Say what?
Yes, I too am in the 50+ age group and finding work is like pissing dry ice, painful as f*ck!
I hit 50 in the UK and struggled to find a job, the only "old guys" around when I went for interviews were those retired coppers who do security at the reception desks of the companies I went to for interviews
On a lighter note, I relocated to mainland Europe in July 2014 and was faced with a language barrier too! But, I have just landed a job in a data centre as a "data centre engineer".
The job is for an U.S. based SaaS/Cloud company who has quite a bit of kit in Frankfurt and Amsterdam and one of the biggest issues they have is the language barrier when hiring agency engineers for a day, so even though I am "overqualified" but I am still employable, why?
It seems as if the IA is not capable of plugging in cables, racking and stacking and doing the physical match and patch, storage array config type stuff that will always need to be done by someone. Sure with VMware, MS and Cisco it's simplified and can be automated.... but... the devil is in the detail and although I am not as young as most doing this work, "old guys" my age don't jump ship to new jobs like the youngsters do and that counts for a lot...
So, if you're in the 50+ bracket, not too proud or afraid to do do the physical stuff, not worried about "job titles", don't mind earning a few £K (or €K) less per year and tenacious enough, there is a job out there somewhere!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
