64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant
131–140 of 315 posts
Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant
#133Earlier 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.…
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Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant
#134As an aside from the OP, I am 52 and building a startup. I often get the feeling when talking to accelerators and angel investors etc. that they balk when seeing my age. Experience doesn't seem to count for much these days - they seem to be looking for 20-something old young people who are prepared to 'hustle' and 'crush it' and work 20 hour days. I am willing to bet that most founders who started their companies 10+…
In startup accelerator world, people with white hairs are brought in when the the team needs an "adult" to manage things. At an earlier stage, having someone who is 35 or 45 or 55 or 65 might make the VCs and advisors feel awkward.
Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Yes because it’s not reality that I’m 45 and find jobs quickly. When I was looking for a job at 42, I submitted my resume to 8 companies through recruiters and had no rejections and three offers in the course of three weeks. Two years later it took one or two weeks. My former manager is in his 50s, decided he was tired of managing after his kids retired and now is a full stack React/C# developer working with Azure.
All of the people he hired in his department who I still keep in touch with are over 40 and all found jobs shortly after he quit as either full stack JavaScript developers or back end .Net developers.
Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant
#136My singular focus right now as a “Millennial” is to save enough before 40 to retire if I choose to and, at the same time, figure out how to become self sufficient so that I am not reliant on someone else for income by 35.
Effectively I want to “retire” from having a “job” working for someone else long before I “retire” from earning income.
Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant
#137I'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…
"I'll make my graceful exit" is an option far too many people are taking out there. Our industry is in the top 10 industries where workers commit suicide. There is no discussion in this country about how our economy forces many working people to actually commit suicide because we have prematurely aged them out. Often to be replaced by a kid who doesn't even have 1% of the skills and knowledge of the person judged "too old" but still too young to qualify for social security.
Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant
#138When 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,…
Employers absolutely love young people. They are cheap and exploitable! Of course if you replace “young” with “inexperienced” that’s different. They will discriminate against people who are inexperienced.
Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Heck one of friends only puts the last 3 jobs he had on his resume, keeps it approachable.
Re: 64 and unemployed: One man's struggle to be taken seriously as a job applicant
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Heck one of friends only puts the last 3 jobs he had on his resume, keeps it approachable.
Given a choice, I’ll go straight W2 contracting or work for a consulting company after I leave my current job whenever that is.