Aging out of tech

[Anonymous]

Someone with a degree in CS primarily should be looking for positions in the 1550 series, not in 2210.

At many places, not all, the 2210 is used only for people without an actual CS or engineering degree - someone such as a HS grad with some set of Microsoft or Cisco certifications and maybe a 2-yr IT degree from NoVA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do 50 year old men also have this problem or is it just women? In my line of work a 50 year old gets more respect than a 20 something!

And what is that? Lawyer, Big 4 Partner, Doctor, Professor?

In tech older knowledge is useless. Imagine me telling kids at work I did Y2K work in 1998 or even better we hired ex college football players to work in tech in early 1980s as the data center equipment was so heavy. They laugh

COBOL begs to disagree.

https://www.devx.com/news/cobol-at-65-still-a-powerhouse-in-the-tech-industry/
(Irony: COBOL was invented by Adm. Grace Hopper)

This. Just because no one learns older tech doesn't mean that there aren't businesses and governments reliant on it.

I can’t wait. I want to use my WordPerfect, and Lotus 123 skills again.

Lotus Notes was my jam!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If it makes you feel better , my 22 year old Cornell CS grad does not have a job yet either

US citizens who looking for CS jobs should apply to NIST in G'burg, the Army Research Lab in Adelphi, the various Naval Surface Warfare Centers (at Carderock, Indian Head, & Dahlgren), NavAir Systems Command at Pax River, NOAA in Silver Spring, and Naval Research Lab in DC.

Many of these have "direct hire" authority, which means they do not have to post all job openings online. Each has lots of CS related technology work. Even if goal is private sector, civil service can be a good place to start.

Step 1: edit resume to say "US Citizen" explicitly. This totally matters.
Step 2: look at USAjobs.gov and apply for any relevant openings in nearby locations
Step 3: check websites of above organizations to read up on openings and how they hire people. Follow any application instructions very carefully.
Step 4: write a nice 1-page cover letter asking about job opportunities and enclose a resume and send it to HR Dept at each of the above organizations.

USA JOBS is so hard to use. My recent grad finds very little CS there. Searching 2210 and Pathways

My agency contracts out all its IT work. Here are a list of the vendors we use:

Large Businesses

Accenture Federal Services LLC (75N98022D00024)
Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc. (BAH) (75N98022D00027)
Customer Value Partners, Inc (CVP) (75N98022D00029)
BCG Federal Corporation (75N98022D00030)
Deloitte Consulting, LLP (75N98022D00031)
Enterprise Resources Performance, Inc. (ERPI) (75N98022D00033)
Guidehouse, Inc (75N98022D00034)
ICF Incorporated, LLC (75N98022D00035)
GovernmentCIO, LLC (75N98022D00037)
NeteSolutions Corporation (NETE) (75N98022D00038)
T and T Consulting Services, Inc. (75N98022D00040)
RIVA Solutions (75N98022D00041)
Publics Sapient (75N98022D00042)
CALIBRE Systems, Inc (75N98023D00004)
KPMG LLP (75N98023D00005)
The Prospective Group (TPG) (75N98023D00010)

Small Businesses

Advanced Decision Vectors, LLC (75N98022D00025)
BLH Technologies (75N98022D00026)
Censeo Consulting Group, Inc. (75N98022D00028)
Arch System, LLC (75N98022D00032)
Jefferson Solutions (75N98022D00036)
Sprezzatura Management Consulting, LLC (75N98022D00039)
Corner Alliance, Inc. (75N98022D00043)
NeevSys Inc (75N98023D00006)
Sonora & Associates, LLC (75N98023D00007)
Inno-Native, LLC (Joint Venture) (75N98023D00008)
CIDVER Corporation (75N98023D00009)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do 50 year old men also have this problem or is it just women? In my line of work a 50 year old gets more respect than a 20 something!

And what is that? Lawyer, Big 4 Partner, Doctor, Professor?

In tech older knowledge is useless. Imagine me telling kids at work I did Y2K work in 1998 or even better we hired ex college football players to work in tech in early 1980s as the data center equipment was so heavy. They laugh

I'm in tech and 50 year olds, both men and women, get much more respect than 20 year olds.
Experience and corporate knowledge is not "useless", it is extremely valuable.
As with any job, learning new skills and evolving is key.

[Anonymous]

I am sure one of my friend works for a grocery store maintaining their systems. You can also do tech at a bank or private credit (we have trouble hiring tech talent). Older women who are humble, easy to talk to, truly care about the business requirements over their balls are gold!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Someone with a degree in CS primarily should be looking for positions in the 1550 series, not in 2210.

At many places, not all, the 2210 is used only for people without an actual CS or engineering degree - someone such as a HS grad with some set of Microsoft or Cisco certifications and maybe a 2-yr IT degree from NoVA.

Not true in my office,,they are mostly 14 and 15s with degrees.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I don’t make a FAANG salary, but my stable 120-160K salary while living in a low cost area allowed me to pay for private school, live in a nice house and do occasional expensive vacations.

I also work remotely and have a very comfortable life. So I’m very content.

