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Ask HN: Laid-off readers over 50, have you left the tech workforce?
- duck 8y agoThis needs an "Ask HN:"
- sctb 8y agoWe've updated the headline. Thanks!
- tosser00005 8y agoI was let go at age 53 about 9 months ago as a software engineer in the Boston area. I enjoy my job and had not thought of changing fields. I'm not in a position to retire either. I got 3 months severance and had a new job at comparable pay by the end of that time period.
- ttronicm 8y agoI'm 47 and might have to. No one seems interested in hiring me.
- no_wizard 8y agoIt might be useful for those reading this thread to include location perhaps? In as so much you might be comfortable. Might also be useful to give some idea of skill set previous job too so people can average themselves appropriately as I think that’s the intent here is to gauge where it hurts the most for this to happen and perhaps what skill sets might be seeing it more? Maybe I’m wrong so I’m open to suggestions on improving this discourse
- Viker 8y agoAre you on engineering or sales/manegement?
- partycoder 8y agoI am concerned that this may happen to me in a couple of decades. Can you elaborate more?
- nikkwong 8y agoI wouldn't make any assumptions on the state of the workforce a few decades out. Things may change dramatically.
- noir_lord 8y agoOne thing that will definitely change is the demographics of the developer community, people who are 50 today who worked their career as programmers would have started in 1986 - 1990, There wasn't anywhere like as many programmers then as now. So the number of older programmers moving down the pipe will grow hugely with the explosion in the number of programmers in the 90's. That and to an extent the field is continuing to mature, We've only had the internet in most peoples homes for what, 18 years (not sure what the 50% line date was). For me I find it's not hard to stay current since I devote my 'TV time' to programming and I like learning, I've also been careful not to find myself stuck in a niche by moving from one part of industry to another. My plan is to just stay current with the technology, I was raised on basic, pascal in the 80's, moved to C in the 90's, then Delphi, C# and the web. It helps that the only constants in my life since I was a kid have been that I love reading and I love programming. I leave work, go home, have a shower, something to eat and then program (or play chess) as a hobby.
- maxk42 8y agoWould you mind sharing what tech you've been working with?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- albumdropped 8y agoRecently laid off at age 48. Less than a month later, had multiple offers with better compensation. Still in tech sector. Two years ago we switched from PHP to Go, which definitely helped.
- klint 8y agoIs your new job writing Go, or do you just think learning it just make you a more attractive candidate?
- albumdropped 8y agoNew role is almost entirely Go. Some legacy Python.
- UnpossibleJim 8y agoIf you can, what type of code are you writing in Go commercially? Don't worry, you don't have to be specific, I'm just curious =) The libraries have really started to take off for it, and I'm curious if companies are catching up to that, yet.
- albumdropped 8y agoThere are several projects, but the largest is basically a very large specialized content platform. Many sites that have to be fast with no downtime - so Go, K8s, CockroachDB. We also have some machine learning (that's why we kept the Python). Also a few fun, small Raspberry Pi / GoBot things around the office.
- amorphid 8y agoFellow 40-something software dev here. I'd love to ask you some questions about your background & experience. If you'd be inclined, can we chat? My email is in my profile.
- stagger87 8y agoWe just interviewed a series of laid off 50+ principle software engineers (all from the same company). After the interview, all reported back they had multiple offers and chose to work elsewhere. Keep in mind these were engineers with very specific domain knowledge (which we were after).
- duck 8y agoIt seems like specific domain knowledge is pretty key at a certain age unless you're really good at selling yourself as a consultant. With 30+ years of of experience I think you almost get to accumulate that automatically, but the worry is that the domain vanishes.
- yanslookup 8y agoWhich domain?
- fecak 8y agoI'd hate to think that readers over 50 feel the need to consider leaving the tech workforce, and I know perhaps hundreds of successful engineers over 50. Those that have a hard time getting back in are often a victim of discrimination not truly based on age, but on stagnation. A 50 year old who has worked on five interesting diverse projects in the last 10 years will find work. A 50 year old who spent the last 20 years working for the same company using old tech may struggle, and by the time you realize you need to retool it can be too late.
- akshat_h 8y agoI have always wondered this. Tech and probably other fields do want you to be promoted. From what I have heard, if you are not able to get promoted in certain number of years, you are put on a PIP and possibly laid off. But there are lesser number of Senior Engineers than Engineers, and lesser number of Principal Engineers than Senior Engineers. What exactly happens? Just the fact that the numbers in the pipeline is always reducing suggests to me that some people get laid off and never find a job? Is that true? If not, what exactly is happening? I am still at the one of the lowest levels on the totem pole, so maybe I am missing something obvious here.
