I'm dreading a possibility of being laid off right now because I keep hearing horror stories about people in my age group not being able to find any kind of a job right now after being given their walking papers, not to mention a job in the same field with similar pay.
Is it really that bad out there for people like me?
Why hire a old person who likely has health issues when you can hire a healthy sprite.
Coding today is mostly open source copy paste and glue layers.
No hard algorithms left to solve.
You don’t write your own BST these days , you use the toolkit that has it in the language you code in. Rust, Golang ...
There is active age discrimination and it can range from the subtle (look at the photos of millennials and younger on websites of accounts at which you want to apply) and requiring you select the year in which you graduated from college in order to proceed in the process to the more obvious like saying it is a more junior level role.
I was a VP of software dev. I've been out of work for 3 years. I'd take the salary of a new hire and a low level tech job.
Isn't it a myth that employers can underpay someone? I'm not saying that employers have to pay you a VP of software dev wages if you were hired as a cashier, but they have to pay you the wages for whatever role and level of experience they hire you at.
When I was leaving the military as a junior officer, the head hunting company that was trying to find a large group of junior officers told us as part of the interview prep to not try to lower our salary expectations when asked by the interviewer. The head hunters already knew what the company was willing to pay, and they told us the range and the recruiter knew we were briefed. All we had to do was repeat it back to them. Those that were stupid enough to cut their salary expectations by $5K for that role didn't get offers from that company.
Ditto for Lee Hect Harrison, the outsourcing resource company that Cisco uses (at least in NC) during each LR to help people find new jobs, research companies, write resumes and interview prep. I've used them twice and both times they talked about how companies have to pay you based on the role, and the years of relevant experience you bring to the role. Trying to show yourself as cheaper than the other candidates doesn't work.
I recall when Cisco was converting a bunch of contractors on my team, including me, to employees. This BU typically placed mid-career professionals in Pay Grade 9 instead of 8. Why, I don't know, but they did. Another guy & I were being converted in the same quarter, both for PG9. I don't recall the specific pay window for that grade a decade ago, but he told the hiring manager that his salary expectations were $5K higher than the median pay for that grade. I told the same hiring manager that I wanted the same take-home pay as my current pay (pre-bonus) and adjusted the salary to compensate for the difference in benefits costs. I basically came in within $1-2K of the median. Both our offers were, you guessed it, the median for that pay grade. All of his posturing and demanding an extra $5K got him nothing. My desire for better benefits, and at that time, better job security in exchange for the same wages got me nothing either. We both ended up with the same wages, and we both got caught by an LR. Me first, then him one or two LR's later.
I was a VP of software dev. I've been out of work for 3 years. I'd take the salary of a new hire and a low level tech job.
In what BU? You say you will take a lower salary, but are you skilled to actually do the work of an individual contributor? Can you setup a devops tool chain from scratch? Can you code? Know anything about data lakes? If so, I’m hiring.
The cloud companies massively down-level roles from old tech. The money is actually better, but you need to actually work. If you have been sitting in a chair at Cisco for too long, you need to go out and retrain.
You have a target on your head at Cisco if you are over 50 and dont tick a number of diversity boxes. It is indeed hard to find work over 50 out there, but it can be done. I did a few years ago and I am in a much better place making much better money without the ingrained layoff culture. Get organized and trust yourself, you can do it too.
LR'd 3 years ago in the UK at mid 50s.
During the consultation period make our job finding a job and work your day doing that. By the end of the consultation period I had 3 job offers and could start the new job the following week with the pay off in my bank account.
There is life after 50.
Not all companies are like Cisco. After 19 years of service, I was laid off in February at the age of 60 from Cisco Advanced Services (refuse to reference CX). I was hired within a month at a Cisco partner for almost the same pay and with full benefits. The beautiful part was between years of service and unpaid PTO I received a lump check for almost 9 months salary so thank you Cisco. In my new company there are several older employees and they are valued. For example , there's an analyst I work with who is 77 years and still going strong ( and he is sharp). In summary, stop thinking all companies behave like Cisco regarding older employees > they don't.
In Silicon Valley you're considered old after 40. To find a job, It's not what you know, it's who you know.
What are you doing living in Silicon Valley anyway? Who lives there anymore?! At this point you should be in a role that will allow you to work from anywhere.
In Silicon Valley you're considered old after 40. To find a job, It's not what you know, it's who you know.
I was a VP of software dev. I've been out of work for 3 years. I'd take the salary of a new hire and a low level tech job. I'm 50. Yet, we keep bringing in H1-bs and claim there is a "shortage." I was also fairly well known as well... so I'm not some id–t. Had write ups in CIO magazine and did some other things for the government that were a big deal.
If you're referring to Amazon/AWS, don't kid youself. No one over 50 is welcome.
Uh oh... Sounds like somebody don’t make it through the loop.
liked your first comment and agree that with age comes wisdom. But you lost me when you said "If you're not up to speed on cloud stuff... take the time (30-60 days) to learn, get some of the certs under your belt, and come on over. We'd love to have you."....
