Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: After 20 years of programming, what do I do now?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 85 posts

Re: Ask HN: After 20 years of programming, what do I do now?

#41

Post by JoshM33k »

qzcx wrote: post #24
RefactorCareer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I wish the positions I applied for had hiring managers as open as you are. To be honest, with the majority of the places I've applied to, I get no response at all.

Got to watch out for the HR filter. Often at bigger companies, hiring managers don't even see a resume unless it meets the criteria they specify on it. That means people like you with related, but different experience get cut out when you could still be a good match. Broken system.

Any advice for how to get past that filter? Things to put on the resume, specific things to say in a cover letter, etc.?

Re: Ask HN: After 20 years of programming, what do I do now?

#42

Post by Sakes »

Are you still working at the job that is imposing asp.net web forms on you?

If so, maybe you could make an argument to adopt new technologies there while keeping your large pay check. If you make a business focused case for adopting new tech, you might find success.

Problem to Solve:

So, how does adopting new tech save money and/or make money?

Crude Proposed Solution:

Talented developers care about their tools, so if you are using dated techniques / technologies you are alienating potential new hires which could add significant value to the company.

The younger programmers coming out of school do not want to program in COBOL. They want to invest in technologies which will increase their marketability as a developer.

So by adopting newer technologies / techniques you reduce your risk of becoming a slave to a dwindling developer community. A community which has stopped growing and is bleeding devs, starting with the most talented. You also open up your company up to new opportunities where they can higher younger talented devs for cheap. You can mitigate problems caused by inexperience by giving them specialist roles which will decrease the amount ramp up time required for them to start adding value to the company.

Apologies:

This is a very knee jerk response. I do not feel as though I have proposed an actionable plan that is well thought out. I hope I have proposed an idea that is worth exploring.

Persuade your existing company to adopt new tech in terms of saving/making money and by reducing future risk (a potentially mortal risk) of problems caused by tech rot.

Re: Ask HN: After 20 years of programming, what do I do now?

#43

Post by busterarm »

sliverstorm wrote: post #38
busterarm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a young-ish developer mostly interested in database and backend work, what skills/path would you say is necessary to function in a full-fledged DBA role? I'm finding in my contracting work that my database skills are above-average and usually one of the big things that I'm relied upon for and I think this is worth pursuing.

From personal observation, giardini's suggestion to grow a Unix beard might actually be a solid step #1.

I can't do the beard, but I'm basically an oldschool unix neckbeard anyway.

Re: Ask HN: After 20 years of programming, what do I do now?

#44

Post by aantix »

mrfusion wrote: post #31
wooUK wrote: post #17

I was also in a similar position as you as a valued lead dev with 15 years of experience working in a company that didn’t want to embrace newer technologies (stuck on WebForms, not moving to MVC, etc). I was not interested in progressing into middle management and had hit the ceiling with regards pay so I became a contractor. I taught myself MVC got an initial bum-on-a-seat noddy contract which was doing MVC CRUD scr…

How are you finding your contracts?

Good old fashioned foot work. Cold email the places you know that use your tech stack.

Introduce yourself and what you have to offer. Show that you understand their business and some of the technical problems they may experience.

Ask for referrals after contracts complete.

Open source contributions and presenting at industry conferences go a long way to establishing an air of expertise; carry yourself like an expert and you almost always will get a second look from a potential client.

Re: Ask HN: After 20 years of programming, what do I do now?

#45

Post by kej »

RefactorCareer wrote: post #25
wooUK wrote: post #17

I was also in a similar position as you as a valued lead dev with 15 years of experience working in a company that didn’t want to embrace newer technologies (stuck on WebForms, not moving to MVC, etc). I was not interested in progressing into middle management and had hit the ceiling with regards pay so I became a contractor. I taught myself MVC got an initial bum-on-a-seat noddy contract which was doing MVC CRUD scr…

That sounds like a good path as well. Thanks for sharing your personal story; sounds like it would be worth it to take a temporary paycut to gain some experience.

I don't think you need to consider a pay cut. It's easy to look at HN and think that all of the good jobs are in new technologies and your experience is worthless. That's not the case.

