10 ms·

When the Jobless Become the Unemployable

25 points by rayvega 16y ago

jaysonelliot 16y ago
Given the young age demographic of HN, I'm looking forward to hearing people's perspectives on the prospects facing people in their fifties who are trying to get back to work. If you had two programmers competing for a job, equally qualified, but one who was 25 and the other 55, how would you choose?
- brudgers 16y ago
  A 55 year old who can't clearly bring more to the table than someone half their age is a concern. If the 25 year old was actually equally qualified, it would make sense to hire that person because they are young enough to move up the management track and into the succession track. So if I'm looking at succession, I'm probably going young. If I'm looking for someone with enough sense to avoid re-inventing the wheel, I'm probably going mature. [all of which is somewhat irrelevant to the effects of unemployment].
  - ryanwaggoner 16y ago
    You know this is illegal[1], right? 1. In the US...
    - rdl 16y ago
      Plus, the younger employee will probably be cheaper to insure, and may not have kids (although at 55 someone may not either, and if so would be less likely to gain them). All of which is highly illegal and lame, but may be a factor at some jobs.
    - brudgers 16y ago
      IANAL - But AFAIK, hiring the older worker on the basis of age would never be illegal. Discriminating against an older candidate is illegal in certain circumstances, but not always. http://www.eeoc.gov/facts/age.html http://www.eeoc.gov/facts/age.html In practice, such discrimination appears to be commonplace and virtually unpunished given the burden on the candidate to prove that discrimination actually occurred. Considering that there were 22,000 Federal age discrimination claims in 2009 [http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/enforcement/charges.cfm http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/enforcement/charges.cfm] and that 61% of all claims were considered to have no reasonable cause and 17% were closed administratively [http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/enforcement/all.cfm http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/enforcement/all.cfm] one could napkin estimate that about 5000 people had some success in claiming age discrimination. I'd be willing to bet that most of those successes were against an employer and not related to the hiring process. Not that any of that makes it right.
  - randallsquared 16y ago
    > it would make sense to hire that person because they are young enough to move up the management track and into the succession track. So when you find someone good at code, you want to make sure to move them out of coding when possible and into something that skill and understanding of programming has no bearing on: management. [edit: removed pointlessly antagonistic remark]
    - brudgers 16y ago
      1. In 15 years you always have the option to hire the CTO from outside, but hopefully you have groomed internal candidates and created a culture where high caliber talent will stick. 2. Without opportunity for advancement, your best young talent will apply to YC. 3. Having managers which understand the technical aspects of the projects they manage, doesn't hurt.
- lionhearted 16y ago
  > If you had two programmers competing for a job, equally qualified, but one who was 25 and the other 55, how would you choose? What's equally qualified mean? I don't see how someone with less than 10 years of experience could possibly be equally qualified as someone with 30+ years of experience. Either the veteran guy has a greater depth of skills and experience, or he's on a fast downward slope and not picking up new skills. If a 55 year old is bringing the same to the table as a 25 year old, the 25 year old is amazingly talented, or the 55 year old has abandoned learning new stuff.
  - pmccool 16y ago
    Or the 55 year old started their programming career at age 45. I've seen it happen... Edit: or whatever age would result in equivalent industry experience
    - Benjo 16y ago
      The 55 year old still has 30 extra years of life. You can't dismiss all of that as useless to the job. That's 30 years of learning about communication, teamwork and productivity through just experiencing life. I don't know how you make the argument that the candidates are otherwise equal unless one has a resume item reading: 1970-2000: Coma, Mayo Clinic
- KevinMS 16y ago
  Web related jobs are often filled with recent college grads, 20-something hipsters, and all kinds of dogmatists who are just uncomfortable with anybody who doesn't fit in. It wasn't like this during the dot-com 90's where I worked with fun motley crews of developers.
- brc 16y ago
  Your question is very prescient. Every developer has to have a game plan for what they are going to do when they are 50. Like it or not, it's a young mans game, and if you're pushing high age numbers, you've got to either be the go-to guru or the seasoned and sensible manager. If you're going straight up against 25 year olds in skillsets, it's going to be hard to win interviews. Of course, creating your own companies is the other way to get around this.
  - hga 16y ago
    Or more like 35-40 from what I've head, seen and experienced. In my case, I was able to unintentionally run a bit of an experiment: starting around 35 or so I found it harder and harder to get work ... until I scrubbed my resume of all evidence of my age, which worked since I don't look my age and generally remembered to not talk about programming PDP-11s in interviews ^_^. I did this in the middle of a job hunt and the change in responses was remarkable.
