Lots of people are T-shaped engineers, so they tend to interview in their domain of expertise and disregard someone else's T-shaped skill. Like you could be an amazing TDD implementer with an efficient code base, and then someone will grill you on how many bugs tests actually catch and bring up the myth of zero defect. Then they fight the candidate on home ground and ask questions on implementing encryption, because that's the Blub they know.

This goes on and they have "trouble finding talent" until they finally find someone who has a very similar skill overlap to the interviewer. The team ends up T-shaped, when it should be square shaped, with different people making up for the weakness in these teams. In this economy, companies can be pickier, so the problem is worse.

Your T-shaped experience is very much an advantage. I don't have a solution for this, other than making it clear what you're bringing to the team. Finding a job through a network might be one solution.

In the sales mode (which, of course is what an interview is), the idea is to gather information to understand the real need and configure a product that meets it.

In an interview, that is you. If the job doesn’t explicitly require experience, then it should never be mentioned. In fact, it should be concealed unless, during the information gathering, there is reason to think it is necessary.

Too many of us approach an interview with the idea of “if I can just let them know how good I am”. Far better is, “how can I help them understand how well I fit their needs”.

During the information gathering, ask questions that help the other person actually say things that match your (hopefully narrowly targeted) resume. Not in obvious ways, “Do you use React?” but get them to think it up, “What front end framework do you use?” followed by another question about React when they say they use it.

The point is Focus on Them. Not Yourself. Learn don’t Talk. Fit in, don’t try to impress.

This is just a popular maxim, but I've found it only really applies when you're trying to sell something very expensive, buy it very cheap or have no idea what the price should be. Most of the time the first price anchors and then the other party negotiates. If you know what you want and have confidence in the general value, go ahead and set an aggressive anchor.

The explanation is very simple: software development is divided into an insane amount of distinct "subgroups"/"subcultures". If you looking for someone experienced, you actually look for someone "experienced in the respective subculture".

If you now have some chandidate who is experienced in a very different subculture, he will either be a beginner in "your" subculture (will he like this role and payment?), or the department culture has to be adjusted more to "his subculture", which implies the the interviewing person will loose power.

But for seniors, it's literally the job. These guys who built payment gateways moving billions of dollars. The security folks who deal with millions of automated attacks a year. The guys who delivered AAA games without crunch time. They reduced crash rates from 5/month to 5/year. Reduced build times by 10x, doubled productivity, etc.

You shouldn't be leashing them and telling them to be humble. You want them to come in, tell us how to do things better. Nearly every senior we hired is like this.

The most senior staff engineers are the ones who come in and give us really bold ideas. e.g. Write less tests. Stop using feature flags. Write less docs. Change performance reviews. Run all QA testing in production, using real money.

I think everyone is bound to push back on these ideas, but they should be listening to them. Bad interviews are unidirectional.

The fallback has to be handled properly. We make sure the default is the one with least risk and have to audit this regularly to fit the current state of the product. Yes, they're tech debt, there's also management overhead for this, and they should be regularly cleaned up. There was a habit of using it as a hack for unprepared releases, so we put some bureaucracy to make sure it's properly thought out.

They're also a security risk; hackers can just send a false flag, so we have to consider whether this is safe.

A lot of the use of feature flags is because a customer asked for a certain feature. For these, it's usually better to just hardcode it to if (customer===A)

Especially as you get older, especially with a resume that isn't cookie cutter and ticks the right keywords, this becomes more and more important. And it applies even if you're self-employed. Just applying online works a lot better when you have some track record of very specific in-demand skills.

I remember applying for an ObjC job, and getting a Swift test, because that was what the guy interviewing me, knew (this was many moons ago, when I wasn't as experienced with Swift, as I am now. These days, I could totally ace it).

In my case, I just got sick of being abused, every time a tecchie got involved, and stopped looking.

In my experience, the (in-house) recruiters, HR, and manager-type folks were great.

However, as soon as one single tecchie got involved, the glaciers started forming. They would poison the whole thing. It didn't matter, whether or not I "passed" the interview. The tecchie made it clear that I would not be welcome, and I won't go, where I'm not welcome.

Like you, I am a person who can do pretty much anything. I had nothing but success. Jobs came to me. Then, at around 45, the company I worked for went down and I found myself unemployed.

Like you, my resume was unusual. I broke it into skill groups. It was obvious that I had a lot of accomplishments and, if hired, could help with almost any need. Nobody hired me.

I did freelance work, started a company that didn’t work. Eventually needed a job again. Kept looking.

