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Comment by someone01 | Hacker News Reader

> But those students at community college who are aged between late 30 and 50? Really driven. It's embarrassing to compare typical college students to them.

I'm in that age bracket (30-50), and trying to transition from tech-support/helpdesk into something like coding/linux-admin/devops/etc, anything that would pay enough to allow raising a family in/near a major US city.

I find it daxx hard to even get a phone call back because of my age.

I spend a lot of time learning this and that and have s small portfolio that can be viewed. But still no joy.

So I keep on pressing myself to learn new skills, putting in 10-30 hrs a week, ON top of my 9-5 job. I did not I work this hard with this much focus in college. Honestly much regrets.

Posting this with a disposable account.

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So, I recently hit the 50+ age bracket, and got laid off by VMware back in November. I got a BSCS in 1989, and my first job after graduation was for the Defense Communications Agency in the basement of the Pentagon. I've worked for AOL (years before Gene Kim got there), and I've consulted for Apple, Raytheon, AT&T, and a wide variety of other companies. I was literally doing DevOps many years before that term was coined.

Since the layoff, I've been able to scrape together a few phone interviews, but I find that it is damn hard to get a second interview -- anywhere.

It's not just hard to get into this line of work at this age, it's also hard to get another job in this line of work when you have already been working in this industry for over 25 years.

The last time I was interviewing, one recruiter said to me that they were looking for someone who was just exactly like me -- but just five to ten years younger -- and asked me if I knew of anyone who was looking. I don't see how you can have as much experience as I did at this time, if you didn't start playing with computers back in 1982.

That last bit sounds like textbook age discrimination; if you have that on any sort of record, or even if you don't, I would consider challenging it - not just for yourself, but for all the other 50+ job seekers out there.

Full disclosure: I (as does almost everyone else here) have a stake in this as I will likely someday be a 50+ employee or job seeker.

P.s. I'm going to stop writing this, but the more I think about what you wrote the more infuriated I get. What the * is wrong with that recruiter? At the least they should be fired for expressing that thought, but they should also suffer in some way for having that thought. They have no business considering your age at all, especially with 50 being decade(s) below retirement age.

This seems curious to me, here in the midwest, it's pretty common for non software companies with shit legacy apps to desperately hire anyone with experience. These companies find it impossible to keep developers, no one wants to work at them. I'm at one now, making the highest salary of my career thus far. I'm not quiet 50.

There are limits to what I am willing to do. For example, I don't do Windows.

There are also limits to what I am capable of doing. I like to think I'm pretty good at the Ops side of the house, and I'm more than happy to work with Devs as part of a larger team, but I am not a Programmer or Developer. I can hack on code to a degree, but I simply do not have the capacity to develop code from scratch.

My wife and I have lived in Austin since 2006, and we are not willing to relocate in order for me to get a job. Since she is an international business lawyer who has always made at least twice what I have ever made (even comparing her worst year to my best), it just doesn't make financial sense for us to move.

So, I'm limited to jobs I can get here in Austin, or to work remotely. Austin being the town it is, there are lots of startups here, but they want devs and not ops. Or they want devs who can do everything.

There's also a number of big enterprise companies here, but of course they want Windows. The University isn't an option because I found out the hard way that they are the biggest flying Mongolian clusterfuck in town.

Sigh....

> but I find that it is damn hard to get a second interview -- anywhere.

So your original comment was a bit disingenuous, you have a lot of conditions to where you'll work, but you then you also tried to use the "age discrimination in tech" narrative to garner sympathy (so I suppose). If there is age discrimination in tech (which I don't see myself, I see the opposite), then commentary like your original post don't help.

Similar situation for places with government contracting. Check out Huntsville, AL, for example.

Do they do remote?

A random Midwest non-software company with a line of business legacy app that they want to keep limping along is unlikely to even know how to answer "do you do remote?"

They have a business problem they need solved, and that almost surely means "come in, walk around, talk to people, and figure it out".

What location and who are you interviewing with? Also, maybe you're applying for the wrong job titles?

Are you able to relocate? You should apply to work at YC almost as a sabbatical.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14372192

Well, I am sorry for your predicament.

I wonder, is it the recruiter doing the age screening on their own or is it coming from above?

"So I keep on pressing myself to learn new skills, putting in 10-30 hrs a week, ON top of my 9-5 job. I did not I work this hard with this much focus in college. Honestly much regrets."

Maybe you could put this effort into building something for yourself? Because, the cruel reality is, the older you get the less likely it you'll get the break you are currently aiming at.

I worked in construction for most of my life but once I past 40 it became obvious that nobody wants to hire someone older and better qualified than they are.

Hope it works out for you.

Craft a new post with a non-disposable account and title your post "Ask HN: What's the best way for a ~40 year old to retrain and get a job in tech" or "Who's hiring ~40 year old developers?".

Actually, I rather like maintaining some anonymity.

I am working in a tech company and my colleagues/friends frequent HN. I am just not in one of those high paying positions.

But I will retain this account to check for responses.

Do you have any suggestions in general? Sorry I cannot post much more details on my part though.

I've seen the HN community respond really well to developers looking for work (Who's Hiring threads come to mind) and seen us really respond well to the plight of older people in our workforce. I have no doubt that if you posted something like this, you'd find people who would be interested in reading your resume.

I'm still young enough that ageism is a concern yet, but I do read situations like yours with interest. I wonder what my shelf-life is as a dev, and wonder if I shouldn't try and more aggressively transition into something else.

My gut instinct is you'd have more luck in more rural areas - jobs do exist in them, I'm technically employed in the agricultural industry.

"I spend a lot of time learning this and that and have a small portfolio that can be viewed. But still no joy." -- You should try posting with a non-disposable account then, I agree showing your work is a hard thing but this community is filled with people who try to be helpful to others.

Also if you are interested in all this stuff try this -- [https://www.visualstudio.com/dev-essentials/] you get free 3 months trials for Pluralsight and Linux Academy, you can download and watch some video courses during commute and that might reduce your study time at home a bit.

Disclaimer -- not affiliated with Microsoft or Linux Academy or Pluralsight, just trying to be of some help :)

What type of job are you looking for? What I mean is, web dev accounts for like 95% of the age discrimination you'll see. There are companies out there that still make stuff and need programs written to configure that stuff. Look in the transportation and agriculture industry. There are still programming jobs out there that don't have much, if anything, to do with the web. And those place don't typically age discriminate.

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