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Adam Nathaniel Davis
Adam Nathaniel Davis

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Why Older People Struggle In Programming Jobs

I'm old. I'm OK with it. I don't lay awake at night worrying about it. But I do understand quite well that I'm definitely old - at least, in a "programming" sense.

Most outside this career field would laugh at the idea that I'm old. In most careers, being in your mid-40s is the prime of your professional powers. But in software development, anyone north of 40 is often viewed with some suspicion. Anyone north of 50 is frequently weeded out of the resume pool. And anyone 60+ had better have a very solid retirement strategy in place.

But this isn't an article about the definition of "old" or perceived bias against the Olds. This article is about the fact that "more-experienced" devs often have a tougher time adjusting to any particular job / task / environment.

It's not just bias. It's real. I've experienced it firsthand. I've seen it in others. I've felt it in my soul.

I don't know if this will help anyone. In any way. But I feel compelled to point out (some of) the reasons why Olds like me find it increasingly difficult to simply fit in - let alone, excel.

I don't claim to speak for all Olds. And I'm not saying that there aren't some aging devs out there who are absolutely thriving in their environments. The following observations are mine and mine alone. Your mileage may vary.


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Political Fatigue

When I was younger, I was content to play all of the standard corporate political games. Heck, at times, I even enjoyed them. But nowadays...? Well, let's just say that I've become the polar opposite of a political player - and my unwillingness to "play along" frequently causes tangible problems in my job.

I used to be in management. At one point, I had 60 devs, organized in 6 different teams, that all reported up through me. At that time, I was much more concerned with making sure that I couched my thoughts in the "right" verbiage. I was much more inclined to burn hours writing reports (that I knew would never be read) and checking off audit boxes (that I knew no one really cared about).

About 5 years ago, I purposely stepped away from management. I wanted to "just" be a coder again. I wanted to get as far as possible from standard corporate politics and allow myself to overdose on code.

But a funny thing happened on my way to being "just" a coder again. The politics seems to have... followed me. On a good day, I'm doing nothing but staring at my IDE. But on far too many days, I find myself expected to tell executive management what they want to hear. On far too many days, I'm still bogged down in meetings and endless administrative details.

Since I'm griping about this here, you might have the impression that I'm one of those Cranky Olds. You know, the guy who's gotta complain about every decision - no matter how trivial. However, I don't think this describes me at all.

I'm perfectly happy talking to "the business" or "the client" or "the stakeholders". And I can typically talk to them in a manner that avoids techno-babble and doesn't demean anyone. People can ask me for all manner of questionable deliverables - and I calmly explain to them, in laymen's terms, how those deliverables could have nasty unintended consequences down the road.

For weeks, or even months, on end, these interactions cause me no problem whatsoever. But then it happens...

It is that moment when someone wants you to do something in the code that, quite literally, makes absolutely no sense at all. But they don't just tell you to do it. They fervently ask for your opinion. They insist on making you feel like you've contributed - even when your only logical contribution is to say that this whole idea is batshit-crazy.

But you can't tell them that it's batshit-crazy. In fact, you can barely tell them anything at all - unless it backs up their original request. That's because they keep soliciting your feedback. But they don't want your feedback. They just want you to nod along and do whatever crazy thing they've asked.

When I was younger, I had a much easier time swallowing my objections in cases like these. But nowadays...? Well, while it's easy for me to avoid being abusive or confrontational, it's not easy for me to couch my feedback in such milquetoast terms that the bigwigs can delude themselves into believing that I support the idea.

I don't yell at anyone. I don't use unprofessional language. But you'd better believe that if you ask me what I think of an idea that is truly, epically stupid, I'm going to tell you, in no uncertain terms, that it's a horrible idea. It's amazing how often this simple tendency causes me repeated headaches in my work.


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Rejecting the Churn

With every year that slides into my rearview mirror, my patience for technology's relentless "churn" grows a little thinner. That sentence probably makes me sound like a dinosaur. But I'm not complaining about learning or adopting new technologies. (Like nearly any programmer, the process of learning new tech is usually exciting to me.)

I'm complaining about (what I perceive to be) an accelerating trend to throw out established tech - and dive headfirst into new tech - often for no better reason than the fact that someone really likes the new tech (or really dislikes the old tech). If you've read some of my other articles, you might've noticed my frequent use of the term: fanboy.

