Ask HN: Any advice for an older engineer stuck in his career? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Any advice for an older engineer stuck in his career?

6 pointswhattodo1235 comments

I am in my mid thirties. I earn decently, but it has been years since I learned anything new or even enjoyed my work. I am not half as good as the HN crowd, but I can build things and be quite useful to a team. I made the stupid move to go from Java (desktop apps) to PHP and am now stuck maintaining a poorly written legacy (15 year old) app and under a lot of pressure to deliver (fixing performance, clean up code etc) and I am not living up to it. Most importantly, I am just not enjoying it.

What can I do to get out of this rut? I absolutely do not want to work on legacy codebases anymore (can't leave the job until July for various reasons) and I'd also like to get out of PHP if possible (go back to Java or learn something new).

I am afraid to apply for jobs that require experience I don't have. I'd totally love to work in graph databases for example (have played with it a bit before), or data analysis, data viz etc.

Any advice?

You aren't an older engineer.

If you don't want to maintain poorly written legacy code, then you're in the wrong business. Learn Java server-side/web apps, learn D3.js and apply it to some public data set or whatever you are interested in.

See if you can use the new tech you learn at your current gig in some way, then you will have experience with it and can look elsewhere.

Get up earlier and do your pivot work there (training, applying, research). If you can cut out entertainments (movies, games, dining out) do that too and work in there.

The real question here is inertia, and you're going to need to burn some fuel to get yourself a new vector.

Good luck, the earlier you start the sooner you'll get to your destination.

> What can I do to get out of this rut?

Start attending Software Development meet-ups as frequently as you can. That's where you'll plug into new ideas. Nearly every major hub city has an active community worth checking out. > http://softwaredev.meetup.com/

You can use your Java skills to do something exciting like building Android apps, it's easy to learn and doesn't require much experience.

PHP rules!

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