> Technologists live in a world of negative unemployment
Just wait until you turn 50...
Just wait until you turn 50...
I've met many people who have struggled to find work after they stopped learning. But someone who refuses to learn at 30 is less employable than someone who still gets excited about a new framework at 60.
I didn't say they didn't hire me for age. Rather, I was offering that as a proof of sorts that my skills are current and yet I had a hard time getting hired.
(I did hear via back channels that I was nixed there for being [euphemism for too old]. Hard to know whether that's true, but all things considered, it's hard to think of a non-demographic explanation, aside from bad luck. In any case, I'm over it.)
Recruiter would not know if you have passed, I assume you mean your package was sent to the hiring committee?
If you did not receive an offer after your package passed hiring committee, one common reason I heard was there is no head count.
A not recent news: Google Settles Age Discrimination Lawsuit [0]
[0]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2019/07/23/google-set...
Was contacted after the usual six months by a new recruiter wanting me to apply again. Asked what happened last time, which he seemed to know nothing about. He investigated, and came back with the corporate-speak I interpreted as "too old" (though phrased in a way that would probably avoid legal issues).
The "no head count" explanation doesn't make much sense to me. And in any case, given the effort required to go through the process, it'd be kind of a dick move to be interviewing candidates when there were no openings.
Their recruiters continue to contact me about every six months.
I do wish companies are more transparent about their hiring decisions.
In any case, it did drive home the point that Google would never see me as anything but marginal and expendable, and I realized that there were other places where I could really matter.
Recruiter would not know if you passed or not.
IIUC, Google recruiter would send your package to the hiring committee if your interview result isn't bad (this is at their discretion); the hiring committee has the final say on if someone has "passed", recruiter doesn't.
From a practical standpoint that means don't buy status symbol products (cars, fancy phones, etc) - stick to practical (I drive a '98 Civic that cost me $2400 - great, reliable car). If you buy a house, buy a very practical one in a more affordable neighborhood. Learn to do your own maintenance. Keep your expenses as low as possible. If you don't have a Roth IRA start one today and begin fully funding it. If your work offers a Roth 401k option put some money in there too if you can.
And of course, always be learning new things.
When I buy something nicer than I truly need for a hobby such as a Mountain Bike, I wait for a great price on a fixer-upper, perform the maintenance it needs, and enjoy it without getting attached, while at the same time putting it back up for sale at a higher price in case someone wants it more than I do. 9 times out of 10 the item will sell in a few months, and oddly enough I've met some incredibly interesting people who wanted properly restored items, such as a tie-dye founder whose been in business for over 50 years and an SVP at Cisco who's in charge of a product I had been using daily for years.
Basically, don't bank everything on going into management. Be financially responsible. Live beneath your means. Explore other pass times and activities that you may have an interest in pursuing in the future. The worst thing you can do is arrive at 40 or 45 with a Plan A that may not work out and no Plan B or C.
It's the industry.
I work with this guy, he's about 60. I think he has a degree in Physics from Oxford, but he has a Texas accent. He's kind of a nomad type of guy, bounces from job to job. Got hired into the AWS "Cloud Team" shop on a project I work on. Doesn't have any AWS certifications. As far as I know, barely touched AWS and never touched Python, CloudFormation, or Jenkins before this job (but he knows just about every *ix flavor there is). Basically a lifelong Linux Sysadmin. I have no idea how he got the job.
Within a month he was writing his own CloudFormation, Lambdas, and Jenkinsfiles. He almost immediately intuited the whole "Zip up the Python and all its dependencies, throw on S3, use CFT to deploy the Lambda using that Zip file" method of deploying lambdas. Note this is with multiple accounts so you need to get the whole IAM delegation between accounts stuff. He's a natural.
I'm in awe of this guy.
I truly believe that HN is full of people than can be like this. The problem is that most hiring managers do not.
During downsizings, as groups got smaller, managers were let go along with workers. Survivors needed learn to mourn the loss of your colleagues who were downsized, and then pick up the important work they left behind. To survive, one needed a positive attitude. Keeping one takes work under difficult circumstances. I always viewed the task as taking lemons and making lemonade.
None of us liked this. This strategy worked for me until they finally cut 70% of the Research Labs staff, including most of my clients and many of my fellow analysts. The best an employee can do is to work with your family to design a budget that lets you live below your means, build an emergency fund with at least six month's living expenses, and to save as much as you can each month in a retirement plan. None of these tasks are easy. Few people actually do this because it requires you to say "no" to many of your desires. Those who do find it easier to cope when the shoe finally drops on you...
I'm guessing that for people this happens to, it's a combination of being in a place with not many tech jobs and also not keeping up with technology. Can you do cloud tech (aws, google cloud, azure?), c++, java, js, protobuffers? None of these technologies were invented when I got my BS in CS many many years ago and I've been learning continuously. Sure there were similar things or building blocks toward this kind of stuff. My last job search was a couple of years ago, I had 3 offers and stopped interviewing and I'm not unusual in my experience (going back to the above comment about negative employment in software engineering). I'm in the Seattle area. At the company I joined a few months ago half our small team of engineers are 45+. We just hired someone past 60 as a dev.
If you find yourself in this situation, all these technologies are available to try for free on the internet, you can teach yourself. Companies that won't hire older people are just stupid, on top of being illegal.
You can become an expert in a niche subject. The tricky part here is that it has to be a niche subject that pays well, with a lot of demand but not so much demand that newcomers are tempted to do the work to also become an expert in it. One example of this, that most on HN would like to pretend doesn't exist, is COBOL. COBOL programmers can command some pretty nice rates now, because nobody wants to work with COBOL but it still powers a lot of the world.
It's also a great time to start your own business. Maybe your kids are out of the house, hopefully you've become a seasoned industry veteran, you've seen other people make mistakes and you've gathered together a nice bit of savings and some excellent credit. Why not put those resources and that experience to use and start your own business? See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18212409
Amplifying: Don't have kids unless you really want them--they're very expensive. Don't get married unless you really want to--being (and then likely not being) married is very expensive. Avoid those and a drug habit, and you don't need a lot of money.
I didn't realize how important networking is when I was young. It really is "who you know and not what you know". And to the degree that it's the latter, it's how well you interview, not what you know that actually matters. It's rarely possible to evaluate someone's skills or how they'll do in a company until you've had them on-board for a year or two.
I was much more idealistic when I was young, and often stood on principal. That was a mistake. If management wants to drive their train over a cliff, offer to sell popcorn. Or write a crash analysis tool that will look good on your resume. But smile the whole time, and keep your resume polished. You're playing for your team, not your employer's.