Ask Slashdot: Getting Hired As a Self-Taught Old Guy? 472
StonyCreekBare writes "How can an autodidact get past the jobs screening process? I have a long track record of success, despite limited formal education. Despite many accomplishments, published papers, and more, I cannot seem to get past the canned hiring process and actually get before a hiring manager. Traditional hiring processes seem to revolve around the education and degrees one holds, not one's track record and accomplishments. Now as an older tech-worker I seem to encounter a double barrier by being gray-haired as well. All prospective employers seem to see is a gray-haired old guy with no formal degrees. The jobs always seem to go to the younger guys with impressive degrees, despite a total lack of accomplishment. How can an accomplished, if gray-haired, self-educated techie get a foot in the door?"
Start your own (Score:5, Insightful)
business :)
Re:Start your own (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are anything outside of the "norm" in the field, the best advice I can give you comes in two parts:
1.) Be willing to work for a little less than the going rate.
2.) Focus on smaller companies who are less likely to have automated resume screening systems. Wouldn't hurt if the owner of the company had a little gray himself.
The truth is that although it's better than 3 years ago, the job market is still a bitch. Don't give up, and hard as it may be, don't take rejections personally and let them get you down on yourself.
Re:Start your own (Score:5, Insightful)
3.) Network. You're likely to get your best paying gigs as contractor/consultant via people who know you. One of the things you tend to get along with the accomplishments and gray hairs is a long network of contacts, people you know, etc. Another benefit is that if you revisit people you worked with early in your career, you'll find that many of them are managers now, and have the power to make hiring decisions (including designing a job around your specific capabilities). It doesn't always work -- I once had a job custom designed for me, and then HR stepped in and killed it (due to interdepartmental politics), but these things often work out quite well. As an Old Guy (TM), never try the cold call, or submitting your resume as the first thing you do. Get in via contacts.
Re:Start your own (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd go another route:
Be willing to work for a little more than the going rate.
Focus, yes, on the smaller companies, but shoot straight for senior/teamlead positions. Your track record should cover you there. Tell them, you want to gain a level in your career and that your age should help you there.
Re:Start your own (Score:5, Insightful)
Tell them, you want to gain a level in your career and that your age should help you there.
Don't say age. Tell them your experience should help.
Re:Start your own (Score:5, Insightful)
Years of experience should have also given him years of names and people to contact when needing that next gig.
Once you're out in the work world, the next jobs come from who you know...if you're doing it right.
If nothing else, get with a contracting house...they DO value older experienced folks with heavy resume experience.
Re:Start your own (Score:5, Insightful)
That is if either:
- You're a natural at (interpersonal) networking.
- or you took on board the importance of (interpersonal) networking when you were young, and made a special effort to do it.
If you put your head down and did a job, instead of schmoozing, you might not be so lucky.
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People need to know that a good part of their work, career and job ARE the things other than just putting your head down and doing work.
People should think about gaining and USING people skills, just as much as they concern themselves with continued education.
You might have learned everything about java, but you need someONE, a person, to give you a job. The best jobs are usually to be had by inside information at p
Re:Start your own (Score:5, Informative)
What the fuck are you talking about?
Hate to break it to you junior, but the gray hair comes creeping in LONG before retirement age is getting anywhere near.
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Hair dye? :-)
Re:Start your own (Score:5, Informative)
That's a matter of genetics, I guess. I spotted my first gray hairs while I was still in college. (Yes, at the "traditional" age to be in college.)
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A friend of mine was totally gray in high school. Never got carded because of it...
Re:Start your own (Score:4, Insightful)
Issac Newton was full-on silver-grey before he was out of his twenties, the man didn't need a powdered wig to look 'distinguished'! I was salt&pepper before I was 30. One of the young turks at a startup I signed on with (long gone now) seemed to think I was older than I was at the time and, asked me indiscreetly during a Friday Happy hour if I was going through mid-life crisis because I drove a two-seat sports car. (a decrepit RX-7 [G1], never having been married, I had no use for a 'utility vehicle')
I laughed him off and pointed out that if it was mid-life crisis, I had picked a really crappy penis extension(aka sports car). He was old enough to be embarrassed, but not experienced enough to understand why.
