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Ask Slashdot: Finding Work Over 60?
First time accepted submitter Hatfield56 writes "I've been in IT since the mid-1980s, mainly working for financial institutions. After 16 years at a company, as a programmer (Java, C#, PL/SQL, some Unix scripting) and technical lead, my job was outsourced. That was in 2009 when the job market was basically dead. After many false starts, here I am 3 years later wondering what to do. I'm sure if I were 40 I'd be working already but over 60 you might as well be dead. SO, I'm wondering about A+. Does anyone think that this will make me more employable? Or should I being a greeter at Walmart?"
Definitely get into asbestos removal. Asbestosis won't hit for 30 years.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Rather than applying for a full-time position, have you considered forming your own independent consulting business? You would have to leverage your contacts in the industry, but there is a massive difference in the culture between hiring a 60-year-old technical lead and hiring a 60-year-old's consulting business. Vendor management contacts just won't care, in my opinion, if you're professional and can get results.
A+ is one the most useless certifications out there. Can you plug in a mouse? Then your A+ certified!
After 60 it's ice flow time.
I feel for you. I was laid off 6 years ago at 50 and I finally got a state IT tech job for way, waaaaayyyyyy less money.
I have almost built back up to where I was 7 years sgo but it was tough.
A+ or any of the other minor certs will not make much difference in your job marketability.
Spend your spare time chasing kids off your lawn with a broom, yelling at clouds and getting the 4 pm dinner special at your local diner.
Having taken the A+, Network+ and Security+ as a requirement for my current job, I can tell you that they're not worth a damn thing. The tests are simple and they just check basic knowledge that you probably already have as a programmer. You could always go the route a lot of fresh grads who are also not working do: start writing apps. Games are fun, easy and profitable enough if done well. Plus there's a slew of tools to make them quickly produceable. Lately I've been playing with the AppGameKit (AGK) from the Game Creators, and I like it. They have a free version that you could try out and see if it's something you'd be interested in.
here I am 3 years later wondering what to do
More people are going on disability than are finding jobs. No reason to think it's going to get any better for the next few years.
Can you survive a clearance check?
If so, you should have no problem getting on with a company doing DoD contracting....they OFTEN look for years of experience. If you're good, have a decent resume, they will submit you in....they want you to get the jobs so they can get $$ off you.
The market is often dying to hire people with lots of resume experience.
You definitely have a leg up on younger programmers.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
If you spent that much time in financial institutions, the think about Urbana, Maryland. Banner Life has a data center there, as well as Fannie Mae, and the Social Security Administration is moving a data center there. It's pretty good bucks, but far enough outside the DC metro area to be at least reasonable. Just an idea.
Try to get some work on the several freelance boards over the internet, start with small jobs and build a reputation. Try to master one specific subject, dont go jack of all trades.
IMHO certifications mean little once a person has >10 years of experience
Leverage your experience for some contracting jobs.
Since you worked in a high reliability/availability environment before, target similar areas like telecom, military, avionics, medical equipment.
Also don't forget those industries also require competent Verification and Validation staff on contract. It may be a "step down" in a lot of peoples' opinions, but a job is a job, and it actually is really hard to find V&V people that have programming skills.
Keep trying trying trying!!!
In addition to trying to obtain a steady job also look on-line for short term projects. I decided to sacrifice my zombie TV time,pub time and music time for extra evening work and it's netting me an extra $1500/pm and it's just an hour or two each evening on each project.
Best of luck!!!
Walmart greeter was my retirement plan as well, but Walmart is phasing out their greeter position.
Just keep yourself enjoying life.
IT skills is a dime a dozen. You need to sell yourself in IT in your particular skillset. Health Care, Manufacturing, Legal, Finance, Government... People don't want experienced IT workers. They want IT workers with experience with their business.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Perfect position for trying out various "Hello world" options
I have to ask what your expectations are and be realistic.
As an employer actively recruiting IT staff at the moment, rare in the current job market I know, and I have a choice between a recent uni-graduate and someone with 15 yrs experience who I can hire for almost the same wages because so many skilled IT staff have been laid off and need to pay their mortgage. For me the choice is obvious, I don't care about the age factor.
However I also interview many many people who think they deserve to get the same remuneration they got from their high-flying finance job and wonder why they are still jobless after two years.
Assuming you have skills (and your summary makes it sound like you do), then your problem is knowing how to find a job. It's a multi-step process.
1) Are you able to find companies to apply for? If not, improve your searching ability. You might need to relocate if there are no jobs in your area.
2) Once you are able to find companies, send them your resume (some people are afraid of that, surprisingly). Are you getting responses? If not, then you need to fine-tune your resume until you get responses. Keep changing your resume and you'll get responses eventually.
3) Once you are able to get responses to your resume, the next key is to get interviews. This is not usually hard, but if you have a habit of writing really rude emails you might have trouble.
4) The next step is to do interviews. Some people have trouble with this step. Keep going to interviews and doing them until you get the hang of it. Eventually you will start getting callbacks for second and third interviews.
That's the process. If you have programming skills, it's mainly a matter of presenting yourself in a way that people will understand what you can do. There are plenty of jobs out there, and old people are often the best programmers.
If you get your A+ then you will work at Best Buy for the geek Squad... And from What I have seen there, walmart greeter is a better job.
With your experience why in the world would you even look at the gutter that is the world of A+? with your background in programming there is a lot of freelance stuff you could do. hell start trolling the freelancing boards and pick up jobs you can do from home. Although a lot of those are incredibly low pay. I know of several flash designers with 15 years experience that refuse to look at the freelancer boards...
"wanted an entire website designed in flash with a SQL backend and capable of scalability. Expectedt o take 3-6 months. Willing to pay $250.00 total for the project."
That kind of crap is rampant on the freelancing sites.
Or find a small business that needs a senior programmer. You know more than the 20 somethings, so use your age and experience as a positive!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Have you considered obtaining a teaching "certificate" (not necessarily a teaching degree) and teaching kids how to code? Consult your local school system to see if your skills and experience can be used. If they don't have a programming course - offer to create one.
If you can program Java really well then you are 90% there for android app writing, Make your living $0.99 at a time. There is a dearth of real business apps for Android.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
And this, kids, is precisely why you need to plan aggressively for retirement.
(To the original poster, I don't really have any suggestions, but you're making an important point -- work hard, save hard, and "what can I do to find work" when you're 60 isn't a question you'll need to worry about...)
From the tone of your statements you obviously don't have what it takes in today's software industry.
It's cutthroat... and there is more work than ever so if you can't find any that should be a huge red flag.
I'm not trying to sound harsh... we all have our strengths and weaknesses and it's important, especially as we get older, to recognize these traits and capitalize on them both- coding is not just coding anymore, business networking is key.
Best of luck.
I would recommend (not knowing if you already do this) becoming active with open source projects. I don't necessarily mean become an Apache commiter, but participate in projects in a minor way (bug testing, mailing lists, forums) , create some of your own pet projects however small they may be and share them on github/bitbucket, answer questions on Stack Overflow/Server Fault, etc. That way you establish an online portfolio of who and what you do.
