9 ms·

Being a middle-aged junior

59 points by kawera 8y ago

nickthemagicman 8y ago
Been there. Just a lot of work is what it takes and lucky connections with good people
Latteland 8y ago
Get an internship while you are in college. They are well paid these days. Just one recent entry on your resume doing dev work will set you free. Don't make a huge deal about your life story. If you get no interest then trim down your resume and remove dates. Someone will take you.
- clebio 8y ago
  > while you are in college ??
  - rocqua 8y ago
    Many degrees require, or at least offer the option of taking, an internship for study credits.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Don't know where OP is sailing from, but in my country, it's customary for students students to do a summer internship somewhere in the middle of their undergrad years. In most domains AFAIK internships are without compensation, but programming internships tend to be pretty well paid.
  - Latteland 8y ago
    Do it in the summer or between terms. Or delay your graduation. If you think your degree program won't get you a job (or it will be tremendously harder) because you are older & you don't have recent work experience, then try taking 3 months out to get paid 80k as an intern, then coming back and finish your program. I really feel that for devs coming from unusual backgrounds, you just need a positive recent work entry on your resume. That's all you need to break through.
    - kelnos 8y ago
      The parent's confusion stems from the fact that the OP is a nearly-40-year-old man who did programming earlier in his life, quit for 16 years, and is now trying to get back into it. "Do an internship during college" isn't really actionable advice for this guy.
      - clebio 8y ago
        Thank you.
        Latteland 8y ago
        Sorry, I missed that important point, bad reading comprehension. I thought he said he was getting a degree and was a junior in college but I read it again and he didn't mention college. He's looking at "junior engineer" or beginning programmer jobs. College internships aren't available, he's not a student. Still, he or she needs one recent dev job on his resume, that will unlock further job opportunities. I think going to recruiting events in person and talking to devs and recruiters in person is one way to make that personal connection that could put you over the hump. Go to an event related to your area of biggest interest, try to make a personal connection.
- jnbiche 8y ago
  He's a 37 year old man, he's not in college.
josephorjoe 8y ago
I didn't learn programming until I was in my 40s. I taught myself and went through one of the coding bootcamps. It took a while but I did eventually get a job. Probably the three biggest takeaways I have from my own experience: If the company is big enough to have an HR department, it is going to be hard to get hired as a non-standard applicant. Too many people would have to agree to take the risk, and HR is NOT about risk taking. Some type of personal connection is extremely important. Meeting someone at a job fair/meetup/hackathon/whatever is going to get much better results than emailing a resume. Recruiters are probably not going to be of much help. Companies do not want to pay recruiters commissions for jr devs.
- lifehacked 8y ago
  The amount of spam I get from recruiters looking for junior devs would lead me to believe otherwise. And as a dev that used to work as a dev at a staffing agency, hiring managers often scrutinize the skills of juniors less than a senior or lead dev.
  - dangerboysteve 8y ago
    recruiters cast drift nets to rake in resume hauls.
- crispyambulance 8y ago
  > ...HR is NOT about risk taking. Bingo! If non-traditional applicants go "through the front door" by applying/submitting their resume through the usual channels at a big corp, they'll get nowhere. HR job-applicant pipelines are DESIGNED to screen out, ruthlessly, as many applicants as possible. Anyone who has even a mildly deviant career trajectory is not going to make it to a phone interview by "uploading" their resume. HOWEVER, if such applicants can get their foot in the door by exercising their professional network or by carefully messaging and persuading the right people, they can get through to an interview.
wonderwonder 8y ago
I did the same thing. Spent 10 years as a c++ developer with no degree. Then got out for 10+ years as I was burned out and did a variety of non programming things. Eventually wanted to get into web development at 37. I had not even coded anything outside of VBA office macros for 10 years. Started learning and applying. It took 8 months to even land an interview, but I landed the job attached to that interview at 38. Took a job making not much money at all and kept it for 2 years. Traded up to another job with a 50% raise and now I'm a software team lead. Its hard, but doable. Just make sure you are constantly practicing for when you get the interview. Build things to show off what you can do.
- qntty 8y ago
  Did you start working at 17?
  - peteradio 8y ago
    He did say he has no degree so it seems plausible.
    - qntty 8y ago
      Yeah, you're right. By the numbers he gave it sounded like he could have been even younger than 17. It's always interesting to hear how very young people get into a programming job. I worked with a 15 year old intern who was probably the smartest person I've ever worked with, and we probably would've hired him at 16 if he was looking for a job.
  - wonderwonder 8y ago
    lol strange, you are right, I actually started at 21. Worked til 30, got out for 7 years and then got back in. In my head I have always said 10 years. Weird I have been living a lie this whole time.
    - qntty 8y ago
      Ah ok. Not that it would be that weird to start working at 17 right after graduating high school.
AdmiralAsshat 8y ago
I had a friend and coworker who was in a similar situation, but not because of a career change. We worked on a piece of legacy software together. He was an incredible programmer, and five times the Java/Web developer as anyone else on the team, but because the legacy software was written primarily in C, and he was the "newest" member of the team, he was still the "Junior" dev. Even after being there for ten years. He was more or less consigned to that job title because Management freaked out at the idea that "they can't all be senior developers!"
- peteradio 8y ago
  That management had poopoo in there brains.
- lifehacked 8y ago
  That guy should have left, but he probably negotiated a salary commensurate with his true experience, with people who just love to code, I can imagine they would not care about the title, the real win is in the bank account. Call me a code janitor if you want as long as I get my 120k 4 weeks of vacation and my co workers are not total wads, I'd be fine.
  - AdmiralAsshat 8y ago
    I'd love to tell you that he did, but no: he was a Steve Wozniak type--incredibly talented but too laid back and passive to know how to fight for himself. He passed away about a year ago from brain cancer and I found out his actual salary from his wife (peanuts, basically). That combination of crappy job title and egregious underpay continued to hamper him when he looked for other work, because the assumption from prospective interviewers was, "You've worked there for 10 years and are still a JUNIOR dev? You must be terrible."
