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Comment by landtuna | Hacker News Reader

That's nonsense. I've got 20 YoE, an elite college degree, tons of experience in Python and C++, have single-handedly put together mission critical software systems, and I can't get my foot in the door outside my small area of expertise. The teams I've worked on are tiny, so I have no career network to draw from. I'm missing machine learning and cloud experience, and my resume gets no hits because of it. Age 44, and I'm starting to think I've been aged out. As far as I can tell, no one is interested in experience that consists of project successes. It's just years of buzzwords and coding challenges. (So I just signed up for Hackerrank. Maybe someone will notice me there.)

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> my resume gets no hits > Maybe someone will notice me there.

I'm not sure if expecting them to come to you is a winning strategy. But you could get someone to review your CV to see if the presentation of it can be improved ?

I also have more than 20 years of experience, and if anyone asks me more than a fleeting question on what I did in college, that would be a massive red flag for me. I feel that even if I'm new to a certain technology, my overall experience is helpful and valued. The grey beard perspective so to say.

And getting some experience with machine learning has never been easier. Play around with TensorFlow, or buy one of those Nvidia Jetson dev kits and follow the free Nvidia AI courses. And there's plenty of things on Coursera, fast.ai and the likes for more formal insights beyond experimenting.

Same with cloud, free tiers everywhere. But it takes effort to learn these new technologies, and that is not always easy at an age where more life has happened than for a recent graduate. So we need to be a bit smarter and efficient at it, but it can still be done.

Edit: I actually checked your Linkedin that you posted in another comment. I personally don't feel it's a bad CV, but I can see how it might not be a CV for FAANG companies. And you are already doing my suggestion of learning the newer stuff.

But I've experienced two things that might apply in your case as well. You're self-employed, which tends to reduce the people reaching for employee positions as they might think you're not interested at all. Secondly, you seem to be working remotely, which reduces opportunities even further.

I'm just wondering if recruiters commonly reach out to experienced developers that are self-employed in a remote capacity with a strong history of real world applications. Maybe a recruiter here can chime in ?

But it does seem you could use some more networking.

Anyway, best of luck !

Thanks! I appreciate the feedback. I'll de-emphasize the remote focus, since I'm close enough to NYC that I'm willing to split my time.

"And getting some experience with machine learning has never been easier."

Yes, if you have spare time.

There's some other problem. None of us can say what it is unless you share your resume, what companies you've applied to, etc. But if you get "no hits" with 20 years of experience in Python and C++, the problem is 100% not "missing machine learning and cloud experience".

Is that an offer? :) https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimhunziker/

One hit was for making machine guns target humans better. (I rejected the in-person interview.)

Another dropped me because they wanted cloud experience.

A YC company changed the job from remote to SF only before we talked.

Where's the 20 YoE? Your linkedin says 10. And it only shows 6.

What did you do between 1998 (when you earned your degree) and 2014 when you started doing the consulting? That's a super long time to leave undocumented. That makes potential employers nervous.

What subject was your degree in? It's strange that it doesn't say.

I think you should take a look at the resume of other people with 20 years of experience in the software engineering industry and compare and contrast. When I look at this, I think... "What did this guy do for all this time? Did he advance in any meaningful way?" In 20 years, I want to see * Advancement * Variety * Leadership

I don't know your story, and I have no real reason to think you're not an accomplished engineer. But your CV isn't doing a good job of showing it. Good luck to you.

I think it must be limiting what you can see to connections if you're not a subscriber to the LinkedIn service. That's all in there!

How big is Bernardsville, New Jersey? Is it New York basically or is it elsewhere, countryside?

One really bad thing about the industry that's rarely talked about is how the jobs are concentrated in a few cities worldwide. If you're in SV/NYC you're fine but if you're in a small city there might hardly be any opportunity.

I would had some numbers in the resume. When you say large amount of data for example, how many sensors? how many GB per day?

You're saying you're a consultant? I think it could turn off some companies who are looking for a permanent employee. Also, it's really uncommon for a consultant to work at the same company for 6 years.

If you've worked mainly for two clients, you could describe that as two separate jobs. That would add way more content and show more experience. The resume is quite empty right now for 20+ years.

P.S. Can see all the experience going back to 1999. There's no problem of linkedin hiding anything for me.

Would you consider moving away from the north east? Because you would probably be able to at least get interviewed at a national lab. But only Brookhaven is in NY and that is one that I have very little experience with.

If you were willing to entertain the idea of New Mexico then the labs might be an option for you.

I suspect that even though you have a lot of experience programming, recruiters aren't counting it as applicable experience to the jobs you want. You essentially have even less experience with cloud/ML than most college grads who at least took classes where they have applicable project experience.

Changing job areas is hard, the best way imo is to find a company that does both what you currently excel at and what you want to do, then do an internal transfer to build experience. I've seen it done before where a friend of mine joined one team building internal support tools, switched to a different team doing data science, and now gets job offers for data science.

I recommend joining a Python meetup. It can be a simple way to grow your network and have free pizza and beer.

Now, with respect to cloud... it's not that hard to learn. If you have system administration skills it should not be a real challenge for you.

Now, people in the industry did not wake up one day and conspire to radically change how things work. It has been a gradual change over many years... that's why it's important to stay informed of new trends and technologies.

Oh, I'm informed. But that doesn't make experience. And neither does a side project, really. And what side project needs cloud scale?

The meet-up is a good idea.

Meet-ups may work. I met my current employer at a local Python meetup and got offered a position right away (I am 40+ too, by the way). I had recently moved to the area and had no contacts.

Also in Meetups you will find highly motivated people, the kind of people you want to work with.

Perhaps a bad suggestion.

competitive programming can be really fun, addictive and great learning experience, and incredibly frustrating and takes lot of time (> 3 hours/day for 1 year to do it the right way).

If you want to learn algorithms for the sake of learning, perhaps specialize in some weird algo sub-topics, places like TopCoder, SPOJ, CodeForces that train for ACM ICPC might be a great place to start. These are different from LeetCode.

Can you do Leetcode medium level problems bug-free in 30 minutes? If yes you can try FAANG. I knew some people of your age (one is 59) were hired by Google -- they are all good in Leetcode.

Companies nowadays want you to be good in domain knowledge but also good to solve Leetcode problems during the interview. Time has changed.

That sounds damn frustrating. Would you be willing to share your area of expertise?

At 17 YoE, I avoid the cloud and ML because it's hard to bring my skills and experience to bear, and also I have no passion for them. But I have also found there's a ton of C++ code out there; IME there's a lot of appetite for someone who can wrangle it.

Well, the technologies I've used are all over the place, but the niche is defense contracting. Until now, I don't think I realized that processing lots of data really fast locally (i.e., not in the cloud) wasn't more generally in-demand.

> the niche is defense contracting

That's not exactly a small niche. Edit: Just saw your LinkedIn profile below, have you applied to DC area companies? I think you would have much more success in the DMV metro area.

No, I know more defense would be easy. I'd love to try other stuff, though. There's so much out there to learn, and it's more fun to do things that push me.

I hear you. There's lots of non-defensive tech companies in the DC area these days too. The workforce isn't just made up of young college grads either.

Have you tried the "Who wants to be hired section?" in HN, e.g., https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25266287

Thanks - done!

Do you want to work at FAANG? I could try to make a referral.

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