Ask HN: Laid-off readers over 50, have you left the tech workforce? - mud_dauber
======
zenpaul
Ha, ha, ha, I just got laid off Monday along with most of the rest of the team
with no notice. The market seems to be fairly hot here in Fairfield county CT
so I'm jumping right back in and expect to pick up another job/contract in the
next month. It's just a matter of rate and commute...

It is tempting to just do my writing or something else but I love the work, it
pays well and it's fairly expensive to live here.

Speaking of writing, I wrote this the day after the layoffs and it pretty much
sums up my feelings...

A tree fallen; the turn of a leaf

Why is the HR team here with crisp manilla folders? "There's an announcement
at 10," please assemble the soldiers.

Somber words were spoken and no questions were asked. Then with cleaning out
our desks most of us were tasked.

The screen turns red, system down in sector 4! I tense for a moment and then
gleefully ignore.

We pack the last picture and hold back a tear, And say "it's still early, but
let's all get a beer."

We relive the drag-out meetings where we battled for the truth, And the late
afternoon YouTubes bordering on the uncouth.

For some it's a blow; for others relief. It's a tree fallen; the turn of a
leaf.

So I'll join another startup, yes that will be fun. Or even a bank, if they
really want to get shit done.

The joy of building and creating with keyboard or pen, Is what I live for over
and over again.

If you're team's on a mission with problems quite hard, Tell me about it.
Please call me. The number's on the card.

~~~
John4234
Expected the top post to be filled with words like ageism, 3rd world, quality
of software, cheap labor and rage but all i saw is Optimism, Reality and
Stoicism expressed very poetically.

------
lproven
I lost my last permanent job in London at the end of 2008, at the beginning of
the financial crisis in the UK.

I applied for about _two thousand roles_ in 2009 alone, and from 2008-2013,
about 3,500 roles in total... In about 6-8 countries in multiple disciplines.

I averaged 30+ applications _per day_ at first... and 1 interview per year.

From 2009 to 2013 I got 2 months of paying work in total.

Reason? I think it's because I was 41 when I started.

I used to mainly work in support, from 1st/2nd/3rd line to sysadmin, systems
design and spec, network architect, everything. I do Windows, Linux, Mac OS,
networking, comms, some programming knowledge, training, all sorts. But I'm
too old to get work as a techie.

I eventually moved to the Czech Republic. I'm in my 3rd position in 4 years,
having nearly doubled my salary from its lowest point since I moved here.
Mainly because I'm a native English speaker and we're in big demand here.

I can _turn down_ work I don't want over here. But I did have to move to a new
country, where I don't speak the language, and accept an initial pay cut to
about one quarter of what I hoped for in London.

~~~
kazinator
Sorry, those 3500 recipients could not have known that you're 41 and tossed
the application on that basis. There is just some problem other than the one
you imagine.

> _I used to mainly work in support, from 1st /2nd/3rd line to sysadmin,
> systems design and spec, network architect, everything. I do Windows, Linux,
> Mac OS, networking, comms, some programming knowledge, training, all sorts.
> But I'm too old to get work as a techie._

Across all the organizations where I have ever worked, I remember plenty of
"old" guys doing this kind of IT stuff.

With that background, it's probably going to be hard to apply for anything
different. Hundreds of applications but very low interview rate sounds like
some sort of insurmountable mismatch between background and job. Or something
silly in your application that is raising some sort of "red flag" for no good
reason. If your age or date of birth aren't in the application, then that
can't be it.

~~~
otakucode
If your 25 years of experience are on the application, it doesn't take a math
major to spot that you're not 23.

~~~
Naritai
Yeah, all hiring managers know roughly how old you are by the time they've
scanned your resume.

------
mikevp
Laid off at 56. When I got home from being notified, there was an email from
the HR person at a competitor in my inbox. I started work there within two
weeks.

Plus, my prior company had a rather spectacular special severance package for
those of a certain age who would sign an agreement not to sue for age
discrimination. (This was accompanied by a thick stack of statistics of who
had been laid off, showing that they were well prepared to defend themselves
from any such lawsuit, but I'd rather take the money than spend the next
umpteen years in court, and have the lawyers take any hypothetical judgment in
the end anyway.)

~~~
nardonne
It's almost impossible to sue for age discrimination and win. All they have to
do is lay off 1 person in their 20s at the time they laid off their older
workers and they claim innocence and it works.