- taurath 8y agoI work with senior engineers who are in their late 20s, and mid level devs in their 40s - I feel like the idea that a career path always has to have an upward trajectory is a bit of a farce - there are a lot of companies full of people who have kids, are competent, but don’t really want to take on the extra responsibility and time.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoAt some point, you realize your family is more important than a few extra dollars and an org chart.
- idunno246 8y agoSenior is considered a terminal role in most companies in terms of required promotions, so you don’t have to get promoted again. Staff and principal is a different job kinda like management is, so at/after the senior level it’s splitting into 3 - managers, staff, and senior ICs, hence numbers go down.
- mahoneycutt 8y agoNot quiet 50 - age 49 - 28 years at same organization That was in 2011 - I retired and started doing in-home tech support for little old (rich) ladies and gentlemen. I haven't looked back :-)
- sridca 8y agoInteresting. If I may ask how much do you charge per hour?
- rhacker 8y agoOh man, I am curious how that is. I used to do in-home tech work when I was much much younger like 20ish. I didn't realize it then, but thinking back on those experiences I often had housewives that were creating their own websites, um... flirting with me... I'm kinda glad I didn't notice... then.. So now I'm curious, do you see that?
- patrickdavey 8y agoBrilliant idea! How did you get started?
- fencepost 8y agoResidential break/fix is always a hot topic for small computer business owners - some people make it work, others get stuck with "residential break/fix is dying." There's also the question of having a storefront and employees. I think any on-site is going to vary widely by where you are, the demographics of your area, and the size of your service area. It's too easy to get into traveling half an hour or more to get to a customer, and if you're doing that without trip charges then suddenly a 1-hour visit turns into 2 hours of your time and halves your rate.
- lproven 8y agoI lost my last permanent job in London at the end of 2008, at the beginning of the financial crisis in the UK. I applied for about two thousand roles in 2009 alone, and from 2008-2013, about 3,500 roles in total... In about 6-8 countries in multiple disciplines. I averaged 30+ applications _per day_ at first... and 1 interview per year. From 2009 to 2013 I got 2 months of paying work in total. Reason? I think it's because I was 41 when I started. I used to mainly work in support, from 1st/2nd/3rd line to sysadmin, systems design and spec, network architect, everything. I do Windows, Linux, Mac OS, networking, comms, some programming knowledge, training, all sorts. But I'm too old to get work as a techie. I eventually moved to the Czech Republic. I'm in my 3rd position in 4 years, having nearly doubled my salary from its lowest point since I moved here. Mainly because I'm a native English speaker and we're in big demand here. I can _turn down_ work I don't want over here. But I did have to move to a new country, where I don't speak the language, and accept an initial pay cut to about one quarter of what I hoped for in London.
- strongbond 8y agoI'm very sorry to hear about your experience. But when I hear that you think 41 is old I have to stifle a slight cough. I'm 58 and started my most recent job 2 months ago. Before that, I worked for FICO in the UK for 1 year and 9 months. I've had 5 or 6 jobs since I was 41, but I've always put the (enjoyable) time in at home to learn new stuff. It keeps you young.
- markbnj 8y agoAlso 58 and working as an SRE at a company I love. Greybeards unite!
- lproven 8y agoI have a tiny handful of friends in IT older than I whose careers are still thriving in the UK. Most are specialists of some kind. I wish them well. For the first >50% of my career, my speciality was that I wasn't a specialist. I can work anything with a keyboard and a display, fix it, tune it, make it talk to anything else, or at a push virtualise it. But that's an obsolete skill in the near-monoculture of today, when IT means Unix, Windows and nothing else, talking Internet protocols. It's all boring now. Usefully, though, I also write, so I changed course and became a tech writer. That's working out OK so far.
- kev009 8y agoAre there any plausible moves to earn mid 100s in some non-tech industry without going through re-schooling?
- Latteland 8y agoEveryone would be doing it if it was easy. Sales is probably the best option but you have to be able to do sales.
- mikevp 8y agoLaid off at 56. When I got home from being notified, there was an email from the HR person at a competitor in my inbox. I started work there within two weeks. Plus, my prior company had a rather spectacular special severance package for those of a certain age who would sign an agreement not to sue for age discrimination. (This was accompanied by a thick stack of statistics of who had been laid off, showing that they were well prepared to defend themselves from any such lawsuit, but I'd rather take the money than spend the next umpteen years in court, and have the lawyers take any hypothetical judgment in the end anyway.)
- nardonne 8y agoIt's almost impossible to sue for age discrimination and win. All they have to do is lay off 1 person in their 20s at the time they laid off their older workers and they claim innocence and it works.
