I agree wholeheartedly with that approach. You're more likely to be successful if you tailor your story and experience to each opportunity, particularly if you have 20+ years of experience.

Specifically, OP mention about applying to a "Senior engineer" and "VP of engineering". Depending on the size of the company, these are very different roles. A killer profile for one could be terrible fit for the other, and vice-versa.

This is before you customize your submission for each job.

While a "35 year career in Silicon Valley" might sound impressive to some people (and perhaps rightly so), as a hiring manager I probably don't care about any projects/technologies you worked on in 1983... I want to know whether you can do the project I need delivered now. Tell me what you worked on last year and in the last 5 years - skim over or leave out the rest.

(If you're dealing through recruiters instead of directly with hiring managers, you've got a different set of problems - the solution to which is probably ignore the recruiters and don't play that game - surely a 35 year career has left you with a network that can bypass those rent-seeking gatekeepers?)

I’ve noticed some anxious double-takes in interviews after passing hiring filters with my shorter resume.

I’ve met people who have changed careers and decided to leave off their prior career work. Resumes are used in the background check for some companies but no one looks beyond 7 years. And if they really have a problem, do you really want to work for them?

The recruiters I've dealt with usually want to slap on a bunch of crap like "Web scala Java OOP web-scale MEAN STACK" onto the resume before they submit it, but the solution to that is to do it all in LaTeX so that they don't know how to work with it :)

I found this to be true a lot of the time. Great idea to tailor your resume to the type of position you're applying for.

Several companies I’ve worked for have had a checkbox on the HR paperwork for interviews, have all gaps in the candidates CV been explained Y/N?

Edit: also want to point out that if you only have worked in greenfield projects where you could grow with the particular tools and practices of that project, you don't know anything about writing maintainable code

Many people have a hard time accepting working for someone a generation younger than them, and especially hiring a subordinate a generation older than them. The people reviewing your resume and interviewing you won't say it (they're not allowed to by law) but they'll definitely be thinking it, and it ends up being a huge waste of your time.

I genuinely think it's a locale thing. I've found work outside the area to be as high-paying and fulfilling, but without the casting couch feel to the interviewing process. In particular, look to large, legacy established companies trying to stay relevant. Many of them recognize the value of experience and pay accordingly.

I'm in Chicago at an agency, and our company is more or less just like this. Moreover, the average age on the team I direct is ~43--not by intention or design; it just happened over the course of inheriting the team and hiring since then. We have safe, risk-mitigated times for deployments, solid production systems, and unless something unexpectedly tanked or you're on flex time, we're all out at 5:00pm.

They're out there, but they're not always easy to find.

I think I've put in maybe two 40+ hour weeks in the past 5 years. I manage several devs and I hate dashing the younger (or ambitious) ones' dreams of resume driven development. My team handles a legacy system that neither crashes frequently nor needs extensive refactoring. "Sorry, cutting up and containerizing the system and using Kubernetes to deploy isn't worth the headache."

I know I'll keep getting promoted (and so will my reports) if I make sure my manager doesn't get calls from his manager asking why there are service outages.

Things move very slowly on purpose. It's better to miss delivery dates than to get bad press or run afoul of laws (which begets bad press).

I'm curious because I work at a big company but not in a maintenance or operational role so I'm not sure what an "ideal" resume or career track looks like for such people.

We're also hiring pretty aggressively right now (grove.co/careers), for what it's worth.

Our home room would regularly scold us gently for working late / weekends. The problem was, the home room wasn't really in charge.

However, on a day-to-day basis I was reporting to a project lead (IT Director for an OpCo) for all practical purposes for the duration of the project I was on. "Bad cop".

In theory, this structure is good for the employee if your homeroom is willing to call BS on the guy running the project. You end up with 2-3 managers evaluating you (depending on scale/# of projects) rather than 1 which can help even things out to "fair".

However, if you are in my situation (direct report to CTO) vs. (home room, who is far down on the ladder relatively speaking)...the home room manager ends up protecting himself/career and doesn't push back. So you end up (for all practical purposes) being a direct report to the project lead until the project is done.

On the whole, its a better management structure than most places and as long as you don't end up on a bad project it greatly reduces problems.

If you end up on a bad project with a bad manager well...it really depends if your home room will defend you or not. 50/50 shot at protection is better than the 0% you get at most places.

I'd argue you are giving them too much credit: they aren't thinking it, they are feeling it. All they are aware of is that you seem like a bad 'culture fit'.