~~~
ProAm
Even if you sue and win you'll likely never work again due to it.

~~~
benburleson
Serious question: If this is the expectation, is it not possible to sue for
the actual damages, which is a lifetime of income?

~~~
marme
no because the actual damage is just your lost income at that job. The reason
you will never work again is no one wants to hire someone who sues their
employer which is not caused by them firing you. It is the same with renting,
if you sue your landlord no other landlord will touch you, many places
maintain blacklists of tenants who have sued their landlords

------
fecak
I'd hate to think that readers over 50 feel the need to consider leaving the
tech workforce, and I know perhaps hundreds of successful engineers over 50.

Those that have a hard time getting back in are often a victim of
discrimination not truly based on age, but on stagnation. A 50 year old who
has worked on five interesting diverse projects in the last 10 years will find
work. A 50 year old who spent the last 20 years working for the same company
using old tech may struggle, and by the time you realize you need to retool it
can be too late.

~~~
FLUX-YOU
>A 50 year old who spent the last 20 years working for the same company using
old tech may struggle, and by the time you realize you need to retool it can
be too late.

Basically, stay up-to-speed with Javascript if you do web development. It's
the only landscape that changes significantly enough to warrant the effort,
mainly because it's a huge melting pot of coding styles and frameworks and
managers of these projects seem to have less commitment to their technical
decisions long-term.

If you do C#/Java/Go/Rust/C++/C, you're probably not going to be left behind.

~~~
ropeadopepope
I would be very curious to see how many 50 year old engineers are doing web
development. I'm only 34 and my experience the past 5 years is that experience
is not respected and being out of your 20s makes you a poor culture fit for
most web companies.

> If you do C#/Java/Go/Rust/C++/C, you're probably not going to be left
> behind.

I wouldn't be so sure. The landscapes don't change as quickly as web dev does,
but they do change. I did a bit of Java/Hibernate work 8+ years ago. I look at
modern Java code bases now and it's so annotation heavy I couldn't make heads
or tails of it.

~~~
antonkm
I'm mid-thirties and was recently asked to teach a 50 yo best practices for
development in Node. And not like Node specific patterns, but more like how to
handle http requests. I'm pretty sure that guy is way above my skill set -
he's smart and he has 15 years of work experience on me. I turned the offer
down since I would have looked like a fool, like a kid teaching an adult how
to drive.

The age bias is real.

~~~
Pyxl101
It sounds like you missed an opportunity there. Just because someone has XX
years of work experience doesn't mean that they know a particular technology
stack. Perhaps this could have been a great opportunity for you to teach that
person your skillset, while learning things from them in return. The best
mentorships are bidirectional.

While humans are growing up, we're accustomed to view our "elders" as our
superiors in all respects. Childhood teachers encourage this view. However, at
the point when you enter the workforce, in my opinion you should set these
ideas aside and treat everyone as a peer; and keep your mind open to the idea
that both people may have something to learn from the other.

~~~
antonkm
No, I think I was a bit unclear. The guy obviously knew what he was doing, and
had setup projects in Node. For me to come in and tell him how require() works
would be insulting.

No missed opportunity, I pivoted the deal after turning down the first.

~~~
dasil003
I don't think you were unclear, I think maybe GP only read the first two
sentences.

------
tosser00005
I was let go at age 53 about 9 months ago as a software engineer in the Boston
area. I enjoy my job and had not thought of changing fields. I'm not in a
position to retire either. I got 3 months severance and had a new job at
comparable pay by the end of that time period.

------
modbait
After many rejections during my job hunt last year, I did seriously consider
it, yes. Despite having a pretty solid skill set and experience, no bites,
which is rather demoralizing.

You can argue whether candidates in their 50s are less viable, but it was
clear that age was a factor. Not just being typecast as stodgy, but also that
many people simply don't want to work with, or compete against, someone who's
older.

I see comments about people getting old and not wanting to learn new things,
but for me it's almost the opposite. One of the things I like most about tech
is learning new things, and once you've been in for several decades, there are
fewer and fewer truly new things left to learn, and positions where you'd get
to learn them are fewer and fewer.

It was almost a fluke, but I did finally find a job (still in tech) that works
for me. But if you knew the details, it wouldn't cheer you.

I may yet leave soon, and just live out my days as a churchmouse working on
Open Source projects. We'll see.

~~~
scardine
I'm only 47 but it was the same experience for me. Ended up taking a data
engineer job at a local government agency - depite the lovely site (inside
University of São Paulo campus) it pays 1/3 the market average.

