There are also many of us who are having trouble finding work. I'm 45, and have a ton of experience. I lost my last job after a few more younger people joined the team (all fresh out of college). They all lived together near the office, went out each night after work -- I'm a single dad with kids so can't do that these days. As much as I liked working with them, there was this growing feeling that they felt that I didn't belong (even though I had been on the team since they were in high school). Code reviews got tougher, I heard complaints from my manager that they thought I took too long on tasks. The final straw was an argument that erupted when I took a day extra than they thought it should take on a particular task. One of them had pulled in OpenSSL a little while back to do some crypto. I needed to make some changes to their code and noticed that the random number generator wasn't being seeded. I wrote some code that I've written before to gather a little entropy from the system and feed it into OpenSSL's PRNG. Even after showing them articles about weak entropy being the cause of security breaches, they collectively felt that I wasn't working in line with the team. At that point I was the only original team member, and I had six team members, all of whom were well below 30 years in age.
I've been out of work for 12 months now. Previously I passed every interview I went to (Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook) and had the luxury of choosing between multiple offers. I haven't got through an onsite loop with any of these recently, nor with a bunch of other companies. The only thing I believe is different is my age.
BTW, the me/them thing is reflection after the fact, not how I felt at the time.
As a mid 20s guy I have never received an offer from any of the big 4/FAANG companies, though I have from companies that prioritizes work-life balance, and I’m sure that’s come through in interviews. Suppose it’s helped that I was willing to move to major tech hubs but still, could just be a matter of finding the right fit. Everywhere I have worked has had people 40+ years old in technical roles making good money.
Sorry that you're having trouble finding work. It scares me that you went from having your choice of top gigs to unemployed. I guess the safest way to guard against that is to get promoted out of an IC role, not that it helps you now. There are guys your age at my company who work slower and more carefully, and fewer hours than the young folks, but they are directors so basically unimpeachable. They're not judged by volume or velocity but I guess on wisdom and political skill.
Where I work there's roughly one director per 100 ICs, so it's certainly not something that everybody can achieve. I'd also expect that it would be harder to switch companies as a director than an IC.
i'm just a little younger than you. i'm not sure if there's some way to avoid age-discrimination issues, but i've been dreaming of a remote consulting company that only staffs 40+ (or even 35+) year old consultants and markets itself as the ones to call when you just need something that works and is designed extremely well. not the latest trendy fad. i'm sure that a company like this could find lots of super-qualified individuals and put out some excellent work..
I'd start targeting the legacy industries (insurance, boating, auto). Plenty of large software development houses that would (off the record) hire older people who are more serious.
The problem with that work is that it’s “legacy.” Lower paying, less interesting technology, more subject to mass layoffs. It’s basically just like being “streamed” in school.
You can earn a living there, but most non-software industries are bad at software, so your skills will deteriorate and you will have a hard time finding another interesting job.
It seems this fixation on the shiny "interesting" jobs is another problem. I'm not getting any younger and I don't doubt there is some ageism in the industry but if we're biasing the search to only include FAANG and a handful of other darlin companies then that's not really a fair analysis of the situation.
Anecdotal but I've seen >40 year old engineers thriving at non tech-hub software companies. There's plenty of interesting B2B companies that lurk in the suburbs or tier-2 or tier-3 cities.
I did not say that it's either FAANG or not interesting. But the companies doing interesting software work tend to be software companies. There are many counterexamples both ways.
No, it’s illegal to discriminate against someone over 40. You can blatantly put on your requirements that you are looking for someone over 40 and can’t be sued - not saying that’s a good idea.
If you couldn’t discriminate against someone younger, you couldn’t post that you wanted someone with a master degree and 10 years of experience.
That's accurate for federal law, but I think a log of states are more strict. At least New York is:
> The New York State Human Rights Law covers employers with four or more
employees. It protects persons 18 and over from age discrimination in employment
> An employer may not refuse to hire or promote an employee, and may not terminate an individual because of age, and must provide the same terms and
conditions of employment irrespective of age, including salary.
That goes back to my original example. If I can’t “discriminate” against an 18 year old, does that mean I can’t require someone to have a BS degree in Computer Science and 10+ years of experience?
No, I'm pretty sure the restriction here isn't based on a "disproportionate impact" judgement, but on intent. As long as you have a reason to claim you applied the college degree qualification, you're fine. The minute that a court subpoenas your emails and finds that you added the restriction with the explicit intent of preventing young people from getting the job, you are in for a world of legal hurt.
This is exactly how it works for most other hiring discrimination too. If a court finds an email titled "how we can use a college degree requirement to decrease the number of Hispanics at our company" you have a problem, but requiring a degree isn't itself illegal even though different races currently graduate from college at different rates in this country.
I've been out of work for 12 months now. Previously I passed every interview I went to (Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook) and had the luxury of choosing between multiple offers. I haven't got through an onsite loop with any of these recently, nor with a bunch of other companies. The only thing I believe is different is my age.
BTW, the me/them thing is reflection after the fact, not how I felt at the time.