At the age of 76, I feel like one of the few oldest people still working in IT. Having worked for IBM for 25 years, I took early retirement in 1992, and after a few months of "recovery" from burn out, the retirement bonus was about gone and I started sending out resumés. After over 200 mailed resumés and less than 5 unsuccessful responses, I decided I would never find the one company willing to hire someone who was in their late 40s, especially for an industry so dynamic as "data processing", now called Information Technology.
Fortunately, I had worked with the IBM PC since 1982, so I received a lot of training and experience that was very beneficial when I left IBM. When the PC was announced by IBM in 1981, it's life-time manufacturing forecast was for a few 100K units, which it surpassed before the first year. All IBM hardware/software before the PC was proprietary, but the PC had an open-source design, i.e. everything about the hardware and software was freely available to the public; anybody could make computers, parts, or software to integrate freely and compatibly with the PC. It was so successful in IBM's large accounts that IBM allowed its technical sales staff (like me, called SEs, System Engineers) to start supporting the PC.
Having found no other employment alternative, I decided to start my own consulting business, and a few months later, my first client was IBM. IBM subs were required to be incorporated, so I started my S-Corp, PSSI, Personal Systems Services, Inc. The IBM thing was great while it lasted, which was about 2 years. I was doing the same work I had done before retirement for considerably more pay (1099 vs W-2). The only thing I gave up was 5 weeks of paid vacation since my IBM retirement benefits included continuation of medical benefits. It also helped when I started receiving my well- earned IBM pension and Federal Social Security. However, I soon discovered I was my own accountant, had no paid vacation, and did my own marketing, just like all other SMBs (Small & Medium Businesses) with emphasis on SMALL.
Finally, I did some year 2000 work, and shortly thereafter agreed with Terry Gilbreath, to become an equal partner in PSSI. Terry had retired from AT&T a few years prior and had a lot of database programming experience, which I lacked. This S-Corp “partnership” gave us both the advantage of having someone to backup each other up if one of us was sick or took vacation. We also could specialize in technical knowledge for areas that were seldom needed by clients, and supplement each other in our specialty areas for all our clients.
