Ask HN: I'm turning 50. Do I still have a career in IT as IC?
48 comments
> perception and experience…
I was a 30 year old hiring manager, once guilty of ageism.
In spite of my gut instincts, we hired a gray haired ‘old guy’ well into his 50’s.
I had concerns, could he keep up with us? Would he have the energy and stamina required?
But we needed someone urgently and my colleagues felt he was a good fit. So, I went along willing to give him a trial.
Turns out, I was a total dope.
He quickly became an informal team lead, amazingly efficient in managing people and projects.
And above all, well respected in our company.
Over the years— he turned down multiple manager promotion offers. Quite insistent, he didn’t want the headaches… smart guy!
I was a 30 year old hiring manager, once guilty of ageism.
In spite of my gut instincts, we hired a gray haired ‘old guy’ well into his 50’s.
I had concerns, could he keep up with us? Would he have the energy and stamina required?
But we needed someone urgently and my colleagues felt he was a good fit. So, I went along willing to give him a trial.
Turns out, I was a total dope.
He quickly became an informal team lead, amazingly efficient in managing people and projects.
And above all, well respected in our company.
Over the years— he turned down multiple manager promotion offers. Quite insistent, he didn’t want the headaches… smart guy!
This reads exactly like a LinkedIn post, formatting and everything.
This reads exactly like an HN comment, tone and everything.
Thank you. I’ve heard that comments here are much higher in quality than on other platforms, including LinkedIn. ;)
Yikes.
Currently an IC at 53. I was same-day terminated at the end of 2020, found a new remote position within a month, left that position for a 25% raise 10 months later. Both were small companies. Haven't seen a job market like this since the dot.com era. Most places I talked to seem more concerned about skills rather than age although I am sure there is a lot of ageism in tech.
Currently an IC at AWS, just recently passed my six month-iversary. I'm 56.
What I have found is that you need to have good relationships with other people in the business, and you need to talk to the right people inside the hiring organizations. It is entirely possible to still fail to get hired by them, but the hiring process remains one that is still mostly driven by personal contacts.
I've been a sysadmin and DevOps guy my entire career, and now I'm moving into Support Engineering. In a way, I've been L3 tech support most of my career, because whenever the help desk has been unable to resolve problems, they would come to us on the operations side to try to help them figure out what went wrong and how it needs to be fixed for this customer.
So, now that I'm a Support Engineer at AWS, Customer Obsession is my top leadership principle that I'm paying attention to.
And yes, our team is hiring.
What I have found is that you need to have good relationships with other people in the business, and you need to talk to the right people inside the hiring organizations. It is entirely possible to still fail to get hired by them, but the hiring process remains one that is still mostly driven by personal contacts.
I've been a sysadmin and DevOps guy my entire career, and now I'm moving into Support Engineering. In a way, I've been L3 tech support most of my career, because whenever the help desk has been unable to resolve problems, they would come to us on the operations side to try to help them figure out what went wrong and how it needs to be fixed for this customer.
So, now that I'm a Support Engineer at AWS, Customer Obsession is my top leadership principle that I'm paying attention to.
And yes, our team is hiring.
I'm not that worried, but I don't take it for granted. The traditional schema of age discrimination (it gets worse as you get older) isn't always true. I worked at one place where all the 30-something IT people felt they were not listened to and in a dead end situation whereas the 50+ people felt pretty comfortable. (One 30-something coder gained weight, got one of those fancy hair colorings where they put strips of foil in your hair to make himself look like he was graying and ultimately got an MBA -- all to get more respect)
I am almost exactly your age. For the last 10 years I've often been the oldest employee at a startup but always felt and believed that people respected my experience. (They told me so)
(There was that time I worked at a place where we had all staff meetings all the time and I frequently talked like and acted like a leader more than the CEO did... Initially I was seen as being supportive because I communicated my belief in the vision of the company more consistently than management did but being critical of management not sticking to that vision led to me being driven out. If we hadn't had the "all staff" culture I wouldn't have been dragged into playing that role...)
I am almost exactly your age. For the last 10 years I've often been the oldest employee at a startup but always felt and believed that people respected my experience. (They told me so)
(There was that time I worked at a place where we had all staff meetings all the time and I frequently talked like and acted like a leader more than the CEO did... Initially I was seen as being supportive because I communicated my belief in the vision of the company more consistently than management did but being critical of management not sticking to that vision led to me being driven out. If we hadn't had the "all staff" culture I wouldn't have been dragged into playing that role...)
My current org (series A startup, headcount around 20) is only hiring senior/staff level positions and it's very hard to find people. We have a pretty diverse age range and only two of the team are under 30 with several in their 50s/60s.
