. Look for older, established companies that either have high internal tech needs, or are a tech-based business.

I had 2 jobs that matched your description, each of which lasted 5 years - one was internal software development for a large energy company. The other was working for a small SaaS shop that had been around for more than 10 years.

On the flip side, the least satisfying jobs I've had were open-office startups with inexperienced managers and CEOs. I didn't last a year at the three of those I've done, and I think I've finally learned my lesson to never try again.

To be clear, there is a place in this industry for young startups led by ambitious but inexperienced leadership teams. I think positively of the people from those places and wish them well... I just agree that those of us who have been around this block for more than a couple decades don't fit well in such places.

[ydnaclementine]

My first job out of school was with a consulting company (think SapientRazorfish, Accenture, Deloitte). What I found interesting is the vast majority of my colleagues were 'older' (35-40+), and these positions are primarily remote WFH. Consultancies love more experienced developers because they know they'll get the work done. The pay is definitely above average too.

Consulting can sometimes lead to more hours depending on stage of project (so be strict on work/life balance) and there might be a lot of travel depending on the project/client. But the clients will be brands you know and the project will be technically interesting and worth millions of dollars. I figure if I ever get tired of the startup game when older, I'll move back into that space.

[sailfast]

Perhaps, but you are almost guaranteed a terrible manager and many, many meetings in this scenario.

[ttarabula]

The sentiments in this thread are surely one of the major driving factors behind techies being some of the most enthusiastic in the FIRE movement (financial independence, retire early). I often wonder why true lifelong career planning isn't part of formal secondary education programs. I've noticed a trend where especially in the software dev world, the reality seems to hit people like a ton of bricks in their mid to late thirties, seemingly with very little reflection on the likely paths earlier on, and FIRE seems like it is sometimes as much about saving face as it is about career and financial planning. Is it part of our inward nature spending much of our time trying to get in to a flow state to solve difficult problems that causes us to push away the messy and more difficult, human cantered, and politically loaded long term career development stuff in those early career years until that avoidance bites back?

[davidxc]

Consider the defense industry / government contractors. I'm not sure what kind of salary you're looking for, but the defense industry / gov contractors pay fairly well (I'd guess ~150k ish for someone with your background) and checks most of your requirements.

[somid3]

If you can code in Java, optionally using the Play Framework, ebeans, etc. I can hire you at $100k per year as a contractor. Email me at omid at colibrin dot com —- I don’t care about your age.

[maxxxxx]

There are a lot of small, specialized, stable companies that fit your description. The challenge will be to find these companies and get hired. Usually their turnover is pretty low and they don't grow much so there is not much hiring going on.

[vaibkv]

Sure, we have a team just like you mentioned. Quiet, no stupid gossips, etc. Focused on work and individual contribution. Very less to almost no meetings for developers. We always for look for creatively solving the problems, rather than preferring manual labor intensive solutions. And the team is small. But it's not Android related. We are big data development and mostly use Scala. Email me at [email protected] if you want to apply. We are Austin, texas based and domain is healthcare.

[avip]

I'd hesitate to "go solo" if what you'd like to do is Android + Spring Boot. Because it's a cold, cold world of a race to bottom out there. I have fiverrs doing apps for me for 5$/h and, contrary to what may be a common belief, they are not x10 worse than me. They are almost as good, and once they become fully on par they start asking 15-20$/h - which is insanely low. Only do that on top of some baseline employment that keeps you going.

[utopkara]

Given your requirements, I would suggest a consultant/contract developer position for large/established companies building enterprise solutions. Large, because they will have challenging business problems that they cannot deliver through their normal project development process. Enterprise solutions, because the problems will be better defined and your experience will be better appreciated.

[liangzan]

Well I'm the founder of a startup, funded, and actively hiring. I'm considered old myself(late thirties), so I see the value of experience.

Going through the variables.

A - no. B - no. I tried that in my previous company, it won't work unless everybody buys in. C - no. D - yes. E - toss up. The average age of the management is in the late 30s, the average age of the whole team is in the mid-late thirties. No twenty plus young kids(rarity in startups nowadays). We've seen shit, made many mistakes, so we're hopefully on the way to becoming better managers F - hell yes. Both founders have kids. Principle is "Work hard, and go home" G - Unavoidable I - Blockchain

Please reach me(check my username)!

[lowlevel]

I think you're going to be most happy running your own show.. I've seen a lot of this anyway. Open plan because the boss wants to see everyone in one spot the 3 hours he is in per year. Focus unattainable due to noise/talking. Resistance to WFH arrangements. Train young people so we can have redundancy...Old guy quits and now you have 4 people doing what 1 used to, 3 of which are looking to quit because face it, they don't want to work hard ;) Good luck my friend.

[danielvf]

Other than a different tech stack, I've got all of these. This is totally doable as a freelancer.

I can't offer any magical advice, other than that, I've made it my policy to never work with anyone who might be a jerk, and to stop working with anyone one who got past the first filter and turns out to be one.

So yes, if you actually want control over your work environment and who you work with, your options are usually either freelancing or owning you company.

Good luck, and you aren't asking for too much!

[raarts]

I can not advise you I can only offer my own experience.

The older you get the harder it will become to get a programming job. I am pushing 60, and lucky enough to end up with a lot of experience as CTO/CEO in multiple companies and now doing technical due diligence for investors, and coaching young CTOs.

But although I'm very up to date on everything new and shiny I would not want to be searching for a programming job right now. The word 'senior' used to mean someone with grey hair, but now means people around thirty and there just are no words available for 40+. Which doesn't make things easier for recruiters by the way.

Even though middle aged people are very experienced, the IT field changes fast and it's very hard to have a family life AND keep your skills current. I only know of a few people being successful with that. On the other hand those people are extremely valuable and few companies know it.

Face it, the future for programmers is bleak, ageism is rampant and it's also true that many aren't current and stuck in their ways.

So maybe it's best to move into management and at least don't be a PHB, or start your own company, it seems older people have a better succes rate than young ones with that at least.

[tayo42]

> The word 'senior' used to mean someone with grey hair, but now means people around thirty and there just are no words available for 40+. Which doesn't make things easier for recruiters by the way.

Do you mean titles for levels in companies? Isn't staff, senior staff, principal, what gets used now for experienced levels?