Ask Slashdot: Are We Older Experts Being Retired Too Early?

caferace writes "I've been around the block. I'm a long-time worker in the tech industry (nearly 30 years), absolutely kickass SQA and Hardware person, networking, you name it. But I'm 50+ now, and finding new regular or contract work is a pain. And it shouldn't be. I have the skills and the aptitude to absorb and adapt to any new situations and languages way beyond what any of my college age brethren might have. But when I send out a perfectly good resume and use the more obvious resources there are still precious few bites for someone requiring to work remotely. Am I just whining, or is this common? Are we being put out to pasture far too early?"

Comments

Lie a little

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't put your age on the CV and knock off the first 10 years of experience. My father worked IT contract work till he retired at 64 by doing this.

Re:Lie a little

[SumDog]

Age on a C.V?! Who does that. No one.. (and you shouldn't. Employers can't ask if you are married or your number of kids either. That can get you sued in many places).

We have a lot of older people where I work, some hired in. The trouble is we also get a lot of people who come through who've been in the same shop for 20 years and they think they know what they're doing, but when you ask them an SQL question they use a sequence of nested queries without any join statements. We get sysadmin who don't know how to map a network drive on the command line. We get people who want security jobs who can't answer, "What's the difference between a GET and a POST request?"

Another issue is that maybe shops are only looking to employ 40+ people in management positions, being team leads and architects. Maybe you hate that stuff and are looking for dev jobs and people are reluctant to hire you for that. The problem here lies in that most IT departments only have a pathway up the chain via management. For a lot of devs and admins, this isn't too bad and they can manage people fine. But there are those that really don't want to manage people, who hate it and there isn't really a pathway for people who just want to stay coding.

Finally, it could be that you're applying to all the wrong places where people do look down upon your for your age. They are probably shitty shops you didn't want to work for anyway. Are you willing to move? If not, you could also try short term contracts (3 ~ 8 months). There are a tons of those if you're willing to be away for a couple of months each year. You can also build up remote contracting opportunities this way too.

So to recap, you might be stuck in a city of discriminatory employers and it's not you, or you're looking for dev positions because that's what you love but people want your age group for management or ... you're not as good as you think you are and are bombing interviews.

Re:Lie a little

[somersault]

But when I send out a perfectly good resume and use the more obvious resources there are still precious few bites for someone requiring to work remotely

How come nobody has commented on this part? No matter what age you are, requiring that you work remotely is going to make things difficult, no matter your age.

Re:Lie a little

[ray-auch]

How come nobody has commented on this part? No matter what age you are, requiring that you work remotely is going to make things difficult, no matter your age.

Seconded. Not just "would like to work from home" but "requiring" - from the outset. I scanned the question in less time than scanning a CV and those words ("requiring to work remotely") jumped out - CV in the round filing thing in based on that alone, didn't even register the age range being complained about.

I've worked remotely in several jobs and contracts, but only after being on-site first and proving myself and establishing with the client / employer which parts of the work can be done remotely - and always being prepared to be on site when required. I am not even sure how you could work remotely doing hardware and networks - but certainly not going to find out by trialing someone who is not prepared to be on site.

At the end of the day, you are selling yourself with your CV and if no one is buying then you are selling the wrong thing or at the wrong price - and IMO "remote working only" is the wrong thing (unless you are an awful lot cheaper - i.e. India rates - and then it's usually the wrong thing but some people do buy...)

Re:Lie a little

[Seumas]

Just because two notable names have made a big deal about it doesn't mean there aren't still plenty of such positions. Asking someone to uproot their entire lives and move across the country to benefit you with their extensive knowledge and experience for work that absolutely does not require your on-site and on-hands presence far exceeds "flexibility".

Re:Lie a little

[Mitreya]

they think they know what they're doing, but when you ask them an SQL question they use a sequence of nested queries without any join statements.

And what exactly is wrong with that?

Query optimizer will generally convert a nested query into a join when necessary. And for a non-correlated nested query (and possibly some particularly shaped indexes) nesting is probably a better answer to begin with.

Re:Lie a little

[ShanghaiBill]

Exactly. He isn't being passed over for younger engineers. He is being passed over for Indian engineers. If the employer wants a remote worker, then it doesn't matter much if the worker is the next town over or the other side of the world.

Re:Lie a little

[dreamchaser]

Just because two notable names have made a big deal about it doesn't mean there aren't still plenty of such positions. Asking someone to uproot their entire lives and move across the country to benefit you with their extensive knowledge and experience for work that absolutely does not require your on-site and on-hands presence far exceeds "flexibility".

