- Vern Six said he encountered age discrimination after a recruiter asked him about a career in technology.
- Sixx started a LinkedIn group to combat ageism after a post about her experience went viral.
- He hopes to work in the technology industry again while starting his fundraising company, Purpose Brew Coffee.
This telling essay is based on a conversation with Vern Six, 58, who has worked in the technology industry for more than 30 years. After being fired from his contract job, he updated his LinkedIn profile to show he was positive about his job. A recruiter contacted him and expressed surprise that Sixx had been in the technology industry for so long. Six, who lives with his wife near Waco, Texas, posted about his experience of what he saw. age discrimination. The following has been edited for brevity and clarity.
I've been in the technology industry for 37 years as a developer, senior engineer, principal software engineer, whatever you want to call it. My career was from 3 months to 4 years. I am most often employed as an independent contractor.
After I got fired, I got a call from the hiring manager. This is common. He said, “I brought my resume. Could you spare a few minutes?” I said, “Of course.”
So he went to search my LinkedIn profile. He said, “Oh, that's amazing, you've been doing this for a long time.” It was as if he had never read my resume. The resume was 12 pages long and listed every project I had ever worked on.
And he said: “I'm surprised you're not a CTO after 37 years in this industry.'' He said, “That's going to be a tough sell. I don't even know if I can sell you to my clients. People will wonder why you're not a CTO or an executive.” ” I was like, “Did you just say that?”
I think I answered him in a way that wouldn't necessarily make my mom proud. Then I hung up. He was a truly hateful person.
After my LinkedIn post about his phone went viral, he begged me to stop naming and shaming him and to delete it. I think he's probably gotten over 200 emails from lawyers asking him to represent me in pursuing this guy. But I just think, “I don't need to participate in him taking on bad karma, and I don't need the possibility of bad karma coming back to me. It's just not me.”
Others have come out of the woodwork, too. He has over 73,000 emails in my inbox. Of all the things I've ever experienced, I don't know, he's had 100 invitations so far. I've been married for 25 years, so I'm doing well.
I probably got 200 hate messages. It's like, “Get out of there, you goat.” Some people used very explicit language.
The post had over 2 million impressions on LinkedIn and thousands of connection requests popped up. So people wanted me to start a group, so I started a group called Inclusive Futures to fight ageism and discrimination. The number of members has already exceeded 400.
“Please bring the old man here.”
I didn't see any age discrimination at my previous company. But before that, I had seen it. “Bring the old man here and hear what he has to say about this.” I can't tell you how many times I've heard those words since I turned 45. On the other hand, in a sense, it is flattering in that my opinion is respected. On the other hand, it's extremely insulting.
It was most common when I worked as a software engineer. At many social events, I was simply excluded. In some cases, it just wasn't the right type of event for me. I'm not going to an ax-throwing bar in downtown Dallas. They went to play paintball. I'm a former army sergeant. I can play paintball, but I'm 58 years old. I've broken my hip a few times and I'm not going to do that again. If they want to go fishing on my bass boat, let's go.
But in my 37 years of experience, women have been exposed to far worse conditions than what happens with ageism. I've heard hundreds of people comment about women in tech, which can be a career-ending discussion, but they're not in the middle of boardrooms, cubicles, etc. I'm just talking nonsense. Generally speaking, discrimination makes me a little angry.
go for coffee
This is the first time in my career that I have not been employed anywhere for more than 24 hours. I worked on this project for his 4 years. I have always been an independent contractor. I've had a great career. I've been building mostly his web apps for the past 26 years. And I'm a former CTO.
My wife and I recently purchased over 30 acres of land next door. I went to the store at 3:00 p.m., and at 4:20 p.m., I received a phone call from a business partner informing me that there was a problem within the company and that contract work would be suspended. I thought, “Oh my god, I'm going to smoke. I'm just broke and have no income.”
We are former full-time missionaries. Up until then, we were kind of serial entrepreneurs. We owned a chain of indoor amusement parks. We sold it, went and lived in Guatemala, helped build an orphanage, and financed it all through the sale of our amusement center business and my tech job. I've worked anywhere I can connect to a computer. I've lived in 92 countries and earned money in every country.
In 2021, my friend and I were talking about how we can really make an impact in the world. So his wife and I started a fundraising company called Purpose Brew Coffee. We wanted to focus on helping finance projects. The basic model is to white label coffee. And we create a website. Because I'm an engineer, right? — and brand our coffee for the organization we're fundraising for. They promote it to their supporters and we ship the coffee to our customers.
Coffee sellers earn a percentage for each bag sold. That's a big share. His 30% of the retail amount will be donated to each organization. If you sell popcorn, cookie dough, or chocolate bars, you can often earn a profit of 2% to 4% at most.
So when the layoff happened, my wife and I looked at each other and said, “Well, maybe it's the right time.” And she said, “No one can do our craft better than you. Let's stop paying the contractors and let you take over.” So we went down that road. The number of partnerships has doubled his in recent weeks as I've been working on it full time.
But as much as I love the coffee business, I'm still looking for another tech job. Since posting on LinkedIn, he has started receiving hundreds of calls a day from recruiters. I work on projects that take months to years. But for now, the coffee business is growing. That would be a cool, cool deal. I think it will really take off. Not supported at this time. We are living off our savings. But I think the business will support me within 2 months.