- ProAm 8y agoEven if you sue and win you'll likely never work again due to it.
- benburleson 8y agoSerious question: If this is the expectation, is it not possible to sue for the actual damages, which is a lifetime of income?
- marme 8y agono because the actual damage is just your lost income at that job. The reason you will never work again is no one wants to hire someone who sues their employer which is not caused by them firing you. It is the same with renting, if you sue your landlord no other landlord will touch you, many places maintain blacklists of tenants who have sued their landlords
- Latteland 8y agoSue after you start working in your new job and are established.
- efoto 8y agoI am over 55, software engineer from SF Bay Area. I was laid off in March and just accepted one of the offers. So, no, not leaving the tech at all.
- notadoc 8y agoGreat topic for discussion. I have seen this happen during and after both the dot com bust and the great recession. Timing of the layoff will certainly impact things, as does the perception of skill stagnation, but there is a component that is related to age as well. I personally know a seasoned VP who only started getting callbacks after they dropped 10+ years of (relevant) experience from their resume. I also know someone who was told by a recruiter to dye their hair. Most of these stories are from 2001/2002 and 2009-2012 but unfortunately I doubt that it's limited to recessionary environments.
- lynchmike77 8y agoDon't let age define you!
- nardonne 8y agoThey really should pass legislation is protect older workers. If they protect transgender people from discrimination, they can protect their older workers who have done everything they were told to do and are being punished.
- zbobet2012 8y agoAre you trolling? https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/age.cfm https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/age.cfm
- bproven 8y agoI dont think he is trolling, age discrimination is just something that is hard to prove. Case in point - as soon as I removed my graduation dates from my resume I started getting more initial calls. Previously I would hear nothing - i assume it was b/c I was filtered out by the HR app parsing bots. Ageism is real in this field..its youth culture. You just gotta know this and work around it.
- throwawaysecops 8y agoAgeism is real if you accept grumbling about limitations in certain markets. All these millennials want to hang together; let them on certain models! They can assume high risk without evaluation and see what happens. Older force already knows this and knows to stick to what is real and matters.
- PhasmaFelis 8y agoI'm not sure what "reader" means here.
- chestervonwinch 8y agoLaid-off readers (of Hacker News) ... I assume.
- throwawaysecops 8y agoOne may assume, but that doesn't mean it is the truth. We are also "writers".
- CNJ7654 8y agoLike Adobe
- ulkram 8y agoWarning: this kind of poll is prone to selection bias.
- walterclifford 8y agoAgreed. I imagine many people who left tech (regardless of age) are not frequenting HN
- 313v8r5h035 8y agonot yet (laid off at 55, new gig after ~2.5 mos.; now 56)
- modbait 8y agoAfter many rejections during my job hunt last year, I did seriously consider it, yes. Despite having a pretty solid skill set and experience, no bites, which is rather demoralizing. You can argue whether candidates in their 50s are less viable, but it was clear that age was a factor. Not just being typecast as stodgy, but also that many people simply don't want to work with, or compete against, someone who's older. I see comments about people getting old and not wanting to learn new things, but for me it's almost the opposite. One of the things I like most about tech is learning new things, and once you've been in for several decades, there are fewer and fewer truly new things left to learn, and positions where you'd get to learn them are fewer and fewer. It was almost a fluke, but I did finally find a job (still in tech) that works for me. But if you knew the details, it wouldn't cheer you. I may yet leave soon, and just live out my days as a churchmouse working on Open Source projects. We'll see.
- scardine 8y agoI'm only 47 but it was the same experience for me. Ended up taking a data engineer job at a local government agency - depite the lovely site (inside University of São Paulo campus) it pays 1/3 the market average.
- modbait 8y agoPretty similar to my situation. Esp the "1/3" part. :-)
- kwillets 8y agoI'm the same way; I found that the creative work that I always envisioned was not happening on the job. Now I'm at home, but I've got emacs open in another window banging out some SIMD code. Maybe I'm ahead of the curve -- everybody says vectorization is the next thing, but hardly anyone knows how to do it or how a computer works.
- modbait 8y agoCheck out OpenACC. Kind of an interesting middle option. https://www.openacc.org/ https://www.openacc.org/
- larryfreeman 8y agoI am 50 and living in Silicon Valley. I have been laid-off 3 times (most recently in January, 2017). Each time, I have had little troubling finding a job. I should mention that I am active on Kaggle and that I code during my day job (C#) and code in my free time (mostly Python). I have not yet found any problem in finding new roles.
- adamc 8y agoI'm not laid off, but expect to find another job when I retire from my current one (probably in another year)... Am I naive?
