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Comment by codegeek | Hacker News Reader

Age is not the main issue. I mean it may make it more difficult but you have a bigger challenge. "Making a move to Software Dev" sounds like you will be entry level in Software world which is really hard right now especially with AI etc.

So the question is "why you if I can hire a 23 year old with possibly more energy, less baggage (most likely they can work longer hours and not have family/kids to worry about etc). That's possibly ageism but when there is a choice b/w an entry level Software Dev who is 23 vs who is 42, who do you think will get priority ?

Now, if you can differentiate yourself where your age becomes a plus and not minus, then we are talking. For example, one can assume you have a lot of real world experience, you have worked in tough conditions with real customers (whatever industry). Can you use that to your advantage and make a better case ? Then you can do it.

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During interviews I make a point about flexibility due to not having my own family, and can also dedicate significantly more time to learning outside of work that perhaps many candidates of a similar age (40-45 bracket) are unable to. I have the same "free time" as a junior dev in their 20s... but with 20yrs Ops experience on top.

It does pay off though and I am delighted when colleagues approach me with a difficult problem to crack. I never take on formal ownership of the problem though, but if I do crack it, my input is well documented (and bonus points: I learned something new).

Cracking some hard problems has earned me a good reputation among the senior engineers & engineering management, and hopefully my future career will benefit from these relationships.

That is the last tactic I would take at 51 - “I have grown children so I can work crazy hours and do side projects to keep up to date on technology.”

My value proposition is the “Joel Spolsky” value play “I’m smart and get things done” and I can talk them through my history of doing so. That can be either supporting sales by flying out to a customer site or being on a zoom call, leading a large cross discipline implementation, hands on keyboard going from an empty AWS account to a full architecture, deployment pipeline, and an ETL or online backend process with hands on development. They get professionalism not passion.

Don’t get me wrong, I am up to date on the latest back end tech in my niche, Gen AI and know when to use traditional machine learning techniques even though I’m going to defer to the specialists for ML implementations that can’t be done with managed services.

But what I am not going to do is work crazy hours.

To clarify, I'm not working "crazy hours". I don't have a huge backlog of work that needs to finished.

I enjoy researching, building and solving interesting problems out of personal curiosity. There has never been any pressure on me to find a solution - many of the challenges are sometimes years old and teams just lived with the discomfort.

Sharing a possible way to remove this discomfort is often welcomed by the long-timer engineers out of curiosity to learn more - it's been a thorn in their side for ages!

> when there is a choice b/w an entry level Software Dev who is 23 vs who is 42, who do you think will get priority ?

Seems pretty ageist to even put the question that way. One could absolutely build up a list of specific criteria that often are more true with younger people, but if you don't articulate those criteria and base decisions upon them, and not the age of the candidate, that is straight-up ageism.

I don't think he is advocating for ageism. He is merely making an observation, which is absolutely true in most companies. You are more likely to get away with overworking and mistreating a youngster than someone with more life experience (who may also have other options and/or savings which gives them the ability to quit), so from an employer's perspective it's a no-brainer (just don't put it in writing, or handwave it as "culture fit" or similar BS).

There are of course some companies who value and capitalize on the experience of older people and have good work-life balance... just don't expect that in your average JS/blockchain/AI shop which is all tech seems to be currently.

Exactly. I am just playing devil's advocate here.

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