you have to expatriate ... only solution for you ... go in a less developed country where your experience counts
64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant
121–130 of 315 posts
Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant
#122Unsatisfied expectations of the interviewer?
Maybe it's better to list full experience, instead of limiting to 20 years? And mention the age.
To prepare them better, rather than surprising.
At least he would need to spend less time on interviews with people not ready to hire a 64 year old, and only talk to people who are ready.
Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
How will they tell the difference between if I am 45 and 50 before they make an offer? I haven’t put my date of college graduation on my resume since I was 35 and now I only put the last ten years worth of work experience.
Let’s say I’m back in the job market when I am 50 in 2024 and I just keep my experience from 2008 or 2012 depending on the company I am interviewing for.
Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant
#124The crazy thing about the ageism in our industry (perhaps others but I wouldn't know) is that it's the one form of discrimination we all will face, unless we die or get so rich as to never need to work again. Yet it tends not to get covered in any diversity/inclusion, at least as far as I've seen.
Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant
#125Earlier 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.…
> It won't be, because different groups answer questions differently.
And the common currently practices don't control for that any better. The parent's idea (blind or double-blind screening of candidates) seems like it would, to me, be inherently better if we can figure out how to deal with the logistical complexities it adds. (E.g., how does on-site work? Are there on-sites?) If anything, it would be interesting to weigh against current practices of a few phones screens and a on-site.
(It doesn't seem worse that the world I'm living in, where I'm at the bottom rung doing my damndest to make sure I'm not part of the problem by treating people equally, while at the same time I see some employers offering hiring bonuses for "diversity hires".)
The query in the paper allows the candidate to say "they don't know"; if you force their hand in answering by removing that option, they should be again on equal footing, no?
Additionally, I've also read about mathematical means of recording uncertainty in answers and weighting score with that. (That is, correct answer to which you were more certain net more points, incorrect answers to which you were uncertain lose less points than incorrect answers to which you were more certain.) The end result you're trying to get at is which person is giving better answers and certainties.
> Meritocracy is a lie used by the privileged.
Sure, people can twist things into something they're not, but that doesn't inherently make the original thing wrong or evil.
Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It's not uncommon to hold additional investment accounts outside of your 401k. So more than likely, YoY investment was close to 30-40k including 18k pre tax.
Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant
#127I'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…
Check out jobs with the federal government and/or with government contractors. The work might not be as sexy or as lucrative (although sometimes it is), but the pay is stable (lolol... shutdowns notwithstanding) at a middle-class level. The government is desperate for people who can code.
The last month should demonstrate that the government is a terrible steward of jobs. Shutdowns and dysfunction are on a bad trend. Half the board (Congress) won't talk to the other half, and the CEO (President) is a narcissist at best.
I don't think anyone who relies on a paycheck should work for the government, unless God himself touched their heart with his finger and made that their calling. Although the man in the article is probably desperate enough to give that a shot.
Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant
#128Just curious: why do age discrimination laws only disallow discrimination against older ages?
Even if discriminating against people age 20-30 is more rare, what's the advantage of allowing it?
It seems like a hard sell to say "you should care about age discrimination" but to enact age discriminatino laws that literally discriminate based on age. Maybe this moral inconsistency is why more people don't care/do more about it.
Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant
#129I'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…
One of FANGs I interviewed at, I couldn’t help noticing they totally avoid asking practical questions that require field experience to understand and instead just focus the entire interview on CompSci college homework problems that recent grads can easily relate to. I wonder why. Hmmmmm ...
Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a (relatively) young developer, and I already worry about it. I enjoy and love working with new tech, I jump to new frameworks and ways of working quite often because it's good fun. I don't think that'll ever change. I'm already worried for the day where I won't be able to do that because people won't perceive me as a young, hungry up and comer wanting to attack problems, and instead they'll see me as an entrench…
Ageism is overblown. The way to get a job for an older worker - I’m in my mid 40s - doesn’t change no matter what your age is. Make sure you have skills that the market wants, don’t get complacent at one company and keep your network warm including local recruiters.
Telling yourself that makes you feel better but it doesn’t change the reality that ageism is a thing.
My wife looked for years until I told he to give up and retire. Working as a consultant, I’m making double what I made as an employee but I’m exceptionally lucky.