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If your significant other is a woman, there's also the double-whammy of sex
discrimination in a male-dominated field. That's a whole discussion in
itself.
My advice would be to use that accounting experience as a strength. Lots of
small software companies have accounting functions as an integral part of
their software, and having programmers and designers with real-world
accounting experience could be a benefit.
Cindy Kight
Technical Communications Manager
RMS Group - Gilbarco, Inc.
Glendale, CA
-----Original Message-----
From: CB Casper [mailto:knowone -at- surfy -dot- net]
Sent: Friday, September 27, 2002 8:38 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Re: Job market and potential age discrimination?
This is a very real question in our household.
My SO is returning to the job market after taking
15 years off to rear kids, with a bit of recent
part time bookkeeping to keep up the skills, and
is changing career paths from accounting & auditing
(internal CPA) to programming.
How much chance for finding programming jobs a year
from now when schooling is done, with an excess of
young programmers available right now?
It's scary to think about how easy discrimination
would be and how easy to justify hiring young
programmers with little real world work experience
over a newly trained, but older programmer with
10 years of work experience.
But how many of them have real experience with
accounting and auditing practices? Few, I suspect.
Finding the company that needs the combination of
programming and good accounting and auditing
skills may be tough, but definately a marketable
skillset.
Find an edge, find something to differentiate
yourself from the herd of applicants, and ye
shall find success.
Ask this question again in about a year and a
half, and I can provide a reality check.
CB
-----------
Bruce asks:
Is age discrimination real? Or are those of us
who are middle-aged simply watching ourselves
in a mirror?
I'm not saying that age discrimination doesn't
happen in the profession. But I do wonder how
often we see it when it isn't there.
--
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