- Many professions become more popular as they get older, but why does the IT industry stop at the age of 35?
- Do I still have a chance to continue doing IT at the age of 35?
- Where do Internet workers over 35 go?
Most recruitment requirements will set an age watershed to isolate older job applicants, and in most recruitment requirements, this cold dividing line will be drawn at 35 years old. In the perception of most Chinese, 35 is the age of gradual peace: youth is a thing of the past, restlessness gradually subsides, life is a foregone conclusion, life’s plasticity is reduced, rest and rest in the repetition day by day, ready to welcome The coming of the year. Compared with the activeness of young people and the stability of middle-aged and old people, people over 35 are more like a transparent vulnerable group.
Is 35 years old really a watershed in life? This article reveals for everyone where the 35-year-old IT person is going.
The 35-year-old curse of IT people
The 35-year-old became a "cruel" age. I don't know when it started. If the 35-year-old middle wave is not paying attention, he may be beaten on the beach by the front and back waves, and there will be no waves left.
The mid-life crisis is already a common social problem, but for the IT industry, the 35-year-old's sense of crisis seems to be particularly heavier.
The 35-year-old is a well-defined watershed in the workplace, and the most embarrassing one is "not being high, not being low." If you have not been promoted to the top management when you reach the age of 35 or 40, you will face the risk of unemployment and elimination by society.
The impact is not limited to the workplace. On a social platform, a programmer said angrily that the new friends who met were concerned about the law of "programmers retire at the age of 35", and the relationship was about to die.
As I approach 35 years old, my anxiety becomes stronger. Open the related topic pages of many social platforms, you are easily infected by all kinds of worrying emotions, 35+ programmers are annoyed by unemployment, and even 20+ young people are beginning to worry about losing their jobs in the future...
It's like knowing all the truth but still having a bad life. The "magic" of middle-aged anxiety is that when you are in it, you know it is a normal phenomenon, but it is difficult to escape the "palm" of negative emotions. At this time, the less you can be a slave of emotions, adjust your mentality as soon as possible to prevent immersion in it.
In fact, most ordinary people live a life of "pushing wheels" every day. Too many worries can increase the pressure. They should pay more attention to the most practical things that are available in front of them, keep improving themselves, and do everything they want.
Does the Internet need middle-aged IT people?
Looking back and reflecting on it, why is 35 the end of the programmer's career?
On the surface, this is a dilemma in personal career development. The deeper reasons are not unrelated to the current fierce employment environment, which is largely the result of the "reversed" market.
Huawei dismisses 35-year-old employees and compulsory retirement compensation for 45-year-old employees; Tencent abolished 10% of executives and dismissed 35+ employees... Today's rapidly iterating Internet and workplace environment are sending a signal to middle-aged people-"You old". As Ma Huateng said, perhaps you did nothing wrong, but you are too old.
"Don't want middle-aged people over 35, no matter how cheap they are." Although there is no clear text, the 35-year-old law is already a "hidden rule" in the recruitment standards of domestic technology Internet companies.
Young people are able to repair the 996 welfare report. They do not have high salary requirements. Middle-aged people's energy and physical strength have both declined. Family burdens have dragged down the growth space, and the salary requirements are still high, so the "olive branch" is more extended to young people.
The main thing blocking the job search of older employees is the recruitment process.
Inquiry about Boss Direct Employment and found that some companies directly specify the age range on the recruitment JD. One of the job requirements for a software company to recruit senior programmers is "more than 3 years of experience, under 40 years old". The recruitment JD of an education company requires “talks for those who graduated in 18 years and under 35 years old”. The reason for the age of the HR remark card is because “older ranks may not be able to hold”.
When you reach the age of 35+, if you look for a job, the market's expectations will become higher. This may not be simply called "bias" or "discrimination."
Different companies have differentiated requirements and cost considerations for different technical positions. If a technical post does not require high skills, considering the cost-effectiveness, the company is more willing to spend less to hire a suitable person. If 30+ engineers are still doing basic work, they are obviously not competitive with young people. For those positions with high skill requirements and high cost of making mistakes, companies are more inclined to spend more money to find an experienced person.
When recruiting people, I found that there is actually a shortage of people in the market, but many college students cannot find jobs. This is not a contradiction. Many programmers have written on their resumes that they have done many projects, but when I really chatted, I found that he did not go deep. What the industry really needs is talents with rich experience who can actually solve problems.
From another perspective, the market’s "survival of the fittest" mechanism is not all bad. It can spur programmers to continuously improve themselves and form their own competitive advantage.
How to break the 35-year-old law
The 35-year-old law is like a sword of Damocles hanging high above the head, the most "torturous" state of hanging. But time is always passing, and no one can avoid the advent of 35.
If an IT person grows up and only repeats basic tasks every day, then when the age of 35 comes, there is a high probability of a crisis.
To fight the 35-year-old crisis, we cannot fight an unprepared "war". The most important thing is that you must have a clear life orientation for yourself, "You had better understand before the age of 35 that any industry and any position can create miracles."
