A bit to point out: I had assumed retirement at 70. A few days after making the last lease payment on my youngest child’s college apartment, I got the call from my manager which obliquely said our part of the corporate chief technologist’s office was no longer funded, and he hadn’t been able to find a place for me to land in the business unit we supported.
The latter wasn’t surprising: I had volunteered to, from my CT Office role, be our business unit’s person engaging a bleeding edge technology our BU’s exec found (my words) distracting and annoying, so that made me distracting and annoying. But the most fun I had had in years, so definitely worth it!
What I learned, though, is that looking for a job at age 59 in tech is not a cakewalk, particularly when investment has really not opened up yet in the one space I could claim unique expertise in. And when I had let my “doer” skills go enough that I couldn’t compete for junior roles in the places in the industry where the stuff I was working on will be getting traction over the next 2 or 3 years.
So I’m retired, on a noticeably tighter budget than planned, a decade ahead of plan. Oh, I could go just get a job, work for the state or some such (I’m in Sacramento); or call up a startup founder I know in the area and ask if they have a floor that needs sweeping. Thought about doing a startup in that very interesting area, but every angle I can think of has the byte addressable persistent memory chip vendors having the power to capture most of the gross margin (and allocate parts), giving them an edge forward integrating into this space, so the VC funded lemmings are going to mostly get crushed, and I’m not one for looking a VC in the eye and saying rosy things when I know better.
Two points:
First, I do not regret spending the price of a house on my kids’ college education.
Second, if you work in tech, your savings (think 401(k)) needs to be ready to support you by the time you’re in your late 50s. Do not assume anyone will hire you after that age.
