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Ask HN: Laid-off readers over 50, have you left the tech workforce?

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Re: Ask HN: Laid-off readers over 50, have you left the tech workforce?

#101

Post by dasil003 »

antonkm wrote: post #73
Pyxl101 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you missed an opportunity there. Just because someone has XX years of work experience doesn't mean that they know a particular technology stack. Perhaps this could have been a great opportunity for you to teach that person your skillset, while learning things from them in return. The best mentorships are bidirectional. While humans are growing up, we're accustomed to view our "elders" as our superiors…

No, I think I was a bit unclear. The guy obviously knew what he was doing, and had setup projects in Node. For me to come in and tell him how require() works would be insulting. No missed opportunity, I pivoted the deal after turning down the first.

I don't think you were unclear, I think maybe GP only read the first two sentences.

Re: Ask HN: Laid-off readers over 50, have you left the tech workforce?

#102

Post by brandall10 »

lproven wrote: post #18

I lost my last permanent job in London at the end of 2008, at the beginning of the financial crisis in the UK. I applied for about two thousand roles in 2009 alone, and from 2008-2013, about 3,500 roles in total... In about 6-8 countries in multiple disciplines. I averaged 30+ applications _per day_ at first... and 1 interview per year. From 2009 to 2013 I got 2 months of paying work in total. Reason? I think it's be…

"I think it's because I was 41 when I started."

Doubftul. I was 40 when I was looking a couple years back and had a better conversion rate of application -> interview than I've had in my entire life. This is for Rails/React work. I had 15 interviews out of maybe 25 or so applications, had a few opportunities I turned down and landed perhaps the best job I ever had.

I'm beginning to look again at 42 and got 5 interviews in the first week and turned down at least at least 3x as many ops that I didn't like because I'm rather picky.

Are there companies that are pushing my resume to the side because they can glean my age by work history and graduation year? Perhaps.

What I will say though is your experience matches much of what I saw circa 2001 during the .com upheaval. I applied to 50 companies in the first month after the startup I was at blew up at, not a single interview. I was 25 at the time though. I knew many people in their 20s who gave up trying to get work.

I imagine looking for work in 2009 was a whole heckuva lot like 2001 depending on what field you were in.

Re: Ask HN: Laid-off readers over 50, have you left the tech workforce?

#103

Post by reinhardt »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #69
Gargoyle wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be as simple as having over 15 years of professional experience on the resume.

I never thought about this one.

Yet another reason for trimming off old jobs after some point; the primary one being nobody cares going through 3+ page long resumes.

Re: Ask HN: Laid-off readers over 50, have you left the tech workforce?

#104

Post by [deleted] »

nardonne wrote: post #47
mikevp wrote: post #31

Laid off at 56. When I got home from being notified, there was an email from the HR person at a competitor in my inbox. I started work there within two weeks. Plus, my prior company had a rather spectacular special severance package for those of a certain age who would sign an agreement not to sue for age discrimination. (This was accompanied by a thick stack of statistics of who had been laid off, showing that they…

It's almost impossible to sue for age discrimination and win. All they have to do is lay off 1 person in their 20s at the time they laid off their older workers and they claim innocence and it works.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Laid-off readers over 50, have you left the tech workforce?

#105

Post by fencepost »

mahoneycutt wrote: post #17

Not quiet 50 - age 49 - 28 years at same organization That was in 2011 - I retired and started doing in-home tech support for little old (rich) ladies and gentlemen. I haven't looked back :-)

Residential break/fix is always a hot topic for small computer business owners - some people make it work, others get stuck with "residential break/fix is dying." There's also the question of having a storefront and employees.

I think any on-site is going to vary widely by where you are, the demographics of your area, and the size of your service area. It's too easy to get into traveling half an hour or more to get to a customer, and if you're doing that without trip charges then suddenly a 1-hour visit turns into 2 hours of your time and halves your rate.

Re: Ask HN: Laid-off readers over 50, have you left the tech workforce?

#106

Post by Reedx »

modbait wrote: post #76
fecak wrote: post #12

I'd hate to think that readers over 50 feel the need to consider leaving the tech workforce, and I know perhaps hundreds of successful engineers over 50. Those that have a hard time getting back in are often a victim of discrimination not truly based on age, but on stagnation. A 50 year old who has worked on five interesting diverse projects in the last 10 years will find work. A 50 year old who spent the last 20 yea…

I believe the "old == stagnant" meme is largely a myth. It sounds right somehow, so it sticks with us. Over the course of a long career, though, I've seen this kind of stagnation distributed pretty evenly across people of different ages. The difference is that when we someone who's young and stagnant, we just chalk them up as green, or a business type, etc. But not "stagnant". We can't see their future, so we can't s…

> It sounds right somehow, so it sticks with us.

Because that is the case generally speaking. People become more resistant to change as they get older. They become more conservative, their openness trait decreases.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16435954

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2562318/

Re: Ask HN: Laid-off readers over 50, have you left the tech workforce?

#108

Post by discreteevent »

Reedx wrote: post #106
modbait wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the "old == stagnant" meme is largely a myth. It sounds right somehow, so it sticks with us. Over the course of a long career, though, I've seen this kind of stagnation distributed pretty evenly across people of different ages. The difference is that when we someone who's young and stagnant, we just chalk them up as green, or a business type, etc. But not "stagnant". We can't see their future, so we can't s…

> It sounds right somehow, so it sticks with us. Because that is the case generally speaking. People become more resistant to change as they get older. They become more conservative, their openness trait decreases. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16435954 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2562318/

That might be true but it's pretty easy to stay "open" in tech as opposed to being open in general. The longer you do it the more you realise it's all the same and that a good portion of it is actually a regression.

That last sentence sounded a bit cynical - So anyway, the main trick with being older in tech is not being open but remaining enthusiastic (most days)

Re: Ask HN: Laid-off readers over 50, have you left the tech workforce?

#109

Post by p1esk »

zenpaul wrote: post #90

Ha, ha, ha, I just got laid off Monday along with most of the rest of the team with no notice. The market seems to be fairly hot here in Fairfield county CT so I'm jumping right back in and expect to pick up another job/contract in the next month. It's just a matter of rate and commute... It is tempting to just do my writing or something else but I love the work, it pays well and it's fairly expensive to live here. S…

I like your writing! A job in a bank can wait, write some more! :)

Re: Ask HN: Laid-off readers over 50, have you left the tech workforce?

#110

Post by throwawaysecops »

bproven wrote: post #98
zbobet2012 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you trolling? https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/age.cfm

I dont think he is trolling, age discrimination is just something that is hard to prove. Case in point - as soon as I removed my graduation dates from my resume I started getting more initial calls. Previously I would hear nothing - i assume it was b/c I was filtered out by the HR app parsing bots. Ageism is real in this field..its youth culture. You just gotta know this and work around it.

Ageism is real if you accept grumbling about limitations in certain markets. All these millennials want to hang together; let them on certain models! They can assume high risk without evaluation and see what happens. Older force already knows this and knows to stick to what is real and matters.
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