Sorry, no it doesn't exceed 'flexibility'. Sometimes one just has to go where the work is. Despite your assertion the trend is and has been for some time moving away from telecommuting. It's not just 'two notable names' say so. It's a real trend in many industries. Requiring to work remotely will seriously curtail the number of opportunities a job seeker can find.

Re:Lie a little

[jafiwam]

Don't overlook the fact that "30 years of experience" is partly valuable on what they can teach the other staff members.

Working remotely is going to have less of an impact on what the other workers know. (If any at all.)

Why pay for "30 years", when "5 years and can share some of that with others" will do the job?

Re:Lie a little

[ebno-10db]

Can you say "scumbags"? How about "illegally discriminating scumbags"? Good luck proving it though. And even if you have the evidence, it's not like anyone cares about enforcing labor laws anymore. That's been dead since Reagan took office.

Back in the 60's my father had a wrongful termination suit that he pursued through the Dept. of Labor (no need to hire a lawyer, etc.). He won hands down. Think that happens today?

I've always had mixed feelings about unions at best. I've never belonged to one and never wanted to. Back when they still had power though, they served a very good purpose for people in non-union shops - they made employers afraid of them. As a result, it was considered good business practice to treat employees well enough that they didn't want to unionize. Partly as a result of that fear, and the actual enforcement of labor laws, people my father worked with, including his immediate supervisor, had no qualms about testifying on his behalf. Think that would happen today?

Re:Lie a little

[pr0fessor]

I telecommute and consider myself lucky, I get to live in the Mid-west where the cost of living is low and work for a company in California. I have looked around and there are plenty of jobs but telecommuting really limits the opportunities.

Re:Lie a little

[blue trane]

This thread exemplifies what's wrong with the workplace: one poster advises people to lie to get a job, another asserts that groupthink trumps the advantages of telecommuting.

It seems that most workplaces are toxic environments, rife with moral hazards and perverse incentives. The goal is not to innovate, but to fit in, and please a greedy little Napoleon boss.

The best solution is to create a Basic Income guarantee. Then people can choose to innovate on their own on what they really want to be working on, instead of letting some rich guy order them around.

Re:Lie a little

[Trailer Trash]

they think they know what they're doing, but when you ask them an SQL question they use a sequence of nested queries without any join statements.

And what exactly is wrong with that?

Query optimizer will generally convert a nested query into a join when necessary. And for a non-correlated nested query (and possibly some particularly shaped indexes) nesting is probably a better answer to begin with.

You speak the truth. Look at it this way:

select something from table1 where id in (select table1_id from table2 where name ilike '%smith%');

or

select table1.something from table1 inner join table2 using table1.id=table2.table1_id where table2.name ilike '%smith%';

They're equivalent, and if you're using a reasonable rdbms (I use PostgreSQL) they end up being optimized identically. IMHO, the first one is far easier to read and understand, particularly if you start adding even more and more tables and restrictions. Something I've picked up over the last 25 years of paid IT work is that maintainability trumps nearly everything else given the price disparity between hardware and human time. (obviously there are limits to that)

In my company I maintain tons of code that I've written over the last 15 years. People call me up and expect for me to be able to look at code that I wrote 10 years ago and make changes. How about places where there's actual staff turnover? Writing readable and maintainable code is just better.

Re:Lie a little

[ShanghaiBill]

That may be true for large businesses, but as a small business owner, I wouldn't even think of trying to hire foreign workers just because I don't feel like dealing with all the taxes and paperwork.

Huh? As a small business owner, I hire foreign workers so I can avoid dealing with taxes and paperwork. My graphic artist lives in Karachi. My sysadmin, and two programmers are in Shanghai. They do the work, and I pay them (Paypal, QQ Coin, or Bitcoin). No paperwork. No taxes. No health insurance. No legal liability. That is far less hassle than employing an American.

The American Dream

[Ozoner]

Sadly your experience is common. The older you get, the harder it is to find work.

So in your last decade or so, instead of saving for your retirement, you end up chewing through what little savings you have,

It's called the "American Dream".

Re:The American Dream

[Z00L00K]

Employers are scared of hiring someone with more experience than they have themselves because they are afraid that you will take over the company.

At the same time young employees keeps repeating mistakes made already by programmers that were around in the 70's, 80's and 90's.