redwards510 8y ago
With the speed that frameworks and technologies change these days, I feel like we're all technically junior developers. Sure I have over 10 years of experience as a professional software developer, but I've only been coding in the latest flavor of .Net for the 2-4 years it's been around. Does anyone care about the five years of experience with Web Forms back before ASP.MVC was popular? Or my years of experience with 3rd-party tool X that no one uses anymore? What about Bootstrap or JQuery? We all only have about two years of experience with whatever the hot new language is before it changes to something else.
- lifehacked 8y ago
  Can I pay you as if you only actually have been typing code for the length of time you have been using the framework I am building my current project with? Do you not feel that after learning 10 different frameworks over 10 years that you can pick up new ones faster and become more proficient than a truly noob who has only been coding professionally for 2 years? The value in a senior dev is the experience they have in quickly learning new concepts and the speed at which they apply those.
- peteradio 8y ago
  Maybe senior/junior tied to any specific language doesn't make a lot of sense. Not like an electrician goes back to apprentice when a new type of breaker or romex type comes out. The foundations of the profession are in something more general than language.
- booleandilemma 8y ago
  This is how it feels to me as well. I’m using AWS now, having never used it previously, and when I mention WinForms and WPF to the younger guys I’m met with blank stares.
- Bokanovsky 8y ago
  For me, I think an experienced developer brings more than just knowledge of frameworks to the game. They bring domain knowledge, transferable skills, they know how to model code, they know how do do things like separation of concerns. They can write readable maintainable code. They can clearly communicate to the non-technical people to get the business requirements out, knowing how to cut to the chase. They should also able to help other developers get up to speed and pick up (the gist at least) of new frameworks and understand the abstractions they use. I regularly work with developers like this and it's thoroughly enjoyable.
dawhizkid 8y ago
Honestly the best part of working in the tech industry trends change so quickly that everyone is jr unless you "keep up." If you are motivated to "keep up", whether you're 40 or 20, you'll find work.
QuotedForTruth 8y ago
I've worked for the federal government last 10 years as a Systems Engineer on mostly software projects. My first degree is in aerospace and mechanical engineering. I've grown super tired of the slow bureaucracy and the fact that I never get to actually create or design anything beyond requirements. I'm halfway through the 2 years it will take me to get a bachelors in CS from my original University. Im still working full time and thus I won't have any industry internships when I finish. I'll be 33 then. Is this going to severely limit my opportunties for a first development job? Should I play down my previous experience to reduce the middle aged junior problem? Any advice will be appreciated.
- ThirdFoundation 8y ago
  I'm in a similar situation. My first degree was in Finance and I'm currently getting a second degree in CS. I'll be finishing my degree this fall and will be 31. I work in Finance now in a sort of 'tech-adjacent' systems analyst and business intelligence position. If I remember, I'll follow up this post in a few months with how my job search is going. I'll begin searching around June in the Philadelphia area. I had a few interviews last year and have gone to one or two tech meet-ups, and I'm reasonably optimistic that my age won't be much of a deterrent. Most people I've spoken with like the diversity of my background and the obvious passion I have for CS. In a sense, going back to school while working full time is an "actions speak louder than words" situation. It takes a lot of effort to get through a second degree while working full-time, and I think that speaks for itself in terms of work ethic and interest in the topic (though it doesn't hurt to highlight as well). That being said, I still have the nagging fear of ageism affecting my job prospects. I think my work experience will lend itself well, but I'm going about this without ego. I know I'm trying to break into a field competing with many other people, so it's probably going to be a numbers game in terms of applying. I'm also a little concerned about the Philadelphia tech scene as it's not as robust as one would expect for a city this size. I know this isn't advice, as I can't offer much, but I can commiserate in having similar feelings and concerns. My guess is that your background will ultimately assist your search (though obviously not everywhere). The one piece of advice I can offer is to start applying early, if only to get interviewing experience and knock off the rust. You said you've been in your current role for 10 years -- has it also been 10 years since you've had a proper job interview? If you want to chat further or even just bounce ideas around, I'm happy to chat further. What city are you based out of?
swinglock 8y ago
They're missing out, I love working with people with a varied background, it's great when someone has experience in other fields.
jshaqaw 8y ago
The structure of society is brutal for those who need to shift gears in their middle years while supporting a family. Good luck!
0xcraft 8y ago
Can relate to the article. Since 2003 or so I have been homeschooling my kids, very intentionally developing my spiritual path, taking on occasional web dev and database projects, and being the stay at home dad. Up to that point, I had been in healthcare analytics doing everything from custom ETL, database design, to ad-hoc reports. Writing code and solving problems related to data was one of my favorite things. Well the kids grew up and my engineering brain stayed active. Except, between age and the various non-traditional choices I had made in life my self-confidence was shot regarding employment. Six weeks ago I accepted an offer for a data and business analyst position in healthcare at age 52. The pay is modest, the people are great, and I feel in many ways like I am starting all over. It is easy to regret lost time and opportunity. I sure have at times. Really I traded one opportunity set for another. Now I see I am well suited for a new kind of role which uses my technical and non-technical strengths. In fact I was told being able to bridge technical and non-technical areas of the organization was a primary reason to offer me the position. I still get to write small bits of software to automate processes my new employer didn't realize could be automated. My favorite type of software to write. Ironically, I have more fields in and out of tech I want to explore than I did 20 years ago. Yet, my life is over halfway to the finish line!
- shmooth 8y ago
  Shit hired at 52 fucking a

