How Companies Are Preparing For the IT Workforce Exodus

itwbennett writes "If you think there's a glut of contract IT workers now, just wait. 10,000 U.S. baby boomers will turn 65 every day from now until 2030, and at least some of them will want to ease into retirement. This may sound like music to the ears of IT organizations who already would rather hire temporary staff with specialized expertise — especially for working on legacy technologies. 'The contractor ratio, already high in tech, will continue to increase as companies allow retiring staff to work part-time hours or hire them for short-term projects,' says Matthew Ripaldi, senior vice president at IT staffing firm Modis."

Comments

OP or tune it ee

[symbolset]

If you're in tech now the geezers are finally going to let you move up by retiring.

Re:OP or tune it ee

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, if you want to work for India Business Machines or Chinese Info Systems COmpany. Speak much Hindi or Mandarin?

The retirements just mean another faux "shortage" of talent to support more offshoring and H1B programs.

But then, I hear the NSA is hiring...

Re:OP or tune it ee

[symbolset]

We're talking about jobs where geezers are retiring. Nobody retires from .com jobs as a geezer. They quit, cash out, opt out, are laid off or are forced out a-la Microsoft's Stack Ranking while they're still in their 30's. There is no retirement in private sector tech. If you're old enough to worry about that, you're on your way out.

Re:OP or tune it ee

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're in tech now the geezers are finally going to let you move up by retiring.

If you thinks it's the geezers that are holding you back, you should probably look for a job in another field. If anything, geezers are the ones being fired because they make too much.

Re:OP or tune it ee

[symbolset]

Strokes grey beard - tell me more, young AC.

Re:OP or tune it ee

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they'll retain their position and likely their pay, only moving to part-time work. So they still get to career-block you, but now they can do it from home. Nothing like a GS 13/14/15 who manages to never be in the office, yet still holds a slot and draws a check. We are horribly shorthanded these days due to this crap, despite being "overstaffed."

Re:OP or tune it ee

[AlecC]

As a geezer, one of the main criticisms at my review was that I tend to overload younger staff with too much information. Because I have seen so much before, I can jump on new problems faster. And I am working at what thinks of itself as a leading edge chip design company on the newest products.The company chooses me for the bleeding edge.

Re:OP or tune it ee

[Gr8Apes]

And yet, the faster IT "develops", the more it seems like year x's crop reinvents the wheel, and several years later, the "hot" trend that was the silver bullet either really does have all the same flaws as yesteryear's tech, or brought in some new ones that made it an even worse choice.

The only thing that's developed rather rapidly is hardware, and that train has slowed relative to technology to take advantage of it. Software wise, some new tech has come out, but mostly existing tech has refined itself. Nothing I'd call revolutionary compared to what existed before.

Re:OP or tune it ee

[dbIII]

Oi! That's not my beard!

Re:OP or tune it ee

[TWiTfan]

I've been listening to this "The Baby Boomers are going to retire and all you Gen-Xers and Millenials will have jobs aplenty!!" horseshit for decades now. But I have never see it happen. Most of the boomers I've known are way too self-centered and selfish to ever voluntarily surrender any power ("Me Generation" indeed) . In my field, I think I've seen more old boomers die at this point than retire. They just stay around forever like some kind of mold, getting in the way, collecting their big paychecks, and preventing anyone else from advancing (or innovating).

Sorry to sound bitter. I'm sure there are plenty of great boomers out there. But in the places I've worked, I've come to see them mostly as a pain-in-the-ass and obstacle to be overcome.

Re:OP or tune it ee

[boristdog]

I've heard it too, and I'm making it a reality, for myself at least. I'm not a true "boomer", since I was born in the mid-60's, but I'm not really whatever they call what came next, either.

But I see what's happening with the lack of jobs. So I'm saving my money, paying off all my debts, building up some alternate income sources and I plan to retire in about 5 or 6 years in my early 50's so someone younger can have my high-paying programmer/dba/analyst job. I don't need a huge house (kids are gone) or an expensive car, expensive 5 star vacations, etc. All I need is health insurance, my little place, my pets, my garden, a good car, lots of inexpensive vacations to fun places and some side work to keep me busy and I'm a happy SOB.