lionhearted 16y ago
I heard an anecdote about the last recession. It's just an anecdote, but should be interesting. It's about an "unemployment counselor" - she had 18 unemployed executives who would come to weekly meetings and complain about how tough it is to get jobs. Deciding that it was unproductive, she suggested that everyone make at least 5 calls on jobs during the next week, and the main focus of next week's meeting is talking about how well it went. Only 2 out of 18 showed up. 16 of them didn't make the calls at all. I'm not finding the statistic right now, but I also remember hearing that the average number of job applications per week for long term unemployed people is 2. This doesn't invalidate the article, but it's an important consideration. If you're not looking very hard and flexibly for work that might be suitable to you, does that really indicate that there's no opportunity available?
- sudont 16y ago
  I was unemployed for a full year and a week (post college). During that time I sent out over 300 résumés, and applied to around 100 online systems. This ranged from front-end jobs (what I’m at currently) and design jobs, all the way down to groundskeeper and Wal-Mart stocker. I had exactly five phone interviews and three in-person interviews out of the entire year. (One of which was a scam.) Not even Wal-Mart would give me the time of day. ...Until I got a referral from a friend to a recruiter. She got me an interview with a nice company, which landed me an offer in 14 hours. I’m sorry, but your anecdote is a straw man.
  - lionhearted 16y ago
    > I’m sorry, but your anecdote is a straw man. Your anecdote proves another anecdote is a strawman? Kidding aside, I've been self employed most of my life and I've never written a resume up, so I don't know. Just sharing one story I heard. Your experience is interesting. What do you think it was that helped? Was the recruiter good, or your friend a strong vouch? Would be curious to hear more about your experience, it's pretty shocking that you get barely any response with your credentials in 400 applications, but then a warm introduction lands you a job in a day. Well, I believe in the power of warm introductions, but you'd expect some interest if your credentials/skills stacked up, no? Would be curious to hear more.
tjmc 16y ago
"In particularly dynamic industries, like software engineering, unemployed workers might also miss out on new developments and fail to develop the skills required." Can't buy that argument for software engineering. If you're unemployed you've got plenty of time to learn new technologies whilst looking for work.
- ryan-allen 16y ago
  I'd also argue that certain type of software skills don't become obsolete, and that a sufficiently experienced developer shouldn't have too much trouble picking up the 'latest and greatest' technologies. It's not like it actually changes fundamentally every few years!
  - jteo 16y ago
    Unfortunately, most HR departments don't understand that. To many HR recruiters, IT recruitment is a task of ticking off the checkboxes for knowledge, as opposed to screening for skills, character traits and personality.
  - yesno 16y ago
    But if your competitors have the same amount of experience but have picked up and used the 'latest and greatest' tools in real production environment, guess which one will get the job? Do keep in mind that if you're 40 years old, it's less likely you'll get a job by picking up the 'latest and greatest' tools. Cause most companies that use these tools often employ workers a wee bit half over your age.
- yannickt 16y ago
  The problem is most employers only care about actual on-the-job experience. You might be a strong Python hacker, but if you haven't used Python in a professional setting recently it doesn't count.
  - smackay 16y ago
    Having something to show is the obvious solution to that. Even the simplest app hosted somewhere cheap demonstrates a myriad of skills that speak volumes about your capabilities. You still have to dodge the person ticking the bullet points in HR but that is a problem that everybody has regardless of the level of expertise.
dabent 16y ago
If my current employer were to suddenly let everyone go, I honestly wonder if half of them wouldn't fall into the "unemployable" category.
- brc 16y ago
  I did some contract work with a team in a large company. Within about a week I realised this team was a dumping ground for poor performers from other parts of the IT dept. They looked after all sorts of little odds and ends systems, and didn't really write any new stuff (that's what I was there for - they didn't trust them to create new software). I have heard from contacts within the company that successive downsizing rounds has removed all of them, and as far as I am aware, none are working in the IT industry in any capacity anymore. They were nice guys but were just contended to sit back and collect paychecks and not learn anything new. If you get into a age+skills death spiral it can be very hard to get out.
rianjs 16y ago
The article doesn't talk about it, but I wonder about companies that do credit checks as a pre-req for employment. Being unemployed can lead to problems paying bills, especially over the long term. (For younger individuals, this might be problems paying back student loans, which aren't dischargeable in bankruptcy.) Bad credit means not getting a job which means further problems paying bills... well, you get the idea.

