Hi Chet,
Are you filtering me or something <s>
I'll say this about that anyway ... In the world of employment, they are
looking for young people, you're right. That's because employers (the
boss) wants to hire people who are trainable in their ways to become
extensions of themselves, i.e. fingers on their hands. That's just the
way it is.
However, and this is this important part for us 'old-timers', the
business world, from small to large, has a huge appetite for
experienced, mature, articulate people who have been around and know how
to get things done without the wet nursing and hand-holding they have to
provide to their 'fingers'.
Going from employment to self-employment is a big hurdle, but not
because you have to learn a bunch of technical stuff (that's always
true, regardless), but because you have to adjust to a new lay of the
land, where you need to present and sell yourself to people looking for
what you have to offer.
In the world of programming, selling yourself boils down to finding
people with a need for what you can do, based on previous experience and
accomplishments, and presenting yourself to them. As I've previously
said, you're in the driver's seat because programming computers is a
need all businesses have, so unlike the auto mechanic who has to find
work in a car repair place, you have a much greater range of prospects
and can pretty much pick the field you're interested in.
First decide which field really interests you, then build a list of
prospective customers within that field, then create a CD with evidence
(applications/documentation/business stuff that you've written during
your career, and a summary in a resume format) and then start
calling/visiting them. The discussions that will follow these contacts
will take a life of it's own, so listen to what people have to say, and
before you know it, you're working again.
What I'm trying to say is that age can work for or against you,
depending on which trees you bark up - don't piss in the wind by barking
up the wrong trees, when the right ones are there all along.
Bill
P.s. I thought we were in approximate agreement on a lot of things
> Same here - my job has been taken from me at least 6 or 8
> times in just the last 30 years.
>
> It never gets easier though...actually, the older you get,
> the HARDER it is.
>
> Also, there IS age discrimination. It's a hell of a lot
> harder to find employment as one gets older.
>
>
©2005 Bill Arnold |