Turns out that none of that costs much except health insurance. And the republicans in my state want to keep me from getting affordable health care. So I can't retire until I can get that. And neither can my older co-workers. So we have to work, causing young people to be shut out of the good jobs, causing an economic crisis.

All because a bunch of petulant little whiners in government don't want people to have affordable health insurance because it may make the black man in the White House look good..

Re:OP or tune it ee

[jacobsm]

I'm one of those geezers who's planning to retire in the next 5-10 years, currently with 34 years of zOS Systems Programmer experience behind me. if you want my job you're going to need to know;

S390 Assembler
How the operating system works
What to do when it doesn't
Data management.
Storage management.
Hardware configuration.
Data Encryption and security.
Networking.
Obscure business logic.
Knowing what to do, and more importantly why you MUST do it.
Knowing what NOT to do, and why it's a really bad idea.
Knowing what rules to make.
Knowing when to break the rules, and when not to.
Knowing when to tell Management they're an idiot, and they accept it because of your track record on being right.

Do you get the picture?

Re:OP or tune it ee

[swillden]

We're talking about jobs where geezers are retiring. Nobody retires from .com jobs as a geezer. They quit, cash out, opt out, are laid off or are forced out a-la Microsoft's Stack Ranking while they're still in their 30's. There is no retirement in private sector tech. If you're old enough to worry about that, you're on your way out.

Bah.

I'm 44 and quite productively employed in private sector tech... and work with many people significantly older than I am, some into their 60s.

Re:OP or tune it ee

[RMingin]

Funny that you would choose that joke. NSA is actually *firing* almost all it's sysadmins.

This will be hilarious in a few years, when their new highly automated system has a problem and they desperately want to contract some of those canned admins back in.

http://it.slashdot.org/story/13/08/09/1419228/nsa-firing-90-of-its-sysadmins

Re:OP or tune it ee

[CimmerianX]

I'm right there with you buddy. And the influx of H1B visa workers is downward pressure on salaries as well. I thought by now I would be making far more than I do, but the influx of cheap cheap, pseudo-slave labor is a constant threat to our kind now.

Re:OP or tune it ee

[jacobsm]

I had two people, one got taken away from me, the other wanted a different career path and moved into a Management position. Currently there's no one assigned to me, and the only other person in the Data Center who can do some of what I do will be retiring next year.

It takes several years of training and hands on experience to become a somewhat useful Systems Programmer.

Re:OP or tune it ee

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I was one of those with "seen so much before"... I actually had a coworker grab me for a problem (they'd spent hours on), I hopped into it and pointed out a bunch of problems in about 30 minutes. He said he has "no idea how I figured that out", so I said I was always willing to take some time and sit down with someone and teach them some things.

His answer? "Oh, I don't want to know what you do... then they'd expect it of me."

I'm the one who just got laid off, of course... he got promoted to being in charge of another department I hear.

Re:OP or tune it ee

[Maxo-Texas]

Don't know if this helps but 5 million people went on social security 2010 and 2011 vs 5 million people from 2000 to 2009.

Most men and almost all women retire by age 65. I think the numbers are like 75% and 90% respectively. Those who keep working are mostly lawyers, politicians, ceo's, and similar types. Not people who punch a clock or work a fixed schedule and mostly people who either enjoy what they do a lot or who have redefined play as work (i.e. going to conferences in spain, hawaii, europe...)

The retirement rate went from 2.5 million per year to 3.5 million per year in 2012.
It increases again to 4.5 million per year in 2016.

You can't see it because of how close it is but the job market should be pretty sweet sometime between 2016 and 2020.

And the chinese and europeans are retiring/dying at the same time.

Only the indians are off sync with the rest of the world. But they are increasingly expensive; the competent ones seem to have been consumed/moved into management; and are less willing to travel/work like slaves-- I'd give it another 8 years on them.

Geezers can be highly effective but once they lose their job- no one will hire them. So they are not going to be a concern.