Aging workforce

[iLLucionist]

As a I-O psychologist and researcher, this is fairly common. A lot of stereotypes are misattributed to the "older worker" and it happens a lot. In this world, organisations almost exclusively focus on attracting "young talent". Yet they fail to understand that older workers are far more experienced. Amongst misunderstandings is the notion that older workers would be (a) untrainable (b) too expensive (c) not creative, and (d) not flexible enough to adapt. This is all ruled out by research, but you know how it works with research. That's just "theory" and management wants "practice". So in short, you are not alone. As a matter of fact, there is a whole psychological discipline devoted towards this, called the "aging workforce".

Re:Aging workforce

[Anne Thwacks]

Actually, its as simple as no one wants to hire someone lder than themselves - they would feel uncomfortable giving orders

combined with no one wants to hire someone that obviously knows more than they do.

Yes I know its a recipe for a train wreck - have you not watched any large projects lately (cough @&#4care).

Re:Aging workforce

[antifoidulus]

As a I-O psychologist and researcher

I am just imagining you sitting on a couch, talking to a hard disk:

You: Well Mr. Hard Disk, how are you feeling?
Hard disk:Doc, I tell you my head feels like its constantly spinning in circles, and I am afraid something might come unhinged and I'll crash!

Re:Aging workforce

[Panaflex]

I disagree. Having worked in everything from multinational companies to 3 man start-up companies I think I've seen quite a bit of the dev world.

I think a well balanced team usually consists of older and younger developers myself.

What you want to avoid as a manager is encouraging cliques and age-based group stratums. Socially people will naturally tend to separate by age somewhat, but by spreading your experienced devs in with the less experienced you create new niches and groups that center around productive aspects such as projects, platforms, and responsibilities.

A few tricks I've used is allow developers to volunteer for project milestones. This gives you good cross-communication setup between project and age groups and allows devs to find their fit if you structure your projects right.

Another trick is to encourage creativity and social rewards. Having code meetings where the entire crowd gets to work through some code together. Each meeting, a different person or team brings part of their project to present and explain their design choices and algorithms for the rest of the team. The team gets to learn a bit, and also can positively (or occasionally negatively) critique the code and look for problems. This can work across projects and departments as well.

You need to encourage social activities across groups as well, but be careful not to cut into outside time too much. Older devs generally have lives outside of work. So limit your after-work socializing and instead encourage innovative activities with 15 minute coffee breaks together or an after-meeting walk.

If you're having problems motivating older developers then it's quite likely that you're not building, managing and deploying your experience properly. You need to do more than toss them in a cube with a set of project milestones. Younger people will do better in that environment if only because they will have more time to sacrifice.

Older people have already done their "lone wolf" time, and generally expect better management and organization. They expect resources to get the job done efficiently and want to be learning and mentoring, not just chugging out LOC. Most of them won't complain as devs tend to be introverts for the most part. If you want productive feedback then you need to empower groups with responsibilities beyond milestones. They need to have time to evaluate and analyze. They need to have time to go over designs and understand, give input, and have their input rewarded.

The secret is to create balanced work environments that allow your workers to be both productive and growing. Having static organizational structures that boxes devs into platforms and languages for years creates experience lags and power bubbles. Having work/slave relationships creates revolving doors. Having loose organizations creates deadline creep and project failure.

In the end, there are plenty of organizations successfully employing developers into retirement age. What you want is an organization that manages goals and expectations by delegating work to teams that are organized with mixed experience and socially rewarded for meeting deadlines. Management should be open to criticism and giving out criticism when necessary. Teams should as well.

Lastly, realize that most developers aren't strictly motivated by dollars. Most people are far more motivated to work towards a goal when the reward is linked with their goals and creativity. Developers need to have the room to try things and fail at them, refine and build on those experiences. If you build that into your development process then you will reduce product and project failures enormously.

Anyway, just my ramblings...

Re:Aging workforce

[dkleinsc]

In the US, I should mention that there's another key dimension in play: Older workers bring with them more expensive health insurance costs. I just watched a major corporation end the career of a 25-year veteran of the company primarily because of that (it was a "layoff" that just happened to get rid of 22 workers who just happened to be the oldest workers who weren't chums with an executive).

Remote working

[Bert64]

Wanting to work remotely is probably putting potential employers off too... A lot of people can't understand how someone can work remotely, and just assume they're sitting around playing games all day. They would rather see you sitting at a desk so they think you're working, even if you might be sitting there using slashdot all day.

Re:30 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

children?

