Ask HN: Ever faced difficulties pivoting your job or career later in your life?
I've been in the telco industry for 12 years where I started as a systems tester, became a support engineer, got into a lead role for a team of support engineers (i built the team from scratch at a startup!) and eventually ended up as an architect for a vendor (think Cisco) where I do pre-sales, architecture design and lead the onshore/offshore teams to deliver client projects.
Early last year, I noticed a big shift in my industry to Managed Services and knew that it is a space I need to get myself involved in if I were to stay relevant for the next few years. Unfortunately, the company I am with is neither in this space nor have any plans in the future to be in it hence I started to look around for jobs at other companies in this space. After 3 months in, I'm now feeling utterly perplexed.
I tried applying for lead/architect roles and was rejected (without even going to the interview stage) being told that I don't have enough experience or expertise. Fair point I guess since I'm in a niche industry thus I started looking at roles that allow me to start at the bottom (i.e. dev, support/operations, customer success). Even then, I keep getting rejected with the common trope that I don't have enough experience or I am either overqualified and/or will not be a good fit for the team!
I asked my professional network for some inputs on the matter and I've been told that I'm in an age group (30-40) where companies are not that keen to hire cause I'm considered too old (ageism). Is this possible? I'm barely in my early 30s so I find that very strange cause I don't consider myself old at all.
So, have any of you ever been in the same situation and do you have any advice on how should I overcome this?