I often refer to people's online presence as a differentiator when I evaluate CVs and interviews. Someone with an active Github account would indicate someone willing to learn and share and would fit in very well in my team. Someone unknown online, would raise a few question marks, and with enough alternative CVs...
My other Sig is very funny.
I think the question of whether you want to work for the money or you want to work for having a day-time occupation is important.
If you are in for the money, I am sure there are plenty of opportunities in the consulting/freelance side that you can follow.
If you are in for the occupation, there are plenty of places where you can do something interesting in an open source project, in an association or in a university. Universities are full of interesting software project that never get maintained or made production ready because a full time skilled engineer is too expensive. I am sure you can get some money out of it and work on fun problems.
I agree. What have you been doing the last 3 years? Hopefully building some useful software for someone..
A 62-year old friend of mine took an iOS certification course at the University of Washington (Seattle) and promptly found a full-time position at one of the Big Four professional services firms, developing mobile applications for their clients. Prior to this job, he was a self-employed specialty developer, until his wife fell ill and he needed to procure full-time employment.
So hope springs eternal - it's at least possible to get a job after being Of A Certain Age, if you have the right skills for the right field.
nebulo
Make sure your skills are up-to-date, and structure your resume in such a way as to not reveal how old you really are. For example, no dates on your education and/or military service, leave off early jobs, etc. You might want to dye your hair if you're gray, although I wouldn't go that far.
It's illegal to not hire you due to your age, but of course it's hard to win an age discrimination suit. So don't let it go there.
Other people have mentioned govt. contracting. Some contracting firms like to hire older techies because they fit in well with the aging population of government workers.
No sig? Sigh...
The problem you're going to experience is that; unless the headhunter knows you're brilliant with tons of experience and willing to do the job for the same pay as some wet-behind-the-ears kid who'll never cut the mustard, when you get to HR, the clueless twit who works there will look at you and show you the door because you're 60.
Start making Android or iPhone apps. Make a name for yourself by consulting; get yourself going with a IT temp shop. Having A+ is like having a driver's license, it's not a path to anything.
If you were with the financial industry and really understand the ins and outs of that, you should be able to get a job in the investment banking sector, as HFT is always looking for guys who are good, and don't make mistakes -- because as we've seen, mistakes can cost millions or even billions in HFT -- so they want really good people, not cheap people who will ultimately cost them even more.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Programming chops can fade quickly when not used. Find and open source project aligned with the your experiences and strengths and start contributing.
1) Keeps you sharp
2) Forces you to retool
3) Gets your skills visible
4) Shows interviews you take your craft seriously, and are self-motivated, passionate
I would not limit yourself so much, pure programmer jobs are considered low skill these days, particularly if you can't demonstrate skills beyond them. Pure programming jobs these days are easily outsourced to cheaper and younger labor overseas. It sucks to say that but it is the truth. Better to think a little outside your comfort zone. If you have speaking, writing, organizational skills, you should consider starting your own firm or working as a consultant. Consider looking into jobs that require more high level skills like solutions/systems/enterprise architecture, program and project management. Teaching others is also not a bad way to extend your horizons. Check around at local community colleges or universities to see if they need adjunct professors for courses in programming. One way to think about this move is this: If programming didn't exist, what else would you do? That might give you a good look at the other skills you have that you could use to go in another direction. Programming is wonderful. I've loved doing it myself for the past 30 years, but like anything, you never want to tie yourself down to one thing. Always keep your other skills sharp.
Have you looked into consulting? Presumably, you have a rather large amount of industry experience and breadth of knowledge.
Being a PM, working with companies on IT initiatives, that kind of thing?
After I 'graduated' from my last programming job, I've been in consulting and not writing code. I've actually found it quite rewarding, and companies are looking for people with "big picture" kinds of skillsets and not just people who can work on the technical nuts and bolts.
All of those soft-skills you've likely picked up, like being able to work in meetings, work to build consensus, scheduling and planning, estimating, overseeing .. these are all skillsets people will still be willing to pay for.
There is life after code, and I definitely know people in their 50's and 60's who are still consultants and in demand.
For some tasks, a little age and perspective is actually what is most needed -- it's like the old joke about the young bull wanting to run down and fuck one of the cows, and the old bull wanting to walk down and fuck them all. The stuff you've already done can be really valuable in helping organizations do new things. Sometimes, just having been there and done that gives you the perspective to see similarities in what's going on and understand where to go from there.
But organizations probably aren't looking to hire you as a coder, but as someone who works at a slightly higher level. (And I'm not saying give up on your tech skills, just recognize the your experience might be more valuable than your ability to write code. If you can still wow the young punks with some coding wizardry, all the better.)
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Don't bother with A+ or Network+ certifications, I have both and they are worthless. They couldn't help me get a job repairing computers when the economy was good, and I was in my 20s. I'd say just find something to do outside of IT.
The problem you face is one that I faced long ago in a completely different vein. I was unemployable, because although I had developed programming skills, they were self-taught by reading books and websites rather than school. Without significant experience, I was unemployable as all the jobs had requirements like Bachelor's requirements.
So I did what seemed to be the only thing left - started my own company! I chatted it up with anybody I could find who ran a business and needed something done, found some people willing to pay for a solution, and worked long hours for a while until my revenue stream was sufficient to live on. Now 15 years later, I have ownership of a valuable company that has grown successfully every single year since starting, employees working a job they like with decent pay and a work environment set up the way I like it. Sure, it has its stresses, but they are stresses I choose to assume or ignore, and I like the control that offers me.
It's not for everyone, but I will probably never have a "job" ever again.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Should I get Certification "X"?
You will always find naysayers about any certification, and these naysayers are often in positions that make it easy to ignore these certifications. I was hired at my current place of employment because of an A+ certification. Granted I was interviewing for a help desk position, but I've worked my way up over time. If you are planning to interview for a help desk position, a current A+ Cert can help push you above the other more ignorant or lazy applicants.
It's worth also depends on your perspective. Are you against taking a help desk\basic IT position? Then A+ is worthless to you. If you plan to be hired directly into a programming position, again A+ is worthless to you.
But when I interview I look for a few things: technical merit, reliable, personality, enthusiasm.
It doesn't even cross my mind that an older candidate wouldn't be qualified. Often, I expect them to have a mountain of experience that could get absorbed into the company. What I've run into though is the older folks often don't have that "nerd enthusiasm", haven't kept their skills current, or are just stuffy with no sense of humor. Maybe it's a generational thing? But a young person with the same ailments wouldn't have a shot here either.
A+ means absolutely nothing. I took my A+ certification out of high school, got something like 99.9% on it with ever actually studying. The only real suggestion I have is to get it so you can take the second level certification test, MSCE, Linux+ etc.... Just load up with papers and then if nothing else you'll get hired to look good for the company. All of those certifications with the exception of CCNA, CCNP, CCIE and MSCE are all just laughable papers. They basically mean you found the power button and plugged the computer in. If your going to focus your time into a real certification CCNA is a good one which is a HARD path or your MSCE. Of course any of the computer networking certifications will at least help.
Some companies, like mine, interview people by asking coding questions. I ask the same coding question every time. If you can answer my question, and the questions of my fellow interviewers, you're in. Age has absolutely zero to do with it. More importantly, the age of your resume has nothing to do with it: I don't care if all your experience is in snobol and fortran 4. If you can answer my question, you win, no matter how ancient your resume.
