I don't think the author's troubles have anything to do with AI, other than making it harder to get an interview. He seems to get a few of those. I think the real problem he has is... well, the meaning of life, i.e. 42.
He's a 42 year old dude. Looking for a job in software? You gotta be joking. He says he can't clear the 25-year old Steve-Jobs complex SV bro mini-boss. Well, duh.
That's the industry. It sucks you up and it spits you out. It vampires the best years of your life and then you're on your own.
Sorry that the author had to find out, but I think I've seen that coming from the day I was first employed as a junior engineer. I just averaged up the ages of my colleagues and it was blindingly obvious how things turn out in the long run.
Nor "AI" as in "Artificial Intelligence", but "AI" as in "Ageist Industry".
P.S. Look on the bright side: at least you're not a 42 year old woman looking for software jobs. Hah.
> He's a 42 year old dude. Looking for a job in software? You gotta be joking.
This is such an odd take. I see lots of older folks around me - and 42 isn't that old.
That said, it's undeniably true that expectations are raised the further along in your career you are. Interviewers will accept mistakes from a fresh college grad that they won't accept from an engineer with 20 years of industry experience who should know better (and is paid more). Not to mention there's just statistically fewer openings for TL positions. All of that definitely makes interviews harder as you're further along in your career.
Someone who's 42 needs to be a "TL" (tech lead?). Not everyone can be a leader (like you say, not that many openings available) -- and leading is often a totally different job and skill set from developing software. So what do you call it when everyone above a certain age is automatically shunted into a smaller pool of openings for a different role? I would call that ageism.
> I don't think the author's troubles have anything to do with AI, other than making it harder to get an interview.
The industry is ageist, but not "900 applications and 3 interviews" ageist. The big problem here is the concentration on remote work. I'm quite a bit older than this guy, quit a job earlier this year and went looking for work again only to find that "ooh, dream job, remote, nice little pay bump" were the jobs that got swamped with 1000 applicants.
He's simply going to have to move closer to where office based jobs are, suck up the commute for a while and when they have more confidence they'll let him work remote after a while.
Most of the jobs are likely getting swamped by AI generated applications, by overseas candidates and by every chancer who hates their current job.
In the current job market, there is absolutely no substitute for leaning on your personal network. It's the only real way to compete against AI and foreign workers. So that means, to give yourself options in a job you don't like, maintaining that personal network is absolutely essential. Instead of wasting the effort on 900 job applications after you quit or get fired, concentrate on reinforcing those connections whether you need them or not.
edit: I had my choice of jobs after a small wait, purely through people I know personally.
The author makes it clear that he can't simply "move closer to where office based jobs are" because he cares for his disabled mother.
I get that, but sometimes you have to do what you have to do. He won’t be much use to his disabled mother if he can’t cover the bills.
I wonder if he should consider taking his mother with him and moving somewhere with a better local job market. Similarly, parents move and take their kids with them when the job market demands it.
There is a separate conversation to be had about whether this is a good thing -- should we allow the job market to force people to move away from their homes/families/friends/connections? -- but it's already a fact of life for a lot of people.
just to offer a minor correction, the ratio was more like 800 applications for multi round interviews with ~10 companies (so maybe about 25 interviews). probably 25% of applications received a "no" response, while the rest ghosted
Some quotes stood out to me
> ...in fact I own three houses
> ...I left behind everything and everyone i know and love on the west coast to come to New York specifically for this opportunity of helping care for my family and growing long term equity with real estate
> With my full time engineering job bringing in around $150k, a salary that I clawed my way slowly and steadily for 20 years, I could just about manage covering all the expenses, maintenance, and planned improvements for the long-term vision of the properties, maintain my 16-year-old daily driver car, and maybe even have four or five thousand dollars left over each year to take one little camping trip and make a couple stock and crypto investments.
Rather than building a career as a software engineer, he spent most of his time as a small-time real estate and crypto(!) investor subsidized by his software engineering side hustle.
lumping in a camping trip with investments is odd. A camping trip might cost very nearly zero dollars, depending on distance and what I have available. We'll be generous here and assume $100 was spent for some reason. That $100 is expended, you don't get it back.
A stock investment might "cost" $4000, but I would hope to have nearly $4000 in some asset. My absolute worst investments, I typically still exited them with 40% of my initial capital.
i was just describing the all around comfort level of my lifestyle. if you drive a couple states away for a camping trip for a week, get a couple motels maybe, eat out, etc, it can be 2k$ pretty easily
I think it's clear he considers the real estate to be actual investments, but the camping trips and crypto/stock to be "play money". Perhaps not a bad strategy.
As much as I have sympathy for dealing with an aging family and being a caretaker, it's these three quotes that essentially threw me away. I'm in a similar position and will never be able to afford property or a home, let alone three houses and the ability to throw a bunch of money at crypto despite having a salary at a similar level.
It sounds like there were poor investments made in owning a bunch of property and now that issue is coming to roost.
And somehow thinks upstate NY is a better real estate investment market than California.
I was just trying to become a homeowner. my first house in new york was about 1/4th to 1/5th the cost of a "starter home" anywhere in california. I was never going to be able to afford that
I don't want to sound like I'm victim-blaming here, but the reality is there's no free lunch. Investments are not risk-free, and, as you've discovered, there's a reason you got these properties at such a low cost. It seems like your real estate situation can't go on like this forever, right?
> selling my properties would be a ruinous move letting go of my most valuable assets that are the only toe hold I have in this economy, and may threaten my ability to become a homeowner potentially ever again, depending on how this economic future plays out.
Despite these negatives, it's possible that selling is the financially-smart thing to do. Keeping your properties may also be a ruinous move that could cost your ability to become a homeowner ever again. It's unfortunate, but it sounds like you need to choose whichever is the lesser of two evils and stick with it.
> If i was bestowed some gift of capital, I could complete the renovations and make the house income-producing.
As an alternative, if this is actually true, then you'd be the perfect candidate for a loan against your house. People commonly get emotional around housing and debt, but there's no room for that when you're struggling to survive.
>That's the industry.
I think this is complete nonsense to be honest. If you're 42 with 20 years of experience you can walk into any random municipal office in a reasonably large town and find a software or at least IT admin job that people will throw at you, because chances are the youngest person there is 55.
The only ageist part of the software industry is the whole web and startup sector, your average post office, hospital, government and education software job is full of middle aged people. If you're unemployed just take a job there
If you look at the increase in total market cap of tech businesses over the last thirty years, it makes a lot of sense that there just wouldn't have been nearly as many people starting their careers in tech thirty years ago as there are today. Also, people tend to go into management as they age because managers are generally better paid (for whatever reason). When people decide to not go into management they often stay on the projects that they helped to build, so you have whole teams of older engineers. I saw this when I worked at AT&T - almost everyone was older.
That might be true some places but not everywhere. If you're a programmer with 25(or more!!!) years of experience in video games companies will fight each other to hire you. And that's if you did only C/C++ your entire life and never learnt any other technologies.
Eh, back when I got my first software engineer job at $BIGCORP 20 years ago, I was almost always the only one in the room younger than 40. Not being a web dev was the key, of course.
>P.S. Look on the bright side: at least you're not a 42 year old woman looking for software jobs. Hah
They suffer even more age discrimination?