So we're out here, and we have a bias for senior talent. It's pretty easy to find junior people, but the good series A/B startups that are trying to build out their org don't really want more junior people and need folks like you.
So we're out here, and we have a bias for senior talent. It's pretty easy to find junior people, but the good series A/B startups that are trying to build out their org don't really want more junior people and need folks like you.
are you requiring coding interviews?
Yes. Unfortunately it's necessary, you can't really trust a resume or recommendation and for an org like ours we can't spend a ton of resources ramping people up.
I don't want to doxx myself here but there were two notable cases I can think of where in one, the code assignment saved us from a bad hire and another where we didn't do enough and we made a bad hire. Both individuals ostensibly had deep experience, but they weren't a good fit for our organization. Everyone has to contribute code directly, we can't have a pipeline where some folks are doing high level architecting and delegating the coding/impl details to juniors yet.
I don't want to doxx myself here but there were two notable cases I can think of where in one, the code assignment saved us from a bad hire and another where we didn't do enough and we made a bad hire. Both individuals ostensibly had deep experience, but they weren't a good fit for our organization. Everyone has to contribute code directly, we can't have a pipeline where some folks are doing high level architecting and delegating the coding/impl details to juniors yet.
Is it though? I imagine say a staff developer with decades of experience, you could check a reference and verify that the candidate did hold a stated role for x years. That seems probably more of a positive signal than doing a leetcode exercise.
Edit: I think I just found my new BS company test. If rationality, sanity, and pragmatism doesn't prevail, I don't want to work there.
Edit: I think I just found my new BS company test. If rationality, sanity, and pragmatism doesn't prevail, I don't want to work there.
You're preaching to the choir, but I don't choose our technical assessment. That said, it's not leetcode.
I think that can work for plenty of orgs, but I'm not sure about my team. I've already worked with two people who had great references and decades of experience who couldn't contribute to what we are building due to their weak technical skills. That doesn't mean there isn't an org out there that they will fit in with better, but the current process we use was derived from experience. It's not hazing, like Google.
I think that can work for plenty of orgs, but I'm not sure about my team. I've already worked with two people who had great references and decades of experience who couldn't contribute to what we are building due to their weak technical skills. That doesn't mean there isn't an org out there that they will fit in with better, but the current process we use was derived from experience. It's not hazing, like Google.
When I'm in charge of hiring for a highly technical role, I'll ask them about a particularly challenging problem that they solved. The ongoing discussion with them getting me to understand the problem and solution in as much detail as they can describe serves as my 'turing test' that's hard to fake moreso than a hit-or-miss coding problem.
some of the interviews I've been through started like that. Which is great. Then, it quickly went on to a coding test where I was asked to implement the optimal solution to a problem, which a certain woman, who wrote a book on coding interviews, and who will remain unnamed, needed almost 2 hours, to arrive at the optimal solution. I was expected to produce said optimal solution in less than 5 minutes. Needless to say, I moved on.
coding interviews do not guarantee that someone can actually write software. it is just an indication if the person grinded leetcode non stop and memorized all the solutions to the leetcode questions.
> Do FAANGs hire such old ICs?
I can only talk about one of the letters in FAANG. Just my observation.
We definitely hire 50+ or even 60+ people. In my experience, all of the internal processes are designed to remove individual bias. You can get hired and be successful.
The problem arises when there's a mismatch in expectation. Suppose you look at your years of experience and shoot for IC7+. The bar for IC7 is _high_. From and IC7, they expect to see org-wide impact in your current role. An org is 1000+ people. Most ICs can spend an entire lifetime and not have that level of impact.
Basically, experience has little to do with level or comp. If you can lead a small team with a few people, are willing to come in at IC5, and fine with making 450k+, I don't see a problem with age.
I can only talk about one of the letters in FAANG. Just my observation.
We definitely hire 50+ or even 60+ people. In my experience, all of the internal processes are designed to remove individual bias. You can get hired and be successful.
The problem arises when there's a mismatch in expectation. Suppose you look at your years of experience and shoot for IC7+. The bar for IC7 is _high_. From and IC7, they expect to see org-wide impact in your current role. An org is 1000+ people. Most ICs can spend an entire lifetime and not have that level of impact.
Basically, experience has little to do with level or comp. If you can lead a small team with a few people, are willing to come in at IC5, and fine with making 450k+, I don't see a problem with age.