NP. If you are a decent writer (and you seem to be) and have an undergraduate STEM degree, you can study for and take the patent bar, and work for a law firm as a patent agent. There is a lot of demand for technically astute patent agents. There are also law firms that hire technical specialists. Many firms have offices in low cost areas because they can recruit people like you there.

Work-life balance may not be good initially while you are ramping up. But you can carry it until your 70s if you want, if you are good at it. And it can be fun work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do 50 year old men also have this problem or is it just women? In my line of work a 50 year old gets more respect than a 20 something!

And what is that? Lawyer, Big 4 Partner, Doctor, Professor?

In tech older knowledge is useless. Imagine me telling kids at work I did Y2K work in 1998 or even better we hired ex college football players to work in tech in early 1980s as the data center equipment was so heavy. They laugh

I'm in tech and 50 year olds, both men and women, get much more respect than 20 year olds.
Experience and corporate knowledge is not "useless", it is extremely valuable.
As with any job, learning new skills and evolving is key.

I’m guessing you are in a leadership role not IC, right, and an established tech company (big tech?)

[Anonymous]

I’m 56 and work in government contracting. I’m constantly learning new technologies (current project is Angular and Java on OpenShift/AWS, none of which I knew 5 years ago).

I was hired as an IC developer at 54 after being laid off from my previous long tenured job, became a team lead within a couple of months, an architect within a year, and I’m now a lead architect/manager. I haven’t experienced ageism, but it’s crucial to spend a huge amount of time learning new tech on your own time. When I started interviewing, I earned Agile, Azure and AWS certs, did a ton of LeetCode problems to pass dumb tech interview tests, and immersed myself in Go4 and other theoretical reading.

Government contractors are always hiring and have huge problems finding developers with any skill at all. I interview developers every week, and I’m appalled at the clowns we get from recruiters - people who claim to be Java experts who don’t know what an abstract class is, people who claim to be SQL DBAs who have never heard of normalization, people in tech in 2024 who don’t know anything about any public cloud platform or anything about containers.

If you put in the effort to learn, you can definitely get hired.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Good luck! I left tech at 46 out of fear for what is ahead (but not in dev). Hope others have more specific advice but meanwhile - and unfortunately - I would make sure to keep hair colored and stay current-ish on trends etc to ensure you are still a “cultural fit”

where did you go?

I switched to an industry on a consumer side that was also suited to my skillset and subject matter background.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Someone with a degree in CS primarily should be looking for positions in the 1550 series, not in 2210.

At many places, not all, the 2210 is used only for people without an actual CS or engineering degree - someone such as a HS grad with some set of Microsoft or Cisco certifications and maybe a 2-yr IT degree from NoVA.

Not true at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m 56 and work in government contracting. I’m constantly learning new technologies (current project is Angular and Java on OpenShift/AWS, none of which I knew 5 years ago).

I was hired as an IC developer at 54 after being laid off from my previous long tenured job, became a team lead within a couple of months, an architect within a year, and I’m now a lead architect/manager. I haven’t experienced ageism, but it’s crucial to spend a huge amount of time learning new tech on your own time. When I started interviewing, I earned Agile, Azure and AWS certs, did a ton of LeetCode problems to pass dumb tech interview tests, and immersed myself in Go4 and other theoretical reading.

Government contractors are always hiring and have huge problems finding developers with any skill at all. I interview developers every week, and I’m appalled at the clowns we get from recruiters - people who claim to be Java experts who don’t know what an abstract class is, people who claim to be SQL DBAs who have never heard of normalization, people in tech in 2024 who don’t know anything about any public cloud platform or anything about containers.

If you put in the effort to learn, you can definitely get hired.

Government contracting doesn’t have ageism because when you bid on a contract part of the specifications that they’re measured against is experience of the staff, i.e. staff with more years of experience are valued more

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Good luck! I left tech at 46 out of fear for what is ahead (but not in dev). Hope others have more specific advice but meanwhile - and unfortunately - I would make sure to keep hair colored and stay current-ish on trends etc to ensure you are still a “cultural fit”

where did you go?

I switched to an industry on a consumer side that was also suited to my skillset and subject matter background.

If PP was not a developer, then being in tech wasn’t really a requirement anyways, they were just trying to milk the money while they could. They were just some other business function in every other industry, so much easier to pivot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do 50 year old men also have this problem or is it just women? In my line of work a 50 year old gets more respect than a 20 something!

And what is that? Lawyer, Big 4 Partner, Doctor, Professor?

In tech older knowledge is useless. Imagine me telling kids at work I did Y2K work in 1998 or even better we hired ex college football players to work in tech in early 1980s as the data center equipment was so heavy. They laugh

Perhaps if you're not updating your knowledge over time and want to keep making the same old widgets. But a surprising amount of old tech is incredibly useful to know. IMO being a great tech generalist requires many more years of learning, and even if you're not working infrastructure, a lot of old Linux/unix stuff is still applicable today.

Or the accumulation of abstractions and how that shapes your problem solving over time. I'm in my 50's, and probably not as hip to the latest in...JavaScript package bundlers. But I can problem solve complex problems much faster than my younger coworkers.

[Anonymous]

Drop the first ten years of work from your resume.