Ask HN: Retired engineers, are you being asked to return to work?

84 points

3 years ago

Several years ago, I was pushed out of my full-time job, along with all other engineers over 55. Similar situation for four of seven colleagues in our consulting consortia, where we do occasional side jobs. Our consortia previously numbered 13, but four had got their fill of American employers and went back to their home countries, while two 'near-shored' themselves into Mexico and Argentina.

For last three months, phone has been ringing and email is full of both contract and full-time offers. I have doubled fees and am more selective (fishing and reading and harassing my wife are my preferred tasks). None of this made sense when you look at reports of the thousands of people being kicked to the curb (but maybe that's particular to coders and not hardware engineers). But I did see this:

businessinsider.com/baby-boomer-retirement-surge-spark-forever-labor-shortage-jobs-workers-2023-5

Older workers, are you being sought after? Do you think that gen X and Y will have less stressful employment situations, or will employers always be able to mitigate worker costs?

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