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Ask Slashdot: Getting Hired As a Self-Taught Old Guy?
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?"
business :)
"The jobs always seem to go to the younger guys with impressive degrees"
Correct.
Take the HR weenies hostage, and demand an audience with somebody technical.
You start your own business.
There really isn't much you can do, unless you know people.
Even though this question is asked every single week here.
put down an degree or one on some of pages of the on line job app.
Then do contracting here and there.
Get your hair dyed some other natural-looking color, with eyebrows to match. You can always go back to grey once you have the job.
My truck is like a series of tubes.
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?
You are better off not working on such a place, keep looking and you will find a place that values your skills. Consider doing your own business as a consultant.
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.
..don't panic
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
Either start your own business or catalog your accomplishments and hope whoever you are presenting them to understands the skills needed to achieve your level of success.
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 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.
Don't bother Start your own biz or be a consultant
Skip the canned hiring process and make contacts directly
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 to work in that field?
Is the job situation where you live that bad? Can you move?
Maybe your resume sucks. Maybe you're asking for too much money. Maybe you smell bad. Maybe you don't know as much as a fresh college grad. It's hard to answer this without knowing more about you. Have you ever gotten feedback from headhunters when they review your resume?
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
Grecian Formula.
#DeleteChrome
It has a lot to do with liability. My lawyers have urged me on several occasions not to hire someone without an engineering degree because in a lawsuit it would be almost impossible to defend if a non-degreed person had engineering responsibility on a project.
The old tricks are the best tricks. You need a plausible excuse for breaking out the bottle, but once the decent aged whiskey is in the open it's game over.
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.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I don't know if you have ANY formal education and/or training, but list any that you have. I have a lot of college, but no degree. I generally just list that as six years of college, and don't bother talking about a degree unless specifically asked. If they ask if I have a degree, I truthful answer, "Lots of education, but no actual degree."
I also bring up the training I have had, and try to tie it in to the job I am applying for. I was trained by the USAF as an Inventory Management Specialist, which ties in to the EDI work I am doing now, although the USAF never heard of EDI back in my day.
I'm an old fart too. Everything that you can relate to the work you are trying to get will help. Good luck.
If you want to be appreciated for your self taught skills try to find a place that will actually value them. I'm not sure where you're based, but in most cities there are a lot of tech startups, a "cheap" senior dev is always very appealing to companies that don't have everything figured out yet - which means they don't have a HR department acting as a barrier to you and the people that could evaluate your skill set. If you're looking for big money and benefits than tap your social network and try to get into places sideways, but if you're trying to add value somewhere that will appreciate the value and don't need that extra level of office sophistication startup's can be fun.
If you're good, you probably won't have to find another job - they'll find you. Everyone at the startup will end up somewhere else if the first venture failed - and they'll vouch for your abilities.
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".
Everything seems to revolve around college nowadays. Heck, there is a grocery store fifteen miles from here that won't hire anyone to wash dishes in the deli unless they have a COLLEGE degree.
1) Network
2) Get lucky
As a fellow grayhair who just recently switched jobs - sell what you got. Sell vision, dedication (You won’t be pulled away for screaming babies), experience, understanding of risk, that you've actually already done what they are trying to do (yes - research!). You are now less the doer and more the vizier. Most importantly, sell confidence, without it you're toast. Good luck
Getting a Degree with a Prior Learning Assessment (PLA) and a few part time online classes?
If you can do it outside the classroom why not do it as part of an official curriculum and get credit for it?
Learn more about PLA from :
... or Google like I did.
Wish you good success!
Education and background don't matter there. All you need is a GED, lie about your background a bit, and be willing to swear an oath to defend the USA with your pinkie behind your back so that you can leak secret documents to the Chinese,... Plan on relocating, though. Like, to Ecuador or Iceland, via, Hong Kong, Russia, or Cuba. And don't expect to see your family again. Or your smoking hot stripper girlfriend. Ever.
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.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
I have never seen the lack of the degree as an impediment to getting hired. I would say the majority of people I have worked with did not have a CS degree. I seriously doubt that this is why you are not getting hired. I would bet there is another reason.
Incompetent gatekeepers work for people on both sides of the gate.
..maybe it's you. Speaking as someone with ~20 years real experience and no formal education at all (HS dropout, even), I haven't had any trouble finding a good paying gig (W2 or 1099) since putting the first behind me, let alone getting an interview. So, I say, seek within for the answers. The "young guy" is bringing something to the table you're not, right out of the gate, and it's got nothing to do with his degree or your lack thereof.
If you think it's no accomplishment to have an impressive looking degree, then go get one. Night school if you must. Make sure you come out top of the class.
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.
Speaking as someone who has been there - easier said than done.
There are many many folks out there doing the same thing and more will be coming down the pike after that big IBM layoff. And with economy not getting much better, I expect more big layoffs in the near future - meaning a lot of unemployed tech workers looking for a way to make a living. I don't care how good you are, there are only many jobs out there.
Unless you can get your previous employer to hire you (doesn't apply in this case) getting the jobs is very difficult - especially without a track record.
Just networking and handing out business cards will land you nowhere. Folks will be polite and take your card but you'll never hear from them. You have to be a salesman and most techies are not good at that. Selling your skills to a hiring manager is complete different than selling your service to a business operator.
And starting a business takes money and risk. When you're older, risking one's savings or worse going into debt on a business is fool hardy. With 4 out of 5 businesses failing, more than likely he'll end up with nothing.
Government work,
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If you have the knowledge and skills, then certs are easy. Depending on the specialisation, you don’t generally need a 3yr degree – eg Microsoft MCPs, CCNA, etc which would go a long way to helping demonstrate your skill set. If certs aren’t an option, advertise your skills, eg a blog about the technical things you’ve discovered, or something else. As a recruiter, these would be these demonstrations of experience I’d look for in lieu of qualifications.
Buy a few people lunch. Network with people in the company you want to work for. Join their church. Coach their kids baseball team.
Get out of the man cave and mingle.
If you have Microsoft skills, Microsoft does not require degrees for coders in Redmond or for field reps (Windows server, active directory, exchange, sql server, sharepoint, etc) around the world. Management actively fights discrimination including age discrimination. The focus is on how well a person can do the job. http://careers.microsoft.com/
My advice is to be clear about your working experience and your depth of knowledge; honest, so to speak. All "audiophiles", music engineers, and even famous producers that I have known never went to college.
Maybe you are in the wrong location? It sounds like you need to hustle and network.
First suggestion: don't use words like "autodidact". Using 2-bit words makes you come across as either overcompensating for a weak resume or pretentious and potentially combative and/or non-cooperative team member.
I repaired computers for 7 years before getting a corporate job. I was the best of the best at it (and still am) yet without SDLC training and actual stories from actual IT workers turned college professors, I'd be doing a very bad job at my current job. I could still easily repair individual computers but the best practices and SDLC rules are everything. So I'm glad I got 2 degrees in IT. No matter how self taught you think you are, you're still not good enough for a corporate job without training.
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.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
Most of the younger developers want to work with the newer languages, and they want to create rather than maintain. Many companies struggle to find competent COBOL programers, largely for maintenance work. If you are as adept at self-learning as you imply, it should be an easy language to pick up. Check out this article currently posted on /.: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/06/25/1659247/join-cobols-next-generation
Good luck!
The world of achievement has always belonged to the optimist. -- J. Harold Wilkins
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've been full-time at the firm 15 months now.
Looking for a job is a full-time job, which includes research.
Also, if a degree is holding you back, get one online (as cheap as possible and as fast as possible). Showing on your resume that you are continuing your education toward a degree can positively influence the resume-filter guy in HR. (Put something like: Attending University XYZ, aiming for a B.S. in Information Systems.) Also, degree does not have to be absolutely related to your career; it's just needed for HR to check the box marked "4-year diploma".
Take any work you can get. You don't have to put it on your resume (there's no database of jobs people have had out there except in govt) if it's not related to your career.
To start your own business and if you don't have assets to protect, you just do work on invoice basis. File a schedule C when you do your taxes (turbotax etc, have that). Do report your income, and pay your taxes. It will be a hassle to find clients, but you can find them. Everybody has crappy computer systems that break. Establish trusted relationships with a few, and before you know it, by word of mouth, they will advertise for you. A word of warning: do not take on exploratory work. Do only what you have done in the past, successfully. It will be easier on everyone, and your reputation will be: gets the job done well and fast. Exploratory work should be considered part of your ongoing education. Any costs incurred there (books, computers, etc) can become a business cost and be deducted from your schedule C income.
I am not a lawyer, a tax professional, etc. Check local laws. etc.
"Piter, too, is dead."
I've worked with some older guys who were largely self taught, at least at first. What they all seemed to have in common (beside's confidence) was that they knew the boss. So much of getting hired is who you know, not what you know. Get out there and network, talk to people in the business. If you have such an impressive collection of work in your past (and published papers) then there must be plenty of people you know in your chosen field. Leverage that into getting a job.
