<story><title>What Happens to Older Developers?</title><url>http://christfollower.me/D140313ADVICE</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>OldCoder</author><text>The interest is appreciated. However, we have different perspectives.&lt;p&gt;My &amp;#x27;C&amp;#x27; experience dates back to 1976 and is probably still relevant. FWIW I never did much COBOL though my firm did have a COBOL-Lint.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think that your 20 years of Linux experience, or mine, is &amp;quot;meaningless&amp;quot;. Not if the experience has been continuous. And, in my case, I&amp;#x27;ve not only used Linux almost daily since before Slackware existed, I&amp;#x27;ve developed my own distro, I maintain copies of nearly 2,000 packages, and many of my copies have patches of my own design.&lt;p&gt;Regarding the &amp;quot;masters of&amp;quot; issue, I may not have made the &amp;quot;generalist&amp;quot; point in the post clear enough. I&amp;#x27;m only a &amp;quot;master of&amp;quot; a few things. But I&amp;#x27;m very good at getting back up to speed on the things that I&amp;#x27;ve had &amp;quot;experience with&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;This is what a generalist does.&lt;p&gt;I agree with the &amp;quot;Take off your reasons&amp;quot; point. I&amp;#x27;m going to keep most of the rest. The difficulties that I&amp;#x27;m facing are partly due to my own foolish mistakes. But they aren&amp;#x27;t about the fact that I&amp;#x27;ve listed hobbies on my resume or that I have a nick that implies age.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not going to pretend to be a twenty-something specialist. It isn&amp;#x27;t what I am. I&amp;#x27;m a highly experienced generalist. In this context, the decades that you feel that I ought to hide are relevant.</text></item><item><author>300bps</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think there is a single thing right with his resume.  Let&amp;#x27;s take the first line of his overview:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Software developer since the 1970s.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;First of all, any development experience from the 70s is at best meaningless and at worst detrimental.  Try teaching a Cobol programmer OOP and you&amp;#x27;ll find that they learn it slower than someone without that procedural coding experience.  Second of all, the first line of your resume should not be to announce what protected class(es) you are in.  Your resume shouldn&amp;#x27;t have &amp;quot;senior citizen&amp;quot; on it anymore than it should have your race, creed, religion or any other irrelevant facts on it.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Linux work started with the first kernel releases and continued through Slackware&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;So what?  I used Slackware extensively in 1996 but the experience is meaningless.  If I had that on my resume now it would tell anyone reading it that I&amp;#x27;m probably resting on my laurels and probably have for decades.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Experience includes: Agile, Assembly, Back-End, BSD, C, CSS, Debian, FOSS, GIMP, HTTP, Java, Linux, Mathematics, Mint, MySQL, Octave (similar to Matlab), Open Source, Parser, Perl, PHP5, Python, Recruiting, Regex, Shell, SQLite3, Support, TCP&amp;#x2F;IP, Ubuntu, UNIX, Tcl&amp;#x2F;Tk, Teaching, Training, Transcoding, VPS, Writing, XML, XSLT&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve seen dozens of resumes that list dozens of technologies like this.  Not even so much as a bold font weight to say the things they are masters of as opposed to &amp;quot;experience with&amp;quot;.  Early in my management career I hired a developer that had TCP&amp;#x2F;IP programming listed as a skill on her resume.  After hiring her, I gave her the IP address of the server to do some TCP&amp;#x2F;IP programming.  She asked, &amp;quot;What is IP address?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;As someone who is in their 40s, my advice to to someone without a job later in life is to drop all the extraneous things and focus on what you&amp;#x27;ve done lately.  Lose the moniker &amp;quot;old coder&amp;quot;.  Lose any technologies older than a decade from your resume.  Lose any references to &amp;quot;35 years of experience with...&amp;quot;.  Take off your hobbies.  Take off your reasons for leaving your past employment.  There are too many other fixes needed to go into.</text></item><item><author>gexla</author><text>So, if I saw a job description like that I would smell BS and never apply. Maybe handing off a resume like that gives the same smell.&lt;p&gt;You don&amp;#x27;t give resumes like this, you tailor your pitch to the company which is hiring.&lt;p&gt;If you are applying to a PHP job, then remove all the fluff and tell the employer that you are a PHP developer. Generalists dont&amp;#x27; get hired, then don&amp;#x27;t be a generalist. Touching up your PHP skills should take a couple of weeks. ;)</text></item><item><author>selmnoo</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t get it. This guy&amp;#x27;s resume says he&amp;#x27;s a double major of math&amp;#x2F;CS from Berkeley with high honors -- and apparently he&amp;#x27;s worked on pretty hardcore engineering projects.&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    I&amp;#x27;ve created a Linux distro of my own. Original and not a fork. 
    See articles on website. Geared towards CLI engineers.
    Patched and built about 1,800 packages myself. Supported 
    and customized standard distros as well.
    Double Bachelors in Math and Computer Science from U.C. Berkeley. 
    High Honors and Honors. Worked with Open Source
    since the 1980s. Led small teams in startup and similar environments.
    Considered to be good at writing and analysis of problems.