The day the startup folded... almost a year later (IT market got cold feet after 9/11) the young guys made a point of individually, dropping by my cube as I, and 95% of the staff packed up our personal effects and lined up for exit interviews. They wanted to know if I was angry or disappointed, or even sad that the business had failed. By the time the last of them had dropped by... I was in tears. Not because I was upset about the business failure, but because I was gonna miss these kids. They all had degrees from big-name schools and had their whole careers ahead of them... for me this was just another gig that didn't make it out of the incubator. I think one of the reasons they afforded me that little show of respect of dropping by to say fare-well is because I had shown that, even as a 'grey-beard' I still loved what I was doing, and helping create awesome software, and hardware is a journey not a reward. It also helped that many of them had cut their teeth on the Apple //gs and I had been one of the lead test engineers on the system ROMs. One of the spare labs in the office had been set up to accommodate our various //gs systems.... and we'd basically built an Apple lab complete with one of my old Macintosh IIfx boxes acting as a file share/internet router, running AUX.... one of those little geek exercises that helps cement team bonds. Fun times.
Re:Start your own (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, this fantasy that tech workers make so much more than average is bullshit.
Maybe that's true in Silicon Valley for the "chosen few", but there's a lot of tech jobs all over the country that aren't paying the "big bucks". I do what I do because I love it, I enjoy it, and I actually wake up every morning looking forward to going to work. But truth be told, I'm sure there are talented plumbers in my city who make a shitload more than I do.
Tech work is RAPIDLY becoming commoditized. Too many young punks who "think" they know some stuff and are willing to work for cheap are driving salaries down. In the meantime, guys like me who actually *do* know how to do that stuff get stuck training their dumb asses.
Forget commoditized (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Start your own (Score:4, Insightful)
This isn't just in the US either, we have the same problem here in the UK.
Over the years I've seen loads of youngsters who straight out of university think they know everything until they get the sharp shock of reality.
Businesses go for them as they are cheap but it's those of us who have been around for decades that end up cleaning up the mess or attempt to train them.
There are some are so arrogant they don't want to accept they are wrong, they are the worse.
Nb: I'm self taught, didn't do university & still overworked in my mid forties!
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Getting Hired, Self-Taught, Old?
Pick 2.
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"average" has many meanings, the simple median, mean, and mode among them. In this case, and in most others where you care about position within a distribution the median is the "average" that is actually relevant - the amount made "by the average Joe". The mean will almost always be biased significantly higher due to extreme income inequality.
Re: Start your own (Score:4, Interesting)
The arithmetic mean is certainly what is most commonly meant when referring to "the average" of a group of numbers, but "average" spans the works, including several other types of mean (harmonic, geometric, etc.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average [wikipedia.org]
As for an "average Joe" - in pretty much every context I've heard it used it's referring to a concept most analogous to the median - half the people are doing better than him, half are doing worse. Half are more interested in X, half less, etc. Precisely the population midpoint. Certainly if you have drastic things going on in the middle of your distribution it's prone to distortion, but that's rarely the case, and it's pretty much immune to distortions at the extremes, which is where they tend to occur. If you're talking about "most people" the midpoint is far more informative than the lives of the aristocrats or beggars. The arithmetic mean will almost always be skewed upwards in any non-gaussian distribution (such as income), and often quite dramatically. And the mode is rather useless for most layman' purposes, especially since its very heavily dependent on the particular binning limits selected, which speak far more strongly to the biases of the statistician than to the data itself.
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Or maybe....
Just maybe.....
It's because you actually want to have a "life" along with your "job".
Just sayin'.....
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Re:Start your own (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you make good career decisions, are fiscally responsible and don't have kids, it's pretty easy to have enough money for retirement before the grey hair shows up
It also makes it pretty easy to grow old lonely and alone.
Re:Start your own (Score:4, Insightful)
Well not having kids doesn't deprive you of a woman, and doesn't deprive you of friends either.