Unlike many other disciplines, the computer industry allows individuals to create programs, frameworks, toolkits, technical documentation, etc. relatively easy. You don't need permission from some bureaucratic agency, certification from some professional group, or a 4-year degree to get started.
The web makes it trivial to publish. Social networks (such as Slashdot) make it possible to gain wide recognition, and if your target audience finds your work interesting and useful, you will receive inquiries.
You captured the attention of Slashdot, let's see your work. Is it good?
I, too, am an older guy. No formal education, but plenty of accomplishments. I, too, cannot get past the screening process.
I sincerely believe the issue is a lack of a degree coupled with "...he has xx years experience but no degree? There's something wrong here."
The younger peeps may discover this situation when they get older. For their sake, I hope not. This sucks.
If you're really desperate, why not fake a generic degree from some remote and obscure overseas college? Chances are, it won't be checked. Once you've established yourself in the new job, do some brilliant work that makes it hard for them to dismiss you if the fraud is discovered. But only do this if you're about to have your home foreclosed.
You dont need certs... I have dyslexia so i find formal qualifications hard (believe me I've tried), but still manage to do VERY well.
Lie
As a young(er) auto-didact myself, who is deeply involved in the hiring process at my current company, I can say with a great deal of certainty that (in Silicon Valley at least) your degree matters almost not at all. It's usually the last thing anyone puts on their resume, as well as the last thing I read. I'm wayyy more interested in what you've been doing for the last few years of your career.
Hiring is (again, in the Silicon Valley at least, for all of the companies I know of) meritocratous. This isn't because anyone cares about being fair; it's because we need to hire people who can get the job done, and there's just not enough of those people floating around that we can get picky about their alma matter and degree from years ago.
So if you're not getting the job, blame it on the fact that your interviewer didn't like the answer you gave on when to comment, how much to unit test, or how many pounds of hair America generates. Or maybe blame it on the type of programming you do (here's a hint: learn Javascript!) *Maybe* blame it on your gray hair (although, just speaking for myself, I'm *looking* for programmers with experience; I keep finding young college guys instead). But don't blame it on your self-learning, because nobody cares how you know what you know, they just care what you know.
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 active, social, and ambitious, in the right way. Create your own projects, team up, work hard. Target smaller companies that may be more flexible about their hiring practices.
Previous accomplishments are not necessarily a proof of anything, the problem is that everyone can boast about their accomplishments, so nobody pays attention to them if they don't know you, but school grades are official and considered "objective". So, your accomplishments only matter to people who know about them - mainly your network.
Of course, you must be able to develop yourself to the tip of your field. You need to show that you have experience about the field - perhaps write a professional blog, or something, be social. Younger people often have more ambition than us older guys, and you have to rebuild that ambition in yourself, even though I know it can be hard. Be proactive, smart, and develop something bright.
'nuf of pep talk. More booze, sleep.
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 before you came to me, so work experience is important. We *will* check if you can program and what approach you take to solving the type of problems we have via multiple interviews on the same day, so if you really can't program, then you will be found out. Also, we place a lot of weight on recommendations, so if you have worked with others on a team and they vouch for you, that will help a lot. Finally, if you are a jerk personality-wise, then we won't want you. Having been burnt more that once by hiring people with serious personality issues it's one of my top things I try to weed out at interview. Finally, a good agency might help you - they take a nasty cut, but push their employees.
I am a software engineer who graduated with a CS degree in 2004. I have almost 9 years of experience. I think experience is essential. I know I am certainly a lot more productive now than I was after I graduated.
I will say however that I see the rationale for hiring new grads over old gray haired guys with lots of experience especially if when they are self taught. I may have been inexperienced when I was first hired, but I was willing to take less pay and I was very easily molded. Not every new grad is intelligent, but that's what interviews are for. A lot of the older people with 30 or 40+ years of experience are pretty set in their ways. They don't like learning new technologies or methodologies. They tend to find ways to do things their own way regardless of what they are told to do.
I am fairly sure that I am going to be like that when I get to be in my 50's and 60's. I can already feel myself being more stubborn about certain things. I feel fortunate that I had a good background on CS theory. I feel like if my mind becomes closed to new ideas I might be able to last for a while on a good foundation, not that I plan to let that happen. I don't know how hard it will be to learn/appreciate new technologies/ideas when I get older. I guess I will find out when I get there.
I don't know how open you are to getting a formal education, but I can't recommend it enough. I have seen a lot of new grads who are pretty inept. I have seen lots of schools and teachers that do a pretty terrible job of teaching subject matter. But when you get the education just right, it can really work miracles to improve your understanding and productivity. I don;t know how old you need to get before it stops being worth it to get a good education, but I suspect it's older than people think. If you actually enjoy learning I would say you should definitely do it. What's the downside? I watch youtube videos of college lectures in my spare time. I find it extremely fascinating, and I am addicted to the sense of power that comes with knowledge.
I don't think being self taught precludes you from getting a formal education. If you don't need a degree you don't even need to spend any money. You can witness all the same lectures as an MIT or Standford student online. I hope that when I am older, I can keep my sense of curiosity and my desire to learn.
The best way to get a job is to be useful. I am not so great with resumes, and I am not a good salesman, but I do know what I am talking about, and I am confident in my abilities. I always do really well in interviews when I can manage to get them. I can't imagine trying to do the things I do if I had tried to teach myself everything.
If you're set on working for someone else and not your own business.... find a subject you like and study, study, study, certify. Not just paper cert, build it, break it, fix it over and over. Whatever "it" is. Be the expert in that nitch and prove it to whom ever you contact. Our own company has been crying for good database and project manager resources and hiring no matter the age. I've worked with talent from age 24-64
I'd ask a large group of people who think they know everything, but don't; and are not in the same position as me.
Are you good? how do you know? Have you self-taught yourself actual experience? Be somebody's apprentice and work on contracts for a bit, you need some experience to go with that knowledge.
You are a non-traditional candidate. You don't fit neatly into the application fields. How do you show that you can benefit the company more than the other candidates?
1) A fellow I know is an older non-traditional candidate. It took longer, but he got a job with a small company. Lesson: find a company with a less mechanical hiring process in which if you don't check box N, they won't submit your application to the hiring managers.
2) Physical job fairs: HR or even hiring managers look at your resume and you here. Structure your resume so your most impressive attributes are at the top.
3) Success in previous jobs seems like a good indicator of ability.
Tune and retune that resume. Give it to friends - but you are the final arbiter. I've had people I know and like give me utterly moronic resume advice. If I hear a consistent theme though, I'll likely address that recurrent theme.
Resume: Imagine you're on the other side of the desk and you've spent your days looking through stacks of resumes. Pretend that's your job - human resources. Their job and bonuses are based on how well they fill positions. So... why on earth would they want to take a chance on you? Have your resume answer that question. If an HR type provides bad candidates to the hiring manager, he'll get blowback.
I've seen the non-traditional candidate succeed but it took longer.
1) Someone else mentioned that SysAdmin is now spelled "Systems Engineer." This is absolute truth - I updated my resume and changed my current title from System Administrator to Systems Engineer, and immediately started getting on average 2-3 calls/emails per week. I think I also put "Sr." in front of it. If in doubt, the determining factor between Jr. and Sr. is "do you ask people questions, or do people ask questions of you?" If your peers are always coming to you for help/advice, you're a Sr. If you're always having to go ask for help from your peers, you're a Jr.
2) Be willing to accept contract / contract-to-hire jobs. Even though I'm currently in a full-time position, it seems the contract / CTH gig is by far the easiest way in the door at a couple companies. And while the job market is fairly tight with a lot of applicants, there are a lot of people who have NO CLUE applying for (and getting) these jobs. If you really know your stuff and can prove yourself, you can go from contract to full-time pretty easily.
3) Network. It's a buzz-word, I know, but get out, get to know people, do favors for people, etc. The more people you know, the easier it is to get in the door. It sucks, but it's the truth. Every job I've held, I've gotten because of people I know. I had one offer once that came as a result of a resume posted to Monster, which I ended up not taking (that one was Amazon), but the jobs I've actually held were due to references from people I knew.
Good luck.
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.
I'm also a self taught programmer and ive been working as a developer for 5 or 6 years, though i'm not old and this was my first job (we'll not the actual).
Some suggestions from my own limited experience:
**Lie!!** Find out what they need, add it to your CV and then study it for the exams and interviews. This is a great way to learn new things.
Find out what's the latest hipe, say you know it, and then learn it. (some fancy library or framework)
Freelance experience, cite your freelance works as previous experience, Bob Software (2010-1012)
But dunno maybe it's just that in argentina there's more demand for coders, maybe reasearch which language is the most wanted.
Nothing is more useless than what you learn in college, how many of you ever had to write a bubble sort for a real app? seriously.
Not everybody is in a position to move hundreds of miles for a job for one reason or another, and someone may be stuck in an area where all gatekeepers are incompetent.
