Ageism
Posting for spouse. He works for a northeast financial company and does not want to have a Blind account or should I say cannot without getting noticed. Question: He has an MBA from CMU and worked in Business Development before moving to Product Management. He has had good interviews at various companies but nothing materializes. He is 40+ and is starting to think that his age could be a problem. His data point is that anywhere he has interviewed he found the team be in late 20's or early 30's. He has calls from Google and Facebook to interview and realizes that the interview process will take time to prep. He is reluctant to go through the grind. I personally think it's in his mind. I am a software developer so I don't know. Thoughts?
IMO, the facebooks and googles probably want a product manager that has some sort of technical background. Without any context for the complexity, and sometime simplicity, or certain issues - how can one accurately schedule and make risk assessments? For quick reference, most product managers at Intel (in my group/teams) have held a senior technical position and furthermore, all of them have a history of comparable industry experience
I personally think ageism matters only if you do not stay relevant. If you are able to get the job done, meet expectations, and stay relevant in the tech market, you should be fine (there are several programmers/IC/Managers who are 40+). Lot of demand for competent senior engineers. I see that he has a background in Business Development but is moving to Product Management. Maybe this is an issue? A lot of tech companies need people with a tech background (even for PM roles) since being a PM, means you work with Developers and Engineering Managers. Just my two cents.
Let's face it ageism is real and yes some opportunities will not come your way. But you have got to work harder and gain critical skills. As I got older I know the difficulty in finding a job (and keeping one) rises exponentially. But it's not impossible
How do they typically know the age? From your graduation year?
Graduation year, work history, word usage, physical appearance, etc.
Thanks all...My husband moved from engineering to bus dev to PM. He was an engineer for 10+ years. He is not up to date with tech and finding it difficult to digest that he has to prep for a coding interview at Google. Haha
I'm 43 and have been contacted by sourcers from Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. but I am in a management role. That said, it is harder to find a job, but that's also partly due to the fact that I am much pickier than I was when I was 24. Not being up to date or changing careers would certainly up the difficulty.
Same with my husband. He gets hits and he doesn't want to agree but he is picky. Some company sent him data to analyze and present. On the other side of the table was a 20 something who just did not get the fact that he works in a regulated industry and coming up with unreasonable product ideas is not going to get the company anywhere. Although they offered my husband declined. Thanks for the comment.
Just to add more, there are companies that value experience and aptitude. My current company (in Boston) is specifically looking for older, more experienced employees and even those without specific domain experience (non tech roles for the latter)
Let him try PM position at Amazon and Microsoft. I don’t think he will need prep for coding. He could apply for managerial positions since he used to be an engineer.
Ageism probably exists and I’m over 40 but haven’t seen it in action yet. The closest I’ve seen are managers saying they prefer college grads because they have less baggage and are easier to train and develop. I think my age group in tech make behavioral mistakes related to age such as wanting to be measured more by their past than their current achievements and talking too much instead of listening. Sure we have a lot of experience but in this business you have to keep a young learner attitude and not be so sure you’re right all the time. If you start every interaction with younger peers like you’re their senior then everyone will resent you, which I’ve seen happen a lot.
Agree 100%
Do the prep and join a larger company. More olds there than startups. Source: old
Is 40+ help for product management ? I thought its an issue for programmers ?