~~~
modbait
Pretty similar to my situation. Esp the "1/3" part. :-)

------
legohead
To any older guys out there who think they might be looking in the near future
-- my advice is to learn the "current stack", or really, just to keep up to
date and messing with the new technologies that come out.

My story: A couple years ago I started job searching, at 38. I had been at my
current job for 5 years. I had a _hell_ of a time getting anyone to bite. I
had a dozen phone interviews that I felt went well, but no callbacks. This
stroke me as odd, as when I had been searching last time, I had to fight off
people and had multiple offers.

I noticed a trend in the jobs I was applying for. Kubernetes, Node, C#, etc.
Things I didn't have on my resume, although I knew I could learn with ease.
But your prospective hirer doesn't want to hear how good you are at learning
their stack. There are enough candidates to choose from that _already know_
what they need, and I was told that more than once.

The jobs I was applying for were the same description, same mechanics and job
duties I had been doing for 15 years already, but since I didn't work with the
latest stack -- too bad.

I eventually got lucky and found a job that was transitioning from what I
already knew to one of these newer stacks.

~~~
scardine
Python is hot, right? I'm doing Python for the last 10 years and even landed
one patch in smtplib. Data science is booming and I have 25 years into ETL.

I'm active in the local Python meetups - my last talk was about the new data
classes in Python 3.7 (currently beta so I can't possibly be more up to date).
Some white hair over my face would hint at my real age if I let them grow for
a few days but otherwise I don't look 47. I commute by bicycle (13 milles
every day). I spend weekends on hackathons just for the fun. I'm lean and fast
both physically and mentally.

But when you are near 50, good luck finding a good position. Age prejudice is
a real problem in our industry.

------
albumdropped
Recently laid off at age 48. Less than a month later, had multiple offers with
better compensation. Still in tech sector. Two years ago we switched from PHP
to Go, which definitely helped.

~~~
klint
Is your new job writing Go, or do you just think learning it just make you a
more attractive candidate?

~~~
albumdropped
New role is almost entirely Go. Some legacy Python.

~~~
UnpossibleJim
If you can, what type of code are you writing in Go commercially? Don't worry,
you don't have to be specific, I'm just curious =) The libraries have really
started to take off for it, and I'm curious if companies are catching up to
that, yet.

~~~
albumdropped
There are several projects, but the largest is basically a very large
specialized content platform. Many sites that have to be fast with no downtime
- so Go, K8s, CockroachDB. We also have some machine learning (that's why we
kept the Python). Also a few fun, small Raspberry Pi / GoBot things around the
office.

------
sheepmullet
I think the problem is the older generation of tech workers are not
mercenaries.

I know a lot of older tech workers supporting important business systems while
their skills slowly become out of date.

They are frequently adding $1 million+/year in value while being paid
~$100-$120k/year.

The businesses would pay $250-$350k/year if they had to.

If the older workers were demanding the premium and saving the $100-$150k/year
extra after taxes then being out of the job market for a year or two to
reskill wouldn't be a problem.

Luckily most of the younger generation are very mercenary and are in tech for
the money. So it's a problem that hopefully will fix itself.

~~~
quickthrower2
> The businesses would pay $250-$350k/year if they had to.

Extraordinary claim

~~~
sheepmullet
What makes you think so?

Do you think they would sooner cut off their nose to spite their face?

~~~
jones1618
I've worked in tech for 30 years and never experienced a single company that
does math the way you describe: "I.T. generates or saves us $X million per
year therefore we'll share that with frontline developers." Ha, puhleez.

In my experience, you'd consider yourself lucky to work for a company that
sees I.T. as a strategic/operational advantage (and not merely a "cost
center") and therefore pays its staff 10% better than market average plus
bonuses.

Unfortunately, I've worked for truly "I.T. forward" companies like that and
still seen a merger or buyout completely flip the culture. Overnight I.T.
salaries and budgets were seen as indulgences and people were laid off or quit
in droves.

