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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?

#51

Post by mud_dauber »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #45
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…

In retrospect, do you think if instead of the 2000 applications you did in 2009, you had highly targeted maybe 1 position a week, with personalized letters, tweaked resume, and friendly follow up, you might have had success? 2009 was the worst year for employment I’ve ever seen, so maybe there truly were no options for you.

OP here - and I agree. 2009 was a worst-case scenario.

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

#52

Post by wenc »

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…

> discrimination not truly based on age, but on stagnation

I can't speak in general, but I have observed in my circles that this is at least somewhat true, and for altogether natural reasons.

Most people, once they hit their late 30s or 40s, family (if they have one) takes priority and they don't have as much time to dedicate to going to Meetup groups, conferences or late nights spent gaining proficiency in new technologies. In general having kids vastly reduces one's free time.

Knowing a technology deeply requires many hours of intentional practice, commitment and energy, which many if not most people in that age range with families don't have a lot of at their disposal. Their "tech growth rate" slows down considerably relative to when they were in their 20s.

For example, I've noticed many SQL DBAs of a certain age have a hard time learning distributed databases because they often expect something familiar (databases are databases, right?) yet find themselves having to bone up on so many new concepts (that CS degree was so long ago) that many give up. Only the truly dedicated, truly passionate and truly nerdy persist, but they are in the minority. A common refrain heard is that "there's just too much new stuff coming out all the time, you can't learn everything", which is true, but it's often also an oft-employed excuse for not dedicating oneself to being current.

So when most average tech folks hit 50, they have pretty much lost about 1-1.5 decades of high-rate tech learning.

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

#53

Post by FLUX-YOU »

ropeadopepope wrote: post #24
FLUX-YOU wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 d…

If you become comfortable with annotation heavy code bases, what is the likelihood it will change in the future and you have to start over with a new style of codebases?

If there's a major shift in those languages (vs. JavaScript) it seems more worth it to retrain once it's solidified and you see companies actually looking for those skills.

Fast moving ecosystems means more things become deprecated more quickly and you also risk more "train thing that will be useless next year".

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

#56

Post by zbobet2012 »

nardonne wrote: post #39

They really should pass legislation is protect older workers. If they protect transgender people from discrimination, they can protect their older workers who have done everything they were told to do and are being punished.

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

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

#57

Post by idunno246 »

akshat_h wrote: post #16
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 have always wondered this. Tech and probably other fields do want you to be promoted. From what I have heard, if you are not able to get promoted in certain number of years, you are put on a PIP and possibly laid off. But there are lesser number of Senior Engineers than Engineers, and lesser number of Principal Engineers than Senior Engineers. What exactly happens? Just the fact that the numbers in the pipeline is…

Senior is considered a terminal role in most companies in terms of required promotions, so you don’t have to get promoted again. Staff and principal is a different job kinda like management is, so at/after the senior level it’s splitting into 3 - managers, staff, and senior ICs, hence numbers go down.

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

#58

Post by vkou »

VectorLock wrote: post #29
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?

If your resume says you graduated from college 18 years ago, and worked at for 17 of them, they can make a pretty good guess.

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

#59

Post by patrickdavey »

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 :-)

Brilliant idea! How did you get started?
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