I've been hearing some real horror stories.
21 replies (most recent on top)
I am a "baby boomer", of the younger boomer age. My first training in IT programming was PL/I at IBM Corporation for a 2 week training class in NYC. Also Fortran, SAS, COBOL and mainframe JCL at my college in the late 1970's. Funny that although I have not applied to any jobs during the 7 years that I have been an internal IT employee at Wells Fargo I have received quite a number of emails asking me to apply for IBM Mainframe COBOL, JCL, ENDEAVOR, CICS jobs that I have had a great deal of experience with during my younger days. I think only mostly the older IT employees know how to work on the IBM Mainframe, although it is still in use to this day and age. I do still remember how to code in COBOL, JCL, ENDEAVOR and CICS, but now greatly prefer the newer IT programming languages to work with. There are still IT jobs available for the older IT employees, some of which the younger IT employees have zero experience with.
Market is just fine for over 50 year old candidates now, especially in tech. Employers know that we who span 30-40 years in tech can rapidly come up with solutions that would take years of trial and error mistakes for millennials. They simply just don’t want to pay for it until they have to. I sleep soundly, secure in the knowledge that the generations behind me have no hope of matching my breadth and depth of knowledge. I’ve hand coded the lowest levels of the tools which they struggle to master. I’m quite sure that I am far from alone in this. Life is good.
I think these FAANG companies are looking for people who are able and willing to learn quick. So their code base, while may be php, it is highly customized. Or if you know java, how can you learn new variations.
Less about you knowing one platform or another, they want to see you worked in different areas successfully of software development and learned fast.
50 to 60 is quite desirable to displace. 50 to 60 is also quite desirable to hire as contractors for much higher pay.
Unintuitive children?
You will learn why if you work your tail off for the next 30 years. More likely I predict massive disability claims.
I found a lot of places I interview at found me too skinny and did not appear like a Senior Software Engineer, plus I wear glasses. Many thought I was not the age i am but a kid. So I had to start drinking protein shakes and also I found drinking beer adding to my beer belly helped me get more mass too. After a few months I resumed interviews again and I think people found me more approachable and no longer saw me as junior resource.
This is something I found helped me.
I applied in 10 companies, and got 6 offers, all had better benefits and salary than here; you just need to keep your skills sharp and you can also play the numbers. Also many of them were proud of their culture and all are remote.
There are job opportunities for the "over 50" crowd, but you may have to get creative in your job search. Don't follow the crowd by applying to the same companies where there are hundreds of applications for each job posting. I went to a not-for-profit and increased my pay by 25%, and got better benefits.
I am 65, a long time technical programmer type person, who graduated from college in 1978. Spent my entire career working in IT and continually taking new programming courses. I still work at Wells Fargo in the Technology department and I like my job there. I guess I left a lot of resumes on the job sites when I was a contract employee for a while. Daily, or weekly, I get emails from prior contracting companies that I worked for, or other contract companies who say they found my resume online, to apply for new IT contract jobs. Some like "beg" for me to apply for their IT contract job. But I am still an internal Wells Fargo technical employee and have to tell them that I am not currently in the job market. When I was a contract employee I found when you need a new IT job just post your current resume on monster.com and indeed.com and the calls for jobs start coming in, usually the very next day. They do not seem to care how old I am at all. I leave my college graduate year on my resume and do not try to hide my many years of IT experience when posting for a new job, because those are the exact skill that they want for the new job.
The job market has always been bad for people over 50. Probably best to save as much as possible in case you are forced to retire early.
One thing I’ve come to love about working for a hospital is with 60-70 age physicians and nurses still performing they don’t have that same discriminatory attitude towards older workers.
Definitely get that in the mega corps. And yes while in the corporate world id see people with credentials good enough to be a Vice President at a small company fill a team member role.
I can resonate with some of the comments here, our generation was led to believe we could change jobs maybe 3 times max in our lifetime and grow in each organization.
If we knew what the job market was going to be like in 2020 and beyond we would have done things very differently. First it was IT jobs now you can offshore your entire Finance department.
Probably best to steer clear of the large public companies if you can. It’s not a job seekers market obviously. Have to take what you can get.
There are plenty of openings at big pharma.......they need vaccine testers.
Isn't requiring an age illegal?68
The post below is right if you keep your skills current you will be ok.
No not all jobs are going to India, there are industries where the workers have to be US based and US citizens, no green cards or illiegal aliens allowed, nor no one can work outside of the US borders.
I was 59 when I lost my position and it took over 9 months to find a job and that was with WF. A little over a year later and I was displaced. Now at 61, it really doesn't look good. Maybe Walmart is hiring greeters eh?
As with anything, if you have relevant, marketable skills, the job market is good regardless of your age.
If you spent your time at Wells Fargo taking credit for the work of others (I'm looking at all you middle managers who volun-told your team members to do your work), then you will most likely not find meaningful employment post-Wells Fargo.
Most of the IT jobs are going to people from India no matter your age. They are cheaper.
You will be surprised how much the younger generations have raised the bar. A lot of these young working professionals already have masters degrees, multiple bachelors, and are very smart. So yes, for us older guys, we just can't compete with them. It is about 100 times harder to get a well paying job when you have a lot of young people in the market.
It is a alot harder. A lot of the jobs arr being taken by Gen Z and Millennials.
I don't think i had to put a year in , anyways, i graduated in 2012. I was able to get a better position - higher pay and a promotion on top of it; I feel like here no way to move up or down or anywhere for that matter, not lateral either.
The outside path is more likely you can get pay raise along with promotion and moves much faster. Inside you are stuck where your at.
I completed an application for a job online and it wouldn't let you skip question of what year you graduated college.
I was immediately rejected when they saw it was the early 90's.
I'm risk management consultant.