I was in the exact same position a few years ago. I was 37, balding, and going grey fast with 3 years of a computer science degree from the early 90s. I know what I did was rare, and it sure as hell wasn't easy, but I went back and got a degree in finance. It wasn't my original intent, but it's where I ended up. I was hired by a tier 1 mobile carrier as a project manager in January, and I graduated this May Cum Laude. The reason I was hired was my 20 years of experience in IT. The degree got me in the door. Give yourself some credit. Being old(er) is a good thing when it compares to a lot of kids coming out today. I know...easier said than done.
Shave your head, problem solved?
Seriously. Write some code, publish it on Github. Spin up a single serving web page, does one interesting thing as soon as you arrive. Remember, everyone else with resumes could be pretending, you're actually doing stuff.
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!
Or maybe your curriculum vitae isn't is impressive as you think it is.
At least in the US, I've found that only a small minority of companies consider education a real requirement. Most listings require "Bachelor's / Master's degree or equivalent experience." I'm over 50 and still on an active technical track. My education is a GED. I don't have trouble getting in the door. My resume doesn't mention education; if an application asks for it I tell them. If I think it might be an issue because the listing says "degree required" and doesn't mention "or equivalent experience" I'll raise it up front and just ask if my thirty years of professional experience (I only keep the last 15 or so on my resume usually) counts for more than whether / if I have a degree. The companies that do consider education a requirement for someone with impressive accomplishments and skills are probably not places you'd want to work for. Headhunters and corporate recruiters can't do much more than match keywords usually, so if your skill set is up to date and you can leverage your experience by being a really good generalist I think it goes a long way. Europe and Asia are a different ballgame altogether, but in the US experience still counts for far more than anything else, especially in technology. Just look for the companies that want people who can do things and show them that's who you are...
Lie, lie, lie. No one checks references. And even if you 1 out of 10 do check, you'll end up getting rejected because they checked only from that one place.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I'm in almost exactly the same position as you. A self-taught 20 year veteran of the software industry with no formal training and no degree. I currently work at Amazon.com and was hired on despite no professional experience in the language in which I'd primarily be developing as an SDE II. This is because Amazon's hiring policies focus on skills, not resume buzzwords or certifications or degrees.
The great thing is that recruiters know this and if you have Amazon on your profile on Linkedin or Stack Overflow, you don't have a problem getting a foot in the door.
A great number of the job openings where I work only require "Bachelor's degree in CS/Comp.E or equivalent experience", i.e. a degree is not actually required. Is this not common in the industry?
Perhaps starting your own business is the route. Yes its hard, but other businesses many times see the business not the person in the business. And it may be better because you are older so you have a more refined point.
()-()
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.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I hire staff on contract once in a while. As a small business I can not afford to stuff up the hire. So I make sure I get to know the applicant and there is no way I leave that in the hands of some "Expert"
Large cooperates are like government. Riddled by policy and ass covering. go for small businesses where you get to talk to the owner and sell yourself.
If I know somebody good, I can easily get them past the screening and into interviews (but there you're on your own). Once you have the connections, you can let your skills shine.
Get a portfolio together. Make some startup apps/concepts. Even if htey don't sell if you can point to your creation and go "this was me" it helps tremendously.
Ask for a programming exercise in the interview. Id hire you if you knew what you were doing.
I work with a 62 year old sw engineer that just got into MVC , jquery and etc last year. He also does bodybuilding 5 days a week. Dont give up
On my CV I simply put all the things I know, past work experience, and relevant information. I cram it into two pages. I supply no education experience on the CV.
When I get calls, and they ask about education, I simply say (jokingly) "If I HAD gone to university for computer sciences after high school, none of what I learned then would be any use now. I've thought about going back to school to get a degree to prove I can work the job, but I've been too busy actually working the job to spare the time."
Most of the places I'd like to work understand this and I get passed on to the director of the department.
There was only one time where I felt the lack of formal education lost me the job, but in that particular case, I didn't care. After meeting the staff during the interview, I was hoping they wouldn't call me.
My studio - www.graylands.ca
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.
If you lie in an interview, you know you are working for a fool who hires liars. Who knows who lied even more than you to work there?
You won't find out until there' s real work to be done well and nobody has any idea how to do it.
Find a large tech company that hires contractors. Get hired as a contractor. Work your ass off and show them you know more than any of the youngsters. Get them to convert you to full time real employee.
Worked for me. Now I get to play with cool toys from the future.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
Young punks with impressive degrees thar can't wipe their own butt!
You just described the hiring practices at DHS!
Reframe your "Sales Collateral", aka resume, social network presence, blogs, etc. to demonstrate you can solve THEIR problems. Use your grey hair for leverage, rather than be discouraged by it.
-- Jimtown Kelly
Often a company is looking for some specific skills or experience and this is often described in the job listing or can be inferred from the product or services the company provides.
If the job listing mentions Linux, you better have lots of stuff on your resume about Linux. If the company makes network products you better have lots of stuff indicating networking knowledge.
When you come into the interview you should review these topics, if you need to learn a new programming language or subject matter, do it, and even it was obvious you just learned it for the job it would reflect very well that you have the aptitude to learn the skills you need to contribute.
Assuming you actually have an interest in what the company does, demonstrate that, learn about their products before you come into the interview. Demonstrate your curiosity by asking questions about things you don't understand about the products.
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.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
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.
I had to teach myself cause I couldn't find a course on being and old guy.
they don't send H1-B applicant's home after their visas expire. So while there's only suppose to be about 60,000 here there's more like 3 times that. And they want to bump the minimum to 300,000. Try to imagine close to 1 million new tech workers hitting the job market in 3 years...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Having worked my way up from a Wafer Probe Operator (Semiconductor Industry) to just under a Staff Scientist without a degree I can agree it is getting harder these days. For the most part, as a programmer, not having a degree hasn't held me back too much but there are certain cultures where if you don't have your piece of paper they won't even talk to you. When I was first promoted to be an Engineer my boss said "We all have 98.6 degrees, show me what you can do". I wonder what use a degree I would have received in 1979 would be today. Other than a check on a form.
Education is about proving you can put up with the bullshit AND do what is necessary. You have proven none of these.
If you simply had a quality piece of OSS on the internets you wouldn't be here. But you don't, because you can't.
Yes the grass is greener, but you are unworthy.
I understand your frustration, but I also understand why you're getting stonewalled. I'm also getting into the grey-haired part of life myself, so I am somewhat sympathetic, too.
That being said, here are some blunt observations:
1. The problem with autodidactism is that it is always self-proclaimed (read: subjective). The person screening you is, to some degree, accountable for whether or not you end up sucking. So part of your challenge is that these hiring managers are just playing the C.Y.A. game, and without a degree to "prove" you're educated the ONLY thing you can bring to the table is what's listed on your resume. Which brings me to #2...
2. In my opinion (and first-hand experience), the resume has long since ceased to be reliable as a measure of a person's accomplishments. These days, the overwhelming majority of candidates I interview cannot *possibly* have accomplished what they allege on their resumes - it's frustratingly obvious within minutes of beginning the interview. The unfortunate reality is that accomplishments listed on resumes are seldom the whole truth (e.g. there's an obviously huge - and unethical - difference between the resume CLAIM "Designed and developed the fixed-priority pre-emptive task scheduling subsystem for an embedded microprocessor" and the REALITY "Well, um... I was responsible for running the automated script that tested the algorithm the developers wrote. What? No, I didn't actually write the script itself, either. But I was on the team, I swear!" Great, thanks for wasting my time.)
3. Because of #1 and #2, the proving ground can only be the actual interview itself. Heck, even with references, many companies "forbid" current employees from doing anything other than confirming whether or not the candidate was employed during the stated timeframe.
But you're stuck between a rock and a hard place because the only way to *get* to the interview, as you've noticed, is to get past the hiring manager and screeners. And, well... they're gonna play C.Y.A. and immediately filter out candidates who don't have the formal education AND the impressive resume.
So what to do? Well, I gave you some blunt observations, now here's some blunt advice:
1. Get some formal education. (read: "Learn to play the game.")
Seriously. I don't mean you need to enroll in a 4-year university and live the dorm life :) All this time you've spent autodidacting, and yet you never put 2+2 together and realized that the lack of SOMETHING formal could be a long-term detriment?
Some people will argue that a degree is "just a piece of paper." Well, so is a resume. But the degree can be verified, and demonstrates that (a) you are able to make and meet a commitment, and (b) that what you know is at least somewhat predictable/reliable (i.e. you followed a curriculum, which was reviewed by an education board, approved, accredited instructors were hired, etc.). THAT is the value of a degree. The resume of an autodidact, however impressive, doesn't have that value. (But just to be clear: no, a degree itself doesn't mean you don't suck. See #3 above.)
