It’s not age discrimination per-se, but it’s because you're actively dragging your heels on the technologies that companies are hiring for. You can probably find a job doing maintenance on some PHP or Rails app that hasn't been updated since Obama’s first term, but the pay is likely also going to come from that era.
You will have to stomach finance or the military industrial complex though.
The rents are no joke, but if I had to be out of a job and in tech, NYC or SF would be top picks (maybe Denver, Austin, DC, or RDU after that).
* web dev - today the majority of the jobs are very heavily ts/js, react, next.js, vercel, etc.
* data engineering - AI/ML is very hungry for clean, organized, and accessible data. so we're talking sql, data warehousing, spark, beam, kafka
* infra/devops - nearly every tech company needs these people: docker, kubernetes, terraform, ci/cd, gitops, metrics and monitoring tools like prometheus and grafana
because only AI, cloud, and startups are hiring? What a weird interpretation to make of someone based off of a comment history on the internet. We don't even know what domain they work in.
Or I can give tactical suggestions, which may be a bit hard to stomach, so he can improve his odds at landing a job.
It’s fairly easy to infer his job domain from comments. He mentions web technologies and SQL often. He refers to himself as a dev, not as an engineer, and he mentions running numerous websites. He probably got his start working in “IT” (nobody says IT anymore, but he still does) in the 90s in support or technician roles and moved into full-stack web developer roles around dotcom.
He also comes across as low self-confidence due to “I've almost always gotten good to great performance reviews” instead of telling us why he’s an excellent dev. That likely comes out in interviews and further hurts his chances.
Regardless, I don't exactly see the good faith when saying "well you don't like AI, just find some crusty old phpjobs and take the cut". Which is both over-presumptuous (we don't know the domain they work in) and not very helpful anyway ("old" companies may not be laying off thousands but still aren't exactly throwing jobs out like candy).
>It’s fairly easy to infer his job domain from comments
Even 20 years ago. Web has so many pieces of tech (some that didn't survive) that I wouldn't assume. Could be IT (which no one says because it evolved into its own separate domain. A 2000's IT engineer wouldn't really be doing what SDET or DevOps do today), could be old style vanilla JS website development, could be flash. Or something entirely different.
>He refers to himself as a dev, not as an engineer, and he mentions running numerous websites
Titles don't really mean much. My domain calls people developers, programmers, or engineers as the company sees fit (also, it's awkward to say "game engine engineer"). The terms are almost as flexible as "senior" these days.
Personally haven't had to deal with Cloud. My domain leaves that to network engineers on the product and probably devops for the company servers. It's there but Ive never been expected to touch it.
I should, but I find it draining.
1. Please keep at it. We need more people with experience staying in software. I don’t know your financial situation, but software is huge and something will land!
2. Based on this comment, I highly recommend likely not ever starting a company. It’s fucking hard, and it’s not glamorous. And even though it’s hard times in the macro, it’s actually way harder for many compounding reasons that are not obvious until you do it.
Again, coming from a place of love.
"Fucking hard" compared to what? Things I'd qualify under the category of "fucking hard":
- Agricultural Farming
- Lifetime debilitating disease / health issue
- Being enslaved or a POW
- Living in a 3rd world country
- Moving West in the 1800s
- Fighting in the American Revolutionary or Civil War
This narrative that starting a company is "fucking hard" is all part of the SV/SF mythos that needs a smooth stone straight to the forehead.
You listed one career choice and agriculture is actually the easiest industry. #2 lowest failure rate in 1 year, #1 lowest after 5 and after 10 years [1]. What you thought was fucking hard is objectively not compared to every other industry from BLS data. Although I'd still say it's a startup and is thus fucking hard personally.
Starting a company is very easy. Building a successful and sustainable one is fucking hard.
I've built a few successful companies but did it while having income (both active and passive). I recommend the same for anyone's first endeavor. I also recommend having a partner or two and maybe ONLY go solo after you've built a successful business. It's not glamorous being a startup CEO and can be very lonely without partners.
50% of businesses fail by year 5
And 80% of small businesses have no employees. Most of the 50% that survive to year 5 are just paying bills and aren't self-sustaining businesses that have enterprise value and can be sold.
If you want to be a one person show, yeah that's not hard in a service business. If you are average, 50% shot to make it 5 years.
If we're talking about building something that kicks off actual profit and has employees, and outperforms the opportunity cost of working for someone else or taking an equity stake in existing business, it is most certainly fucking hard.
To the parent - if you have savings and get a partner or two - I say keep applying but go for the startup too. The best businesses in my opinion are ones that make money closer to day 1 than year X. Figure that path out. Riches in niches. Don't worry about the macro environment.
[1] https://www.lendingtree.com/business/small/failure-rate/
You are pretty clearly defining "hard" differently than the poster you're responding to, as somehow being related only to the chance of a venture failing. But obviously that's not what "hard" means when the other examples include being a prisoner of war.
The context of the entire discussion was NOT for the parent to decide to apply for jobs or become a prisoner of war.
It was to work for the man or do a startup. And building a successful startup is fucking hard.
Furthermore, nobody in SV is using the definition that the parent is irate about when they say building a startup is hard. They're using the one I've outlined.
What is the point of moralizing?
Because the guy is framing his discouragement as "coming from a place of love" when in reality it takes roughly 2-3 weeks to go from zero-to-[LLC accepting payments on Stripe]. Which means it's really not that "fucking hard" at all to start small and begin the search for paying customers.
I've been on this board for 17 years back when it was originally called "Startup News" and full of new-company founders, sold 2 small SW apps back in 2009, and have also done the F100 corporate adventure. The emotional challenges of starting your own company can be easier than the 9-5.
Also it's a completely different ballgame when you build a company that has employees versus an app.
We don't know what path the parent was talking about or what their business would be. We don't know their financial position.
Regardless, it's hard to build a successful business. Especially on your first attempt.
okay, now tell my how long and how much it costs to g from new LLC to self-sustainable. Even some of the most popular startups aren't profitable for years.
I guess the silver lining is that I can now better emphasize with the challenges of protracted unemployment.
From the crash of April-ish 2000, it was 6-9 months before the best of the best could even get an interview, and about 36 to something approaching normality.
Never really had trouble finding work on the West Coast since then though. This year, I was unemployed for half a year (after quitting voluntarily) and finally found work with a European company. Guess the boom times are over! It's AI or bust now, lol (and I have neither the skills nor the interest to work in ML).
Keep in mind though I'm also a nobody, some rando self taught web dev coming from the LAMP world into React. We're pretty much bottom of the barrel as far as programmers go, so I'm not surprised I'm not a competitive candidate! I love the frontend, but more for its visuals and UX than coding. It's a very far cry from AI or algorithms or really any sort of non visual coding.
The kind of I stuff I used to get paid for when I was younger, Wix handles effortlessly now (and I recommend it my clients too... don't pay me, just make it yourself on Wix in a few hours). React's probably headed down the same path: https://v0.dev/
It was quite common around 2002 to join a new company after being laid off from one, one to be laid off yet again a couple of months later.
Myself, I was living from savings with salaries delayed by a couple of months, while we were trying to find a new source of income.
Then again, I don't know what I would pivot to. I thought about building a startup. However it is not a good time to be doing that either.