Finally, I ran into a headhunter who told me the magic: Decide what you want to do and remove everything from your resume that does not apply to that specific topic. Do not allow even a hint of general-purpose skill to appear.

She made me understand that nobody had a requisition for a ‘jack of all trades’. They have a requisition for a sales agent, bookkeeper, programmer, database guy. Specific stuff.

I was broke and did what she said.

In my case, my education and fundamental skill was programming. Gone were all of my proud accomplishments in favor of all the things I knew about PHP, MYSQL, LAMP of all sorts (this was in the ought). Also some things where I had helped a project team. It made me sad because I have done some very cool stuff that went by the wayside. But it was the resume of a professional programmer, dedicated to the craft.

I have never been unemployed since.

This is not just sad but incredibly inefficient, because it's better to hire a clever person than can get things done, who can learn anything, than to hire an "expert" in some stupid tech that will be obsolete in six months, and who will probably have a hard time learning anything else.

That might not ever be said aloud, but I think it underlies some hiring decision-making (and, for a lot of places, probably should underly their thinking).

We might love software for its challenges and changes; most places just see it as a cost that must be paid to make their business function. They no more love it than they do their electricity utility.

The only correct answer to finding a job as a generalist/veteran. You need to focus on 1 specific thing and go hard at it. It is extremely difficult to read a Resume which has a bit of everything.

Being a generalist myself, my CV is also all over the place. I tailor my 'CV' to the company/project I'm interviewing for, so it appears less confusing. I have several versions where different skills and projects are highlighted, downplayed or even removed. I also write a tailored text for the position or project, making it explicitly clear why I would be a good fit, to make sure the person views me the way I want to be viewed. I try to ensure that my CV leaves no room for their personal interpretation. (many are often skeptical of a broad skillset, or lack the experience to properly value it)

That said, it could also be the current economy that works against you.

"I need to find people / companies who can see this as an advantage."

My opinion on this is, that it is good to have diverse experience, even more so in times of crisis. Specialization is for insects.

However, I am convinced that you never ever should present yourself as a generalist. In German there is the saying: "Geh gleich zum Schmied und nicht zum Schmiedl.", meaning no one takes the almost expert if they can have the real expert.

Our superpower is not being generalists, it is that we can be experts in more than one discipline.

This wasn't a problem in the past decade or so because the IT market was extremely supply side limited. Now this changed and people are getting tripped up.

Its kind of sad really. Recruiters and hiring managers need to better understand that they don't actually need that much specialist expertise as they typically think. But there plainly is little way around checkbox hunting recruiters right now, except ones personal network maybe.

Case in point, a client of mine was looking to improve their Data platform offering so they brought in a couple of experts and me, a generalist (via a friendly recommendation). While the experts did deliver their expertise they would have actually put the org down a multi year path of migrations, platform development and mid seven figure annual licensing deals. Back in the real world, the facts where that the requirements and scale where scratching the upper end of most OTS products in question and also that they already had the correct solutions in play already, just not necessarily wired up and maintained correctly. Long story short, we reached the intended results in months with just minor re-orgs and a couple of additional FTE for maintenance and build out and the client avoided a multi year, eight figure initiative that might or might not have worked out.

This is the same as with software engineering. You can spend year developing games, year developing fintech, year developing funny car website but no one cares as experience seems focused around code.

1. you are not under obligation to disclose each and every experience in your CV, I was given this advice by proffessional CV writer and also have seen it given on this very forum; probably anything older than 10 years is not relevant, that's why I started removing some of my older experiences

2. I was in the shoes of tech lead who was hiring and was presented with variety of applications, and when dealing with more experienced people I always was concerned if they will stand in line and respect they are not in charge; I was looking for signs of this during interview, like- is the applicant digressing when answering my questions, is applicant talking a lot about his past and how unique she/he is and simillar. When interviewing it's best to not do that; and from my past experiences some more experienced people I hired had difficulties with authority, this presented valuable lessons to myself what behaviors to look for in me so I don't repeat those mistakes

3. I'm also believer in networking; my network is not great however those limited contacts I have always get warm welcome from me and I always strive to be helpful when chatting. I have tendency to start lifetime relationships- I'm friends with some people I worked with 15 years ago, we jump on occasional phone call just to talk about life, and sometimes they call with hard tech questions (sometimes about systems I had not worked with for 15 years too...); try to embrace your network :)

4. My strategy for job hunting (when I'm not referred through my network) is to shortlist interesting applications from LinkedIn as well as from my local job portals and call recruiter to have quick chat; I always preferred quick prelim chat as I got fast feedback letting me to avoid given application

This is great advice, which I followed as a 40+ coming from another domain who went back to university to retrain. However YMMV, most North America, UK, some countries in Central Europe, are pretty PC (at least at surface level) with regards to rules against age discrimination. However, other job markets like Germany, Switzerland, Austria, expect stuff like CV photos and DoB in your CV header, which makes it harder to ommit stuff because HR people love to jump on timeline 'gaps'.

