Hi. I've been in the profession (SW Eng) for about 18 yrs now. A few years from my 50s. Didn't go the managerial route. Stayed technical. My current gig is in a very difficult and complex project written in C. Been there for 2 yrs now and I'm afraid that due to the ancient tech stack and despite being a good engineer I'm loosing my marketability.
After enduring bad behavior for nth time (yeah it's a toxic workplace) I decided I had enough and did a round of applications. Mostly for backend positions and mostly for golang positions. I don't have prod xp with golang but it's close to C and every time I've used it it seemed ok. But the problem is that I'm either being ignored or skipped over. All jobs are for seniors in the _specific_tech_stack_. Other positions I've applied for and got no response whatsoever are architects, tech managers and the like. Granded, this regards a turd job market (EU/Greece) but still that's where I am at.
Am I toasted for good? I mean, nearing my 50s with my most recent gig writing "C" on it is as good as declaring my career over?
A few years later I actually started working in Java and Python, and then iPhone came along and I was right back in C land again!
Then in 2016 I got a job writing in Go, which lasted 2 years - aaaaand now I'm back to writing C (and C++) again - 25 years after my C-career crisis.
It's not like I'm actively seeking C jobs - I'm a polyglot and can handle pretty much anything. But again and again these C jobs just keep coming out of the woodwork... And I can command premium salary because there just aren't many skilled C developers anymore.
As soon as something basic goes down or when you have unexpected dives into low level stuff, the fair weather pilots are suddenly out of their depth.
I started with C, eventually moved into business roles and honestly wasn't even that good a dev. But looking at the uncertainty ahead in the world from a climate point of view, I sometimes worry about the future of tech talent.
We are losing tech veterans at a high rate and gaining a lot of chatgpt devs. I once remember a stackoverflow outage from my dev days and a large part of team went on vacation in the second half as we were so used to asking and copying.
Any fragility to modern infra will make us fall so hard on our faces I fear and hope I am wrong.
I still remember a colleague complaining to me in 2001 about a crash they were having in the data entry app (written in Java) that was wreaking havoc in the bank's check clearing department. The stack trace would go to JNI, into a vendor's .so and then SIGSEGV with an address of 0. The trouble was, nobody knew anything below Java.
I tracked down the issue after examining the crash report over lunch for shits and giggles. It failed in memcpy because it was trying to copy a null pointer. I disassembled the vendor's .so and checked the offsets to see where the code was going, and it turned out that the fingerprint reader code would return a null if it failed to scan properly (and the library had no null check). The vendor refused to fix it, so I patched the .so with a few nops, an xor and a je to work around it.
Everyone looked at me like I was some kind of god who commanded the very chips themselves.
Once the old guard is gone, I wonder what they'll do...
Then they just jump jobs and get a 50% raise after enduring the "poor work environment" at their previous job.
This is not you but the market. Consolidate and don't take this as a judgement on your skills sir.
C will never go out of fashion.
That might be rather harsh wording, but I wouldn't rule it out entirely.
I am in my mid 40s, have been professionally in the business since my 20s and recently "migrated" out as I did not see much potential in it any more.
Admittedly, it also depends on how flexible you are and how willing to adopt the latest trends (to avoid saying fads :) ). If you feel comfortable with that, it shouldn't be "impossible" to stay in the field but the age will certainly still play a factor.
I am not sure how good my advice can be, but if you want to stay technical and with Go, I'd say keep applying for such positions. Many companies will reject you because you may not fulfill their arbitrary requirements, but there'll be eventually a company who recognises your experience and your abilities.
While I am probably biased, I would still say programming has become a rather tough market these days for anyone 35+
Still, no guarantee either of course.
what did you do?
I'm older than you are and have been out of work for longer than ever before in my life. BUT I finally got a decent offer and will be starting a new job soon. There is hope.
Also you’re in the EU so could feasibly move to where needs your exact skill set. But web/frontend/backend is needed everywhere so it’s likely worth adding that to your C skills.
You _could_, but reaslitically speaking the frictions with language, culture, and distance from family and friends probably makes this harder than maoving US -> Canada or vice-versa. The EU tried hard to overcome this, but they're fighting national differences and cultural borders older than Christianity.
Don't lie about anything in your resume/CV. If you get called out, your whole reputation and your whole CV then is in Question.
Not sure if it is same in the EU, but if it is illegal don't volunteer your age. No need to lie.
But perhaps you can be economical with facts and/or 're-prioritize' them, if expedient, ie choose which cards to reveal and with what emphasis.
Personally, I just tell it matter-of-fact as I see it, pretty much. You're looking for a good match of a job after all so may as well be fairly honest. Take that advice with a bucket of salt though because I'm still looking after <cough>, a year ... <cough, cough> ... or so.
Uprooting your life when you are 25-30 is easier, can be a fun adventure, etc. Doing that when you are 50 is many layers more complicated.
Lying is absolutely a no-no, there's no upside, you will be forever in debt about a lie and in the case of something as easily detected as your age you will lose all credibility for a stupid reason.
Asking someone to move is usually quite unreasonable, unless there's legit problems where the person lives. A lot of people, especially people in their 50s, have roots that they just can't walk away from.
Furthermore, software gigs tend to be much shorter than how often people stay in a location; and remote work in software is super-common today.
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Padding the resume isn't a bad idea. If you've worked in C, and taught yourself Go, you're senior in my book. I mean, you may not know the gnarly corners of the language and eco system, but that's easy enough to pick up.
Applying for a junior Go position would probably not be a good fit for you.
Applying for a mid-level Go position sounds uphill because competing candidates have 1-2 years of professional Go experience.
I would overcome that by accepting any opportunity to get real Go experience.
For example, I'm spending some extra hours every week for a money-less startup on an "I'll register the hours and you'll pay me next year" basis.
As a reward, I learn Phoenix/Elixir and Nix: The lead will spend time fast-forwarding me through the commands, and I can spend some hours that I don't bill them on qualifying. For my next interview, I can say I've spent X months doing Phoenix/Elixir and/or Nix in production. The money is secondary.
Alternatively: Use your network. What young people don't have is an abundance of acquaintances who took the management route who can vouch for your generic skill set and work ethics which don't translate into recruiter filter buzzwords.
P.S. I'm not far behind in age but I code in 2 different tech stacks daily at work, on FE and BE, and stick my nose into parallel stacks to get that experience, specifically so I don't get COBOL'd (do one thing my entire career, and then that one thing no longer has developer demand).
But maybe for older people it would be ok? Embedded projects are usually more "traditionally" programmed and pretty slow moving.
I have done this many times. For example, I didn’t know k8s, and I wanted to switch jobs: I spent around 1-2 months learning k8s at work and at home, I learnt the fundamentals and did some side project and then I put on my CV that I’ve used k8s in my current job (I didn’t). I passed the job interview.
Micromanaging employee time is one of the worst signs of a toxic company culture. And definitely not a sign of an efficient one
That doesn't always mean quitting - I personally try to just change my job role and find that I often can adjust the work to avoid the toxic leaders. But if that cannot be done, leaving the job is a reasonable action.
And "as a Founder", if you think your staff is obligated to pull you out of any holes you dig, you are going to be in for a surprise when you find out just how many people are happy to let toxic leaders fail.
How else are we going to keep ourselves sharp? Besides, is on the benefit of the current company that I become more knowledgeable. Crazy to hear this retrograde way of thinking.
How do I even work for you without "sharpening my skills"?