Re:They can get someone younger for much less pay.

[myowntrueself]

They can get someone younger for much less pay.... and that's basically, it.

You pay for experience, and employers don't want to pay for yours.

Exactly. Hire someone half your age, pay them half as much, make them work twice as hard until they are an age and have enough experience where they start expecting pay rises then fire them and hire youngsters again. Its almost a fiduciary responsibility.

Presenteeism

[CaptainOfSpray]

You require to work remotely? Most managers cannot stand that - if you aren't there in the office so they can see that you are working, you must be goofing off, you cannot possibly be working. Judge you by your results? They wouldn't know how to do that, and they are far too harrassed/unimaginative/untrained to work out a method of doing it.

I've been in IT for more than 40 years, a contractor for the last twenty. In all that time, I have once had one contract that allowed me to work from home, and then it was just one day a week - and even then, in the middle of the contract, they tried to change it to all five days a week.

Publish freeware and help migrations

[Antique Geekmeister]

As an older engineer, I've found that helping out the youngsters with their freeware and bringing lesons learned decades ago is rewarding, and professionally helpful. I can name at least 3 freeware or open source projects that I've been involved with for more than 10 years that get me recruiting calls from other countries. Very very few people have that much experience with it, my name has been in the developer mailing lists for that long, and I've done it as a matter of technical interest. Put those on your CV.

Also, companies that are migrating from older to newer platforms may welcome people who've worked extensively with both. As I've become older I've become the "local reference" for the older technologies. Simply having a hint of what the differences might be can same hundreds of man-hours of labor porting software or keeping the old system alive during the migration.

Re:FTFY

[scsirob]

They *THINK* they can get someone younger for much less pay.
And they *THINK* they will get all the experience from that younger person too.

What sets us "old farts" apart from the younger folks is that when we started, computers, software and infrastructure weren't half as complex as they are today. And we have seen it all grow. With that, we still know what happens under the hood. We still recognize a failing harddisk, a bad memory problem, a network routing issue etc, when the young guys just see their mouse, tablet or app not doing what they expect. The young folks know where to look when things work. We know where to look when things fail. Employers do not recognize that until they are hit by disaster.

It's a sad truth...

[ImOuttaHere]

After 30 years working in software engineering and program management, I was turfed. The company I worked for had been acquired by a huge rollup company. We all knew what we coming, and come it did.

I survived eight layoffs and got caught in the ninth, four years after the takeover. This, even though I helped bring the kinds of technologies and software engineering talent that helped generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year in bottom line revenue.

In my case, the company had decided to ship manufacturing (a common "given") and engineering (something that surprised many of us) to China. The only thing the new company was interested in was increasing the value of the "leadership's" stock options. They didn't care what they acquired, just so long as they could strip assets and downsize and ship jobs offshore to fatten the bottom line. They honestly believed that what few jobs that were left in the US could be picked up by young engineers coming out of college. Cheap labor, right? Wrong. Particularly when they don't yet know enough and have no experience in highly specialized electronics and software solutions.

I wish I could find it, but I remember reading a German study that showed us old folks are more productive in a 24 hour work week than new or middle-aged workers working 35.5+hours a week. I know we older folks can really crank out the work, manage and maintain revenue generating business relationships, and can help the rich bastards make even more money than they already are if they'd keep us around, but...

Trans-national corporations, banks, and businesses really don't care how they generate their money and no one, not one single organization is upholding labor law that might, just might, hold these rogues accountable.

I've been looking for a job for over two years now. I can't believe the US job market is as tough as it has turned out to be. We hate to suffer like this, but I feel too old, that I know too much, and I'm too damned expensive for korporate Amerika. Too bad labor isn't organized and won't stand up for each other. It's every person for themselves, or so it seems to me.

Re:It's a sad truth...

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, you really need some good advice, and here it comes, for free: Don't agonize over that ONE employer. They are probably simply idiots. Try to forget them.

Focus on getting a new job somewhere else. Fire out resumes and in your free time, participate in an open source project. Learn new stuff: Linux, C++, Android, Hadoop. Put yourself online on XING and LinkedIn. Every single skill, list it on these site. Every single project.

Again, forget that corporation. You were not married to them, they were neither your parents nor your kids. You can hate them; but channel that hate into advertising yourself and getting a new job.

In short: Life is a bitch, get over that one episode. Welcome to the realities of the Free Enterprise System. Did you ever think all your first-world luxuries come for free ? Did you really ? Did you think your god gave you a better life than he gave to a Chinese man ???