Other people will argue the (rising) cost of education. Bullsh!t. I've taken numerous college and university courses over the span of a 15-year career, and NOT ONCE did I pay for it myself. Did you ever check your former employers' continuing education reimbursement policies? And even if I'd had to pay for my coursework out of pocket, there are plenty of financial aid packages and scholarship opportunities available to those who have the motivation to look.
IMO the hard truth is this: not having ANY formal education whatsoever is a choice that you make, a chance that you take. Sometimes it works out, often it doesn't. Want to make your hassles non-existent? Then go get a certificate, or an associate degree, or SOMETHING. That'll get you past the hiring managers and screeners, and then you'll have your chance to impress the interviewers.
If you're looking for a quick fix, though
Read "How to win friends and influence people". The book is older than you and has been studied by many great men. This is a "manual" on human interaction, something us "geeks" can use, to present ourselves in the best light. Are you applying for suitable "high level" jobs? If you are a certified "grey beard", but are applying for entry level positions, then forget it. By definition you are the wrong person. You need to put yourself in the position of the hiring manager and see how your 6-digit salary will actually save them money. Second, most of my auto-didactic friends are consultants who have found a niche: cobol, mainframes, pdp-11/vax, as-400, etc. All based on resume, reputation (i.e. recommendations), and word-of-mouth. Old computing niches aren't sexy, but they are desperately needed and pay the bills. Once you get your first gig, if you present yourself well (see book above), then others follow. I don't know your niche ... but there are hundreds of business out there that are willing to pay thousands of dollars for you to fix their problem.
I'm sure this will get blasted...but it's true.
Yes there are some companies out there who don't care about certs, but in order to get past most HR departments, you need something.
Certs will do it.
Especially, Cisco, Red Hat and security focused certs.
After that, the technical interview is all on you.
1. Your own business. (I'm doing this)
2. Get yourself a rep on the internet. Do something for an open source project for example. Option 1 can be supported by this as well
You probably need to take a serious look at your resume. Even as an 'old guy' with plenty of great experience you need to have a two page resume. Update to a modern template and spend some time honing the message to target the job you want. Hiring managers understand that you have more under your belt than could fit on your resume so don't sweat what you can't fit.
Focus on results. Use the space wisely. Don't get disappointed when you don't get an interview for a job that emphatically states the need for a degree. If their culture does not allow for someone in your shoes you probably wouldn't be happy there anyway. There are senior level technical jobs that will accept experience in lieu of a degree. Look for them.
Also, don't be afraid of selling yourself. Don't lie, never lie. But do use compelling language to indicate that you get the job done right and under budget.
Finally, create a cover letter specifically for every application, especially if the jobs sounds like one you really want. Forget about the resume in the cover letter. Use 2-3 paragraphs to call attention to the specific experience and results that apply directly to the job. Come off as confident but not cocky. Remember, you are the experienced professional.
This may or may not be happening to you, but you may be a victim of equal employment opportunity (EEO) issues.
If a hiring manager directs HR that a certain credential (e.g., a college degree) is "required" then HR will use that as a filter on the proverbial pile of resumes they have sitting on their desk. Regardless of how good you are, if HR lets the hiring manager see your resume and doesn't also let the hiring manager see the resumes of all the other applicants who don't have a college degree then HR can be exposed to an EEO lawsuit.
The scenario goes like this:
You are applying for an IT job at a company that also employs skilled labor (e.g., mechanics, machinists, etc.). Mike the mechanic is an internal candidate that applies for the same job because he figures that sitting in front of a computer all day isn't "real work" and must be easy. The job requires a college degree, but HR sees that you're a self taught IT guy and goes ahead and passes along your resume to the hiring manager. HR passes on Mike's resume because he probably doesn't know anything about computers and smells like motor oil.
You get hired and Mike catches wind that his resume never even reached the hiring manager's desk. Mike lawyers up and sues the bejebus out of the company because he wasn't given the same opportunity to demonstrate his skills.
Networking.
My company is hiring like mad... we have target numbers that are unattainable by our recruiting department, and nonetheless, they reject candidates such as yourself, despite technical staff's desperate desire to speak to you.
In our case -- and I imagine, most cases -- the way through them is around them. Network, and make contact with someone on the inside. Then let us ram you down recruiting's throats. It works if we care enough -- and if we think you're someone we want to work with, we care enough.
We're out there, at user's group meetings, hack nights, you name it. Seek us out. Screw recruiting.
As someone who sits in a lot of interviews and makes hiring recommendations, I find polished, personal side projects very compelling. If you have a recent tech project that you started on your own, for your own benefit or amusement, that demonstrates multiple technical proficiencies, then I start paying closer attention. When it's just your project, I know that you aren't trying to take credit for someone else's work, and anything cool or impressive in the project proves your initiative and value.
Why in Hell are we being subjected to yet another "How do I get a job" post? Forget your age. Forget whether you're self-taught or not. Skip Slashdot, learn how to write a resume, learn how to efficiently search for jobs, learn how to interview, learn how to handle rejection, and land a stinking job. Not the perfect job? Repeat the previous actions after having taken a less-than-ideal, but sufficiently-paying, job.
No, really. Be honest with yourself about why you don't have a degree. An impressive degree is an accomplishment that takes hard work, commitment, and time. Don't let your pride fool you into thinking you have nothing to learn. Don't let your wallet fool you into thinking you can't afford it. And most of all, don't let your lack of a degree be an excuse.
Get your resume together and create a LinkedIn account. Post the relevant details and start sending out connection invitations to the people you know in the industry. Emphasize your skills over education. Trust me, you'll have 100 connections in no time. Then the recruiters will start to find you. They troll through LinkedIn all the time looking for keyword skill matches. Sure, some of them are bottom feeders but others can help you.
Short answer is to use your networking skills. Having a degree is great for getting your foot in the door but eventually you've got to be able to get shit done. When you get shit done, people notice. When people notice, you begin to build a reputation. Once you build a reputation, you don't call them...they call you.
Equally important are your interviewing skills. Managers are typically "Type A" personalities and are drawn to people like them. If you're not a Type A then learn how to pretend you are one in a interview. Don't be afraid to toot your own horn. Be confident and impress them with your skills. You don't have to kiss anyone's ass but leave them with the impression that you're a cool guy and someone they would want to work with. It goes a long way.
The easiest way is to have someone you've worked with put in a word for you, but seriously, use a job site. I haven't touched Dice in 5 years, and I *still* get emails from recruiters via that site every damn week (I can't even figure out how to pull my resume from it). HOWEVER, make damn sure you can ace the tech screen and interview. Nothing is more pathetic than a middle-aged developer who doesn't know squat in a face-to-face; and for God's sake show enthusiasm and confidence. If that means going on a ton of failed interviews to get practice (and see what kind of questions you'll get - and they tend to get repetitive after a while), do it.
You have hit the nail on the head. They are looking for someone with a degree or some other qualification. Go back to school, get a degree. This will get you past 98% of the useless HR filtering.
I recently gained some insight into the hiring practices where I work. They scan resumes for key words. "Ohhh.. no BSc... DELETED!"
You would be amazed at the number of candidates I have to sift through with degrees from unaccredited universities and colleges simply because HR saw those three magic letters that met the criteria to be forwarded to the next stage of the process.
If you think for a second that this is going to get better, you're dead wrong. Look at LinkedIn[1]. You can specify what level of education your ads are targeted for. Only want post-grads to see an advertisement on Facebook? Easy.
If you want to play this game, you need to work within their rules or find weaknesses in their rules (such as unaccredited universities). (Incidentally, this is now something that I check for - have I at least *heard* of their university?)
If you really have a wealth of experience, it will be trivial for you to challenge a bunch of courses at your local university. Screw paying full tuition. Show up, pay a quarter of the cost, write the exams, get the grade, eventually get the degree. This can be done part time so that you can keep whatever job you currently have.
If you start taking classes as a mature student, you will understand classroom politics and processes *FAR* better than someone who arrived fresh out of high school. Do what I did when I went back after a decade for my masters. Sit in the front row. Ask questions. Shape the class to YOUR needs - hell, you're the one paying for it, not mom and dad. Get your money's worth.
In the end this is your career and your education. You might find some insight on the Internet, but it's generally a horrible place to go for advice. Nobody online will ever care about your circumstances as much as you do. Put a plan together. Ask for feedback from your peers and mentors. Make a decision. Act on it.
Good luck.
[1] http://www.linkedin.com/company/linkedin/linkedin-talent-finder-3437/product
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?
The fast food industry is pretty good for uneducated geezers who can hardly be considered technically proficient, such as yourself. Let me guess, you list FORTRAN and COBOL as your only programming languages and expect to be taken seriously as a programmer or something?
I have a fantastic job at a Silicon Valley company; never finished college. And we're hiring like mad. Feel free to send me a resume (I'm a hiring manager, but I also know all the other hiring managers :) ).
Why not lie about a degree? Seems that everybody and their mama lies about everything, including the President and the Congress. If your are better than a degree holder, then you should have no remorse and think of it as a favor to the HR person that will grant your interview.
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.
