Comment by owyn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by owyn | Hacker News Reader

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Hmm. It's not clear from your post, but if you are in the midwest, that could be part of the problem. Every company in the SF/bay area seems to in a hiring frenzy right now.

You're the same age as me... and being without a job is a scary prospect, but I think it's important to stay positive. I was unemployed for a year once (by choice at first) but it took a few months to get a job once I started looking, and I specifically wanted to get into a different area (games) from where I had been (e-commerce) so I knew it would be harder. I ended up working with a team of young guys right out of school and was able to work well with them. I made an effort to embrace new stuff rather than go in with the attitude of "you should do things my way because I'm the experienced guy", and I got the job and made a positive impact.

I think my experience helped a lot, especially in building up some agile processes and keeping everyone focussed on the tasks at hand. There are a lot of roles that a developer can fill besides just development. Try to play up those skills? Every place I work, I end up in a "team lead" kind of situation just because I'm interested in processes and process improvement and can speak to both managers and other developers about various software development practices and figure out what will work at this place vs some other place.

I really suck at "programming interviews" but I am getting a lot of recruiter interest right now (I'm in the bay area). I feel like there are LOTS of companies hiring right now. I also have a feeling that I probably wouldn't get past whatever screening is done at most of those companies, so I never bother to follow up. I have failed plenty of interviews at Google and Amazon and some smaller hot startups and usually end up working at places nobody has heard of, but that's okay. :) I'm pretty happy where I am now.

I'm not sure if this helped at all. :/

Thanks for the tips. I am hiding out in a family member's vacation home in the southwest to save money. My phone number is 415 and I have a 646 google voice number I use when I apply to jobs in New York. As far as anyone knows on first contact, I am local. I usually do fine in the interview and once I get the job. My problem now is that I can't even get my foot in the door. Hardly anyone ever even responds to my email. One weird thing is, the places that actually did contact me were for the jobs that I was the least qualified for and just applied to on a whim.

The last place I worked full time was incredibly volatile and replaced almost the entire engineering team 3 times in the 2 years I was there. I probably should have left after the first mass exodus. I often wonder if that is what killed my career. Maybe that company on the resume is a black mark?

Tony - Send me your resume and I'll be happy to review it. I might see something sticking out like a sore thumb.

It's easy to spin a failure into a learning experience, that's a familiar story arc for everyone in the hiring process. My second job was a massive failure (with a public IPO and everything), doesn't seem to have hurt. I even got a job because of it once.

I don't know why it's so hard to get a job when you are already unemployed. I think there is even MORE bias about that around here than age. This article might be about age, but I suspect that is probably more your problem here. I'm not sure the best way out of that particular hole, but if you can get any kind of a consulting or freelance gig, that might help. Then you can just smooth over gaps with the "freelancing" qualifier and talk about how you're really interested in something long term / stable, especially after the volatility at the last place. Hopefully you can find employers who are nervous about someone sticking around for a couple of years, reassure them that's what you are interested in (even if it's not). If you drop me an email, I can forward you to a couple of recruiters who have contacted me in the last week or two.

If you were loyal and decided to stick around, I would see that as an asset if I was a hiring manager.

A lot of times we're harder on ourselves than we should be. I'm happy to help out a fellow geezer (j/k). Drop me a line if you want.

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