59 points by kawera 8y ago

Been there. Just a lot of work is what it takes and lucky connections with good people

Get an internship while you are in college. They are well paid these days. Just one recent entry on your resume doing dev work will set you free. Don't make a huge deal about your life story. If you get no interest then trim down your resume and remove dates. Someone will take you.

clebio 8y ago
> while you are in college ??
- rocqua 8y ago
  Many degrees require, or at least offer the option of taking, an internship for study credits.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Don't know where OP is sailing from, but in my country, it's customary for students students to do a summer internship somewhere in the middle of their undergrad years. In most domains AFAIK internships are without compensation, but programming internships tend to be pretty well paid.
- Latteland 8y ago
  Do it in the summer or between terms. Or delay your graduation. If you think your degree program won't get you a job (or it will be tremendously harder) because you are older & you don't have recent work experience, then try taking 3 months out to get paid 80k as an intern, then coming back and finish your program. I really feel that for devs coming from unusual backgrounds, you just need a positive recent work entry on your resume. That's all you need to break through.
  - kelnos 8y ago
    The parent's confusion stems from the fact that the OP is a nearly-40-year-old man who did programming earlier in his life, quit for 16 years, and is now trying to get back into it. "Do an internship during college" isn't really actionable advice for this guy.
    - clebio 8y ago
      Thank you.
      - Latteland 8y ago
        Sorry, I missed that important point, bad reading comprehension. I thought he said he was getting a degree and was a junior in college but I read it again and he didn't mention college. He's looking at "junior engineer" or beginning programmer jobs. College internships aren't available, he's not a student. Still, he or she needs one recent dev job on his resume, that will unlock further job opportunities. I think going to recruiting events in person and talking to devs and recruiters in person is one way to make that personal connection that could put you over the hump. Go to an event related to your area of biggest interest, try to make a personal connection.
jnbiche 8y ago
He's a 37 year old man, he's not in college.

josephorjoe 8y ago

I didn't learn programming until I was in my 40s. I taught myself and went through one of the coding bootcamps. It took a while but I did eventually get a job. Probably the three biggest takeaways I have from my own experience: If the company is big enough to have an HR department, it is going to be hard to get hired as a non-standard applicant. Too many people would have to agree to take the risk, and HR is NOT about risk taking. Some type of personal connection is extremely important. Meeting someone at a job fair/meetup/hackathon/whatever is going to get much better results than emailing a resume. Recruiters are probably not going to be of much help. Companies do not want to pay recruiters commissions for jr devs.

