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Comment by pseingatl | Hacker News Reader

After 40, it's musical chairs. The music will stop and there won't be a chair for you. McKinsey comes in and says "cut staff." HR comes in, says "cut 5% and replace them with Desi H1-B's." Your best bet is to take a deep breath and build another start-up. In the meantime, take any job of any nature.

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I try to say this gently, but this comment would make more sense if it came from lots of direct experience, rather than (what appear to be) repeated tropes. Have you seen this repeated in your own over-40 experience or the experience of people you know?

Sounds a bit like IBM. Or like a company going through a private equity acquisition.

Have you seen this repeated in your own over-40 experience or the experience of people you know?

I can't speak for the parent, but that exact thing has happened to me.

It's no trope.

Likewise. I hit 40, which I didn't think was that old, dropped out of contracting and found employed work has gone from being easy to, well, IME impossible to turn up.

At best it would be anecdotal, and if not from experience it's an intentionally alarmist and flippant remark.

I've seen it a few times. One company replaced the entire QA department with off shore people from India, this didn't go well. Another replaced a bunch of devs with off shore people in Belarus, this did go well.

Disney did it back in 2015 or so.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/stocks/news/do-...

This happens, that much is unarguable. But replacing departments does not disproportionately affect workers over 40 unless that dept is disproportionately over 40, which begs the original question: How can one find such a dept!?

Medical.

It's not a trope.

After 40, getting hired has a similar to propensity to making friends. Ageism is a subtle, pervasive bias.

When I was 20, I looked about 13 and everyone wanted to hire me.

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