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64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant

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Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant

#111

Post by burtonator »

snotrockets wrote: post #98
burtonator wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Link to your resume and I'll take a look. All this bullshit about inclusivity. What we SHOULD be doing is blinding the candidate and interviewer. No name. Just the last 2 years of job history. That's it. You don't know their gender. Don't know their age. Don't know their race. Just complete meritocracy.

It won't be, because different groups answer questions differently. One famous result ( http://web.pdx.edu/~mev/pdf/PS471_Readings_2012/Lizotte_Sidm... ) is that woman hold themselves to a higher threshold of certainty before claiming to know something. An interesting solution would be to score differently based on known biases; but that would be a can of worms in itself. Meritocracy is a lie used by the privileged.…

> Meritocracy is a lie used by the privileged. There is no such thing in the real world.

That's absolutely untrue.. you really discredit yourself when you say provably false things like this.

Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant

#113

Post by pandapower2 »

throwaway24572 wrote: post #51

So here's some hiring anti-patterns I've seen, it's not just millennial managers, but I've seen these patterns in lots of companies and interviews. 1. Managers that want to hire people they could be best friends with. Drinking buddies, social media socialites, etc. Don't confuse this with hiring their best friends, they just feel more comfortable around people that they could socialize with. 2. Managers that don't wa…

>4. There must be something wrong with the person if he didn't get into management by the age of 50.

This idea amuses/saddens me. Personally, i know a few older technical people (myself included) who have been managers and chose to return to non-manager work. Non-developers (including non-technical managers) seem to have real trouble accepting that someone would not want to be a manager. Hands on techies usually get the attraction of spending your time building stuff Vs going to meetings, shielding your team from political goings on, taking calls, setting budgets, and moving jira tickets around.

Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant

#114

Post by oh_sigh »

MisterOctober wrote: post #58
__float wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...why should he start as a janitor when he has years of experience doing the jobs he's apply for?

Yep. Also, most companies won't hire people who are massively overqualified for unskilled [or lesser-skilled] positions. In fact, many managers view unused skills as a waste [e.g., in the "Lean" philosophy / cult, it's called the '8th muda or waste' ] and are specifically wary for that reason among others. now of course, it's not always interpreted as a negative incentive to hire certain folks due to their having ski…

I wouldn't be surprised if part of the reasoning is there was a threat to power that would come from an overskilled person taking a position. For example, that overskilled person may not fall for certain lies or controlling aspects that the manager uses on actually-unskilled labor, who presumably don't have industry experience or are too afraid of losing their job to cause a fuss.

Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant

#115

Post by sakoht »

I'm 45 and I know a bunch of people far older than me who are highly-valued on their teams. Even in Silicon Valley I found younger engineers enjoy working with super-experienced people _IF_ those years actually translated to expertise. What you can't do is sit on your ass for decades then expect to be rewarded for treading water when the cozy job at BigCo finally dries up. All of the computing industry gets more competitive each year. Age gives you a head start if you are _actually_ using the time to keep growing, IMO. Often, people get older and get comfy and stop learning, or they lose the ability to related to younger talent on the team, which is just an essential business skill, like it was when you were young and had to relate to older people. And, if you actually have real skills, but a company won't hire you because the leaders think superficially, you should filter them from the list of companies you stake your future on.

Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant

#116

Post by sakoht »

throwaway24572 wrote: post #51

So here's some hiring anti-patterns I've seen, it's not just millennial managers, but I've seen these patterns in lots of companies and interviews. 1. Managers that want to hire people they could be best friends with. Drinking buddies, social media socialites, etc. Don't confuse this with hiring their best friends, they just feel more comfortable around people that they could socialize with. 2. Managers that don't wa…

There is a natural repercussion for being a manager who passes on talent, and hires something less. You lose. Unless you are in a company where being good doesn't make a difference.

Working in a company that hires poorly is its own punishment. Dodge the bullet.

Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant

#117

Post by MSM »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #49
yardie wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like this blaming of people for not having foresight. You can do everything right and still lose it all. Let's say he started a 401K in his 20s and slid the meter all the way to right (riskier investments). He would have encountered: - 1980 recession, the one that got Reagan elected. - 1990 recession, the one that got Clinton elected. - 2001 recession, this one mainly affected tech workers. - 2008 recession,…

If he started in the eighties and contributed even a third of the limit, he'd be quite wealthy now even with the setbacks you mentioned. I've only been contributing since '07 and I'm at nearly $700k in my 401k. Now, the information wasn't as easily available about how to properly invest back then, and I don't necessarily blame the guy for it. Not necessarily , but there is still probably a better than even chance tha…

How is your 401k invested? Contributing the maximum since 2007 would only give you (~187k @ 17k/yr average) and I don't see how you could have almost quadrupled that with anything but the riskiest of investments.

Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant

#118

Post by quicklyfrozen »

scarface74 wrote: post #62
towaway1138 wrote: post #15

I'm only in my 50s, but this is very relateable. Did a couple dozen interviews a year or two ago before finally getting a bite. Somewhat amazingly, even passed the hiring committee at a FANG, only to get swatted down by a rare strike from the executive level. In one interview, was asked to produce a class that could serialize and deserialize a list of numbers, to/from a string of chars. Sure, it's not that hard. Took…

So did you try finding a job just in Silicon Valley on the West Coast at a FANG or did you expand your search? It’s hard to believe as hungry as people are for developers that no one in the entire US including remote work, contracting, or consulting would hire you assuming you had marketable skills. I’m in my mid 40s, was just looking for a job last year and it took me two weeks and from the time I started looking un…

In my experience, there's a pretty big difference between mid 40s and over 50. Companies may be hungry, but they've also become more selective.

Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant

#119

Post by stale2002 »

thisisweirdok wrote: post #79

When I was in my upper 30s I was mistakingly included in a reply-all email from someone who interviewed me and said I seemed kind of old for the position. I was ready to lose my shit on them but my wife made me wait a day before responding when she saw how angry I was. I was considering hiring a lawyer to sue the shit out of them for discrimination, but at the end of the day I brushed it off with a snarky "at least I…

Here is a question for you.

What if instead of the situation that you were in, the opposite happened to a young developers.

Ie, the employer used a euphemism to discriminate against someone because they were too young.

Would this bother you?

Or is it only your age group that you care about being discriminated against?

TBH, young people are massively discriminated against, in all forms of jobs. It is merely accepted, though.

When you treat people equally, the group in power may feel like they are being discriminated against, because they no longer have an advantage.

Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant

#120

Post by jswizzy »

I have had to work with plenty of older programmers and it's always a bad experience. The boomer generation are not team players and they will use office politics to sabotage anyone who they perceive as threat to them. I have to deal a guy now who complains about ageism all day and talks about how experience he is and how he did x great thing but I have to explain simple programming concepts to the guy and agrees and looks down on me all.
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