4 ms·

After 25 years in electronics manufacturing (< 30 employees, factory closed)and 12 years in IT (>250,000 employees, site closed), looking for a job at 55, I jus

by memcg 5y ago

After 25 years in electronics manufacturing (< 30 employees, factory closed)and 12 years in IT (>250,000 employees, site closed), looking for a job at 55, I just refused to jump thru hoops and put up with BS. That was 10 years ago and I have no regrets.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
Same here. I was 55, when I was looking.
- memcg 5y ago
  I just want to look for ways to contribute to the lives of my family, friends and community. Both of my jobs were 50+ hours per week minimum and 1 hour daily commute. I missed a lot over years, and in the end I traded time with family for financial security. I wish I had worked just a little less and been better about leaving time and energy for others.
gcheong 5y ago
What does this mean practically speaking? I’m 55 and just starting to look again now after being out of the workplace for 4 yrs.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  In my experience, I found recruiters and screeners to be very condescending and, in some cases, downright nasty. In one case, it was all smiles, until they brought in the tech lead, and I was quickly given the bum's rush, after that. Recruiters tended to "ghost" me, almost immediately upon finding out my age. It was weird. I have a tremendous résumé, and they would contact me, gushing about it, then would suddenly have a "connection issue," after I told them my age. I'd never hear from them again. I guess the industry is crawling with 30-year-olds, with 35 years of experience. It's quite possible to get work. All of my employees got jobs again, but it took a couple of years, for a couple of them to find settled work. Most had to be contractor employees for a year or so. Our team was composed of very experienced C++ programmers. Absolutely top-shelf engineers. They're doing fine, now, but it took a while. I just didn't feel like going through the agita.
  - gcheong 5y ago
    Thanks for that. While I don't advertise my age I'm pretty sure the employment gap in my resume is putting them off and I'm getting a lot of the same response as you mentioned. But even before then it was getting harder to find a job and, after being told no thanks from one company where I, my recruiter, and their internal recruiter thought I for sure had it in the bag after multiple interview rounds I just figured it was a clear signal I had to find a different way - just not sure what that is yet and if it's even worth bothering with interviewing.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
      I just started making my age clear, up front. In many cases, they couldn't hang up, fast enough. Not sure I'd recommend that. It probably comes across as "challenging." I just got tired of having my time wasted. I wish you the very best of luck.
Damogran6 5y ago
So what did you two end up doing? I'm 52, and work is in a neat little compartment. It's not great, but it's not soul sucking, and has good PTO and a pension and financially everything's grand and on-track...but work and my career is no longer where I draw value. I could easily see finishing my career here, and I could also see having another job before retirement. (And, I could see retiring ASAFP if I could get the financial and life expense curves to cross. :) )
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  In my case, I am working on a project with a small NPO (Nonprofit 501c3). I'm the lone developer of a fairly ambitious iOS/iPadOS app that mixes a simple social graph with a geographic database. It's coming along great. Been at it for about a year and a half (over two years, if you count the backend I wrote -over ten, if you count the geographic DB, which I also wrote).
  - tomca32 5y ago
    This is really where it’s at. I’m not even close to retirement age, just about to hit 40, but I really think often of retiring and how I want to spend more time working with the nonprofit I volunteer for. Developing software that has real users and really matters to people in the field. When I say I want to retire people always think that I want to sit in a sofa all day…no I want to retire from having to work for a living and work on things that make me feel like I’m doing something that matters. Building useful software for an ngo that works in poor African countries and wouldn’t be able to afford an engineering team is what I want to do, not binge watch Netflix from my sofa. NGO I mentioned: https://mindleaps.org https://mindleaps.org
    - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
      > NGO I mentioned: https://mindleaps.org https://mindleaps.org Cool! Looks like work that feeds the soul.

by memcg 5y ago

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

Same here. I was 55, when I was looking.

memcg 5y ago
I just want to look for ways to contribute to the lives of my family, friends and community. Both of my jobs were 50+ hours per week minimum and 1 hour daily commute. I missed a lot over years, and in the end I traded time with family for financial security. I wish I had worked just a little less and been better about leaving time and energy for others.

gcheong 5y ago

What does this mean practically speaking? I’m 55 and just starting to look again now after being out of the workplace for 4 yrs.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
In my experience, I found recruiters and screeners to be very condescending and, in some cases, downright nasty. In one case, it was all smiles, until they brought in the tech lead, and I was quickly given the bum's rush, after that. Recruiters tended to "ghost" me, almost immediately upon finding out my age. It was weird. I have a tremendous résumé, and they would contact me, gushing about it, then would suddenly have a "connection issue," after I told them my age. I'd never hear from them again. I guess the industry is crawling with 30-year-olds, with 35 years of experience. It's quite possible to get work. All of my employees got jobs again, but it took a couple of years, for a couple of them to find settled work. Most had to be contractor employees for a year or so. Our team was composed of very experienced C++ programmers. Absolutely top-shelf engineers. They're doing fine, now, but it took a while. I just didn't feel like going through the agita.
- gcheong 5y ago
  Thanks for that. While I don't advertise my age I'm pretty sure the employment gap in my resume is putting them off and I'm getting a lot of the same response as you mentioned. But even before then it was getting harder to find a job and, after being told no thanks from one company where I, my recruiter, and their internal recruiter thought I for sure had it in the bag after multiple interview rounds I just figured it was a clear signal I had to find a different way - just not sure what that is yet and if it's even worth bothering with interviewing.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
    I just started making my age clear, up front. In many cases, they couldn't hang up, fast enough. Not sure I'd recommend that. It probably comes across as "challenging." I just got tired of having my time wasted. I wish you the very best of luck.

Damogran6 5y ago

So what did you two end up doing? I'm 52, and work is in a neat little compartment. It's not great, but it's not soul sucking, and has good PTO and a pension and financially everything's grand and on-track...but work and my career is no longer where I draw value. I could easily see finishing my career here, and I could also see having another job before retirement. (And, I could see retiring ASAFP if I could get the financial and life expense curves to cross. :) )

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
In my case, I am working on a project with a small NPO (Nonprofit 501c3). I'm the lone developer of a fairly ambitious iOS/iPadOS app that mixes a simple social graph with a geographic database. It's coming along great. Been at it for about a year and a half (over two years, if you count the backend I wrote -over ten, if you count the geographic DB, which I also wrote).
- tomca32 5y ago
  This is really where it’s at. I’m not even close to retirement age, just about to hit 40, but I really think often of retiring and how I want to spend more time working with the nonprofit I volunteer for. Developing software that has real users and really matters to people in the field. When I say I want to retire people always think that I want to sit in a sofa all day…no I want to retire from having to work for a living and work on things that make me feel like I’m doing something that matters. Building useful software for an ngo that works in poor African countries and wouldn’t be able to afford an engineering team is what I want to do, not binge watch Netflix from my sofa. NGO I mentioned: https://mindleaps.org https://mindleaps.org
  - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
    > NGO I mentioned: https://mindleaps.org https://mindleaps.org Cool! Looks like work that feeds the soul.