Suddenly she was looking for a job in Silicon Valley, and she was over 50.
In an effort to keep her twenty- and thirty-something colleagues thinking of her as an older sister rather than a mom, she goes out of her way to socialize in the break room or at company events.
At Silicon Valley companies, the median employee is more likely to be 31, 30, 29, or younger, according to researcher PayScale.
The plaintiffs are seeking class-action status on behalf of workers 40 and older who were laid off and replaced by younger employees.
Many older tech workers are just going to greater lengths to seem younger as they try to win over potential bosses younger than their kids.
Besides the standard preinterview tricks-listing only recent jobs on résumés, freshening online profile photos-job seekers are investing in retraining, creeping on potential employers, and changing their appearances in all kinds of ways, including plastic surgery.
At ProMatch, a state-funded job counseling and networking program in Sunnyvale, Calif., Robert Withers advises his mostly middle-aged or older clients to cut anything on their résumés that's more than 10 years old, to use a professional photographer for their LinkedIn headshots, and to hang out in the parking lots of places where they'll be interviewing to see what the people there wear.
One 60-year-old software engineer, fired in January after seven years at a chipmaker in San Jose, now wears casual button-downs, khakis, and sneakers to interviews, studies embedded systems at a local extension school, and has started working out and dyeing his gray hair a dark auburn.
"It's smart to stay current and look as young as possible if you want to keep working in an industry where so many people are in their 20s," he says.
The bottom line: Older workers booted from Silicon Valley jobs are seeking restitution or, more often, going to great lengths to seem younger.
] The median U.S. worker is 42 At Silicon Valley companies, the median employee is more likely to be 31 (Apple), 30 (Google, Tesla), 29 (Facebook, LinkedIn), or younger, according to researcher PayScale.
] From 2008 through last year, the Valley’s 150 biggest tech companies faced 226 complaints of age discrimination filed with the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, 28 percent more than complaints of racial bias and 9 percent more than those of gender bias.
ID: 5357
NAME: its-tough-being-over-40-in-silicon-valley
DESCRIPTION: ] by Carol Hymowitz, Robert Burnson @bloomberg.com - OP's explore the state of the job market for this age group in silicon valleys tech industry and how older workers are dealing with the situation.
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STATUS: Write
PRIORITY: -5
OWNER ID: 75