Be concerned. Very concerned. If you try to change jobs, you will realize, to your chagrin, that your interviewers will typically have no clue how to evaluate the work you've done over the years (unless you have been doing full-stack web dev or something in that neighborhood, or have been working in cloud-native technologies, AWS, Azure, or GCP). Definitely be prepared to be downleveled and paid far less than your experience would suggest.
There is zero value attached to experience if you are IC in this industry. Do not be fooled by words, look at the actions of the recruiters, hiring managers and interviewers.
BTW, you had better grind leetcode. Even ops jobs are asking people to do algorithmic problem solving type questions nowadays.
There is zero value attached to experience if you are IC in this industry. Do not be fooled by words, look at the actions of the recruiters, hiring managers and interviewers.
BTW, you had better grind leetcode. Even ops jobs are asking people to do algorithmic problem solving type questions nowadays.
Speaking as an IC at AWS, I'm in the Support Engineer role and not SDE, but I can tell you that leetcode won't help you get hired in our org. Yes, the SDEs do some coding as part of the interview, but leetcode won't help with that part.
You can still do leetcode if you think that doing so helps you practice, and will help you do well in the face of "No plan survives contact with the enemy" type situations. But don't bet your career on leetcode.
You can still do leetcode if you think that doing so helps you practice, and will help you do well in the face of "No plan survives contact with the enemy" type situations. But don't bet your career on leetcode.
I have some experience in this situation. About 20 years ago, I transitioned from employee to consultant. I do IT projects like fractional or temporary CTO in smaller organizations.
I do projects that last from 6 to 18 months, and in each one I learn about a new business, and often learn about a new technology. it keeps things fresh and interesting.
I can do this because my skill set is pretty broad and I have spent time building and maintaining a big network over my career - not necessarily attributes that can be acquired quickly.
I guess the only actionable advice is to consider working out side FAANG, and be open to consulting vs. employee. There's plenty of reward and plenty of interesting work out here.
I do projects that last from 6 to 18 months, and in each one I learn about a new business, and often learn about a new technology. it keeps things fresh and interesting.
I can do this because my skill set is pretty broad and I have spent time building and maintaining a big network over my career - not necessarily attributes that can be acquired quickly.
I guess the only actionable advice is to consider working out side FAANG, and be open to consulting vs. employee. There's plenty of reward and plenty of interesting work out here.
What? Yes.
(Edit: My comment is terse and I still stand by it, but one more note: Don't let age affect your ability to do good work. Do today's work in the fashion of our day—not complaining about how things were done better in the past. It's similar to a new hire saying "at X company we did it Y way and it was soooo much better" incessantly. As long as you don't do that, then, why would it ever be a problem?)
(Edit: My comment is terse and I still stand by it, but one more note: Don't let age affect your ability to do good work. Do today's work in the fashion of our day—not complaining about how things were done better in the past. It's similar to a new hire saying "at X company we did it Y way and it was soooo much better" incessantly. As long as you don't do that, then, why would it ever be a problem?)
You have completely misunderstood the post. It's about ageism, not whether a 50+ year old can do the job.
why would it ever be a problem?
Just read the first comment by JSeymourATL in this thread.
Just read the first comment by JSeymourATL in this thread.
Plenty of others I'm sure will speak to whatever explicit ageism is out there in hiring, but there is a lot of tacit ageism as well. Even post-pandemic, most "FAANG" type companies still seem to insist on you living in Seattle or San Francisco. So if you do, good on you. If you don't, well if you're unmarried and don't have kids, it's probably pretty easy to relocate. If you don't want to uproot a family, or it's not entirely your say because your spouse has their own career and doesn't just follow you around the country, or you have medical issues and a good relationship with a provider near you and don't want to have to find a new one, it's more challenging. Same thing obviously applies to kids and spouses with medical issues as well. They may need to live where you already live. Ability and willingness to drastically change your life for a job correlates pretty heavily with age. It's especially frustrating when you say all of this on your public profiles and recruiters are constantly hitting you up with positions that require relocation anyway.
If you were doing fine at 49, you’ll be fine at 50 too.
I'm turning 54 and I'm still in-demand quite a bit. I just changed jobs and had a bidding war by a few different employers to bring me onboard. I was upfront with my age in all interviews, but my cloud, k8s and linux experience spoke volumes. Don't worry about your age. Just keep up with technology and you'll be fine.
Having been downsized by a multinational as an IC at 55, my first advice is to maintain a network of colleagues and recruiters.
Keeping your head down doing the work leaves you unprepared if/when the axe comes.
I sent off resumes all over NA, but only got four interviews and two engagements. Networking got more than that and produced better quality engagements.
Keeping your head down doing the work leaves you unprepared if/when the axe comes.