lifehacked 8y ago
The amount of spam I get from recruiters looking for junior devs would lead me to believe otherwise. And as a dev that used to work as a dev at a staffing agency, hiring managers often scrutinize the skills of juniors less than a senior or lead dev.
- dangerboysteve 8y ago
  recruiters cast drift nets to rake in resume hauls.
crispyambulance 8y ago
> ...HR is NOT about risk taking. Bingo! If non-traditional applicants go "through the front door" by applying/submitting their resume through the usual channels at a big corp, they'll get nowhere. HR job-applicant pipelines are DESIGNED to screen out, ruthlessly, as many applicants as possible. Anyone who has even a mildly deviant career trajectory is not going to make it to a phone interview by "uploading" their resume. HOWEVER, if such applicants can get their foot in the door by exercising their professional network or by carefully messaging and persuading the right people, they can get through to an interview.

wonderwonder 8y ago

I did the same thing. Spent 10 years as a c++ developer with no degree. Then got out for 10+ years as I was burned out and did a variety of non programming things. Eventually wanted to get into web development at 37. I had not even coded anything outside of VBA office macros for 10 years. Started learning and applying. It took 8 months to even land an interview, but I landed the job attached to that interview at 38. Took a job making not much money at all and kept it for 2 years. Traded up to another job with a 50% raise and now I'm a software team lead. Its hard, but doable. Just make sure you are constantly practicing for when you get the interview. Build things to show off what you can do.

qntty 8y ago
Did you start working at 17?
- peteradio 8y ago
  He did say he has no degree so it seems plausible.
  - qntty 8y ago
    Yeah, you're right. By the numbers he gave it sounded like he could have been even younger than 17. It's always interesting to hear how very young people get into a programming job. I worked with a 15 year old intern who was probably the smartest person I've ever worked with, and we probably would've hired him at 16 if he was looking for a job.
- wonderwonder 8y ago
  lol strange, you are right, I actually started at 21. Worked til 30, got out for 7 years and then got back in. In my head I have always said 10 years. Weird I have been living a lie this whole time.
  - qntty 8y ago
    Ah ok. Not that it would be that weird to start working at 17 right after graduating high school.

AdmiralAsshat 8y ago

I had a friend and coworker who was in a similar situation, but not because of a career change. We worked on a piece of legacy software together. He was an incredible programmer, and five times the Java/Web developer as anyone else on the team, but because the legacy software was written primarily in C, and he was the "newest" member of the team, he was still the "Junior" dev. Even after being there for ten years. He was more or less consigned to that job title because Management freaked out at the idea that "they can't all be senior developers!"

peteradio 8y ago
That management had poopoo in there brains.
lifehacked 8y ago
That guy should have left, but he probably negotiated a salary commensurate with his true experience, with people who just love to code, I can imagine they would not care about the title, the real win is in the bank account. Call me a code janitor if you want as long as I get my 120k 4 weeks of vacation and my co workers are not total wads, I'd be fine.
- AdmiralAsshat 8y ago
  I'd love to tell you that he did, but no: he was a Steve Wozniak type--incredibly talented but too laid back and passive to know how to fight for himself. He passed away about a year ago from brain cancer and I found out his actual salary from his wife (peanuts, basically). That combination of crappy job title and egregious underpay continued to hamper him when he looked for other work, because the assumption from prospective interviewers was, "You've worked there for 10 years and are still a JUNIOR dev? You must be terrible."

redwards510 8y ago

With the speed that frameworks and technologies change these days, I feel like we're all technically junior developers. Sure I have over 10 years of experience as a professional software developer, but I've only been coding in the latest flavor of .Net for the 2-4 years it's been around. Does anyone care about the five years of experience with Web Forms back before ASP.MVC was popular? Or my years of experience with 3rd-party tool X that no one uses anymore? What about Bootstrap or JQuery? We all only have about two years of experience with whatever the hot new language is before it changes to something else.

