tech_joe's comments

> You’ve hired right? As a hiring manager you want someone with fresh successes in the area you’re hiring for.

My approach has always been very different I guess. Likely because I have seen so many shifts in technology. As an example, when I was attending university for electrical engineering FPGA's didn't exist. I had to learn FPGA's years later (used PLD's and PAL's before that). The same is true of so many things.

When hiring engineers, I have always cared far more about how they think, how creative they can be and how well they can learn new technologies. To me that has always been far more important than getting someone who, as an example, has been driving Javascript for the last ten years, is an expert, yet could not make a shift to WASM if their life depended on it.

I'll give you a real-life example. I'm expert level with AutoCAD and Solidworks. I got a contract with an aerospace company. They used SiemensNX for their 3D CAD. I had to learn it and become capable enough to to do the job. It took me about two weeks to make a pretty solid transition. The software is different enough that you can't just jump into it, although, yes, skills I had with other tools helped. That's kind of the point, I am was making. Experience and flexibility to learn are valuable when combined.

Your comment exposes that I think of the hiring process differently than, perhaps, most, and that likely influences how and what I present to others when applying. In other words, what I see as a strength, to others, might come across as a weakness or just confusing.

Thanks.

> Answering these answers will probably help you understand where you're going wrong and how to better sell yourself.

Good feedback. Thanks.

No, not entitled at all. Also, not arrogant (you didn't say or imply that, just adding this myself). I know what I know and can do and where I might be out of my depth. I have no problem at all admitting this in the course of my work. That's how you learn.

I feel I have to repeat what I have posted a couple of times now: My original post isn't intended to be a resume. No attempt whatsoever was made to make it sound good or be the kind of thing I would submit to anyone for a job application. It's just a raw brain dump of skills and knowledge I acquired over four decades.

To your point, yes, I can see that even a well-written version of these skills could be very confusing for what I am going to call single-discipline jobs. You are right, if someone is looking for a web developer or embedded software guy, the fact that I own an industrial CNC machine and can run it is a ridiculous thing to add. I don't think I've done that in applications, yet, I have to admit that I have sent off many cloned applications out of frustration without filtering in/out what relevant bits should and should not be there.

What you are saying is correct. If the skills presented in a resume turn out to be orthogonal to the job, they might as well be excluded or left as material for a conversation in answer to the question "What else have you done?".

I should say I have applied to a range of jobs where the position entails managing multidisciplinary engineering teams. In that case the skills should not be orthogonal at all. Maybe I have to think through the presentation or avoid listing skills and focus on management "stories", again, leaving the details for a conversation.

I can see how more can be confusing and detrimental to getting past the first proverbial filters. That much makes sense. I guess the question is: Where do you draw the line or lines. The first are easy: Job-relevant skills. And, perhaps, from there, and being very selective, add skills that might add context yet not look/feel irrelevant.

Something to think about.

A problem with having been an entrepreneur for decades is that you are not used to applying for jobs. I have hired people for roles from sales, web dev, marketing, hardware and software engineering, etc. In all cases I always had the patience to fully evaluate every person who put a resume in front of me.

I guess I am saying I never really learned to apply for jobs. I know that sounds stupid. Really stupid. 60 years old, and you are realizing you might not know how to apply for a job? Well, my reality is that I never had to apply for jobs when I was in my 20's and 30's. I could (and did) walk out of one job and land another in the same industry the same day without having to apply for it. Small industry. People knew key players. By my mid-30's I launched into entrepreneurship. Didn't have to apply for that job. And that was that. I didn't have to consider applying for a job until about ten years ago. I've been busy with consulting contracts, some as long as two years. So, yeah, maybe the one thing I am getting out of this is that I might not have that skill.

Interesting. Something to work on.

Thanks.

> I don't believe for a second that you can have proficency at all these skills. That's just not possible. You may have cobbled things using these techs or worked with people who knew these things well, but you can't possibly be an expert at all these things.

Thanks for your comment.

It's always interesting to me when "That's just not possible", or a similar comment, surfaces. Not much I can say other than, no, it's true. And, no, it isn't about cobbling things together and claiming the work of others.

There's nothing on that list that I could not do immediately or get back up to speed within, say, 30 days or less. For example, last time I used LISP or FORTH was probably in the mid 90's. When I did work with these languages, I built non-trivial applications and worked on them for years. Can I write a Forth application today? Well, no, not without getting back into it, which will take just a few weeks. It's like ridding a bike, you don't really forget.

> you can't possibly be an expert at all these things

Not what I am claiming at all. In fact, almost nobody is an expert at most of what they put on their resumes. I have a few areas of expertise that I would consider to be much deeper than the average engineer. And, in fact, those are the areas where I find consulting work most readily. If I had to describe myself in one sentence I would probably say something like: I can fully engineering just-about any product from scratch, no matter the technology or disciplines involved. Of course, there are boundaries, I am not about to claim I can design a nuclear reactor. We have to be reasonable. I've worked on everything from embedded to robotics, aircraft simulators and things that have gone into space. So, yeah, those skills are real and applied.

Like I said, I don't sit idle very well. Always learning.

> It sounds like you may need an outlet to vent, not necessarily "your frustrations", but maybe you need a way to outline or give a retrospective account of the past ~40 years so that you can come to terms/appreciate your journey thus far (which sounds very interesting).