On the other hand, there is no reason you have to be without children to make some money, and if you are actually old, chances are, any kids are out of the house or on their way out of the house already. That makes you effectively equivalent to being without kids if you are starting now.
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Re:Start your own (Score:4, Insightful)
That's pretty selfish. What about humanity?
What about it? We're not part of an endangered species. If anything, not having kids is doing a favor for humanity. Those of us who want to make a difference do our part to lower the human population to more manageable levels by not having kids, so the species can thrive instead of over-consuming available resources and destroying itself.
Re:Start your own (Score:5, Insightful)
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it's pretty easy to have enough money for retirement before the grey hair shows up.
I had it since I was still in college. Bit early, no?
What is this "hair" you speak of?
Bring a rifle. (Score:4, Funny)
Take the HR weenies hostage, and demand an audience with somebody technical.
Re:Bring a rifle. (Score:5, Funny)
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Seeing as they had to do some prison time, I guess this tactic worked out alright in the end for The Lone Rangers in Airheads.
for the grey hair part... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:for the grey hair part... (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect the problem is that the application forms that the submitter has to fill out, require certain degrees and get tossed into the trash if those requirements aren't met. And probably by the lowest level HR person at the firm.
One of the things I noticed years back before I gave up on IT was that they wanted very specific requirements to even allow the application to submit. And that was before the most recent economic downturn. It's probably gotten even worse now.
Re:for the grey hair part... (Score:4, Interesting)
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It's because companies don't want to invest any money in staff. They want to just hire a worker unit that can complete certain tasks for them, trained at someone else's expense.
In the long run it is usually better to get someone in and train them. Obviously they need the right basic skills but not necessarily specific degrees or experience. Many companies are not interested in that though, they just want to hire someone disposable to complete one particular task or fill one specific role.
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Apparently, I come from a world where people are capable of reading things in a non-literal way.
Networking. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is where networking comes in. Cold-calling hiring managers (per se) is partially to weed out people who don't have any "in" to the company, already. That, and maybe die your hair. It sucks, but in a world where everything but your actual work-ethic and capability is secondary to things like youth, height, attractiveness, and diploma, you have to manipulate the game to your favor so you can get your foot in the door.
I also think there tends to be a problem where most people assume that if you're over a certain age and you are not seeking a management position, there must be something wrong with you. After all, if you have put in your years, why would you want to do anything other than manage people, right? . . . Right?
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While he's at it, he might be able to set up some informational interviews or get a job at a temp agency.
You have to contract / set up a firm (Score:5, Insightful)
Set up a firm, start networking. If you deliver projects on time and budget then you will soon have more business than you know what to do with. Ultimately this strategy will work out better for you in the long run, but is more challenging to get going.
Generally speaking, if you have real talent, you are a sucker to work for someone else.
Re:You have to contract / set up a firm (Score:5, Insightful)
In this situation it's going to be all about who you know. You say you have a long history of successes? Contact the people you worked with and worked for. Someone, somewhere, is hiring and at least some of those people will be in position to push your resume at least past the first layer of defense. Lack of a formal degree will see your resume to circular filing cabinet in record time, unless the HR drone has a reason to believe otherwise.
Re:You have to contract / set up a firm (Score:4, Informative)
CONTACTS! I second that. (Score:5, Insightful)
I am in much the same boat. My branch of the industry went from garage shops to IPOs to conglomerates. The hiring process went from people-in-the-know to armies-of-PHBs-working by the book. The number of potential employers went from hundreds to a handful. The workforce went from top-notch locals to armies of adequate, semi-adequate, or inadequate H1Bs.
I had been a pioneer and well recognized by other actual techies - even those that had gone on into management or entrepreneurship. But after catching a layoff when the conglomerate deemphasized its new acquisition's function, I went from highly-paid pan-expert to 17 months unemployed due to the same HR-is-a-brick-wall for non-commodity heads effect.
I finally ended up contracting at a long-running garage shop in a niche market, a position found through a contact who had just watched them have a project almost fail for lack of a person with my particular skill set.