Re:OP or tune it ee

[boristdog]

Obama's the one who has, unilaterally and probably unconstitutionally, removed employer requirements from the bill and waived hundreds of companies

Ummm...Did you read what I was saying? WHY should health insurance be tied to employment? If I could get affordable health insurance NOT tied to my employer (and I have great health insurance through my employer) then I COULD RETIRE IN ABOUT THREE YEARS. And one of you young whippersnappers could have my job.

As it is I cannot get affordable health insurance without being employed, so I end up screwing some young person out of a job for an additional 15 years or so until Medicare kicks in. Now multiply this over the millions of others in my situation and...enjoy your un-or-underemployment, I guess.

Re:OP or tune it ee

[Sigma 7]

Being on the hiring end of the interviews I can say it's VERY hard to find candidates that are even in the ballpark of our required skill sets.

I've been seeing this a lot - the first major job search I did was part of co-op, and employers were demanding ~5 years of crystal reports which is well beyond those who are in college and learning stuff for the first time.

There is only a shortage of purple squirrels. If you look for actual talent, or actually spend time to train a newcomer (90 days for basic tasks, and gradually increase responsibility afterward), then you have plenty of applicants available where you don't even need to call in an H1B.

Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

"...says Matthew Ripaldi, senior vice president at IT staffing firm Modis"

Should we even take this post at face value?

Re:Outsourcing

[Joining Yet Again]

Capitalism pretends that you can think in the long term by pandering to the interests of men who only need enough money to live for one lifetime.

All non-regulated industries end up as you describe, really.

Glut of IT workers?

[pthisis]

If you think there's a glut of contract IT workers now ...then you lack a basic understanding of labor markets.

Computer Programmers: 3.7%
DB Admins: 1.3%
Network and sysadmins: 3.9%
Network and data analysts: 3.9%
Software devs, application, and systems software: 4.0%

Those are the current unemployment rates for workers in those occupations. It's pretty much the same for all IT occupations; there are few enough workers that companies are having a tough time filling jobs, and even moderately skilled employees aren't having trouble finding jobs.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323936804578229873392511426.html

Re:Glut of IT workers?

[Dr_Barnowl]

Second that ; whenever we try hiring, the standard of the applicants is utter, utter, dross.

They typically exhibit faults like

* Lacing basic reading comprehension

For example, they tender applications for development jobs... when they were applying for testing.

* Apply for every job

When I apply for a job, I read the application and compose a precise strike covering letter, tailor my CV, the full treatment, because there are so few jobs out there that would interest me. These guys cut and paste applications into a huge list of jobs and it shows. Why would I want to hire someone who isn't interested in my position?

* Lack basic English skills

Spelling and grammar mistakes are a no-no. Successful software development is about communication - communicating with the user to get the requirements right, communicating with the computer to implement them. I don't wish to hire someone who displays difficulty communicating with concision in any of their chosen languages. Writing incomprehensible goobledegook in your job application will get it canned. Without wishing to be biased, this applies equally to the many Indian applicants (they outnumber the natives, typically) we receive responses from.

* Being unable to program

You'd think this would deter most folks from applying from programming jobs, but apparently many people have no shame. While I don't expect people to reinvent wheels like ArrayList, I do expect you to know how they are constructed.

* Lacking any kind of initiative

If you're asked a tough logic problem in an interview, even if you're stumped, you don't give up. If you attack it in a way that reveals some kind of thought process going on, I will give you credit for it.

Re:Glut of IT workers?

[Dr_Barnowl]

And of course, the spelling and grammar nazi has made an error in his post!

<fires self>

Re:Glut of IT workers?

[asmkm22]

All they're saying is that the number of CONTRACTOR and/or CONSULTING jobs will go up, as businesses aren't likely to replace all of their aging and retiring in house staff. They aren't saying the overall unemployment rate or even career demand will change. Just that the shift away from in house staff is going to speed up in the next few decades as a result of baby boomers exiting the market.

Re:Glut of IT workers?