If you're hyping any particular tech, but you can't make a cogent empirical argument for that tech, you're probably a "fanboy". If you're badmouthing some other tech, but your primary argument against it is that it's old or stupid, you're probably a "fanboy".

Fanboys may sound like a harmless hazard of this line-of-work. But fanboys can cause real damage. If the fanboy is some little-respected kid right out of college, his irrational passions probably won't cause any real problems. But fanboys can be anywhere.

Your manager can be a fanboy. The ivory-tower architect who's friends with the CIO can be a fanboy. The guy who's been working for the company for the last 20 years can be a fanboy. Heck, even the CEO could be a fanboy.

And once the fanboy decides that they hate the tech you're currently working in (the tech that you've probably invested thousands of hours into), and once they have the ear of the decision-makers, it's only a matter of time until you'll be rewriting all your stuff. Or you'll be looking for a new job.

This "churn" doesn't just apply to top-level tech. It can apply to NPM packages. Or style guides. Or... any trivial aspect of our work. And once the opinion in your shop has "evolved", you'll find yourself having to radically change the basic way in which you do your work. Or you'll be looking for a new job.

Do you wanna know why something as (supposedly) trivial as tabs-vs-spaces can still, to this day, infuriate people? It's because you have some people who have been coding with tabs/spaces for years and it's never been a problem. And then one day, someone walks in and says, "OMFG! I can't believe you're still using tabs/spaces!" Pretty soon, you need to follow the herd on whatever trivial decision has been made - for you. Or you'll be looking for a new job.

Please don't confuse this section to mean that I don't want to learn new tech (or techniques). I'm as excited as the next programmer to dive into something that promises to solve a problem. But I'm not excited to switch out languages / frameworks / tools / etc. just because the old way is supposedly "stooopid" and the replacement is supposedly the New Hawtness.


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The Cynicism of Experience

When I started in this career, I can think of many instances where my naivete was almost... an asset. You see, sometimes I was too stupid to realize I was being used. But in the process of being "used", I also gained valuable experience. Or I impressed the hell out of the people who saw me breaking my back to make everything work.

In my 20s, any slight suggestion that extra work was needed would lead to me pulling a 24-hour coding marathon. Or working through the weekend. Any suggestion that we adopt some (counterproductive and poorly-supported) technology would lead to me diving in headfirst to learn-and-implement said technology. Any hint of stock options or future IPOs would get me all giddy thinking that I was working for the next Google and I could work myself nearly-to-death - because... I'd be rich!!!

Nowadays...? Well, let's just say that I'm more discerning with my efforts.

I will (and frequently do) work overtime. But the moment I get the sense that my willingness to work overtime is being abused, we're gonna have a little chat. And if our team loses someone, and the company's "solution" is to simply spread the work onto the remaining employees - while keeping all the due dates the same - you can guarantee that I'll be telling everyone, very clearly, that I will not be absorbing someone else's entire workload.

I don't get all giddy anymore about the empty promises of most companies (especially startups). If the comp package includes some stock options, that's great. But if you expect me to consider those options to be all, or a major component, of my comp, then I suggest you start recruiting at the local colleges. I have mortgages (plural). I have bills and commitments. And even if I like your company, I promise I don't like it so much that I'm willing to forgo a market-rate salary.

Here's another scenario where my experience (cynicism) can sometimes cause me problems:

Once you get a reputation in an organization as a proficient coder who can really get stuff done, you can suddenly find many "off the books" requests landing in your lap. I'm talking about those scenarios where someone outside your team's pipeline comes over and starts saying things like, "Hey... How difficult would it be to make this one little change to this app??"

20s Adam would get all excited about those kinda requests. A few brief meetings and I might end up working nights-and-weekends just to implement some kinda guerilla project. Sometimes I'd do it because I was excited about the tech. Other times, I'd do it because I was eager to please. In a few cases, I even got in trouble for doing it. But I almost always found that the boost within the company to my reputation was well worth any short-term blowback.

These days, I rarely indulge these folks. You know the ones. The people who figure that they can completely subvert the dev pipeline by directly cozying up to one of the programmers.

I've had executives try to do this to me (who were, nevertheless, completely outside of my chain-of-command). I've had young ladies try to do this to me, sitting closer to me than is natural and smiling at me more than anyone truly wants to smile at me.