The one thing I've learned about this industry is that no matter how
innovative or adept an engineering department is, an exuberantly stupid
executive team can completely squander and destroy that asset surprisingly
quickly.

~~~
sheepmullet
> therefore we'll share that with frontline developers." Ha, puhleez.

Like I said "if they had to".

You still have to make a compelling case.

Surely you have seen teams with 3 solution architects when they don't even
really require 1?

Or teams with contractors who have been in the same team on contract 5+ years?

The problem is most senior devs don't even collect the information they need
to make a compelling case.

Like if I asked you how much more productive are you than a new (3-6months)
senior dev on your project? Would you be able to show me?

I'm ~14x more productive on my current project than a newly hired senior dev
and can give you the jira queries to prove it.

------
mahoneycutt
Not quiet 50 - age 49 - 28 years at same organization

That was in 2011 - I retired and started doing in-home tech support for little
old (rich) ladies and gentlemen. I haven't looked back :-)

~~~
rhacker
Oh man, I am curious how that is. I used to do in-home tech work when I was
much much younger like 20ish. I didn't realize it then, but thinking back on
those experiences I often had housewives that were creating their own
websites, um... flirting with me... I'm kinda glad I didn't notice... then..
So now I'm curious, do you see that?

------
stagger87
We just interviewed a series of laid off 50+ principle software engineers (all
from the same company). After the interview, all reported back they had
multiple offers and chose to work elsewhere. Keep in mind these were engineers
with very specific domain knowledge (which we were after).

~~~
duck
It seems like specific domain knowledge is pretty key at a certain age unless
you're really good at selling yourself as a consultant. With 30+ years of of
experience I think you almost get to accumulate that automatically, but the
worry is that the domain vanishes.

------
scardine
I'm not over 50 yet (47) but I'm done applying for programming jobs and I
don't want to get back into management unless it is my own company.

Currently I'm working full time as a data engineer for a local government
agency waiting for some side business to take off.

Just started a productized service business offering "an elite squad
delivering a complete web application over a single one-week sprint" (the idea
is to take some business process currently managed through spreadsheets+email
and turn it into a web application - complete with reports, filters, search,
permission control and etc in one week).

------
DrScump
I left the tech "workforce" (although I use a lot of technology on my own in
my own business) a couple of downturns ago, after I got fed up with having
several positions in a row offshored and eliminated.

I started my own unrelated business (sort of fell into it, applying my
observations about certain marketplaces) with the immediate goal of having
more hands-on control of my fate -- I could live with the impacts of my own
stupid mistakes, but I wanted to insulate myself from others' stupid mistakes.

So, I stayed above water even through the 2008+ downturn, even while a lot of
my colleagues who had stayed in the industry were out of the conventional
full-time workforce as well.

But now, my industry segment is going away (ironically, due to the stupid
mistakes of the industry superpower), so I've folded up the worst-performing
60% of my business. Now, I have to decide whether to just sell my SV house and
"retire" or somehow find an appropriate role for my "out of date" (in terms of
modern stacks) technical skillset.

I think at this point, my most marketable skill is writing and breaking stuff,
and writing about breaking stuff, but the trick is finding the right company
with those needs.

------
efoto
I am over 55, software engineer from SF Bay Area. I was laid off in March and
just accepted one of the offers. So, no, not leaving the tech at all.

------
kwillets
One theory I have is that the tech community was a lot more nerdy in the past,
and we've gradually been diluted out as the tech population has grown. The
whole "culture fit" thing just seems creepy to me; I used to work with all
kinds of crazy people.

------
larryfreeman
I am 50 and living in Silicon Valley.

I have been laid-off 3 times (most recently in January, 2017). Each time, I
have had little troubling finding a job.

I should mention that I am active on Kaggle and that I code during my day job
(C#) and code in my free time (mostly Python).

I have not yet found any problem in finding new roles.

------
ttronicm
I'm 47 and might have to. No one seems interested in hiring me.

~~~
partycoder
I am concerned that this may happen to me in a couple of decades. Can you
elaborate more?

~~~
nikkwong
I wouldn't make any assumptions on the state of the workforce a few decades
out. Things may change dramatically.

~~~
noir_lord
One thing that will definitely change is the demographics of the developer
community, people who are 50 today who worked their career as programmers
would have started in 1986 - 1990, There wasn't anywhere like as many
programmers then as now.

So the number of older programmers moving down the pipe will grow hugely with
the explosion in the number of programmers in the 90's.

That and to an extent the field is continuing to mature, We've only had the
internet in most peoples homes for what, 18 years (not sure what the 50% line
date was).

For me I find it's not hard to stay current since I devote my 'TV time' to
programming and I like learning, I've also been careful not to find myself
stuck in a niche by moving from one part of industry to another. My plan is to
just stay current with the technology, I was raised on basic, pascal in the
80's, moved to C in the 90's, then Delphi, C# and the web.

It helps that the only constants in my life since I was a kid have been that I
love reading and I love programming.

I leave work, go home, have a shower, something to eat and then program (or
play chess) as a hobby.

