on Feb 21st, 2006Silicon Valley, Where Jobs Refers to More than a Brash CEO
When the phone rings, do you check caller ID before answering it? Is there anyone alive who doesn’t? If it’s not a telemarketer trying to sell you a new vacuum, and it’s not your daughter asking if you wouldn’t mind babysitting again, and if it’s not the doctor’s office calling to schedule that eye exam, then it just might be your old employer, wondering if you’d like to come back to work and show the hot shots how to really tweak the profit engine.
Since everyone will be working till their 85 anyway, you may as well say yes. I’d suggest bringing your own lunch though, because most of the programmers I know live on Red Bull and pizza. The other good thing: it means somebody else gets to mow the lawn, wash the car, do the laundry, go grocery shopping….
Mr. Geisen’s story highlights what some recruiters say is a budding trend in America’s high-tech capital: Silicon Valley — long famous for young, hard-driving engineers and brash entrepreneurs — is becoming friendlier to over-50 workers. The shift stands out all the more because during the Internet-start-up frenzy of the late 1990s, many older technical workers complained they couldn’t find work in a region with virtually no unemployment.
The easing job climate for older workers in one of the country’s most notoriously youth-hungry regions comes as the U.S. work force as a whole gets grayer. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says workers 55 and older accounted for 16.9% of the employed in January, up from 12.2% in January 1996.
Set to Be Put Out to Pasture? Think Again Tech-Heavy Silicon Valley Looks to Over-50 Set For Expertise and Wisdom
By PHRED DVORAK
Wall Street Journal, February 21, 2006; Page B8
Mindless Age Discrimination Is Getting Old — Older Workers On The Firing Line Once Again
by Beverly Goldberg
The immediate savings from letting older employees first go may be costly in the long term, says author Beverly Goldberg, who is a vice president of The Century Foundation and the author of Age Works: What Corporate America Must Do To Survive The Graying Of The Workforce. The effort to cut costs now may result in difficulty finding adequate numbers of workers in the future for a variety of reasons.
Goldberg urges companies to carefully think through such a decision before implementing it. NewsViews is a BH SmartDoc and provides valuable management commentary. Each NewsViews contains provocative reflections on current events in business — and why you should care.