But these days, my response to these folks is always exactly the same. I listen politely to them. I provide any immediate feedback I can which might help to steer them in the right direction. But as soon as they want to push me to actually do the work - outside of the normal dev pipeline - I politely (but firmly) decline.

This may sound like the "right" way to handle this situation. But I've noticed that once I tell someone "no", it tends to come with all sorts of long-term side effects. I've had managers tell me, in performance reviews, that I'm "difficult to work with". Yet when I try to figure out where this assessment came from, it turns out that it's from the same people who were trying to get me to subvert the normal flow of things.

In fact, it's amazing to see some of the stunned looks on peoples' faces any time I tell them, in a professional and unemotional tone, "No. I won't be doing that." Or, "You'll have to talk to the project manager about that." Or, "You'll need to negotiate that priority directly with the client."

For some people, it doesn't matter how professional (or justified) you are. They will still hold a grudge against you if you dare to deny their request.


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Little Tolerance For Double-Speak

Maybe this doesn't much bother the Olds. Maybe it just bothers me. I'm not sure. But I know that, over the last 2+ decades of corporate work, my patience with blatant corporate double-speak has steadily dwindled.

To be clear, I understand that corporations have their own vernacular. It doesn't bother me when someone says that we should "touch base offline". And "think outside the box" is a hackneyed (and near-meaningless) phrase, but when someone spews those words, I pretty much know what they're trying to communicate.

But if you tell me that we need to do some "right-sizing", I'm gonna vomit a little bit in my mouth. If you keep preaching to me about being a "disruptor", I know that your idea of "disruption" is for me to work nights-and-weekends to realize your vision. If you ask me to take an "action item", it's your subtle way of trying to assign new work to me without consideration for current project priorities.

I could go on, but you get the point. I've really grown to hate this incessant need to doctor distasteful ideas in some vague form of New Speak.

This hang-up of mine is particularly glaring when someone wants me to chime in on a proposal - and that proposal has no redeeming factors. I can pretty much talk around most potential ideas. But if the idea is simply without merit... I'm going to say so. And that's where people start talking about me like I'm some grumpy old bear that can't be reasoned with.


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Knowing Your Worth

How can knowing your worth possibly be a bad thing?? Well, let me explain.

In my 20s, I already had a ton of knowledge and pretty decent programming skills. But I had a sparse resume - and it was more-than-difficult to initially get my foot in that door.

When you're in that part of your career, you tend to think very carefully before quitting, or job-hopping, or getting on the bad side of one of your coworkers. But it's been a lonnnggg time since I had such worries about my resume.

I'm blessed to work in a field where there has always been very strong demand for my skills. And my CV is now at a level where I no longer fret over any particular entry. For the most part, these are good things. But it also means that my willingness to put up with other peoples' crap is frighteningly scant.

I recently had a contracting gig where my entire team was remote - but they wanted me to come into the office every day. So... I wasn't there for long.

I recently had a gig where several of the executives were blatant, boisterous racists. (And misogynists. And anti-Semites.) So... I wasn't there for long.

I once had a job where they made me jump through ridiculous hoops to certify the security of my code (including many audit checkboxes that would do nothing to actually secure the application). But when I showed them how I could easily hack the employee database - and anyone else outside the company could do the same - they didn't care at all. So... I wasn't there for long.

Generally speaking, this sort of hyper-mobility is an asset. I mean, who wants to be stuck in a job where some aspect of it has become onerous?? But the flip side is that it becomes very difficult to justify dealing with anyone else's crap - even for a short period of time.

Again, that's generally a good thing. But I've met other Olds like me who just can't be bothered to hunker down and build a solid history with any single company - because those companies always do something that's rude or unprofessional or just downright stupid. Follow that pattern through 3, or 4, or even more sequential employers and, before long, you have a reputation as this cranky Old who just can't "fit in".


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The Cookie-Cutter-ing of Software

One of the most soul-sucking trends in dev over the last decade-plus has been the constant effort to reduce programming to some sort of assembly line kinda process. Although I can understand the desire to refine a complex process into a simpler one, the end result of these efforts is that the programmers often end up being treated like... assembly line workers.

Look, I get it. Software development is hard. And complex. And expensive. And time-consuming. And I also understand that organizations are constantly looking for new ways to simplify these (inherently complex) projects.

