6 ms·

He's a college-educated electrical engineer with IT consulting experience. Why can't he find a job somewhere?

by jeremyt 10y ago

Erikun 10y ago
Worth noting that Germany was considered "the sick man of Europe" due to its poor growth and high unemployment from the middle of the nineties to a bit into the 2000s. Not sure that is the entire explanation of his problems, but is probably related.
- netsharc 10y ago
  The "recovery" out of that sickness is a bit fake, it's just because 18 other countries agreed to use German currency (a.k.a. the Euro) that Germany now is looking better than the rest of the continent: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/22/greece-eurozone-germans-single-currency http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/22/greece-... And Hartz IV is a neo-liberal's wet dream.
  - allendoerfer 10y ago
    It was more like "other countries (aka France) demanded the Germanies to join the Euro in order for them to reunite". No Euro, no reunification. The German people were really scared of joining weak currencies like the Lira and others, having gone through multiple hyperinflations historically and finally having a super solid and strong Mark. That is also why the ECB is a) independent of the member state goverments and b) in Frankfurt and not somewhere in France or Belgium like the other EU buildings are.
    - eru 10y ago
      > [...] having gone through multiple hyperinflations historically [...] In the 20s and at the end of WWII? Any other one I missed?
      - allendoerfer 10y ago
        Not to my knowledge. Maybe I should have written "two" instead.
        eru 10y ago
        Thanks.
  - eru 10y ago
    > And Hartz IV is a neo-liberal's wet dream. 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.)
  - eru 10y ago
    Funny enough, the Euro was a quid pro quo in return for French approval of unification. (The French were basically forced to copy the Bundesbank's monetary policy. Their politicians had hoped to meddle more with the ECB.) See eg http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-price-of-unity-was-the-deutsche-mark-sacrificed-for-reunification-a-719940.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-price-of-uni... (lots more to be found with some searching).
DasIch 10y ago
His particular skillset might not be quite up to date anymore.
- raarts 10y ago
  Which is just another way of saying he 's probably out of touch and his knowledge/experience is not worth much. 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.
  - eru 10y ago
    It's a real shame, because if you learned about fundamentals like compilers, data structures and operating systems eg in the 80s and then slept for 30 years, you would still pass a Google interview today. 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.
    - minipci1321 10y ago
      > It's a real shame, because if you learned about fundamentals like compilers, data structures and operating systems eg in the 80s and then slept for 30 years, you would still pass a Google interview today. 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 ;-)
      - eru 10y ago
        We have a bunch of self-described old farts working here in the Google office in Sydney without any problem. They do however seem to expect more seniority out of the senior candidates.
weinzierl 10y ago
Incidentally I do hiring and I can tell you that in Munich there is an abundance of ex-Siemens people most of them in their late fifties and early sixties. It is difficult for them to get a job. It's sad, sad, sad. 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.
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  Right. Leaving out obvious questions like "What exactly happened to this guy?" does a lot of damage to the credibility of the article as a whole.
  - lsc 10y ago
    I disagree. Unless you live in a world where ordinary failures are punished by a lifetime of penury, it doesn't really make any difference. We've all failed projects; we all expect to be able to get up afterwards and try something else. 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.
    - CamperBob2 10y ago
      I hear what you're saying, but if you read between the lines in the article, this guy has left behind a trail of failures of the sort we'd normally give hurricane names to. He had a lot of advantages in life and wasted them all, one by one. 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.
stcredzero 10y ago
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.
- jeremyt 10y ago
  I'm sorry, but that is just not an acceptable excuse in this case. I acknowledge that ageism is real, but I've also worked in companies where we went out of our way to hire older engineers. 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.
  - dzhiurgis 10y ago
    Don't forget that people do not want to work after reaching 60-70...
    - tfigment 10y ago
      Careful. There are many people over 60 that would like to work though maybe not full time. Personally I know my father would love to work but really can/should not as he has dementia. My mother wouldn't but volunteers as a dance instructor 10-20 hrs/wk and loves doing it in her retirement.
- 10y ago
gutnor 10y ago
Apparently he was out of work in 95. At that time in Europe, IT was not that hot. It was starting but he probably didn't have the proper profile. Germany was not great at the time either anyway. 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.
- taneq 10y ago
  > Moving from independent to employee is another one. I've heard/feared this as well, but in light of the statistics on startup infant mortality it seems crazy to stigmatise.

