
Being a middle-aged junior - kawera
https://medium.com/@forsman.tomas/being-a-middle-aged-junior-ca7d643d9356
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josephorjoe
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
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.

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dangerboysteve
recruiters cast drift nets to rake in resume hauls.

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redwards510
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.

~~~
vp8989
That isn't really how anyone worth impressing judges work experience.

Those kind of resumes where you have like 18 years of work experience in 9
different language, but you were essentially not much more than a junior dev
in any one of them, are very unimpressive.

That is the typical career story and that's why a lot of people struggle to
find dev jobs when they get older because they weren't managing their career
and were just riding the technology churn with all the other 23 year olds.

You should think of your career progression as every couple of years you are
making a jump up to either more responsibility, or a more difficult domain, or
working on systems with more load etc ...

If you don't make these forward progressions you will be judged harshly as an
older person, because it's very difficult for people to NOT think, "well why
didn't this person make any progress in their career? They must suck."

The technologies used is a side detail, it's never the "meat" of your work
experience.

~~~
devoply
You make it sound trivial but the fact is that you're hired to do a job. Most
likely if you don't go find another job every 2 years then you will not be
progressing because many companies will not give you more responsibility or
more difficult things to do. And then if you jump ship every two years they
judge you for not sticking around and you will be docked for that. In the end
I have seen plenty of companies hire older workers as just developers. If you
want something higher then you have to be an expert in a domain... this again
limits the number of jobs available to you.

~~~
pvorb
> many companies will not give you more responsibility

You don't _get_ responsibility. You _take_ responsibility.

Of course this is harder in large companies, but it's equally important.

~~~
fatnoah
>You don't get responsibility. You take responsibility.

Underrated advice, right here. It's not always easy or gratifying, but it's
served me well over the past 20 years.

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cbluth
I agree with this, I guess. But I've always thought of it as "assuming" more
responsibility. Subtle difference.

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wonderwonder
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
Did you start working at 17?

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peteradio
He did say he has no degree so it seems plausible.

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qntty
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.

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AdmiralAsshat
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!"

~~~
lifehacked
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
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."

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0xcraft
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
Shit hired at 52 fucking a

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Latteland
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
> while you are in college

??

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Latteland
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
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
Thank you.

~~~
Latteland
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.

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QuotedForTruth
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.

~~~
cgearhart
I was in civil service for the DoD including time as a system engineer for
NAVAIR at Pax River from 2012-2017. I had an undergrad degree in MechEng and
finished an MSCS in 2016 at age 33. In 2017 I moved to SV and last week I
started a new job as an ML engineer at a FAANG company. I don’t know if a
second BS is better/worse than MS, but it is definitely possible to switch.

So far, I feel conspicuously older than most folks in my group, and I’ve
effectively rebooted my career so I don’t have the same seniority and
professional network I had in civil service. I worked around the middle-aged
junior problem by taking small contract remote work at below my normal pay
rate to bank some experience. I’m still comparatively inexperienced (and the
offers I get reflect that), but I’m not being paid like a new grad or
anything, so I feel like I have time to work up.

~~~
QuotedForTruth
Wow. Thats a pretty parallel path. Thanks for replying. I thought about doing
an MS but didn't feel qualified since I hadn't covered much in undergrad and
it was so long ago. I've thought about switching now that I've taken a
significant amount of the CS core curriculum, but it would add an additional
year at least to this whole process.

How did you go about getting the contract work? A service like upwork or
similar?

~~~
cgearhart
I took a side-gig as a TA in grad school and eventually that led to networking
that connected me to some small-scale remote work opportunities. I’d be
willing to try something like upwork these days though.

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

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

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

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dawhizkid
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.

