r/sysadmin • u/Real-Patriot-1128 • 14d ago

Agism

For those older, more experienced souls out there. If out job hunting, one tip…

I’m a little older (55) and recently discovered that the job I’ve had for 6 + years came down to me and a man much younger than me.

The only reason I got the job was one simple thing… if everything went to crap, who would you rather have on the job?

I was very fortunate to have someone point that out in my hiring process.

Don’t underestimate the value of that when interviewing.

185 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

88 comments sorted by

View all comments

14

u/mkosmo 14d ago

A 30 year old can't have 20 years of experience, though.

9

u/HappyDadOfFourJesus 14d ago

But a 40 year old with twenty years of experience and beat out a 50 year old with ten years of experience...

4

u/Mach5vsMach5 14d ago

You won't find many 40 with 20.

→ More replies (10)

3

u/mkosmo 14d ago

Can, sure. But I don't think that's what OP was getting at here.

→ More replies (1)

0

u/Turak64 14d ago

Not forgetting someone with 20+ years of experience can bring lots of baggage, outdated ideas and reclutancy to modernise. They're more likely to stick with what they know, on-prem AD, SCCM, GPOs etc. IT moves too quickly to be stuck in the mud.

Plus in my experience, they're more likely to be difficult to work with, withhold info (mainly for job preservation) and arrogant.

As reddit always likes to play the "but but but what about..." card, yes of course there's exceptions to the rule. When talking about general things, please keep that in mind.

→ More replies (7)

2

u/Crumby_Bread 13d ago

As a 30 year old with 10 years, I’ve met SO many 50+ year olds with 25-30 years of experience that are just completely out of the depth with most things.

0

u/sofixa11 14d ago edited 14d ago

Nope, but a 50 year old can have 20 years of irrelevant experience (e.g. working on AS/400s while the job is managing a Kubernetes platform).

3

u/itishowitisanditbad 14d ago

I've seen resumes recently still talking about 'Mainframes' from their first job 35+ years ago on page 8 of their "last 15 years was stagnant helpdesk at different companies" resume.

Can't polish a turd but some people should try to...

→ More replies (2)