He's a college-educated electrical engineer with IT consulting experience. Why can't he find a job somewhere?

by jeremyt 10y ago

He's a college-educated electrical engineer with IT consulting experience. Why can't he find a job somewhere?

Worth noting that Germany was considered "the sick man of Europe" due to its poor growth and high unemployment from the middle of the nineties to a bit into the 2000s. Not sure that is the entire explanation of his problems, but is probably related.

netsharc 10y ago
The "recovery" out of that sickness is a bit fake, it's just because 18 other countries agreed to use German currency (a.k.a. the Euro) that Germany now is looking better than the rest of the continent: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/22/greece-eurozone-germans-single-currency http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/22/greece-... And Hartz IV is a neo-liberal's wet dream.
- allendoerfer 10y ago
  It was more like "other countries (aka France) demanded the Germanies to join the Euro in order for them to reunite". No Euro, no reunification. The German people were really scared of joining weak currencies like the Lira and others, having gone through multiple hyperinflations historically and finally having a super solid and strong Mark. That is also why the ECB is a) independent of the member state goverments and b) in Frankfurt and not somewhere in France or Belgium like the other EU buildings are.
  - eru 10y ago
    > [...] having gone through multiple hyperinflations historically [...] In the 20s and at the end of WWII? Any other one I missed?
    - allendoerfer 10y ago
      Not to my knowledge. Maybe I should have written "two" instead.
      - eru 10y ago
        Thanks.
- eru 10y ago
  > And Hartz IV is a neo-liberal's wet dream. 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.)
- eru 10y ago
  Funny enough, the Euro was a quid pro quo in return for French approval of unification. (The French were basically forced to copy the Bundesbank's monetary policy. Their politicians had hoped to meddle more with the ECB.) See eg http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-price-of-unity-was-the-deutsche-mark-sacrificed-for-reunification-a-719940.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-price-of-uni... (lots more to be found with some searching).

DasIch 10y ago

His particular skillset might not be quite up to date anymore.

raarts 10y ago
Which is just another way of saying he 's probably out of touch and his knowledge/experience is not worth much. 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.
- eru 10y ago
  It's a real shame, because if you learned about fundamentals like compilers, data structures and operating systems eg in the 80s and then slept for 30 years, you would still pass a Google interview today. 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.
  - minipci1321 10y ago
    > It's a real shame, because if you learned about fundamentals like compilers, data structures and operating systems eg in the 80s and then slept for 30 years, you would still pass a Google interview today. 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 ;-)
    - eru 10y ago
      We have a bunch of self-described old farts working here in the Google office in Sydney without any problem. They do however seem to expect more seniority out of the senior candidates.

weinzierl 10y ago

Incidentally I do hiring and I can tell you that in Munich there is an abundance of ex-Siemens people most of them in their late fifties and early sixties. It is difficult for them to get a job. It's sad, sad, sad. 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.

CamperBob2 10y ago
Right. Leaving out obvious questions like "What exactly happened to this guy?" does a lot of damage to the credibility of the article as a whole.
- lsc 10y ago
  I disagree. Unless you live in a world where ordinary failures are punished by a lifetime of penury, it doesn't really make any difference. We've all failed projects; we all expect to be able to get up afterwards and try something else. 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.
  - CamperBob2 10y ago
    I hear what you're saying, but if you read between the lines in the article, this guy has left behind a trail of failures of the sort we'd normally give hurricane names to. He had a lot of advantages in life and wasted them all, one by one. 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.

stcredzero 10y ago

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.

jeremyt 10y ago
I'm sorry, but that is just not an acceptable excuse in this case. I acknowledge that ageism is real, but I've also worked in companies where we went out of our way to hire older engineers. 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.
- dzhiurgis 10y ago
  Don't forget that people do not want to work after reaching 60-70...
  - tfigment 10y ago
    Careful. There are many people over 60 that would like to work though maybe not full time. Personally I know my father would love to work but really can/should not as he has dementia. My mother wouldn't but volunteers as a dance instructor 10-20 hrs/wk and loves doing it in her retirement.
10y ago

gutnor 10y ago

Apparently he was out of work in 95. At that time in Europe, IT was not that hot. It was starting but he probably didn't have the proper profile. Germany was not great at the time either anyway. 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.

taneq 10y ago
> Moving from independent to employee is another one. I've heard/feared this as well, but in light of the statistics on startup infant mortality it seems crazy to stigmatise.