Comment by sandoze | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sandoze | Hacker News Reader

I might have 'lucked out', I'm 41. I under performed in my 20s (it was the 90s after all and the bubble burst just as I was gaining momentum in the market) and received my college degree at 30. I assume most people who see my resume consider me 8 - 10 years younger than I really am. Doesn't hurt that I hit the gym and haven't gone gray yet. I went the mobile route (iOS) and haven't had a pay cut in 8 years (currently 200k+ living in the mid-west). Not without its ups and downs, I tend to not get hired at start ups, maybe those 20 somethings smell something is up, but fortune 100s are quick to give me an offer letter.

With age comes maturity. It's allowed me to get along better with my co-workers (so many upper 20s, lower 30s tend to be a bit... hot headed) and I'm not afraid to negotiate. The older I've gotten, the more comfortable in my skin and in my skill set I've become.

If there's ageism I've yet to experience it and I've worked with people well in their 50s doing mobile. It comes down to who you're working for, what your skill set is, timing and, in my opinion, health. You've got to stay healthy and look healthy! Also, I tend to prune my resume, no one wants to see your experience 8+ years ago.

Or maybe it's all luck, ask me in five years what I think when Objc/Swift goes the way of PHP, I might be singing a different tune.

Unrelated question, but are you working as an iOS developer and making that salary in the Midwest? Or do you have a different role like Architect or PM?

Strictly as a developer. I tend to gravitate toward team leader. I had a role for about 2 years in health care as a architect. Management wasn't for me.

I think it is combination of luck and skills. I work with many developers in 40s and I am just couple of years to 40. Company pays pretty good salaries but they produce atrocious work with much delay. However they love to talk about all the latest technology and company is lagging behind. They want company to arrange training in new stuff, meanwhile spend most of the time checking stock markets, chitchatting about kids' education, and personal family stuff in break rooms.

To me they are like most people in IT/Software who work there, because no other type of job will have this kind of salary or flexibility.

> Also, I tend to prune my resume, no one wants to see your experience 8+ years ago.

Can you talk a bit more about that? Do you only list your latest 5 years of professional experience?

I am 31 but just got my degree a few years ago. I don't put the graduation year on my resume, but in another 5-10 years I may start!

I'm seeing similarly high rates for contract iOS worth (1-year contracts in the $200-250k range, in a city most folks on HN have never heard of). Is it worth trying to transition from C# where the cap seems to be in the $120-130k range?

I would think mobile actually favors older people with C++ experience a bit more, since iOS dev does not have garbage collection and doing C type of things can be useful in iOS dev. iOS dev I think wont go PHP level because of the difficulty bar.

> currently 200k+ living in the mid-west

Is this an employee salary or contracting/consulting income?

I'm not sandoze, but the figure seems reasonable for folks with 20 years of experience. Most of my buddies make about that much (plus 25% to 50% bonus) in NYC. I make slightly less than that.

NYC is slightly more expensive than the mid-west.

I can say that I live in an area closer to the rural mid-west than NYC, and we consistently see 1-year contract rates for iOS developers in the low $200's, up to $280-300k if you have 8+ years of relevant domain experience (again 1-year contracts). If sandoze is consulting $200k is 100% reasonable. If they're a full-time employee, $200k is pretty high but definitely possible with their experience.

It's not typical for the Midwest.

It's Salary working for a fortune 50. This does include a 30% bonus which year over year I tend to see 20-25%. This is almost the same salary with a 'paltry' 18% bonus I was receiving when working mobile in health care (technically total compensation was ~192k at that time with the bonus).

It's tempting to work in start ups. They are far more exciting, they can have an easier barrier of entry and, coming from the start up gaming industry that I was involved with when the App Store was only a couple months old (this means I'm pushing ~8 years of iOS experience), I worked my tail off. In three years I and our team released over 13 games and applications. In the five years I've been in fortune 100s we've released at best one and tend to keep the company's very first application, usually about six years old, written by a ruby dev interested in mobile, alive. It's not super interesting work but it pays well. That's where you have to draw the line. In another year or so I would leap at an opportunity to take a 100k pay cut and go back working for a start up... but am I going to keep 35-40 hour weeks? Rotating Fridays? Unlimited vacation that you actually have time to take? I suspect not and that's what makes me nervous about looking for work outside the big companies.

So you have to keep it interesting. I make games on the side and take deep dives into algorithms and concepts. I actually nailed my interview where I'm at now because of an article about Levenshtein distances on this site. I wrote it out in swift, understood it the best one can in a day. Turned out to be a great answer for the technical interview I had a week later!

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