Age and employment in the Netherlands

Bill Sloman · 2012-09-03T19:59:59+00:00

I've complained here before that Dutch personnel departments don't hire people over 45 and try to get rid of older employers.Today's NRC Handelsblad reports independent support for this point of view.Apparently Joop Zinsmeister - a lecturer at the Hoogeschool van Amsterdam - shares this preception, and last week he earned a Ph.D. from the Radboud University in Nijmegen (where I worked from 1993 to 1999) with a thesis entitled "Oud is wisj genoeg" (Old is wise enough), which basically spells out what personnel departments think about older employers - they don't like them - and how they act on their beliefs - they encourage them to retire.-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

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Les Cargill 14 years ago

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These days? I made the jump 27 years ago, while still an undergrad.

Not... really. There's about 20-40 hours of supporting math & science classes than really aren't on the requirements list. You can get a

*degree* on schedule, but you really oughta five-year-it if you want to do it for a living.

If the person just wants to do webby-this or apps-that, there might be a shortcut. but i bet they end up doing back-end, and that actually gets pretty deep.

BSCS plus an MSEE seems a pretty good foundation.

What's different now is that we were all warned repeatedly that we were gonna be learning the trade for at least five years out of school. Kids now aren't as much. We also had the rise of DOS as a shield - you could make anything work in DOS if you had the right books. I suppose Linux serves that role now. But we could fake it until we made it on DOS.

I keep thinking there will be a shortage of hardware engineers, but there doesn't ever seem to be one. The "shortages" of software people are generally pretty much political - you get Esther Dyson and her ilk lobbying for more H1B slots.

-- Les Cargill

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robertbaer 14 years ago

depending on context

a baxandal tone control or whatever,

working young and you with the Phdee in chemics can make something like that a reality,

production line.

1) "Ageism" is rampant here in the states; has been for at least 30 years. One waltzes into the hiring doors of a prospective employer and after ten seconds (or less) of seeing you are old (ie: over 40), they say you are overqualified and boot you out the door. 2) How about a Wolf Pregnancy Pill that allows women to get children in just 2 months? Or a Baby Factory Deluxe Pill that does everything in a month?

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krw 14 years ago

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I looked up the numbers on the BLSsite, for another reason, a few weeks ago. There are something like 350,000 programmers to 170,000 engineers (all varieties). At my PPoE, I could easily keep three embedded programmers busy. There were two electronics types and four embedded programmers, so I wasn't very busy. ;-) Where I am now, the numbers are easily 10-15:1.

That doesn't change the fact that hardware types are hard to find.

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krw 14 years ago

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That's the situation today. What's going to happen when we retire?

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krw 14 years ago

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impossible

I started to make the jump but flinched at the last minute, several times, actually. I'm certainly glad I didn't go through with the change. I

*despise* C.

Cheaper to teach, not to get a shingle. BTW, 4 years was more or less normal when I was in college. Five years was normal when my brothers were in college. ABET demanded that the requirements change if they were to continue offering a BS.

I think the other way is better, particularly if you're going to say with software.

;-)

There certainly seems to be a shortage of hardware types. I get enough people calling me and I had *no* problems getting a job last year, even in this rotten economy.

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krw 14 years ago

depending on context

like a baxandal tone control or whatever,

working young> and you with the Phdee in chemics can make something like that a reality,

production line.

If you consider "reverse ageism" to be ageism, perhaps. ;-)

Old wives tale.

Huh?

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robertbaer 14 years ago

depending on context

like a baxandal tone control or whatever,

working young>> and you with the Phdee in chemics can make something like that a reality,

production line.

Not so, experienced that; exact words of overqualified used as mentioned.

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Jan Panteltje 14 years ago

On a sunny day (Tue, 04 Sep 2012 17:39:10 -0700) it happened " snipped-for-privacy@teranews.com" wrote in :

depending on context

like a baxandal tone control or whatever,

working young> and you with the Phdee in chemics can make something like that a reality,

production line.

