He's a college-educated electrical engineer with IT consulting experience. Why can't he find a job somewhere?
Because ageism is real. I finally got hired to a good job, with a boss who appreciates what I do, but before that happened, I got (rather snidely) accused of "googling the answer," had people blow off my phone appointment, was basically called a "fake programmer," and had people angry at me or look at me like I'm a piece of crap during interviews.
I have never, ever, been treated like this in my professional life, except in the Bay Area. Knowing what you don't know is generally best learned by getting some bruises in the process. Really, the lesson is that not knowing what you don't know can be very extremely painful. It's one thing to know that abstractly, another to know it from direct experience. There are some people who just knee-jerk say you can't do this or that. There are other folks who have enough experience to have a good feeling for how to navigate what they don't know, in such a way that the team can see it coming.
That said, the article makes it sound like this guy has been out of work for close to a decade or more. Maybe he can't get a cutting-edge IT or engineering job, but he could do tech-support, an entry-level job, or even drive for Uber or a taxi.
The absolute worst experience was a technical phone interview that was going very well, I thought I connected with the interviewer(2). So I was shocked after being complimented on the breadth and depth of knowledge I had, near the end of a 45 minute conversation, there was a pause and he asked "so, when did you graduate from high school?" Needless to say, the tone changed somewhat and I didn't get the in-person interview for the position that "wasn't really a good fit for me," and he, "wasn't really sure [we're] going to actually fill this position," forgetting that he earlier said he wanted someone as soon as possible.
(1) See Logan's Run -- it's a documentary about the Bay area companies' solution for aging software engineers. /s (2) And I knew him, but only in the sense I knew him from several mailing lists stretching back to the days of USENET as a knowledgeable, respectable guy with a good reputation.
TL;DR ageism is a thing everywhere.
He has had many interviews, and in about half of them he tells me he was rejected by the interviewers at the end because they're "looking for someone 'fresher'." One interview he had started out with a phone interview, and they loved him and his experience. He turned up for the interview, and the first question it was some time before the first question was asked because of all the awkward ways the interviewer tried to broach the topic of my friend's age.
I'm 41, with a Computer Science degree, and I don't even get half the number of interviews he has. He previously worked for an educational institution, I worked for what turned out to be one of the least reputable employers in town. That guy's business practices destroyed any hope of finding work that I've had. (In my country, if you're unemployed and signed up with the government support agency, whether receiving financial support or not, you agree to accept any reasonable job offer.)
Aside: in the last eight years, I've had three interviews. The first one found out that I have a disability, and much like your interview, he forgot that he'd told me I was well suited to the role due to my knowledge and skills. He turned bright red and started screaming at me, literally screaming. He was threatening me with legal action and bills, for wasting his time because I didn't have enough experience, threatening to lay a formal complaint with the referring agency.
I'm a great interviewer because I have a bit more empathy and interest in understanding other people.
You can downvote me if you like but my words still ring true.
wat. I presume this was after you called him out on his contradiction?
The more interesting question is why his customers stopped paying, but the article doesn't say. In the end I think many things had to happen for such a fall to take place.
Personally, I find this talk of age discrimination super scary, and I do my best to ignore it, just because I've spent most of what I should have spent on retirement savings on my business ventures, so I myself plan on working through his age. I already seem to be "not a cultural fit" even in my mid-30s, though I suspect for reasons other than age, but certainly, the social expectations for technical people have... changed, even within my own career.
It seems likely he has mental issues, which suggests the system is failing him in ways that have nothing to do with poverty or conventional welfare support. His life situation probably shouldn't be used as fodder for a generic cri de coeur article on those topics. But we can't be sure because the journalist couldn't be bothered to elaborate.
He left a job to work on his own business, and failed, and handled the failure badly. If that's "a trail of failures of the sort we'd normally give hurricane names to." - then I am in serious trouble.
Of course, as you said, there wasn't much detail, but very likely that was because the person in question didn't want to revisit those things.
I don't think you're wrong to be concerned about age discrimination, of course. But maybe this is an example of it, and maybe it's not.
Sure, there was no information indicating the guy didn't have serious mental issues... but there was also no information indicating that he did. Your "reading between the lines" I think blames the old guy... when there's really no evidence presented, one way or the other.
>Things like, "A customer (his only one?) stopped paying (why?)"
The vast majority of small computer businesses (corp to corp contractors) that I know only have one customer at a time, because they only have one worker to rent out; themselves. It's really common. It's less common for those customers to stop paying after work is rendered, but it has happened to people I trust to not bullshit me on the matter. (It's kind of common for some of these small contractors to get pissed when the "contract" ends early, and to demand compensation for that... One of those mistakes a lot of people make before they learn how things actually work, at least in my jurisdiction, the length of the contract has no bearing on anything at all. You usually get paid for hours worked; really there's no further guarantees.)
>I don't think you're wrong to be concerned about age discrimination, of course. But maybe this is an example of it, and maybe it's not.
I agree. Well, I'm not 100% certain I need to be concerned about age discrimination; it's in my "might be an irrational fear, but I'm not certain either way" bucket right now, but I agree about the article.
Then the hiring mentality in continental Europe is not as openminded as in the UK or the US. Being out of work alone is a big red flag on your resume. Moving from independent to employee is another one.
The cardinal sin is being over 50. When I was a kid, losing your job when you were in your 40s was the nightmare of all families - the event you do not recover from like the family terminal cancer. It is getting a lot better, but even 20 years later finding a job when you are over 50 is ridiculously hard. In my home country we even have the concept of pre-pension (i.e. unemployment payment with an extra added by the company) to get rid of older workers easily.
I've heard/feared this as well, but in light of the statistics on startup infant mortality it seems crazy to stigmatise.
And Hartz IV is a neo-liberal's wet dream.
In the 20s and at the end of WWII? Any other one I missed?
Not really. UBI would be. The effective marginal tax rate for poor people is pretty high. (The conventional taxes are low, but each extra Euro earned pre-tax cuts into welfare a lot. That incentive ain't great---especially since welfare is a very stable income once you have all the bureaucracy sorted, but the kinds of jobs poor people get are often less stable. Especially jarring if getting a job involves sunk costs like buying a car or moving to a different city.)
See eg http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-price-of-uni... (lots more to be found with some searching).
I'm not in the Bay Area but in Amsterdam, NL, which also has a sizeable startup culture, and I'm in that age group as well. I think both things are true, yes many older programmers have trouble keeping up (hell, even youngsters are complaining about Javascript fatigue), and I see them struggle, but on the other hand ageism is real, and many people in my age group are hit by it. Unwarranted in many cases.
It's not even that you had to be lucky to guess right. The fundamentals are easy to identify.
But of course, lots of people chased and are still chasing the latest superficial thing; and complain that they can't keep up.
LOL, on my own Google recruiting track, it turned sour after I admitted I am significantly older than my LinkedIn profile shows. I believe I was reasonably good on fundamentals during the phone interview as you say ;-)
They do however seem to expect more seniority out of the senior candidates.
If you're young and looking for a junior position, employers will have no problems teaching you some of these things but there are limits.
Current programming languages: just stick to the ones that will be around for a while. (Simple heuristic: pick the ones that already have been around for a while. In the 80s, that would have been C for example.)