- legohead 8y agoTo any older guys out there who think they might be looking in the near future -- my advice is to learn the "current stack", or really, just to keep up to date and messing with the new technologies that come out. My story: A couple years ago I started job searching, at 38. I had been at my current job for 5 years. I had a hell of a time getting anyone to bite. I had a dozen phone interviews that I felt went well, but no callbacks. This stroke me as odd, as when I had been searching last time, I had to fight off people and had multiple offers. I noticed a trend in the jobs I was applying for. Kubernetes, Node, C#, etc. Things I didn't have on my resume, although I knew I could learn with ease. But your prospective hirer doesn't want to hear how good you are at learning their stack. There are enough candidates to choose from that already know what they need, and I was told that more than once. The jobs I was applying for were the same description, same mechanics and job duties I had been doing for 15 years already, but since I didn't work with the latest stack -- too bad. I eventually got lucky and found a job that was transitioning from what I already knew to one of these newer stacks.
- bproven 8y agoYep - biggest key is stay current. Change to new langs / systems if needed so you can stay in the "the most desirable" camp. Don't marry yourself to a technology. This is especially critical IME as you get over 40. I learned the hard way :(
- scardine 8y agoPython is hot, right? I'm doing Python for the last 10 years and even landed one patch in smtplib. Data science is booming and I have 25 years into ETL. I'm active in the local Python meetups - my last talk was about the new data classes in Python 3.7 (currently beta so I can't possibly be more up to date). Some white hair over my face would hint at my real age if I let them grow for a few days but otherwise I don't look 47. I commute by bicycle (13 milles every day). I spend weekends on hackathons just for the fun. I'm lean and fast both physically and mentally. But when you are near 50, good luck finding a good position. Age prejudice is a real problem in our industry.
- rustyworm 8y agoIf I do, I'll be waiting to be recalled when the dreaded "Year 2038 Problem" happens. ;)
- modbait 8y agooblig: "It says here you know COBOL..."
- kwillets 8y agoOne theory I have is that the tech community was a lot more nerdy in the past, and we've gradually been diluted out as the tech population has grown. The whole "culture fit" thing just seems creepy to me; I used to work with all kinds of crazy people.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- zenpaul 8y agoHa, ha, ha, I just got laid off Monday along with most of the rest of the team with no notice. The market seems to be fairly hot here in Fairfield county CT so I'm jumping right back in and expect to pick up another job/contract in the next month. It's just a matter of rate and commute... It is tempting to just do my writing or something else but I love the work, it pays well and it's fairly expensive to live here. Speaking of writing, I wrote this the day after the layoffs and it pretty much sums up my feelings... A tree fallen; the turn of a leaf Why is the HR team here with crisp manilla folders? "There's an announcement at 10," please assemble the soldiers. Somber words were spoken and no questions were asked. Then with cleaning out our desks most of us were tasked. The screen turns red, system down in sector 4! I tense for a moment and then gleefully ignore. We pack the last picture and hold back a tear, And say "it's still early, but let's all get a beer." We relive the drag-out meetings where we battled for the truth, And the late afternoon YouTubes bordering on the uncouth. For some it's a blow; for others relief. It's a tree fallen; the turn of a leaf. So I'll join another startup, yes that will be fun. Or even a bank, if they really want to get shit done. The joy of building and creating with keyboard or pen, Is what I live for over and over again. If you're team's on a mission with problems quite hard, Tell me about it. Please call me. The number's on the card.
- linuxlizard 8y ago"crisp manilla folders" <-- gave me chills
- p1esk 8y agoI like your writing! A job in a bank can wait, write some more! :)
- crispyporkbites 8y agoThis is great, it’s rare to hear poetry I can identify with. Thank you
- jfolkins 8y agoThank you for sharing @zenpaul
- 8y ago
- Kyragem 8y agoAgism is real and I've seen it first hand while working in industry. I made a conscious decision a few years ago to take a pay cut and move into academia, where experience is still considered a plus.
- mrits 8y agoI run engineering at a medium size startup. I don't like hiring C++ programmers with less than 20 years experience. Ironically the Ukrainian outsource team I once used to find talent quickly now supplies me with "senior devs" that are 5 years out of school. I'm in my mid-thirties myself.
- sheepmullet 8y agoI think the problem is the older generation of tech workers are not mercenaries. I know a lot of older tech workers supporting important business systems while their skills slowly become out of date. They are frequently adding $1 million+/year in value while being paid ~$100-$120k/year. The businesses would pay $250-$350k/year if they had to. If the older workers were demanding the premium and saving the $100-$150k/year extra after taxes then being out of the job market for a year or two to reskill wouldn't be a problem. Luckily most of the younger generation are very mercenary and are in tech for the money. So it's a problem that hopefully will fix itself.