My sister worked for a UK retailer that got bought up by a US company and the GPs description is eerily similar to hers except the Yanks ran that company into the ground and since she was in logistics she ended up as one of the few remaining employees selling off their inventory just before the company went out of business. In Europe, being bought up by an American company is widely considered a signal to grab your parachute and get ready to bail out. Disturbingly often US investors seem to end up bringing whatever company they take over into a death spiral of lay-offs and rationalizations, just like the GP described, until the company has deteriorated to the point that the only thing that can be done is to dissolve it up and sell the parts for on a fire sale.

Re:It's a sad truth...

[ndykman]

Citation needed. This current economic situation seems directly tied to out of control market speculation, heavy accumulation of wealth at the top (now surpassing the levels seen right before the Great Depression) and a fragmented work force that is unable to organize in many areas thanks to focused efforts to weaken labor laws.

Also, given that tech people are so enamored of disruptive technologies, why do they think that couldn't organize in a effective way that avoids the worst problems but maintains the benefits? Create a disruptive union model that changes the game on both sides, perhaps?

you have to be asleep to believe it !

[Anonymous Coward]

"George Carlin famously wrote the joke "it's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it".

Carlin pointed to "the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions" as having a greater influence than an individual's choice."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Dream

Re:Your not alone

[Seumas]

I don't understand how this happens. Are these people not social? Are they not assertive? Do they not push back? I'm a few years away from 40, so I don't think I qualify for that range just yet, but the people I work with who are a good deal older than me are aggressive in voicing their disagreements, pointing out where things are fucked, not accepting shitty practices, and pushing for things to be corrected. They don't sit quietly by while products, processes, or themselves are screwed. Where the younger guys may be timid, the more seasoned among them will firmly tell you your shit is fucked and encourage you (and help, if needed) to unfuck it.

It may be common but it still sounds like whining

[slim-t]

Anytime you describe yourself as "kickass," you come off as a jerk. Then you demand to work remotely. Surely there are people out there with adequate skills, who aren't jerks and will show up at the office once in a while.

Re:You require remote work?

[Arker]

I think you are wrong.

Yes, there are a few Habibs in India that charge more than I do, and are worth it. They have advanced degrees in mathematics and are actually capable of doing work over my head.

The ones that are competing for my job? I could trounce 99/100 of them in less than 5 minutes on any subject. They get work because it is cheaper to let them work on the job for an hour and THEN escalate to me when they still cant figure it out. And expect me to clean up not only the original problem but all the damage the overseas tech did as well, in less than 20 minutes.

Since I can do that and they cannot, my job remains relatively secure.

That said, obviously requiring remote work limits the options quite a bit. I know I could easily make 3x my current salary if I would move to some urban hellhole, but most of the raise would go to higher cost of living, and quality would go down, so why would I be tempted?

Opinion

[DaMattster]

As a small business owner in IT managed services, age absolutely does NOT matter to me. I'm more interested in a person's willingness to continue to learn and not stay stagnant. If you are in your 80s and have continued to learn on your own and want to stay engaged, I can do the heavy lifting ... that's no problem, welcome aboard. Attitude, experience, and wisdom trump youth every time. My marketing director is 25 years older than I am and I can constantly learn from him because he stays on the cutting edge and subscribes to lifelong learning. My brother has a mechanical engineer on his payroll that is 92 years old and is an extremely talented and creative guy. He can design something on paper in a mere fraction of the time it would take a lesser experienced engineer to do. Don't ever make the mistake of judging someone on age - judge on attitudes.

Like yourself much?

[ledow]

Why wouldn't I hire you?

"absolutely kickass SQA and Hardware person, networking, you name it"

"I have the skills and the aptitude to absorb and adapt to any new situations and languages way beyond what any of my college age brethren might have."

"a perfectly good resume" (just sounds so snarky)

and critically: "someone requiring to work remotely"

Get off your high horse, write a plain CV/resume (omit your age if you really feel you need to) and apply for "normal" jobs, not telecommuting jobs.

Who wants to hire a blow-his-own-trumpet, big-head, nearly-retired, remote worker? Nobody.

That said, as you get older your skills mean less. If you have 20 years or 30 years experience, which is "better"? There's not much to choose between them. If you had nothing versus even 1 year's experience it makes a big difference. Hence as you age, your experience means less. It's almost a bell curve, in fact. After a while you "know" so much that you have to be retrained to do things "our" way.

