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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?

#121

Post by convolvatron »

coss wrote: post #71
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…

It's weird at 30 I can't see myself making it another 20 years. I find programming draining and exhausting, but I still enjoy doing it :? I just don't think I'll just feel like I will have lost a lot of the fire when I'm that age.

good instinct. certainly the personal reward of getting something interesting running dims. and I find myself working considerably slower, and its quite a bit easier to get distracted.

most importantly the kind of work that was available for me 20 years ago was just inherently more interesting than the kind of work I can find today.

if you don't get 'retirement money' early on, I would highly recommend spinning up another vocation to spend your later years with. at the very least you're in a privileged position where, ageism and market conditions aside, you can always backfill with a little drudge work.

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

#122

Post by antonvs »

modbait wrote: post #85
antonvs wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But an older stagnant person's skills tend to be much more out of date. Younger ones have the benefit that their skills are still likely to be relevant at a larger subset of the employer pool.

That's an interesting point, and may very well be true. It doesn't imply that there's a correlation between age and stagnation, though. Also, in my experience, stagnation can run in the other direction, temporally. I encounter many young people who won't even learn about, much less consider, using a tool like 'make', simply based on the assumption that newer seemingly similar tools must be better. Sometimes the old w…

> It doesn't imply that there's a correlation between age and stagnation, though.

Not the way you're describing it. However, there's a pretty common correlation between age and relevance of skillset, which is a direct consequence of stagnation over many years.

The point is that someone saying "old == stagnant" may actually be thinking of it the way I'm describing, which has more validity.

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

#123

Post by undefined1 »

discreteevent wrote: post #108
Reedx wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)

Yep, for sure. And it's easy to be too open in tech - constantly chasing the new shiny framework or language or library (which I'm frequently guilty of). But a lot of times the right answer is to stick with what has been battle tested and what you're productive in.

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

#124

Post by AFNobody »

habosa wrote: post #48
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…

Wow thousands of jobs! Could you explain: * How do you even send that many applications? Is there some site where you can click thousands of checkboxes and apply? Do you send individual emails? * What modifications do you make when applying from job-to-job? * What adjustments did you make along the way? Did you change your resume or make any other major changes to how you were presented? * For how many of those jobs…

> 2008-2013, about 3,500 roles

> * How do you even send that many applications? Is there some site where you can click thousands of checkboxes and apply? Do you send individual emails?

(3500/2) = 1750 hours, or just shy of one work year with holidays/vacation/etc.

If he is applying to multiple countries, of the course of 5 years, I wouldn't be surprised if 3500 jobs were posted for him to apply to that his qualifications were relevant for.

To be honest, I've applied to a non-negligible number of jobs every year just to keep interviewing and looking for better options. At 30min per application, the limitation was my time rather than the # of positions that were open given how flexible I am about location.

The only difference is I've been continuously employed and the applications are as much about maintaining my ability to interview effectively as it is firing bosses I don't care for.

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

#125

Post by AFNobody »

anocendi wrote: post #83
fecak wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Former recruiter and current professional resume writer. As the other respondent said, the quick formula a recruiter might use to guess your birth year is "college graduation date - 22" or "date of first job - 22". You should keep this fact in mind as you write a resume and decide which jobs to include, which jobs to perhaps delete, and whether you want to include your graduation date. It isn't necessary to include a…

I am curious. If what you described is a standard technique people can use, what prevents the recruiters/talent acquisition to, by default, discard resumes/CVs without exact dates?

You should target 10-15 years of relevant job experience on your resume and keep it to 1-2 pages.

The goal is to appear no older than a 30-39 year old professional on the job application as much as possible.

22+15 = 37 (24+15 = 39, if a masters)

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

#126

Post by AFNobody »

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.

It isn't even that, they just need to eliminate the position and not rehire anyone for it (or a similar one) for 18 months.

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

#127

Post by scardine »

modbait wrote: post #75

After many rejections during my job hunt last year, I did seriously consider it, yes. Despite having a pretty solid skill set and experience, no bites, which is rather demoralizing. You can argue whether candidates in their 50s are less viable, but it was clear that age was a factor. Not just being typecast as stodgy, but also that many people simply don't want to work with, or compete against, someone who's older. I…

I'm only 47 but it was the same experience for me. Ended up taking a data engineer job at a local government agency - depite the lovely site (inside University of São Paulo campus) it pays 1/3 the market average.

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

#128

Post by giobox »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #114
ProAm wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you sue and win you'll likely never work again due to it.

Who would know unless you had a unique name and it hit the newspapers?

It's not unheard of for groups of employers to share (often times illegal) blacklists of known "troublesome" workers. Recruiters supposedly sometimes maintain similar blacklists as well.

> https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703389004575033...

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

#129

Post by kwillets »

modbait wrote: post #75

After many rejections during my job hunt last year, I did seriously consider it, yes. Despite having a pretty solid skill set and experience, no bites, which is rather demoralizing. You can argue whether candidates in their 50s are less viable, but it was clear that age was a factor. Not just being typecast as stodgy, but also that many people simply don't want to work with, or compete against, someone who's older. I…

I'm the same way; I found that the creative work that I always envisioned was not happening on the job. Now I'm at home, but I've got emacs open in another window banging out some SIMD code. Maybe I'm ahead of the curve -- everybody says vectorization is the next thing, but hardly anyone knows how to do it or how a computer works.

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

#130

Post by scardine »

legohead wrote: post #87

To any older guys out there who think they might be looking in the near future -- my advice is to learn the "current stack", or really, just to keep up to date and messing with the new technologies that come out. My story: A couple years ago I started job searching, at 38. I had been at my current job for 5 years. I had a hell of a time getting anyone to bite. I had a dozen phone interviews that I felt went well, but…

Python is hot, right? I'm doing Python for the last 10 years and even landed one patch in smtplib. Data science is booming and I have 25 years into ETL.

I'm active in the local Python meetups - my last talk was about the new data classes in Python 3.7 (currently beta so I can't possibly be more up to date). Some white hair over my face would hint at my real age if I let them grow for a few days but otherwise I don't look 47. I commute by bicycle (13 milles every day). I spend weekends on hackathons just for the fun. I'm lean and fast both physically and mentally.

But when you are near 50, good luck finding a good position. Age prejudice is a real problem in our industry.

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