But you can't build a sizable, brand new app from scratch and expect that you can just hand a pile of all-encompassing specs to the dev team and have them crank it out like they're building a bird feeder. You see, everyone wants to chase this Holy Grail idea that they can just brainstorm over a big set of specs, hand those specs to the dev team, and voila! out comes the app they were envisioning.

I don't know how many times I've been building some component, and working my way through the specs, when I realize that the client has asked for something that's completely contradictory or nonsensical. And that's fine - as long as I can ping them and have an intelligent conversation about the issue.

But now it seems that, with increasing frequency, the stakeholders wanna just shoot me over a bunch of specs - and then they want me to go away until I have a finished product. Sometimes, they literally get annoyed if I hit them up with questions. And even if they don't mind my queries, god forbid that I ever go so far as to question(!) the design they've asked for.

Most people in my position don't just know how to write code. They know how to build better apps. They know a great deal about what works - and what causes end-user nightmares. Now, I don't have any desire to be a BA or a PM. But the idea that I should never provide any functional feedback on the design of the app itself is, well... it's just ignorant.

When I was younger, I'd offer my meager suggestions. And sometimes the client would even listen. But if they completely ignored me, I didn't much care. I just did it exactly how they'd asked for it.

But I'll admit that, at this point in my life, it's pretty damn frustrating when the client's asked for something that I know will fail or need to be changed once it goes live - but if I bring this up, in any way, the annoyance in their voice is palpable. You can almost hear them thinking, "Why won't this guy shut up and just build the app exactly as we've asked him to??"

Go through that process with enough clients and you'll find yourself wondering why you're even in this career field at all...


Conclusion

I could go on like this for an additional 100,000-or-so words, I'm sure. But this piece is already getting pretty long. I've decided that I'm going to spin up a new series where I actually go through some specific stories of things that I've experienced.

For now, I just wanted to lay out some of the reasons why older programmers really can have problems fitting in with "modern" dev shops. It's not because they're "stuck in their ways". It's not because they can't understand the latest technologies. Frequently, it's because their own experience is almost, in some ways, working against them.

I've noticed this often when looking at myself. I find myself wondering, "How much longer can I keep doing this?" Because some of the stupidity I deal with daily can occasionally get me very depressed.

Latest comments (132)

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robertt52127337 profile image
Robert Thompson

Your article is very long and winded, and I get most of it, thought didn't read through all of it. One thing that reads loud and clear for me is this idea that "new" tech is on the table for one reason and one reason only, because it's there. These kids want to advance it, of course, because they know it and the old people don't. What could be more plain than that? What better way to flush out the old geezers than to introduce some new thing they don't know, and then dispense of them because they don't have that "skill"? It is age discrimination personified in a whole new way. And there's no way to combat against it. You can't say they got rid of you because "you're 60". But they can say you "don't know Python", and that is one of the requirements, so you don't fit the bill. What these young fools don't get is that what goes around comes around. One of these days THEY will be in THEIR fifties or sixties, and some "new technology" that they weren't educated or trained in will be the "new thing", and they will be foregoing their retirement income trying to pay the bills when they're 63-years old, just three years of THEIR retirement. If I'm in heaven or hell or wherever I am, I won't shed a tear for them, because they made their bed, now let them lie in it!

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bacchusplateau profile image
Bret Williams

The more I read your posts, the more I want to work with and for you, Adam.

"In fact, it's amazing to see some of the stunned looks on peoples' faces any time I tell them, in a professional and unemotional tone, 'No. I won't be doing that.'"

This article really spoke to me. I'm 52 and last year I quit a very successful senior director post at a very well known dot com so I could become an individual contributor again. I find myself doing and saying many if not all of the things you've called out in this article. Management should appreciate the bonus ability of senior (literal) developers who can quickly divine if a given direction is a good or bad way to go. I wonder how long I'll last at my current position. At least it's a remote position and I can keep my mouth shut easier than in an office environment!

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bytebodger profile image
Adam Nathaniel Davis

The more I read your posts, the more I want to work with and for you, Adam.

Oh, dang. What a nice compliment!

At least it's a remote position and I can keep my mouth shut easier than in an office environment!

I will admit that this definitely does help! While getting dragged into a meeting face-to-face it can be much harder to conceal the bubbling emotions.

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damiensawyer profile image
damiensawyer

That was a great read. I'd guess that my CV is a similar age and length to yours.
Two things come to mind.

