Remote Roles | Full/Part Time/Contract | Kubernetes | Engineering | DevOps | Product Manager| Full Stack | Would love to get into AI.
**Recruiting for Old Farts in Tech** Why is there no recruiting agency dedicated to recruiting old farts. What an massive untapped market that is being ignored .. An Old Fart in Tech is someone who is over 50 and been in tech all their working lives. They are the people who helped create the tech that the young guns now use and primly evaluate others on .. Old Farts are generally financially independent, kids gone, home paid off but looking for some extra cash to fund lifestyle choices and most importantly, to feel useful and valuable. They DO have a LOT to contribute, with all that decades of experience. What a waste of knowledge. I cannot vouch for every old fart, but many of us (I'm 65 shortly) are more interested in sharing what we know, making ourselves useful and keeping a simple lifestyle going, and, enjoying what we do Where can Old Farts be useful? Well here are just a few ideas: Code Reviews Documentation Reviews Documentation Generation (Few companies do this well, why not get an experienced person to do it properly) Proposal Reviews Roadmap Reviews In fact, Old Farts are perfect as the voice of reason pretty much anywhere in Tech, the sounding board, catching the "what have we missed" items in plans and proposals, all that stuff that requires decades of experience I would think that many Old Farts would not be compensation orientated, they would not want a squillion dollars, in fact they would probably like part time roles, to keep their minds active and a good work life balance. Many Old Farts are finding that Pension Funds are not what the were chalked up to be 40 years ago, imagine a super experienced Dev Ops engineer who contributed to the Linux kernel flipping hamburgers for $12.00 per hour, what a waste of useful talent, he could be imparting significant amounts of knowledge reviewing CI/CD pipelines and bash scripts. So how do you find Old Farts? Well its currently pretty much impossible, they have to submit a resume, that is pages long to some automated system. It never gets past the initial screen, either too long to read, or the 20-30 year old, university educated hot shots cannot comprehend that someone 2.5 times their age can offer anything useful, so the Old Fart never gets pushed up the line, so zero chance to get evaluated fairly. I wonder how those hot shots will feel when they become old farts themselves. :) Are there any Recruitment Agencies willing to consider a special division specializing in Old Farts .. I will help ... #recruiters #oldfarts #experienced #olderemployees #50yearsplus #oldergeneration #boomers
Some observations about Old Farts from a Really Old Fart who views mentions of reaching age 60s and 40+ years experience as suggesting that you still are just toddlers. Some organizations have institutionalized their having OFs around. The first group is universities. Most have "emeritus" professors who are still doing research and teaching after they have "officially" retired. The other is companies that have "Technical Fellows." Some of these companies never retire TFs but keep them on-and-on until they personally want to retire or have to retire because they cannot physically keep going, even part-time. Others help their old TFs become consultants by coaching them into becoming LLCs (liability limited corporations) with a staff of 1. Still others continue to help old TFs working on processes and inventions, and then patenting. I will add to my re-post some ideas on how other OFs can help themselves make the transition back from retirement into semi-retirement. Some of them derive from the above observations. Others are things done by some of my friends, but not (yet) tried by me. Still others are derived from all your comments on Mark's post. Keep on keeping on.
Mark Cupitt what a thought and comment provoking post -well done! I’d regard myself as an OFPAP! (Pursuing a Passion) At 60 I didn’t want to retire but found a great role whilst on a charity ride in Italy with CIOVITA - thanks to CEO Andrew Gold looking to land and expand in the UK. A new industry for me - cycle clothing - but applying many OF sales and marketing skills from many years in fast paced technology. And thanks to other CEO’s I met along the way Mihir Mehta of Bomisco and David Ward of PartnerScore and new friends with Andy Gilbert at Connection2Channel and his team - all allowing me to use my experience - I’d highly recommend a few juggling balls - it’s so much better than “one” corporate job. So key message is don’t try to find what you had before, build a part time portfolio to enrich yourself and make sure you have fun doing it! Shout out to Dionne Edwards for helping me to reach this conclusion.
The risk that people fear is that some of those old farts can turn toxic, sometimes very quickly. Lots of experience can either mean someone who has a broad pool of knowledge on how to deal with various types of problems, or someone who has a whole range of reasons why something cannot work and how anyone who tries to make it work are idiots for trying at all. I have tried it being the very same person, and not knowing if your request for insights is going to be met with sage advice or derision at any given moment can be extremely detrimental for a company in the long run.
I appreciate people like you. I'm also still trying to chase people like you out of my organization, not the few of you that understand that I'm just trying to get mine. Not the few of you that get that I have some really new ideas that are slightly scary but will put our company in a wholly better posture for the future. I'm not scared of amazing people like you... But my career has been dotted with people in your generation who see me as a threat, who think that I'm too young to listen to, who think that my new ideas are too hard to action, but I'm on the cusp of 40, I'm tired of being told that my ideas are too "new", and I'm sick of being looked at as though my head is two_fold because I point out that tour ideas are good, but need acclimation in a pipeline... I support your generation, I just ask that you support mine too in an effort to do our jobs together, brother. I'm with you.
Check out this one: https://greysource.com/ 😊
A lot of old farts still need a job to pay rent. Not everyone is financially independent. I need one and will work really hard because being old and homeless is the worst in the world.
Very good points. I would love to have an Old Farts Team help design my app ideas and the platform service idea I have. How would one go about finding a team?
You had me until the story at the end…. Otherwise yes!
As you grow older, your brain stops being sharp and you struggle to multi-task. This affects your decision making. So, no , at some point you have to throw in the towel gracefully.
Remote Roles | Full/Part Time/Contract | Kubernetes | Engineering | DevOps | Product Manager| Full Stack | Would love to get into AI.
4dMartin Ellis I thought about nominating you as the Patron ..