siliconindia | | MAY 20188IN MYOPINIONANTI-ADVICE FOR THE (MID-CAREER) TECHNOLOGY ENTREPRENEURThe world of work is changing as fast as the world of information technology. Today, more and more people are leaving corporate environments and turning towards entrepreneurship, driven by a variety of factors. Mid-career professionals take the plunge into entrepreneurship for a variety of reasons: a desire to pursue a long-cherished dream, a family situation requiring a relocation or other changes in priorities, an unexpected startup opportunity, a job loss and struggles with finding employment, and disillusionment with the corporate environment. The last one is particularly interesting. Studies show that as workers get older, they face systemic discrimination for their age by many corporations (Indian firms, in particular, openly ask candidates for their age during interviews, a practice that is illegal in the United States and elsewhere). These very same corporations struggle to attract younger, millennial workers, because that generation has no interest in working for large, bureaucratic organizations. Large corporations are thus slowly losing the battle for talent because older workers are leaving and younger workers are not signing up adequately to fill the gap. An additional complication is the slow attrition of talent for older technologies required to maintain enterprise IT systems. As an example, a major healthcare company in the U.S recently inventoried their IT skills and realized that the only people with experience in Cobol programming (required to manage legacy mainframe applications) were workers in their seventies. No millennial in his right mind will learn Cobol today, and this creates a severe talent management issue for the company.By Paddy Padmanabhan, Founder & CEO, Damo Consulting, IncPaddy Padmanabhan
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