http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/obama-gave-foreign-students-180000-u.s.-jobs-32b-in-lost-wages/article/2613146
All jobs end up being given to "fresh grads". Once over 40, laid off engineers find themselves jobless, even if they are eligible to do many of the jobs that are awarded to these fresh grads.
Same thing here in the Colorado Springs office.
The truth is those engineers at 40 years old who barely eligible for the work that fresh grads can also do
Most of the firmware, entry level software, and test engineering jobs do require STEM knowledge. These jobs can be done by those who are 20+ and can also be done by those who are 40+. Preference is given to 20+.
I'm over 40 and gainfully employed.
Will Apple be willing to hire the hardware and firmware engineers let go at Oracle?
When one technology dies or reaches its end of life and another is in its infancy, the engineers hired are all fresh grads. An Apple Hiring Manager told this to me - competition is very intense, I have a ton of fresh-grads roaring to go, who will work 17 hours a day and not go home. If you need a "life" you need to look elsewhere. This he said out of genuine concern and gave a frank state of affairs at whats going on at Apple.
I'm over 40 and gainfully employed. You need to sharpen the saw and keep your skills up to date. As people age some don't want to learn anything new and get stuck in their ways. Sure, they still need mainframe programmers but Very few are writing any new code on the mainframe. That's not where innovation is occurring. If you can keep your skills relevant then you shouldn't have a problem finding work. Just my 2 cents.
In my experience, programmers hired right out of college are really not very good. They lack experience in working in groups, the importance of documentation and code comments, and formal testing. They also make basic mistakes in algorithmic complexity. I saw plenty of this during my time at Oracle.
when all the EMEA support centers closed in 2014, 2015 and 2016, several support analyst (rdbms, oem) from india and egypt moved to the new support center in Utah. Other engineers from EMEA countries were asked to move to Utah, too. Most of them refused and found a new job very quickly in their respective countries.
You would be surprised to know how many foreign employees work in utah.
The truth is those engineers at 40 years old who barely eligible for the work that fresh grads can also do would be laid off in any other industry/country anyway. In a lot silicon companies if you are not able to get promoted to a certain level in 3 years you are gonna be letgo.