  • The experience you've (we've) built is hard earned and valuable. It gives a genuine advantage over many less experienced people in the pursuit of not just writing code, but shipping stable and flexible software. This is usually what the business wants. I try not to lose site of that.
  • On occasions I've told my young children that there are many adults who get up and go to work but contribute very little of use. There are some roles which just 'get in the way'. I don't think that means I'm not a team player. I really enjoy working in a well-oiled team. It does mean though that experience helps me discern which parts of the dev process aren't helpful and (where possible) tactfully avoid them.
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luiz0x29a profile image
Real AI

Man, that hit home, I'm just 30 and I feel that, having worked for 15years

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genster profile image
Ryan Cole

You know a lot of these attributes are considered assets over here in Europe. People here are much more direct generally speaking, and expect you to be assertive with dissent. Maybe consider a second career on this side of the Atlantic :)

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bytebodger profile image
Adam Nathaniel Davis

Oh, man... I'd absolutely love to be in Europe! And not just for vacation. Me-and-mine have been trying to figure out the best way to get the heck out of the US for a little while.

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bongcs87 profile image
bongcs87

Emotionally Added (Family, Financial, Spouse, Kids, Elderly Parents)

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tardisgallifrey profile image
Dave • Edited

I just turned 60 this year. I'm at your state. I've done management. I've done politics. I'm through with them all.

While I'm not a programmer by profession, it is part of my skill set where I work. Your observations are not just happening in technology but it happens in many corporations and large businesses. I nodded my head on many of your anecdotes.

I think one of the things that gets me as I've grown older is that my BS meter sensitivity keeps increasing. I can spot BS far easier now than I use to, and I don't have any flowery words for those spreading it either.

Good read, sir.

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Scott Henshaw

Well said, my friend. I'm not only an older dev, but I have also excelled into and voluntarily out of management in the game dev business. Take your comments about the OT culture and youth movement of fanboys and multiply by 10. At first, I was also a bit bitter about working with as you call them "fanboys" who didn't understand the tech they used.

Most devs under 30 these days can't do the math to build their own render engine little own explain how the game engine they use works. But, I've found this leads to new opportunities.

I find more and more I can use my experience and patience as a teaching tool. It gives me an opportunity to help some realize that what was old wasn't all bad, what's new isn't all great, and that OT culture is bad management planning. It's not that younger devs can't, they just haven't lived some of the older/better ways.

If you can find that position where part or all of your role is that of the educator, you learn and you can help the next generation do and understand more. You can also teach them how to be better professionals, to recruit and retain the best talent -- not the youngest / best grades / most prestigious university / best looking / most popular. I believe that is the next evolution of the profession, and that as the older devs who have scars and war stories it's up to us to find the fanboys with potential, those who are willing to listen and teach them. We'll all be better for it.

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phongduong profile image
Phong Duong

Your experience and perspective are so valuable. Thank you for sharing

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joelbonetr profile image
JoelBonetR 🥇

I'm near 30 and I feel like you in some thinks, specially about corporate political games and political fatigue, I just want to work on a pragmatic way and put my hands on a company where my experience and opinion worth something, avoiding this sh*t out of the equation that only makes our job harder. Sometimes I feel a bit lost about that and don't really know what to expect or what to do to get rid into this environments that harm my mental health, just to work as well as I can and enjoy the process tbh. Any advice from an older would be appreciated

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el_biker profile image
Esther Lumsdon

I'm female, 55+. I do QA. Much of this article resonates with me. My spouse is a developer and their comment was "yes to all of that, and sounds like some exposure to U.S. government or DoD security framework".

Because I'm QA, I have not been tagged with "difficult to work with" for refusing out-of-band assignments. I've been able to say "my manager has to approve that" or "I don't have the bandwidth to take that to product owner/manager to get clearance from them, but they can ping me for my input."
I do worry about the ageism. I've been laid off twice in the last 2.5 years, and was the oldest person in the layoff from the startup, and the oldest at my location from the big company (there were folks older than me at other locations). My network of relationships with past co-workers and people I've interacted with at meetups has definitely helped me land jobs - I've been in the same geographic area for 20+ years.

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bytebodger profile image
Adam Nathaniel Davis

"yes to all of that, and sounds like some exposure to U.S. government or DoD security framework"

I'm currently working for a government contractor... 😲

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drbeehre profile image
DrBeehre

I'm a baby at 25 with an entire year of professional developer work behind me! Rest of my time has been in infrastructure work and getting my software engineering degree.

