Ask Slashdot: Are We Older Experts Being Retired Too Early? 629
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?"
Re:30 years? (Score:4, Insightful)
children?
Re:They can get someone younger for much less pay. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:30 years? (Score:2, Insightful)
You've been in the biz thirty years and you're not retired retired? C'mon. I've been at it for one year, at two-thirds the average starting pay, and I'm looking at becoming an artist/gardener/eccentric recluse in three or four years. (Granted, I live in a $34,000 home in one of the lowest cost-of-living cities in the US... but that's all part of the plan.)
I see.
I take it...no wait, this is Slashdot. I automatically assume all those usual expenses that befall other men that stem from having a girlfriend or wife you are devoid of.
In case you hadn't noticed, women are the most expensive thing on the planet.
Re:Lie a little (Score:5, Insightful)
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
How come nobody has commented on this part? No matter what age you are, requiring that you work remotely is going to make things difficult, no matter your age.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Aging workforce (Score:5, Insightful)
combined with no one wants to hire someone that obviously knows more than they do.
Yes I know its a recipe for a train wreck - have you not watched any large projects lately (cough @care).
Re:The American Dream (Score:4, Insightful)
Employers are scared of hiring someone with more experience than they have themselves because they are afraid that you will take over the company.
At the same time young employees keeps repeating mistakes made already by programmers that were around in the 70's, 80's and 90's.
Re:Lie a little (Score:5, Insightful)
How come nobody has commented on this part? No matter what age you are, requiring that you work remotely is going to make things difficult, no matter your age.
Seconded. Not just "would like to work from home" but "requiring" - from the outset. I scanned the question in less time than scanning a CV and those words ("requiring to work remotely") jumped out - CV in the round filing thing in based on that alone, didn't even register the age range being complained about.
I've worked remotely in several jobs and contracts, but only after being on-site first and proving myself and establishing with the client / employer which parts of the work can be done remotely - and always being prepared to be on site when required. I am not even sure how you could work remotely doing hardware and networks - but certainly not going to find out by trialing someone who is not prepared to be on site.
At the end of the day, you are selling yourself with your CV and if no one is buying then you are selling the wrong thing or at the wrong price - and IMO "remote working only" is the wrong thing (unless you are an awful lot cheaper - i.e. India rates - and then it's usually the wrong thing but some people do buy...)
Re:Your not alone (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
It may be common but it still sounds like whining (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Entrepreneurship (Score:2, Insightful)
Tailoring, or trying to, your resume/cv to a particular job is a recipe for disaster.
If you are not competent enough to write a document that sells you in the first page, and drives the deal home by the end of the second then you should consider going back to school, seriously.
I recruit software engineers. Often we use more than one recruiter because there are several positions. If I receive two different resumes from the same person I immediately bin them because I know I can't trust that person to make an honest assesment/teport. You tried to twist facts just to get the job. How will you be when I hire you?
Some resume tips from someone who employs engineers: .*". They list that crap because they can't summarise their experience in a way which implies it.
1. I dont care how many buzzwords and acronyms you cram onto the page.
2. I care that you can provide a coherent description of your job roles and what that enatiled, including the skills you needed to use and the outcomes you achieved.
3. If it takes more than 3 short paragraphs to describe the key points of any previous employment your communication skills are too lacking to hire you.
4. Only people with no demonstrable skill list things like "fast learner" or "motivated" or "demonstrated ability in
5. Having 20 years of experience with a 5year old technology tells me you are full of shit.
If you want to get a job, try being honest in your resume. Know your limits and be prepared to admit them with your faults.
Like yourself much? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:30 years? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Lie a little (Score:5, Insightful)
they think they know what they're doing, but when you ask them an SQL question they use a sequence of nested queries without any join statements.
And what exactly is wrong with that?
Query optimizer will generally convert a nested query into a join when necessary. And for a non-correlated nested query (and possibly some particularly shaped indexes) nesting is probably a better answer to begin with.
Re:Lie a little (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. He isn't being passed over for younger engineers. He is being passed over for Indian engineers. If the employer wants a remote worker, then it doesn't matter much if the worker is the next town over or the other side of the world.
"Work remotely" is code word for "low output" (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, you are competing with a bunch of young guys who while not nearly as good, nor efficient, but will show up in the town and then the office and be there for the management to see. They can do this because they rent, don't have entrenched families, and aren't tied to where they are.. and probably got there a year or two ago anyway.
