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Comment by anon9001 | Hacker News Reader

I think this cuts both ways. I'm getting older, but I get along really well with the fresh meat.

What works for me is to come across as an OG hacker and stay up to date on whatever the hot tech is. I'm also as immature as ever and have a pretty good command of dank memes, which I think helps more than people want to admit. I'll follow the culture wherever it goes, the same as I have since I was a teenager.

I just always try to expose myself to everything so I know what's going on, from 4chan to reddit to HN to NPR to Fox News. IMO cultural awareness is the key to appearing "young", even if your physical appearance is older.

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The other way experience helps is that you don't really need to interview at unknown places if you want to work somewhere. Over time, you've built up a professional network, and you can generally switch jobs via that network, instead of walking in the front door. Having a deep specialty in something allows you to work with other such specialists.

I past 30 now. Most of my friends are managers but I love building things and chose to be an IC.

I think tech is very fast paced. You gotta constantly be learning. Terraform, k8s, docker, rust, js frameworks, other language paradigms, deeplearning etc

It’s a lot to learn on your own.

Places you interview may ask “have you used React / Some X tool”, the best response you can give is “yes, I’ve dabbled myself and built X prototype”. Or for core things “yes, I’ve had my fair share of experiences and contributed Y to their open source repos”

Am similar to you in a lot of ways, you gotta be the cool kid and in the know. I know too many friends who've gone the other way, always dissing Millenials and have grown prematurely old.

TL;DR "Hello, fellow kids!"

I'm sorry, if this works for you, more power to you. I agree that you have to make an effort to keep up with the field, but keeping up with the teen culture on top of that would take a significant toll in my sanity.

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