I'm about to start a job and a junior SRE for a well established software company that's looking to radically expand and I have no idea what to expect.

This post is an awesome insight into some of the things I should expect out there! Thanks for sharing!

Looking forward to following your future posts!

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bytebodger profile image
Adam Nathaniel Davis

Glad to hear it! And I hope I haven't written anything here that's too negative for you. There's much to love about this vocation. There are just some things that never seem to get better. And when they don't you can get kinda tired of them after 20+ years... But I'd recommend this life for nearly anyone who has the aptitude!

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drbeehre profile image
DrBeehre

Oh don't worry! You haven't scared me off!

If anything, it's refreshing to hear that it isn't all sunshine and rainbows like the world of IT is sometimes portrayed. To me, this post has just highlighted a lot of things I've already heard a bit about but in more detail, and means that I won't get my hopes up and will at least be aware of some of these issues.
At least now I have a good baseline to compare any of my future companies with and will hopefully be able to tell when I've got it good!

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Andrew L. Ayers

I have to say that many of your points hit home with me, but right now I'm on something of a "downside" when it comes to my career. Or maybe I'm just moving sideways with it? I dunno at this point. A little background:

I was let go from my last position as an SWE from a small shop back at the end of February. No problem I thought, I've got savings - let's take a week to gather thoughts, then hit up my recruiter. Did that, got some leads, a few interviews lined up...and then...pandemic hit. All of that dried up.

Ok - I can handle this...

June came around, and I turned...let's see...ah, yes - 47 years old. Sigh. Still nothing from my recruiters at this point (I enlisted a second that I had used in the past). Seems things were barren, but I wasn't certain, so at the end of June I decided to strike out on my own, first with LinkedIn, then Indeed, and see what was around.

Found a few things - posted out my resume - but interviews were hit or miss - mostly miss. A very few went very well...got to the third round on a couple...but both fizzled out at the last moment. One said they wanted to keep my resume on tap, and they'd call me if anything turned up (interestingly, they did call me at the beginning of November...but I haven't heard anything since...sigh).

Part of this I know is just due to the times were in...but the last two interviews went so far south on me, coupled with a failure on trying out HackerRank to some end of "improving my skills" - that I kinda went full sabbatical. I'm not sure whether I'll get back into it or not. I haven't interviewed or applied for anything in a couple of months now. But savings won't last forever, and UI runs out in a month...

So what happened? Well - I'm not really sure, but I kinda feel stupid all the same - almost like "imposter syndrome". I don't have anything more than an associates degree from a long defunct, out-of-business, probably-being-sued, VoTech school. I might as well not have a degree, for all it's worth. But I do have close to 30 years of SWE experience. I thought that was worth something. But maybe not? I have the drive to learn new tech, and I can do it fast. But I've never been a project lead. I'm not sure how I got to be 47 years old, and not be more than a programmer...but that's what has happened.

And because of my lack of schooling - no real "computer science" learning to speak of, everything self taught (I grew up on 8-bit computers that plugged into a TV) - I don't know things. You ask me a big-O notation question, at best I can only guess at the answer. You ask me something about a particular way to do something involving a particular kind data structure or algorithm any more complex than a link-list sorted by basic sorting algorithm, or maybe a binary tree structure on a good day - you'll get a virtual blank stare from me.

It isn't that I haven't heard of these things. It isn't that I don't know that they are fundamental things in computing. It's that, number one, I have never, ever, had to regularly use either or any of that, for what I have done in software development. It isn't like I was writing the latest database engine, or search algorithms, or some new language compiler. Certainly, in those areas and others, it's needed.

But for your regular CRUD style applications written in common programming languages and such? Nope - nothing there. If there's a problem along the way, something tearing thru resources, we'll take a look at it then. Let's get the steak on the grill first, we can worry about sizzle later...

Or maybe I just got lucky or something, and never had such problems thrown my way in nearly 30 years? I'm not sure any more. And honestly, I'm beginning not to care. Except for the fact that I do, because bills and mortgage. And - what else can I do with my life? Remember - I don't have a degree. I'm almost 50, and changing careers at this point is...well...probably on the side of impossible, unless it's being a greeter at Walmart. Oh wait...that's gone now, too.