And the job market is tough no matter what your age or experience. Many places can't afford people at all, let alone top-end salary highly-experienced people. That said, I've never paid attention to "the market" and always just applied for things I like and never had a problem finding work (in fact, the opposite... I'm currently holding off applying for permanent jobs, after resigning from my job of 5 years, in order to be ready for a good place that are determined to hire me and have offers coming in from all sorts of places).

Also, in my experience, if you're good the work finds you. I'm socially inept but this networking thing really gets you work like nothing else. I spent 10+ years just going from client to client based on word of mouth and NOTHING else. I'm not "the best", by far, but I'm good at what I do and learn quick on what I don't.

You're willing to adapt and learn, so do so. With the recruitment process as well as the types of jobs you go for. Apply for damn near anything in your area of expertise and stop being so picky about YOUR requirements. If you were so good, the jobs would be finding you, not the other way around.

Honestly, you're just like everyone else looking for work. You can either put in the graft and find the job you want by spending MONTHS looking for it, or you can drift from job to unemployment to job as and when something comes up that "suits" you.

Re:30 years?

[serviscope_minor]

In case you hadn't noticed, women are the most expensive thing on the planet.

Who the fuck modded this shit insightful. My SO earns more than I do, so the net cost is negative. Try treating women as fellow people rather than whatever weirdass thing you've made them up to be in your mind.

Re:FTFY

[Cwix]

What a load of BS.

As a 30 year old admin I can tell you right now that I can easily diag failing hard drives, memory sticks and yes even network issues..

If you think that you need many many years of experience to do this you are not nearly as talented as you seem to want to make yourself out to be. Go look in the mirror, if your crowning achievement is being able to diag simple hardware problems, then maybe the issue with you getting hired has more to do with your inexperience and not your age.

High-turnover industry is a lemon, make lemonade

[TheRealHocusLocus]

Pushing 50 is an adventure. Find an entirely new direction, start a new life chapter.

I am a 1970s-onward computer tech turned 1990s-onward BSD/Linux sysadmin who helped start a Freenet and two ISPs, the first back in the 'dark ages' before AOL got its first ip address. Then after a 8 year gap in my IT resume (I had rejoined a family business) I discovered not only do 40-somethings have difficulty competing for other new hires... in this brave new world you cannot even walk in and introduce yourself anymore, it's fill out this form on our website and we'll call you back.

No one ever called back, not even for a boring graveyard shift telecom job. I now work fixing water main breaks and jetting sewers and doing light construction, I'm in better physical shape than I was at 18. The best part of it is when you clean sewers you're not expected to take your work home with you.

The worst part is when your buddies bring you their old 512mb netbooks and ask you to load Windows 8 onto them. It hurts to say no and it's sometimes hard to explain why.

Re:30 years?

[dkleinsc]

Thank you, whoever you are. Your response reminds me of a classic definition of feminism being the radical notion that women are people.

Typically, when you get into a good committed relationship between capable people, then each helps support the other when they need it. Man or woman doesn't matter when the chips are down, love and committment do.

Children, on the other hand, are way more expensive than a lot of would-be parents give them credit for. To age 18, it's about $400K. If you're helping with college expenses, tack on another $200K. The little rascals are also the greatest diminisher of marital happiness, according to serious studies on the subject. I'm sure being a parent is a wonderful experience (that I've never had), but be careful out there and don't end up a parent by accident.

"Work remotely" is code word for "low output"

[jafiwam]

Sorry, you are competing with a bunch of young guys who while not nearly as good, nor efficient, but will show up in the town and then the office and be there for the management to see. They can do this because they rent, don't have entrenched families, and aren't tied to where they are.. and probably got there a year or two ago anyway.

Management like to do stuff like walk around the building looking for who's there and who's not, and of who's there, who is working. Maybe not as enforcement, but as "gee I am a great manager look at all my guys working" type of thing.

Remote workers often disappear to other companies because this entrenched commitment is not present. Remotely working lets them jump ship for fewer reasons faster. (The company I work for has been burned by this repeatedly.)

Plus, getting someone involved in a complicated project remotely sucks ass, and is a drain on everybody else, having to produce a bunch more documentation that a conversation in a hallway could accomplish, remote desktop sharing sessions, etc. Sometimes I work on complicated stuff with others in my company, and it always sucks to have that one guy that can only see one computer screen and only hear what's going on. Unless it's pure program coding or graphics or something, they never pull their own weight.

