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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?

#21

Post by 0x4f3759df »

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…

A friend of mine is content maintaining a legacy VB app and has been at it since college -- about 20 years now. I hope he never gets laid off.

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

#23

Post by lkrubner »

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…

This is written in defiance of quite a few reports of the opposite. Employers want many things from employees, including a low wage, an ability to work 60 hours a week, and an absence of health problems. Also skills, but a company that only needs someone who is highly skilled can hire a high priced consultant. Of those, there is no need for loyalty whereas for salary jobs, loyalty seems to be very important.

Among older tech workers I know, I see a growing divide in their career tracks. A few become high priced consultants and charge between $200 to $300 an hour. The rest are in jobs where they are just hoping they don’t get fired. See recent stories about IBM.

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

#24

Post by ropeadopepope »

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #19
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…

>A 50 year old who spent the last 20 years working for the same company using old tech may struggle, and by the time you realize you need to retool it can be too late. Basically, stay up-to-speed with Javascript if you do web development. It's the only landscape that changes significantly enough to warrant the effort, mainly because it's a huge melting pot of coding styles and frameworks and managers of these project…

I would be very curious to see how many 50 year old engineers are doing web development. I'm only 34 and my experience the past 5 years is that experience is not respected and being out of your 20s makes you a poor culture fit for most web companies.

> If you do C#/Java/Go/Rust/C++/C, you're probably not going to be left behind.

I wouldn't be so sure. The landscapes don't change as quickly as web dev does, but they do change. I did a bit of Java/Hibernate work 8+ years ago. I look at modern Java code bases now and it's so annotation heavy I couldn't make heads or tails of it.

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

#25

Post by albumdropped »

klint wrote: post #20
albumdropped wrote: post #8

Recently laid off at age 48. Less than a month later, had multiple offers with better compensation. Still in tech sector. Two years ago we switched from PHP to Go, which definitely helped.

Is your new job writing Go, or do you just think learning it just make you a more attractive candidate?

New role is almost entirely Go. Some legacy Python.

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

#26

Post by strongbond »

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'm very sorry to hear about your experience. But when I hear that you think 41 is old I have to stifle a slight cough. I'm 58 and started my most recent job 2 months ago. Before that, I worked for FICO in the UK for 1 year and 9 months. I've had 5 or 6 jobs since I was 41, but I've always put the (enjoyable) time in at home to learn new stuff. It keeps you young.

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

#27

Post by sridca »

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 :-)

Interesting. If I may ask how much do you charge per hour?

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

#28

Post by StevePerkins »

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #19
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…

>A 50 year old who spent the last 20 years working for the same company using old tech may struggle, and by the time you realize you need to retool it can be too late. Basically, stay up-to-speed with Javascript if you do web development. It's the only landscape that changes significantly enough to warrant the effort, mainly because it's a huge melting pot of coding styles and frameworks and managers of these project…

This should really be the top (perhaps only?) response in any of these threads.

I have no fears of being completely unemployable in my 50's or 60's. But in my mid-40's now, I'm already losing interest in web development as a particular niche. A lot of students and junior developers might not be completely aware that there's even a difference, a subset/superset thing there.

Web development is so accessible, anyone can self-teach. It's not so common to learn EAI, ETL, large-scale batch processing or data streaming, etc by way of personal GitHub side projects. It's basically a long, slow process of getting hired for roles that you're not 100% ready for, at companies with those sorts of needs, and growing into it over time.

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

#29

Post by VectorLock »

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…

When applying to those roles how did they discover you were 41?

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

#30

Post by UnpossibleJim »

albumdropped wrote: post #25
klint wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your new job writing Go, or do you just think learning it just make you a more attractive candidate?

New role is almost entirely Go. Some legacy Python.

If you can, what type of code are you writing in Go commercially? Don't worry, you don't have to be specific, I'm just curious =) The libraries have really started to take off for it, and I'm curious if companies are catching up to that, yet.
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