A friend of mine was trying to upskill himself and learn AI/ML. He had 10+years in IT and well paid . But on approaching his manager, the upskilling request was denied.

The manager said that he could "gather a bunch graduates" to build an AI/ML platform. There was no need to experiment and bet on someone with that much salary and experience.

So, I somehow feel ageism in tech is the result of everyone thinking tech is easy to build. A 15+years JAVA guy has similar output to say 5-6 years or for some extreme managers even 2-3 years.

I’m slightly over 40. Recently, I’ve been interviewing, and almost all of the focus has been on how I solve their ‘coding challenge’. Few questions about software engineering practices, algorithms or data structures, about how to approach challenging problems, make trade offs, or ship software.

It all comes down to if I can solve a problem like “Given an NxM matrix of integer strings, print true if any row, column, or diagnonal contains only palindromic numbers that can be written as the sum of consecutive squares.“ Oh, and on some random guy’s laptop, with a panel of 4 people watching me type as they sit in silence, and with 20 minutes remaining.

When I look back at all of my career successes (leading engineering teams through 10 successful commercial products, 4 startups, 3 acquisitions, millions of users, etc.), coding was hardly important.

I guess it’s time to retire.

> “Given an NxM matrix of integer strings, print true if any row, column, or diagnonal contains only palindromic numbers that can be written as the sum of consecutive squares.“

Ok, but this is not really a puzzle. It looks like a rather trivial exercise just to see if you can write nested loops. I guess an average software engineer shouldn't have problems with this. Or I am missing something.

Well, I failed this one and similar problems going on 5-6 times now.

I don’t know why I can’t do it. I freeze up with analysis paralysis, or stage fright, or something. Maybe it’s because I have no clue what they’re looking for, and I’m so used to simplifying problems based on business cases and stakeholder feedback. Maybe it’s because I’m always thinking about production-grade code (I do try to avoid nested loops!). Maybe because I assume that the problem requires a specialized data structure, and so try to invent it on the spot. Or, it could be that I am old-school and like to solve problems on paper first before coding.

You may not believe me, but I code everyday. At every job I’ve held, I’ve been complimented as one of the best programmers. So, maybe I’ve only ever worked with C-grade developers? But, I’ve worked with 100s of people. How can that be?

But, let’s say that I really do suck at coding. Are all my other attributes, skills, and experiences valueless? Seems like such a waste.

Years ago, relatively early in my career, I went into management. But, I only did it for 2 years before going technical again. It just didn’t make sense at that time. Senior developers then made more than managers, and I enjoyed building things. Now, I really regret that decision.

Anyway ... I clearly can’t get a job. Anyone have any career ideas for a washed up software engineer?

This is an interesting list that has been posted here before:

- https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards

But if you want to work somewhere firmly in the whiteboard club - do regular practice on hackerrank and leetcode. Many interviewers will draw their questions directly from those sites (and some others, I'm sure).

(Personally, I honestly feel those exercises have improved my coding, so there's that too.)