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-   -   The plight of IT professionals in their 40s (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shifting-gears/198522-plight-professionals-their-40s-22.html)

I'm wondering, this forum must be having quite a few folks who left IT industry to do their MBA, and if I'm not mistaken most of them came back to the same industry eventually.

What is their take on this entire matter, specially those from premier institutes?

Excellent point. Repaying debt is hard enough in a business where the debt is used to create an income generating asset. It is worse in a salaried environment where you assume your salary will continue through your life and keep increasing. For most it could be a reasonable assumption but I wouldn't use it to pile up consumer goods related debt. If we have to take on debt do it for buying a roof above our head.
Yes, yes, yes. It is only later in our lives that we realize that health is the greatest wealth.
By not getting into debt you took care of the 80%. Invest in one house at least in case you have not done so. Most of us were nuts in our 20s and were not wise enough to know it either.
Never ever too late. I started Yoga after I retired. And in a few months I can see the difference in my body. The body's recuperative powers to absorb healthy action is enormous.

I think it is my time to write a post in this thread

Last August I have joined this 40s IT club, however unlike any other person running on 40th birth year, I have completed 22 years of experience in this industry. If you do the math, you will realize that I have started working immediately after passing my 12th grade. Yes, that is true. I never entered a classroom to study my degree, but through correspondence education in commerce. Though my IT career started with India's first browsing center at Chennai (Cyber Globe India's Net Café), I was the luckiest to onboard what then became a boom for job seekers. While my fellow classmates were trying their luck studying in colleges, I was gearing up with my hands on experience as Browsing assistant, DTP Operator, programmer, system administrator, product designer and project manager etc.

Since I have started at the time of stone age in IT industry, I didn't have the option to pay all my earnings to EMIs, but to invest in early real-estate offerings clap:clap:

While talking about today's scenario in the industry, nothing is unexpected as the industry maturity is at a peak, it is evident that automation and consolidation of offerings tend to happen. Most of the human intelligence is now replaced by AI platforms that are slowly taking over the human contribution.

Forthcoming days are not only a threat for 40s IT professionals but overall, there will be a tsunami of job cuts due to most if not all of the L1/L2 activities going to machine operated systems.

I see not much hope for the thousands and thousands of engineers coming out of India if they are not putting themselves into application oriented engineering rather than rank or score or mark oriented degree programs.

Finally, I'm any day willing to retire. All I'm doing is sitting in the US for my kids to complete their 12th grade (My elder one is at 9th grade and younger one is at 7th grade) and milk the last bit of wealth to enjoy a retirement in sustainable businesses.

If you're an ex IT guy doing an MBA in a top 10-25 institute, your career options are as below
Marketing - if you have very low workex, you have a moonshot at getting into a marketing internship in a well know fmcg go, and if you convert that into a job, and survive the first few years , Life will be good. If you have > 2 years of workex, they'll assume that you'll hit your thirties the first few years of your job, want to get married, settle down etc, something you cannot do in a sales/marketing job until you're pretty high up.
Finance - If you can get your certifications and theory spot on, you're good to go for a core fin job (but this means that you will be drowning in books the first six semesters with no social life. else you can get into financial sales, but that's hell too compared to IT, I know of several who got back into IT after fin sales roles.
Operations - No shot at manufacturing sector. they hear you are from an IT sector, and its an instant bye bye. They'll not even bother explaining why.
BPO ops is always there, but I consider it a part of IT
HR - this is where there is actual opportunity - very few people get into HR (and I regret this now, especially seeing the HR opps floating around). a lot of Ex IT folks got into HR (and surprisingly guys are very much wanted, unlike the "HR is for women stereotype", and they are in pretty nice positions now)

I am now in my mid 40s and spent the last 22 years in IT/ITES. I did not get into programming at all. The last program i wrote was in Fortran in my engineering days :uncontrol

For the last 18 years, i have been constantly traveling with at least half the year staying in hotels and living out of the suitcase. I decided to change everything a few years back and got into Management Consulting. The state of affairs continued with more travel, longer travel and more work. But i did make a few changes to my life when i started my 40th year

1. Physical Fitness - Two decades of travel did not put me in a proper physical form. But then, there is no excuse for that. So i started running. I have been running for the last 5 years now. I don't do marathons, i just run. And two things happened. I became fitter and i became calmer and had an entire hour to myself to think

2. Time Capsules - I created time capsules. I stopped facebook and all associated social media chatter excepting Team-BHP. I started going out, met people socially, friends, strangers, parkbench squatters and a multitude of people. I listened to stories told by them and realized a lot of them are unhappy. Unhappy with quality of life, not the availability of money. I created time capsules for activities.

