My father is nearly 70. He works as a Cloud DevOps engineer for a large hospital. He seems really troubled with his current job, especially the fact that the people he work with don't value good engineering (my interpretation). He wants to move to a more tech/engineering driven company, but obviously with his age this is tough. He always talks about how he wants to move to a better job, but then says there's no point at his age. I do think he's a really competent engineer (I say this as, I think, a fairly competent software engineer myself, currently working at a major-ish tech company), and so I'd like to see him work somewhere he can thrive but worry it might be too late. Any advice on this?<p>Edit: Don't mean to be cynical, but as a potential plus, he does look quite young for his age (I'd say a solid 10-15 years)
I do a lot of cloud infrastructure and system admin, at 62. I freelance so no one cares about my age, only what I can deliver. I see lots of freelance opportunities for that work because many companies don't need full-time, can't afford, or can't find people.
This post made me happy, just to know that there are 70 year olds working in software at the IC level. The oldest I have seen in my companies is probably 60 max - and I found a correlation between older people working in tech, and working as a freelancer / contractor. Probably because they have built up an expertise in an area so they can, plus enjoying the flexibility when you are possibly less reliant on the money (older kids, etc.). I want to see more people this age in tech, doing the coding / ops!<p>As for advice - I am not sure! Just keep applying. Don't let the age be a factor for him, and then if it is a discrimination factor for employers then it is unfortunate but keep applying anyway. There are plenty of people who appreciate talent.
What does he mean by a more tech/engineering driven company? Do you have examples? Does he mean AWS or Oracle or Azure or GCP?<p>Does your dad (and the cloud devops team) work with folks at their cloud provider and is it one of the big ones azure, gcp, aws. If he has close relationships with them then that might be a way in. Or is it a 3rd party contractor running the hospital-cloud interface?<p>There is a lot of engineering to be done at the interface level even at the devops level. Right now cloud "devops" for hospitals is a big growth area and since he has experience in in that environment, I would think the bigger cloud providers would want his expertise as a solutions/support engineer.<p>The other thing for him (and maybe you) to do would be to start a 3rd party cloud/devops integration company!<p>There are also med-tech companies that deliver services through the cloud as well. Devops itself is arguably being eaten by software as things progress (as devops ate sys admin).
He's 70 and if he's been in engineering for a while I'd guess he's built up a good nest egg. And he could get Social Security if he's not already getting it. Why not quit and start his own company?
What has he done in his career? It would be easier to help with a bit of history here. What did he enjoy the most? What did he feel he was best at? Why is he still working and not in retirement?