I'd also argue it's not a locale thing. It's that companies 'struggling to stay relevant' are hungrier.

https://newrepublic.com/article/117088/silicons-valleys-brut...

The former is just following a script and wants your information in a specific format because that's what the automation demands.

The latter is a person who you will either work with or under, they don't care.

The latter is the preferable path in my opinion, and personally use the "send me your resume in a specific format" request as a reason to cease contact because of all it implies.

Makes no sense to maintain manually written resume when you are already maintaining your employment and experience history on LinkedIn.

All the relevant data is in their database, just click the export to pdf button, if somebody insists on PDF, and attach that to the email.

If I had been in industry for >10 years and was still looking for junior roles I sure as heck wouldn't be trying to hire me!

What modern technologies have you recently worked with? What does your resume show, 20 years at the same company, or do you have experience at well-known, "prestigous" companies like FANG? Are you pigeon-holed into a specific area, or are you a generic, back-end or front-end expert that has worked in relevant and useful technologies for 2018?

Also, with 35 years of experience in Silicon Valley, don't you have a network of former coworkers that you can contact for references or jobs?

I'm 50 years old, and I've had no problems getting jobs and recruiters from FANG won't stop contacting me even now. Sure, things might change over the next few years, but I also have a rolodex (old man's terminology) of former coworkers that I routinely have lunch with still and can ask for jobs, etc. I'm sure things will change, but I'm also doing my best to ensure that I can retire in the next 10 years as well.

Anyone hiring people for specific things they learned in University is doing absolutely the wrong thing.

Many high end schools don't even have very rigorous applied computing standards, meaning, they might have some hardcore CS stuff, but they don't necessarily encourage good programming habits, patterns, culture etc..

So the education I think always counts for a lot, it's the work experience from 30 years ago that actually may be less relevant.

One opportunity might be to find something 'related' - for example, writing documentation, doing sales support, technical product management - basically anything but front-line engineering. There are a lot of such jobs.

Do you reach out for weekend lunch dates just to chat? Are people open to that (given work, hobbies, kids, etc.)? I'm having a hard time coming with "excuses" and serendipity to stay in touch with people I'm no longer working with.

This is not necessarily about ex-coworkers.

In general, weekend time is more guarded and precious so try to meet for a coffee/drink after work. Or you can both go to an event that is related to mutual interest (tech is possible but would not recommend it). Trying to meet more than one person at the same time also leads to scheduling difficulties.

If you want to meet up with more than one person, consider hosting a Tuesday night dinner party. Nothing fancy, do take out if you can't cook that well. Tuesday night is usually an "off" night for most people.

Ideally, you meet with people you would like to stay in touch about every 3 months. A person is not really in your direct network unless they know who you are and can recognize you in person and know what you are currently working on and have seen you in about the last 3 months. But here's the catch, you don't necessarily have to be directly in contact with everyone. A simple "How is Jane doing? Have you heard from her" can keep you updated enough.

There are some people from work that you might think you'll remain friends with after leaving with whom you do not meetup with again. That is ok. People drift off. Maybe it was just the recurring coincidence of time, location, and possibly purpose (going to the office for years) that made you "friends".

Like the saying goes:

Friends for a lifetime

Friends for a reason

Friends for a season.

The most naturally extroverted individuals that I know have many social circles. One friend I know always buys two tickets to a performance and never lets the other person pay for it.

Finally true friends whom are hard to find are those who you can open up and be vulnerable with.

Facebook has bastardized the term friend. Not everyone is going to be your friend, as it requires reciprocity and shared caring.

Literally, that's what I will send to one of my ex-coworkers, or vice versa. It's not anything more than that. Either through gChat or Facebook Messenger, I don't find it that hard, and I don't feel like I need excuses.

I recently went to a going-away/layoff party for one of the first engineers I worked under in Silicon Valley, 20+ years ago. I hadn't personally talked to him in 10+ years, but he was delighted to see me. We shared war stories about our old company, dot com bust, etc. It was great, and doesn't have to be anything more than that.

That and we're always bouncing news, advice, and helping one another in said Slack instance. Safety in numbers.

Edit: the other thing I do is pass along interesting looking recruiting emails to people who I know are more on the market than I am. I figure they'll do the same for me next time I'm ready to move on.

Yeah this is an important thing everyone should be doing. I used to be shy about this but everyone is in the same boat and most do appreciate a quick drink or meal every few years to network, even if you're not friends.

