I see constant IT job openings at the company that are being advertised in LinkedIn. Some are in Ford, AV, Credit, and Mobility. Is that because the company is really growing and hiring or is it because of constant turnover due to poor environment ?
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@babc+16LsCf0d What product was built in 6 months and is better than competitors?
I know of no Ford Product / App that meets that criteria. And what revenue does the product / App generate?
@babc, you dont understand. Its not that us old timers are unwilling to learn new things or adapt to change. This has to do with the fact that we have seen all of this fluff many times over the years. If you go to a restaurant 10 times and get food poisoning 7 of those times, you become jaded toward that restaurant, right? Its the same thing with us. We have lived through all the nonsensical ideas and we can see through the fog. As to your reference to Agile, its not a bad idea in certain circumstances, but it doesnt work everywhere. In my are its an abomination. As far as your no-age discrimination claim goes, that doesnt hold water either. Old timers have a pension on top of their SSIP and it is a huge expense for the company. If I remember correctly, the Ford Pension fund was 90% funded. If there are 10 billion in pension obligations, that means that there is $9 billion sitting in the fund that cannot be used for capital improvements, etc. The company wants to get those obligations off the books as soon as possible and that means getting rid of the older employees as close to legally as possible. And that is why those pesky age discrimination laws were enacted.
Dont worry, in 20 years you will see it too.
First of all to OP: positions are posted but there’s still a hiring freeze, so this is just grooming candidates for when hiring is allowed again.
Second: God y’all are jaded. I work in an agile team and our internal product has been built within 6 months and better than competitor products. Anyone that claims “age discrimination” is just someone too jaded to grow and understand that you need to adapt to the new way of working or get left behind. Anyone with a positive attitude and the drive to learn the new ways will have no problems with their career. Y’all with your “can’t teach an old dog new tricks” attitude can keep claiming you’re being discriminated for your age. Just know you’re actually just not using your knowledge right and are being let go for falling behind and getting paid too much to do so.
Agree with shoehorn comment.
Agile was not implemented properly.
People used Agile as an excuse to cut corners.
Also Agile was mostly fake in groups. Managers using buzzwords but continuing on doing things the way they wanted to.
Agile got shoehorned into Ford because some consultant convinced senior leadership that this is the wave of the future and this is how silicon valley does it. The problem is that it doesnt work in an integrated mainframe environment where you just cant release bits and pieces every 2 weeks. It just doesnt work that way when you have changes that require integration with many other systems. Rally is a farce because you end up doing meaningless work to make metrics look good.
"As a hiring manager I find that attitude and energy level are more important than age. I would rather hire an older person who has a positive attitude and passion for their work instead of a young green one. If you’re concerned that some companies bypass your resume because of age include only the last 15 or 20 years of work experience unless experience prior to that is pertinent to the skills of the potential job. That will get you past the resume scanners and once they talk to you they’ll see what you have to offer."
I would absolutely love to see the demographics of your teams(s). Maybe just maybe you would but your leadership team wouldn't- that and only that carries the day. Chances are you have very little say in who you hire. Sorry.
Yes, Rally/Agile really are bad. Not suitable for most of the IT work at Ford, and what we've achieved so far is less work, faster, and with poor quality. Go read the customer reviews of Fordpass at the Google or Apple stores if you don't believe me.
As a hiring manager I find that attitude and energy level are more important than age. I would rather hire an older person who has a positive attitude and passion for their work instead of a young green one. If you’re concerned that some companies bypass your resume because of age include only the last 15 or 20 years of work experience unless experience prior to that is pertinent to the skills of the potential job. That will get you past the resume scanners and once they talk to you they’ll see what you have to offer.
There are companies who are happy to hire skilled older workers with a positive attitude.
All the SRD in our department were over 50 and had a better job in under a month.
Funnily they were also all the best people in the department, so they were not critical Ford employees.
No one wants to hire anyone that is older. I have applied for countless positions, those I am more than qualified for, and never get the job. It is very easy to see how old a candidate is by the years of experience they have as part of the jobs on line application. Talk about age discrimination!
The reason you keep seeing postings is Ford IT is inefficient by management design. They carve up work so that person A can only do A, person B can only do B, person C can only do C. So even though work A is at most 200 hours a year, person A will expand that work to fill an entire year and then some.
In most companies IT person A will do A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I and J and do all efficiently and well.
Why does Ford management do this? Plain and simple to build their empires.
The sad side effect is they end up with inept staff as each person only has a small bit of knowledge and skill. I know several people who got a rude awakening when they left Ford and actually had to work every day and have a broad skill set.
If you really want to work in technology, go to work for a real technology company, which Ford is not and never will be. Ford is a vehicle manufacturer that has a wish to gather and find a way to sell data. Not a success so far, no light at the end of the tunnel.
It is not necessarily that Rally/Agile are bad. The problem is that management doesn't really want to change the way it creates incentives within the organization. It seems to be that they think that if they force their teams to use Agile ceremonies and put all their work into Rally, that they will get all these gains with no other effort on their part.
The problem is, if you still work the same way (with all the red tape/bureaucracy), it does not matter what tool you use or what the latest Agile fashion is. This is why people become jaded; I don't blame them. They see all this stuff as fluff, and it is hard not to if nothing fundamentally changes.
Could we benefit from some of the so-called transformation that is being suggested? Sure. But from what I can see, it is just going to be management forcing us to go through the motions while nothing that matters actually changes.
OP here. Thanks for the responses. I am also over 40 so I guess Ford will not be interested in my skills/experience. It's foolish that companies believe a 22 yr old is going to build them the next greatest thing since sliced bread.
They want us out because some of us old timers are set in our ways and dont buy into the latest fads. We laugh at Agile and Rally because we have seen all this stuff many times before. These methodologies all promise the moon and the stars and the end result is always the same..... more bureaucracy, less output and higher cost. SLC, SDLC (11 ring binders of instructions on how to manage a project), AMC/ASC/PTG (I forget what that fiasco was called), and then AD/AM. If I was in senior management, I would want to throw me out too.
No, your eyes are not lying - there are jobs available at Ford - just not for anyone over 40. Can’t be bothered to say, retrain, any experienced Ford employees to fill these positions?