Take your foot out of the doors of others and beat your own path. Wake up call, create a business instead of running or improving or operating those of others.
I'd suggest getting one of the bigger certifications, like a CCNA. My CCNA is lapsed, and has been for a decade now, but I put "former CCNA" on my resume, and it seems to trigger whatever resume-scanning apps the larger corporations are using. I've done IT for some small shops, where it was a matter of knowing someone who knew someone, and some larger shops, where it's a matter of the software triggering on "CCNA" and handing it off to a live person. And once the recruiter comes calling with phone and in-person interview opportunities, it's what you know, not how formal a setting you learned it in.
--
www.nitemarecafe.com
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.
Without some form of visible results people have nothing to trust but your word, while formal qualifications are there to state that you have somebody else's word to vouch for you. That means without formal qualifications you have to find another way to inspire trust.
That may mean working for people that trust you for other reasons or working for charity so that other people will see that you can do what you say you can and will give you a reference. Another is to start your own thing, get people to notice it, and build up a reputation.
That way our species will self-select the thoughtless!
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Have you considered applying to Google? For technical positions nobody looks at your degrees. Having "papers and accomplishments" should get you past the HR people and get you started with the real process. If you show you're good during three phone screens and five onsite interviews, you're in. There are no brain-teasers or tech trivia questions - despite whatever you may hear from uninformed bloggers who don't know what they're talking about. It doesn't depend on having rapport with a "hiring manager" - there's no such thing. The process is extremely fair. It's only about you and your abilities.
Don't want to work for Google? Seriously? I call sour grapes. It's an awesome place to work.
Source: I work at Google. I participate in the interview process, as does everyone else. The workplace and benefits are fucking awesome. No, I'm not 20, I'm in my mid thirties. No, I don't "live in the office", I work for 8 hours and go home to my wife and my hobbies. Yes, my career is advancing pretty well even under that conditions.
whatever reason you claim... if you believe you shouldn't reproduce, then you are probably right.
I, too, am a HS dropout with good career from just about every field of "IT"; HW, drivers, middleware, web technologies, Android, iOS. But then I was offered a job (currently consultant) of totally different technologies: .NET, ADO, authentication, etc., just about every topic found in the book C# 2012 and .NET 4.5 (1600 pages). Bad luck but no amount of explaining to the HR will help me (they see the education level). Being of "old age" means I unfortunately can't compete in spare time (I've studied these books in the past when I was younger). And the older guy will always be slower when compared to experienced young people (who have the skills of that particular field).
So one mistake and you're out of the game. My career was over in one week when the client detected I did not have the same skills as a +10 year .NET experience guys they already had. Select your career path wisely and avoid mistakes. The economy is bad and the companies can hire the guys with 10+ years of experience from a specified field. The client won't pay for "fast learners". Education helps but not necessarily. One bad side step and you are out of the game.
You can do that in Malta, and it's free to boot if you're from the EU..
You really should get some qualifications. An alternative is to do a diploma course if you wish to do something with less effort, or start off with the diploma course and then move to the University Course.
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"Traditional hiring processes seem to revolve around the education and degrees one holds, not one's track record and accomplishments."
Hate to break it to you -- but the education and degrees you hold *are* a record of accomplishment. Don't like people dismissing your hard work? Try not dismissing theirs.
Simple .... you lie. You don't lie about your accomplishments or your capabilities but you exaggerate the details.
You manage to get a front page story on Slashdot about your problems in finding work, and there is no link to your CV? Nothing I can find via Googling your slashdot account name. No link to your email address. You just missed a world-class opportunity to get your name and skill-set in front of millions of eyeballs.
It's not necessarily about having skills or not but the "or equivalent experience" is missing from the applications because there are so many people available with degrees. It's about having an investment (from government/state/whatever) and about the company crediting this investment. I know positions (manual labor) where the job doesn't require qualifications but only people with degrees will be hired. It is about valuing certain age group and giving this age group the possibility to fund their studies (by manual labor). Older people are not hired because a) they don't need money (they have savings), b) they are probably slower or lack physical fitness for manual labor.
Everyone is so terrified of a discrimination lawsuit that generally, you're never going to get a call telling you that you did not get the job let alone any feedback whatsoever from the interviewer.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
I would look at small businesses, school districts, city government offices, etc. They won't pay as much, but city government IT jobs can be stable and long-term.
In the business area I work, experience trumps education. We are not even looking at education history when browsing CVs. But it is a work requiring a lot of dedication, long hours and a lot of stress and I have serious doubts that anybody over 50 or so is getting hired on 'grunt' level (it will be different in upper management). Obviously, it is not allowed to discriminate based on age - but lack of degree might give a proper _excuse_ to reject a candidate.
So, real problem is probably that "jobs always seem to go to the *younger* guys with impressive degrees".
As other people suggested, start own small business, start selling your skills as a company, not as a worker - at this point age doesn't matter anymore.
See it as a plus. You're screening out the people who don't think too much - why do you want to work for them?
David Anderson
Put down some respectable but less known school that no one would lie about going to.
Unfortunately they get really pissy over the degrees. Two masters degrees (Math and CS) and they still call me undereducated because I don't have a doctorate. Whatever.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
At your level, you should NOT work backwards... I mean, it's time to SHIFT your direction...
you should NOT be looking for "jobs"...
you should be looking at innovating things....
i know this sounds too idealistic... but hey, without dreamers (and actuators...) we will not be exchanging thoughts online at this point...
Given your experience and expertise... why not STEP UP? make yourself useful in a WHOLE DIFFERENT LEVEL? don't go backwards....
innovate.. innovate.. innovate...
Hey, it's cool that you feel comfortable enough with yourself that you can announce that you're an autodidact, but what you do in your personal time in the bedroom has little to do with work (unless you plan on autodidacting at work which is against most company policies).
we hired a grey haired programmer that never finished his degree. In fact, his education never came up in the interview. It wasn't until several years later that I found out he hadn't finished school. I just assumed he didn't put college on his resume because it was 30 years ago and his degree may not have been computer science/discrete math. His decades of experience working on a commercial Unix and C++ compiler are what made him stand out, and he has been awesome.
But why should they hire you.
That's the problem with u old farts. U can't move over and let someone else have a chance. & what makes you think you deserve to take someone else's start out in life... Jees, and even whine about it .. double sheesh.
I have no official qualification, I don't even have high school nor English education(I shouldn't be able to write this post on paper). I'm currently the technical director of a game company and I have almost 20 yeas of experience(I started at 20). I've been contacted by several major companies(Microsoft, Google, EA etc...) so is not matter of company size. Personally, when looking for new tech people I barely glance at an applicant education, in fact if the guy rants 2 page about degrees is probably because that's all he has. If you have skills, they will look at you. Personal projects are much more impressive than a fancy diploma. The game industry must be a bit more loose on the school thing but I started my career in telecom and they also didn't seem to care much. Everybody with some tech experience knows that there is very little value to university if you don't do anything of your own time. Of course if you are being interviewed by a "manager" he will look at your school, but that most likely is a junior position that doesn't really require much knowledge otherwise it would be a tech guy doing the searching. That is based on my experience.
I got laid off in January, 2013 - for reasons that still defy any sense of logic. I work in the "embedded" world, a closer knit sort of group. Been doing this 30 years (so yea, I fit the "Old Guy (TM)" bill). Difference for me is that I do have a degree, lots of experience at different companies (big and small). I was fortunate to land a job where they were looking for the "experienced" guy - since most of the company is made up of younger folks ( most all 10 years away from retirement, this was a good fit, for many reasons, plus it gives me an opportunity to share my experience with the younger crowd, who did not live throught the "computer revolution" that I did. Starting with Mainframes in the last 70's, to the birth fo the PC - MS-DOS - AppleII - MAC, to the explosion of the embedded space where the 4/8 bitters are now all going to Cortex M0/M3/M4 or CPU-in-an-FPGA approach. Most don't know much about "bare metal" programming (we bit-bangers unite!) or even much about what an RTOS is. And I even get to learn from then some new stuff.
It is possible to find a good job, but as many have said: Network - Connections - that's the key.
Most of the "self-taught" old guys I've worked with in this business are complete idiots. They write code that is difficult, if not impossible to follow. They never write comments and they never document their work. They are self-centered, egotistical, and insecure, and jealously cloak their knowledge in secrecy, even from their superiors. They also prate on endlessly about their "accomplishments", which are impressive only to the technically illiterate and gullible. I've spent a lot of my career cleaning up their messes. You may be the one-in-a-million exception to the rule, but it is understandable why employers would pass on you.
I started in ISP/Systems work in high school back in the 90's dot com era when it was fashionable to hire kids to do IT. I never got a CIS/EE degree. I actually studied to be a chef, but I went back to IT for the easier lifestyle and better money. I've done Dev/QA for most of my career, but I recently gave IT Recruiting a shot, because I was interested in moving to sales engineer work for higher earnings potential. I lasted six months. Now I'm going back to development. Recruiting did give me a look behind the curtain of hiring in IT though, and these are some things I learned and some advice for the poster.