Two of those degrees (MS and PhD) are graduate degrees, not undergrad.

In the specific case of AI, the field has changed massively over the last 10-15 years, so the field-specific knowledge conveyed by degrees further back than that may indeed have depreciated quite a bit.

However, field specific knowledge is not necessarily what makes graduate degrees valuable. It's knowing that you're getting a candidate who knows how to branch out into unknown territory, who knows how to research the relevant literature, who didn't quit when the going got tough, and who can express themselves in comprehensible prose. These qualities don't become irrelevant, even if Isaac Newton was your PhD advisor.

Not saying it should be that way but I bet some people will think a >60 year old may just look to hang around/coast for a few years waiting for retirement.

I recently helped a friend through a job search, and was shocked by how much the process has changed in the past 3-4 years. Recruiters are inundated with thousands of resumes. So traditional job application practices ("Write a cover letter and email in the resume") or semi-recent practices ("Cast a wide net on Monster, Indeed, LinkedIn...) perhaps no longer have the rate of return that you're expecting.

I read through the book, "What Color is your Parachute: 2018 Edition" to better help my friend, and the book offers full sections on how to do better than just "putting your resume out there." Working personal connections, announcing employment intentions during coding meetups, writing specific emails to companies you respect (independent from whether they're currently hiring for your position) or getting even more creative with getting your info out there... all of the above are practices that might not have been necessary during your last search (they certainly weren't during mine).

Maybe I'm underestimating the massive extent of blatant ageism in the software industry, but I'm quite surprised that someone with your skill set can't yell from a crowded street corner and have six recruiters materialize. That leads me to think it's not a matter of what you're offering, but rather how you're selling.

I read this post of yours on job searching of those over 60 and found it quite interesting and helpful when it comes to finding creative ways to establish connections to possibly stand out in a job search.

Now I'm nowhere near 60 and around half that age but trying to take a cue from your post I see that you work for Atlantic Media. Don't know if that still holds up but I saw job their job board recently that there's an opening available at Atlantic Media for a Backend Python Web developer.

I'm a guy who enjoy using and working with Python as far as learning purposes go. And after quickly reading your post here I figured to reach out and try a somewhat different approach than the old cover letter and resume email method and contact you if you may have any info to this current opening at your company?

So with that said, here I am..and I wanted to inquire to find out if this opening is still available? If so, do you have a contact to learn more about this position and the things you require in regards to the nature of the job? My apologies in advance that this may not be the response to your post that you were looking for but I figured why not take some ideas from your post and apply it..hehe..

Any help in this matter will be greatly appreciated. Thanks

--K

Thanks

I don't bat an eye when I interview someone older than me. I expect that I'll probably learn a thing or two.

Message me. If you've got that kind of experience, I can get you an interview.

Also, if you're open to contract gig or right to hire, that might be a good way.

Anymore people like hiring young inexperienced devs they can abuse and pay poorly. And then they wonder why we have to take months and months to pay off technical debt...

Hiring managers and inexperienced management think anybody can learn to code so they just hire who they think is cool. It's a bad trend. So tired of working with people who are fresh out of code bootcamp and are basically useless.

I've posted about this before so I'll repeat myself:

> More than anything have learned that education and training are hugely important and hiring to train leads to mediocre staff who think their two years of development work stack up to your 4 years of college and 6 years of professional experience.

> They take forever to start writing productive code, if they ever bother leaning at all.

> I will never hire someone without a degree or equivalent experience again. Even for Jr. roles

https://www.reuters.com/article/employment-ibm/ibm-laid-off-...

I've gone through the interview process at Google twice and was "close but rejected".

If you are personally having difficulties interacting with people <30 years old a good first step would be not to patronize them.

Ph.D. in AI will probably scare off anyone who has a typical business app development or integration job. It's just hard to imagine someone with this level of education grinding out bugs in garbage legacy code, or calling vendors to ask why their SOAP web service doesn't work according to documentation.

Now, whether you would even care for such a job is another question. Some of them are quite challenging and require excellent system thinking skills, but there is zero glory in delivering the final product.

I'm not familiar with the specific of Bay Area job market, though.

The challenge now may be how to present your skills in ways that convinces others that they're up-to-date or relevant. I can definitely see why many employers might be wary of a PhD with a 35 year old history working in R&D who might have drifted away from the cutting edge (i.e. published research).