I know my company isn't the only one where the interviews work like this. You should seek us out.
I should probably go back and tell that guy at Walmart who greeted me that he isn't employed anymore, he'll be pissed, but that's life.
There Can Be Only One...
- Certifications. Cross A+ off that list, and give a look at brainbench and some others. Most certs are not worth anything, but with your experience, you should be able to pull off quite a few of them at 'Master' level, which will demonstrate skills empirically. If those skills are in line with your experience, they will act as a "force multiplier" for that experience.
- Experience. Did I mention this already? If you have kept current, this goes a looooooooong ways.
- Stability. 16 years is a long time at one company, especially by the standards of the last decade or so. I started my IT career in the mid 90s and since then I have only had two jobs for longer than a year. It's similar for many people in the field. No hiring manager likes it, but they live with it.
- Age discrimination...? They aren't even allowed to *ask* you how old you are, so don't give them many hints. If the experience/history on your resume goes back to the 1970s, scrub out the oldest stuff. Drop the years off your education, if you have it listed. Impress them with what you know to get you the interview before you drop any hints that may bias them.
The toughest thing you have going against you is that every potential employer is going to be worried that they will spend time training you and bringing you up to speed on their systems and procedures just in time for you to retire when you were about to start really making (instead of costing) them money. It's not your age itself that is the problem, it's the fact that you will probably be retiring sooner than they would like. This means a lot of time and resources will be invested in you that they won't recoup when it comes to training "the next generation" of replacements and so on.
You can mitigate a lot of that by sticking to your niche, even if that means moving where the work is. It'll be a lot easier for you to stick to the financial industry, where experience not directly skill related makes you more valuable. Of course you need to double-down on your pre-interview research too. Make sure that you tailor every resume you send out to the specific employer you are going to send it to, highlight the skills and experience that relate directly to their business.
Huge important place to be for the next ten years. If you can do any sort of database at all you can get a great job at Orbitz or any other type of shop that uses Hadoop.
Go to machine learning meetups in your area, super smart people are in the data science community and they will help you get a job. Our Chicago Machine Learning group is super good for this!
What would Richard Feynman do, if he were here right now? He'd do some math and he'd follow through!
Do contract work, move, consider lower paid jobs or whatever you can accept. But an A+ cert will make little to no difference.
Are you willing to move somewhere new? If not, consulting is the best route to go.
Do you have your heart set on continuing to program? You mention PL/SQL - PostgreSQL experts are in great demand now and are replacing oracle jobs all over the place. Few people have a LOT of experience, so being able to just claim that you've installed it locally (hint: install it locally on a unix server), and being able to do PL/SQL, you have a good chance of getting SOMETHING in that field.
Do you plan on working more of a "corporate" job - aka: Big company to move up in? In that sense, i can see why your age would be a problem. Instead, take up android development. If you can get ANYTHING published, you will be in extremely high demand all over the country for java based android developers. You would also have a much higher chance of being able to telecommute or work from home full time. Either way, having long time java skills will still give you a shoe in to many android shops.
Final recommendation - if you want to continue writing code and can't find anything, I would recommend taking up javascript and HTML. You can always work from home, PHP/Python/Ruby are pretty easy to learn, BUT you can keep using c# and java as well. There are a LOT of web jobs available all over.
As for a+ / network+ ... both are pretty useless in my opinion. Security+ i've seen a few people give a nod of acknowledgement, but that's pretty much it.
As for WHERE to get jobs: www.dice.com and www.craigslist.com are my two recommendations for finding something. Otherwise register yourself with a tech recruiter like teksystems or accenture. They make money by finding you jobs, AND they will sometimes bypass the interview portion with the official company they are trying to place you in, or they might only do phone interviews - that should help keep your age a little more hush hush while going through the interview portion.
I'm not at all suggesting that the OP's contention that age may be working against him isn't true. However, I have often found that when people over 50 in IT "can't get hired" that what they are conveniently leaving out is the following - they live in some small town of 50,000 or fewer people and there simply aren't any more jobs available in that small town like what they used to do. They aren't willing to move because they have paid off a house or are close to paying it off, have kids in school and don't want to move them, etc.
Java for 'droid, Ruby and K language --- sgt_doom
It's probably pretty hard to land a salary+benefits position in this industry at 60, but I've worked with plenty of older guys at startups who were working on a contract basis (as was everyone else). Sure, there are plenty of startups that want to appear to be hip and young and cool, but get away from silicon valley and lots of small companies are happy to have an older, reliable, quality software engineer on staff. You can always start your own company, too. There are plenty of niches for a competent software engineer to fill on their own or with a small team that don't require any particular expertise other than the ability to write quality code and manage a small network of systems.
You fucked up. Should have moved into management in the 90s and made a killing. Esp in finance.
Over 60 and unemployed...welcome to the club. I was replaced by an H1 visa person for 1/4 the salary. Thank Congress for this.
I found that when unemployed or when your employment has been threatened that stress and fear are you number 1 enemy. You have to do something with that stress or you will not be psychologically capable of meeting the challenges you face. For myself I found getting up early, getting sunlight, and working out was critical to relieving that stress. Don't get a membership a a gym. You don't need it. Walk, run, or lift dumb weights. After that I had to create a specific plan to get myself into that new job or out of the toxic environment. The end goal was to get to a place that would provide the funds I needed for living. How to get there wasn't completely clear at the time. I would create a daily plan of what I was going to do and work that plan. That was my job, to work the plan. Plan items where like, get resume together, call recruiters, work the phone, scan the job sites, etc... There is a job market. You need to know what skills are needed in the market and work your resume to address market needs. If you have to update your skills get access to the best textbooks and study them page by page until you have mastered the information in them. Build working prototypes. Open source your stuff if you think they are good. Notice I said "get access" not buy. Libraries and B&N are great. Take notes. Don't stop. Never stop. Don't watch TV or waste time on stupid entertainment. Live with only a few goals in mind.
If you haven't noticed, programming has changed since the '90s. It's now pretty well a blue-collar job -- under three levels of management. Even in small companies, it's heavily controlled, especially where version control comes into play.
It's the perfect job for any 20-something.
By the time 30 roles around, you'd better be the one determining what gets programmed. Whether or not you also do the programming is irrelevant.
By 60, your value comes as proper experience. You shouldn't be looking for a programming job. You should be looking to manage a programming company, consult for a programming company, assess a programming company, or start your own programming company. Otherwise, you're a) not bringing any more skill than a 20-something and b) wasting a lot of the skill that you certainly have.
I'm 35, have my own software company that's varied in size between 1 and 5 programmers -- including myself. And that's just the way I love it.
Don't forget the new NSA data center in Bluffdale, Utah, USA. Great cost of living, superior (i.e., massive brand new) data farm equipment, and the chance to protect the nation from cyber-terrorists. Who could ask for anything more?