------
TomMasz
I took a voluntary layoff in December and yes I have left the tech workforce.
I was in product infosec and the stress was taking a toll on my health even
though I didn't realize it at the time. I'm thinking about moving into
academia. It's something I've always wanted to do but would never have done
while I was still working. I'm set financially so the lower pay isn't a
drawback.

------
mrits
I run engineering at a medium size startup. I don't like hiring C++
programmers with less than 20 years experience. Ironically the Ukrainian
outsource team I once used to find talent quickly now supplies me with "senior
devs" that are 5 years out of school. I'm in my mid-thirties myself.

------
ulkram
Warning: this kind of poll is prone to selection bias.

~~~
walterclifford
Agreed. I imagine many people who left tech (regardless of age) are not
frequenting HN

------
adamstober
Sorry to hear. While I'm not over 50, I went through something similar at one
point and took the opportunity to spend some time on a passion project before
going back into the workforce.

Despite the frustrating situation, you'll end up better off. And if you're
looking to get back to the tech workforce, here are some tips that I hope
might help: [https://medium.com/layoff-aid-blog/how-to-hack-the-tech-
job-...](https://medium.com/layoff-aid-blog/how-to-hack-the-tech-job-search-
when-youre-unemployed-cfa2b3f123f2)

------
notadoc
Great topic for discussion.

I have seen this happen during and after both the dot com bust and the great
recession. Timing of the layoff will certainly impact things, as does the
perception of skill stagnation, but there is a component that is related to
age as well. I personally know a seasoned VP who only started getting
callbacks after they dropped 10+ years of (relevant) experience from their
resume. I also know someone who was told by a recruiter to dye their hair.
Most of these stories are from 2001/2002 and 2009-2012 but unfortunately I
doubt that it's limited to recessionary environments.

------
noobermin
Honest question here, why is there ageism in hiring in IT? What does it buy
any employer to shoot for younger, less experienced workers?

I'm probably naive but I don't get the logic.

~~~
cbayram
My thoughts:

You are there to burn brain cycles for a fixed pay, a high pay at that.
Experienced older crowd demands higher pay. Most gigs could care less about
their experience; 95% of the gigs consists of mundane task completion and pump
out code demanded by often micromanagement processes.

Older crowd is more likely to question, call out bs, and demand work life
balance.

Young are more impressionable, willing to burn the candle night after night.
24-hour long hackathons on soda and pizza anyone? This is unhealthy in so many
ways lol. This says more about the profession rather than ageism. Name another
profession where people willingly accept working under such unhealthy
circumstances, especially off the clock. Lunch at your desk is the norm.

Fuck it! Frankly, the profession is ideal for a (wo)man-child, crippling any
mature, healthy social development. End of the day, it's you and the computer
1v1. No one outside IT/tech gives two fucks about your abstraction flame wars,
coding practices yadi yada unless bottom line is suffering. They'll throw
bodies at the problem. Meanwhile Stfu and code.

------
rustyworm
If I do, I'll be waiting to be recalled when the dreaded "Year 2038 Problem"
happens. ;)

~~~
modbait
oblig: "It says here you know COBOL..."

------
313v8r5h035
not yet (laid off at 55, new gig after ~2.5 mos.; now 56)

------
nardonne
They really should pass legislation is protect older workers. If they protect
transgender people from discrimination, they can protect their older workers
who have done everything they were told to do and are being punished.

~~~
zbobet2012
Are you trolling?
[https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/age.cfm](https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/age.cfm)

~~~
bproven
I dont think he is trolling, age discrimination is just something that is hard
to prove.

Case in point - as soon as I removed my graduation dates from my resume I
started getting more initial calls. Previously I would hear nothing - i assume
it was b/c I was filtered out by the HR app parsing bots.

Ageism is real in this field..its youth culture. You just gotta know this and
work around it.

------
adamc
I'm not laid off, but expect to find another job when I retire from my current
one (probably in another year)... Am I naive?

------
lynchmike77
Don't let age define you!

------
duck
This needs an "Ask HN:"

~~~
sctb
We've updated the headline. Thanks!

------
PhasmaFelis
I'm not sure what "reader" means here.

~~~
chestervonwinch
_Laid-off readers (of Hacker News) ..._

I assume.

------
kev009
Are there any plausible moves to earn mid 100s in some non-tech industry
without going through re-schooling?

~~~
Latteland
Everyone would be doing it if it was easy. Sales is probably the best option
but you have to be able to do sales.