25 points by rayvega 16y ago

Given the young age demographic of HN, I'm looking forward to hearing people's perspectives on the prospects facing people in their fifties who are trying to get back to work. If you had two programmers competing for a job, equally qualified, but one who was 25 and the other 55, how would you choose?

brudgers 16y ago
A 55 year old who can't clearly bring more to the table than someone half their age is a concern. If the 25 year old was actually equally qualified, it would make sense to hire that person because they are young enough to move up the management track and into the succession track. So if I'm looking at succession, I'm probably going young. If I'm looking for someone with enough sense to avoid re-inventing the wheel, I'm probably going mature. [all of which is somewhat irrelevant to the effects of unemployment].
- ryanwaggoner 16y ago
  You know this is illegal[1], right? 1. In the US...
  - rdl 16y ago
    Plus, the younger employee will probably be cheaper to insure, and may not have kids (although at 55 someone may not either, and if so would be less likely to gain them). All of which is highly illegal and lame, but may be a factor at some jobs.
  - brudgers 16y ago
    IANAL - But AFAIK, hiring the older worker on the basis of age would never be illegal. Discriminating against an older candidate is illegal in certain circumstances, but not always. http://www.eeoc.gov/facts/age.html http://www.eeoc.gov/facts/age.html In practice, such discrimination appears to be commonplace and virtually unpunished given the burden on the candidate to prove that discrimination actually occurred. Considering that there were 22,000 Federal age discrimination claims in 2009 [http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/enforcement/charges.cfm http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/enforcement/charges.cfm] and that 61% of all claims were considered to have no reasonable cause and 17% were closed administratively [http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/enforcement/all.cfm http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/enforcement/all.cfm] one could napkin estimate that about 5000 people had some success in claiming age discrimination. I'd be willing to bet that most of those successes were against an employer and not related to the hiring process. Not that any of that makes it right.
- randallsquared 16y ago
  > it would make sense to hire that person because they are young enough to move up the management track and into the succession track. So when you find someone good at code, you want to make sure to move them out of coding when possible and into something that skill and understanding of programming has no bearing on: management. [edit: removed pointlessly antagonistic remark]
  - brudgers 16y ago
    1. In 15 years you always have the option to hire the CTO from outside, but hopefully you have groomed internal candidates and created a culture where high caliber talent will stick. 2. Without opportunity for advancement, your best young talent will apply to YC. 3. Having managers which understand the technical aspects of the projects they manage, doesn't hurt.
lionhearted 16y ago
> If you had two programmers competing for a job, equally qualified, but one who was 25 and the other 55, how would you choose? What's equally qualified mean? I don't see how someone with less than 10 years of experience could possibly be equally qualified as someone with 30+ years of experience. Either the veteran guy has a greater depth of skills and experience, or he's on a fast downward slope and not picking up new skills. If a 55 year old is bringing the same to the table as a 25 year old, the 25 year old is amazingly talented, or the 55 year old has abandoned learning new stuff.
- pmccool 16y ago
  Or the 55 year old started their programming career at age 45. I've seen it happen... Edit: or whatever age would result in equivalent industry experience
  - Benjo 16y ago
    The 55 year old still has 30 extra years of life. You can't dismiss all of that as useless to the job. That's 30 years of learning about communication, teamwork and productivity through just experiencing life. I don't know how you make the argument that the candidates are otherwise equal unless one has a resume item reading: 1970-2000: Coma, Mayo Clinic
KevinMS 16y ago
Web related jobs are often filled with recent college grads, 20-something hipsters, and all kinds of dogmatists who are just uncomfortable with anybody who doesn't fit in. It wasn't like this during the dot-com 90's where I worked with fun motley crews of developers.
brc 16y ago
Your question is very prescient. Every developer has to have a game plan for what they are going to do when they are 50. Like it or not, it's a young mans game, and if you're pushing high age numbers, you've got to either be the go-to guru or the seasoned and sensible manager. If you're going straight up against 25 year olds in skillsets, it's going to be hard to win interviews. Of course, creating your own companies is the other way to get around this.
- hga 16y ago
  Or more like 35-40 from what I've head, seen and experienced. In my case, I was able to unintentionally run a bit of an experiment: starting around 35 or so I found it harder and harder to get work ... until I scrubbed my resume of all evidence of my age, which worked since I don't look my age and generally remembered to not talk about programming PDP-11s in interviews ^_^. I did this in the middle of a job hunt and the change in responses was remarkable.