You want to do whatever you can to get an interview, phone first if possible. Once you're in the interview stage, it's 90% personality. Many, many times I've seen guys that were weak on the skill set beat out guys that were stronger technically because of personality. If you have a shitty personality.. Maybe you'll get lucky and be up against other guys that aren't fun to talk to. (PS: if you have a sense of angry entitlement and are really cocky about your skills, chances are you're irritating to most people. stop and be honest with yourself for a moment about that. PPS: if you walk out of an interview thinking you killed it, chances are you bombed.)
Not having a degree can be a real hinderance. It really depends on the the company's policies, or the hiring manager personally. At a basic level they want assurance that you understand the fundamentals, but mainly it's that the manager him/herself is proud of and values their own education. If they're the type that will name drop the school they went to, wear a class ring, and give a shit about school rivalries, you're in trouble. On the other hand, I met many Directors of IT, CTO's and CIO's that never achieved a degree and have had impressive careers. Those are the hiring managers you want to be on the other end of your job application because they focus on projects and achievements.
Age discrimination is real. You'll hear things like "too senior" or "we're looking for someone more jr, 3-5 years out of college." Which is pretty clear, but couched in just enough legitimate reasons connected to compensation, team dynamics, and being maleable to the lead's methods/style to not be discriminatory. Some managers just aren't comfortable having someone significantly older than them as a subordinate. Maybe they have a team of 5 developers already, all in their 20's and early 30's, and they have to think about their comfort level on the team. You'll hear "culture fit" which is another term that already sounds a little iffy, but is couched in some legitimacy. If a company sees itself as a hip, jeans and t-shirt, startup type environment working with cutting edge technology, they try to sell that to attract development talent. It doesn't help the sale when there's an older guy that would be their peer that dresses like their dad who cut his teeth on Cobol. You might consider approaching larger more established companies.
My advice is only keep 15 years worth of relevant work history on your resume. If you worked at a movie theater in high school, how is that going to help you get a programming job? If it was also 1982, well you're just dating yourself for an HR gatekeeper. Most managers are only interested in the top 2 job/project entries anyway and whether the experience listed there is applicable to the job they're hiring for. Make sure those entries speak to hands on experience with the main technologies they're using in the job description.
To hiring managers: one thing managers/companies hate is job hoppers. You don't want to invest a lot in an employee only to have him leave after a year. Older workers want stability too. They're looking at their retirement portfolios and looking at how much they can earn to reach the finish line. If the compensation is good, and the environment is fun/positive, they're looking for a job they can stick with until they retire. That kind of loyalty is a great ROI.
is that you? http://www.userfriendly.org/cartoons/sid/
I'm in a similar boat. The crux of the problem, I believe, is that prospective employers aren't as concerned with what you have done as with what you will do. Toward that end I would suggest you generate new creative output. Post tutorials, engage in fora and such; show that you are still active and committed to productive engagement.
Before I even start, the #1 key is people skills. People tend to hire those that they emotionally connect with.
I'm one of those self taught people that you are talking about and I have absoulty no problem getting interviews or getting past the so called 'formal education barrier'. I've been working solid since I was 16 years old doing some form of computer related work, when I was 16 in HS I was hired to a college internship position to do some shell scripting work (16 being back in 1995) and some C like development (The SW package had custom development API's that were based on AMPLE which is sort of C like, and all of the engineers were EE's and someone with even a little programming [A thinking back to 16 at how my development skills evolved over the years] I was able to help them develop some useful interfaces and automation routines]. And was working with as a UNIX [back then HPUX and Solaris] admin/engineer with a bent on scripting and automation and web based development [back in the late 90's when Perl CGI was all the rage], and progressed through the 2000's as a developer/engineer doing what would be called DevOps 10-15 yeas before term was coined. I've kept my skills up to date, and my experience with programming allows me to basically dive into any new lanaguge and get pretty comfortable within 2 weeks or so and be able to do useful things and keep learning, and I have a pretty solid understand of Linux. So I'm kind of in a niche position with both skills sets which is hard to find in this market, and I have always been a very solid performer and I use my network to get jobs not so much blind recruitment. In fact I've only taken a job from recrutiers twice and I've both regretted them.
So basically the keys are:
1) Solid in demand skill sets. It's nice if you have a mix of a couple skill sets that you don't see much in one person like strong Linux admin/engineer and developer [You can make a hell of a good datacenter automation engineer with those skills]
2) Network and talk to your collegues. Get to know them and be sure you are a top tier employee where people always think at thier next job "Well we are doing X and you know who was really good at doing X and doing it well..." Then they mention it to thier manager (or they are the manager) they call you up and you see if you want the job.
3) Always play around with new stuff. Sure I could do everything I do now with perl but a lot of people are afraid of it now so I know Python and Ruby and C# well enough now so I can get up to speed in a lot of environments [But really if you've done enough development you can pick up a lanague and then use google and stack exchange as your friend because you can google, I know how to do X in Java how do I do it in Ruby]. I'm only really an expert on any given language when I'm emersed in it on a daily basis.
I'm 54 and haven't gotten a job without knowing someone at the company or being recommended by a friend for over 20 years, that's 5 jobs before my most recent one. My last search started down the monster.com road, even interviewed several times. Then went to one interview at a company where the VP was someone I used to work with and several people I know worked at, and had a job created specifically for my skill set. Best job I've ever had...and the highest paying.
Don't stop using traditional methods, but if you are any good your past associates are your best bet to getting you a job. They can get your resume to the person hiring.
If you still can't get a job, maybe you just aren't that good. Or your skills are too outdated. Figure out which one is the problem and fix it instead of whining.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
get into an open source project that interests you and has commercial usage
then after you have submitted and got your name on a few features and/or got a name by helping people on the mailing lists
you will find plenty of work..
(worked for me)
I'm very much in the same boat as you are, maybe even slightly worse off. I have a couple of degrees (architectual design and drafting and an associates in psychology), but I never even took a computer class in college. I stumbled into a job as technical support at a failing ISP, and as people around me kept getting canned, I assended the list of positions mostly by being the last man standing, until I was the systems administrator. Eventually I found a major flaw in the billing and provisions process, which had over 1100 cancelled accounts still active, and that turned the comany around from running at a $20,000 loss each month to making a profit. While I shifted into programming, which I liked a lot better and have stay in that field since, I don't have any certifications, publications, or formal education in the IT industry.
While getting the first few jobs were tough, I've found that most companies will take experience over having a degree anyday, and twice on Tuesdays. Also having been on the hiring end of thing half of the time, I will always take experience over any degree, regardless of how prestigious (Okay, maybe not over an MIT degree. lol) I've had too many newly hired employees with their shinny new computer science degree, and I've got to hold their hand for the first 6 months because they know little of what is current practices, so much as they know what is "suppose to be the proper method". The trouble with schooling is that a technology comes out and gains some traction, it must then be choosen and learned by a professor. He must then write a syllabus before the school can even offer it as a course, which is then at the mercy of school quarters. By the time a student signs up, takes the class, and finishes - it's technology that is 1 -2 years old, which in todays world is just about 1 - 2 years too late. 8-)
Personally I haven't had any issues with education being a factor for coming up on a decade. My question to you would be where and how are you applying for jobs? These days I don't even waste my time looking for a job, as most jobs that are listed are in the lower range of what I would consider a good position and company. I've done pretty much every job in the last 8 years all working through recruiters. Headhunting seems to be an exploding field, so it takes weeding through vast pile of them to find one that is of real quality and service, but once you find a place like that, they will take care of you and represent you well. I also like it because they negotiate the salary or wage for you, with your input and guidelines of course. Plus recruiters seems to get all the best positions, as companies don't want to waste time sifting through the sea of unqualified candiates either. My advice would be to find a good recruiter, and if you have the skills, you'll be their favorite person in the world.
no kidding, it works
I know of companies in smaller communities that are willing to hire self taughts. I work for one of them in Aspen Colorado
HR's primary purpose is to be a speed bump and to enforce arbitrary rules that are merely Pareto effective.
So to get around them you need to network into an organization to the hiring manager(s) and be able to demonstrate your non-traditional directly and face-to-face.
Find an employer with a open policy towards diversity - I got lucky that way. I don't know how you research this kind of thing 'cause a lot of employers pay lip service to diversity when they really don't practice it.
Find a way around HR - in tech the only thing they do is match buzz-words between job requisition & resume. Thru a friend & former colleague I got the name of the person who led the crew where I work - never was sure of his real title, probably program manager. I wrote a personal letter to go with my resume, he was open to evaluating a track record & seeing the capability therein. Again, I don't know how you find this sort of person - I just got lucky I guess.
