Typical American Career path - esp after 50

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DH was laid off at 59 and retired. Does a tiny bit of consulting. He considers himself very lucky. He has 3 friends laid off in 50s who have never been able to get FT jobs again and it is financially devastating. 2 with wives trying to catch up career-wise but both had taken a break with kids so it’s tough. One divorced because of the situation and he is working at Costco. After working as a finance analyst.

You can’t be serious.

Over 50 an not an executive is really hard to find a job. Age discrimination may protect you from being fired, but if you're caught in a layoff, it's really hard to find something new

[Anonymous]

There are tons of jobs for over 50 and even over 60 people that pay well and can get hired.

What you see is people who sit in their cube, learn nothing new, become a SME very specialized to that one business stay at a job a long time and are paid very well. Then at 55 let go.

Networking, going to conferences, being active on LinkedIn, keeping up on latest new hot topics seems pointless when you have a secure job at 54 you plan on staying at to 65. But if rug pulled out from under you suddenly you are stuck. I see it again and again.

There is a movie with Kurt Russel that takes place in the Artic Circle in Winter. They escape their building from a large massive fire and
standing our front. Someone asks Kurt now that we don't have a building now what? Kurt holds his hands out towards warm fire and goes we are nice and toasty for now we will figure it out later. The camera goes back and shows them in massive Ice Block with snow falling and fire slowly burning out.

Getting laid off with severance at 55 is same feeling. The checks keep coming a few months but like the Fire they eventually stops and you are left out in the cold unless you planned ahead.

[Anonymous]

Everyone has had fancy high paying jobs, but few prepared for layoffs.
I retired way before 50 having made minimum wage or less my whole life. Investing is the way to go and it has been available to all of you.
Don't put all your money into retirement account making money for the company offering it. You can't touch that money, you can't trade, and if you can't buy and sell, you won't learn anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Everyone has had fancy high paying jobs, but few prepared for layoffs.
I retired way before 50 having made minimum wage or less my whole life. Investing is the way to go and it has been available to all of you.
Don't put all your money into retirement account making money for the company offering it. You can't touch that money, you can't trade, and if you can't buy and sell, you won't learn anything.

So your advocating people should all become daytraders or invest in crypto or such? Get real you can’t beat index fund unless you have insider knowledge. Sure, you personally might’ve made a killing, but that’s just really taking a lot of risk and getting lucky

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are tons of jobs for over 50 and even over 60 people that pay well and can get hired.

What you see is people who sit in their cube, learn nothing new, become a SME very specialized to that one business stay at a job a long time and are paid very well. Then at 55 let go.

Networking, going to conferences, being active on LinkedIn, keeping up on latest new hot topics seems pointless when you have a secure job at 54 you plan on staying at to 65. But if rug pulled out from under you suddenly you are stuck. I see it again and again.

There is a movie with Kurt Russel that takes place in the Artic Circle in Winter. They escape their building from a large massive fire and
standing our front. Someone asks Kurt now that we don't have a building now what? Kurt holds his hands out towards warm fire and goes we are nice and toasty for now we will figure it out later. The camera goes back and shows them in massive Ice Block with snow falling and fire slowly burning out.

Getting laid off with severance at 55 is same feeling. The checks keep coming a few months but like the Fire they eventually stops and you are left out in the cold unless you planned ahead.

I’m sorry, if you were staying in the same role and going to conferences and learning new things, that will be no protection from ageism and being laid off. The only way to inoculate against ageism is due advance to leadership and executive levels. Anything else is wasting your time. Just because you learn the skill or fad technology does not make you in any way more marketable at 50. That’s a fantasy sold online learning course companies.

Are you talking about the Thing when you reference the burning building in the Arctic? Good movie and it captures the fatalism of being an older employee, but just like them they really was no protection or way to save yourself. Like the alien, ageism is too strong for any individual to fight

[Anonymous]

Are you buying public health insurance?

[Anonymous]

Back in the early 90s my dad was laid off at 55. It was a clear age discrimination move, they laid off all over 50 employees and a lawsuit was filed (but my dad chose to not participate).

He'd been director level and never returned to a professional position. Had lots of great phone interviews that immediately turned negative as soon as they met him and saw how old he was. He took on work as a handyman and managing their community center.

DH was laid off at 59 from a IT contractor. Applications for another job went nowhere and he decided to just retire.

So yes, layoff in 50s w/ little prospect for a similar position, is IME pretty common. In both cases, we did well with retirement savings and it's not a financial hardship. But if we'd overextended, bought a more expensive house, decided to have another baby (last kid started college with fully funded 529 right after DH's layoff), if would have been a big problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are you buying public health insurance?

I'm guessing it's cheaper when you have no income. Do they look at assets?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DH got laid off at 44, he has Masters in Computer Science from UC Berkeley for reference. He started his own consulting, grosses between 600-800k annually.

Full disclosure, he is extremely driven, knowledgeable and disciplined. There’s no way I could ever work that much. He is 54 now and still going strong, the biggest thing is he doesn’t have to worry about layoffs etc. He knows others in tech who went into lucrative contracting roles after layoffs.

He got in at the ground floor for tech boom and has loads of experience, probably worked at a dozen companies or a FAANG right? But what about the Cisco engineer who worked on their router firmware for 20 years and was laid off?

Yes, he worked for Google and Amazon for almost 20 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DH got laid off at 44, he has Masters in Computer Science from UC Berkeley for reference. He started his own consulting, grosses between 600-800k annually.

Full disclosure, he is extremely driven, knowledgeable and disciplined. There’s no way I could ever work that much. He is 54 now and still going strong, the biggest thing is he doesn’t have to worry about layoffs etc. He knows others in tech who went into lucrative contracting roles after layoffs.

He got in at the ground floor for tech boom and has loads of experience, probably worked at a dozen companies or a FAANG right? But what about the Cisco engineer who worked on their router firmware for 20 years and was laid off?

Yes, he worked for Google and Amazon for almost 20 years.

FAANG is not typical American career path. It’s more like Big Law or Wall Street.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are you buying public health insurance?

I'm guessing it's cheaper when you have no income. Do they look at assets?

After I was dumped, we were fortunate to live in Maryland where the Medicaid program is pretty good, especially for kids.
I think it's income based for under 65
https://health.maryland.gov/mmcp/eligibility/Pages/incomelimits.aspx

[Anonymous]

So what is the best plan if you can’t slide into Big Law/Big Tech/Medicine?

Work corporate and try for executive suite, but if by 40 not on clear trajectory angle for a government job? Just go for government job early if you don’t want to be an executive?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Everyone has had fancy high paying jobs, but few prepared for layoffs.
I retired way before 50 having made minimum wage or less my whole life. Investing is the way to go and it has been available to all of you.
Don't put all your money into retirement account making money for the company offering it. You can't touch that money, you can't trade, and if you can't buy and sell, you won't learn anything.

This is excellent advice (learned the hard way).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone has had fancy high paying jobs, but few prepared for layoffs.
I retired way before 50 having made minimum wage or less my whole life. Investing is the way to go and it has been available to all of you.
Don't put all your money into retirement account making money for the company offering it. You can't touch that money, you can't trade, and if you can't buy and sell, you won't learn anything.

This is excellent advice (learned the hard way).

Keeping cash to trade out of retirement accounts will incur much higher taxes.

And most people can’t trade better than indexes, how is this excellent advice??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So what is the best plan if you can’t slide into Big Law/Big Tech/Medicine?

Work corporate and try for executive suite, but if by 40 not on clear trajectory angle for a government job? Just go for government job early if you don’t want to be an executive?

Yes or start your own biz.