I sent off resumes all over NA, but only got four interviews and two engagements. Networking got more than that and produced better quality engagements.
50 can be so many different things: Some people at 50 present as old, and others present as younger. For interviews that probably makes a difference. I come from smaller startups and now work in an enterprise org. Everyone's older here.
If you can produce, and show that you can produce, then there's probably nothing to worry about. Admittedly this is a very naive and simplistic view but probably more correct than not.
I'm well past 50, and currently interviewing... Age hasn't been a problem.
I got my last job 18 months ago, and had no problems then either. I think its a matter of keeping your skills current. If your cranking out accounting reports, like I used to do, it's a lot harder then if your doing highly specialized/highly sought after stuff.
I personally think, you make your money in tech 'at the ends' - you either want to be far enough ahead or behind that your abilities matter more then anything else. Figuring on COBOL financing my retirement :-P
I personally think, you make your money in tech 'at the ends' - you either want to be far enough ahead or behind that your abilities matter more then anything else. Figuring on COBOL financing my retirement :-P
C programmers (in my area) are doing really, really well right now.
Yeah - it surprising how much demand there (still!) is for 'C'. It doesn't get all the press the 'sexy' languages get. But there's still a lot of work...
Well, I guess you’re a data point. Is said to be the best time to look and companies are desperate for talent. So folks >30-35 will be the test… If they find work “like younger people”, we’ll believe the hype. If, however, they get the same song and dance about lack of current experience, companies are just looking for cheap newbies and frustrated they can’t get them easily.
I would think there are lots of niche and non faang stuff out there but nobody is bothering to look. Or, they’re all in it for the $$ alone.
I would think there are lots of niche and non faang stuff out there but nobody is bothering to look. Or, they’re all in it for the $$ alone.
I’m 35 - the highest in your cited range. I can’t remember the last time I’ve felt like I had more options. In fact, 5 years ago I wouldn’t even get a response from FAANG recruiters any time I applied. Now I’m turning them away. Make of that what you will, and I don’t think I’m anything special.
Good to hear. I opened up a slot during Covid by pulling the plug so I did my part :-). One would think/hope that experienced people have value but one never knows.
Do FAANGs hire such old ICs?
I don't know if they hire them, but they at least humor you with an interview. I'm older than you and prepping for my virtual onsite now and had made it to the onsite previously in a couple FAANGS.
I don't know if they hire them, but they at least humor you with an interview. I'm older than you and prepping for my virtual onsite now and had made it to the onsite previously in a couple FAANGS.
Depends how young you look, and carry yourself, is the honest truth.
It's not the number itself
It's not the number itself
https://youtu.be/DAWYX5NG91M
In seriousness, I’m in my mid 40’s and a literal gray beard, and I haven’t yet encountered anything I could recognize as age discrimination. I seem to be in more demand for higher-profile IC jobs than ever.
I could only wish I was being approached in this way in my 20s.
In seriousness, I’m in my mid 40’s and a literal gray beard, and I haven’t yet encountered anything I could recognize as age discrimination. I seem to be in more demand for higher-profile IC jobs than ever.
I could only wish I was being approached in this way in my 20s.
Taking into account the current situation, you should be OK. I am not sure about FAANG, but with other companies, they are, at least in my home country, desperate to find IT talent.
My relative is a developer pushing 53, and he's assumed more management responsibilities. I think this current labor shortage will be fine for you, but it depends on your industry and company.
The older I get the more I realize the entire world revolves around marketing and impressions. Competence or experience/knowledge come in secondary to that, unfortunately.
I hired a person of similar age without thinking about his age a single time and he left for another job at a larger FAANG 16 months later.
nit: IT != software engineering
IT is desktop support, fixing servers, printers, computers, setting up new employee laptops, handling networking, fixing WiFi issues, etc.
IT is desktop support, fixing servers, printers, computers, setting up new employee laptops, handling networking, fixing WiFi issues, etc.
As an expat, in modern usage, I have observed this as a US vs. Europe (or maybe vs. ROW) issue. In the US, IT is like networking and helpdesk, and in Europe, it is more the whole hw-sw-networking-development mass.
>Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of electronic data and information.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_technology
It sounds like you're getting your definition from what people think an "IT department" is in a regular business. IT is an old-school name that encompasses far more than you describe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_technology
It sounds like you're getting your definition from what people think an "IT department" is in a regular business. IT is an old-school name that encompasses far more than you describe.
Never heard IT to mean only desktop support, it is the whole thing.
But can I still jump companies easily ? Will startups take me in? Do FAANGs hire such old ICs?
I'll try anyways, but I'm curious about your perception and experience.
Thanks.