In my mid to late thirties, have nothing saved for retirement, don’t have a job currently, have been reading about how people find a really hard time continuing to work when they hit their 50’s due to ageism. Whats the play here? Obviously to get a job but do you have suggestions as to which specific field so I can continue to work for a long time? Thanks
same age, same mess, nonstop rejections, started pivoting to it support. job hunt now is just misery everywhere, finding anything at all feels impossible
Are you worried about retirement funds because I am
I'm on the Remington retirement plan at age 45
What does that mean
Remington is a brand associated with firearms.
Do they do guns as well? I've only ever heard of them as a razor/shaver company.
Edit: Well, whaddya know, in addition to the shavers and typewriters they're famous for, they made WW2 pistols.
I am an older guy in a field known for ageism.
The cause of ageism is overwhelmingly people thinking experience accumulates over time in a valuable way. It doesn't. You often have to throw the book away. In tech, I have thrown the book away 4 times, with AI being the latest one.
Every technological advancement is not quite a reset, but it often makes what was important before into a minor sideshow or niche concern. If you want to stay relevant, you must move away from it as quickly as the new people coming into the profession are simply not learning it.
I've been in tech long enough to have been around when we were fussing about memory usage and RAM on desktop apps. We cared about minimizing the size of downloads. QA was somewhat intensive. My first work computer had 8mb of RAM.
The memory one still has niche applications, but most firms that develop software will never open up a profiler. I would bet most devs today don't know what a profiler is and never will need to know in their careers.I would bet most app developers haven't a clue how much memory their product uses. Yet I still run into older devs babbling on about profiling memory usage in interviews.
That doesn't matter now and shows you have not kept up with what does. RAM usage and download size are irrelevant. Even Microsoft just uses a web browser for its UI now, on Windows. Most downloadable apps are a copy of a web browser shipped.
QA is similarly irrelevant. Most companies don't have testers. Plenty ship a PR as soon as it is merged. Quality control as a software discipline largely disappeared beyond whatever automated tests you chose to write. Why? A fix can be quickly shipped as soon as the error report comes in.
Keep up with the field and you will be fine.
Spotted the person that has worked in web development their entire career. I’m sure the fda will be totally understanding that the control software for that medical device was only briefly overdosing patients because after the first person died the company pushed an update.
This. Never stop learning.
And especially in tech, you can easily find yourself a junior developer again by not doing that.
Sorry, Charlie. That’s all simply irrelevant today. I have kept up with my field, 10 YoE, no trouble getting jobs before recently. Now, I’ve been locked out through no fault of my own — literally, my last job loss was a layoff I had no control over, and no warning it would happen. At the other side of the spectrum, you have Stanford grads who can’t find jobs.
Cut the platitudes and spill some real tea, because “keep up with the field” ain’t good enough.
Where are you on AI, as that is the big shift right now?
The other article in the subreddit? The people who can't get jobs freely admit that they don't have products/research in a time when AI lets you generate both easily?
High school research paper publishing is now somewhat common. A typical new grad project like a to-do list or ordering app is now something that somebody with no tech skills can execute with Base 44 or Lovable.
Yes a lot of it is imperfect. The research papers are in niches nobody really cares about (snow accumulation patterns on fences). Lovable in particular can be hard to refactor or pivot. But it doesn't matter as on the resume nobody is looking closely and most people did nothing at all.
They also missed the "build" culture shift in tech that reappeared two years ago or so. Tech is back to being obsessed with shipping stuff to the exclusion of everything else. So all the leadership/empathy/inclusion work they likely did became worthless from a career perspective.
Construction management it’s an important field to be in. The construction trades in general is a good industry to be in right now, but one of the biggest shortages that we have is skilled and experienced management. It’s not too difficult to hire 100 workers but it’s quite difficult to find a worker whom you can give them the blueprints, the tools, the supplies and materials and send them out to do the job with very little supervision or instruction.
As someone in their 50s, one thing that keeps me relevant is the fact that I’m better at knowing what I need to do my job than my boss does. By being able to manage other people while managing myself, that makes me valuable because I take a significant amount of the workload off of my manager.
And this applies to the supervisory role and many different careers. One thing that gives you relevance and job security is that if there’s ever a need to reduce the workforce, you’re more likely to keep your job even if that means doing some of the manual labor while you’re supervising others.
And understand this is different from mid-level management, which is essentially like being a laborer in the office without any type of leadership task or skill set.
That’s interesting thanks, how do you get into construction management if you don’t have any experience? Go back to school? Or are there entry level roles? Also do you think it will be impacted by artificial intelligence long term?
Artificial intelligence will never be able to take the shovel or hammer out of your hand.
The best way to get into a construction management is to actually start out doing construction work. And enlist in one of the construction trades as they’re all pretty hot right now. And if for some reason you cannot get into a construction kind of job, go get a temp job doing construction cleanup work. That’ll acclimate you to the construction environment and as the contractors see you doing a good job with cleaning, someone will offer you a job.
Okay thanks I will look up construction companies in my area and give them a call
Same boat!
I have a contingency plan however.
Move to a country with good safety net. I will be absolutely miserable, but I won’t starve to death at least.
I literally am having a hard time getting hired at even fast food. “Overqualified”. I’m about to lose our home. I don’t if I even want to live past a certain age in this country.
