Old Tiches Never Die

The Bay Citizen
Old Techies Never Die; They Just Can’t Get Hired as an Industry Moves On
By AARON GLANTZ
Published: January 28, 2012
Silicon Valley may be booming again, but times are still tough for the 200 out-of-work professionals who crowd into Sunnyvale’s City Hall every Thursday morning.
Most of them hold advanced degrees in engineering and have more than a decade of experience inthe technology sector. They fill all of the seats in the City Council chamber and spill out into the aisles.
They are members of Pro Match, a government-financed support group and “interactive career resource center” for educated older workers who have suddenly, and usually involuntarily, found themselves on the job market. Most have been out of work for months.
The job market “is not the sameas it was years ago,” said Massimo Sutera, 45, a microprocessor engineer who was laid off last year when his firm, Zoran Corporation, a video chip maker, was acquired by the British firm C.S.R., which promptly scaled back its Sunnyvale operations, discontinuing its investment in digital television systems-on-a-chip. “It’s a mess.”
While Web-based companies like Facebook and Google are scouringthe world for new talent to hire, older technology workers often find that their skills are no longer valued.
Part of the problem, analysts said, is that many of the companies shedding jobs are technology manufacturers, while most of the companies that are hiring are Internet-based.
While employment figures published by the state Employment Development Department show that Silicon Valley’stechnology sector has more than made up for job losses that occurred early in the recession, the rebound has not helped everyone.
Cisco Systems, a maker of computer networking equipment that is Santa Clara County’s largest private employer, laid off 1,331 workers last year. The semiconductor sector, which used to be the lifeblood of the South Bay’s economy, has lost 4,600 jobs since 2008.
“Theseare people who know how to run a factory floor, but most of these new companies don’t care about that,” said Connie Buck, a career counselor who helps run Pro Match.
As a result, the South Bay’s unemployment rate, which stood at 8.9 percent in December, remains higher than the national average.
“The pace of change is just breathtaking,” said Russell Hancock, president and chief executive ofJoint Venture Silicon Valley, a research group backed by businesses and local governments. “We’ve entered a strange new world. There are opportunities, but they are different. You have to be edgy and supercreative.”
“You’re not going to get a job that’s going to be assembly and filing and coding,” Mr. Hancock said, “and frankly, that can leave a lot of the older set a little bewildered.”
Hiringmanagers at the Bay Area’s fastest-growing technology companies were blunt. Seth Williams, a director of staffing at Google, said his firm was looking for candidates who are “passionate” and “truly have a desire to change the world.”
Brendan Browne, who heads hiring at the professional networking site LinkedIn, said his firm wanted every new hire to be entrepreneurial. Mr. Browne said thatapproximately 25 percent of LinkedIn’s new hires came from the company’s recruitment efforts at colleges and universities.
Lori Goler, the head of human resources and recruiting efforts at Facebook, said her company was looking for the “college student who built a company on the side, or an iPhone app over the weekend.” The company also hires more-experienced workers, if “they are results-focused andcan deliver again.”
Regardless of age, Ms. Goler said, “We ask: Are they going to get to do what they love to do for fun at work?”
Some observers say much of this language is just code for age discrimination. They point to the case of Brian Reid, a 52-year-old manager who was fired by Google in 2004 — nine days before the company announced plans to go public — after his supervisors, including...