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Comment by scorpioxy | Hacker News Reader

Tough but not unusual. For the record, I'm 33 and I have had a similar experience. I am not sure it has anything to do with your age but ageism is very real and I am trying to prepare for it because 40, assuming I'll make it, is just around the corner.

I did 3 interviews so far this month and even though I didn't get any rejections, I still don't have any offers. Things around here do move slow(Australia) but I am not holding my breath.

2 of those interviews asked me questions about algorithms even though the job had nothing to do with that and I explained that I am not good at those puzzles and that I preferred to discuss my experience.

I don't know your situation but you have to keep trying. Even 20-30 interviews, whatever it takes. Not getting an offer from an interview says nothing about you or your abilities. Every single user on this site can tell you horror stories when they were looking for a job so you're not alone.

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You could also plan for another life (style) (because approaching 40 for which we started planning early 30s) which is what my wife and myself did. We prepared a few years to make sure (we invested money and time in that) we had remote gigs all over the world set up and then moved to a much cheaper country and to the cheapest part of that country. Not only did we find, after a while, that life is actually nicer, we don't miss anything we had before and we literally need a tiny fraction of the money we needed in the popular city. Obviously you need to be a certain kind of person to do this, but many of my friends now did / are doing it and feeling the same experience. Most of them come from high paying IT jobs which means they have enough money in the bank (especially after selling their house) to provide additions to their pension or even live out their entire life without needing income in a much cheaper place.

Edit; now planning for 50 by removing dependency on doing development gigs

Which country you moved to?

Spain, the very south and in the mountains.

The theory is sound but it assumes that I am able to move to any country legally to live there. That requires certain types of passports which I was not born with. It also has more assumptions to what my financial/family situation is. I don't meant this in a negative way of course since you don't know me but what I am saying is that this plan is not always possible.

The idea of keeping expenses down and foregoing frivolous luxuries is what allows me to wait for a better offer inbetween jobs if i needed to. So I strongly agree with that bit.

> since you don't know me but what I am saying is that this plan is not always possible.

Ofcourse, did not mean to imply you should pack up and leave, but it is an alternative scenario for some and they might not have considered it (well). It took us years of planning and checking out locations when still in fulltime employment, so it's not this 'f*ck it, we're off' kind of thing.

Edit: checked your profile/site and I do believe the 'unintended privileged' (you cannot help where you are born or who your parents are) like me cannot really understand how it is not to be able to just travel anywhere, so sorry if I stepped over that too easily. I just try to help as I was in your position 10 years ago work wise, but not in quite in the same region...

Oh yes, it's pretty good advice in general. Thank you for that.

Luckily, I am in a better situation than most, having the chance to move to Australia a year ago as part of their immigration system. I say luckily but really it took a lot of effort and planning to apply and then wait for the process and take care of all the details. Its a great country but I still face some issues being a foreigner.

P.S. The mountains in Spain... Sounds great!

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