lionhearted 16y ago

I heard an anecdote about the last recession. It's just an anecdote, but should be interesting. It's about an "unemployment counselor" - she had 18 unemployed executives who would come to weekly meetings and complain about how tough it is to get jobs. Deciding that it was unproductive, she suggested that everyone make at least 5 calls on jobs during the next week, and the main focus of next week's meeting is talking about how well it went. Only 2 out of 18 showed up. 16 of them didn't make the calls at all. I'm not finding the statistic right now, but I also remember hearing that the average number of job applications per week for long term unemployed people is 2. This doesn't invalidate the article, but it's an important consideration. If you're not looking very hard and flexibly for work that might be suitable to you, does that really indicate that there's no opportunity available?

sudont 16y ago
I was unemployed for a full year and a week (post college). During that time I sent out over 300 résumés, and applied to around 100 online systems. This ranged from front-end jobs (what I’m at currently) and design jobs, all the way down to groundskeeper and Wal-Mart stocker. I had exactly five phone interviews and three in-person interviews out of the entire year. (One of which was a scam.) Not even Wal-Mart would give me the time of day. ...Until I got a referral from a friend to a recruiter. She got me an interview with a nice company, which landed me an offer in 14 hours. I’m sorry, but your anecdote is a straw man.
- lionhearted 16y ago
  > I’m sorry, but your anecdote is a straw man. Your anecdote proves another anecdote is a strawman? Kidding aside, I've been self employed most of my life and I've never written a resume up, so I don't know. Just sharing one story I heard. Your experience is interesting. What do you think it was that helped? Was the recruiter good, or your friend a strong vouch? Would be curious to hear more about your experience, it's pretty shocking that you get barely any response with your credentials in 400 applications, but then a warm introduction lands you a job in a day. Well, I believe in the power of warm introductions, but you'd expect some interest if your credentials/skills stacked up, no? Would be curious to hear more.

tjmc 16y ago

"In particularly dynamic industries, like software engineering, unemployed workers might also miss out on new developments and fail to develop the skills required." Can't buy that argument for software engineering. If you're unemployed you've got plenty of time to learn new technologies whilst looking for work.

ryan-allen 16y ago
I'd also argue that certain type of software skills don't become obsolete, and that a sufficiently experienced developer shouldn't have too much trouble picking up the 'latest and greatest' technologies. It's not like it actually changes fundamentally every few years!
- jteo 16y ago
  Unfortunately, most HR departments don't understand that. To many HR recruiters, IT recruitment is a task of ticking off the checkboxes for knowledge, as opposed to screening for skills, character traits and personality.
- yesno 16y ago
  But if your competitors have the same amount of experience but have picked up and used the 'latest and greatest' tools in real production environment, guess which one will get the job? Do keep in mind that if you're 40 years old, it's less likely you'll get a job by picking up the 'latest and greatest' tools. Cause most companies that use these tools often employ workers a wee bit half over your age.
yannickt 16y ago
The problem is most employers only care about actual on-the-job experience. You might be a strong Python hacker, but if you haven't used Python in a professional setting recently it doesn't count.
- smackay 16y ago
  Having something to show is the obvious solution to that. Even the simplest app hosted somewhere cheap demonstrates a myriad of skills that speak volumes about your capabilities. You still have to dodge the person ticking the bullet points in HR but that is a problem that everybody has regardless of the level of expertise.

dabent 16y ago

If my current employer were to suddenly let everyone go, I honestly wonder if half of them wouldn't fall into the "unemployable" category.

brc 16y ago
I did some contract work with a team in a large company. Within about a week I realised this team was a dumping ground for poor performers from other parts of the IT dept. They looked after all sorts of little odds and ends systems, and didn't really write any new stuff (that's what I was there for - they didn't trust them to create new software). I have heard from contacts within the company that successive downsizing rounds has removed all of them, and as far as I am aware, none are working in the IT industry in any capacity anymore. They were nice guys but were just contended to sit back and collect paychecks and not learn anything new. If you get into a age+skills death spiral it can be very hard to get out.

rianjs 16y ago

The article doesn't talk about it, but I wonder about companies that do credit checks as a pre-req for employment. Being unemployed can lead to problems paying bills, especially over the long term. (For younger individuals, this might be problems paying back student loans, which aren't dischargeable in bankruptcy.) Bad credit means not getting a job which means further problems paying bills... well, you get the idea.