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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?

#131

Post by modbait »

scardine wrote: post #127
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.

Pretty similar to my situation. Esp the "1/3" part. :-)

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

#132

Post by modbait »

kwillets wrote: post #129
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.

Check out OpenACC. Kind of an interesting middle option. https://www.openacc.org/

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

#133

Post by modbait »

undefined1 wrote: post #123
discreteevent wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Indeed. There's an inevitable trade-off between looking for a better approach and simply executing with what you have. (cf machine learning)

Suppose my boss asks me to find a good Thai restaurant for lunch. If I'm new to the area, I'll be very "open" and spend a lot of time looking into the possibilities, etc. If I have a lot of experience eating at Thai places in town, I'll be less open. I already know the best one out of a substantial set, and it's less likely that I'll find a better one without a lot of work. Call it stagnation, or call it being careful with the company's money.

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

#134

Post by mrits »

I run engineering at a medium size startup. I don't like hiring C++ programmers with less than 20 years experience. Ironically the Ukrainian outsource team I once used to find talent quickly now supplies me with "senior devs" that are 5 years out of school. I'm in my mid-thirties myself.

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

#135

Post by Spooky23 »

kazinator wrote: post #41
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…

Sorry, those 3500 recipients could not have known that you're 41 and tossed the application on that basis. There is just some problem other than the one you imagine. > I used to mainly work in support, from 1st/2nd/3rd line to sysadmin, systems design and spec, network architect, everything. I do Windows, Linux, Mac OS, networking, comms, some programming knowledge, training, all sorts. But I'm too old to get work as…

— EDUCATION

1994-1998 Univerisity of Whatever

BS CS

—

Let’s guess the likely minimum age?

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

#136

Post by Spooky23 »

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…

I’ve seen this happen to people. You get depressed and focus on sites like Monster/etc that are mostly bullshit generic posts and agencies trolling for resumes. No interviews because there are no jobs.

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

#137

Post by quickthrower2 »

sheepmullet wrote: post #117

I think the problem is the older generation of tech workers are not mercenaries. I know a lot of older tech workers supporting important business systems while their skills slowly become out of date. They are frequently adding $1 million+/year in value while being paid ~$100-$120k/year. The businesses would pay $250-$350k/year if they had to. If the older workers were demanding the premium and saving the $100-$150k/y…

> The businesses would pay $250-$350k/year if they had to.

Extraordinary claim

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

#138

Post by Spooky23 »

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?

It’s common and appropriate to exclude irrelevant experience.

Do you as a potential employer care that I was an Informix DBA in 2000?

HR wants experience who isn’t at peak earnings. If you tried to recruit me from a Jon I liked at 30, a 40% raise would be affordable. Now, no mas.

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

#140

Post by DrScump »

I left the tech "workforce" (although I use a lot of technology on my own in my own business) a couple of downturns ago, after I got fed up with having several positions in a row offshored and eliminated.

I started my own unrelated business (sort of fell into it, applying my observations about certain marketplaces) with the immediate goal of having more hands-on control of my fate -- I could live with the impacts of my own stupid mistakes, but I wanted to insulate myself from others' stupid mistakes.

So, I stayed above water even through the 2008+ downturn, even while a lot of my colleagues who had stayed in the industry were out of the conventional full-time workforce as well.

But now, my industry segment is going away (ironically, due to the stupid mistakes of the industry superpower), so I've folded up the worst-performing 60% of my business. Now, I have to decide whether to just sell my SV house and "retire" or somehow find an appropriate role for my "out of date" (in terms of modern stacks) technical skillset.

I think at this point, my most marketable skill is writing and breaking stuff, and writing about breaking stuff, but the trick is finding the right company with those needs.

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