This is what I am looking into to make myself more marketable... http://www.scs.northwestern.edu/program-areas/graduate/predictive-analytics/
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
I'm 66, and I keep getting hired for non-specific stuff, because I have no obvious skills. I turned 60 working for an ISP configuring customer links. Then got laid off and became a data center tech. After a couple years in a cushy job configuring servers remotely, I got referred to phone support. After enduring that for 16 months, now I am testing web sites. I wouldn't have a job if I had been looking for anything in particular.
Get your PMP certification from the PMI (yes it will cost a few bucks), then talk to some placement firms about contract work. Your age and experience will be valued in IT project management, and you will earn 2x the techs/developers.
At least in the California job market, there is a dearth of qualified applicants. I've been on both sides of the hiring equation for years. The idea that you can't get a job, with over a decade of PL/SQL, Java and other programming, is just laughable, and tells me we must be missing something, here.
Are you missing all your teeth and refuse to get dentures? Are you only looking for jobs in a 10 mile radius of your house? Are you demanding an astronomical salary? Do you have obvious medical problems that make you incredibly unreliable from day-to-day? Are you just a mediocre programmer?
Your age certainly isn't preventing you from landing a new job. That said, it's certainly possible whatever those issues are, they could be age-related or age-compounded.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
It's much easier to find a tech job with a government agency (local, state, or federal) than it is to find a job in industry. Government jobs are publicly posted, and governments are especially sensitive to various laws regarding equal employment opportunity; there's also a higher percentage of older employees in governments than you will find in most companies. There's something positive to be said for a steady 40-hour/week job. While I don't think much of certifications, some government job postings include them, in which case it would be worth pursuing that certification for a specific position.
If you enjoy teaching, you should consider finding a way to teach at the college level. Community colleges and university extension programs often need instructors, and there are numerous for-profit institutions that don't require advanced degrees of their faculty. While teaching itself can be personally rewarding (not so much financially, though), many of your students will be working for companies that might be willing to hire you as a contractor or perhaps even as an instructor for the company's internal education programs.
In summary, be realistic about what you can bring to the party, recognize that many companies simply find legal ways not to hire people over 40, and focus on those opportunities where you are on a relatively even playing field in seeking a job. Good luck.
Or should I being a greeter at Walmart?
Get a job as an English teacher.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Yes, consult with headhunting firms in your area (as long as you are in an area with tech jobs, SF/Bay, RTP, or major metro area). I predict you'll be working again as a programmer within 30 days. Of course half the money you earn will go to the headhunting firm and they won't give you many benefits or anything, but you'll have a job and make decent money.
So that you can compete for the price of a handful of rice.
I was unemployed for 2.5 years starting just before I turned 53 (I'm 56 now, in my new job for 9 months). This was my first time being unemployed since turning 50, and my first time in such a bad economy. Previous periods of unemployment lasted only until I had had enough time off and wanted to do some work. This time was different: It wasn't raining jobs when I went looking.
I had fantastic connections, with 40% of my career spent as an independent contractor specializing in embedded real-time systems. My resume reads like an engineer's wet dream: I've really been blessed in my career, and I've been the "go-to" guy for many companies and projects. I've never been a manager or leader, just an engineer with solid tech and communication skills. And I've loved every minute of it.
But I had an impossible time getting interviews via the usual means (calling prior associates, networking, Monster, Dice: think crickets chirping), and the few interviews I did get were either "cattle calls" (AKA "career fairs") or were claimed to be mistakes ("Which job are you interviewing for?"). It got bad, very bad. It took well over a year for me to stop thinking of myself as WonderBoy, and to start using my skills to take a more analytical view of the job market.
What finally turned the tide was learning just how local tech jobs were being filled: There were so many folks looking for good jobs that only the most massive companies (mainly defense contractors) had the HR staff to cope with the resume flood. I soon learned that all the mid- and small-size companies were using various temp/staffing/recruiting agencies. ALL OF THEM!
So instead of applying for specific jobs, I started contacting the agencies and recruiters who were being contracted to fill jobs I was interested in. I kissed lots of frogs along the way, but wound up with two very solid, capable and professional recruiters at two agencies who pre-interviewed me, then kept me in their "hot file" of candidates.
They started sending me on interviews to see what kind of impression I made on prospective employers, starting with those employers who had been rejecting lots of candidates the agency and recruiter thought were good matches. Given my history, I had good interview skills, and was able to interview the interviewer, providing valuable feedback to the recruiter. Then they started sending me out for "real" interviews.
I still wasn't getting offers, but the quality and number of interviews went way, way up (1-2 per month). I also got debriefed by the recruiter immediately after, and the feedback was invaluable: It kept me centered, and kept me from worrying. I was on the right track, and everyone agreed it was only a matter of time.
After 5 months of this, the opportunity came that eventually became my current job, for a small company (30 employees). The commute was far, the pay was 30% lower than my last job, and they had a 6-month contract-to-hire requirement (that's how the recruiter got paid - small companies can't afford to pay in advance). That looked like a pile of negatives, but the only viable alternatives were all military contractors or expensive moves out of town. So I took the job, but I negotiated the contract-to-hire down to 90 days, and after only 30 days in, I was told I would be hired when it expired.
The work is absolutely a ton of fun, like getting to play every day. The compromises I made to accept this job were well worth it, even if I hadn't been over 50 and running out of savings. Seriously, I wound up with a great job.
The moral of the story is that you need to get yourself into the process that ACTUALLY causes jobs to get filled. For me, it was staffing/recruiting agencies, and I suspect that approach may work well for you.
Good luck!
I know of at least two companies who have gone looking for people who are either retired or semi-retired for full-time positions. The companies aren't rich, and so can only pay normal wages, and so get turned down a lot and/or have terrible turnover as people in mid-career go looking for more money elsewhere.
They find that older engineers more reliable, and that their depth of experience makes them as effective as more junior people, even where the juniors try to work too many hours. Sometimes because the juniors are working too many hours (:-))
It's hard to find semi-retired people, though. The people I know about were found by the employer via word of mouth, but I suspect one can ask for 'enough experience that age and treachery beat youth and enthusiasm' in an ad without actually getting arrested...
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
This clearly delineates the dichotomy that aging developers reach at some point. (I'm not even close to 50 yet, let alone 60, but I'm not 25 any more either...)
When you're young, and not really at the top of your game, you can still fill a role. Some kinds of testing, lab rat, meeting coordinator, etc. (I'm kind of saying this tongue-in-cheek, but the bottom line is that when you're young and cheap, and perhaps a bit underpowered, well we always need someone to fill the snack room and keep the copier filled with paper).
When you reach ~35, I'm really going to say 40, you (and your employer) need to have a very serious conversation. Typically you're not the cheapest guy in the organization any more. Either you fill a role a leader, an architect, a mentor, a specialized guru, etc. or you... uh, well, how'd you like to move into management? Sure there are always slots for "good" developers who are middle aged, but if you're not a student of history, you need to understand that there's a perception that you provide 25% more value than the 25 year old, but you cost 100% more. When it comes time to cut back, well... do I have to connect the dots for you?
I guess what I'm saying is this: if you're 40 and at the top of your game, the sky's the limit. I don't want to sound immodest, but I've been freelancing for ~15 years, and I'm turning away working all the time. I work incredibly hard to stay current, to stay relevant, to deliver value, etc. For every billable hour I work, there's another hour learning, invoicing, speaking publically, mentoring, etc. And I deliver focused, concentrated knowledge and value and relevant experience to my customers.
