Posted on 06/09/2019 5:15:35 AM PDT by Galatians328
“But you come in, and you’re D.O.A.,” said Mr. Adair, who is 71 and has neatly clipped gray hair. “You can see the look in their eyes.”
My sister and her husband experienced the same kind of bias when she lost her job at a NASA gov contractor working as a legal secretary in NASA and he a 41 year master tech at Sears back in 2013 at the age of 59. Both 'phased out' due to reductions in overhead supposedly.
When looking for new work and being highly qualified goes well until the subject of age comes into play and then bam no deal once it becomes known. Nearly impossible to find other work as being too old is suddenly taboo.
I wouldn’t call it greed. What has fundamentally changed is the pace of change. I think back to when I was in college and working at a machine tool outfit, they had just a single CAD workstation and everything was done by phone & mail. Secretaries take hand written script and would “type it up”, making copies of the memo in the copy room and walking them around offices. Everything moved more slowly, including access to information.
Efficiencies of scale have accelerated. Email, the smartphone, etc. have made everyone accessible and more productive in a GLOBAL marketplace. Employers have more choices. In the tech industry every project is a global one. The pace of change also makes experience less valuable. The technology I was working with 15 years ago is practically obsolete, I can’t expect to be doing that and make the same money.
Today’s game is about constant evolution. If an employer can pay less for a product or service they will naturally do so - I don’t blame them. The days of learning a skill and having an entire career using it are gone. If you’re in your 50’s and somebody in their 30’s can do 95% of what you can but for 70% of the pay, it may be that you’re overpaid per the market.
I don’t like it but am trying to plan around it. Attaining new skills, having more responsibility, speaking at conferences, and being willing to travel all contribute in areas others are less willing or able to do. Anything less and I know I’d have to take a pay cut or risk being let go.
I get that young get hired, but old won’t go away. We still have baby boomers hitting 70 to 74 still working. It’s so dang selfish. The young will never get to advance due to these folks that refuse to leave. I feel sorry for the young today. There is no reason for people to work past social security age.
Probably because normal people retire then. I really think 66 should be max age to work. 67 when the new age for social security kicks in. Getting rid of the old people would save companies vast amount of money from their bloated salaries to health costs. I really wish congress would pass the bill. But of course they are the largest geriatric facility on the planet.
Welcome to my world over 60.
Once I turned 50, the AARP wanted to be pen pals with me. At 55 - I kid you not - the local funeral home sent me a 12 month desk calendar, out of the blue. I didn’t even know there was a funeral home in this zip code. In my mind, I’m still 25 from the neck up. My doctor says to act my age because I’m falling apart. I’m a little weary of the buzzards circling me.
Maybe they have had to start from scratch with their 401k.
Maybe they have some family crisis or health issue that isn't obvious to your superficial gaze and snap judgment.
And maybe, just maybe, you are going to be in their exact same shoes in a decade.
And teaching...
And burger flippers want $20.
LOL!! its true!
i was hospitalized briefly in November. 2 days after i came home, a big pamphlet from a cemetery arrived ! WTF? I ain’t dead yet.
I left a company that had gone full social justice under Obama, because you get preference for federal contracts if you met the “out and equal index” and had aggressive affirmative action policies.
Human Resources actually had a presentation explaining why it was a GOOD thing. That systematically discriminating against white guys caused a lot of midcareer white guys to leave and older whites to retire soon ... opening up positions for more “diverse” candidates to be hired or promoted. And the people they moved in where cheaper than the whites who left with seniority because they sat in seminars where the brown woman said all whites are racist, all men are sexist, you want a cost of living raise, take more such training, sign a diversity statement, and attend various company events to prove you’re an ally.
i think silicon valley is somewhat of an anomaly.
in the silicon valley my father kept his job for 43 years at one company, until 1992, at 70. i kept working in silicon valley by jumping companies until 2008, at 57.
the two things i think contribute to age discrimination economically are government regulations designed to help employees but which have unintended consequences for employers, and h1b and illegal immigration. the political correctness stuff exists too, of course, but now i wonder how far it would get if it were economically impractical.
part of the problem imho in silicon valley is that there is still little ability to manage software development effectively. the most used metric remains the # of lines of code written per day, with little regard for the actual quality of the code written.
many people move out of the silicon valley after not being able to continue working for one reason or another. they go to grass valley, redding, or back to iowa.
somehow millennials do not consider it important to plan financially for the future. instead of buying a home they rent in high-rent san francisco and spend any leftover income on clubbing and travel. most of them seem not very knowledgeable outside of their immediate work tasks. besides clubbing and travel, they seem to put a lot of energy into virtue signalling and facebook.
Best advice on this so far!
I’m a 50-ish guy and there’s definitely a need and desire for skilled techs but they value process over skills and certification over experience. That’s not ageism so much as a perceived cost factor so the overpaid MBA can show he cut salary costs by 20% (even though the project took twice as long so all salary costs were doubled... but the math never reaches that far for some reason)
Check out our president.
These posts are amusing. One person here is blaming women who are taking all the jobs away from older men while another claims that women aren’t being hired because of their high health costs. Now, you are writing that older people can’t work as well as younger people but another guy wrote that young people have higher absenteeism so are not being hired! Which shows that nobody knows anything, lol.
Hillary’s younger... who would you hire of the two?
“The good people I know in the 40-65 age bracket have all moved on to work for smaller companies or consulting firms - or have gone into business for themselves, which is what every American should be planning to do at some point - starting at age 18. The glass ceiling isn’t just for women, and your chances of lasting until age 65 at a “secure job” in the private sector in these times are minimal. “
Sound advice.
I tell everyone I can, plan to work for yourself by the time you’re 40, start that planning in college.
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