Maybe look for some continuing ed classes, just to show activity. I found an inexpensive way to take Oracle DBA classes. It had a lot of hands-on & was fun. As a class, we actually wrote a paper on bringing up an Oracle installation from scratch on both RedHat and Slackware, & it was selected for presentation at an Oracle conference. Unfortunately, none of us had the money or time to travel to the site of the conference to present it. But, taking the class demonstrated a "no give up" & "self-starter" attitude.
Good luck...not easy but it can happen.
You won't get past the jobs screening process cold calling companies, as you've already experienced. Instead you have to find ways to get out there and meet people without interviewing, like at industry meet ups, learn how to sell yourself, accomplish things on your own that you can talk about (they don't have to make money, just be cool enough to show off), and build a network of people that respect your ability and get work through that.
Contract work is a great way to get your foot in the door.
When you first start be willing to work for less / do less interesting work, do a great job at that, and you'll find yourself in demand, then you can start being more particular about what you work on and making more. It takes a lot of work, of course, and more work than if you had a formal education.
My thoughts (having just come from a very similar place)... Write a narrative around the darn degree, and put it out there from the beginning. "Two years into from my bachelor's degree in Computer Science, life took me sideways. I've never managed to find the right combination of time and money to go back and check that box, but I've never stopped learning new, valuable skills like A, B, and C." Find a marketing or creative person to help you write your "story". Then practice it over and over until it rolls out of you automatically. If a company is gonna be hard over on the degree requirement, get to the "no" right away and move on to companies that are more flexible. When I was applying for jobs, I would write a point-by-point response to the job requirement list in my cover letter . "I'm sure you're inundated with applicants. Let me save us both some time and prequalify myself. You asked for blank/blank/blank, I have blank/blank/blank." Whenever I could, I put the degree thing first, "You've asked for a 4-yr degree. If this is a firm requirement, then I thank you for your time. If instead, you're looking for someone who brings broad real-world experience and a thirst for learning, let me tell you how I meet the rest of your requirements." If you're qualified for the job and this doesn't get them over the hurdle, nothing will and you probably don't want to work there anyway. Know it's a numbers game. In the current environment, employers can hold out for the perfect candidate. Apply for everything which might be a fit, as soon after it's posted as possible. If you're not sure, apply anyway (except at key companies where the perfect job for you might crop up in the next few months). My current job (which I love!) came from a posting that I almost didn't apply for. The rejections are hard, and the "black hole" non-responses are maybe even harder. That's a sign of the times, not your skill. If you're not into the system in the first few days, you're probably out of luck because the hiring managers have stopped looking. Yes, network as much as possible. There are many of us who were told, "Put your head down, do a good job, don't waste your employer's money socializing, and everything will work out just fine." Mom and Dad, bless their well-meaning souls were WRONG. So if you find yourself without a network of sufficient quality, start working on it as uncomfortable as that might be. Linked In. Meetups (meetup.com). Industry events. Put it out to your friends that you need a job. This last was the absolute hardest for me. It sounds sappy, but someone told me, "You have to put it out to the Universe." When I, with maximum discomfort, did that I found that my friends and colleagues absolutely rallied to my support. And though I ended up taking a job from a complete stranger, it helped just knowing I had a better network than I had previously thought. Do this without looking or feeling "broken". "I was hoping to start a consulting business, but it's not evolving fast enough, and now I really need to focus on getting the bills paid. If you hear of anything that fits me, let me know!" This way you're not "begging" your friend/acquaintance for a job, but simply telling them your need. Make it an out-of-body experience. There are many, many highly qualified people out of work. It's very easy to start to doubt everything you think you know about yourself. Whatever inspires you and makes you feel the most empowered... drink it up. Especially before an interview. Make yourself as young as possible. Agism is wrong, but real. This isn't just about your hair color. Self-teach yourself a bit about social networking, internet marketing, mobile apps... whatever is relevant to your industry. Even catching up on pop culture -- television, music -- makes a difference in my opinion. Hang tough! I don't know you from Adam, but I wish you good luck and will be sending positive vibes in your direction! !!!2u
I wonder how much of it is the age thing vs completely cryptic HR screens. It was so much easier when I was in the public sector and the job announcement followed a strict form. You set your resume to answer every bullet point in the job description and if you hit all the checks it got past the mouth breathers and onto the desk of who would actually be hiring you. In the private sector, I've seen job announcements like that to cryptic touchy-feely bullshit like "Do you dream in DLL? Do you get a chubby writing device drivers?" Honestly. Spell out what the hell the job does and leave it at that. All my degree did was give me an understanding of the language of software engineering. It did absolutely nothing to prepare me for the reality (not to mention that the language of choice in uni was Java and now I'm in a QT/C++ house. Not exactly square one, but certainly not hit the ground running like an old crusty grey hair with no degree would do).
Grecian Formula 16 or Clarol depending on your fancies. Henna can be good for a short-term change (50/50 joking/serious).
As for the rest... can you show them any of your work?
Especially good would be something relevant to the field of interest.
No? How about showing them design notes for your latest personal project? Things that lay out data structures and how they interact?
Depending on the field, can you show them 'buzzwork'... work in the latest
tech-buzz stuff? Parallelization? Async I/O? Async web-io clients?
Find out what they are looking for, what their interests are, crash-study to become as much of an expert as you can in their field of interest -- so you can reliably speak and talk like an expert. Don't speak beyond your expertise, cuz if you over-speak your knowledge, cuz it will be inevitable that Murphy will be on the review staff if you do (if you don't, he won't).
Interview them -- find out what they are planning and what they want to do -- tell them how you can help them. If you can -- start thinking strategies to help them solve their problem and ask if they'd though of "this" approach -- NOTE -- you have to know the field to pull this off well, so advanced study of your potentials is a big must.
Getting past their preconceptions can only happen if you get a chance to demonstrate something outside of their expectations for "someone of your age and appearance"...which is always "a bit" challenging. People base so much on little things like your email address, (is it at yahoo, your own domain? google? sbc/att? Do you look like a tourist or a serious hacker?)
A website showing some cool things -- especially your own creations, can be a big bonus -- but even if not your own things, did you setup the website yourself? Did you create it yourself? What techs does it (or do you use)?
Each situation is unique && has its own challenges. I wish you the best of luck, as I know employers can discriminate with impunity in today's pro-business environment. They have all the marbles in their court as they don't have to give you a reason why they said no...
Aside from starting/running your own business, your best bet in this situation is to focus on finding jobs with smaller companies where your potential colleagues are the ones handling the hiring process, not some non-technical HR person that is simply comparing your resume with the job requirements. For example, my company (45 or so employees) is currently in the middle of hiring two new IT resources, and our CTO (a former software developer for several companies who also ran his own business at one point) is the one spearheading the effort, with assistance from myself (QA engineer). We're more interested in experience and the ability to interface with employees from a support standpoint, rather than education. Anyone can get a college degree, but not many are personable, particularly in the IT/dev world. We've turned down applicants with significant education after having in-person interviews with them, simply because we didn't like the vibes we were getting from a personality standpoint. If you're made it to an in-person interview, we know you can do the job from a technical standpoint. Now we want to get to know you.
>Despite many accomplishments, published papers, and more, I cannot seem to get past the canned hiring process and actually get before a hiring manager.
With a history like that you shouldn't be going through a canned hiring process.
You're doing something wrong.
Talking to former co-workers and moving into positions at companies they've vetted as decent places to work is often a great deal for all parties involved - you get a good job, work with the same excellent people again, and their company gets a known well-performing quantity. That doesn't work as well when you've progressed to leadership roles too far beyond your peers or have other career goals that are too different like making enough to cease working for money at which point you start your own companies. I suspect new peers you'd like to work with again make that a temporary situation but have yet to verify.
Where that's not reasonable as a senior person you should be having casual encounters with technical directors (in big companies only; at small companies you want to go up the food chain to some one more able and willing to speak about the business), VPs of engineering, or CTOs in person (coffee is popular) or on the phone in which both parties get a feel for each other and determine whether a long term relationship is worth pursuing at this time or in the future. A decent linkedin presence should be enough to net this with inbound contacts directly from executives in young companies and from recruiters for larger organizations.
Those recruiters fall into two broad categories - keyword matchers taking a shotgun approach, and more targeted ones that have a better understanding of how things work and what your CV implies. The former usually don't have anything interesting to offer and I don't have much experience dealing with them. The later will make introductions. Some will try to funnel you directly into a hiring process which begins with a technical phone screen, but any place you want to work (executives recognize engineers' importance to the bottom line and consider you worth their time) you can get away with not doing technical interviews on the first date and push for a personal introduction.
I recently pulled off a horizontal career move from the technical side to marketing, as well as a long distance move to a city where I had no contacts. The change in location helps you get comfortable with the new hair color since nobody will know the 'old' you. My technical background was a big seller to the marketing people because I know their targets. Plus, it helped that I was a services buyer while on the technical side. Find your strength that is valuable to someone else.