Obviously if you can emphasize relevant domain expertise (a major advantage of being experienced), you may be able to turn your liability into an asset. I know military and intel contractors value domain experience much more than do startups. Sell yourself as a principal scientist with "the right stuff". Large corporations buy into that.

Yes, the OP happens to be 60. But there is no reason to speculate ageism based on just that. May be he / she has a 4-page resume. May be he is applying to series A start-ups. May be OP has switched a few jobs in quick succession recently. Too many unknowns to provide any answer.

My apologies if this is stating the obvious, but if your applications are starting with just a resume, you're already at a disadvantage at any age. And I suppose that effect only increases with years of experience and seniority of positions applied to.

Finding good candidates is expensive and time-consuming. If someone is serving up qualified leads to you on a silver platter, you take them.

Referrals from existing employees are the single highest quality source of candidates for most companies. Many companies even incentivize employees to refer candidates by giving them bonuses if they refer someone who ends up being hired.

Cold interviews should probably only happen for your first job.

My summary: 35 years in Silicon Valley; 3 STEM undergrad degrees, MS in AI from Stanford, PhD in AI from a top-10 program; ICPC champion; always considered to be an elite programmer; very current knowledge; constant employment; wide variety of skills; management experience with small teams; very stable life; no vices; very healthy and energetic; I get along with everyone and like working in teams.

I did a handful of interviews at places where folks who I went to school with also interviewed.

I got a lot of "culture" questions. My younger classmates, did not hear the world "culture" in their interviews, ever.

It's hard not to be pessimistic and assume "culture" was about age...

edit: I didn't mean to sound like I was trivializing your experience. The "culture fit" is really nasty and sucks for everyone who isn't "the norm".

Perhaps focus on rapport at the start of your interviews?

I don't think that is the issue. I was looking for an entry level position at the time, it's a CROWED field, and the handful of places where I and another much younger classmate both interviewed where I could compare included at least one, often more phone interviews. If I wasn't getting along well with them I don't expect they would have brought me in. Most of the phone calls and interpersonal in person interviews went great IMO.

To be clear I have no idea what their idea of "culture fit" actually was.

I've since started asking, nobody has been able to answer without first looking confused and humming and hawing a while. Most of the answers were usually surprisingly generic and such about "openness", "fun" and such, I suspect a few were made up on the spot. Amusing ;)

Welcome to the "culture" wars.

If you had been hired in those companies, you wouldn't have lasted long. Unless you have a supernatural talent on filtering out bullshit.

I have two experiences in the last year that were a bit strange. One was a guy that kind of already hired me and casually asked my age to never reply again after I disclosed it. OK. The other one was a company that had two early twenties co-founders I worked for remotely for more than half a year and were genuinely surprised about my age when I stepped in their offices for the first time. Still working for them though.

In Europe a lot of companies (I think it happened with a German and a Swiss company) straight ask for your age, which somewhat shocked me when seeing it for the first time after mostly dealing with US companies.

On the other hand some US companies asked me if my "race"* is "Latino" whatever the hell that means. Sometimes I feel like it I guess? Depends on the music? Me and most of the other people I see in my country look pretty caucasian to me though. Must even be more confusing to black people from Latin-American countries. Do I get a double race bonus or should I pick the one that gives me most benefits? If so which one?

* they asked it in a very PC way and made it an optional field

You can thank the federal government for that question.

That was the term!

The age thing may be an issue of course. If it's abundantly obvious from your resume that you are 60 or older, a reader may make assumptions about you that aren't true. Once a client reaches 40 I typically start to at least address the possibility of ageism and options to mitigate the risk if they are interested.

There are even some simple things such as resume formatting that could be at play. For examples, resumes with tables and images can be more difficult for ATS systems to parse.

Dozens of possibilities. I'm happy to take a look if you'd like.

What's your experience with placing them?

Some of the issues I have seen that can be construed as ageism I will list.

* Candidates lack of awareness. They have a 2-5 page resume. I see the resume and I wonder how unaware they are. Yes, resumes do not matter but when I get 3 pages filled with large paragraphs I worry the candidate lacks awareness. So far its been a good indicator. * Candidates who belittle me during the interview process. * Candidates who have not kept up with technology. No I don't expect you to know the latest framework but understanding patterns that have emerged in the past 5 years seem relevant. I dislike the latest and greatest technology but its important to understand the general trends. * Candidates that generally who have had zero prep for the interview process expecting the resume/experience to tell all. Yes, algorithms are not the best determining factor but it's at least a minor indicator. When we work through a problem does the other person just give up?

