Ask HN: Is there a list of grey-hair-friendly IT companies? E.g. something like that https://github.com/remoteintech/remote-jobs but for being actively anti-ageist or at least not bothered by one's age? |
Ask HN: Is there a list of grey-hair-friendly IT companies? E.g. something like that https://github.com/remoteintech/remote-jobs but for being actively anti-ageist or at least not bothered by one's age? |
Without something similar to a union or a change in laws to better incentivize pay raises, I don't see a great way out of this :/
I'd say my company is "grey-hair-friendly", but they're still hiring for way more junior roles than senior roles. I'm not sure if there are companies that explicitly don't hire junior engineers, but then you'd at least be competing against other people looking for the same salary range. Working with a recruiter might also be a good idea if they can help find companies that would be a good match
Saddly, bad middle manager wants to hire a yesman (or women). Not an experienced engineer that will challenge them by highlighting to upper management the project technical debt, the lack of tests or the broken CD pipeline.
So... everywhere? Haha the tests are always garbage.
Most employers want to hire someone who actively improves things, someone who solves issues, and not someone who just complaints about them and makes demands.
Of course the assumption is that they have to pay more for more experience.
But it's also about perceived power and control. Younger workers are seen as more compliant, and many managers do not feel comfortable hiring underlings who are older.
I'm not so sure. I think many tend to see that as a too good to be true situational and toss your resume.
In fact any company older that 30 probably won't care. I'm not a grey hair yet, but I actively hate startups. We aren't changing the world, we're helping cat photos load 3 milliseconds faster...
There's plenty of gray beards, the UC is starving for seasoned talent, and the HMO plans are inexpensive and cover a lot -- 5 years to vest in the pension that matches nearly 100% and you can take distributions starting at age 50.
many UC IT people left
A Unix BOFH spot that tops out at under $180k in a HCOL area? It's something I guess.
Remote work has a way of prioritizing professionalism and solid communication over in person social signaling which is likely to help be anti-ageist.
So the list you posted:
https://github.com/remoteintech/remote-jobs
Should be a good place to start
The list of age-friendly industries others are posting are difficult remote - insurance, banking, defense, education - all usually need to be in-person due to security/data concerns.
Co-payments are very low though. Dental is partially included. Kids are included, wife/husband also if they are not employed.
My salary works out to roughly $120 per hour. I pay a $15 premium to insurance from each paycheck and a $20 fee to see a doctor. Even if I had some catastrophic car crash and spent months in the ICU, my maximum annual payment for all healthcare is capped at $5,000.
Healthcare costs can be a huge burden for low and middle-income Americans, but for a senior tech worker, healthcare is a tiny expense compared to income.
You can't even rely on the apparent age of senior management as a rough guide.
The information is sensitive and damages companies reputation who are explicitly not on the list. Except maybe, these days, if a company wants to be known for its non-wokeness or such nonsense. Maybe one of Musk companies?
However, I do think this is an opportunity for sites like glassdoor.
Gov generally wants stability and is very slow to move to new technologies (pros and cons).
It's not huge money, but you can clear 6 figures a year, having better than normal job security, and a good work-life balance being a sysadmin at a gov agency.
In aerospace they seem to prefer people who know where the bodies are buried, know how to bury bodies, have buried a few bodies themselves, and can instruct others on body burying.
The closest thing I've seen is that people who have X number of years of experience doing the same thing over and over again don't get opportunities that people with the same number of years doing different things do, unless there's a position that needs X exclusively.
not related to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40230790 or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39673589
Better maternity / paternity benefits: https://www.levels.fyi/benefits/Maternity-Leave/
Sabbatical programs often kick in after a certain number of years. A more structured program could indicate being more receptive to higher tenure / older populations: https://www.levels.fyi/benefits/Sabbatical/
But I don't put any stock in (non-professor) sabbatical programs, specifically, anymore, at least not the month-ish kind.
It's easy for a company to advertise sabbaticals, whether they mean it or not (e.g., no cost if you layoff or have a hostile work environment in the first 5 years), and there's also odd incentives, as well as perceptions.
For one example, you can imagine a stereotypical coked-up CEO saying, "If someone is still here in 5 years, they must be complacent, not top players. Sabbatical means they document their duties, and we send them home for 4 weeks, to test whether the docs are enough. It's time to check the freshness date, bro."
And on the employee side, you can imagine people approaching 5-6 years holding out a little longer for that bonus/vacation, but seeing no real refresh of incentive after (unlike RSUs). I've seen industry sabbaticals like this used for job-hunting, and the occasion almost looks like a sign that's time.
(With professors, OTOH, it's different: it might be a year, and a chance to refresh your research, break into a new area, write a book, be a visiting researcher, etc. Which potentially has upside for the university. And the real commitment signal by the employer is tenure.)
I know one company that does not fit that bill, IBM. In last April they had a lay-off, I heard from friends who worked there, the only people let go in their Dept were all over 50. Do a search and you will see many articles about that.
I wish you luck
edit: there are actually similar named companies that exist.
Or consider some finance startups.
For us it's not age or title, it's ability to learn and apply, throughout a span of experience. We've found those who learned and applied while the commercial Internet was being made, the web being made, the cloud being made, are better equipped for learning and applying today's higher abstractions.
If you helped build the stuff of which it is made, you can better create new things on top of it.
No. You don't load cat pictures faster by surrounding it with spyware and choose the cat pic with data from said spyware.
The question verges on the rhetorical.
Have you asked yourself why you hang out on this website given how you feel about startups?
Also, is it really fair to apply such a strong statement to all startups? Look at your screen and the browser you're using, the user interface concepts, the computer itself. Where do you think those came from?
Liquid crystal displays were invented at RCA, an old radio monopoly.
>and the browser you're using
CERN, a government-funded research lab.
>the user interface concepts
SRI, a government-funded research lab, and Xerox, an old copier monopoly.
>the computer itself
ENIAC was a US Army project.
Maybe they just like technology.
I hate *working for* startups. It's fun when your young, not when you have bills.
The HN guidelines cover what topics are relevant to submit as new posts here, and cover civility and usefulness of comments. That seems good enough.