5 ms·

Do you have any recommendations for someone earlier in their career (<50 yo) to avoid or minimize ageism? Go into management? Be prepared to pick a new career?

• UncleOxidant 7y ago
  Seriously, your best bet (and the advice I would give my 20-something year old self) is to SAVE AS MUCH MONEY AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN. And then save more than that. Try to be financially independent by 50. If you can do that then you won't have to worry about ageism. You'll be able to be picky about the kinds of jobs you take. From a practical standpoint that means don't buy status symbol products (cars, fancy phones, etc) - stick to practical (I drive a '98 Civic that cost me $2400 - great, reliable car). If you buy a house, buy a very practical one in a more affordable neighborhood. Learn to do your own maintenance. Keep your expenses as low as possible. If you don't have a Roth IRA start one today and begin fully funding it. If your work offers a Roth 401k option put some money in there too if you can. And of course, always be learning new things.
  • borkt 7y ago
    I'm in a similar spot. As enticing as a Tesla Model 3 Performance edition might be, my '00 civic with 220k miles, no heater, and a head gasket problem still gets me to work every day, and I have all the cash I need to replace it the day it dies. My wife and I are in our early 30s and our mortgage payment is less than most of our friends pay to rent a single room because we worked and saved through college. When I buy something nicer than I truly need for a hobby such as a Mountain Bike, I wait for a great price on a fixer-upper, perform the maintenance it needs, and enjoy it without getting attached, while at the same time putting it back up for sale at a higher price in case someone wants it more than I do. 9 times out of 10 the item will sell in a few months, and oddly enough I've met some incredibly interesting people who wanted properly restored items, such as a tie-dye founder whose been in business for over 50 years and an SVP at Cisco who's in charge of a product I had been using daily for years.
    • addflip 7y ago
      While I'm pretty frugal myself I do splurge on cars; currently own the Model 3. The reason being is that safety technology is always improving. So driving an '00 Civic with 220k will save you some cheddar it may cost you a severe injury or worse.
      • borkt 7y ago
        I'm not saying I don't want one (I rented a P100D on vacation and it was fantastic). Its just not the right decision for me to use as a commuter car despite how much my heart wants one, and I have to actively supress my desire to purchase one, but it does make me feel more fiscally responsible not to buy it. I also probably don't value safety as much as you. I have a twin turbo 300zx track car which I'll never sell and goes completely against everything I described above to be honest, so I'm a hypocrite regardless!
        • achillesheels 7y ago
          Moderation in everything :)
      • downerending 7y ago
        If you care about safety, don't overlook the effects of weight differential. Odysseys are quite safe, partly because they're pretty heavy.
    • UncleOxidant 7y ago
      The other advantage of 90s Hondas (and possibly also '00) is that they're so cheap to have fixed as opposed to how much you have to pay to get a newer car fixed. Parts are readily available and pretty darn cheap. I know a shade tree mechanic in the neighborhood and when I needed to get a new clutch master cylinder put in I ordered the parts off of Amazon for $20 and he did the job for $100. I probably could've done it myself, but for $100 it seemed like it would be better to have him do it as he does this kind of thing all the time.
      • 7y ago
• organsnyder 7y ago
  Build and cultivate your professional network. The more senior you are (in position and age), the more you're hired via connections rather than resume.
• dominotw 7y ago
  Yea going into management is the best bet. Its a "controversial" topic on HN because large swathes of ppl here here believe #IC4Lyfe is a good career move. Its not.
  • drywater 7y ago
    Until companies have 3 managers and 2 normal employees.
  • bilbo0s 7y ago
    I think it's important to let people know that there are fewer managers than workers. (At least, if a company is doing things correctly there are fewer management positions.) This means that not everyone will be able to make this transition even if you have the appropriate skills and disposition. Furthermore, if you look around a lot of tech companies, you'll notice that most of the managerial staff is <45 as well. So keep that in mind. Basically, don't bank everything on going into management. Be financially responsible. Live beneath your means. Explore other pass times and activities that you may have an interest in pursuing in the future. The worst thing you can do is arrive at 40 or 45 with a Plan A that may not work out and no Plan B or C.