Meanwhile I'm finishing the degree via "distance learning" through an accredited institution. By the time the contract runs out I hope to have that checkbox checked. (College is a LOT easier when you don't have the draft board trying to send you to Vietnam and you can do the classes online when you're free and alert, rather than at 8 AM when you're a night person.)
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It's not who you know; it's who knows you.
Simple (Score:2)
If you had done your research on the subject just in the last few days on these very pages, you would know to apply to Google
Personal experience (Score:4, Insightful)
My situation is very similar to yours. I haven't been able to get an in-person job at all, just contract work, where I've been moderately successful.
I've had several third interviews for jobs, but they always wind up hiring someone less-qualified but with a degree. I've pretty much given up on the job part, and resigned myself to contract work unless one of my app projects takes off.
How do you know this? (Score:5, Informative)
How do you know the people getting the jobs have no experience? I am probably not as old and not as experienced as you, but I was getting beat out for entry-level jobs by people with degrees AND experience, sometimes a ridiculous amount of experience for the position and/or pay. Fact is, there are a LOT of people looking for a job or a better job out there, and lack of a degree is an automatic disqualifier for a lot of positions right now due to the number of applicants hiring managers are seeing that have both the desired experience and degree.
Maybe move somewhere else? (Score:2)
Most companies are willing to trade years of experience and certifications for specific degrees. Do you have certifications?
Are the "published papers" in the same tech field that you're looking in for a job? You have enough knowledge to write papers on the subject but no one will hire you
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Law is probably the second least secure field jobwise in the U.S. after architecture, and a lot of legal jobs have been offshored in the past few years.
Insufficient Data (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Insufficient Data (Score:5, Insightful)
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This, plus: Take a good, hard look at yourself from the employer's viewpoint. Is your resume 10 pages long, etc? Are you networking? Do you have a good LinkedIn profile? Linkedin is how recruiting is done now.
Being self-taught only makes a difference if you let it.
Bullshit.
When I worked at Lockheed Martin, 2 years ago, they had a policy strict hiring/promotion policies about education.
I.E. you could only get so high with an associate degree, a little higher/more stability with a bachelors, and only those with masters degrees were allowed to be architects. It was education over ability. There was one architects in particular that ran around saying stupid shit like, "some objects are data objects, and other objects are function objects but never both". But he had a
Re: Insufficient Data (Score:5, Funny)
This doesn't exactly paint you in a goid light. The architect was right. Welcome to functional style programming.
Two Words (Score:2)
Grecian Formula.
Go into business for yourself (Score:5, Insightful)
Start a business. You'll enjoy that more than working for someone else anyway. In many states you can start an LLC for a pittance.
Barring that, you need to network. HR departments exist (these days) as a shield between hiring managers and the great unwashed masses. One criteria is that you must have [from
Caveat -- I'm an old guy with lots of experience, mostly self-taught, working in a field not studied in college. (That didn't, in fact, exist when I was in college.) Finding a new job is often an adventure because my college credits were a long time ago in a completely different area. In most cases, I've known someone who knew someone, managed to get the manager's ear, maybe over a beer after hours.
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Message was garbled. That was supposed to read:
One caveat is that you must have (some degree) [from (some college)] just to get past HR and get the manager's ear. (But you probably already know that.) You need to find a different way in. You say you have many accomplishments -- someone must have noticed, and you must have built relationships during those accomplishments. Time to exploit that, call in favors.
Small shops and networking (Score:3)
You'd probably have better luck with smaller shops. The kind where the owner will probably meet with you personally if you go in and ask for a job in person. Be prepared to compensate for your lack of formal credentials with examples of your work.
Probably varies from place to place, but around here, previous experience trumps education most of the time. Larger places you might need the degree to get passed the automated keyword hunter, but your references from previous employers and what you can say about what you've worked on are what sell you.
And on that note, with that long track record of success, you should also have a large collection of people who know the kind of work you do and would recommend you to others. Get in touch with them and see if they know of anyone looking for someone with your skillset.
People who can refer you to the company they work for are your absolute best bet. Your chances of getting a job are magnitudes higher when someone inside the company, who knows the role and office culture and the position, is saying "this guy is good, he's exactly what we need".
