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0 pointsChrisMarshallNY3y ago0 comments

Actually, I never took coding tests, until a few years ago, when I was looking for work, at age 55.

I quickly learned, that if I saw a binary tree test, I might as well give up. Even if I did OK, the company was not going to give me a chance.

What I do have, is a ginormous portfolio, with dozens of repos full of ultra-high-Quality code, for shipping products, and over a decade of checkin history, along with hundreds of pages of documentation, and dozens of blog articles and postings; often directly discussing my design methods and development practice.

It has been my experience that this was dismissed, even when I curated and sent examples, directly relevant to the job.

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weatherlite3y ago

Hey I hear you, I'm not gonna gaslight your experience, let met just say this:

1) Getting a job that pays well isn't that easy in most fields

2) Getting a job as a software dev in FAANG or somewhere else desirable to many devs is plain difficult; you are competing against dozens and sometimes hundreds of candidates, some of whom are pretty good. There is no real "dev shortage" for these companies, if anything there's a huge inflation of devs who are qualified and want to work for them.

3) The tech interview process sucks and almost everyone acknowledges this and hates it; just 2 days ago I was asked a riddle about how to measure 45 minutes when burning ropes that take 60 minutes to burn. That was freaking half the interview, the other half was a difficult array question. Looking at the solution now there's no way I could come up with it even on a good day. And the company was a run of the mill company most people haven't even heard of, not exactly a FAANG. I was interviewing for a team with a pretty esoteric tech stack which I am super qualified for - but alas I get stressed when confronted with boys scouts riddles in a high pressure situation - so I must not be worthy of the job.

What I'm saying is - I think we all suffer in this together, it might be a bit better for recent grads but not by much. In the next downturn you will have dozens of people who know you well and will recommend you and help you get a job - a recent grad has nothing and will be the first to be let go since most of them can't really produce much yet. I'd take being 50 something with 2 decade worth of experience and connections than being a recent grad now.

ChrisMarshallNYOP3y ago

Yup. We're in a "bubble," right now.

It's an industry, where people make pretty sick money, for little experience. In fact, younger folks often make better salaries than older folks.

I worked for over 35 years, and never made as much as many kids right out of school, make, at FAANG (or is it now "MAANG"?) companies.

I was able to save and invest enough money, though, so that, when I was given the cold shoulder, at 55, I was able to take my toys and go home. That is a very, very rare privilege, and I am grateful. I feel as if I dodged a bullet. Many of the companies I looked at, made it clear, that, even if they did me the huge favor of offering me a job at a vastly substandard salary, they would treat me like garbage.

When the bubble bursts (and that may be coming. The horrid quality of so much of today's software is a real chicken coming home to roost), we will have huge armies of terrible programmers, desperate for work, and making it difficult to filter out the good ones.

weatherlite3y ago

> when I was given the cold shoulder, at 55

Have you tried reaching out to people on your network who worked with you in the past? I think this together with your experience is a very strong asset. Reach out, tell them you want work, you might be pleasantly surprised that your age isn't much of an obstacle.

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weatherlite3y ago

Hey I hear you, I'm not gonna gaslight your experience, let met just say this:

1) Getting a job that pays well isn't that easy in most fields

ChrisMarshallNYOP3y ago

Yup. We're in a "bubble," right now.

It's an industry, where people make pretty sick money, for little experience. In fact, younger folks often make better salaries than older folks.

I worked for over 35 years, and never made as much as many kids right out of school, make, at FAANG (or is it now "MAANG"?) companies.

weatherlite3y ago

> when I was given the cold shoulder, at 55

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