  • joncrane 7y ago
    I agree that IC for life is not a good career move, but it's not the wanna-be IC's fault. It's the industry. I work with this guy, he's about 60. I think he has a degree in Physics from Oxford, but he has a Texas accent. He's kind of a nomad type of guy, bounces from job to job. Got hired into the AWS "Cloud Team" shop on a project I work on. Doesn't have any AWS certifications. As far as I know, barely touched AWS and never touched Python, CloudFormation, or Jenkins before this job (but he knows just about every *ix flavor there is). Basically a lifelong Linux Sysadmin. I have no idea how he got the job. Within a month he was writing his own CloudFormation, Lambdas, and Jenkinsfiles. He almost immediately intuited the whole "Zip up the Python and all its dependencies, throw on S3, use CFT to deploy the Lambda using that Zip file" method of deploying lambdas. Note this is with multiple accounts so you need to get the whole IAM delegation between accounts stuff. He's a natural. I'm in awe of this guy. I truly believe that HN is full of people than can be like this. The problem is that most hiring managers do not.
• johnminter 7y ago
  I had a 37 year career at a company that used to be a well recognized brand. I was in the Research Laboratories in an Analytical Sciences division. During that time we had many layoffs as the company's financial position eroded. The key to success in that environment was to be a lifelong learner, a team player, and developing skills that permitted you to generate results that proved your worth. During downsizings, as groups got smaller, managers were let go along with workers. Survivors needed learn to mourn the loss of your colleagues who were downsized, and then pick up the important work they left behind. To survive, one needed a positive attitude. Keeping one takes work under difficult circumstances. I always viewed the task as taking lemons and making lemonade. None of us liked this. This strategy worked for me until they finally cut 70% of the Research Labs staff, including most of my clients and many of my fellow analysts. The best an employee can do is to work with your family to design a budget that lets you live below your means, build an emergency fund with at least six month's living expenses, and to save as much as you can each month in a retirement plan. None of these tasks are easy. Few people actually do this because it requires you to say "no" to many of your desires. Those who do find it easier to cope when the shoe finally drops on you...
• panzagl 7y ago
  Government and DoD contractors usually run older than commercial companies- you won't get close to SV level compensation, but it can be a good way to move to a lower cost-of-living area.
• NotSammyHagar 7y ago
  I'm mid 50s, I keep learning. If you are a programmer who can't find work, well first let me say that would be horrible. It's unacceptable, it should never happen, yet reports keep happening. I haven't seen it in my career, I'm sure I'm fortunate in many ways. I'm guessing that for people this happens to, it's a combination of being in a place with not many tech jobs and also not keeping up with technology. Can you do cloud tech (aws, google cloud, azure?), c++, java, js, protobuffers? None of these technologies were invented when I got my BS in CS many many years ago and I've been learning continuously. Sure there were similar things or building blocks toward this kind of stuff. My last job search was a couple of years ago, I had 3 offers and stopped interviewing and I'm not unusual in my experience (going back to the above comment about negative employment in software engineering). I'm in the Seattle area. At the company I joined a few months ago half our small team of engineers are 45+. We just hired someone past 60 as a dev. If you find yourself in this situation, all these technologies are available to try for free on the internet, you can teach yourself. Companies that won't hire older people are just stupid, on top of being illegal.
• thaumaturgy 7y ago
  Aside from ~UncleOxidant's really good reply -- to save as much as possible with a goal towards being financially independent by 50 -- there are a couple of other options which anecdotally seem to have worked well for a lot of people: You can become an expert in a niche subject. The tricky part here is that it has to be a niche subject that pays well, with a lot of demand but not so much demand that newcomers are tempted to do the work to also become an expert in it. One example of this, that most on HN would like to pretend doesn't exist, is COBOL. COBOL programmers can command some pretty nice rates now, because nobody wants to work with COBOL but it still powers a lot of the world. It's also a great time to start your own business. Maybe your kids are out of the house, hopefully you've become a seasoned industry veteran, you've seen other people make mistakes and you've gathered together a nice bit of savings and some excellent credit. Why not put those resources and that experience to use and start your own business? See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18212409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18212409
• downerending 7y ago
  I'd echo what others are saying here: learn to live cheap, cultivate your professional network, learn to be a team player. Amplifying: Don't have kids unless you really want them--they're very expensive. Don't get married unless you really want to--being (and then likely not being) married is very expensive. Avoid those and a drug habit, and you don't need a lot of money. I didn't realize how important networking is when I was young. It really is "who you know and not what you know". And to the degree that it's the latter, it's how well you interview, not what you know that actually matters. It's rarely possible to evaluate someone's skills or how they'll do in a company until you've had them on-board for a year or two. I was much more idealistic when I was young, and often stood on principal. That was a mistake. If management wants to drive their train over a cliff, offer to sell popcorn. Or write a crash analysis tool that will look good on your resume. But smile the whole time, and keep your resume polished. You're playing for your team, not your employer's.
• ScottBurson 7y ago
  Assuming you're in software -- study machine learning! It's going to be hot for a long time.