I'm sorry - my brain says "recruiter" when I read your message for some reason. I'm not sure what it is pattern matching on. If you can assure me that you're not a recruiter I'd be happy to send you my resume, although a little more information about what your company does would be helpful.

have u tried amazon?

I do like the DC area but we have kids living in the Bay Area and my wife doesn't want to move away from them. If there is some way to work with you with that constraint I'd be interested.

The advice I've given to younger generalists like me is to force yourself to become an expert on something. That's what people are used to seeing when they are hiring. Pick something long-lasting like databases or search or machine learning.

OP: Not sure why you are down-voted. The HackerNews Community seems to dislike telling the truth if it is surrounded by even a hint of negativity.

Can you be more specific about what you mean by "engineering services firm"?

I think the downvotes are for suggesting the defense industry.

"We won't hire you because you're old, but don't you dare go to those guys who will, because we hate them." lol

There are many small companies which provide anything from staff augmentation(engineers for hire) to full product design services(come to us with an idea and a bag of money and we'll make it happen). I'm in San Diego and know a couple companies that do this:

http://www.serranosystems.com/

https://fairwaytech.com/

http://www.a2etechnologies.com/

http://www.jetheaddev.com/

Actually, I would appreciate some advice on this. I truly don't know what services to sell. I can set up machines, design databases, write graph algorithms, train machine learning models, design web services, etc. But I'm not a "leading expert" on any of those things. I'm a generalist and usually have an answer for any problem I run into simply because I've run into it before. How do I market myself as a general problem solver?

I'm in the exact same boat and would love to hear some ideas.

There should be a market for people like us. My personal network is not large enough to build a practice around. Have you had any ideas on this?

I have run into this in the past. Usually a Technical Lead or Director of Engineering is grumpy, gives me a very perfunctory 5-minute interview, has clearly already made up their mind. It was just a waste of time for me and their company.

Yeah, I interviewed someone over 60 a few months ago and myself and the other engineers who interviewed were all intimidated. It was fine once we were in the interview room but reading the resume scared everyone a little.

OP. I'm originally from the midwest but we'd like to stay in California for now. I'll keep you in mind, though.

Well, there is your problem. This is the "why you might not even do a phone interview" issue. Off to the reject pile you go.

Put yourself in our shoes, and see how similar the frustration is: Why are you rejecting us? We hire people older than you, we have interesting work, the finances probably work out better... but you reject us.

If at some point you decide to evacuate California, we'll still be around: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17912861

The main reason is we have 4 kids living in the Bay Area and my wife doesn't want to move away from them.

Fine, take them with you. Can they code too?

His kids are probably adults by now and the reasons his wife won't move away is because of grandkids that are already there or expected soon.

Absolutely not! It's a slippery slope when one starts fudging "just a little".

VP of Engineering at a startup is probably the best fit. Managing small (< 10) software teams is probably next. Anything with lots of novel and/or interesting problems is next. I also seem to have a knack for listening to customers and figuring out what they really need and want.

Well, I'm not very social. My personal network exists but most of them have been at the same job for 10 years or longer. A few are at FANG-CxO level where I'm not sure they'd be helpful.