Two choices (Score:2)
1) Network
2) Get lucky
Sell the accomplishments (Score:2)
Your a gray hair and you (Score:2)
haven't figured this out yet?
1) Start your own contracting firm.
or
1) Make contact through user group meetings, seminars, what have you.
And
2) Become active in any coder events.
References (Score:4, Insightful)
If you have done impressive things over many years, you should have contacts who are aware of your abilities. An inside experienced contact at most companies can get a resume of someone they think is valuable in front of hiring managers.
Unfortunately if you don't have a formal education and don't have anyone who can vouch for you it will be very difficult. Put yourself in the position of a hiring manger with dozens of resumes on their desk - they are looking for an efficient way to cull the resumes down to a manageable number and formal qualifications are an easy (and generally reasonable) method.
Maybe it's not them.. (Score:4, Insightful)
ALso (Score:2)
Government work,
bad idea (Score:2)
Work for the government (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm serious. I know a fellow who is not only 71 years old but a convicted felon who is still on federal supervised release and hasn't work in over ten years who recently got a job with the State of California doing some sort of IT work. The state hires older people. Hiring managers aren't blinded by the cost of older people's health insurance because it doesn't come out of their budget. I suspect it's the same with the Federal government.
Choose COBOL (Score:3, Interesting)
online resume (Score:2)
Put your resume online somewhere, make the page google-search-engine friendly (html5, validating, good structure, no fancy tables or javascript).
There are fewer restrictions there, because no page numbers, etc.
People scour the internet to find talent.
Be open to contract work, even 3 months contract, as these can turn into 6, 12, or full time.
My story: 2010 a recruiter found my resume through google search, called me for position, was 3 months contract, got extended 3 more, then 9 more, then full-time, and I
Easy (Score:3)
Lie
Gray hair? (Score:2)
A pack of hair color costs something like $10 at your local store. One problem solved. (If someone has good tips for coloring beard, I'd like to know.)
My guess is that if you want to apply to an organization that uses formal screening process, you're off worse. Networking is the word of the day and if you have a lot of previous work experience, you might already have a professional network. Use it, and sidestep the screening. If not, build your network. Participate in groups, attend conferences, etc. Be act
No objections from me (Score:2)
I've hired gray hairs, long hairs, dyed hair and no hairs as programming contractors. Age and experience are not so important to me for these mid-level programming gigs.I care about a few things though - are you up to date on not just coding, but contemporary development methodologies? Have you worked in an Agile team before? Do you have a niche skill that fits with my project (in my case often embedded programming, or Linux device drivers). I'm far more interested in what you've done in that last year befo
Are you any good? (Score:3)
Headhunter's secrets (Score:4, Informative)
As a former headhunter, here is my best advice:
1. Avoid headhunters. All they'll do is attach a commission handicap toward hiring you.
2. Find out where there are places nearby where you'd like to work and are qualified.
3. Prepare a killer resume that describes your accomplishments in the terms of the job you could do for those employers.
4. Find out who the hiring managers are, and what positions, if any, are open.
5. Have three copies of your resume available. Walk in the front door cold, and tell the person at the front desk your name and who you are there to see about the job.
6. If the front desk person asks for a resume, give it to them.
Generally, this will get you in front of the hiring authority. While you're talking with that person, aside from telling them all about the great things you can do, ASK FOR THE JOB! "This sounds great! I can start on Monday, would that be too soon?" etc.
Good luck.
Write code! (Score:4, Informative)
For work experience, sign up on freelancing sites like odesk. Take jobs just to do them. Nobody knows how old you are, there. Even if all you can do is sysadmin -- well, admin some cloud services!
Lie (Score:3, Insightful)
Why are you applying through normal channels? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're grey haired, experienced and accomplished, you should also have a friendly network of ex-colleagues and customers who will help you get a job.
Your first job or two you should apply for though normal channels. After you've made some friends in the industry, every other job you should either be getting shortlisted though mates referrals, or headhunted - it's that easy. Employers are screaming out for good employees and the internal referals count heavily compared to unknown randoms.
