Hacker News Reader

Comment by a4444f | Hacker News Reader

The older I am, the more experience I have, the harder i find landing a job. 10+ years of experience, multiple companies. Also, not that many techs/skills from earlier years are applicable now, it seems that there were couple of technology cycles since then, and more experienced persons may have no much advantage over younger persons.

If people you know do not know much, then the people you know do not know much, there are also people you do not know.

View on HN

> Also, not that many techs/skills from earlier years are applicable now, it seems that there were couple of technology cycles since then

Out of curiosity, could you elaborate on that?

Sure, for example one time I was proficient in DOS low level programming, not a very useful skill now. Also, typically, when a language or technology gets any good, it already becomes obsoleted by something else (examples Delphi Pascal, Perl). What is fashionable is already on its way of being uncool. I guess Java and Python are next (very decent technologies). Though I believe there is a real progress in IT, GPT3 for example. But it happens through obsoleting older technologies. And I can't really say, that I'm better that younger programmers, because one time I knew something unusable today, I think the converse is true. There is no happy ending. I guess escort services are similar to IT (not much premium for older/experienced "workers"). I guess the knowledge that is current in IT year-by-year is called mathematics.

I don't know.

When I see several total stack changes on a resume it sends me a strong signal that the person can adapt and learn.

My idea is, that the type of IT knowledge is often of a particular trivia quiz kind. You may "learn" the next trivia quiz, but you'll not be necessarily any more wiser after 20 years (due to forgetting and obsolence) than after 5 years. I guess a painter, sculptor, doctor or lawyer might be significantly better with 20y exp than 5y.

It's something I've observed as well.

There are devs with 10 years of experience that really have ten time one year of experience.

Some places teach IT as rote and magical knowledge. Others teach fundamentals. The first are effectively constantly re-learning and the later are improving. I always say I would rather hire someone with a good understanding of graphs and who never heard of git than someone who rote memorized git commands but has no clue what a graph is. Because the first one can pick up git after reading one or two tutorials.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com