Having said that, if you're 40 and a middle-of-the-road kinda guy (or gal), well there are plenty of those, many of them younger and cheaper. Start looking over your shoulder. You're pricey, you're not respected by those less experienced (but perhaps actually more valuable than you), and you have a target on your back. If you're middling, either you just don't have the aptitude or ability, or (what's worse) you don't have the passion / drive. Either way, get ready to hit the bricks. I'm sorry, it's a cold world.
Most of the people I network with are also freelancers / independent consultants, but one thing that fascinates me, something that I've never experienced but I know it exists - the role of true gurus / experts *within* a company (typically a big one). I'm talking about guys like Jeff Dean at Google or Andrei Alexandrescu at Facebook. These guys could do incredibly well out on their own as freelancers, of course I suppose they do well with stock & options & perks, but still... I've always wondered what it's like to be a top-performer (industry-wide, not just in your little pond) within a larger organization. Do you get bored? Are you under-utilized? Is there a lot of politics & overhead? Or are you like a, excuse the term, "pig in shit"? Is the big organization exactly what you need to scratch those itches and pursue those crazy ideas that eventually become quantum leaps in technical circles?
Sorry the detour at the end, my point was more to explain the "fork in the road" at a certain age, but I figure this would be a great place to ask the question about super talent in larger organizations.
Ignore the kiddies and libertarian suckers' comments (I mean, if they were making that much, they wouldn't be wasting time posting here during the work day).
The real question is how long you have on your resume of you being out of work. The longer you're out, the less HR assholes want to talk to you. Back around '04 or '05, when I was *very* long "between positions", I applied for one that looked like it was written for me. Never heard anything, so I got annoyed enough to call the recruiter. She told me I "wasn't fresh".
That *really* pissed me off, so I asked her that if she took a year off to have a kid, would she never be employable again, becuase *she* "wasn't fresh"?
That took her back. She said she'd never thought of it that way, and actually put me in. Didn't get it, presumably because her opposite number thought the same way.
I also wrote a couple of articles I managed to get published in a mag. More on the resume. Did some F/OSS software, set it up as a project on sourceforge, and *that* went on the resume... and it also gave prospective employers examples of what I could do.
Anyway, one thing I did was to use some hair dye. Another thing was that a friend looked me up, told me he was starting a co, and had me do his co. website. I never got paid for that... but with his ok, the instant I made that website live, I had, on my resume, that I was "working" and the website as a bullet point. He was willing to answer calls that yes, I was working for him. Not that many months later, I finally started working again. Warning: you might have to work outside where you live, at least for a while (till you find something local), just so a) you can pay the bills, and b) have another point on the "yes, he's working now" check box.
A+ is useless. My son got it six or eight years ago, and no one would hire him, anyway. He went back for his 4-yr.
Best of luck.
mark
If you don't mind a low wage, support.com has some work from home opportunities with benefits and stock options:
http://www.support.com/about/careers/openings
Forget the newfangled programming language of the day, forget hip and cool, go for the "boring", yet essential stuff that requires experience only older IT guys have. Stuff like, say, quality assurance (auditing software and business processes), penetration testing, ... heck, even Big Iron and Cobol are still in use. All these areas are in desperate need of skilled professionals, and can't find them in the the younger 20-35 age bracket. Or, alternatively, explore less popular areas, like, e.g. hardware/software co-design, development of custom solutions for specific industries (e.g. medical, military, industrial, ...). Your skills, if you have kept current, are more valuable than you think.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Apply to Northrup Grumman, a huge government contractor. They have alot of work, and don't care about age.
It's a very "gray" industry. Most people there are older, still actively working some rather nasty engineering problems (e.g. drilling through 2 miles of water and two more miles of rock) and more likely to understand that your brain didn't turn off when you hit 60.
Disclaimer: At 55, I've gotten heavily into programming powershell to control my little bevy of virtual machine servers and still write my network control software in either vb.net or C#, depending on which one makes my internal customers feel all warm and fuzzy. I'm also pushing for application streaming in the office. I don't expect that I'll suddenly forget how to do any of this in 5 years.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
means more time to work.
Assuming you are still good at what you do ("programming" is how you do it .. "what you do" is create a solution to accomplish tasks, right?), the answer is to go online and find some open source software that appeals to you. Something that is within your existing skill set. Then learn how to use it, begin answering questions for others (assist them in using it ...). Then (when you are good, and answer those questions well ...), the time will come that making repairs, upgrades, integration, customization to that software will be a business. And there is no limit to the number of packages you can learn or work with.
Better yet, when you get good enough you will eventually be able to "fork" a project (make your own version, which is completely normal in the open source world ...) and the resulting package will be your brand.
It takes time ... but it does not take three years and once you have a client base using this method you can no longer be "outsourced" except by your spouse (for those long hours ...).
Perhaps career change into project management of software or engineering projects.
Usually experience and older workers preferred for being responsible for keeping project managed and on track. ...just a thought.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
I wouldn't call myself ageist, but if I were to pick any reason why I might be hesitant to hire someone 60+, it would be based on the assumption you don't have the drive for it anymore. Having been out of work, I hope for your sake you've been keeping yourself busy for the past 3 years working on something related- smartphone apps, websites, open source projects, whatever. If not, I would probably write you off too. Sorry to say but true.
When I was in my 20's, I assumed I'd be washed up by my 40's. I'm now in my 50's and getting RSI from hanging up on recruiters all day long. My dad is in his 80's and still programming for a living. We're both working in languages that are several generations removed from the languages we learned to program in, using systems that were utterly inconceivable at the time. My previous job was working on a computer which would fit in an Altoids tin and was far far more powerful than the giant mainframe I started with.
The most important thing is to never stop learning -- NEVER. My dad and I used to work together programming in Fortran. If we'd stuck with it, you can imagine where we'd both be now. Always stay curious, and always be learning something new.
Thirty years ago it was "Hmm, this C language is getting popular, I should look into it." Twenty years ago it was "Oh look, a book on device driver programming." Fifteen years ago it was "Sun's got this new Java language, I think I'll learn it." Five years ago it was "Wow, I wonder if I could write anything cool on this new cell phone operating system." I never did any of those things for any reason other than curiosity, but they all eventually led to major career advances for me. I could probably list a hundred more things I learned out of curiosity but which benefited my career later on.
Second: never stop working. Employers hate gaps in your resume. It's not fair (or very rational), but that's how it is. If you find yourself between jobs, find *something* to do. When I had a 4-month gap after my startup went under, I spent the time developing an Android app and putting it on the market. It doesn't make enough money to live on, but it was enough to establish me as an experienced mobile engineer, and my career has been going great guns since then.
My dad was laid of after many years as a developer/technical writer/manager at the same company when he was in his early 60s. After roughly a 6-month job search, he found a great position as an "automation engineer" (he basically wanders around looking at people's processes and then automates the boring parts for them). So hang in there, it can be done. If you just start from the assumption that you have to prove to them you've gotten wiser and smarter with age rather than getting "set in your ways", that could probably help.