Let me state again that I believe it exists but I sometimes have a hard time separating true ageism and just a clear distinction between people who have stayed relevant and not relevant.

For example I interviewed someone in their early 20s a little while ago who knew Angular 1 inside-out and to the absolute finest detail, but that is obsolete now that we're on Angular 6/React etc - they had never used modern Angular, Typescript or React... just good old Angular1 + JS. Did they stay relevant? nope. Are they old? nope. The benefit of the doubt for the early-20s person could be to just assume they don't know Angular6+TS because they were working on legacy code and didn't get the chance, but should I treat the early-20s person any different from a 60s person all other things being equal? nope. I am sure they could both pick up the new skills just as easily.

I know a lot of retired people socially (parents/friends of friends, neighbors etc - alas not that many from work) who are still 100% as sharp as a tack - quick-witted, intelligent, energetic etc. It would be unfair to use their age as a filter based on assumptions of how they would perform in an interview based on how other entirely different individuals have behaved in previous interviews.

"Oh, .Net 3.5 you say? We do 4.0 here. We call you back."

Coding has barely changed since the 60s. The screens are bigger.

It's the programs that have evolved not the programmers really.

The early 20s person who went deep with angular 1 may not have "kept relevant", but that is no reason to outright reject them (or someone 30-40 years their senior) on its own. I am sure they (and "old" people) would easily be able to get up to speed.

As you said, programming has largely remained unchanged at a fundamental level.

On another note I believe one fundamental reason some employers prefer younger employees is that they are easier to push around.

Then what is the relevance of your harping on thier proficiency with slightly older same Ole crap tech?

Not keeping relevant is not a problem related to age was the point I was trying to make, but actually applies to all ages equally.

    They have a 2-5 page resume.

A couple of things stand out;

1) Your resume has the potential of being very intimidating to someone, sometimes less is more. Trim it to just what they hiring manager cares about.

2) You said "Everything from senior engineer to VP of engineering" have you applied to "just engineering" roles?

I ask because both senior engineering and VP roles typically have a very high level of "hiring risk" associated with them. Specifically, if you are interviewing at places outside the network of people who know your work, whether or not your idea of how to fill a senior role is the same as the company where you are interviewing its a very real question. It can cause a tremendous amount of churn in an organization to hire someone in at a senior level who ends up not getting along with the rest of the team or company.

As a result you may find it easier to work initially at a lower level and then negotiate a raise/promotion rather than jumping in high. Everyone's situation is always a bit different.

If you're still on the market, we're hiring, and not ageist. I'm the CTO, 34.

Unless there's something broken, a system down, or a critical issue that needs to be fixed yesterday, I got news for you: I ain't staying late either.

I'm 32 with a dog and a highly opinionated cat. Hire me, or don't. Plenty of other companies out there that respect work life balance and don't insist on the awful notion of "well you don't have anyone waiting on you to get home anyway, why do you care?" (of course I'm deliberately phrasing that awfully, but let's be honest with ourselves here).

I have put in long hours in the following circumstances:

* I really, really loved what I was doing, and I just wanted to do more of it

* There was an emergency and I was needed to resolve it. I'm happy to do this if my org has a culture of post-mortems, root causing, and following through on fixes.

* Annual review/perf season. I'm a manager of engineers (as well as an engineer). The one thing I'm willing to bend my boundaries on is making sure my people are well represented at perf time. Ideally I'd get this done in work hours, but I can't always, but I can't let someone lose recognition for their work because I couldn't find the time to write them up positively for it.

This times 1000. The concept that any company "deserves" more than 8 hours of 5 days (or more) is (in my opinion) disgusting.

It seems to me that ethnocentricity is rampant in the bay as a sub cultural norm. For example the Bay Area is big on tolerance, but if you choose to voice political concerns that challenges the area’s popularity you will be silently shunned and ignored which counter-intuitively is intolerance. As a solid example review the firing of Brendan Eich from Mozilla. This kind of self-satisfying inward-facing deceptiveness allows any manner of isolating justification, such as ageism. In other areas wisdom and experience are rewarded commodities.

The Bay Area is also stupid expensive. You will make less money elsewhere but be instantly more wealthy. I would need to multiply my salary x3 to live the same in the Bay Area with a House half the size.

