Ask HN: How do I over ageism in tech?
I live and have worked in silicon valley, but have been unemployed since March 2020. I had a few consulting gigs here and there but nothing that pays enough to sustain life here. I have two kids who live in the area with their mother, otherwise I'd move away.
My problem is even with 25 years experience ( removed the first 15 from my resume)...I keep getting denied offers. I work with js for 10 years now, used all the modern frameworks. I don't know what else to do. It seems all the bootcamps have flooded the js market with younger people.
I know I should be a staff or architect by now, but those positions rarely exist from what I've seen for FE. Also I am self taught so when I get the FAANG style "hard core" coding challenges I usually screw up. But even when someone talks to me on the phone they pass. Not even a tech screen.
Today I just got passed up saying they wanted someone with more experience working on teams. smh
I'm 46 btw, and am thinking of a career switch. What career should I persue?
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This might be a bigger issue then your age. I'm almost 10 years older then you, got laid off in July and rehired in November. No-one seemed concerned about my age.
But, I'm in Cloud Architecture and DevOps - which has a real shortage of people atm. (Or seems to judging by all the recruiters on LinkedIn)
If you're not getting to a tech screen - maybe you could do some mock interviews with a coach? With your experience you should be getting at least that far.
with 25 years exp, I'm assuming you're going to be more expensive then an entry level person. Use that section to highlight why you're worth the money. Business case stuff is always good: reduced costs by X at company Y, or implemented XX which increased revenue, implemented scalable X that allowed us to grow to Y. Soft skills like mentoring, communications, customer focus, etc. are good as well.
You have some good stuff in the experience section, but I have to hunt to find it. Put some of the best bits of that in the summary, to get me 'hooked'. Like:
"Experienced in IOS and Android application design and implementation"
"Built base app and API modules for company later acquired by IBM"
Anyway - Hope this helps!
I just say I don't have a camera, but I have a headset and so far, no-one has complained.
upvotocracy is a reddit clone I'm worked on with another developer. We are in the process of re-designing the FE.
While I'm not an investor or entrepreneur myself, there seem to be a lot of promising projects here, if you can refocus slightly articulate the concept to people other than developers. Best of luck.
When I am looking for something that solves a particular problem and stumble across it, or something similar, I eagerly put in the time to figure it out. But when someone else (eg you) asks me to pay attention to A Thing, I need its merits explained to me up front, because I have no prior incentive to invest time in figuring it out.
I don't know if this has had any bearing on your career stuff mentioned in the OP, but one thing I learned getting older is that asking someone to invest time in evaluating your work has a cost for them, so you need to offer some clear benefit up front. You may know your work is good, but they don't. Think of it like a buried treasure map; you need to emphasize the treasure part in order to get them to look at the map.
Only you know what career to pursue. No one else can answer that for you.