Age Discrimination is Real

This is a topic I have debated about covering for a long time but avoided due to the sensitivity of the subject. However, after having this come up repeatedly in conversations with people in my age group I decided to take the plunge.

Throughout my career I scoffed at the concept of age discrimination until I experienced it myself several times over the last few years of my working life. Hiring managers would go through the motions and interview me for roles to cover the HR bases, but over and over it was a younger person, or someone who checked more boxes, who got the job, whether or not he or she was better qualified (and if the winner was better qualified, I was OK with coming in second - which I did on most occasions). A friend told me flat out that they were looking for people with a “longer runway” when I interviewed with him for a higher level role. In that case the given reason was that the directors and VPs in that area were all over 50 and they wanted to build bench strength. Maybe, but that pushes aside the notion that the best candidate will get the job.

There could be several reasons for preferring younger candidates, and longer-term bench strength is certainly a valid one. Other not-so-solid reasons include that younger people come cheaper and may present a more diverse candidate pool which allows a company to check more boxes thus meeting HR, PR, and other requirements. One thing is clear in corporate America; older workers are rarely valued for their experience, knowledge, and ability to teach younger workers to accelerate their development and growth. All things one would think companies would strive for in order to drive top and bottom line growth.

What amazed me was the number of people I know who have experienced the same thing across a wide array of large companies. From being told there was no point in applying for roles to having career paths shut off shortly after hitting 50. Many of those I’ve spoken with are headed for early retirement as soon as financially feasible, with any loyalty to their employer tied only to hitting that magic age. Is it any wonder that so many older workers retired early during the pandemic? Why stick around when your skills, experience, and knowledge are no longer appreciated. And when you can re-invent yourself while enjoying the benefits of retirement.

At the risk of upsetting some readers I will add another issue faced by many who, like me, are in the so-called “overrepresented” group. Under the misguided notion of fairness, those in such groups are passed over in favor of those in “underrepresented” groups. With the focus on quotas and optics instead of on getting the best person in the job. It’s ironic that those pushing this concept don’t see that discriminating against any group to favor another never works out, and it will not accomplish the stated goal. Companies are so focused on this that they are sacrificing results, and in the end short-changing their stockholders and employees.

Don’t misread my words. Equality is the only path to progress. In the corporate setting this would result in the best candidates getting the job every time no matter what boxes could or could not be checked. In this case “best” is based on the current needs for the position. Maybe it’s diversity, maybe it’s experience, maybe it’s an outside perspective, maybe it’s relationships with stakeholders, maybe it’s something else. Whatever “best” is, the company and its employees will benefit most with this model when pulling from a diverse pool of candidates. And a diverse pool includes those in both “underrepresented” and “overrepresented” groups.

Lest anyone reading this thinks I’m just grinding my axe, checkout the article in the link below that exposed ageism at work at IBM.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ibm-executives-called-older-workers-dinobabies-who-should-be-extinct-in-internal-emails-released-in-age-discrimination-lawsuit/ar-AATNMUo?ocid=hponeservicefeed

For those of you who are shaking your heads thinking “this will never happen to me or in my company”, I hope you are right but I’ll bet it will. I felt the same way until it hit home. The good news is that retirement, particularly early retirement, is an opportunity to reinvent yourself. When one door closes another (or sometimes several) opens. Walk through that door and be the best candidate for your new role.

www.RetiredandInspiredat55.com 3-28-2022