I created a self-promoting website with myname.xxx (find the URL that you can get, mine was a .us version) and created custom pages for each company that I contacted. Find a jobs board that specializes in your specific area of interest, then go directly to the company's website to apply. Be bold and creative in how you present yourself, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
I'm serious about the hair color, you will love the new you in the mirror. I went to a salon and they screwed it up the first try, then got better the next one. Then I did the long distance move and gave the color mix to the new salon. They got closer, then we adjusted it. Once I saw how this all worked, I went to CVS pharmacy and bought the Paul Frieda foam coloring. I picked too dark and red the first time, then got it right. I wasn't working during the experimental time, so the only person who saw the changes was my landlady, and she's doing the same thing with her hair, for the same reason. We both laughed.
Seriously, not only is it nothing special, but all good programmers are autodidacts (they have to be) and NO GOOD PROGRAMMER calls himself 'autodidact' - it's a real red flag, seriously.
if they could be, why in God's name would the companies go to the trouble of paying for the Visas? Those aren't free you know. Also, the H1-Bs typically work for $35-$40k/yr and work 60-80 hours a week. They're doing the work of 2 people for half the pay, in effect replacing 4 Salaries.
There are other factors. India has a growing middle class looking for opportunities. If they find them here then they won't care so much that their native country is a hell hole. It takes the pressure off the 1% of India to make their country a better place. At the end of the day it's all about the race to the bottom.
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For instance, I don't even have an irrelevant degree and I just got interest from Facebook for a JavaScript developer position after honing my skills at JS and client-side development for the last 5-6 years or so. I would imagine Java and C# probably tend to have a bit more academic bias than most other popular web-languages since academia is in part greatly responsible for their popularity in the first place. The client-side/UI folks on the other hand tend to care the least because we can typically size each other up in a handful of questions.
But yeah, really badass web developers and I suspect higher end programmers in general really don't care. What they do care about though is whether you're a rookie professionally and in your situation it would likely take some work on personal projects and collaboration on open source or working very cheap to get your foot in the door. Oh, and I'm 39 btw. I think I got like one gray hair a while back but it's hard to tell because I'm blonde. I basically pissed away my 20s on alcohol, video game journalism, and just being a putz in general so no, it's not like I even had a lot to show for myself when I got my act together and focused on this career 6 years back. The first year wasn't easy.
For programming the best advice I can give is that you not worry about the numbers so much where language is concerned. In fact it might pay to put more effort into the stuff that doesn't have the most jobs advertised. If something is somewhat popular and you get really good at it, your chances will be much better than if you jump into say Java and your sans-college resume is one in a pile of 10,000 that will go through a rigorous screening process by non-tech people long before it reaches an engineer.
And if you happen to be great at JavaScript, check to make sure you're not forgetting to wear pants at the interview because demand is high and nobody's waiting for colleges to pump out decent JS devs.
May I ask, which accredited institution are you attending? I've been looking for an actual legitimate one but haven't had much luck.
Don't fight it, friend. Just put this pair of sunglasses on and you'll never want to mix with "society" ever again!
Go tribal! Only the aliens and alien sympathizers stay where the money is.
1. I worked as a 'wage slave' for a few companies until formal retirement age. One of these then had troubles doing a job I had done (they hired a multi degree person who had 'book learning' but no real work skills).
2. Phone call to me. I resisted, as they wanted too long a work week, then gave in after forming a Limited Company (private limited company UK = Delaware private Inc) to separate my assets from work risks. Did first short contract at their 'long week'.
3.Next contract offer I said only if a short work week. They accepted. Now on my 28th contract and 8 years later well into my seventies hired again.
4. Get the skill set right for the company and you are then 'proven worth'.
Regards Eion MacDonald
You know what you've got. Be more assertive. For me it works wonders. I'm also self-taught, and I've never had problems getting good jobs.
As terrible as it sounds, sometimes it is the only way.
I would suggest something like the following (all have worked wonders for me)
1. Buying a degree from an online university - gets you past the pre-screening and might get you an interview
2. Claim you have a degree from a university in a foreign country - Lost the actual degree in a "fire" and chances are HR wont be bothered to make an overseas call.
3. Go temp! - That's how I got into one of the largest IT companies in the world with no degree whatsoever, only self-taught experience. - As a temp I was able to get my foot in the door and show them my worth. After that, they decided to hire me full time against their own hiring policies because I was able to prove I WAS that good.
Any way you look at it, employers, both prospective and current, lie, cheat and steal when it comes to our pensions, salaries and promotions. While we get told for the 4th year in a row their isn't enough money for salary increases and a new round of lay-offs is coming, the CEO and his/her cronies are still giving themselves 6-7 digit "bonuses". Who is the liar in this equation?
Do what you gotta do then prove to them you were worth it.
I'm using Charter Oak State College. This is because they are an accredited and respected school, specializing in in distance learning, which accepts a high enough score on a recent Computer Science GRE exam for credit-by-exam on many of the course requirements, and (if certain requirements are met, such as being active in an industry using them) accepts older credits (i.e. math, distribution requirements) that many other institutions would consider "stale" and timed-out. They do not currently offer a BSCS, however, so I'm going for a BSGS with a CS concentration. I've taken three classes from them so far, and am currently taking a math class (needed but not offered there) from the University of North Dakota for transfer credit. Several of my few remaining requirements I expect to complete by exam (and a couple - public speaking, English - by waiver due to documented work experience).
Another excellent school (with a more technical orientation) that also specializes in distance learning is Thomas Edison. They do offer a BSCS, but stopped accepting the CS subject GRE for credit (because too few students used it for them to continue the effort of keeping it qualified against their own requirements). In my case this made a big difference in how much work would be required to reach the diploma. For some others, especially those who need many of the classes (or test-out equivalents), are tech focused, and would find the more directly applicable degree a benefit, Thomas Edison would be a good choice.
These schools are oriented toward people who wish to complete their degrees but are employed or located where going to a classic college is impractical. Examples: Deployed military personnel, low-level medical employees seeking higher certifications for career advancement, workers located far from a good subject-appropriate school or working schedules that interfere with school scheduling.
Two credit-by-examination programs are also related to this. DANTES is one - driven by the military's need to provide education for their soldiers without interfering with their duties (but open to all). Another is CLEP (College Level Examination Program), a product of the College Board which provides 33 subject tests which are accepted as proof of accomplishment by most universities. Each program lets you receive college credits without actually taking a class, by testing whether you've successfully taught yourself the subject.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
By the way: Charter Oak's mandatory "cornerstone" class was a wonderful experience, and just what I needed. Think of it as a boot camp on how to research and write academic papers (and read them). VERY enabling.
I wish I'd had the equivalent when starting at my first University back in 1975.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I wish I'd had the equivalent when starting at my first University back in 1975.
Typo: Back in 1965.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I had the same problem for many years. and it is a major pain in the ass (and, I too, am widely published, ,etc.). I finally sold out. Thomas Edison State College is one of a few accredited colleges that will work with you to consolidate credit from different schools, examination, and portfolio assessment to get you a degree. Not cheap but has been well worth it. No one seems to really care what you degree is in or when exactly you got it, as long as you got the check in the box (I'm an EE but got a CS degree). It was also good enough to get me into an "Ivy League" grad program (paid for by my new big company employer) and I got an MSEE to make up the difference. Now, that box on the job app is not a problem for me. And, yeah, I sold out, but you get over it.
If not, the other comments are right on. Find a small company and work for less. That's how I started. Extra points if you find a small company and their guru just quit/retired/keeled over. Sometimes you have to gamble. I got one of my best jobs by solving a big problem for them in the interview. They could have just said, "Thanks, now get the hell out!" but they realized that there would be more problems and I was apparently pretty handy to have around. Bringing business or even the smell of business in with you is another good strategy.
Good luck. I know it sucks to sell out, but then again it sucks to get discriminated against.
People hire based on familiarity. Young CS grads from Stanford think only young CS grads from top-flight universities know how to design software. Start-up jockeys who dropped out of college think only drop outs with start-up experience know how to design software. I'm also an old(er) auotdidact. I like older, experienced people who have demonstrated passion for their craft by teaching themselves.
that part's not rocket science. Americans make too much money. We live too well. Our air is too clean and our food too nutritious.
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You obviously still have the experience and qualifications for the job, you just need to get yourself recognized for it. Since a resume is often the first thing an employer will see, make it stand out from the crowd. There are some really useful tools out there to generate really unique, eye-catching pieces for a resume. For example, there's one called visualize.me that you can use to generate visual models reflecting your past experience or skill sets. If you can make your resume reflect new, progressive technologies, you'll combat any negative stigma due to age. As for the degree, many employers cut a break to older generations because the specialized college degrees were less common when they were college aged. If you can make them think you're the best for the job, it won't matter. Networking is also INCREDIBLY useful for the job hunt, but I won't ramble about it. Here's a great article with more info about visualize.me, info on other tools, and ways to use networking to your benefit: http://www.jobs.net/Article/CB-88-Talent-Network-IT-3-Job-Search-Tools-for-the-IT-Geek/