I’m in my 50s. I still code and I still love it. I got hired into a FAANG in my 50s and I’m still better than most of my team. I told the recruiter I didn’t want to interview or work as a staff level I wanted to be an IC at the senior level despite my 30+ years of experience and I’m happy.
This past weekend I’ve been coding a couple of side projects that has been using OpenAI to classify a bunch of things and I’m still having a ton of fun.
I wouldn’t say it’s unique but usually people my age get hired at higher levels but I purposefully didn’t want that.
I studied my ass off, I did I think 400 LC questions and did many other interviews before this interview so I was at the top of my game. Systems design comes naturally to me, but also required practice. I arranged things so that I had all my interviews over the course of about 6-8 weeks and ordered them so that the companies I was least interested were at the beginning and the ones I cared about most were at the end. I also explicitly told them that I wanted to be interviewed at senior software engineer level, not staff or higher based on my years of experience.
This worked in 2021-2022 but I don't think it works these days because this is probably the second worst job market I've seen since the dotcom bust.
My story is almost the same as yours. Contacted out of the blue by a couple of FAANG (maybe after referrals from acquaintances, but not even sure), despite having little experience (started my career in academia). Took me a couple of attempts over the span of a few years.
Interestingly, first attempt at one of them, they said I was ok for IC4, but wouldn't hire me at that level with my seniority. I'm also glad I eventually started at senior level rather than staff (and I'm happy to stay at that level too).
It should be pretty easy to get a referral. Most people should be able to find someone who would refer them (acquaintance, friend of friend). I already referred alumni from my school just because they reached out to me on linkedin. It's just a form to fill... After that, you never know what the recruiters will do with that. Sometimes, the person you recommended gets contacted soon after. Other times it seems recruiters skip promising candidates.
No referrals, I got contacted through LinkedIn and truth be told I had interviewed there a couple of other times in the years previous and was rejected.
I'd be curious to know the age distributions among SWEs at FAANG, but from what I see in my company, it seems to be centered around 30. My guess is that are very few people older than 50.
So maybe the world isn't as civilized as you'd hope too :) I'm curious about the legal implications too.
This past weekend I’ve been coding a couple of side projects that has been using OpenAI to classify a bunch of things and I’m still having a ton of fun.