Ageism Rageism!

Having gone almost one year without any paychecks or consulting asssignments, and being rejected repeatedly with excuses such as being "Overqualified", or "Not a Good Fit", or "Professionally Obsolete", I decided to do something about this.

After all, one of my colleagues had quickly dropped thirty-five or more pounds, colored her blonde and gray hair black, and gotten a facelift operation on borrowed money just to get a job. In fact she also had to re-learn how to giggle, just to hide her actual age. She carefully described the painful steps she had gone through to "chop off" years from her age, and to appropriately act dumb proportionally to hide her superb experience that companies used to pay a mint to hire. "Never say in the old days, we did this work this way", she cautioned me. "Never mention anything about older technology" she mentioned in passing. Then as if she had remember a national security secret she raised her voice a bit and said, "Never", with a big pause combined with deep remorse. "Never, answer the question about your favorite TV show that may indicate your age!" "I know!", then after a deep breath and a big pause, she continued that "A recruiter tricked me with this question and guessed my actual age."

I heard about another colleague that shaved his head to get rid of "Discrimination Grays" and started to wear colorful shirts with colored T-shirts that showed when he did not completely buttoned his shirts to hide the fact that like me he is around sixty years old too. The fact that he had a patent grant had to be hidden too since that would clearly self criminate him and deluge his "Advanced" age! He could only list one of his published books for the same reason.

What a travesty!

According Richard Bolles the famous author of "What Color is Your Parachute?" books, at this age people are to use all that valuable experience they had and create masterpieces. The analogy he used in his book was that, just like an opera, this advanced age is when we create arias in concerts. Arias that are the peak, the optimal that experience can produce. Richard Bolles is internationally known as the authority in career development and management. "Mr. B." as he is affectionately known among his followers of many years, including me, knows what he is talking about.

Against my own best judgment that I should use my gold experience as a Senior Management and Technology Consultant and continue my own entrepreneurship consulting practice, I decided to mimic my colleagues, and "Age Sanitized" my resume to just show "Recent Experience", and removed graduation dates. I offered to work as a volunteer for no money in a PHP professional membership group in San Francisco. I got several takers. It was for free after all!

One well funded startup in downtown Palo Alto, CA enthusiastically invited me to meet with them. When the CEO who is less than half my age saw me, could not hide his surprise, disappointment, and disbelief. Yet, he tried to go through the motions as best he could. We started with some small talk about American Idol TV show. I had taken my colleague's advice to heart. Then, we moved to his questions. But, after thirty years of experience, I could easily see his struggle to find right words to politely and yet not abruptly terminate this awful waste of time.

He disappointedly finally concluded that I "Look OK" to him, but he had to get "Permission of his CTO". He even bothered to ask for my availability for the next week. We shook hands, and he hurriedly walked me through the several cubicles occupied by employees who seemed to be at most twenty-five. One of them pretended that he had not even noticed this "Old Token" passing by, and the other did a half hand gesture of sort of waving.

The verdict came in a week later after the CTO decided not to even meet with me.

I was "Overqualified, and, Not a Good Fit." This came as a double rejection! I guess they were telling me that ageism has created such rageism that I was unacceptably overpriced even for free!