Older Americans and "The New IT Revolution."

[wnied]

Recently I have graduated courses that I began eight months ago, for Microsofts MCSE certification. In that class I had with me, three older people. Two women and one man. They were painfully new at the subject of computers, but they were all more than willing to learn. During the period of time I spent with them in class, I and a few of my classmates who knew a little more and had a little more experience, took it upon ourselves to help them understand the basics of computers and How they work. i.e.(where the CPU and RAM are, how a hard drive works etc,etc) Once they began to grasp it, we all worked together to help out those in the class that were lacking in one area or another and brought all up to speed, so that when it was time for each test, we were all sure that we were all ready.
We all graduated in September of this year. Most of us were very hard pressed to find jobs in this market, as MCSE certifications are becoming a "dime a dozen" type cert and most companies are looking for experience more than certification. Being as it was, Myself and another classmate were lucky enough to get a job in our field. We did this through another person who was in another class for I-Net+ certification. So far, we're the lucky ones. All others are working in job fields that were closer to what they were doing before they were laid off, rather than what they were trained for. The three older classmates I spoke of, werent even THAT lucky. Every door they knock on, every interview they goto, theyre asked "Why did you choose this line of work? This is mostly for the younger crowd." One older gentleman was told to comeback in a week or two, as they were going to interview for janitors then!
I have contacts in the job field, many whom I consider friends. They almost always ask me if I know anyone from my old MCSE class thats looking for a job. When I tell them about the older guy, without telling them his age, they want to meet him. But when the question of age comes up and I answer 45, suddenly its well I think maybe the interviews are scheduled for the week after I mentioned earlier...blah blah blah, etc etc etc.) Its amazing to see the predjudice in action. Age discrimination runs rampant in this field, and it saddens me to see it this way. I admit the computer field isnt the only field this is present, but this field is supposed to be an omni-acceptable field. But then again I can see where this is a biproduct of a narcisistic society, hell bent on looking and feeling 21 forever! Why is it people feel the need to forget or dismiss the past and the people that lived it then? Other cultures treat the older generation of their society, as wiser individuals to be utilized for their knowledge. Am I the only one to see the treament we give them, as wrong? And I wonder, how will I be treated when I get to be that age....

Ok, I'm off the soapbox...
wnied

 

[Yzzim]

<< And I wonder, how will I be treated when I get to be that age.... >>



You'll have plenty years of experience by then where age won't matter.

It is sad that those people couldn't find jobs but many companies don't want to give someone full benefits when they're gonna retire in 15-20 years. Plus younger people learn faster and have more spunk.

 

[atomicbomberman]

it's this whole IT frenzy thing...

if you have an MCSE when you're 18 like my friend, you make a lot of money for an 18 yrs old, and people aroudn u think you're an IT wizard.
if you're 45 and JUST got your MCSE, they think what the heck is wrong w/ u?

it's that simple.. state of mind.. people will never learn

 

[kranky]

You are right that age discrimination is rampant in the IT industry. There's no logical reason for that, since at the same time the industry is crying about the hundreds of thousands of jobs going unfilled because they &quot;can't find people&quot;, and lobbying Congress to increase the number of H-1B visas to permit foreigners to come to the US and fill those jobs. The reason they do discriminate is that they want to hire young people who will work long hours and think it's fun - NOT, like yzzim said, because of benefits and ESPECIALLY NOT because they &quot;learn faster&quot;. That's just not the case.

Ever notice how many companies with a lot of young programmers have pool tables, free food and drinks, provide someone to pick up dry cleaning, etc., etc.? It's not because they want to have happy employees, it's because they want to eliminate reasons for people to go home, and stay at work longer.

Older employees probably have families, and activities outside of work. So if you can hire a young, single person, they may have fewer outside &quot;distractions&quot;.

Salary doesn't seem to be an issue, since they are willing to pay decently.