Tailor your CV/resume
If it's a lower level job than you've previously done then downplay your CV
Same in the interview
If they want intelligent then give them that. If they want a drone then that's what they get
-For fast food— don’t attach a resume/cv just fill out job application directly from company website -Don’t bullet point describe what u did at previous jobs with action verbs— say basic “stocked shelves, cash-handling, ect” -No gaps between jobs, your last job was the same job as this, same title -Do not mention you have a degree -Use friends as references (list as managers, coworkers) - you’ve tried playing by the rules and it hasn’t worked. You are more than capable of doing this job, but unless you match what they’re looking for, you won’t get the chance. Best of luck, sorry it’s come to this.
Sorry to hear, I guess you have to just keep trying
Wanting to go back to school but in the same boat- not sure what for
Be careful about taking out loans for school
You have to have a career and not a job in order to somewhat avoid ageism. When you are respected in a certain field and you have navigated yourself to a higher position, ageism goes out of the window. Appointed VPs in companies are not young.
Disabled ppl like me get discriminated against more.🤷♀️
Society kind of set up hiring disabled people in a hot potato way. We agree that they are a burden, but instead of sharing the burden (gov pays for accommodation changes), whoever hires them is just on the hook for accommodations and restructuring the job.
This is particularly true in an age where every aspect of your suitability as an employee is scrutinized. The job description doesn't ask for an Olympic (not Paralympic) contender but that is effectively how it is treated.
A lot of it is simply that companies don't really want to think about what a job involves. Easier to order an omni human.
Most definitely. It’s not always because of the anticipation of lesser performance. But it becomes a matter of liability if the job aggravates your disability.
We had a worker on the job that only lasted two days. They were medically disabled due to a previous injury. But they were clear to do light duty work. The job required a lot of walking, and as a result, this person became injured again and filed a workers compensation claim on the company’s dime. Nobody gave her a hard time about it as the company truly believes in taking care of anyone who suffers an injury on our watch. But at the same time, this incident has made it harder for the next disabled person who is willing to work their hardest at any cost.
We have a couple of “disabled” people on the job who haven’t been officially diagnosed with a debilitating injury, but they fight through it every day because they would rather be at work than to be at home collecting a check.
It is tougher to get hired when you're older, but not completely impossible. I just got hired as a communications specialist in October at age 61. Prior to that, I got a job doing sales administration. It was just a stop gap job until I could find something better, but at the time that they hired me, I was 60.
A bit hard to make suggestions with absolutly no info. Experience in what field, degree, interests, location, etc etc etc.
My plan is to buy a used Toyota Sienna and live down by the river. My social security check at 67 should be around $2,000 a month, which I hope is enough.
Sigh I hope I have enough time to figure this out people I know have been saving and investing since their early 20s feel like I’ve missed the boat
Will there be Social Security for anyone in mid to late 30s at present?
Healthcare is always a good place to go. Even if you just go on the administrative side, but nurses will always be in need for a wide variety of areas (nursing homes, hospice, home health, clinics, hospitals, etc.....)
Look for high temperatures jobs.
Look up LLM low temperature and high temperatures.
Government jobs? Start casual or seasonal…. I did this Christmas season for seasonal and they asked if I wanna stay on… of course I do… now in a union with pension
Ha! In the age of Trumpism, everybody in government ends up on the unemployment line.
What type of government job may I ask?
I didn't have a lot of trouble finding a job at 50. But that was also in 2014.
In 2024, at the age of 60, found myself out of work and nobody wants to deal with me all. I'm old, I'm out of touch, I'm a boomer, I don't know how to use computers, etc.
I decided to just go ahead and retire early rather than work for these idiot kids who have already decided I have one foot in the grave. 40 years was a good run for me. I'm so over it now.
It was at my local liquor store. Good luck!
Your government job is at a local liquor store?
Yes. Our liquor is regulated by government in some provinces in Canada.
I'm 64 and it's true
So am I screwed then that I haven’t saved anything at my age and will have to work for a long time?
Hard to say. Do your very best to save or invest if you can.
When I was your age, I thought I would work forever. But as your body ages, things pop up that often change your course.
Nursing. Nursing is your only play.
Is it really my only one?
Yeah. I just finished watching Nurse Jackie and a lot of the nurses were in their late 50s.
Internal recruiter here - the job market outside of healthcare has turned to a Instagram onlyfans type model where only young attractive women are getting the jobs. No one wants to hire ugly people over 40.
Employers want to hire 25-35 year olds and abuse them.
People made fun of me for being frugal and a saver. No these people are in their 50s with nothing and are living a very stressful life.
I’m in my mid to lates 30s with nothing saved how screwed am I be honest
Beyond fucked - you will need to get a 120k+ plus job and live like a broke college student and save every penny for the next 20-30 years. You could get lucky and invest In the next big thing but chance of that are slim.
I hope you had fun in your 20s, had a sports car, and travels a lot.
By 55 I will be retired with a decent amount of money and will be able to do what ever I want - true freedom.
Are you serious that is how the math works out, I don’t think I can get a job like that let alone work for that long with ageism and all that. Is that really the math
I think he’s exaggerating , irs more not having debt and keeping costs down. There’s people who make good money but are drowning in debt , buy expensive cars or if the housing market crashes they are even more fcked. Someone making low pay but low expenses can be equal to that or end up saving more . Just my opinion but in the 2030s when markets crash you’ll get a chance to invest low for the next 30 year cycle
It’s definitely a stressful age but it’s not impossible
If you do the math on what he’s saying you need to do, you would have 3 million dollars saved up and that’s not investing in anything. So it’s over exaggerated. That would give you 125k a year every year in retirement if you live to 90. Not exactly necessary
I do think investing and compounding and living not above your means is really the best bet. Or finding a job with pension for example UPS driver I think has one of you work 30 years you get 5k a month in retirement I think