15 ms·

I don't know about other places, but I'm almost 36, with about 10 years of Java and web experience, and I keep getting more and more offers (from around the nat

I don't know about other places, but I'm almost 36, with about 10 years of Java and web experience, and I keep getting more and more offers (from around the nation) from both enterprises and startups (twitter, amazon, rackspace, apple, google, netflix, Oracle, NCR, banks etc...). I talked to a friend who works at Twitter (he is 37) and he told me it's not a "college graduate world" as some depict it, he said most people he works with are around his age (which was very encouraging for me). Here in Atlanta there are tons of Sr. Java jobs, both enterprise and startups, at least based on the recruiter spam I get in LinkedIn. When you say "too old in this industry" which industry are you talking about? SV? Web Startups (Ruby / Python / Node)? Gaming? Mobile? perhaps for these you are right. But for the companies I listed above, or any enterprise company in the country, your age is just about right, and your experience years are in demand. Again, don't know about C++ specifically, but if you had 10 years of Java, you would have easily landed multiple offers from various good companies around the country, at least this is what me and people I talk to in the Java community seem to experience. I don't know if it's C++ that is different, but the "if you are 30+ then your career is over" situation is not something I see even close to the reality at least here in Atlanta. Hope it encourages you a bit. P.s. If you want to increase your spectrum of possible jobs, I recommend learning "less cool" technologies, like Java EE 7, Spring, Hibernate, or if you need to choose between Haskell / Go or Scala, go with Scala, it will be perhaps less cutting edge, but will give you much more job opportunities. Also learning Hadoop, Storm, MongoDB will make your resume look very attractive. Also you should pick up good github projects that show you are full stack, do some AngularJS projects, write a jQuery plugin, the jobs offers will follow (I got more than a few solely based on some nonsense plugins I wrote in github that look as if I know what I'm doing) YMMV, all based on my very subjective experience here in Atlanta...

givehimagun 13y ago
This is really good advice.
peacemaker 13y ago
Thanks for the advice. When I mentioned getting too old I was referring to startups specifically. With C++ work I know I have less to worry about in terms of age. I understand what you're saying about the "less cool" technologies but they don't interest me. The whole point is to guide my career down a path that is more enjoyable and fulfilling so doing something like that seems a step backwards. I appreciate the advice though, thanks!
- eranation 13y ago
  I don't think all of these are necessarily "less cool" technologies, some of them are both very cool, in high demand, and fun to work with. Scala is a good example I think, if you like Ruby, Erlang, Haskell, or even F# / C#, it might grow on you the way it did on me. Some say it's a complex language, I don't see it as such (coming from Java) I see it as a typed Ruby, with pattern matching copied from Haskell, and concurrency system copied from Erlang. With 100% Java interoperabilty. Cool enough for me... it's both fun to work with, high performance, and still considered pretty cool in most parts. It's the only language that can be used enthusiastically by both a bank and a SV startup (and the academia) using the same philosophy and methodology. It's the peace maker language. I know, Go, Haskell, Lua, Clojure, Rust, Julia, Nimrod are much more on the hype spot, but hypes come and go, and you end up choosing what technology you both enjoy using, and that has a job pool. For me it's Scala currently, can change any time.

givehimagun 13y ago

This is really good advice.

peacemaker 13y ago

Thanks for the advice. When I mentioned getting too old I was referring to startups specifically. With C++ work I know I have less to worry about in terms of age. I understand what you're saying about the "less cool" technologies but they don't interest me. The whole point is to guide my career down a path that is more enjoyable and fulfilling so doing something like that seems a step backwards. I appreciate the advice though, thanks!

eranation 13y ago
I don't think all of these are necessarily "less cool" technologies, some of them are both very cool, in high demand, and fun to work with. Scala is a good example I think, if you like Ruby, Erlang, Haskell, or even F# / C#, it might grow on you the way it did on me. Some say it's a complex language, I don't see it as such (coming from Java) I see it as a typed Ruby, with pattern matching copied from Haskell, and concurrency system copied from Erlang. With 100% Java interoperabilty. Cool enough for me... it's both fun to work with, high performance, and still considered pretty cool in most parts. It's the only language that can be used enthusiastically by both a bank and a SV startup (and the academia) using the same philosophy and methodology. It's the peace maker language. I know, Go, Haskell, Lua, Clojure, Rust, Julia, Nimrod are much more on the hype spot, but hypes come and go, and you end up choosing what technology you both enjoy using, and that has a job pool. For me it's Scala currently, can change any time.