If you really love technology and want to develop in the technical field for a long time, you must continue to learn so that you can accumulate technology and have a systematic understanding and cognition. If you have the ambition to transform management, you must also prepare accordingly and pay attention to cultivating your own management thinking. For ordinary programmers who feel that doing this business is not particularly outstanding and relatively weak in competitiveness, it is wise to prepare Plan B in advance, explore a second career, and seek the right time for transformation.
1
Build a network
Regarding networking, it’s easier said than done. Here are some tips for building relationships:
Share what you’re reading with colleagues. You can say, "I read this and think you might like it too." Technical articles usually resonate and help you build relationships.
Affirm the work of others. If you read someone’s work, like it and actively comment. They spend time creating content, just want someone to watch it. Your comments are very helpful for making friends.
Once the pandemic subsides, go to the party. Even if you don't talk for the first few times, someone will see you and talk to you.
Join and stay active in groups on websites such as LinkedIn. Click the "Connect" button and write a sentence as a personal profile. It doesn't need to be fancy. It may be "I have read your blog. Very good. Let's make connections" to
help others. Whether you are responding to a request for help or helping a colleague hand in hand, this will be of great help.
2
Looking for a mentor
A good mentor will shape your development path, and will take you back in the right direction when you go wrong.
Their past is a treasure of wisdom. Not only will they share many battle scars, but they will also tell you the lessons they learned. The advantage of this is that you don't need to go through the same detours. At the same time, they will guide you to set goals like a beacon. However, the key is to make a plan and set some measurable goals. This not only maximizes your efficiency, but also makes it easier for your mentor to work with you. Make a plan and talk about it; tell them about your experience and the challenges you are facing; describe the project you are working on and learn from their past projects. A mentor is an investment that makes you better and faster.
After your future mentor agrees, you can make the following plan:
Make a plan for talking time.
Write down an outline of the goals you want to achieve in 2-3-5 years.
Set digital goals or improvement goals. For example: promotion from senior engineer to architect within two years; salary increase by 20%; becoming a project supervisor and so on.
3
Create a valuable work history
In the future, you need to be valued. Think of it as a dream board-it reflects your achievement goals, the function is that it can state your achievements in the best way. But if you were to write, what achievements would you write about?
Some examples were randomly selected from the Internet:
using Objective-C and Swift, Cocoa and some open source libraries to develop native iOS applications.
Generate a Java-based BDB storage engine service for the MySQL storage engine plug-in.
Responsible for designing, developing and hosting various websites and web applications in LAMP and WAMP environments.
Do these look great? It looks good, but compared with the following:
A virtualization strategy (VMware) was developed, which has saved the company an estimated $300,000.
Redesigned and optimized the algorithm to reduce advertising overspending from 24% to 2.3%.
Increased productivity by 650% by establishing agile development practices.
Migrating the data warehouse to the cloud increased customer coverage and reduced IT costs by 30%.
If you were hiring a leader, who would you choose?
Your resume style should reflect your career direction, and those who screen your resume will want to know what you can do and what characteristics you have. Technical terms can be helpful on your resume, but if you want to get a high salary, run yourself or influence others, you should clearly state the value of what you can do.
In short, whether you continue to stick to the technological path or transform, it is most important to follow your own heart and desires, and continuous learning is indispensable to break the 35-year-old paradox. The business world is changing rapidly, and we must keep up with the pace in order not to be abandoned by the times.
To overcome the 35-year-old phenomenon, in addition to personal efforts to break through the professional bottleneck, a good public opinion environment is also needed to not "demonize" the 35-year-old.
More importantly, the workplace ecology needs to be further improved. It is hoped that companies will create a fairer and more benign employment opportunity and employment environment for older technical people, and give older programmers more tolerant and open space.
It is understood that in the United States, Europe and other countries, in order to reduce experience interference and employment discrimination, age is not allowed on job resumes, and age is also avoided. It is illegal to involve age. This means that job seekers rely solely on works to speak.
"One size fits all" for employees over the age of 35 may cause companies to miss out on those talents who are truly experienced. We call on domestic Internet technology companies not to restrict the age too much when recruiting technical personnel. For example, in the recruitment of JD, age regulations are not written, and the interview process does not ask for age as much as possible. Just as the color and race are not asked when recruiting, age should gradually avoid becoming a distracting factor.
We are glad to see that some companies have already made changes. In the recruitment of JD, a company stated that it is a whitelisted company of Zhihu 995 programmers. The company does not have 996 and advocates happy jobs. Another start-up company "has a good head" specifically emphasizes that it recruits programmers over 35 years old, because the CEO started his business when he was 35 years old and couldn't find a job.
In fact, in this context, if you love technical work, even if you don’t switch to management at the age of 35, you may not develop badly if you stick to the frontline position.
Whether to transform or not, when you make a decision, you can first think about these two questions: first, what position do you want to transfer to and assess whether you have the skills required for that position; second, whether you love the industry and whether Willing to always learn in this industry.