It's big on virtue signaling specific kinds of tolerance towards certain groups, but that's about where it ends. Apparently people past middle age aren't one of those groups.

Sorry if that sounds harsh, but those are my observations as a 3rd party - I have no skin in the game.

If Zuck had said whites or Asians or men “are just smarter” he would have been flayed alive, but he was (is?) brazenly ageist and not a murmur. That’s Silly Valley in a nutshell.

When I interview you I don’t really care about the hundreds of things you can do or have done, I only care about the one thing I’m interviewing you for. The oldest person in my team is close to 60 years old and works as a developer next to 20-30 something year olds (doesn’t do any management or VP-ing or whatever on the side). You need to be OK with that and the fact that your boss may be 20-30 years younger than you.

All I remember from his interview is that he had more than 10 years of specific development experience for the job he was applying for. That’s impressive and not something that a younger developer can easily beat you too.

One of the problems with rich companies is that they can afford to have nonsense hiring policies. There's no real pressure to do right by candidates, so why bother?

I ultimately stumbled across a solution of sorts, which was to find a money-poor, non-SV organization with serious tech problems to solve. They're f___ing lucky to have me, they know it, and I'm treated accordingly. Very gratifying.

1. A resume isn't a CV. It's more like a sales brochure to sell yourself. Have resumes tailored for different things that show how having you will help them.

2. Age discrimination is a problem. Even though it's illegal and not useful. But, companies would rather spend on lawyers to work around their illegal antics and are not focused on useful (see the open office craze). If they hack around being useful or legal it's ok to hack around their processes.

3. Try looking for something outside of the valley or the companies that want to be like that. There are tech jobs all over and remote gigs for some of them. Look for sane companies where they are at.

My thinking is, if there is no indication of your age ("35 years of experience", graduation dates in the 70s/80s etc), then there is less scope for unconscious bias (or just overt ageism) to creep in since there are less clues. Same with adding potentially "irrelevant" experience from older jobs - less clues for people to jump to assumptions about (both tech/industry, as well as just the age thing again)

Once you've got your resume through the bias-blockers you can then wow them with your energy and enthusiasm when you get a chance to talk to them on the phone, then wow them again when you bounce into their office and blow them away with the interview. If you do really well in the interviews, you've given them some really solid evidence of your awesomeness that they've seen with their own eyes that will be hard to ignore, even if they think (consciously or otherwise) that you are old.

Resumes are so easy to pass on when you've got a stack of them to work through (so impersonal and instantly forgettable), but interviews are "real" events with real memories and real personal interactions that - I find - helps override assumptions and unconscious biases.

Good luck!

Doesn't that strike you as a little weird tho'? I mean experience is one of those things that the more, the better right? If you could choose a surgeon or a lawyer with more or less experience, which would you prefer?

The view isn’t entirely just financial. People at your level challenge things and in particular challenge leaders. That’s because you should be a leader at this point, either by title or by influence. Someone like you can come in and disrupt the power dynamic, particularly if the leadership is weak (often true), and the leadership wants nothing more than to preserve itself and make its life easy.

Another piece is the more senior you are, the more the soft skills come into it and how well you’ll fit into the team. I’m not talking about skinny jeans here but rather whether your values align.

If you are trying to get VP of Engineering jobs, I’d say that few would believe that you’ll be satisfied just coming in and grinding out walls code to a spec that someone else wrote.

I'm often challenging my leaders because I believe they work for me, e.g. their job is to make my life easy. I usually get away with it simply because I've been here long enough to know how projects usually unfold.

As our workforce gets younger and younger (we don't generally hire graybeards either) I start wondering how I fit in - I don't want to ever become a manager so I guess I have to fake it with the skinny jeans!

Tech companies all have lucrative referral systems so you really can network your way in through a person on the team.

This is the way to get a good job in SFBA. There is a good chance you are not even passing a recruiting screen.

Why are you job hopping, if you don't mind me asking?

If a company is hiring for a senior position, then _from an HR perspective_ they want the employee to ideally stay for 2-4 years. You're at the age where not only you could retire soon, if the job gets hard then it's a permanent option on the table that an employer will need to continue to compete against and eventually will lose.

Going for high-pay contracting positions will probably be hugely effective. People will understand where you're coming from, and you might get to work on more interesting things because your resume impressively speaks for itself.

Can you be more specific about what you mean by "engineering services firm"?

