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

I've been a DBA officially and unofficially off and on my whole career. On one hand it is great. UIs and front end software is like fashion and always changing. What lives on is the data those programs generate. Understanding that the data will outlive almost any program put in front of is a good thing to remember.

On the other hand there is a lot of pressure as the DBA. Backups, redundancy, security, etc... all fall onto the DBA to get done and done right. Fat finger a script and blow away a key table sucks (a DBA isn't a DBA until they have done this once), but it drives the point home that backups, backups, backups are key.

EDIT

The other part is the blame for lots of woes will end up on the DBAs desk. I'm a fix it and move on kind of person, but if you take things like that personally a DBA position might not be for you.

I've found myself where you are at multiple points in my career. And each time, I made a leap to a new domain. Not wildly, but to an immediately adjacent domain that excited me.

With 20 years of experience you potentially bring far more to the table than "just" your dev skills. The great thing about being a developer is that you touch a lot of other domains...often at a fairly detailed level of understanding (I learned more than I ever wanted to know about the credit card industry by developing commercial credit card processing software for gasoline dispensers many years ago).

Of course, this is how many devs end up becoming managers...though you say that's not where you want to go. But there are other paths as well. For example, a Product Manager with strong development skills can have a significant edge over someone that's come up strictly through marketing.

People who can straddle the boundaries between domains of knowledge have unique value. At this point in your career, you likely possess knowledge and skill beyond just ASP.net development...skills that startups or companies would find valuable.

I originally came out of physics around the time of the collapse of the SSC project. I saw colleagues with freshly minted PhD's in theoretical physics (NOT a marketable degree...except for driving a cab) go off to Wall Street and become quants...and do quite well.

So the core question is: are you locked into thinking of yourself as just one thing ("developer"), in which case the search is for what kind of developer you want to be next...or can you think of yourself as someone whose years of experience bring unique and valuable expertise...in which case the search should be broader and more unconventional.

It's less about what the external trends are; more about how you can reset your internal self-image...and your willingness to make the investment to bring that into reality.

Of course that means adopting entirely new strategies for finding where your skills have value...those types of jobs aren't posted on HR job boards.

Personally, I've made some huge career and domain jumps over the years (physics, software, large-scale databases, robotics, biotech...and various startups). It can be challenging...and a little scary (but only in the roller-coaster/skydiving sense), but It's also made for an exciting life that's largely been quite financially rewarding.

Never be afraid to jump out of the box...

I'm not saying that the world is fair, or unfair, or even that I'm fair, or unfair. I'm just saying that as a person (with limited time as we all are) who works for a small fairly innovative consulting company, a resume that shows 12 years of ASP dev will get pushed to the back of the list. I don't have an HR dept. That person may be a perfect fit. This is the guy's best possible chance. Nonetheless, I have limited time and will interview fresh-outs or jr devs with more diverse skillsets first, and an old-dog ASP dev only as a last resort. Diamond in the rough? Well, I have no idea about the diamond thing, all I know upfront is it's certainly the rough, and probably not worth my time.

To give you a philosophical answer. People usually have two situations in life where they make such decision. One where Passion wins and other where Salary(benefits). Almost overtime Passion gives job satisfaction over Passion unless you deal with Finance areas like Stocks, bonds, insurance, investment etc You are want to work for Passion, you would have to focus on what is relevant in coming future and align your interest with that. There will be fit somewhere. Once you do that, build a portfolio for the future. Not what you know, Not what you have but what you want to be known for.

Hope this helps

MVC is a lot easier for someone who grew up developing on the web. But if you aren't skilled at hand rolling your own HTML and you don't know client side frameworks that can take the place of the bloated but easy to use WebForm controls, MVC is a lot harder. WebForms hide the real web from developers.