We need people that understand software development. We need people that understand enterprise networking. We need people that understand IoT. We need people that understand security at all 7 layers. We need experienced program managers. We need experienced vertical leaders. We need people that can be “fingers on the keys” pro-serv people. We need prototypers. We need experienced managers to build and lead these teams.
We want experience. But if you think you are going to get a job without the slightest understanding of serverless, or object storage, or containerization, or a rudimentary understanding of how the cloud console works, you are sadly mistaken.
Further, you need familiarize yourselves how to interview at A, G, and M. It’s not old-school Cisco. Knowing somebody may get you an interview, but it won’t necessarily get you a job. Show how you are best at what you do. Show you want the role. There are no coasting spots at these companies right now.
Enjoy.
If you're referring to Amazon/AWS, don't kid youself. No one over 50 is welcome.
My last 3 hires: all over 50. I’m 47.
I work for THE cloud company. We're looking for EXPERIENCE in many positions. That means with age comes wisdom. If you're not up to speed on cloud stuff... take the time (30-60 days) to learn, get some of the certs under your belt, and come on over. We'd love to have you.
I liked your first comment and agree that with age comes wisdom. But you lost me when you said "If you're not up to speed on cloud stuff... take the time (30-60 days) to learn, get some of the certs under your belt, and come on over. We'd love to have you.".
30-60 days of "learning" and getting new certifications with no job experience that goes with them is no better than hiring the young Internet savvy early-in-career hires. There's no experience in that.
I had a year's worth of experience with AWS EC2 (elastic compute cloud), but not much experience with all the other aspects of AWS cloud (Containers, Load Balancers, networking, S3 storage) and people would contact me about roles that needed me to be an expert in all of those areas. Sure, I can pick that stuff up by working as part of a team that understands it all, but I certainly had no expertise with AWS outside of EC2. Just reading about it without having practical experience means you can make mistakes that expose yours and your customer's data.
That comment sort of reminds me of reading job descriptions back a few years ago wanting 5+ years experience with Swift programming. Swift came out in 2014, so no one could have 5 or more years of experience with it until 2019. Hopefully it was just a case of a manager wanting someone with 5+ years of programming experience who also had experience with Swift and the recruiter wrote it up as 5+ years of Swift experience.
If you work for Cisco, start looking now. It no longer has the same cachet it used to. I got LR’d the very week that JC handed over the reins in 2015, and I got a temp job, then got experience in cloud products, then got an FTE job, then a better FTE job. I’m in my late 50s now. Some good companies still hire gray hairs, they are aging too.
Will possibly have the ER as an option, last time was pretty nice.
If you're referring to Amazon/AWS, don't kid youself. No one over 50 is welcome.
I work for THE cloud company. We're looking for EXPERIENCE in many positions. That means with age comes wisdom. If you're not up to speed on cloud stuff... take the time (30-60 days) to learn, get some of the certs under your belt, and come on over. We'd love to have you.
The situation for over-50 white female tech sector knowledge-workers is bad too - there's just not as many of us as there are males. The discrimination is real. We are invisible.
Layoff in 2016 - took 2 months to find a comparable new position.
Layoff in 2019 - has been over a year, and nothing ...
The word on the street is there is no ageism in Federal and State government jobs. That is what I was able to get. Less pay but better benefits and no offshoring.
The problem with entering Federal service over age 50 is that you have zero opportunity to work long enough to earn retirement unless you have prior Federal or military service. Isn't Federal retirement 20 yrs? Another problem is that people are considered for openings with preference for Federal service, so when you try to move into a position as a promotion, those with more years of Federal service will be given preference over you which could mean you're stuck where you are.
Another option is to look at smaller companies. They tend to appreciate experience and don't really care about age. They're usually looking for someone who can come in and fix problems that the younger crowd hasn't been able to find a solution on the Internet. But if you can't solve their problems, you're back on the curb as fast as you got in.
Over 50? White? Male
You won’t fInd work for yrs
Be honest- would you hire you or a college kid who checks off 3 Woke-buckets to please your leadership?
Cisco gets rid of entire groups / teams to avoid lawsuits. The good bad ugly approach
Typically they target teams heavily loaded with senior roles like a CTO group. That gets the most old White t–ds that way, but a few youngen to cover their move.
Just from experience I can tell you it has been harder as I have gotten older. I used to be able to bounce back from a layoff/lost contract in 2 weeks. My last one lasted from 2016-2018 and the guy who worked with me was even longer until he listened to his son.
He would get through the phone interview and get the in person interview and then nothing. His son told him to use some Grecian Formula and get rid of the grey. He was hired on his next personal interview after doing that.
If you are old, white and male. Hang it up you will be looking forever especially with woke companies like Cisco putting a target on your back that's 3 strikes against you. But remember they don't discriminate. Luckily I planned ahead and I'm cashing in my chips. I'm not playing this stupid game any longer.
The word on the street is there is no ageism in Federal and State government jobs. That is what I was able to get. Less pay but better benefits and no offshoring. For Federal jobs I saw, and the one I got, you have to be an American citizen.
I got the impression there is ageism in private industry but sometimes it was not age but a matter of they wanted less experienced people they could pay less.