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Similar question, I'm a developer in his early 30s, also in nyc. I'm finding I don't particularly like management, though I seem to be decently good at it. Ho

by ep103 8y ago

Similar question, I'm a developer in his early 30s, also in nyc. I'm finding I don't particularly like management, though I seem to be decently good at it. However, posts like the above seem to be what I'm seeing in the market, and I'm starting to wonder if I need to transition as well in order to stay viable long term? I think I would rather go back to a team lead or even senior developer position, but I don't want to end up writing a post like OP's above in 5+ years?

throwawaymlc 8y ago
I'd be pretty keen to correspond with you, OP, or other "senior" / experienced (30s, 10+ years) developers in NYC trying to skill up and get into higher salary positions, or at least share some experiences and intel. email is in my profile.
- clooless 8y ago
  Didn't see your email there. I'm in my 40s with 20 years experience in NYC. Applied to a handful of positions, but was politely turned away. I suspect age is a factor, but of course no way to prove it. I'm considering shaving 10 years off my resume and see how that goes. I've done management successfully but it was stressful, and I went back to development. To beef up my list of skills, I'm starting to expand into areas that are natural progressions from my current set. For example, I use C# and Asp.Net for backend work, so I began using .Net Core; I use React on the front end, will add Redux; MySql/SqlServer for the database, will start working with Postgres; AWS for the cloud, will research Azure. I'm not sure if I should be adding a whole new bullet point, such as learning Erlang/Elixir, Python/Django, Ruby/Rails, or something completely different.
  - throwawaymlc 8y ago
    Oops, sorry, added it now. Right, I am revising my resume currently, and for the first time I'm considering dropping off my earliest jobs - both because they were a long time ago, and because what I was doing then is more or less completely irrelevant to what I would want to be doing next. My thought, looking at the senior developers around me, is that adding whole new bullet points is good.
dadoge 8y ago
In your case, are you developing valuable domain expertise? In infra roles, there is little "business side" of the work and hence could be more easily commoditized. I work at a big tech company and the staff engineer in our org has been at the company for 4+ yrs and has A LOT of domain expertise in ads, and institutional knowledge about a lot of different systems in the company. Domain expertise is directly transferrable to some companies, and having a lot of institutional knowledge is also a good selling point IMHO -- e.g. asking good questions in an interview about a companies stack could show that you can very quickly understand some nuances of the types of systems they built/are building since you've done something sorta similar. I've also seen us hire pretty senior people with a good amount of domain expertise but didn't know ALL the shiny new tools, but did show they were keeping sharp in SOME of them.

by ep103 8y ago

throwawaymlc 8y ago

I'd be pretty keen to correspond with you, OP, or other "senior" / experienced (30s, 10+ years) developers in NYC trying to skill up and get into higher salary positions, or at least share some experiences and intel. email is in my profile.

clooless 8y ago
Didn't see your email there. I'm in my 40s with 20 years experience in NYC. Applied to a handful of positions, but was politely turned away. I suspect age is a factor, but of course no way to prove it. I'm considering shaving 10 years off my resume and see how that goes. I've done management successfully but it was stressful, and I went back to development. To beef up my list of skills, I'm starting to expand into areas that are natural progressions from my current set. For example, I use C# and Asp.Net for backend work, so I began using .Net Core; I use React on the front end, will add Redux; MySql/SqlServer for the database, will start working with Postgres; AWS for the cloud, will research Azure. I'm not sure if I should be adding a whole new bullet point, such as learning Erlang/Elixir, Python/Django, Ruby/Rails, or something completely different.
- throwawaymlc 8y ago
  Oops, sorry, added it now. Right, I am revising my resume currently, and for the first time I'm considering dropping off my earliest jobs - both because they were a long time ago, and because what I was doing then is more or less completely irrelevant to what I would want to be doing next. My thought, looking at the senior developers around me, is that adding whole new bullet points is good.

dadoge 8y ago

In your case, are you developing valuable domain expertise? In infra roles, there is little "business side" of the work and hence could be more easily commoditized. I work at a big tech company and the staff engineer in our org has been at the company for 4+ yrs and has A LOT of domain expertise in ads, and institutional knowledge about a lot of different systems in the company. Domain expertise is directly transferrable to some companies, and having a lot of institutional knowledge is also a good selling point IMHO -- e.g. asking good questions in an interview about a companies stack could show that you can very quickly understand some nuances of the types of systems they built/are building since you've done something sorta similar. I've also seen us hire pretty senior people with a good amount of domain expertise but didn't know ALL the shiny new tools, but did show they were keeping sharp in SOME of them.