If I were a senior manager and I heard that coming from you, you'd hit the unemployment turnstile faster than you could blink. You're being paid to determine whether they can do the job well and are a good team fit. If you don't understand that, then you aren't capable of conducting a quality interview, and you shouldn't be in that position at all.

What do you expect from someone who wonders if old people are teachable?

I know some of them are, but I seriously wonder for people who spend considerably long time in exactly same position with regular job hopping

>You're being paid to determine whether they can do the job well and are a good team fit.

Yes and their job history and how they changed the companies is very vital part of that.

So many people are talking a lot about "quality interview" but lets be brutally honest, for more junior positions 10% of people get to have interview, rest of them is rejected based on CV (story that job history tells) screening or technical test.

So instead of criticising me, can you advise me motivation of somebody who does 5 lateral moves in 10 years?

Let me give you a personal anecdote.

I built software for an employer that pulled in over $35M over the 13 years that I worked for them and continues to draw approximately 70% of their revenue. This wasn't an application. It was an entire suite of online products. I interfaced directly with C-level executives to go over the strategy, the scope, the features, and the design of each of these products in the lineup. I met with clients to learn about their marketing needs and how we might meet those needs. I was the technical point of contact for all software and hardware related tasks.

I was the only technical employee on staff. Occasionally I'd manage a contractor.

To be clear, I was the product manager, the hiring manager, the project manager, the lead developer, the business analyst, and devops.

But those weren't my "official" titles.

My job title was software developer.

I was fully engaged with creating the products, I was well compensated, and I was close to home.

Now tell me, what should my next move have been? Should I have gone for a position where I sat around, twiddling my thumbs, fucking with spreadsheets, sitting through inane product roadmap meetings, planning to plan about planning, and all the other insane busy work bullshit that tech companies do to justify spending capital?

I'm an expert product developer and an expert product designer and an expert facilitator and I have the receipts. I didn't become a software developer to manage people. I became a software developer because I wanted to develop software. How's that for motivation?

Thats very impressive to be honest. So to understand better people like you, if you decided to change jobs, would you search for SWE again, or only filter for positions with "senior", "principal" etc.?

If for any SWE position, what would be the motivation/ in which cases would you consider smaller scope of work?

I didn't quite have five moves in ten years and they weren't all lateral so this isn't me but I have a resume that some people didn't like because of high frequency moves due to early stage start-ups. My resume took off when two of the companies I worked with got acquired by Shopify, but before then having a high frequency of moves was viewed by some as a negative.

Keep in mind moving every two years is common in tech especially in companies that don't give four year option plans because you often get a token 1% raise when inflation is hovering around 8%. This means you're roughly 15% behind after two years with compounding. If you're a senior engineer making roughly $200K, that means you're often getting around a $30K raise to move. I think some people have careers that cap out at senior and that's okay. Not everyone makes staff or principal engineer.

You might also hire a younger who turns out to not work on bugs because it's beneath them. Or they only want to work on new projects because they went to some uppity college and it would just be wasting their education to work on "old tech".

I've seen those. They suck to work with just as much as an older who is set in their ways.

Honestly, age has nothing to do with either. It's personality.

But for the record, my first hire was 10yrs older than me, my last one is probably 10yrs older as well. So I still value experience of people who are longer in the industry