Wrong naming, too close to 'cry wolf' and nothing came out ;-) Concorde pill?

Or a Baby Factory Deluxe Pill that does everything in

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Jan Panteltje 14 years ago

PS there could be a FTL (causality breaking) pill, where the baby is born before you had sex ;-)

(And you can decide then afterwards if it was worth it, at even higher acceleration you see your kid become president of the US, decide ....)

I have seen a documentary with Hawkins where he states time travel is not possible. His reasons are insanely stupid[1], he fails to see the bigger picture.

Man what a quack science is sold to the public these days.

[1] I am not saying possible / impossible, just that he has no clue.

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petrus bitbyter 14 years ago

"Jan Panteltje" schreef in bericht news:k24ab8$3j9$ snipped-for-privacy@news.albasani.net...

No need for that. There is a uturine replicator already, invented by Lois McMaster Bujold. You have still nine months to go but not to carry. Bodybirths are out.

petrus bitbyter

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Winston 14 years ago

(...)

Actually they don't allow you *in* the door in the first place. Older workers are completely invisible.

If you are 22 and willing to work for chump change, they will bring you in for an interview. If you are 24 and will happily commit felonies for your boss's boss, you'll be hired.

--Winston

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krw 14 years ago

depending on context

like a baxandal tone control or whatever,

working young>>> and you with the Phdee in chemics can make something like that a reality,

production line.

Sure, I've experienced it. I've also experienced exactly the opposite, more. Why would you want to work where they don't want you?

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krw 14 years ago

That's probably true if you have no marketable skills.

Absurd.

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John Larkin 14 years ago

view.

depending on context

like a baxandal tone control or whatever,

invented

working young>>>> and you with the Phdee in chemics can make something like that a reality,

production line.

If you are useful (namely, you will be a net asset to an employer) there is someone who will be smart enough to employ you. Small companies, without hiring rules or an HR department, is the best place to look.

John Larkin Highland Technology Inc www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com Precision electronic instrumentation Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators Custom timing and laser controllers Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

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krw 14 years ago

view.

depending on context

like a baxandal tone control or whatever,

invented

working young>>>>> and you with the Phdee in chemics can make something like that a reality,

the production line.

My CPoE is *not* small and certainly does have an HR department (ten people, or so, down the hall), however they value experience over a couple of bux an older employee costs. They aren't unique. In fact, it was the middle-sized companies where I found the age discrimination. Again, why would I want to work there?

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John Larkin 14 years ago

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We start charging $200 per hour as consultants.

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com http://www.highlandtechnology.com Precision electronic instrumentation Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators Custom laser drivers and controllers Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links VME thermocouple, LVDT, synchro acquisition and simulation

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Gib Bogle 14 years ago

That's my situation. Once you are financially secure boredom is the biggest threat.

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krw 14 years ago

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impossible

When I retire, I don't want to work that much. ;-)

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John Larkin 14 years ago

the top"

impossible

At $200 per, you don't have to. I can imagine not working 40 hour weeks, but still doing an intense design now and then. You can only ski half the year, and golf and cruise ships look horrible to me.

One age issue is that, if you're over 60 or something, some employers will worry about how long you'll be around (and about the cost of your health insurance maybe.) Of course, youngsters may not be around for 5 years either.

One advantage older folks have (and should mention to employers) is that we tend to value documentation more than beginners, which means that, even if we retire or die or something, we're more likely to leave good documents and procedures behind.

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com http://www.highlandtechnology.com Precision electronic instrumentation Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators Custom laser drivers and controllers Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links VME thermocouple, LVDT, synchro acquisition and simulation

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Bill Sloman 14 years ago

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That's how I got hired at 58 in the Netherlands, There aren't that many small companies in the Netherlands who can afford a full-time electronic engineer - Haffmans, who did hire me, didn't usually keep one on the staff - and when I came back on the job market at 61 I needed even smarter people, and it turned out that there weren't enough of them around to let me get another job.

You are talking about the tail of the distribution here, and there's just not enough area under it when the whole population is only 17 million. Granularity sucks.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

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