I’ve become too old to be marketable in free agency so I’m stuck, but you better believe the day it’s financially viable to do so, and not a minute later, my happy ass will walk out into retirement and never look back.
I hired a 65-year-old guy last year. I knew he was older, but didn’t know his age until after he joined my team.
It was also a slightly new career path for him. He’d worked as an IT Project Manager for most of his career, focused on backend systems interacting only with other IT folks. Now he’s a Program Manager on a Product team so it’s not wildly different, but his stakeholders are significantly different and the way he works is different (focusing at a higher level than before).
And he is rockin’ it. I love working with him and seeing him grow into this role has brought me a lot of satisfaction. He is a great member of my team. He’s mentioned wanting to retire within 5 years and I’ll be sad when that happens, but I hope I have the chance to be his last manager and support him through when he makes that choice.
I’m not trying to minimize the challenges of changing jobs as you get older; the statistics speak for themselves. But I do hope that if you want that change that this anecdote might help inspire you. There are other hiring managers who will only care about what you can bring to the table.
I’ve become too old to be marketable in free agency so I’m stuck, but you better believe the day it’s financially viable to do so, and not a minute later, my happy ass will walk out into retirement and never look back.
I was there too. Then the company came out with a buyout that was available for anyone with enough years of seniority.
The package was worth more than if I had worked until I was eligible for my pension, so obviously I jumped all over that.
I’ve become too old to be marketable in free agency so I’m stuck, but you better believe the day it’s financially viable to do so, and not a minute later, my happy ass will walk out into retirement and never look back.
Idk what you do, but don’t limit yourself. In my line of work, people with a shitpile of experience are very sought after
I hired a 65-year-old guy last year. I knew he was older, but didn’t know his age until after he joined my team.
It was also a slightly new career path for him. He’d worked as an IT Project Manager for most of his career, focused on backend systems interacting only with other IT folks. Now he’s a Program Manager on a Product team so it’s not wildly different, but his stakeholders are significantly different and the way he works is different (focusing at a higher level than before).
And he is rockin’ it. I love working with him and seeing him grow into this role has brought me a lot of satisfaction. He is a great member of my team. He’s mentioned wanting to retire within 5 years and I’ll be sad when that happens, but I hope I have the chance to be his last manager and support him through when he makes that choice.
I’m not trying to minimize the challenges of changing jobs as you get older; the statistics speak for themselves. But I do hope that if you want that change that this anecdote might help inspire you. There are other hiring managers who will only care about what you can bring to the table.
Some of our best guys are in their 50s and 60s.
Some of our worst guys are in their 20s and 30s. Not inexperienced - just shitty workers and probably never going anywhere in their careers.
Then some of our best guys are also in their 30s and 40s.
I was there too. Then the company came out with a buyout that was available for anyone with enough years of seniority.
The package was worth more than if I had worked until I was eligible for my pension, so obviously I jumped all over that.
Best career move I’ve made in 20+ years!
My company (megacorp that bought out another megacorp I worked for) appears to no longer do early retirement buyouts.
Every year they whittle away a little more at the things that made it a good place to work. The past year has been especially bad.