Can I mod something +1 Scary if it's true but I wish it weren't?
* Gulf Oil States
* Germany
* South Korea
They ARE Hiring. Use Google to find job posting sites.
Fiddle With your Resume and you will be employable again. Forget all the moral hubris about "lying". Our leader lie left and right and start deadly wars based on lies. Do it to get work, that's 100% O.K. !
You could consider being a consultant but, you've been out for 3 years and that could be a problem.
The answer is 42.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
The first 15 years as a programmer you spend on looking for "silver bullets" only to find out that certain things will always be there and that you need to use certain practices to deliver robust work. That's when you are 35-40. You start to be a reliable guy at age 40. Those who can't see that are obvious idiots you have to ignore and many, many experienced managers know the value of a "seasoned professional" and will pay for that. Either in a perm position or freelance.
I actually thought this before I clicked the comments link.
I'm not a programmer. Tried it when I was 14-17 and didn't much care for it. Did hardware and tech support work for the next 10yrs, obtained A+ cert and the little bit of networking experience landed me my current job. My networking experience has increased dramatically, but I always wanted to get into server administration. In the last 5yrs while on my personal time I have achieved a degree in Server Administration and a few server/OS certs along the way. Now next May, with the direction that my company is going, they want my department to be CCNA(R&S, VoIP) certified and I will be attending that boot camp and getting certified. Even though my current degree and certs look good, they are sitting idle and I am getting certified in networking that my job is paying for. Now I think I may just go back to school and get a degree in Network Administration.
It's all about the down time and not sitting on ones ass. Proactive, MAN...PROACTIVE!
"That's right...I said it."
About a year ago, I made a career transition to software engineer and had just completed grad school for Comp Sci. I was 41. I had a phone screen for a job opening at a mobile apps company. The phone screen was overseen by an agency recruiter, who listened in on the whole conversation. The interviewer (a software architect) kept hammering me about my age. First, he flat out asked how old I was. When I told him my age, he said he was disappointed because he was looking for someone in their 20's. He then asked me why I thought he should hire me instead of someone in their 20's. I never had a chance to speak with the recruiter after the call. In an email, I told the recruiter that this seemed like age discrimination...I never got a reply from the recruiter. I spoke to a retired lawyer who was a friend of the family but, he seemed like an idiot...He said its only age discrimination if you are over 60, and then there's only a case if I could prove the company hired someone in their twenties to fill the position. Basically, I gave up after that and moved on. I eventually got a great job at another company doing exactly what I want to, but I still wonder if I ever had a case against the company that gave the phone screen.
They are phasing out the position. Evidently they aren't cutting current greeting staff but I do not believe they are hiring any new greeters. Here's a random article explaining.
But it doesn't sound like you're 60, though. It's well known there is a huge amount of agism in the tech industry. Doesn't matter how not-idle the poster is. He could be incredibly skilled, but not actually get hired. I mean, look at his skills! Java and C# is maybe 75% of the programming market: he's correct that he would already be hired if he was only 40.
There's literally no point in getting a degree in network administration if you already have a degree. The only reason to get any degree at all in that field is for those places that absolutely won't hire someone without one, otherwise you can get plenty of work with no degree at all. The network administrator classes teach you only the very basic material, most of which you probably already know and only a small amount of what they teach you is applicable in the real world anyway.
The best way to learn networking is by doing. Especially if you are talking about getting into Cisco, etc. There are so many specialized things out there, they may teach you basic stuff but the interesting stuff you learn OTJ. If you want to get into networking what you need to do is get a job for a consulting company that does only networking. It's hard, but if you're willing to accept low pay for a while the experience you get will allow you to jump to higher paying positions inside of a year or two.
Companies are afraid to hire older people. You raise their insurance rates and they worry about you deciding to retire at inopportune times. Consulting avoids those concerns since everything is based on contracts. You may have to find your own health insurance, but with C# and Java experience I suspect it won't take you very long to land some consulting work billing at $75-100/hr.
A guy in his 60's with only a couple past jobs and 3 years recent unemployment doesn't look like a really great resume. It looks like he got laid off, and refused to look at any job that wasn't up to his level or out of his comfort zone for a few years, and then finally after a while got a (completely useless) A+ cert. It looks like he's desperate for some relevance. I haven't seen his resume, obviously, but it would give me pause -- even if I didn't know he was older. The "many false starts" deal is worrisome too. Though it's entirely likely I'm reading too much into a few sentences.
Either way, I know a lot of folks from way back when (I'm in my mid-40's) thought that longevity at a place meant something, but it's deadly. You tend to get really good at only those things which were used at that company -- and that includes the culture as well as the tech. It's not an age question, either. If the submitter had moved around every 4-5 years (or even twice) during that last 16 he'd be 100% more employable. As it is he just sort of looks like an "empire builder" with deep but narrow experience who was forced out.
That said, I'd network the shit out of myself, call old vendors/suppliers/contacts/co-workers/whatever and try consulting or freelancing. There's got to be someone in or outside his old company that needs a hand somewhere.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Seriously, do _everyone_ in the world a favor and contribute to something like openstack, apache (httpd), linux. Openstack really needs more older experienced developers to help remind people of those cyclical things that get 'forgotten' every generation. httpd needs people to fix bugs - there are way too many old ones or look at the web standards - help them get the web auth things done basically - do something that matters, get noticed.
I'm only a few years behind the poster. Got a job doing software QA at a company that deals with tape technology and lots of Linux and all flavors of Unix. I was a good match because I've been working with Unix since the late '80s (VMS before that) and Linux since the mid '90s. The company was having trouble finding anyone who wanted to deal with or had experience with tape or "legacy" Unix systems. Funny thing is that there are a lot of people who still use AIX, HP-UX and Solaris, have a lot of money wrapped up in the systems and infrastructure, have no plans to trash stuff that still works and will pay quite well for people who can work on them.
Now if I could just find someone who still uses punch cards, I'd really have it made.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
I've written a couple of encryption applications (C#, trying to move them to C++); that's the kind of thing I like. ... I also think I've written an unbreakable encryption application but doesn't everyone think that?
Hello Mr. Hatfield. I walked into that little trap myself a few months back. If you're an encryption fan, how good are you at breaking other "ad hoc" encryption methods? I got a little ahead of myself a while back and eventually learned that I'd come up with a method that does have a weakness, the interesting question for me became if certain other people thought it was worth their time to break it. I didn't get any takers at the time. I keep seeing stories about "_____ hacks into ______", however it would just be fun to pit my little idea against an expert code breaker for real so that I (and others, I'd publicize the results here and a couple other forums) so we can get a hands on demo of the dangers of home brewed encryption.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
way in. You just have to keep sending the resumes to those guys and jumping through their hoops.
If you are looking at A+ as a way to brush up your general PC internals knowledge and trouble-shooting, I think it couldn't hurt. Though few of us will practice desktop support as our primary focus, those skills are generally the most beneficial next to your primary focus wherever you go.
I once made a friend of a top tier recruiter by agreeing on short notice to join a (very temp) Dell desktop refresh at a small corporate headquarters near where I was living at the time. The lead guy walked out after the first day, and I took over to complete it successfully. After that I got the impression he would find me things, though shortly thereafter I went with something else that went long term.
