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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?

#71

Post by coss »

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.

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

#72

Post by nookoking »

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 hate to be that guy, but there was something seriously wrong with your process. If you have any of your apps saved from around that time, it would be a learning experience for all of us if you shared them. Redacted, of course.

To add to your story, let me tell you mine:

High school grad, going to a CC, really bad grades and only experience in freelancing and projects. Projects weren't amazing, but they were put together well.

I averaged 600 apps per day. That was after I put a lot of effort into my resume, making sure the wording was perfect and the layout pristine.

One weekend I got really desperate and did 500 apps in one day and waited it out for a month. I got something like 30 positive responses for a phone interview/code challenge. I also had recruiters for contracting and temp work blowing up my phone for their shitty positions.

I refused them all, because I thought I could do better. And I did.

Come around 22,000 apps in one month. If it had developer/software/programmer in the title, you bet your ass I applied to it. I wasn't qualified for any of them and I didn't list my education.

I got around 900 followups and had the pick of the litter. I fabricated nothing on my resume. I got followups for positions in countries whose languages I didn't even speak. "We'd love for you to come join the team if you're willing to relocate and learn how to speak X language" [Translated].

I'm sure some of you might have even seen my resume. 30 apps per day? How does it even take that long? You can do apps in less than a minute. Cover letters are for schmucks.

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

#73

Post by antonkm »

Pyxl101 wrote: post #67
antonkm wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm mid-thirties and was recently asked to teach a 50 yo best practices for development in Node. And not like Node specific patterns, but more like how to handle http requests. I'm pretty sure that guy is way above my skill set - he's smart and he has 15 years of work experience on me. I turned the offer down since I would have looked like a fool, like a kid teaching an adult how to drive. The age bias is real.

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.

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

#74

Post by wwweston »

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…

> those 3500 recipients could not have known that you're 41

A likely-accurate age estimate is easily discernible for applicants who follow the common practice of putting their education history with graduation dates. A much rougher estimate is also possible with nothing more than specific technologies. You can do pretty well with employment history as well -- and I'd suspect that many among hiring managers or HR staff quickly develop a profile (consciously or not) that rules out both inadequate experience AND experience that feels too scattered or too long.

There could also be other factors, of course. Timing can be an issue. I've heard stories of people applying for hundreds of jobs (who were getting hundreds of applicants per open position) during the 2001-2003 bust. I wouldn't be surprised if it were the same thing in 2009 (though I found 2009 was a great time to be contracting -- businesses still wanted stuff done, they just didn't want the liability of an FTE on the books).

And there's always the possibility that the GP was simply not matched to the job, but it's not the foregone conclusion you seem to be assuming.

> I remember plenty of "old" guys doing this kind of IT stuff.

Most of the people I remember working with have health insurance, too, so naturally not having health insurance has rarely been a problem for working people.

(Which is an indirect way of saying: survivorship bias! The existence of companies that employ workers over 30/40/50 is positive to observe for anyone who'd like to make software/IT their career as long as possible, but the figure that'd probably matter most would be the relative hire rates among different age groups.)

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

#75

Post by modbait »

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 see comments about people getting old and not wanting to learn new things, but for me it's almost the opposite. One of the things I like most about tech is learning new things, and once you've been in for several decades, there are fewer and fewer truly new things left to learn, and positions where you'd get to learn them are fewer and fewer.

It was almost a fluke, but I did finally find a job (still in tech) that works for me. But if you knew the details, it wouldn't cheer you.

I may yet leave soon, and just live out my days as a churchmouse working on Open Source projects. We'll see.

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

#76

Post by modbait »

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 see that they're always going to be like that.

If you weren't stagnant when you were young, you're not going to be stagnant when you're old.

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

#77

Post by twblalock »

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…

Java, C#, and C++ have changed a lot over the past decade -- the languages themselves have changed, and the way they are used has also changed a lot with the rise of microservices and stuff like that.

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

#78

Post by larryfreeman »

I am 50 and living in Silicon Valley.

I have been laid-off 3 times (most recently in January, 2017). Each time, I have had little troubling finding a job.

I should mention that I am active on Kaggle and that I code during my day job (C#) and code in my free time (mostly Python).

I have not yet found any problem in finding new roles.

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

#79

Post by Kevguy »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #35
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've done development in two industries; Healthcare and Transportation. Most of the developers I've worked with in those industries have been older. So, my anecdotal experience is that it really depends on the industry. The awesome thing is, both of those industries are keeping up with the latest in tech, so it's not like devs are sitting back working on the same old code base for a decade.

I will add Finance and Insurance as two more industries where older developers (who keep their skills up to date!) are welcome.

Yes, COBOL is still being used at many of these companies, but other departments are using up-to-date .NET or Java and don't ever look at COBOL.

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

#80

Post by ummonk »

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…

> But there are lesser number of Senior Engineers than Engineers, and lesser number of Principal Engineers than Senior Engineers. What exactly happens?

More and more people going into software engineering than in previous generations.

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