    Experience includes: Agile, Assembly, Back-End, BSD, C, CSS, Debian,
    FOSS, GIMP, HTTP, Java, Linux, Mathematics, Mint,
    MySQL, Octave (similar to Matlab), Open Source, Parser, Perl, PHP5,
    Python, Recruiting, Regex, Shell, SQLite3, Support,
    TCP&amp;#x2F;IP, Ubuntu, UNIX, Tcl&amp;#x2F;Tk, Teaching, Training, Transcoding, 
    VPS, Writing, XML, XSLT
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
What is wrong with Silicon Valley today that a person like him can&amp;#x27;t get a reliable job, and therefore is unable to live with medical healthcare, a reasonable place of residence, etc.?&lt;p&gt;edit: on the bright side, now that this post is on HN frontpage, I hope someone seeks this guy out and gives him a job. From what I can grasp, the quality of his code is pretty damn good.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>beat</author><text>For some perspective... I&amp;#x27;m 49. Last time I looked for a job (six months ago), I had two offers in less than two weeks. In general, I can get a job in no more than three weeks, just by answering the calls. And I don&amp;#x27;t think I&amp;#x27;m all that special.&lt;p&gt;What I do have is a &lt;i&gt;relevant&lt;/i&gt; resume, both buzzword compliant and impressive to humans who actually know their ass from a hole in the ground. It&amp;#x27;s carefully honed not to present me as a &amp;quot;generalist&amp;quot; (or some other self-perception), but to get me to the top of that pile for interviews.&lt;p&gt;Look at your resume as a piece of software. No matter how aesthetically pleasing and warmfuzzy your resume feels to you, if &lt;i&gt;it isn&amp;#x27;t working&lt;/i&gt;, then it&amp;#x27;s buggy and needs fixed.</text></comment>
<story><title>What Happens to Older Developers?</title><url>http://christfollower.me/D140313ADVICE</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>OldCoder</author><text>The interest is appreciated. However, we have different perspectives.&lt;p&gt;My &amp;#x27;C&amp;#x27; experience dates back to 1976 and is probably still relevant. FWIW I never did much COBOL though my firm did have a COBOL-Lint.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think that your 20 years of Linux experience, or mine, is &amp;quot;meaningless&amp;quot;. Not if the experience has been continuous. And, in my case, I&amp;#x27;ve not only used Linux almost daily since before Slackware existed, I&amp;#x27;ve developed my own distro, I maintain copies of nearly 2,000 packages, and many of my copies have patches of my own design.&lt;p&gt;Regarding the &amp;quot;masters of&amp;quot; issue, I may not have made the &amp;quot;generalist&amp;quot; point in the post clear enough. I&amp;#x27;m only a &amp;quot;master of&amp;quot; a few things. But I&amp;#x27;m very good at getting back up to speed on the things that I&amp;#x27;ve had &amp;quot;experience with&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;This is what a generalist does.&lt;p&gt;I agree with the &amp;quot;Take off your reasons&amp;quot; point. I&amp;#x27;m going to keep most of the rest. The difficulties that I&amp;#x27;m facing are partly due to my own foolish mistakes. But they aren&amp;#x27;t about the fact that I&amp;#x27;ve listed hobbies on my resume or that I have a nick that implies age.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not going to pretend to be a twenty-something specialist. It isn&amp;#x27;t what I am. I&amp;#x27;m a highly experienced generalist. In this context, the decades that you feel that I ought to hide are relevant.</text></item><item><author>300bps</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think there is a single thing right with his resume.  Let&amp;#x27;s take the first line of his overview:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Software developer since the 1970s.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;First of all, any development experience from the 70s is at best meaningless and at worst detrimental.  Try teaching a Cobol programmer OOP and you&amp;#x27;ll find that they learn it slower than someone without that procedural coding experience.  Second of all, the first line of your resume should not be to announce what protected class(es) you are in.  Your resume shouldn&amp;#x27;t have &amp;quot;senior citizen&amp;quot; on it anymore than it should have your race, creed, religion or any other irrelevant facts on it.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Linux work started with the first kernel releases and continued through Slackware&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;So what?  I used Slackware extensively in 1996 but the experience is meaningless.  If I had that on my resume now it would tell anyone reading it that I&amp;#x27;m probably resting on my laurels and probably have for decades.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Experience includes: Agile, Assembly, Back-End, BSD, C, CSS, Debian, FOSS, GIMP, HTTP, Java, Linux, Mathematics, Mint, MySQL, Octave (similar to Matlab), Open Source, Parser, Perl, PHP5, Python, Recruiting, Regex, Shell, SQLite3, Support, TCP&amp;#x2F;IP, Ubuntu, UNIX, Tcl&amp;#x2F;Tk, Teaching, Training, Transcoding, VPS, Writing, XML, XSLT&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve seen dozens of resumes that list dozens of technologies like this.  Not even so much as a bold font weight to say the things they are masters of as opposed to &amp;quot;experience with&amp;quot;.  Early in my management career I hired a developer that had TCP&amp;#x2F;IP programming listed as a skill on her resume.  After hiring her, I gave her the IP address of the server to do some TCP&amp;#x2F;IP programming.  She asked, &amp;quot;What is IP address?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;As someone who is in their 40s, my advice to to someone without a job later in life is to drop all the extraneous things and focus on what you&amp;#x27;ve done lately.  Lose the moniker &amp;quot;old coder&amp;quot;.  Lose any technologies older than a decade from your resume.  Lose any references to &amp;quot;35 years of experience with...&amp;quot;.  Take off your hobbies.  Take off your reasons for leaving your past employment.  There are too many other fixes needed to go into.</text></item><item><author>gexla</author><text>So, if I saw a job description like that I would smell BS and never apply. Maybe handing off a resume like that gives the same smell.&lt;p&gt;You don&amp;#x27;t give resumes like this, you tailor your pitch to the company which is hiring.&lt;p&gt;If you are applying to a PHP job, then remove all the fluff and tell the employer that you are a PHP developer. Generalists dont&amp;#x27; get hired, then don&amp;#x27;t be a generalist. Touching up your PHP skills should take a couple of weeks. ;)</text></item><item><author>selmnoo</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t get it. This guy&amp;#x27;s resume says he&amp;#x27;s a double major of math&amp;#x2F;CS from Berkeley with high honors -- and apparently he&amp;#x27;s worked on pretty hardcore engineering projects.&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    I&amp;#x27;ve created a Linux distro of my own. Original and not a fork. 