- quickthrower2 8y ago> The businesses would pay $250-$350k/year if they had to. Extraordinary claim
- sheepmullet 8y agoWhat makes you think so? Do you think they would sooner cut off their nose to spite their face?
- jones1618 8y agoI've worked in tech for 30 years and never experienced a single company that does math the way you describe: "I.T. generates or saves us $X million per year therefore we'll share that with frontline developers." Ha, puhleez. In my experience, you'd consider yourself lucky to work for a company that sees I.T. as a strategic/operational advantage (and not merely a "cost center") and therefore pays its staff 10% better than market average plus bonuses. Unfortunately, I've worked for truly "I.T. forward" companies like that and still seen a merger or buyout completely flip the culture. Overnight I.T. salaries and budgets were seen as indulgences and people were laid off or quit in droves. The one thing I've learned about this industry is that no matter how innovative or adept an engineering department is, an exuberantly stupid executive team can completely squander and destroy that asset surprisingly quickly.
- scardine 8y agoI'm not over 50 yet (47) but I'm done applying for programming jobs and I don't want to get back into management unless it is my own company. Currently I'm working full time as a data engineer for a local government agency waiting for some side business to take off. Just started a productized service business offering "an elite squad delivering a complete web application over a single one-week sprint" (the idea is to take some business process currently managed through spreadsheets+email and turn it into a web application - complete with reports, filters, search, permission control and etc in one week).
- DrScump 8y agoI left the tech "workforce" (although I use a lot of technology on my own in my own business) a couple of downturns ago, after I got fed up with having several positions in a row offshored and eliminated. I started my own unrelated business (sort of fell into it, applying my observations about certain marketplaces) with the immediate goal of having more hands-on control of my fate -- I could live with the impacts of my own stupid mistakes, but I wanted to insulate myself from others' stupid mistakes. So, I stayed above water even through the 2008+ downturn, even while a lot of my colleagues who had stayed in the industry were out of the conventional full-time workforce as well. But now, my industry segment is going away (ironically, due to the stupid mistakes of the industry superpower), so I've folded up the worst-performing 60% of my business. Now, I have to decide whether to just sell my SV house and "retire" or somehow find an appropriate role for my "out of date" (in terms of modern stacks) technical skillset. I think at this point, my most marketable skill is writing and breaking stuff, and writing about breaking stuff, but the trick is finding the right company with those needs.
- noobermin 8y agoHonest question here, why is there ageism in hiring in IT? What does it buy any employer to shoot for younger, less experienced workers? I'm probably naive but I don't get the logic.
- cbayram 8y agoMy thoughts: You are there to burn brain cycles for a fixed pay, a high pay at that. Experienced older crowd demands higher pay. Most gigs could care less about their experience; 95% of the gigs consists of mundane task completion and pump out code demanded by often micromanagement processes. Older crowd is more likely to question, call out bs, and demand work life balance. Young are more impressionable, willing to burn the candle night after night. 24-hour long hackathons on soda and pizza anyone? This is unhealthy in so many ways lol. This says more about the profession rather than ageism. Name another profession where people willingly accept working under such unhealthy circumstances, especially off the clock. Lunch at your desk is the norm. Fuck it! Frankly, the profession is ideal for a (wo)man-child, crippling any mature, healthy social development. End of the day, it's you and the computer 1v1. No one outside IT/tech gives two fucks about your abstraction flame wars, coding practices yadi yada unless bottom line is suffering. They'll throw bodies at the problem. Meanwhile Stfu and code.
- michal-franc 8y agoThere is this notion that only 'younger' people can be innovative and the more experience you have the more your 'neural network' is solid and using 'proven' solutions, which limits outside of box thinking. - this is what I have read some time ago in a piece about 'Ageism'
- adamstober 8y agoSorry to hear. While I'm not over 50, I went through something similar at one point and took the opportunity to spend some time on a passion project before going back into the workforce. Despite the frustrating situation, you'll end up better off. And if you're looking to get back to the tech workforce, here are some tips that I hope might help: https://medium.com/layoff-aid-blog/how-to-hack-the-tech-job-search-when-youre-unemployed-cfa2b3f123f2 https://medium.com/layoff-aid-blog/how-to-hack-the-tech-job-...
- TomMasz 8y agoI took a voluntary layoff in December and yes I have left the tech workforce. I was in product infosec and the stress was taking a toll on my health even though I didn't realize it at the time. I'm thinking about moving into academia. It's something I've always wanted to do but would never have done while I was still working. I'm set financially so the lower pay isn't a drawback.