Career Disaster Area
I am working with two clients who are 65 years of age and they are figuratively living in a “Career Disaster Area.”
The career world where they lived for so many years has been hit by a massive earthquake. They truly are living in a “Career Disaster Area.”
Can they recover?
Sure.
Will they ever go back to the good old days?
Probably not.
Let me tell you their stories but their names and identities have been altered to protect the innocent. You may see yourself in their stories.
Marketing Career Disaster Area
Sally was the consummate marketing professional. She had worked in a variety of different industries over the span of her career. At different times in her career, she worked freelance and she worked for some major agencies.
Like many of her peers, she took a hit in the great recession and then her spouse passed away suddenly. Sally decided to move across the country to be closer to her children. Now she is trying to reestablish herself in a new city, where the culture and job market are very young and vibrant.
Sally is 65 years of age.
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Sally is taking courses in social media and digital marketing but the skills required to be a productive marketing professional have made tectonic shifts in the direction of technology and analytics. For Sally, this is really a “Career Disaster Area.”
Tectonic Shifts in Marketing Skills
I spent much of the 1990’s working either in IBM marketing or in an executive briefing center, which was a marketing and sales support function. We produced presentations, marketing collateral, and web content that supported the sale of IBM hardware and software. That world no longer exists.
I am currently working on launching the Career Pivot online community. I am learning about Facebook marketing, Google adwords, re-marketing and pixeling strategies, ad networks, and other digital marketing strategies. When I made the decision to leave the world of technology marketing 15+ years ago, I left a place that looks NOTHING like it does today.
Can Sally shift into this new technological marketing world that is populated with a very young workforce at the age of 65?
It is possible but not probable.
The marketing world where she thrived for so many years is now a ‘Career Disaster Area” for her.
Sally is having to shift her expectations, likely moving to freelance writing, and possibly non-profit community – where her skills are still valued.
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Technology Hardware Career Disaster Area
Larry, a 65 year old engineer, has worked for some of the top companies that designed and manufactured leading computer hardware throughout his career. During this time, Larry was a program and project manager for huge, multi-national and multi-company development projects. The projects had huge scope and complexity.
That world is disappearing fast. Companies like HP, IBM, and others have seen their hardware businesses almost completely disappear. Companies like Sun and DEC have been wiped off the map in a very short period of time.
There are many like Larry that built their careers around designing large and ever-growing, complex hardware systems. The hardware market has become commoditized in the last 10 years. The iPhone sitting next to me has more computing power and function than huge computers of just a few years ago.
There have been tectonic shifts such that the market now demands software, mobile app development, cloud computing software infrastructure and similar skills.
Last week, Larry interviewed with for a position with one of the leading cloud infrastructure companies for a program management job. The first thing they asked him to do is take a coding test.
WHAT!! A coding test??? This is a program management job!
I am like Larry. I have not written a line of code in over 15 years. Could I pass a coding test? Probably not.
Does it make sense that they want to see if he can code? Probably not; but that is not the world we live in now.
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They Moved My Cheese!
The complex world that Larry excelled and thrived in moved from hardware to software very fast. In fact, at warp speed. They moved Larry’s cheese and he did not even realize it.
The career space that Larry and his peers lived in for so many years now looks like a “Career Disaster Area.”
Like Sally, he could retool; but can he do it fast enough and be accepted in a very young fast-moving market?
It is possible but not probable.
It is now time to shift expectations and direction.
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Rebuilding After a Disaster
We have seen it over and over again. People can and do rebuild after a disaster. Sometimes, people have to walk away from the disaster scene because it is too risky to stay.
The question for both Sally and Larry is do they rebuild on their existing skill foundations or do they move on to something different? Neither of them want to stop working at the age of 65. They both have lots of working years ahead of them and the last thing either want to do is retire.
Does this sound familiar? Has this happened to you?
What did you do?