"We won't hire you because you're old, but don't you dare go to those guys who will, because we hate them." lol

http://www.serranosystems.com/

https://fairwaytech.com/

http://www.a2etechnologies.com/

http://www.jetheaddev.com/

Should I focus on having some/one/few "unique selling propositions" - something I can say I'm expert in? And what would those be?

Anyway back to trying to give you (and other younger folks) some answers.

I've been interviewing candidates for a while. From technical phone interviews, over F2F, and now mostly so called Fit interviews.

And first time I interviewed someone with CS PhD that they have since around the time I was born - I was happy to be paired with another older colleague.

Not that I was scared/intimidated or felt inadequate. I was really worried about candidate getting impression we're a bunch of "teenagers" ;)

So actually on that point I've got nothing for anonOver60 - other than saying to others that instead of being intimidated, you should just be yourself and there is nothing to worry about.

If the candidate is good - being more experienced they'll know how to handle situation in a way that won't make you feel like 2nd class compared to them.

I second the idea of different/customized CV for different roles/positions. In fact each place/position you apply for should be it's own tuned/customized veraion of generic CV..

I'm an engineer myself, not a recruiter, but if you want to post an email, I'll take your resume and share it with the right people.

I think that flags you as vastly overqualified for most jobs you're applying for.

That said, drop me a line (email in my bio) with your resume, happy to forward I know a few places that might be interested!

You list all your accomplishments (35 years, 3 degrees, etc)... what do you say on your resume or your cover letter that indicates you are also hungry to learn? to explore? to be humble? to be part of a team?

And I wonder at 35 years, why are you not leading a team and mentoring others? Why are you still on the lower tiers?

Lastly, there are many job situations, which let's just say, the employer / managers are not even ambitious. They just want somebody in the chair. They have a budget to maintain, or they are in transition. or they have billable hours to meet. They just need a warm body. Forgive me, but at a minimum, I find it hard to accept that someone who is really job hunting hasn't at least found one of these.

Also, what are you requesting for salary? Do you do the coding challenges? Do you call them back promptly? When you are on a phone interview do you talk over them, or listen and answer succinctly? There are many, many factors beyond the mere resume to consider as well.

You may be getting circular filed because you're direct applying. Try reaching out to someone you know at the company or talk to a recruiter and your response rate will go up quite a bit.

Also, I don't have hard numbers or anything but I've worked or meet people in Google and YouTube that are north of 50. There's even a nickname for them [3] ... I guess depending on your personality you can take the nickname the good or the bad way. I wanna think, good :-)

1: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carl-sassenrath-02699b84/

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sassenrath

3: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Greygler#English

I'd say focus as much as you can with your resume on highlighting those current library/framework/patterns that you're passionate about. Those are often times the things that recruiters will look for as well (in addition to the basics).

Funny, that is the same impression I get from younger coders' work who haven't been around much, only know one narrow stack, and start from the boilerplate that you can get from various CLIs.

Maybe age has nothing to do with it and there is simply a variety in skill level no matter how long you have been doing this?

I'm a hiring manager and all too often I get resumes from people that think listing more is better. 5, 6, 7 page resumes are exhausting to read. Write for your audience. Know the company you're applying to. Know the role you're applying for. Write addressing those points. Take it from the perspective of the reader. I have 20 resumes on my desk, I need yours to stand out.

As for the ageism, take out dates. Don't need to know what year you got your degree. Don't need to know past 10 years.

That should get you on the same level as everyone else for the phone interview. After that, it's a different story.

Maybe the education section reveals your age and pre-biases hiring managers. Put it nearer to the end so they see most recent work first.

Do you have many short stints or other classic red flags?

Also not a hiring manager.

Start with a one-pager with a medium-size font and plenty of whitespace. Expand to two pages if you are still getting no hits.

Or demand too much pay.

As you get older, it gets harder to get jobs - not impossible, just harder. It takes longer.

Why does it take longer? We're outside the knowledge of most hiring managers. They're thinking of "junior" as 0-2 years experience, and "senior" as 5-7. Where does 35 years fit on their spectrum? They don't even have a category for it. (You may be looking for jobs with the title "Principal software engineer" rather than "senior software engineer"). Those jobs are ones where your experience gets recognized as worth more money.

But most jobs see you as just an older, more expensive senior engineer. And if they can get a senior engineer for half your money, why would they want you? (Yes, I know. You're worth more. You can deliver actual results faster than those people. You can avoid mistakes those people will make. I know that. Your average hiring manager who's looking for a senior software engineer doesn't know that.)

