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I really feel for people who are unexpectedly losing their jobs late career because of the DOGE cuts.
I experienced something similar when I was pushed out of my 36 year banking job at age 59. I was a good performer, but when they want to get you they get you.
I struggled for a couple of years but the good news is that I finally figured things out and at age 70 I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.
I want others to be as happy as me so I’ve been giving my retirement books away for free.
You can download my books “Retirement Heaven or Hell” and “Longevity Lifestyle By Design” by visiting the BoomingEncore.com website.
If you would like my other book “Victory Lap Retirement” which makes the case for working part-time in retirement DM me at michael.drak@yahoo.ca and I will send you an electronic copy.
All I ask in return is that you consider posting a honest Amazon review on the book you read. Notice the emphasis on the words “consider” and “honest”.
I use the reviews as motivation to keep going when I feel like quitting on my new “Ikigai” book.
During times like these we need to help and watch out for each other.
Mike:
I own two of your books in both paperback and Kindle. You are a true “mensch” to make your books available to folks for free.
Your statement, “If they want to get you, they get you” is true at many different ages. For me it was 48. I landed on my feet immediately, however, getting a better job at higher pay, before my severance period ended.
Keep up your marathon training and definitely complete your newest book. Let us know when it becomes available.
GOD LOVES YOU and so do I!
I retired in 2010 from our county govt. I had a lot of friends and acquaintances in IT who worked at our 2 large banks: BOA and Wells Fargo. Many of these were let go around this this time because they were older and often had high salaries.
Many people consider IT to be a young person’s game (I don’t), and do not value the contributions of older workers.
I grew up in the late sixties early seventies in Hanover NH, where Dartmouth College resides. John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz who were professors there co-developed the BASIC programming language and Dartmouth Time-Sharing System (allowing multiple users to link into a mainframe computer) in 1964. At our high school in the early 70s we had a teletype with punch cards and a dot matrix printer. Probably one of the first schools in the country to be connected to a mainframe. I still remember the password was H15009 (oops). All I remember doing was printing out a banner containing Snoopy punting a football.
I was in Boy Scouts with professors Kurtz’s sons. Years later one of the sons (also very adept at math) bought a house two doors down from us in our neighborhood, and their son (currently a math professor) was in my daughter’s high school graduating class. This is so ironic, and also proves my theory that proficiency in math is genetic.
Ah, yes, I do recall “Times like Those”. My first experience was my father. He was let go late in his career when the company was purchased and the entire backoffice staff replaced. One Friday a couple of suits came into that office, told everyone to pick up their personal effects and line up at the door. As they exited, they were told “Good Luck” and handed their final paycheck. No warning, no severance.
One of my siblings was very successful and earning a 6-figure salary in the metal stamping business. That evaporated when this type of manufacturing left the country, some to Mexico and a lot to China. I’ve had my own experiences. Consider that when I began my career a computer was an IBM 360 mainframe and the calculator on my desk was a slide rule and a pad of paper and pencil. Design was accomplished with a drafting board, T-Square, triangles, pencils and erasers. Blueprints were blue with white lines and used an ammonia process. The Xerox copying machine was relatively new and the first commercial Fax machine had just been invented. I suspect many of us also have such experiences. I also expect the pace of change to be relentless and to continue.
There were other changes. Loyalty became an impediment. Back in the 90s it was considered a problem if an employee was with a firm and static for too long. Such an individual was considered to be insufficiently motivated. That’s what HR professionals were saying at the time.
Like pensions, some things are gone. If they return, it will likely be in another form. For most of us in the private sector, we can expect to change jobs or careers several times during our working life. That means continuous education, planning and other preparations for the inevitable. Today it is most helpful to pick a career that won’t be replaced by AI and similar technological advances in a couple of years. Certain career may be fads. I’m not sure if there are really going to be sufficient jobs for all of the environmental engineers that schools are producing.
Back when, people went to school to learn how to punch computer cards. This job skill was obsoleted in a few years and some progressed to coding. HTML was really hot when the internet exploded, but that space quickly filled with software tools that did much of the work, eliminating many jobs.
AI will probably have an impact similar to other forms of automation. I would hope parents and younger people do a lot of research and find a school and career fit that provides a foundation and stepping stone to a long term working, productive life. I should add “at a reasonable cost”.
Lol. I started my techie career in 1970 writing code for a 360 on green and white striped paper which went off to the punch card operators. We had 24 hour turnround, which meant we usually found the errors before the computer did.
Ah yes. I remember. We used to “desk check” our programs a lot because test time on the computer was limited. You will get a blank look if you mention desk checking to modern programmers.
Indeed. I remember referring to a terminal and getting a blank look from a new hire. I also remember getting system test time at night because the mainframes were in use for production runs during the day. And hefting those massive disk drives around.
The two programs I wrote for my MS were all created on punch cards. Each program required a standard punch card box to hold all the cards. By the time I finished, folks were migrating towards file storage and submission via hard drive storage. A 20Kb disk drive was a pretty large beast.
My Intro to Computer Science class in 1981 was the only time I punched cards.
By 1981 we’d been using terminals for a while.
Yes, I think they wanted to give us a sense of history.