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Comment by vinceguidry | Hacker News Reader

As a professional, hopefully he's been planning for retirement for some number of years. And not all employers discriminate. So just find one who doesn't, finish off your retirement checklist, and leave the world of work to the kids.

There are worse worlds to live in than one in which everyone can do what they want.

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> So just find one who doesn't

IBM didn't, until they did.

I really don't understand the mentality here sometimes. HNers want ultimate choice for themselves, but the choices of the companies they work for are to be constrained such that the only choices they make are choices that benefit them. They want both ultimate security and benefit of market forces on their salaries.

Libertarianism only when it suits them.

It's almost as if we care more about workers who are people, than big, faceless corporations.

Oh? Just find a new employer? And if they get sick while unemployed, should they "just" cure cancer?

> Just find a new employer?

Umm, yeah? You do have a network of professional contacts whose bosses are constantly hitting up for personal references, don't you? There is still a shortage of qualified tech workers, isn't there? The world didn't just change overnight because IBM is laying some people off.

Okay, you tell me. What social contract do you think should be on offer here? Because it sounds a lot to me like, "Give me everything and hold me accountable for nothing."

No, despite all the rhetoric about shortages, I'm seeing most companies sit on job reqs for a year waiting on a unicorn rather than taking a chance on a non-perfect fit. Largely due to the meme that started a decade+ ago that one bad hire can destroy a company, and everyone is secretly a non-learning moron.

Heaven forbid they might have to allow you to train for two weeks for a two year job. Nope, must "hit the ground running."

I wonder where it's going to go. Will the field fully stratify by tech stack? Kinda hard to imagine with how new stacks still pop up every 5 years or so.

I'm already kinda leery of taking jobs outside of my specialty. I'm not at the point yet where I won't switch stacks, but I can see it getting there.

Indeed, it might be even worse. You generally aren't allowed to take a job outside your specialty these days unless you've got a friend on the inside, or very early in your career.

Or you can answer with 100% certainty a selection of twenty random questions on the new stack. Because there will always be one other candidate who dedicated their life to it. What you know right this second takes precedence over anything you might learn, even if you could look it up in thirty seconds.

There is a book about "mindsets" I read recently. The growth mindset (teachable) and the fixed (born smart/dumb) mindset. Tech interviews are firmly in the later category, to our detriment.

Your last sentence shows that you are not interested in a discussion; you are only interested in bragging how much better you are than the people who had the rug pulled out from underneath them.

Ah yes, the "let them eat cake" strategy.

Oh these poor professional IBMers, making IBM salaries for all these years.

These aren't the poor and downtrodden we're talking about here. Is it really too much to ask someone with a professional livelihood to build a professional safety net with it if they want safety?

I rather like labor market liquidity, thank you very much. I wish there were more of it.

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