For the record, I'm 56.

He was brilliant: He knew a lot, did a lot, and still wanted to learn. He kept his skills up-to-date trying out a new technology every year for personal projects. Having contracted for years he'd been in lots of companies and that also gave a lot of variety of skills and experience.

Edit: He worked 4 months for us, and we'd have kept him longer but he had plans to travel around Europe in his caravan for the summer.

How does your Linkedin profile look, in terms of libraries? Many recruiters / managers look at libs / tech FIRST, which is kinda backwards. Do you have the latest tensorflow or [insert cool new thing] on the resume?

If your resume is really what you posted - any outside recruiter can help you getting interviews. They may give you lackluster opportunities at first, but that's part of the process (think of it like dating, but for jobs).

Stay strong.

If you email me (email is on my profile) I can provide you referrals (including to my current employer) and information about resume-blind services that I’ve used in the past which might be helpful.

I also agree that applying for dev roles when you have manager experience is really going to raise questions. I was only a manager for one brief stint and I still had to reassure every single interviewer that "yes, I was interested in a purely technical role".

Age: very late 30s

Some techniques that are helpful for this:

- only list the last 10 years of work experience (add a comment about making available prior work experience on request if you like)

- pull any other skills or experience into a specific skills/experience section

- don't list the dates for your degrees/graduations

If you survive the resume cull then you're much more likely to survive in person interviews unless the place is horribly ageist.

Edit - I get it the issue will come up at some stage. But explaining why you changed the dates later in the process is better than not getting an interview.

Also, a lot of what people call "ageism" should more rightfully be called "culturalism" IMHO, and it's harder to fault people for simply getting less along with someone much older (on the other hand, I've had MANY older friends)

1. Ageism is very real in the bay area. People see a huge list of experience going back to 1985 and graduation dates in that range and they filter you. It is terrible but true. If you are sending a 5 page resume of experience to win them over, try including only your best and most relevant work from the last 10 years and omit graduation dates, etc. See how that works to at least get to the first interview.

2. In addition to the conscious ageism, there is a lot of unconscious stuff people do that also excludes older devs. Even if someone doesn't include dates, I can tell almost immediately they are from another engineering culture (either physical or temporal aliens). There are a lot of little cues that people might interpret as you not being "a good fit", "old school", or "enterprise-y". If you are friends with any hip 30-35 year old devs, have them review for cues like that and squash them. Quite possibly you'll also find there are real holes in your resume or way you are presenting yourself.

3. On that note, have that same hip dev friend cross reference his version of what tech is hot with your expertise. You might be a great dev in 100 ways but your attachment to php (haha, jk php lovers!) will peg you as "old school". If you really don't have experience in any of that hot tech, "I can pick stuff up" only goes so far especially if people are already wondering because of your age. Build something real (!"I did a tutorial or toy app and it seems cool") using one of those hot tools and put it on your resume.

Everything above applies to LinkedIn or Github profiles too, not just your resume since people will immediately check those also. Of course, when you get to a first interview, you might still get filtered but at least you'll have a shot.

I know it is pretty callous to just try and work around ageism as I'm recommending but sadly I think this is the hurdle older devs need to tackle to get to the first interview. I see older guys not finding work all the time.

To be clear, this perspective isn't coming from someone in their 20s. I'm 45 and am already seeing these harsh realities. I feel like I get to see both sides of it since I own my own company and I've been immersed in the 25-35 year old hipster dev culture all along which helps me to stay very current in lingo, trends, appeal. Because we see it all the time, we're very careful to avoid this ageism trap in our hiring by moving people forward using very well defined criteria, not subjective "I got a good feeling about him" type heuristics that might lead us to filter really great devs because of our unconscious biases.

If you're in a hot/young market like the Bay Area, then it may be worth considering moving to a secondary market. I'm in Phoenix, and know that spots in Texas, Atlanta and other areas are similar in that there's more line of business software development that has a lot of people that re a bit older. Right now, I think the average developer age where I am is 40yo. Of course there are other aspects to consider in terms of a move, but it's worth thinking about.

And to double down on what the parent suggested... limit your resume to the last 10 years or so with career highlights, and nuke the education section. For the most part, nobody cares once you're in a field more than a few years.

Good luck.

You could also try removing school graduation dates or any other hints of your age.

If after all that you're still not getting interviews, then the fault can't be with how old you are.