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Comment by ChrisMarshallNY | Hacker News Reader

I can say that in some of the rejections that I got, it was quite personal.

I was old (55, at the time), and that seemed to actually upset the interviewers.

I had all the right buzzwords, but as soon as they saw my grey coiffure, the process started going sideways. Somehow, they seemed to think that a 30-year-old could have 30 years of experience.

I was treated pretty shabbily, a couple of times. It was clear that I was considered a waste of time.

I only made it to a test a few times. I failed the BTree part of one test (of course), and they didn't seem to like what I returned in a take-home, once. I also once failed a Swift test (I had just started programming in Swift), when I applied for an ObjC job. Otherwise, I did passably (but probably not outstanding) on the tests.

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I don't know about you but the older I get, the less I take anything in life personal.

I've come to realize that there are so many aspects of life that are not under one's control and shaking your fist gravity doesn't accomplish anything; even more so when it comes to business and professional relationships.

One of my favorite quotes is from "Deuteronomy 18:13", or as the The Coen Brothers aptly put it:

- "Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you"

Not that I’m religious but I looked up that verse and don’t see how the Coen Brothers got that message from it.

It's the Coen Brothers quoting rabbinical commentary on the verse, not interpreting the verse themselves.

I looked it up as well, because I had a guess at which famous verse it was but didn't know it by chapter/verse.

The context of the verse, based on the surrounding verses, is that "simplicity with the Lord"[0] means accepting that what happens, or what will happen in the future, is from God and there's no need to try to figure out what will be out make sense of the uncertainty of life.

I think I can relate that to the GP's quote.

[0] translation to English my own, not sure what the language you saw was. Notably, the word used in the original Hebrew[1] can be translated as "simplicity" but also "wholeness" or "completeness". Maybe that works better? Also interestingly, in contemporary Hebrew, it means "naive"...

[1] תמים

I admit to getting quite pissed off, but I eventually decided that it wasn't worth it, and just retired.

I'm grateful that I had the means. Because of that, I would have been happy to take a lot less than many, if the work interested me, but it never got that far.

NBD. I've found that learning on my own is better, anyway. LLMs have been a Godsend, there.

These days, I get quite a bit done, but I do it on my own terms, and that makes all the difference.

This is what I’m working on, now[0]. Still has a ways to go, though. I should publish it next week.

My heroes are guys like Stu Nicholls and Howard Oakley. I've learned so much, since I decided to retire, and it's accelerating.

[0] https://littlegreenviper.com/series/passkeys/

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