Start looking hard for LOCAL jobs where you don't have to be "remote". Use your experience to branch out into new areas that widens your skill set to the point you can find a local job. Or, move to where the jobs are temporarily. Just don't say "I will only work for you remotely" because companies do deliberately pass that up because they've already had bad experiences with that.

One last point, the economy is still pretty bad. Nobody is getting a lot of jobs right now. The government is lying to you about it, or the job growth isn't in my state, NOBODY I know is doing "gosh I got this great new job" it's all "I haven't gotten a raise in 5 years and there are no worthwhile job prospects elsewhere". If there is a good economy, it's in China or something. You might consider lowering your expectations a bit. If you really want to work, you gotta compete with other guys that really need to work. From here, it sounds like you aren't on several levels.

Re:They can get someone younger for much less pay.

[gstoddart]

Very true. But CEOs are the last people you should expect to realize this.

Because they have no business knowledge either? ;-)

Re:30 years?

[ILongForDarkness]

How exactly is a women going to have a baby and keep working? At least in my country there are some things I don't agree with like guaranteed seniority protection and accumulating vacation days while on maternity leave (so generally they take a year off then "come back" to 3-5 weeks of vacation). The seniority side of things: works well for low skilled jobs, putting cookies in a box it doesn't much matter after a few months what your experience is so in unionized jobs might make sense. But for skilled positions? I'm sorry a 30yr old women that has taken 2-3 years extra off in her career to have kids is not equal to a 30yr old guy that didn't all else being equal. She isn't equally deserving of a raise, promotion etc since she had less contribution to the success.

But for the military side of things: I've seen it in practice having been part of the army for a while. Women had smaller ruck sacks, fewer pushups, and sit ups required to get in etc. But you know what? The women that made it through basic kicked ass. My basic company had only about 5 women. 2 failed out due to injuries. Of the top 10 generally and specifically in shooting 2/3 of the women were in that group. A theory I've heard is women are more likely to listen to shooting instruction where as guys are either coming in already with bad practices from hunting or whatever or just wing it with bad form because we have the upper body strength to get away with a poorly handled machine gun (at least for a 5 round burst after which Rambos are all screwed). Also smaller ruck sack entrance requirements: after in basic they had to do everything to the same level, ruck sack size is fine because generally their clothes were smaller so everything still fit in the bag. The 60mm mortar doesn't get any lighter because a women is carrying it so the humped just as much weight as the men other than maybe 5lbs less that their clothes weighed.

Re:30 years?

[dkleinsc]

The costs of children being factored in are:
- Food, easily $800 a year, or $14400 total.
- Clothing, frequently cheap because of second-hand, but another $200 a year is not uncommon, so $3600 total.
- Time off from work to take care of them (both in infancy and during illnesses). This is a very expensive item, with costs of $60,000 not uncommon.
- What that does to the career of whichever parent takes that time off from work. This accounts for much of the disparity between men's and women's pay, costing mom (who are more likely to take the time off than dads) roughly $180,000 over those 18 years.
- The larger home needed to have room for the child. Also, an important related expense is having the home in a neighborhood with a good school system. This is easily $300 a month increase, which comes out to $57400.
- Medical care. Insurance for kids typically runs at least $1000 a year, so tack on another $18,000.
- Transportation to and from school. If you're lucky and live near enough that the kid can walk, or have good school buses, this is $0, for others it's another $4000 or so over the kid's lifetime.

Add those up, and you get $404,000, right about the $400,000 figure I quoted. As for the $200K, have you ever looked at college tuition?

I have a software company and I'd really want...

[Assmasher]

...someone like you involved - but the problem is that your greatest value to me would likely be your actual presence at the company. The guy who stays calm in the face of adversity, who had seen it all, who would head off problematic decisions before they become canon, et cetera. All of that is awful hard to do when you're a remote worker.

My point is that your greatest asset IS your experience, and that's difficult to share remotely (unless you're an architect or someone who works a bit more in isolation.)

My $0.000002

ROFTL no. Would have done so by 40

[raymorris]

There are people who RUN businesses, and there are people who are EMPLOYED by businesses. If they haven't "taken over the company" by age 40, they almost certainly won't. If they've been an employee for 20-30 years, that's probably because that's their preference or where their strengths lie. They aren't going to take over anything.

Of course, there's the rare case of someone has has run several businesses by age 40 taking non-executive employment for some reason, but that's not the usual case. I've run a few companies and I took an 8-5, but I think I'm the only one in a building with ~200 people. Nobody else here is going to take over squat because they'd rather show up at 8, leave at 5, and and collect their steady paycheck and benefits.