No, not really. I am that type of a person. My reason for posting on HN was to get feedback of all kinds, criticism mostly --because that's where the lessons come from. In other words, helping me understand what is wrong with me in terms of, perhaps, how I have been presenting myself and approached looking for work.

> Start a blog or a newsletter or something and tell your story. Respectfully, I think that it would be a great opportunity for you to "give back" to the new crop of 20-something, motivated self-learners out there. In general, I think readers in the fields that you have done work in can benefit from real accounts such as the ones I'm sure you have to share. I'd like to read more from you.

I was a mentor for our local high school robotics team (FRC) for many years (while my kids were in the team). I helped send kids to the top tech universities in the nation (including mine). That was definitely fulfilling.

Aside from that, today, I am pursuing a degree in CS with a focus on ML. Not learning much yet (waiting for higher level coursework, it's at the algorithms and data structures stage right now...which I can probably teach). I do take the time to help others though, and that's always fun.

> if there's too much info on the resume, I don't know what YOU want to do. I don't want to hire someone that may be bored with this job

That's good insight. Thanks.

> If I was hiring for a web dev role and saw this I would just think you're not that suited to my specific role.

I agree with your point. Again, my post was not a job application, just a brain dump of skills learned and applied over the years.

I have applied to engineering manager positions where working with multidisciplinary teams was a requirement. This, I would have though, would be where everything I have done would be of value. Never got a response on any of those. I find this amazing, given that I have worn every hat in a typical tech product design and manufacturing pipeline, have had 30 or more engineers working under me and have manufactured millions of dollars in product. In that context, it is hard to understand why someone might not be curious enough to at least want to have a conversation.

> You need to tailor your CV to the job you're applying to and leave almost everything else out.

I recently read an article about modern job application evaluation. The author said that if it takes more than 10 seconds to get a sense of who you are, your CV will get tossed.

That means one-page CV's with ten bullet points and large type (or something like that).

Maybe we are in the jobs-as-elevator-pitches era? Say enough to make them interested and fill-in details when they call you.

To answer your other questions. Mid-level programming would probably not be a good fit for me. A job has to be enough of an intellectual challenge to make it interesting. Without that people are just miserable. So, yeah, senior engineer or above is likely the right fit.

That said, not wanting to sit idle, I started a new self-funded tech business. It's a physical product. I did all of the engineering: electrical, mechanical, ARM firmware, desktop application, manufacturing, testing, etc. Sold the product, booked and delivered a first sale ($175K).

While that's good, I just can't take the kinds of risks I took back twenty years ago. I need to raise capital to make this go beyond this point. I am looking for additional sales as a way to keep incremental growth going. The VC landscape today seems difficult. Also, it feels like most investors are far more interested in pure software startups and, of course, a bunch of young founders rather than a single 60-year-old. So, again, I'm on my own.

I am not saying any of this to whine. You have to take the good, the bad and the ugly. That's life. And I am perfectly fine with it. Just need to figure out what's next.

Someone asked why I don't retire. I have seen way too many people rapidly deteriorate physically and mentally from the idleness retirement can bring. Not interested. If my original post conveys anything it should be that I don't really sit around doing nothing for very long. I don't do "idle" very well. Then there's the reality of a business failure in 2010 (the economic implosion from 2008 took us out) that really hurt. Which means I have to work. Other than my home and reasonable savings, we have no retirement accounts or pensions. It's interesting how people assume that everyone reaches 60 with 401k's and a path to idle retirement. Lots of people don't. I think I can say this is --sadly-- far more common among entrepreneurs.

> You have communication problems - the needless tech listing took so much space that you had to make your actual point in a comment, and at the same you left out much more relevant information like what you've been doing recently.

While I thank you for taking the time to critique, I think you are being a bit harsh, particularly considering my post was a brain-dump of skills. It isn't a job application.

Same with your JSON, iOS development comment. Again, a brain dump. You'd be surprised how many people have no clue what JSON is. Same with mobile development. Maybe HN is the wrong crowd for a list containing some of these skills to resonate.

Anyhow, thanks again.

Yeah, I have a couple of consulting gigs what have kept me busy.

part 2...

I think it is beyond obvious I have not sat idle after having to drop out of engineering school in my mid 20's. The above isn't a list of things I touched superficially. Each of the above skills represents (and came from) having to learn in order to perform at different jobs or for specific projects. Starting and running my own tech company forced me to learn even more. It was self-funded, which means I had to do it all for a long time.

...so, why is it that I can count interviews from job applications in the last, say, ten years, with two hands?

About seven or eight years ago a recruiter opened-up to me when he sensed my frustration. What he told me rattled me to some extent. He said nobody would hire me and suggested entrepreneurship was my only path. The way he put it was:

"The owner/CEO of a small to medium company won't hire you because, given your experience, they will be afraid you will learn their industry and become a competitor. The manager at a medium to large company won't hire you because they will be afraid you'll take their job."

That has been in the back of my mind for years now. At the same time, I hear so many stories from people who send out hundreds of resume's and never get so much as a smoke signal back. While I do wonder "What's wrong with me?", I also ask myself whether the problem really centers about hiring practices today. You'd think many companies would jump at the opportunity to have someone like me contribute to their mission. Yet, nothing...

And there's the question of age discrimination, which is a real thing in tech.