Resume bug or "overqualified" (Score:3)
I'm surprised. First guess is that you've misdiagnosed it being about formal education.
You might have something horribly wrong on the resume. Maybe have a friend look at it and figure out why no one should ever hire that awful person. Then remove the part about how you made the Nazi Party's website 100x faster, or whatever it is. ;-)
Other idea is that people are seeing it and thinking "this guy wants a real job, not our job; there's no way we can afford him." You have to address that in the cover letter, hopefully without throwing away too much money. Think about whom you're approaching. They shouldn't all necessarily get the same spiel.
Good luck, buddy.
Grasshopper (Score:3)
You have not captured the Zen of the situation. Your fate is to hire and not to be hired. Simply come out with a brilliant and easy to implement plan and get others to do the work. Walking without leaving a trace on the rice paper is not required.
From one self taught old guy to another... (Score:3, Funny)
I had to teach myself cause I couldn't find a course on being and old guy.
How to win friends and influence people (Score:3, Informative)
Professional societies (Score:3)
I've found that professional societies are very useful for making contacts, bypassing HR.
I went to my local Linux UG a few times and they were always trading jobs.
The professional society depends on your skill set. You go there and start talking tech.
One of the broadest organizations would be IEEE. What's another one?
I don't know. Maybe other people have different experiences.
Have other people used professional societies to network and get jobs?
Places Needing Stable IT Staff (Score:3)
Emphasize stability if you can, this can make age a plus. Not that age
guarantees stability or youth means not responsible but you are more
likely to be considered in a place looking for stability.
County government,especially smaller counties. They typically run on shoestrings but they
can really appreciate someone who can keep systems running well. Likewise midsize
towns and cities.
If you have some oddball skills, that can be a plus. In fact if you know INGRES, are willing
to live in Seattle and are stable: Drop me a line!
Medical computing often wants someone a little older. Banking will often hire someone older.
Midsized organizations 100-500 can be an especially rich vein, places that have been around
awhile so gray hair isn't unusual and small enough not to automate the initial job search. They
also often have enough work to keep a small team busy.
Surprisingly, these can be research departments at
Universities (yes, they sometimes happily hire people without degrees. Who
better knows a degrees worth for day to day computing? Arguing with the person
with an MS who wants to convert everything to Python is not fun.).
I think it a fair bet there are security companies watching the news
that are going to be more accepting of someone older than they were
a month ago.
Hiring here! (Score:3)
Dear smart, grumpy engineers of Slashdot who live elsewhere in the US: here in Silicon Valley it's hard to hire good people.
I am very much trying to hire excellent engineers with experience in search infrastructure/Lucene, recommendation systems, as well as great mobile app developers with experience developing top-tier iOS or Android apps. I will pay well for good talent, offer fair benefits and excellent option package in an early stage startup founded by a guy who has built several successful businesses, including a multi-hundred million dollar company backed by top tier venture firms.
If you can prove to me that you are smart and capable and have relevant experience, I don't care if you have a degree from a top college or not (a degree will affect my baseline expectations, but if you seem smart and competent, I'll give you the opportunity for a phone call to show me how good you are).
If you are a Slashdot regular, that is worth bonus points too (the fewer digits in your UID, the better).
Seriously. If you meet any of the parameters above and think you are a great programmer and would like to come out to the Palo Alto area and work with other top tier people building a product that pushes boundaries in the social space and helps people get more out of their mobile devices, send a resume and cover letter to resumes@delvv.com.
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Or you can find a niche where formal education isn't terribly relevant. I got my previous job because the niche I work in has a gross lack of talent and I had a track record of building good stuff.
Granted, there are only a couple gray hairs on my head, but sometimes you just have to really hunt for the right employer.
Re:The solution is simple. (Score:4, Interesting)
AC's second sentence is on the mark. Work your contacts from previous jobs and tasks, so that you have someone in charge at a new place invite you in.
Else, as has been suggested, either consult or start a business.
Dyeing hair and eyebrows is not so far-fetched. About ten years back when a friend of mine quit his job with a state agency just several years shy of fully-vested retirement to open a consulting partnership with a friend of his, he dyed hair, brows, and mustache for the first four or five years. Once their client list and reputation were built up and they had more work than they could possibly handle, he stopped and let the grey appear, with no problems.