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Hi Marc – Thanks so much for this article, which you apparently wrote with me in mind. My story closely aligns with Sally’s, except that I’m 58 – lots of experience with marketing, but not so much the digital kind. I was laid off the end of December, in the Houston area, and looking to possibly relocate to Austin, closer to family. However, tech is king in Austin, so I feel even less qualified for the posted marketing positions. I’ve started to take some online coding courses, which I really enjoy, but I’m not fooling myself into thinking it will get me to where I can really compete with 20 & 30-somethings who have grown up with digital in their DNA. So I’ve been rethinking my end goals, but, in the meantime, I will have to find something to carry me through financially. I’m a pretty positive person, but it does get to be a challenge to find enough time in the day to submit applications, network, self-train and take care of my home and kids (single mom). However, I do appreciate this and other articles you’ve written, as they give me perspective and show me that I’m not alone. Thanks!
Deborah,
Things are moving at lightening speed. The more I dug into this the more I realized how things have changed in such a short period of time.
Marc
The world does move fast – but you don’t have to stay in the slow lane. I’m in this age bracket and have changed jobs three times in the past 12 years (1 – career change, 2-refining industry, 3 – cross-country move). I’ve moved straight from one job to the next without real job hunting. I’ve always been that person who quickly adopted new technologies. The one who sought tough, challenging assignments, the one who took classes, the one who innovates wherever I go. Right now I’m starting on a huge global project (along with my day job) that has never been done by any university career services. If your world has changed, then you need to change too! If you’re a marketer – do you write well? Maybe online content creation is for you. Reinvent yourself!
I am that age exactly and my skills are rusty. I have a unique skill set born of my previous position that is not transferable to most positions. Currently, I am trying to fashion a new job based on the skills I have while signing up for multiple classes to improve at least my knowledge. I do admit complacency but it’s a hard lesson at 65. Although I enjoy the idea of reinventing myself.
Denise,
I looked at your LinkedIn profile. You appear to have spent a lot of time in academia. Are you trying to move out of world of education?
Marc Miller
I am 58 years old and joined a tech startup in 2011 where the company had only two multi-purpose production computers. I built, from the ground up their on-premise data center with 30+ production servers and also was the cornerstone developer for a industry leading phone call tracking platform. They sold the company and outsourced in 2019. I was asked to migrate the on-premise data center to the cloud, which i did flawlessly and in record time, less than 6 months. Soon after i shutdown the on-premise location they let me go with no severance pay after nearly 8 years of loyal service. They outsourced IT.
I wore multiple hats and served as a strong generalist, but now I find myself navigating in a world of specialists. Roles such as Systems Engineer or Systems Administrator has specialized into a DevOps Engineer, DevSecOps Engineer, Site Reliability Engineer, Cyber Security Engineer, or some other lofty named engineer. Same goes for Software Developers & Software Engineers; Backend Engineer, Full Stack Engineer, Front-End Engineer, or specialized to a language – Python Developer, Go Developer, Rust Developer, etc.
I discovered to my dismay that I was way behind the power curve and had a lot of catching up to do. I ended up enrolling in an online computer science program to brush up on fundamentals such as data structures and algorithms, etc. because all the interviews involved several rounds and mandatory online coding exercises that very few people would ever pass unless you spent months preparing for on sites such as geeksforgeeks, etc.
And, lets not forget the fact that ageism is paramount in the IT industry.
Want to see proof? Just browse at most every companies career site and you will see only pictures of young people plastered all over the web page clearly sending out a message that old farts are not recognized even though it was the old farts that made the company successful in the first place.
Mark,
Here is the problem. You are still trying to compete technically. Your real value is as the architect of how to do things. The fact that you migrated a datacenter to the cloud flawlessly is fabulous. Who else needs to do that?
I would market that not as an employee but rather as a consultant or contractor. That will get your foot in the door and they might hire you as a FTE. I call this dating to get a job.
As you have discovered a 58 year old guy is not who they are looking for and you will fail to go through the normal interview process.
Marc