The old man's freaking out
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- rounce
Got a major source of stress right now. My father works for a rather large software firm, heading up a team on newer stuff and maintiaining legacy code for a bunch of large scale hotel systems used by some very very large international hotel chains as the shit goes deeper into the fan people are starting to get made redundant. He was the workhorse dude when his past place got dumped and alot of his higher-ups got booted last time and we're both kinda scared that I'll be the only one bringing in the dough, and I've had a rough time work wise recently (just the rent of £1800 a month I couldn't manage on a reliable basis at the moment)... if he gets dumped that is.
One of the junior members of his team bit the dust today, and he's shitting himself because he's nearing retirement age because he see's himself as expendable. He's never really worked much with the web apart from writing an ASP.Net client and backend for one of the product line.
He's done shit from teaching english in the Sudan to writing raytracing software and assembly languages but has no qualifications past his A-Levels. (Yeah I'm proud as fuck of him, so what?)
Might it be time to give him a weekend crash course in colour theory, Flex and Actionscript? and would any firms full of young hipsters likely to take on a 50something year old ex-hippie now semi-neoconservative?
Maybe some of the CDs and IDs could give some sort of idea?
- Melanie0
I'd certainly hire someone like him on a contract/freelance basis. I don't think age is a deciding factor in someone's ability to get the job done.
- canuck0
Doesn't your country offer any type of retraining program/grant for laid off people?. Might be able to upgrade his skill set that way.
- yeah you could upgrade him to a gardener or a funeral director or something, or maybe he could learn to readmax_prophet
- Might be a start.canuck
- brandelec0
was he planning to retire soon? how does it work? does he have a pension setup?
- gung_hoek0
Age is a real problem, lack of degree not so much. He´d work for somebody 20, 30 years younger, kind of out of balance there with the life experience bit. When we are hiring, people over 30 must have killer portfolios to get an interview, over 40 is not even considered. Maybe it´s a culture thing.
- gung_hoek0
If he´s a badass developer though, he should stick with that IMO. If he rocks assembler, then switching to something more popular like deep PHP or something like that should be a piece of cake for him. Don´t know how the market is in the UK, but here developers are still very sought after. We tried for a year, couldn´t fill a PHP position, all talent was bought out by the big firms.
- uberdesigner0
if he's sharp and on his game he shouldn't have a hard time finding a job fixing old systems
- rson0
How far away is he from retirement?
- rounce0
He does have a pension but he's only really been saving since he had to settle down once I was born. So I doubt it'd go very far.
He has been wanting to move to the states for a while though so might that be more or less of a possibility given the current climate?
- bad time to move to the states. the economy is really shit right now.armsbottomer
- cannonball0
He's not fired yet. Tell him to test the water when he has clear head, and start considering the alternatives when in front of a cup of tea at home, but I think what's most important for him is to keep focused and let everyone know that he's in the game hardcore.
If the company is firing people to trim the fat, they're definitely not going to shell out on a new enterprise system of software, which from what it sounds like, makes your dad the keymaster.
Know where you stand, and take some refreshers for the coding skills, in case work needs it, is what I'd say.
- Corvo20
Start-up a small training firm for kids 6-10? Doesn't take a lot of money and you'd probably get support from many of the EU training programmes. It's not very challenging at start, but there's a market for it and, as a tutor, you have a lot of time to freelance. I'm thinking of doing this (building a small school) in a few years. I'm tired of working for other people, giving them ideas and being paid shit, neglecting my freelance time. After all, all of the expertise is yours, not guy's who is paying you.