3. Changed my role - From jet setting consulting, i changed to backend operational controller job. Thanks to my firm providing this opportunity. I now work closer with leadership, but there is little stress as no clients to satisfy and zero travel. I work from home and if i miss people, i then go to office. I work on my own terms now although in a firm as a salaried employee

4. I bought in change at a personal level too. More hobbies to pursue, i am learning to play the veena although i am sure that i cannot do an "All around the watchtower" on a veena. I play with my son and his Lego and have become more creative than ever. I have time to write by poems now and indulge in some crazy cooking.

The crux i think is as follows

1. Identify if money is the key driver or not. If it is then plan to get it done as quickly as possible. As you hit your midlife you don't want to be burdened with debt and chasing the greenbacks. If it is not, then work for pleasure rather than for possessions.

2. Identify your passions and work towards fulfilling them. If it is road tripping do it. If you don't do it now, you can never do it in your 50s.

3. Get out as often as you can and meet real people. Talk about all things under the sun.

4. Be fit. If it means just walking do it. Walk to your kiranawallah, doodhwallah etc.

5. Lastly give back to society. You dont need to be a counsellor. You can be a listener too. Simple things like reading books and paper to the blind is just a start. Doesn't put pressure on you and you learn a lot too

Here's to welcoming the 50s which i am sure is going to be more pleasurable than the 40s.

Thanks for the insights, some of the options you mentioned are revealing like the HR one.

But apologies, I probably should have framed my query better. I wanted to understand from those relatively matured in their roles (let's say 6-8 years or more) who then went on to do their MBA. Can safely assume that they went to a premier institute, most likely spent 1 year, and went back to IT in a different role.

Just wanted to understand from those who took this kind of a step, what is their opinion on the anxiety raised on this thread. Did an MBA help, did it set them on a path where they feel more secure about the future(if so why or how), or was it just another addition to their EMIs with no apparent benefits in terms of being better equipped for future in this industry?

If you mean 1996, that's hardly the stone-age of IT industry. I started programming in 1989, on a PC with monitor/keyboard just like now, even I don't qualify. My business partner started programming with punch cards, that would qualify as stone age.

So you are looking at people who did MBA mid-career and stayed in IT with a different role? Ahem, I did that. I took up MBA after 11 years of experience. I thought it will give a leg-up in my job search when I return to India. However, I didn't know that the MBA I took was geared towards entrepreneurship. By the time I had finished 2/3rd of the course, I was no more thinking about a job. I ended up co-founding a company after I returned to India. It is completing 15 years in two months. So yeah, you can do MBA and stay in the same industry, but in a different role.

Hi,
Went through this thread in one go, and provides a really good insight into the industry to Newbie's like me. Will take note of all advice as i find my way through this industry.
I had but one question for the experts: I am not sure if this was brought up earlier elsewhere, but is the situation same across different sectors of the industry? I work in the VLSI domain of the semicon industry and wanted to know if it is any different here. From my viewpoint, there is a lot of consolidation in form of M&A and automation, but there also seems to be tremendous value for experienced and technical people. I might be wrong here, but i'm merely stating what i am seeing. Wanted to know if this is accurate?

P.S: I have around 7 years of experience with a semicon major in the vlsi domain.

https://bangaloremirror.indiatimes.c...w/67118323.cms

A potentially damaging life story averted in time. Kudos to the wife for having braved all the mental turmoil to go looking for her husband with the cops.

There is an interesting discussion started on
this thread
which I thought is very relevant to this discussion.

Be sure to read about my interaction with some hotshot IIMB folks in the same thread!

Today I was talking to a very old and close friend, in fact he is my classmate from primary school. So he is around my age, that means wrong side of 50.

He job vanished in 2020 when his company restructured and realigned their business to match Covid-19 reality. Since he was in management, getting a new job in 2021 became very hard. What made it extra hard was his age, and how corporate HR views professionals in their 50s.

Every resume sent via normal HR channels were rejected at filtering level, and he was informally told that they prefer 45-48 years for the role he was seeking. So the only way he could get some traction was by getting the resume directly to director level people bypassing the HR. This is possible only when you have some powerful contacts. However, even those directors would forward the resume to the HR to process it, and HR would try to block and delay it unless that director follows up. All because of his age.

