Too Old To Engineer???
Added 2022-03-23 16:31:24 +0000 UTCSo you're an accomplished engineer who has been put out to pasture because you got too old to do tech. What do you do for the next 40 years of your life? Discuss...
Comments
Hi, Fran. That was a reply to @CircuitMike. Sorry for the confusion. I sent you some interesting early 70's Popular Science digital clock projects awhile ago. I hope you enjoy them!
Ah Clem
2022-03-30 22:02:21 +0000 UTCI am absolutely NOT in academia... never have been.
Fran Blanche
2022-03-30 21:10:08 +0000 UTCEditing error, needed to reprocess.
Fran Blanche
2022-03-30 21:09:36 +0000 UTCGot too old? That's me! I "retired" from a fortune 500 company at age 56. That company made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Luckily, I was ready, and I hope everyone reading this is thinking about those contingencies. A big part of my case was that, every year, employees expected get a raise in pay, kind of as a matter of course. Eventually that means a company could hire two or three (or more) kids right out of school for what a "legacy" worker made. Sure it will take some time to get the newbies up to speed, but the management can read the writing on the wall. The key is to have a plan and never take your job as a god given right. Never!
Michael S Wilhelm
2022-03-26 01:25:07 +0000 UTCI am Never Too Old to do anything..!!..
Michael
2022-03-25 18:07:59 +0000 UTCThey'll pry my power electronics from my cold dead hands! (Unless I make a mistake, in which case they will pry them from my hot still smoking hands. Ahum.)
Consolidated Catlifter
2022-03-24 16:51:55 +0000 UTCThink "WOMEN" - White Old Men Exiting Next ! I was laid off one month shy of my 55th when Siemens bought Shared Medical Systems in Malvern. This was even after earning an MS-IS from Penn State just 2 years earlier. Ageism is real. The politicians (at least those in 2001) did not care.
Michael A Klaene
2022-03-24 13:21:47 +0000 UTCIn my mid-fifties I sold my business but after a couple years I pondered getting another gig even though I didn't need the money. Picking up a lower pay would be fine and maybe I could help a small growing company. What I found is that my hands-on skills were really just not up to date.. Ageism is real and for years companies have sought to trim tenured high wage workers and replace them with younger people who expected less. That really happens. In my case however, I had spent too long supervising and not enough time recently being hands-on engineering to keep my skills up to date. YMMV
Bill Kerr
2022-03-24 08:08:44 +0000 UTCFran, 1. Companies prefer younger workers who are early in their career and get lower pay. 2. Companies do not like older workers are closer to the top of their pay scale. 3. Companies are pushing as hard as ever for increased productivity by under-staffing and ignoring the problem this causes. We fall down the backside of the productivity curve. We are so damn productive we cannot get anything done. 4. Increasing automation is taking away jobs. 5. The boomers are retiring at their highest rates. 6. World fertility rates are dropping.
James Baloun
2022-03-24 04:41:59 +0000 UTC20 years ago, the royal "we" trained our own cheaper/younger replacements. 20 years from now, the royal "we" will be training our own AI/heuristic replacements. 20 years after that, nobody will know how anything works anymore, and we'll reenact "When the Bough Breaks." "Too old to do tech" is just code for "too wise to bend over backwards to accommodate poor project planning," and "too expensive compared to people who don't know any better." *Shakes cane, yells at cloud, complains about skateboarding on the sidewalk, etc.*
Travis Snoozy
2022-03-24 03:18:17 +0000 UTCAt nearly 58 and having worked at the same company for 30 years designing equipment for a very niche market, I'm pretty sure I'd be unemployable anywhere else. But there's no sign of the IBM model being applied here yet, so hopefully I have a few more useful years.
David Peaker
2022-03-23 23:22:17 +0000 UTC@Circuitmike - glad you are having a positive experience in academia; mine was the reverse. 20 years and the pay increases became less for older IT staff, not so for the new kids. I knew of three that were hired at starting salaries higher than many people with much greater seniority, and the attitude was suck it up or leave. I took early retirement and went back into private consulting. As mentioned, running your own business is a hell of a lot more work and a hell of a lot less profitable, but at least you can pick and choose your gigs. I can get by on my retirement savings and SS, but I still have a working brain. I get a lot of satisfaction from pro bono work, but often times I just want to be left alone because I'm so pissed at the system. Bizarre dichotomy.
Ah Clem
2022-03-23 20:35:06 +0000 UTCWas that a re-upload on YouTube? The comments (including mine) have all disappeared.
Laura Halliday
2022-03-23 20:11:00 +0000 UTCI just turned 50 last week, so this is definitely relevant to me. But I work in IT in higher education and I'm glad I do. I've worked at a number of schools in my area and I've found that older people are welcome, the benefits are good, and the work environment itself is usually much more laid back. Myself and a lot of people I've worked with have done time in the for-profit corporate world and we've transitioned into roles like this because it's just so much more friendly to people in our age bracket and experience range. I've seen plenty of coworkers work into their 70s and retire comfortably, and I look forward to doing so myself in 15-20 years.
Circuitmike
2022-03-23 18:37:29 +0000 UTCWe need young people to have the ideas to spend millions to deliver pizza from space.
Timothy P Elliott
2022-03-23 18:01:31 +0000 UTC