lifehacked 8y ago
Can I pay you as if you only actually have been typing code for the length of time you have been using the framework I am building my current project with? Do you not feel that after learning 10 different frameworks over 10 years that you can pick up new ones faster and become more proficient than a truly noob who has only been coding professionally for 2 years? The value in a senior dev is the experience they have in quickly learning new concepts and the speed at which they apply those.
peteradio 8y ago
Maybe senior/junior tied to any specific language doesn't make a lot of sense. Not like an electrician goes back to apprentice when a new type of breaker or romex type comes out. The foundations of the profession are in something more general than language.
booleandilemma 8y ago
This is how it feels to me as well. I’m using AWS now, having never used it previously, and when I mention WinForms and WPF to the younger guys I’m met with blank stares.
Bokanovsky 8y ago
For me, I think an experienced developer brings more than just knowledge of frameworks to the game. They bring domain knowledge, transferable skills, they know how to model code, they know how do do things like separation of concerns. They can write readable maintainable code. They can clearly communicate to the non-technical people to get the business requirements out, knowing how to cut to the chase. They should also able to help other developers get up to speed and pick up (the gist at least) of new frameworks and understand the abstractions they use. I regularly work with developers like this and it's thoroughly enjoyable.

dawhizkid 8y ago

Honestly the best part of working in the tech industry trends change so quickly that everyone is jr unless you "keep up." If you are motivated to "keep up", whether you're 40 or 20, you'll find work.

QuotedForTruth 8y ago

I've worked for the federal government last 10 years as a Systems Engineer on mostly software projects. My first degree is in aerospace and mechanical engineering. I've grown super tired of the slow bureaucracy and the fact that I never get to actually create or design anything beyond requirements. I'm halfway through the 2 years it will take me to get a bachelors in CS from my original University. Im still working full time and thus I won't have any industry internships when I finish. I'll be 33 then. Is this going to severely limit my opportunties for a first development job? Should I play down my previous experience to reduce the middle aged junior problem? Any advice will be appreciated.

ThirdFoundation 8y ago
I'm in a similar situation. My first degree was in Finance and I'm currently getting a second degree in CS. I'll be finishing my degree this fall and will be 31. I work in Finance now in a sort of 'tech-adjacent' systems analyst and business intelligence position. If I remember, I'll follow up this post in a few months with how my job search is going. I'll begin searching around June in the Philadelphia area. I had a few interviews last year and have gone to one or two tech meet-ups, and I'm reasonably optimistic that my age won't be much of a deterrent. Most people I've spoken with like the diversity of my background and the obvious passion I have for CS. In a sense, going back to school while working full time is an "actions speak louder than words" situation. It takes a lot of effort to get through a second degree while working full-time, and I think that speaks for itself in terms of work ethic and interest in the topic (though it doesn't hurt to highlight as well). That being said, I still have the nagging fear of ageism affecting my job prospects. I think my work experience will lend itself well, but I'm going about this without ego. I know I'm trying to break into a field competing with many other people, so it's probably going to be a numbers game in terms of applying. I'm also a little concerned about the Philadelphia tech scene as it's not as robust as one would expect for a city this size. I know this isn't advice, as I can't offer much, but I can commiserate in having similar feelings and concerns. My guess is that your background will ultimately assist your search (though obviously not everywhere). The one piece of advice I can offer is to start applying early, if only to get interviewing experience and knock off the rust. You said you've been in your current role for 10 years -- has it also been 10 years since you've had a proper job interview? If you want to chat further or even just bounce ideas around, I'm happy to chat further. What city are you based out of?

swinglock 8y ago

They're missing out, I love working with people with a varied background, it's great when someone has experience in other fields.

jshaqaw 8y ago

The structure of society is brutal for those who need to shift gears in their middle years while supporting a family. Good luck!

0xcraft 8y ago

Can relate to the article. Since 2003 or so I have been homeschooling my kids, very intentionally developing my spiritual path, taking on occasional web dev and database projects, and being the stay at home dad. Up to that point, I had been in healthcare analytics doing everything from custom ETL, database design, to ad-hoc reports. Writing code and solving problems related to data was one of my favorite things. Well the kids grew up and my engineering brain stayed active. Except, between age and the various non-traditional choices I had made in life my self-confidence was shot regarding employment. Six weeks ago I accepted an offer for a data and business analyst position in healthcare at age 52. The pay is modest, the people are great, and I feel in many ways like I am starting all over. It is easy to regret lost time and opportunity. I sure have at times. Really I traded one opportunity set for another. Now I see I am well suited for a new kind of role which uses my technical and non-technical strengths. In fact I was told being able to bridge technical and non-technical areas of the organization was a primary reason to offer me the position. I still get to write small bits of software to automate processes my new employer didn't realize could be automated. My favorite type of software to write. Ironically, I have more fields in and out of tech I want to explore than I did 20 years ago. Yet, my life is over halfway to the finish line!

shmooth 8y ago
Shit hired at 52 fucking a