It took me a long time to decide whether to make this video. Not because I wasn’t sure it was true. Because I wasn’t sure the world was ready to hear it said plainly. After sitting with it for nine months, I decided that was exactly the reason to say it.
The Evidence They Gave Me
After many years with the company, good reviews, and a role I had built from scratch, I was told my performance wasn’t good enough. Seriously, you could not believe the reasons they gave.
The video goes into what that conversation actually looked like, including the timeline I was given to decide, the structure of the so-called improvement plan, and what both of those things tell you about what the plan was really designed to do. If you’ve ever been handed a process that felt less like a path forward and more like a countdown, this will resonate.
The Pattern Nobody Wants to Put on Record
There was no smoking gun. No email that said “he’s too old.” What there was, was a pattern. Year after year, watching every new hire be younger than me, every single one, including at senior level. Age remains the one thing nobody wants to put on the record.
The statistics in the video are ones I hadn’t fully absorbed until I started researching them. More than half of workers over 50 are pushed out of long-term jobs before they choose to leave. Of those, only around one in ten ever fully recovers their prior earnings. Around a quarter never find another job at all.
These are not edge cases. This is a pattern.
What I Want You to Take From This
The video doesn’t end on anger. It ends somewhere more honest than that, and more useful.
Underneath the shock of that call, there was something I wasn’t expecting: a weight lifting that I hadn’t fully admitted was there. That doesn’t make what happened right. But it does make the story more complicated than a simple injustice narrative, and I think that complication is worth talking about.
Nine months on, it’s about fifty-fifty. Fifty percent forward momentum, fifty percent fear. Anyone who tells you the journey from job loss to reinvention is a straight line upward isn’t telling you the whole truth.
If you’re sitting where I was sitting nine months ago, wondering what just happened, this video is for you. Not to tell you it gets easy. But to tell you there is a process, and you are not alone in it.
Watch the video here: At 57 I Was Targeted Because of My Age. The Conversation Nobody’s Having.
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About the Author
Max Farnon is the founder of Empower Over 50, a platform and community for professionals navigating career disruption, identity, and reinvention in midlife and beyond. He is the author of Coming Home After 50: A Journey of Rediscovery and A Beginner’s Guide to AI (2025). Max grew up in Cheshire, England, and has lived and worked in the United States, the United Kingdom, and China. He writes and speaks about job loss, ageism, financial reality, and what it actually looks like to start over after 50, without the motivational gloss.