[ruir]

The point is that everyone nowadays doesn't think long term, and just wants cheap labor, and then complains it can't find competent applicants, because the competent ones are already with a stable job, and/or don't bother applying for cheap ass salaries.

Re:Glut of IT workers?

[cyber-vandal]

Why would I want to hire someone who isn't interested in my position?

Because you need their skills perhaps? I don't hire a plumber because he likes my house, I hire him because he can fix my boiler.

Re:Glut of IT workers?

[Maxo-Texas]

When I entered IT, we were kind of the priest kings. Good pay, bad hours, reasonable status.

As I retired from IT, we were a cost center. Good pay, ridiculous hours plus nights and weekends and almost all holidays, terrible status.

I couldn't recommend it as a career to anyone. The technology changes too fast these days and age discrimination is blatant and harsh.

Offshoring competition is harsh tho I think it will start easing in under 8 years. Their wage inflation is incredible (20% a year) and their willingness to leave home for years is diminishing.

Re:Glut of IT workers?

[RoknrolZombie]

Well, I can maybe help you with some of your hiring practices - as an experienced IT guy who's been out of work a few times over the last few years, and have been looking to better my situation for a lot longer, I might be able to tell you why qualified applicants aren't applying.

First: Are you putting a ballpark salary in the advertisement, or is it some nonanswer like "DOE" or "Market" or "Going Rate"? Because all three of those have prevent me from submitting my resume in the past, as I'm assuming that you're just going to rape me on my paycheck. Oh, you mean I need to get a phone interview (during my workday), I need to take a day off for a face to face, and then IF I'm able to impress you enough you'll tell me that the most you'll pay me is 2/3 of going rate (but I'll get a raise in six months! pinky swear!)

Second (and speaking of pay anyway): Are you actually giving market value to your IT guy or are you underpaying him/her by 20% like most of the rest of the world? When someone is hiring me to do server work, helpdesk work, database work, managing a phone system, running backups, handling rebuilds and break/fix requests they'd better be paying more than $17/hr.

Something that companies don't seem to realize: *good* IT guys (and no, I'm not cocky enough to think that I necessarily belong to that group) are also really good at research - they HAVE to be to do their job. When I find a job opportunity one of the first things that I do is check online for the salary that I can expect to get. If that's too low, I don't apply. If I'm finding the advert somewhere like Dice or Monster, that has the ability to parse my already written resume and I'm redirected to a site that forces me to [i]manually re-enter all of my fucking information[/i] I'm also disinclined to apply for the position, [b]especially[/b] if the rate of pay is nowhere to be found. The third thing that I check is the climate of the company - do they have a lot of turnover? Are there reviews online with Glassdoor or somewhere else that can let me know *why* there's a high turnover (after all, there may be legitimate reasons...or it could be because your company has no idea how to hire competent managers)

Now, that third step is optional - if I'm unemployed and looking, that third step is nonexistent (I'd rather work *anywhere* than be unemployed. I can continue looking after getting hired, after all), but if it's a shitty company that treats its IT department like crap, you can bet your ass that two weeks after hiring me I'll be continuing to look for work. In six months I just might be out the door.

Some might be saying that I'm shooting myself in the foot by being so stubborn about this shit, but honestly, how much of my time do you need to waste just to determine whether I'm a potential fit for your company? Do you really want your time wasted by a technician that you can't afford? Do you really want to squash those excellent IT guys that just simply don't have time (by dint of being overworked and on call all of the fucking time) by making them reinvent the wheel (by manually having to enter in a resume that likely took at least a few hours to put together in the first place)? If you said yes to any of those questions then you're like most of the other companies on the planet and I've answered your question.

There's another issue that I'll mention here, although it hasn't prevented me from applying at very many jobs: Let your IT department draft the Job Posting. Having your HR department try to grok the difference between Windows and Office is painful enough, but when you have them just throwing down any buzzword that they've heard in the last two weeks you're really not going to get a very good caliber of employee.

Re:Glut of IT workers?