Management like to do stuff like walk around the building looking for who's there and who's not, and of who's there, who is working. Maybe not as enforcement, but as "gee I am a great manager look at all my guys working" type of thing.
Remote workers often disappear to other companies because this entrenched commitment is not present. Remotely working lets them jump ship for fewer reasons faster. (The company I work for has been burned by this repeatedly.)
Plus, getting someone involved in a complicated project remotely sucks ass, and is a drain on everybody else, having to produce a bunch more documentation that a conversation in a hallway could accomplish, remote desktop sharing sessions, etc. Sometimes I work on complicated stuff with others in my company, and it always sucks to have that one guy that can only see one computer screen and only hear what's going on. Unless it's pure program coding or graphics or something, they never pull their own weight.
Start looking hard for LOCAL jobs where you don't have to be "remote". Use your experience to branch out into new areas that widens your skill set to the point you can find a local job. Or, move to where the jobs are temporarily. Just don't say "I will only work for you remotely" because companies do deliberately pass that up because they've already had bad experiences with that.
One last point, the economy is still pretty bad. Nobody is getting a lot of jobs right now. The government is lying to you about it, or the job growth isn't in my state, NOBODY I know is doing "gosh I got this great new job" it's all "I haven't gotten a raise in 5 years and there are no worthwhile job prospects elsewhere". If there is a good economy, it's in China or something. You might consider lowering your expectations a bit. If you really want to work, you gotta compete with other guys that really need to work. From here, it sounds like you aren't on several levels.
Re:They can get someone younger for much less pay. (Score:4, Insightful)
Because they have no business knowledge either? ;-)
Re:Lie a little (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't overlook the fact that "30 years of experience" is partly valuable on what they can teach the other staff members.
Working remotely is going to have less of an impact on what the other workers know. (If any at all.)
Why pay for "30 years", when "5 years and can share some of that with others" will do the job?
Re:Lie a little (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you say "scumbags"? How about "illegally discriminating scumbags"? Good luck proving it though. And even if you have the evidence, it's not like anyone cares about enforcing labor laws anymore. That's been dead since Reagan took office.
Back in the 60's my father had a wrongful termination suit that he pursued through the Dept. of Labor (no need to hire a lawyer, etc.). He won hands down. Think that happens today?
I've always had mixed feelings about unions at best. I've never belonged to one and never wanted to. Back when they still had power though, they served a very good purpose for people in non-union shops - they made employers afraid of them. As a result, it was considered good business practice to treat employees well enough that they didn't want to unionize. Partly as a result of that fear, and the actual enforcement of labor laws, people my father worked with, including his immediate supervisor, had no qualms about testifying on his behalf. Think that would happen today?
I have a software company and I'd really want... (Score:5, Insightful)
...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
Re:Lie a little (Score:5, Insightful)
they think they know what they're doing, but when you ask them an SQL question they use a sequence of nested queries without any join statements.
And what exactly is wrong with that?
Query optimizer will generally convert a nested query into a join when necessary. And for a non-correlated nested query (and possibly some particularly shaped indexes) nesting is probably a better answer to begin with.
You speak the truth. Look at it this way:
select something from table1 where id in (select table1_id from table2 where name ilike '%smith%');
or
select table1.something from table1 inner join table2 using table1.id=table2.table1_id where table2.name ilike '%smith%';
They're equivalent, and if you're using a reasonable rdbms (I use PostgreSQL) they end up being optimized identically. IMHO, the first one is far easier to read and understand, particularly if you start adding even more and more tables and restrictions. Something I've picked up over the last 25 years of paid IT work is that maintainability trumps nearly everything else given the price disparity between hardware and human time. (obviously there are limits to that)
In my company I maintain tons of code that I've written over the last 15 years. People call me up and expect for me to be able to look at code that I wrote 10 years ago and make changes. How about places where there's actual staff turnover? Writing readable and maintainable code is just better.
ROFTL no. Would have done so by 40 (Score:4, Insightful)
There are people who RUN businesses, and there are people who are EMPLOYED by businesses. If they haven't "taken over the company" by age 40, they almost certainly won't. If they've been an employee for 20-30 years, that's probably because that's their preference or where their strengths lie. They aren't going to take over anything.
Of course, there's the rare case of someone has has run several businesses by age 40 taking non-executive employment for some reason, but that's not the usual case. I've run a few companies and I took an 8-5, but I think I'm the only one in a building with ~200 people. Nobody else here is going to take over squat because they'd rather show up at 8, leave at 5, and and collect their steady paycheck and benefits.