I never got started in the "glory" (gravy-train) years. Nowadays I get the impression the only way in is to resurrect yourself as a fire-eater when a good pile of suffering and hell fortuitously lands on your doorstep. Seems like the days of the dependably stationed clock-watcher are pretty much over!
Here in the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley, there's a demand for experienced Linux IT systems admins. But that word "experienced" keeps meaning different things. Today it means you need to have experience with nagios, puppet or chef, ruby, mysql, apache, tomcat, java and so on. That you've been doing various forms of 'IX for 20 years means little to the numb-nuts who are hiring if for no other reason that have no clue to what administering Linux systems truly entails. They ask if you can script in "shell", not having a clue what that means, let alone knowing that it could mean sh, bash, ksh, csh or whatever. I'm 61 years old and just moved from one senior IT job to another at about a 10% pay increase. The work is there *IF* you can keep up with the buzz word of the month. Nowadays almost all of the computing work is in web site development, so if you've fallen behind on the latest things in the IT alphabet soup derby, consider doing free-lance web site work. Get your act together in java/tomcat, or get hip to the build engineering discipline. Free-lance web site building is a resume builder, and it's applicable-today job experience that gets you the work. I don't know about where you live, but I have yet to see any age discrimination here.
Learn to deploy and customise wordpress. There are an infinite supply of people looking for this very solution.
I'm calling bullshit on this.
If you can program your way out of a wet paper bag, you can get a job in this economy.
I was recently part of a team seeking a capable Java GWT programmer. We interviewed over 20 candidates. Many "Java Programmers" did not know word one about OOP -- it was frightening. Even more frightening was hearing the same lament from friends working for other companies -- one reported that only 5% of candidates could pass his company's Java OOP test that "was so easy it would make you cry."
I'd look at your resume, your skills, and your attitude. At least one is lacking.
While you are seeking work, learn something new. Write an Android app. Learn a new language or technology. Give your self something interesting and current to discuss when you get interviewed.
And yeah, A+ is a complete waste of time and money for you. Unless you want to work on the help desk.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
Hi, I myself am long in the tooth, so as to say -- and I've been thru some bad weather in the past, in economical matters, that is.
I got me a job with the Government, which (over here) is a more equal opportunity employer. Age is not deemed an important criterion on selection tests; you just have to beat younger dudes.
Good luck.
Learn how to use and maintain control systems. Allen-Bradley, Siemens, Emerson, etc. If you're a computer guy you should be able to pick it up in less than a year and it pays good. Plus, all the guys currently doing it are 60 years old too. It'd be like camouflage.
It worries me you asked about A+ certification. A+ seems like an obvious non-starter unless you need it for some obscure employer policy (as at least one other posters mentioned (for Alaska)). Which makes me wonder if other problems (challenges?) are missing from your original problem description.
Can you post a streamlined version of your resume? Simple text + skills + work history; you can strip company + identifying info. That would give the crowd here some more to work on.
Some additional questions for you:
What area do you live in? (Country + closest major city).
Can you travel?
What kind of schedule can you work?
Skills: Java, C#, PL/SQL, some Unix scripting
What kind of role are you looking for?
What kind of recruiters have you reached out to?
... men that reached the age of 70 amongst the celtic tribes of northern Spain, threw themselves to the cliffs because they were no longer fit for combat.
Not being fit for combat meant to be useless, and a burden to their the tribe.
Perhaps we should go back to those venerable traditions. Or just die of hunger.
BBQ grill in small room. Put up warning signs.
Exercise a alot, wear tight pants, eat right.. act hip.. say groovy!
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
Sad, right? But that doesn't change the facts, unfortunately. Things are what they are.
in fact i envy your country. because no matter what doom and gloom everyone say and complain about, USA is still a country where a man can still turn himself from nothing to something. America never runs out of programs and opportunities to better yourselves. switching to bioinformatics not only is a fresh start, but also "a brave new world" where you can still use your acquired IT skills. here, check this link out --> http://xomix.com/bitmap-bioinformatics-training-certificate-program/
i'm a filipino in the Philippines and unfortunately, i can not take advantage of that opportunity. You think your life there is hard? try working as IT in the Philippines. you won't believe our situation here where companies routinely underpay, overwork and discriminate against IT workers, especially the grunts. i wouldn't even want to try to be in America because you guys think that H1-B threatens you. Also, the US embassy in Manila is filled with Fil-Ams (U.S. Citizen immigrants of filipino origin) who puts everyone applying to be in US with the most extraordinary scrutiny short of saying filipinos must be banned in america.
See, when you're 35, you think that careful planning results in security. And in a perfect world, it should. But then there's your daughter with leukemia, and then the divorce, and then your carefully researched hedge fund investment shits the bed, and then your partner splits the business and takes your best clients, and then the housing market collapses, and then you throw out your back making long stints at a desk impossible, and then there was that patent lawsuit that sank your startup.
And so you find yourself at the age of 60, having to listen to some 35 year old douche lecture you about planning.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Most people, like yourself, slap together a resume and send it out. They typically under value themselves. A buddy of mine in his 50s, was recently let go and he came by to get my opinion on his resume. The first thing that I read was that he knew MS Office for software and the first line on his hardware experience was PCs and laptops. The first impression was that he was looking for a junior position. In realilty, he was an expert in Unix, SANs, NAS, security, system forsenics, etc.. After sitting down and reviewing his experience and putting it in the order that he wanted prospective employers to see, he ended up with an excellent resume that reflected his skills and years of experience. The next week, he had 4 interviews, 3 head-hunters wanting him and 2 clients. I recommend that you run your resume by someone who knows you, your work experience and knowledge. I've put a simple 2 page web site together for us nerds that details the job process. I'm a teacher in a post secondary institute specializing in VoIP so it's not some free plug for a business or anything.
I also lost my programming job at age 60 (after 31 years with the company) due to "staff reduction". Fortunately I received a nice severance package (1 year's salary) which along with unemployment benefits allowed me to get by for the next 2 years. I spent those 2 years seeking another job without any success. No one seemed interested in hiring a 60+ year old programmer. At 62 I decided to say screw it and formally retired. Started collecting social security and my company pension. Still haven't had to touch my 401(k). Turns out it was the best decision I ever made. I am actually enjoying life for a change. No more meetings, 2:00 am wake-up calls, self evaluations, status reports, etc. Life is good. And you never know when it will end. I have had several friends in their early 60's who have passed away due to heart attacks and cancer. Bottom line, retire at the first chance you get and enjoy life.
Although the sector needs experience, getting through the HR frontdoor is the first hurdle and a not-so-well-written resume can be the biggest hurdle.
My advise would be to find someone with IT-related HR experience and rewrite your resume in a modern way, emphasizing your experience.
Read some background on the latest buzz technologies and you probably will notice that most of it is just the same old technology with a new shiny label.
Make sure you include some buzzwords that HR people are looking for. Rather than actively having worked with new technologies, understanding those technologies is usually sufficient for new employers.
Good luck finding a new position!
I work in City government. We can't find qualified developers at our pay scale. You might make a little less but the benefits are good. There a plenty of out-dated systems that need support, so older skills are still valuable. I've seen a few older people get hired.