    See articles on website. Geared towards CLI engineers.
    Patched and built about 1,800 packages myself. Supported 
    and customized standard distros as well.
    Double Bachelors in Math and Computer Science from U.C. Berkeley. 
    High Honors and Honors. Worked with Open Source
    since the 1980s. Led small teams in startup and similar environments.
    Considered to be good at writing and analysis of problems.
    Experience includes: Agile, Assembly, Back-End, BSD, C, CSS, Debian,
    FOSS, GIMP, HTTP, Java, Linux, Mathematics, Mint,
    MySQL, Octave (similar to Matlab), Open Source, Parser, Perl, PHP5,
    Python, Recruiting, Regex, Shell, SQLite3, Support,
    TCP&amp;#x2F;IP, Ubuntu, UNIX, Tcl&amp;#x2F;Tk, Teaching, Training, Transcoding, 
    VPS, Writing, XML, XSLT
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
What is wrong with Silicon Valley today that a person like him can&amp;#x27;t get a reliable job, and therefore is unable to live with medical healthcare, a reasonable place of residence, etc.?&lt;p&gt;edit: on the bright side, now that this post is on HN frontpage, I hope someone seeks this guy out and gives him a job. From what I can grasp, the quality of his code is pretty damn good.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lostcolony</author><text>If I was a recruiter, this would go in the not interested heap.&lt;p&gt;While some companies want generalists, this isn&amp;#x27;t tailored for that either. You indicate projects you&amp;#x27;ve been on, but not what your specific responsibilities were. Describing the project&amp;#x27;s language, DB, and how the project is pipelined is not useful. What did -you- do? What experience do -you- now have that could translate to other projects? &amp;quot;Core was a Perl server that collected binary data from upstream devices, stored data using SQL, and relayed it to clients as XML over HTTP.&amp;quot; tells me about the project, but not what -you- did, not what experiences -you- now have. Even better if you can highlight keywords for me. The whole &amp;#x27;typical projects&amp;#x27; section is kind of a waste; it&amp;#x27;s project names that have no meaning to me, or which may, but tell me nothing about what technology you know. &amp;#x27;Email client programs&amp;#x27;; does that mean you have familiarity with the various email protocols? TCP&amp;#x2F;IP? GUI development? Nothing anywhere else tells me what it is you know.&lt;p&gt;Most companies want to fill a niche. Highlight what niche you can fill (yes, preferably tailored for the company), and make that -obvious- in your resume.&lt;p&gt;In general, take this approach - assume a recruiter, HR person, etc, will spend 3 seconds looking at your resume before deciding whether to bin it, or continue reading it. They are looking to match a certain set of relevant keywords&amp;#x2F;terms. What message do you want to send to someone in three seconds&amp;#x2F;what words&amp;#x2F;terms do you want to be matched against? That should be what I as a reader get from the first sentence, the first item in your experience, and the first item in your skills.&lt;p&gt;The message you&amp;#x27;re currently sending is &amp;quot;Old coder, part of a large team that did...some stuff that isn&amp;#x27;t spelled out clearly, and generalist with a whole lot of bullet points&amp;quot;. Not interested. But tell me &amp;quot;Perl, C, and Linux expert, extensive application development experience, double CS&amp;#x2F;Math major&amp;quot;, and suddenly if I have a Perl or C codebase I&amp;#x27;m interested. Right now I have to do too much reading and thinking to get that information out, and no recruiter will do that.&lt;p&gt;Also, in general, you are correct that there is a bias against age. You&amp;#x27;re making it so the first thing I notice is your age. Make it so the first thing I notice is your experience; make it clear that you fill the niche I have, that you may well be the ideal candidate for my needs, BEFORE I notice your age.</text></comment>