And regarding what will happen when you get to be that age? Unless things change, what may happen is that a new technology will come along (like it always does), and they will hire young people who have spent hundreds of hours learning how to do it on their own (like the number of high school students who can do web page development) while laying off the experienced people since they will require training. These companies completely miss the point by not recognizing that their long-time employees are going to be more inclined to stay with the company and not leave when the company across the street offers a 5% increase to move there. So they moan about high turnover at the same time they ignore a huge available bloc of workers.

BTW, just in case anyone is wondering, I've not been personally affected by these actions, but I know people who have.

 

[wnied]

Yzzim

Younger people learn faster and have more spunk?...You see this is the attitude I am talking about! I dont know about you...but most of the younger people I know are nothing but whiney complainers who sponge off their parents and bitch about the state of affairs, whilest they lay around on their parents couches! I know more older people that do more work by ACCIDENT then these fools do in a day!

Open thy eyes and try to look objectively at the world around you, meet and greet some of the people in it with you...Youll find the older the person...the more communication skills youll encounter. Wanna know why? Because back in their days, everyone wasnt sitting happily behind a computer, anonymous and secure, to espew their opinions of what they think is real, and what actually is. They had
to go into the world young and learn from the experience...not sit behind a CRT screen and observe through the cameras lense from afar.

sheesh
wnied

P.S. Thank You So Much Kranky.

 

[Moonbeam]

We are probably headed in a direction where the acceleration in the rate of change will reach a pitch that a career will last from 6 to 8 years of age with anybody over 10 just a useless drag on the economy.

 

[Tiger]

Nice posts wnied and kranky.
I'm one of the &quot;over the hill gang&quot;.
I'm also looking for a change of career.

As for some 22 year old couch potato keeping up with me, not a chance.
I do more in one day than most &quot;IT professionals&quot; do in a week.
It doesn't take a bribe to get me to go to work until the job's done.
I've also been playing with these things since before the kids learned to spell.

Yzzim, how old are you? Have you ever had a job?

 

[burnedout]

Thank you, thank you Tiger.

Being age 40 and seeking work in the IT field also opened my eyes a little bit regarding age discrimination.

To be quite honest, I only encountered maybe one or two instances where I heard &quot;you are a bit old for this position, aren't you?&quot; I shot back with &quot;Would you like to see what I can do right now?&quot;

Yeah, my degree says Associate of Applied Science in Information Systems and dated 1988. Proud of it. Was flashing EEPROMs and cracking 8 bit programs on 5 1/4 in disks back before then too.

Many of the hiring managers I've met however, embrace the &quot;touch of gray&quot;. Especially when you speak of experiences with older products such as SPARC 1 and 2, C128s in CP/M mode, token ring adapters and the like. Interpersonal skills go very far also.

Indeed, MCSE certs are becoming a dime a dozen now. Some (not all) MCSEs I've met do not have dedicated, hands-on hardware experience. Mention cross platform integration with Unix and it scares the crap out of them.

 

[Whisper]

I actually will have to back-up the fact that in general, younger people do tend to learn &quot;faster&quot; than their older counterparts. This is due to the fact that the younger crowd are more recently out of school and so their brains are accustomed to absorbing new information. The older crowd is somewhat set in their ways, less willing to view things from different perspectives, and are not quite as used to changing their patterns of thought in radical ways. Not saying it to be snotty or discriminatory; look for evidence of success in graduate school classes comparing older to younger students and you'll most likely seem the trend I mention above. The older crowd is definitely more responsible and level-headed than the younger, but they are also less willing to accept someone else's views on a subject as right or correct when compared to and in conflict with their own. Of course these are only generalizations, and so can't be applied to any one person in particular. Just a statement of trend.

It is sad that age discrimination runs so rampant in the IT field, though. However, I think it's more of a US thing than an IT thing. Our culture simply doesn't place great importance on age, and only a few fields (medicine, earth sciences, education, etc.) value it over youth. there aren't as many valid economical or scientific reasons why as there are simple cultural biases.

 

[Yzzim]

I'm just going by what I've heard here at college. I'm 19 and yes, I have had a job before.