[RoknrolZombie]

If you're hiring people that work for you because they "enjoy working for you" then you've hired a bunch of liars. I work because I want to get paid, because I have bills. I don't work to make friends. I don't work to have social hour. I work because it pays money - I have enough "fun" fixing my family computers for free.

light, tunnel, oncoming train

[Swampash]

With 10,000 Baby Boomers hitting retirement and putting their hands out for social security while simultaneously ceasing to pay income tax the IT job market should be the least of the US's worries.

Re:light, tunnel, oncoming train

[SirLurksAlot]

Exactly how many IT workers do you know who will need Social Security when in all likelihood they've been in IT their whole lives making IT money? I don't know about you but by the time I turn 65 I plan to have some kind of nest egg built up. If you're in IT you're not exactly hurting for money (or you're doing it wrong).

Re:light, tunnel, oncoming train

[somersault]

Lots of people spend money as soon as it comes in. Some even spend money they don't have..

Re:light, tunnel, oncoming train

[Antique Geekmeister]

Personally, I know many of them who will need that Social Security immediately. Some have moved fiscally up to management, and are in better shape fiscally, but many have been relegated down to "legacy support" or squeezed out of their companies to avoid retirement benefits, or have been working as contractors (which makes savings harder). Many of us were horribly battered financially by the dotcom bubble, and others by the housing market crisis where our savings and housing investments collapsed. Being out of work for a year, unplanned, while their "stock options" turned into so much wastepaper collapsed a lot of savings. It's been difficult for many of my older colleagues to keep their skills active and salaries in the middle class, especially if we lost businesses in the dotcom crash and had to start over. Others of us have invested heavily in families and communities, whether with direct finances or by doing careers that we loved, or have health issues that are eating their finances.

The combination of any or all of these has been fiscally devastating to many of my colleagues and predecessors. I've been very fortunate that my workplace values the experience and that the variety of systems we work with keeps my skills fresh. But many of my older technical colleagues have basically become unemployable, since they're "overqualified". And despite its illegality, age discrimination is still widespread, just as there is gender discrimination against hiring women who might become pregnant in IT.

Re:light, tunnel, oncoming train

[deadweight]

Doies that mean they all get sent to Cuba without trial? Let Castro deal with AARP - that'll do him in for sure - muahahahaha

Re:light, tunnel, oncoming train

[SQLGuru]

I'm in my 40s and won't need Socialist Security for many years. I'm planning for the well to be dry (or to be legislated away) by the time I get there, so I'm putting away money on my own. But you can bet that when the time comes, I'll be claiming whatever share I'm allowed. It's *MY* money that I was forced to contribute so that it would be there for my retirement....when I retire, I want it back.

Re:light, tunnel, oncoming train

[Sponge Bath]

Every single one of them could continue to live the lifestyles of the rich and famous without a dime of Social Security money... all the while complaining about how tough things are for them and how easy things are for the rest of us.

Project much?

Re:light, tunnel, oncoming train

[Maxo-Texas]

Those who are well off will be losing 15% to 35% right off the top to taxes.
I expect changes to balance the system will raise that to 25% to 50%.

If we have a period of inflation- they'll have paid in dollars of purchasing power to get dimes of benefits.

A fifth of the boomers will do well- the rest may be looking at early death and pet food.

Re:light, tunnel, oncoming train

[operagost]

Since you're blaming this boomer for every government that existed while he was alive, I'll hold you personally responsible for what Obama is doing-- OK?

Why the negativity for contractors?

[BlueCoder]

Being a contractor I can earn more money if I'm motivated. Work semi regularly at half a dozen businesses and be exposed to new businesses and people all the time. In good times I can choose between projects that I'm interested in doing.

Re:Don't Worry

[erroneus]

If you think you don't have a boss, then you're doing it wrong. You have many.

Government is your boss in part. Each customer you do work for is your boss.

Personally I prefer the dead man's shoes approach

[SmallFurryCreature]

Why wait until your boss retires... why not assist him on his way to his final reward. What do you think crawl spaces are for anyway?

And what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Got an ambitious underling? There is always more room under the office.