Your third point is the most important for 40+.

As you age, network becomes far more relevant and job applications less so. Specially now with all the LLM usage both on employer and job applicant sides it is likely a very frustrating numbers game.

Speaking as someone also non-US, without a financial safety net, and with a diverse background, larger orgs - both public and private sector - can be an interesting place for a multidisciplinary skillset. This is particularly true if you enjoy switching roles. While absolutely not the best path for optimising monetary gain you may be able to land a substantive role then continue to pursue new projects and secondments as opportunity tweaks your interest. This removes some of the volatility and risk while keeping the intellectual stimulation of a new challenge if that's what you enjoy.

I have no masters, no education at all. I just dropped out of school and started helping at a web hosting company back in 2004, and my career took off from there.

The only advice I can give you is to specialize on something that matters. Like provisioning, kubernetes, cloud services, or whatever. I never got a job that wasn't interested in some specific thing I had experience in. None of them had any interest in me being a jack of all trades.

Start building stuff at home, publish the code and infrastructure definitions on github. Start writing about it in a blog, show in every way possible that you have a passion for it.

HR people want to pigeonhole you in a 2 line paragraph to know which profile you fit. So I try to make it easier for them… I work out industries /roles I can realistically target, and prune / rearrange / focus experience to match their checklist. Almost spell out in neon lights which is my profile.

Once you pass the first round you can loosen up a bit and make space in your story for additional relevant experience.

Also, make sure it’s relevant experience. If the role is multi country, I highlight international exposure (even if the actual content is not relevant for the role)

Good luck !

I sincerely wish you the best. In my case, I just gave up looking, but I also have the luxury of being able to.

Based on your experience I'd definitely look for small to medium size SRE/operations consulting companies. I think most of those would see your CV as a positive.

"Dumb it down" as my recruiter said. I eliminated 99% of skills from my CV and now I get a lot of interviews.

Oy vey. This is shocking, but also perfectly logical.

Human psychology will be the death of us all.

Elaborate? Why is this the case?

In theory.

This makes me think that in terms of job searches, too many qualifications are a disadvantage. If the initial short listing is automated, then I assume too many qualifications means that you’re not slotting into the right niche that gets through the automated process, and if it’s humans doing the shortlisting, I wonder if they assume that someone with multiple qualifications doesn’t know what they want to do, gets bored easily (which for me is true), or they’re intimidated.

So ultimately, my experience is that your CV doesn’t have to list everything you’ve studied, or every job you have done. You can tailor it and only list qualifications, skills and experiences that are relevant to the job you’re applying for. But remember, if you do that, at the interview, you need to also only draw on the experiences you’ve listed in the CV because you can’t really throw in other work experiences that are not listed in the CV or they’ll ask why you didn’t list them. Overall, it’s easier to keep things simple. I generally find most humans prefer simplicity, so perhaps just package yourself up as something simple, but be excellent in the stuff you choose to focus on. That’s my current strategy for myself anyway. Not sure if it’s that helpful, but just another perspective anyhow.

Also, could look for a local city Union position to gear down your workloads... as collective bargaining is the only real mitigation for institutional "culture fit"/bigotry, and massive influxes of qualified desperate people.

One should know what you need by now, but ikigai may help guide you into an area that increases well-being:

https://themindfool.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Ikigai_do...

Regulatory capture of the training/certification for technology has always been a serious problem. It does create fungible staff, but provides no economic advantages for most firms.

Best of luck, =3

Perhaps it’s not what you’re selling that’s wrong, but how you’re pitching it?

I get it because I've been on both sides. Moving around a lot and short stints can be a red flag. Candidates might be seen as a flight risk. Candidates might have culture and personality issues. Not having long stints and progression is a red flag.

Advice from one recruiter from a major tech SaaS co. was too simply trim the resume.

Or one of those companies who are really desperate to hire someone for whatever reason. Perhaps you can _take over_ such a business (search for "Nachfolger gesucht unternehmen")

It is not clear what your problem is. Has the freelancing side-business dried up, or is the "main day job" gone, or both?