Re:FTFY

[k8to]

I'd expect a systems admin to be able to diagnose a problem like that -- not that ours can. But most programmers I meet can't. They'll be trying to fix their code all day long when their system has bad ram.

Our customers have the same problem. They'll be asking why our software is slow on "just this one node". Telling us to "fix the bug".

I have to look through system call timings, application logs, kernel messages, kernel dev tools blah blah to give them evidence of what I already know. "it's a hardware problem. It seems this is a known failure pattern in the linux kernel for cache coherency errors betwen SMP cpus".. or whatever. We're an application vendor. I guess these companies spend enough money with us that it's worth it to my employer for me to play tinker-toy remote systems admin for them via proxy of systems debugging.

I get roped into these problems because no one else on my team can figure them out.

It pays.

Age Discrimination is Real

[Ronin Developer]

As someone who, at two months shy of turning 50, found himself unemployed as well as seeing how my brother, at 57, can't find anything other a retail job (he used to be an executive but was laid off), yes...it's real.

Some companies recognize that the old folks possess knowledge and business skills that took years to acquire. Yet, as we age, we cost companies more in terms of benefits (i.e. medical). And, we are at the top of the salary ranges in most cases. Businesses that look only at the bottom line are quick to let us go. Some regret it.

When I was last let go, there was a clause, in tiny and condensed print, that said to accept my severance (which sucked, btw), I couldn't sue under the Age Discrimination Act (which is supposed to protect those over 40). The also only let me go that day. Others, over the age of 40 have been let go...singly...so they don't have to report on the ages and positions of those let go. The average age at the company is now 36. The company has a 200 employees/consultants...a handful over the age of 45.

Another company that let a division go listed all employees ages and titles and division to show that age discrimination was not a factor. They complied 100% and also did their best to help us get placed and provided a REAL severance package that showed how much they really cared about the employees they were letting go. It was a great company.

I don't really want to be a manager...which is where most my age end up...I am a creative type. My resume shows my skills. But, I have been in the work force since 1979. It's not ethical to not list your previous employment if relevant. If you have gaps, you will probably be asked to explain them. So, it's hard to hide your likely age. They aren't stupid. And, some simply will bit bucket your CV as soon as they realize your age.

In the US, there is a list of questions they can't ask. But, your CV gives you away. In my case, I was lucky that 2 days after getting laid off - I had a chance encounter with an individual who needed someone with exactly my skill set. Age wasn't an issue as my experience is what he needed. Coding is being done by remarkable people who are far younger than I. That's fine with me as I am a systems architect and engineer.

Bottom line is you can't lie on your CV. A background check (which most employers do), will verify your CV. Most ask for references. They better be good ones. So, call the old employer and, if still on friendly terms with them, get their permission to use them as a reference. While HR can't ask certain questions....how the reference responds (like, hesitating or sounding bored or enthusiastic) makes a difference.

If I get laid off again (knock on wood), I will likely be self-employed or doing contract work.

You're not trying hard enough

[caogdin3419]

I love watching youthful ./ folk give advice on topics for which they have no credible experience.

I'm 72 now, and still gainfully employed...just not by 35-year-old "managers" (or worse, "executives") who haven't got any substantive experience to evaluate competence. After a career consulting to IBM, Intel, HP, Amoco, DuPont (and lots more) at the CxO level on IT strategy, I semi-retired in 2001, to a small mountain town nestled in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Up here, the body of "technical talent" is composed of self-taught "experts" who wouldn't know how to make changes to a registry, or whip up a quick script to solve a user's persistent problem.

So, I reached out to local businesses with computers who experienced lots of "crashes" and "fatal errors" and had gaming computers when they needed a laptop ('cause that's what the local store wanted to sell). I have several clients who keep me busy, and who have learned to accept my counsel as focused on THEIR business needs, not what's convenient for me.

The trick, for me, was to figure out what services to offer (hint: what they want, not what I want to do), and how to price my services; small businesses HATE to pay by the hour, because they understand that provides incentives to waste time in getting to the solution. I changed the model to a fixed monthly fee for most services, and a price schedule for extraordinary things (like properly configuring a new computer to add to the network). I make a comfortable living that supplements other family income, and keep my skills sharp.

Find your own path and make it yours. Don't try to get hired by people who can't appreciate your value. That way lies madness. --cao