The only downside is getting the fingers to un-stiffen enough to sign your references. You would think that the blood and putrid remains on the resume might cause questions, but real businessmen understand. Everyone has a few skeletons in their closet.

Re:quick calculation

[antifoidulus]

there's roughly 5975 days between today and 1st January 2013.

Holy shit, is this our first /. post from the future? Why are you speculating on what may happen, you already know. Now share!

I call bullshit

[eman1961]

First of all, there is no glut right now of competent IT workers. I have lots of buddies (most elderly, so to speak, I'm 52) who have absolutely no shortage of work. I don't see it. I am a contract worker now - bill at a greater rate than I ever have in my life, and have more work than I know what to do with. I turn down 2 out of 3 contracts. I think that people who are not getting IT work need to hone their skills until they have jobs/contracts forced onto them.

I used to work at Microsoft - I never even *came close* to being stack ranked out. I am not saying that no one was ever incorrectly ranked at the bottom, but I never saw it. The people I saw at the bottom end of the stack rank - I could see the point that the managers were making. One dude was competent, but spent *way* too much time goofing off. And while Microsoft is mostly filled with competent people, make no doubt about it, there are plenty of semi-competent people there. There needs to be a system to get rid of the dead weight.

Now granted, I am not lazy. I am versed in OO and functional programming. I have developed many large projects in JavaScript, as well as C#. I have written books, written over 1000 blog posts, recorded over 150 screen-casts, and etc. I took a job writing a large system in JavaScript without knowing the language, then taught myself the language, including the functional programming / lamda / closure aspects in 3 weeks. I was 50 at the time. So don't whine about being old and not having the skills. If you don't have them, then get them. If you have them, then you probably have work. And if you have the skilz and don't have work, then blog / screen-cast, and you will have work in short order.

Re:I call bullshit

[cyber-vandal]

Lie and then learn the language before you get found out.

Re:I call bullshit

[eman1961]

No, I didn't lie. I made no statement about my JavaScript skills before getting the job. I did make statements about being able to do the job in JavaScript. I knew about the performance gains in the V8 / Chakra JavaScript engines, and I knew that even though I would need to write some somewhat complex code, the JavaScript engines could handle it.

I got the contract for three reasons. First, I am a domain expert in a pretty technical area. I know about software development, and I am also an expert in another field. That is another story, see below. Second, through long, painful practice, I have become a good writer / speaker / screen-caster. I can present well. In the process of applying for the job, I recorded several screen-casts that explained exactly how I would go about solving the problem. Those screen-casts were sent from person to person until the entire hiring team knew that I was the right person for the job. Third, I didn't have any questions about whether I could perform. I was confident of being able to pull it off, and in fact, I certainly did do so.

About being a domain expert - while at MS, I was a 'heat seeking missile'. I would only work on hot projects, and in each project I worked on, I learned more than almost anyone else on the team about how best to work with the technology. I had one manager who wanted me to work on a 'dog' project, and I just would not do it; I switched jobs to another group that had a project I believed in. Being a domain expert, in my opinion, is the highest ROI that a developer can make. Don't just be a code jockey. Be a code jockey and an accounting expert, or be a code jockey and a construction estimation expert, or be a code jockey and a compiler expert. This is how you pull off the 'feat of getting a job writing a large JavaScript program without any JavaScript experience.'

When you are working at a company, the idea is to make your best effort to be the deepest domain expert in that particular field in the entire company. If you are in accounting, read every available relevant book on accounting. If you are at a company writing software to do computational fluid dynamics, then really understand the math, the available theories about best practices, and so on.

Re:I call bullshit

[plurgid]

Well I call bullshit on your bullshit man.
This is the same mindset as the myriad of "work at home" MLM schemes my wife has found her self wrapped up in over the years (Avon, Mary Kay, Pampered Chef, Stampin' Up, yadda yadda yadda).

Yes sir! If you're a super-motivated outgoing self-promotion machine you too can earn up to* a bajillion dollars a year!

Here's a bloody obvious thing: everyone can't do that. If everyone did that, then it would not work.

It worked out for you: congratulations. That *does not* mean that it will or can work out for anyone motivated and good enough.
It means you got lucky, and you worked hard.