Take a week or two to build a handful of sites in ASP.Net MVC with Entity Framework, so you're familiar with the basics. At that point you'd be marketable for a lot of current senior .Net positions. Experience with .Net is more relevant to most companies than MVC-specific experience. Add in your SQL Server skills for when Entity Framework doesn't cover exactly what you need and you can almost write your own ticket.

Re: Ask HN: After 20 years of programming, what do I do now?

#46

Post by AnimalMuppet »

First of all, avoid the term "senior dev". That means 5 to 7 years of experience. You're way past that.

Next: Web programming is something junior devs can do. (Maybe not as well, but they can do it, and for less money.) You need to move on to harder things, where your experience is worth more money.

What harder things? You mentioned SQL Server. You say it's "losing relevance with the ORMs/EFs of the world", but there's more to the world than that, and I strongly doubt SQL Server is going away. Find places where it is in use, and go there.

Alternately, you can try to move up to architect of someplace with a big web presence, but I'm less clear on how you make that shift.

Re: Ask HN: After 20 years of programming, what do I do now?

#47

Post by pgambling »

Thanks for sparking this discussion!

I'm a senior dev, but still relatively early in my career (~8 years). I've been thinking about your exact situation a lot lately as I have interviewed several candidates from various backgrounds. I see a lot of people with lots of experience, but they didn't make the cut after taking our coding tests and technical interviews that younger less experienced devs breezed through. I wonder if I will be in the same boat in 5-10 years myself because I haven't kept up with the newest technology. Like you, I have no desire to become a manager and I'm quite happy being an individual contributor.

Also being a relatively new Dad (toddler and a newborn on the way) only makes it that much harder to keep up!

Re: Ask HN: After 20 years of programming, what do I do now?

#48

Post by busterarm »

atwebb wrote: post #40
busterarm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a young-ish developer mostly interested in database and backend work, what skills/path would you say is necessary to function in a full-fledged DBA role? I'm finding in my contracting work that my database skills are above-average and usually one of the big things that I'm relied upon for and I think this is worth pursuing.

Honestly? From what I've seen, the main skill would be, don't go into a DBA role. DBAs are operational/administrative roles by nature (maintain the DB, account/security stuff, respond to server/DB issues). What, I think, you're getting at is more architecture and system building. Having the ability to consider DB bottlenecks and interactions along with a strong foundation in application programming will provide a gre…

Years ago I worked at a financial that had a large tech staff but we only had one full-time DBA. He was a really young, sharp guy and he got to work with basically every department in the company helping them out with stuff. He had his own office, nobody ever disturbed him, he only had to report to one person (rarely) and he got paid fantastically well.

Looked like a sweet deal.

Re: Ask HN: After 20 years of programming, what do I do now?

#49

Post by mattbrewsbytes »

Sakes wrote: post #42

Are you still working at the job that is imposing asp.net web forms on you? If so, maybe you could make an argument to adopt new technologies there while keeping your large pay check. If you make a business focused case for adopting new tech, you might find success. Problem to Solve: So, how does adopting new tech save money and/or make money? Crude Proposed Solution: Talented developers care about their tools, so if…

An angle on this that may work is to just introduce the new tech on something not very important but still useful.

A decent argument can be that plain old technology upgrades at some point are going to be gigantic herculean efforts if the same old language/framework is used for a long period of time.

And you are more susceptible to security issues and/or ridiculous "extended support" contracts the longer a tech is kept around - to the point where it is difficult to patch, etc.

Re: Ask HN: After 20 years of programming, what do I do now?

#50

Post by brianfryer »

lingua_franca wrote: post #36

1. pick an industry, not particular technologies. For example if you think Internet companies like "FANG" group are more promising, try to join one of'em; 2. become familiar with a more adaptive language like Java; 3. prefer back-end over front-end as experiences/technologies are more transferable; 4. stay sharp on algorithmic problems; 5. keep learning;

> prefer back-end over front-end as experiences/technologies are more transferable

I'm curious to know more about what you mean by this...

Post reply on HN