It could be the culture that is the problem. Good managers are very accommodating to people of all ages & races. It's tricky to advise without knowing what the hierarchy looks like in your company.
I see some problems, though - why are there no promotion opportunities? Why were you, not promoted & younger people hired from outside? Did you had any discussions with senior management yet & did they give you any feedback?
Usually, mid-size to large tech companies have two career paths. Engineer to Principal OR Engineer to Engineering Manager. Some firms have people like technical leads. First, you want to decide on what path to choose. Both are quite different.
It's a pleasure to work with dark matter developers. I have worked with quite a few. They are not even on LinkedIn. They are quite productive, focused & get work done in 6-7 hours. They go home & enjoy time with their kids. On weekends they play poker with friends who are also dark matter professionals.
Not my experience.
I was working on my clothing startup with initial investment of about ~$30,000 USD.
INDIA - Met at least 12-15 manufactures in India (medium to large scale, $1m ARR to $50m ARR). Only a 1-2 of these had any catalogs or samples of different fabric compositions. Most wanted an advance to kick-start the process. Sampling was a total failure with three of these.
CHINA - Contacted about 10 manufactures in China via Alibaba. Each one of them had a very detailed catalog of anywhere in between 10-50 fabric compositions. Shipped to my home in a week for just $100.
It was Peru where I got the garments manufactured. It did cost me about 20-30% more but it was very satisfactory.
We have been writing software for decades. Still majority of the software engineers are only good at copy & paste. Things are actually getting worse as most answers you can google, when you can't they are just stuck.
I am an entrepreneur & a small business owner in India. I did a small manufacturing in China & was blown away by their professionalism. The article mentions - `Chinese suppliers had a totally different attitude, aiming to exceed the Cupertino company’s expectations` - this is so true.
In India, most manufacturing companies or businesses are trying to sell what they have or can produce (without any attention to detail). As a result, false promises & contracts are prevalent. There are no SOP's or any organized sampling process in most Indian companies vs Chinese who keep everything very formal & organized.
I never visited China & the manufacturing went perfect. In India, I personally visited the factories & still could not get the job done. All samples were rejected. Lost money & most importantly time. It's a damn mess. People seriously lack work ethic.
Welcome to entrepreneurship. Dealing with humans is difficult in general. Plus you are dealing with some pissed off customers. Even harder. This is what you can try -
1. See things from customers POV.
2. Maybe you’re not willing to accept what is built is not perfect & have issues. Once you're self aware it will help manage issues better. You need to move from denial to acceptance phase.
3. Our brains are wired to be defensive. Try to acknowledge or trigger whenever you’re defensive. Hard to explain but it’s like anytime you get defensive an inner force tells you YOU ARE BEING DEFENSIVE.
4. Best way to deal with an angry customer is just to agree with them initially, this will calm them a little & from there you can have a more productive conversation.
I am a full stack engineer over 10 years of experience in full stack development & leading product cycle from conception to completion. Also experience in leading teams of 5-15+ members through multiple product launches.
Professionally, I have diverse work experience from building complex products like forex trading systems, a bitcoin miner, working as a technical architect & lead for an enterprise react native application to a CTO for a funded startup.