A hard-working, motivated, talented person is like a seed. If the seed finds itself on fertile ground, it can grow and thrive and bear fruits . If it lands on barren ground, not a damn thing is going to happen.

When you get down to it, that's the real root issue, here. There are fewer and fewer parcels of fertile economic ground in the US. Typically boomers (hell, everyone once you get past a certain age threshold) tend to think "hey I worked hard and these lazy kids ...". Your post betrays that same sort of thinking, and I'm here to tell you it's complete bullshit. The US is completely awash in talented, motivated, educated hard-working and capable young people who haven't got a place to plant their seed.

IT contract workers (especially the from-overseas variety who are willing to work for pennies on the dollar) are like an invasive species ... say Kudzu (if you've ever been to Georgia, you know what I'm talking about). It's resilient ... it can thrive in barren, low-nutrient soil where other species can't, but it does EVEN BETTER when there is good soil, so ... like I said ... drive through Georgia some time ... you'll see it covering *everything* choking out every other native species of plant.

You can self-promote your ass on youtube and blogs all day long. If everyone else is doing it to (and I'm here to tell you -- THEY ARE), then it doesn't matter at all. Who that works for is that the old guy with 25 years experience gets the job (like an old growth tree rising high above), while the youngsters can battle it out with the kudzu below.

It's only a matter of "hard work" if there's a place for you to do it. Increasingly there isn't. And I say this as one of the old-growth old guys with experience, who does many of the things you're talking about ... and who has been lucky enough to have things work out. I just have the awareness to see what's going on down below, and I'm telling you ... it wasn't like this for us when we were starting out, and if it had been we wouldn't be where we are today.

Nice rant but missed the point.

[jasenj1]

The story is about the coming rise in contract workers. With lots of semi-retired baby-boomers around, companies will need to hire far fewer full-time employees. All the geezers will be happy to put in 10-20 hours a week with no expectation of benefits or a high wage - If they've planned properly, they have retirement income. Contract work should be a nice supplement, not their entire income.

If I'm a hiring manager, I can choose a full-time employee with required health, retirement, etc. benefits, or I can contract some old-guy who knows his way around and pay him more hourly but much less when the entire compensation package is computed.

Re:Nice rant but missed the point.

[eudaemon]

First this is just a marketing fluff piece by some recruiter wherein he shares his fantasy that for some reason companies will lay off or let retire great swathes of workforce, and then for no discernible reason hire them back through modis so they can take a 33% passthrough cut.

Second , I hear you about contracting vs full-time. It took the .com bust combined with a down-swing in energy to force me out of a contracting for the first time since 1900. But, where I work now also doesn't keep contractors on more than a year and doesn't do business with any but a short list of large shops, all of whom want entirely too much dosh for a 1099 passthrough. So again, this guy is talking out his backside if he thinks there's suddenly going to be a sea of contracting jobs. We don't hire contractors unless we have to just because of the one year limitation. It's not enough time to teach people complex systems, get them productive and reap the benefits.

Re:this is stupid

[wcrowe]

You may not be working with any of the industries that were early adopters of IT. If you were to look into the oil industry, automobile industry, government, distribution, and manufacturing, just to name a few, you would find lots of workers 55 and older.

I'm a retired geezer.

[BenEnglishAtHome]

My organization wanted to lower headcount, so a couple of years ago they offered early (reduced) retirement to us oldsters. I took it.

I went back for the office Christmas party last year and found I had been replaced by 3 contractors. The organization wound up spending more money to get my work done than they saved by letting me go.

Weird and stupid, but I'm enjoying my retirement.

Re:this is stupid

[Whorhay]

My Father recently retired and he was coding for mainframes as his second job out of college. I work with lots of older people who have been doing IT stuff their whole lives. Some started at banks, others at major local manufactures, and a lot were in the Military as computer operators and such. Shit, my Maternal Grandmother, who died in her 70's nearly a decade ago, changed vacum tubes in her universities computer or some such. IT work has been around for a lot longer than some people seem to think.