I was a long term programmer for system level development for the past 20 years of my career until I decided I was just "getting too old for this shit". I really needed a change. I would never consider leaving a career like programming where you are among the computer elite and understand things like binary mathematics just because it's logical and move to something silly like A+ style bench tech.
I decided that I have to make a lateral move. While Cisco isn't quite a lateral move, it's as close as it gets. So, I've spent the past 9 months studying and will have my CCIE in January. I am now a Cisco instructor and instead of taking a pay cut, I now make nearly three times as much.
I've taken the A+ and Network+ exams and on a scale from 1 to 10, 1 being the worst (Certified Ethical Hacker) and 10 being the best (CCIE, JNCIE), I put A+ and Network+ at -2 since not only are they effectively a certification to try and convince people you're not useless, the questions on the test were often so incredibly wrong it was awful. I feel that if you study for A+ or Network+ it actually will teach you much, but much of it will just be completely wrong.
To those who are about to flame me about it, I aced both exams because I've been around people who just completely don't understand computers for years making stupid remarks about them. So I know how a "Computer Expert" would answer these questions and that's what I did. On the A+ and Network+, if you answer the questions intentionally wrong, you often get them right.
So, in short, unless you want to work for someone who you'll have to struggle to respect, don't work for anyone who actually respects the A+ or Network+.
P.S. Linux+ is maybe a +2 on that same scale.
I was 62 when I got laid off as an IT manager after 17 years at a small university. I thought it was all over, but kept applying for jobs that interested me. I had 20 years of programming experience and really enjoyed web development so those were the jobs I went after. Amazingly I was hired as a web developer at a larger university and I've been there for 2 years. Most of the other programmers are in their 20s ad 30s and pick up new stuff way faster than I can. But my experience has proved it's worth time and time again. These kids are smart, but haven't yet mastered the best ways to approach problems, nor the instincts to know when a course of action will be fruitful or not. Languages may change, and the problems we're solving now are different, but the basic principals of good programming are the same. The best part of my experience is that the young developers really do respect my experience and don't just treat me as a dinosour.
So hang in there and keep looking for a shop that will benifit from your years of experience.
I am 64, going on 65 years of age. I took a new position with a major international corporation as senior systems engineer at the beginning of this year. I didn't apply for the job initially. I was approached by a head-hunter firm who had read my resume on the IEEE web site and thought I'd be a good match for for this company. I was interviewed and hired, and I don't think that my age had much to do with the decision. I think that my abilities, experience, and drive were what mattered to them. Now, I am doing cutting-edge work and although I butt heads with people from time to time, my ideas and tools are becoming adopted and implemented world-wide in a system that supports 50+ million users (growing to 200+M in the next year or so).
FWIW, our organization has many young, old, asian, latin, european, american engineers (male, female, and "other"), and as far as I can determine, none are discriminated against because of their ethnicity, sex, age, or orientation (company policies are clear on this). The company originates in Europe, so that may be (probably is) a factor in the "liberal" attitudes of the organization. I can only say that I am personally thankful for that!
So, if you aren't already a member of a major professional organization (ACM, IEEE, etc), then do so join. At your (my) age, you should be able to become a "senior" member, with lower annual membership fees. In any case, both the ACM and the IEEE have serious programs to help their members obtain employment in their fields.
I really wasn't expecting the age issue to be a big deal as I've always performed well for over 30 years and got the best job of my life, doing head-down programming, at 55.
But the economy and the extra seven years since I was last in the market seem to have made a big difference.
Start a real company for a couple hundred bucks. It's good experience and looks better than 'unemployed' on a resume.
Create your company's web site and get it hosted for a few bucks a month.
Fill in the gaps with online free courses. They show your mind is still working. Google 'MOOC' for the latest, but coursera.org is one I've benefitted from.
If you want a challenge that will prepare you to be a consultant and you can drop when something better comes along, consider substitute teaching.
I'm in the same boat as you and want to thank everyone for their hopeful comments.
Anonymous old fart here. You can pretty much ignore the advice from the younger crowd. It's like taking advice from a non-technical user on how to fix a pc. They have no clue.
Age bias is going to be a fact of life. A lot of it will be because you don't fit what their preconceived notion of what a programmer should look like.
Stay technical obviously. A lot of stuff today is fad driven. You'll have to learn a lot of it at least superficially. Don't worry about that. They don't know it any better. I know that because I spend a lot of my time fixing that crap. So basically develop a necessarily limited knowledge base and bs to bring you on par with your juniors. Not knowing what they're really talking about hasn't stopped them.
Ah, but how are they selected for the interview in the first place? If HR is screening resumes, you may never know you're not seeing someone.
"there hasn't been anything genuinely new these past 20 years"
Are you serious?
20 years ago would be 1992. That was before 98% of the internet users today knew of the internet. Smart phones didn't exist. The Apple Newton just came out. Windows 3.1 came out. MIME was first defined. InterNIC did not exist. Linux was maybe a year old.
You better hope you don't actually employee people. You comments are the most obvious form of illegal age discrimination I've heard in a while.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
A few certs on the resume might not be a bad thing. Sometimes HR is the first person looking at your resume and certs mean different things to different people. I've started to get some to increase my exposure to different technology. I also make an effort to undestand the material vs just doing enough to pass the test. They aren't going outshine my experience or degree in CS but having something that shows your still interested in learning isn't a bad thing. The cert is also sort of an insurance policy for a IT hiring manager who can always claim you had it in the event that you're a bad hire. I know a good amount of IT managers that spend most of their energy on doing the least amount of work/making sure nothing comes back to make them look bad.
and i find that just making smartass comments on slashdot is a full time job
I'm serious. Give up. You may never get another job again, at least not in this country -- and I say that as someone who is almost exactly your age.
You are probably two years away from early retirement on Social Security. Your best bet may be to consider some South American retirement communities where, in two years, you could be well on your way to becoming a citizen -- possibly retaining dual U.S. citizenship -- AND of being able to afford medical care. (Medical vacations are available for a reason, you know.) The earlier you look into it, the better off you may be. You will have to learn Spanish or Portuguese if you want eventually to be a citizen down there. But I know for a fact that Spanish, at least, is not hard to learn.
You may not be able to work again until you get citizenship, but some South American countries make it rather simple to live there by reducing or eliminating taxes on income earned in the United States, and at least one, I believe, has a treaty that allows you to collect your Social Security income for as long as you want without taxation. While not everything is extremely cheap there, it seems as though you may be able to live a relatively decent life in some South American countries on just your Social Security benefits, and if you own property in the U.S. and lease it out, you may be able to live extremely well. Eventually, you should be able to get some sort of health insurance, and the quality of care in some countries in South America appears to be quite good, even as the actual cost is much lower. And despite what you may have heard, not all South American governments are corrupt -- at least one ranking organization (http://www.worldaudit.org/corruption.htm) lists 2011 corruption rankings for 180 countries in their World Democracy Audit and gives Chile a marginally better ranking than the U.S. government.
So I suggest at least considering the idea.
How do I get to post a question on slashdot. I seem not to be getting it right. Will appreciate