But there is good news. After a year of relentless searching and shadowboxing with the HR, he landed a job with a huge MNC. clap: Finally a company judged him by his abilities than his age.

Glad he found a job. How did he manage to stay positive during that period? Did you get a chance to ask it?. That will help. One of my friends was in a similar position and he gave up after a few months. For people in 40's/50's, things are ok as long as the current job is stable. But the moment they try elsewhere, (voluntary or otherwise), they will face the reality, regardless of how good they are.

It appears, these days all companies use ATS (applicant tracking system) to filter out resumes. So, if the resume is not ATS complaint, it will never be looked at. What are some of the best tools to create ATS resume?. (Of course the best option would be employee referral)

Oh, he is a very dynamic person. An expert in non-IT people management all his career, including labor forces in thousands. So he was able to keep motivated with eternal hopefulness, despite the dread.

The panelists in the new company were surprised at the depth of his skill when they finally interviewed him. Someone with such a rich resume could be jobless for a year just highlights how bad the scene is for 50+ people looking for a job.

I often joke that I started a new company at age 50 in order to create employment for myself. But there is some truth in that joke. ;)

When my grandfather was working in a government as teacher, the retirement age was 55. So after retirement, he worked for another 5 years in a private school for a lower salary, by commuting 10kms each way in a cycle. The retirement age was set low because India at that time because government worried about providing adequate employment. Retiring folks early, opened up jobs for younger folks who will work for lot less. It was not done because the older professional couldn't contribute anymore.

Same principle is coming back these days. However, plenty of 50+ professionals have skills that can be very valuable to any employer. Unfortunately, most companies have calibrated their HR policies to totally tune out such professionals no matter what they are capable of. That is a real shame.

Will probably require a different thread, but recruitment itself is broken in most of the IT companies I've worked at so far. How do you say your "company values people" and "people are our greatest asset"...and then assign the least experienced HR people to recruitment, or worse- outsource recruitment to some shady body-shopping agency?! I've seen recruitment become some sort of 'punishment posting' for HR, or a place junior HR staff have to 'serve-time' before moving on to better roles. It's no wonder that they can't think outside some very narrow parameters when shifting through dozens of resumes everyday. It does get better when you interact with more senior people and the teams the candidate will actually work with later, but the initial screening and calls are handled by these type of roles and that's where a lot of suitable candidates are lost in the system just because their resume didn't have some 'desirable' keyword. Another downside to the 'filter on keyword' approach is that a lot of 'smart' candidates have figured that out and sprinkle keywords liberally- though once you interview them, you realize they don't have a clue what those even mean! It's a wasteful exercise and personally I see recruitment agencies as a waste of money...unless the idea is to just have warm bodies with 'x years of experience on y technology/buzzword' on the bench and use that to bill US clients!

The role I work at has some specialized tools, but like any other tool, they are just tools and anyone can pick them up in a couple of months. But almost every org I've worked at previously hesitated to get candidates on board who are otherwise well-suited for the job but just may not have the 'x years experience' with a particular tool. Some jobs have been so rigid that we've had to reject candidates who are obviously much more intelligent and better suited for the role in favor of a candidate who just happened to have the required experience on a particular tool...but was totally incompetent otherwise!

As a Head Hunter, I can fully understand your friend's situation.
No client wants folks above 50 years. In fact, today clients want folks who are under 45 years and less said about my startup clients, the better.

I really don't understand why organizations have such a bias for folks above 50 years. I have found them to be more mature, well experienced and offer a very different perspective in problem solving and driving a function.

In fact my first closure as a Head Hunter was with an out of work 55 year old professional. This gentleman had lost his job due to corporate restructuring and despite a lot of effort, he wasn't able to get another job. But he never lost heart and kept himself updated on the new tech and did pro-bono consulting when possible.
The position I was head hunting was for a C-Suite position in a listed company and it took a lot of persuasion on my part to convince the hiring manager (CFO) to even have an initial call. In the end all it took was one 45 mins discussion with the candidate to change their mind and the entire discussion process was completed within 8 days and the candidate joined on the 11th day. The changes brought on by this candidate for my client are beyond my client's expectations.

Post that, I have always routed for good folks irrespective of their age, education background and their current work status. Today I am at a stage, where my clients respect my word and agree for that initial discussion with candidates I recommend.

This is one of the reason why I insist on working with the Hiring Managers. The business folks understand the importance of the role and candidate, they will never base their decisions on trivial factors like age, compensation etc.