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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?"
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.
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".
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".
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.
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children?
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.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
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.
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
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.
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.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
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.
I am officially gone from
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.
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 am officially gone from
...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
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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.
-josh
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