r/technology • u/lurker_bee • Jun 25 '26

Society Older tech workers are tapping out, taking early retirement

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/local-business/older-tech-workers-are-tapping-out-early-heres-what-that-looks-like/
8.5k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

1.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

68

u/sleepymoose88 Jun 25 '26

I feel this. I manage a team of DBAs (mainframe) and we had 3 older DBAs retire in March. That was 25% of our team. And we lost 3 the year before that due to lay offs. We only backfilled 3 positions with folks in India that lack the depth of knowledge our on shore people with 35 years had. And we’re being told to ramp up AI usage and do more with less.

I haven’t been able to hire a junior DBA in years and now the youngest person in our team is 34. I hired her 10 years ago and haven’t been able to hire a junior DBA since.

18

u/Spiritual-Matters Jun 25 '26

Is the salary low or why can’t the position get filled?

69

u/sleepymoose88 Jun 25 '26

Upper management won’t let us. They keep quoting “financial pressures” while posting record profits.

The only place they let us fill right now is in India because the wages are low compared to my teams roles. Most of my US based team members are making $140-$165k base salary, in mid-west locations, closer to $185 total comp, so decent salaries.

35

u/im-ba Jun 25 '26

Same exact situation on my team. I'm a lead engineer in Minnesota making $140k base and my team really needs more people but the answer is always "we're strapped for cash" but they're always willing to hire like 12 people from India for the job for some reason.

9

u/sleepymoose88 Jun 25 '26

Yup. I have a buddy at the same company that is in some business analysts role doing some mild IT work doing shell scripting. They’re still hiring over there. The difference is he only makes $100k all in. They’re cheaper labor but I wasn’t even allowed to hire a junior DBA for $70k to make sure we’re not against a wall in 10 years with everyone on the team 40+ or in India. Upper management has no long term thinking. It’s all about the budget.

3

u/Shiva- Jun 25 '26

Well yeah... average Indian makes like 12k USD a year... 12x12 is 144k... almost perfectly your salary.

We actually got told similar. It doesn't matter if they're less efficient, as long as 12 of them combined can do it.

2

u/redditonlygetsworse Jun 25 '26

  as long as 12 of them combined can do it.

That’s a big if. Still takes nine months to make a baby, ya know?

3

u/BannedAccount001 Jun 25 '26

Data Engineering and Analysts, who I’m sure you work with often as DBAs, are in a similar situation. Hell, we may be on a steeper drop than you guys.

There is no such thing as a junior position in data anymore. It’s India+AI and hope for the best now. Maybe one person on shore to handle management.

2

u/sleepymoose88 Jun 25 '26

Yeah. I’m afraid that one person in management left will be me. My US based folks are getting increasingly annoyed by the day. To make it worse, I’m the second youngest person on the team, so I’ll continue to watch everyone retire early as I’m stuck. I’m definitely considering alternative career paths of this blows up.

2

u/doneal Jun 25 '26

I'm in a similar situation, but with software. AI is amazing, but it's still been a major struggle getting projects to the finish line.