I’m 45 and have never gotten more attention from recruiters, despite the fact I entered the job market during the height of the dot com era. My graduation date is clearly marked on all resumes in circulation, as is my experience showing my first internship all the way back in ‘96. It’s not only the number of ops that hit my plate, but the sheer aggressiveness of the recruiters. Very often am I contacted repeatedly, sometimes up to 5 times, by a recruiter for an op. Many times it’s directly by the hiring manager, the director, cto, or even ceo of the company.

In fact, only in my 40s have most of the major tech companies reached out to set up interviews (Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple), and a ton of pre-IPO unicorns. During the pandemic I had the former CEO of Zelle personally interview for his new venture and Brian Acton personally reached out to schedule an interview for One Signal.

I’m just a principal dev who does React and Rails. Been a tech lead in a few startups, never held a title above that, never a de facto people manager and certainly not a director.

I remember the sheer terror I was feeling toward the top of the my 30s because of discussions like this on Hacker News. Had a taste of management in my early 30s and decided it wasn’t for me, and remember toying with ideas for a career switch because surely, I would be dead as a programmer soon. The exact opposite happened.