It is also not clear what you are looking for.

This applies to software pretty exclusively though, can't comment on anything else.

The first is that the software engineer field in Germany has been swamped with applicants from waves of layoffs and turned it into a buyers market.

Second is the German culture itself. Germans are (generally) very static in their career paths. Chopping and changing career directions is still seen as a negative. Whilst career switching (Quereinsteiger) is becoming more common, it’s still not easy.

Careers within highly technical traditional subjects (chem, biotech, engineering) now seem to require a PhD or at least a masters by default in order to be competitive.

I would focus on the fact that you’re not really doing anything wrong. The market conditions just suck. Pull on your networks which you just have built up freelancing. It’s easier to find something ironically if you have something than when you don’t. Good luck.

Back in the 80s and 90s, I was already designing circuits with relays, then moving to microcontrollers like Basic Stamp and PIC chips, long before Arduino became popular. I bought my first computer, a Commodore PET 2001, back in 1977 and taught myself programming from BASIC to assembly, then onto C, Pascal, Lisp, and more. My curiosity led me to self-study artificial life, artificial neural networks, genetic programming, and genetic algorithms during a time when these fields were nascent.

I foresaw the trajectory of technology and its financial promise, but I chose not to settle into a "cube farm", where I felt my intellectual curiosity would be stifled or would not be fair to my employer. Instead, I've run my own companies and worked for others, always learning and adapting. Now, at 60, I find it's tougher to market my broad skill set in an era where tech has become highly specialized. Age can indeed color first impressions too, but remember, your diverse background makes you a macro thinker, which is still highly valued. And you have 15+ years on me.

I keep myself fit, unlike many of my peers, allowing me to take on demanding roles like those long hours on a construction site in Saudi Arabia. You might train anyone to dive or work at height, but the real challenge is what they do once they reach the problem - fixing motors or hydraulic lines under pressure. In 2003/4, I built my own CNC table, an 8x4' router, and developed software to turn black and white photos into bas-relief carvings, inspired by an old NASA algorithm for interpreting single-perspective images of celestial bodies. I wrote it in Blender's Python API. I was one of the first contributors of funds to make Blender opensource.

I don't regret my eclectic choices, but I recognize the need to perhaps find a more stable focus for the next chapter to support my family. Success, for me, has always been about showing up - waking up early, getting ready, and being present. That's 90% of it. The other 10%? It's the unique contribution you make to any team or company. My work history shows few sick days; I once went three years without one, now averaging about two a year. My father, similarly, didn't take a sick day for over 15 years. I think this is easier when you are passionate about your job. At least that's how it works for me.

So, if you're feeling discouraged by an unconventional career path, remember, your journey isn't just about the jobs you've held; it's about the insights, resilience, and adaptability you've gained along the way. Keep moving forward, and let your rich tapestry of experiences guide you. Good luck, and please update us on your progress!

Holy crap do I wish we lived close so I could hear your stories over coffee.

I am a much better listener nowadays to reap the benefits of others perspectives and experiences. I lost my ego with the birth of my first child decades ago; this was a nice surprise. It helped me to look outside myself more. However, most jobs becomes routine after a while, which causes complacency and accidents. Beginning technical divers follow a Weibull distribution of early incidents due to inexperience. The curve stays low and flat. Even the best experienced divers get complacent and incidents occur at the end of this curve, hopefully not stopping there, which could mean they died, or were scared or injured enough to change their job.

The less glamorous sides of an eclectic CV are that you may be really good at a few things, maybe you've mastered one or two, but you have gaps for sure. You need to leverage the macro view of business and problem solving you have earned and learned from your multiple experiences. I can honestly say I sometimes just jumped due to boredom, but for the most part it was to learn something new that crossed my horizon. The trick is to push horizon.

Currently reading Richard Hamming's, "The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learing to Learn", and it is proving to supports some of my held beliefs, yet it has also exposed some flaws in the mix. Good read.

Happy New Year!

Rhode Island, so a bit of a hike :)

But the bigger issue is that it would involve one of us driving through Connecticut, which has been shown to cause terminal boredom in lab animals.

- the Touro Synagogue, the oldest synagogue in the U.S.

- Naval Undersea Warfare Centers, Newport, whose predecessor (IIUC) built the world's crappiest torpedoes until a few years into WW2.

Drop me a line if you're ever in the area! "${my_hn_username}HN@gmail.com".