There's no way I could ever even think about trying to learn, at this late stage, everything I'd need to know about data structures, algorithms, sorting, etc - all that low-level comp-sci stuff...that for some reason, I'm finding myself being interviewed about (well, at least a couple of times).

My cynical side is saying to me, and I don't know how much to trust it, "Psst...They are interviewing with these questions as a proxy for age discrimination."

A sign of the times? Weed out the olds and those who've forgotten over time, long since graduation at least, to get in the young-n-dumb 20-somethings who are cheaper on the payroll and insurance rates? Especially in this time of Covid-19? Seems plausible, but it might just be my paranoia talking.

So...in the meantime...I'm re-inventing myself as a Youtube Vlogger. I figure that if there are tons of people watching other people do the dumbest stuff on the planet (a TikTok for mixing paint!? WTH?) - and making money at it...well, why can't I?

Worst case scenario, I think, will be that I market myself as a "Youtube Video Editor for Hire", or something of that nature. Maybe in the meantime the world will get back to some semblance of "normal". Then again, perhaps it's moved on without me...a gaping 10-month hole (and growing) in my resume seems to be a strong indicator of that possibility, too.

Did I mention that I don't really have the means to retire - ever? Sigh...wish I had a way to go speak to my 20 year old self and knock some sense into him...

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bytebodger profile image
Adam Nathaniel Davis

Wow. Lots to unpack here. And I won't even try to respond to everything you've written - although I genuinely appreciate your predicament.

On one level, it seems like you haven't really been interviewing "enough". I'm not saying that's your fault. I haven't been in the job market since right before the COVID stuff hit, so I may not have the best perspective. But I know that when I'm really searching for something new, I can often get some kinda interview nearly every day.

But if I read through the lines in your narrative, it sounds like maybe you're not really hammering the interview trail cuz your hearts not in it. You've got doubts about whether you really wanna be doing this at all? And if that's the case, then, I feel for you. But I don't really know what to say. Even if there a 1,000 surgeon jobs out there and you've been doing surgery for 20 years, none of that matters if you aren't really excited about doing surgery anymore.

I will say that the problems you've run into in your interviews are real. But it feels to me like they're getting blown out of proportion - because you haven't had enough interviews to allow you to put them all into context.

I've experienced many of the same things. In fact, I've written several articles on Dev.to about this stuff. I too have nothing but an associates degree (in Electronics, no less). I too can blank when you ask about a lot of that theory stuff - because, as you've pointed out, much of it has no use in "real" applications.

I do not think that asking college-kinda theory questions is a way to weed out the Olds. I think it's a way to weed out the non-degree holders. There are some shops where everyone has a 4-year computer science degree - either because they require it, or because it just happened that way. When you interview for a job in one of those shops, you're gonna get a lotta college-kinda theory questions. Cuz, in their frame of reference, that is a way to judge the basic knowledge level of candidates - cuz they had to learn that stuff when they were being trained.

The interview thing is very hit-or-miss - even if you have a ton of experience. To this day, I can go on an interview and completely bomb it - because I don't align with what their people think a dev should say / do / know. And then I can turn around and ace the next interview. Just depends on the interviewers. And you have no control over it. That's why the only real "solution" is to try to line up as many interviews as possible. I've also had many interviews where no one ever asks me a single question about Big O notation or binary trees or any of that other crap.

Thank you for the thoughtful feedback. And I wish you luck!

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bosepchuk profile image
Blaine Osepchuk

I've been programming for over 20 years now. And I found this article and the discussion in the comments very interesting.

One overlooked issue here is the idea of hiring for "fit". A very wise man once told me that you can get into a romantic relationship with just about anybody. However, the effort to keep that relationship going will be inversely proportional to how good of a "fit" it is. The better the "fit" the less effort required.

I think it's a mistake to think that your relationships with your co-workers and supervisors would be any different.

That same wise man also told me that there's someone out there for almost everyone. You just have to figure out what you actually want/need and then go find it.

Again, the same is true about jobs. I've heard of shops that specialize in hiring people with autism and shops that are pulling old Cobol programmers out of retirement to work on old mainframe apps during the pandemic. And everything in between.

The right job for you now almost certainly won't be the right job for you 20 years ago. But the right job (or at least a job that's a better fit) is likely out there.

Is there any chance that your current job just isn't the right job for you, Adam?

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