Get a programming career, they said. The more experience you get, the more people will want to hire you, they said. Well, I'm finding the inverse to be true. Everyone wants a 20-something who knows 100+ programming languages (none of them well) and who'll sleep at the office and kiss butt all day vs. a guy who has a few gray hairs but has seen some things and knows where the bodies are buried.

I think the myth of the superstar developer who gets actual job offers left and right all career long is unattainable for most folks.... most jobs.

People believe what they want to believe.

Even 20 somethings who will work 100 hours. I had interns tell me about how much they expect to make when they graduate. I asked where they got that number from ... it is always other interns and internet tales of wonder.

Like guies, that's not how work works ...

What I absolutely love (which means I hate it) is when the HR department mangles the job descriptions to where they have a need for, say, a WordPress developer who is an expert in C#. Like...what? What on earth does WordPress have to do with C#? They're not even in the same universe. If you're using C# to develop WordPress marketing sites, you're just doing it way wrong.

@molaram Have had a side hustle going for ages. Problem is, people look at what I do as just another monkey farm that shouldn't cost so much. Even though they can't do it themselves at all. So they go to Wix or Squarespace, screw up, and then come to me all angry like it was my fault they didn't choose me to do it well in the first place. And they still don't wanna pay a living wage. I have four good regular customers for site maintenance and coaching. Those are the ones who finally figured out they need people like us. Rare.

Just learn yourself some Cobol and add it to your resume. There are no age restrictions in Cobol land...

"career"

Such a stupid word for what is essentially a string of deskjobs. Can't even buy a house with a "career" today. What value does the word even hold in 2021?

@Oktokolo if you want to go slightly less mad, learn Ada.

Honestly a lot of job posts are basically wishing the world was different from how it is. This is especially true on LinkedIn.

Read such posts and insert “I wish” at the beginning. The boss is wishing he could have everything for cheap to free. So like fuck that the world isn’t how you wish it was. Look for job posts grounded in reality and filter out the noise.

Knows where the bodies are buried? Nonono, friend. That is usually domain specific.

@molaram there is a dumb idea
Most businesses fail if they’re not backed by hookers or cocaine these days