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Software "engineering" is not a chartered discipline, so your lawyers (multiple!) would appear to have their head(s) wedged.
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Yes, it actually is, it's just that nearly everyone doesn't follow or learn the discipline.
Frankly, I have never met some who calls themselves a software engineer that actually understood engineering.
This is there needs to be a PE equivalent for Software, and it's why it should be a crime to call yourself and engineer without said credentials.
Actual engineer is problem not what you think it is/. It involved disciple, understanding, and the ability to sign off on work and take liability.
And not, not all soft
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There is a software engineer PE:
http://ncees.org/about-ncees/news/ncees-introduces-pe-exam-for-software-engineering/
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CS is not IT
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The OP claimed to be a techie, which probably rules out interest in engineering disciplines anyway.
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unfortunately, lying on a job application is a criminal offence - tantamount to fraud.
Re:put down an degree or one on some of pages (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, politicians are tantamount to fraud.
Re: (Score:2)
Because they won't check that, and fire you immediately if you are caught lying, right?
Wrong. It happens, it's no good for anyone, and usually hits before the first paycheck.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, depends on which jobs. Maybe you're using the wrong search terms.
In today's "DevOps" environment, sysadmins are now called "Systems Engineers". And most of the ones in my large company don't have any degrees (unlike the younger developers that we spend most of our time shepherding).
Also tech headhunters are always prowling for experienced "Systems Engineers", so team up with some of them and they'll tell you how to look your best to their clients so you can both get paid.
Re: (Score:3)
Thankfully in the spanish-speaking world the word Ingeniero (engineer) means a completely different thing. It's a degree, just like Doctor. You can't just call yourself an engineer, nor a company can name you a "doctor". Same thing with "architect".
Best you can call yourself if you don't have a real university degree is a "technician".
Re: (Score:3)
Not always correct, but if you have no experience at all, then yes.
A degree is useful for getting into entry level jobs. After that, it is mostly networking that does the job for you. I know a few people who don't even have a degree that have senior technical positions. Experience trumps education every time, unless you are talking about academia or research. No one wants a Ph.D. for mere development work. Too expensive. Even a Master's Degree is something of overkill except maybe for certain architec
Re:What is your point? (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea is that 4 years in school with a stamp of approval at the end of it, is a sort of pre-verification that the candidate is worth talking to. RIght now in technology you can accept every resume with a B.S. in EE or CS, and you would never run out of resumes.
Of course, I must be lying since we have this massive tech labor shortage.
Re:What is your point? (Score:5, Funny)
No, you're lying because it's common knowledge that, at the end of the day, what really matters is KNOWLEDGE. So, ditch college, learn everything by hacking and you are bound to get the highest spot in a company. Because everyone in college is a rich spoiled kid.
Slashdot people don't waste their precious time with such nonsense as "grades", "exams" or "degrees". And certainly not "certifications". Those are for idiots with a lot of money in their hands. No sir, follow the example of great hackers, hack a bank and go through their front door proving their security is SHIT and everyone there is a complete IDIOT. The bank owner himself will give you the CEO position from where you will be able to order every desktop in the company converted to Linux and open source their business process.
Re: (Score:3)
No, you're lying because it's common knowledge that, at the end of the day, what really matters is KNOWLEDGE. So, ditch college, learn everything by hacking and you are bound to get the highest spot in a company. Because everyone in college is a rich spoiled kid. Slashdot people don't waste their precious time with such nonsense as "grades", "exams" or "degrees". And certainly not "certifications". Those are for idiots with a lot of money in their hands. No sir, follow the example of great hackers, hack a bank and go through their front door proving their security is SHIT and everyone there is a complete IDIOT. The bank owner himself will give you the CEO position from where you will be able to order every desktop in the company converted to Linux and open source their business process.
I didn't realize that this was sarcasm until I was 3/4 of the way through this, and then looked up to see the "Funny" moderation. Perhaps it's supposed to be both truth and humor?