Ask HN: 44-year old software developer – what now? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: 44-year old software developer – what now?

17 pointsmb_7213 comments

I'm a 44-year old developer who first programmed on a TRS-80 in 1982, graduated with a degree in Maths and Comp. Sci in 1994, and I've been working ever since as a 'software guy' in various industries (school administration, medical, construction, logistics, real estate finance, hospitality). I'm unsure what to do next.

Data points: 1) current job is for a logistics company where over 5 years, along with a non-developer co-worker as advisor, I've created a custom Winforms / SQL server application that now runs the company.

2) have Australian and EU citizenship, currently in the EU

3) technically am 'ok', sometimes slightly better than that; my strengths lie is talking to non-technical people and creating cleanly-developed and maintainable software that meets their requirements

4) have a joint venture agreement in place with an Australian-based long-running client (since 2005); I rewrote his Delphi-based finance application in C# so it now works cross-platform on Windows and Mac (using Xamarin), with a shared PCL (portable class library) that contains the core calculations. There is an 'ok' mostly-passive (aside from bug fixes) income from the sale of this product.

5) my work, with the exception of some C# Mac work in recent years, has been entirely Windows-based, and 90% of this has been Winforms. Early on I worked on and helped develop a C++/Paradox (!!) application, then Delphi apps, and now C#/.NET/Winforms is basically everything.

6) via HN I have a reasonable understanding of current technologies, but zero practical experience, although I do have some 'as required' experience with HTML / CSS / JS

7) I've got Crohn's disease, and can't practically make it into an office job 5 days a week, or reliably

8) currently am learning Python and Django

I still love developing, and although I'm an introvert like solving people's business or general problems with software, and interacting with them to achieve this.

Any brainstorming ideas would be appreciated.

It sounds like you have a lot of options.

What kind of work do you really want to do?

What would be an ideal mix of workplace elements relating to your health and working with colleagues and where you would live?

How much do you want to stretch? Python and Django are in a way similar to C# and webforms in terms of the type of work and concepts while F#, Scala, Haskell, Erlang, or Clojure would probably be less familiar?

Do you want to work in a setting with a few other developers? Or a lot of other developers?

Do you want to work with *nix boxes in addition to Windows? Work with Systems on a Chip? Distributed computing?

My random advice from the internet is to spend some time examining the wide range of possibilities. It's not that you're likely to get them all, it's just that you might have a better feel of what you're getting and not getting.

Good luck.

Your c# skills allow you do pretty much any developer job web/desktop/mobile/games. So what do you want to do?

The job market right now is pretty brutal. If you can keep your current job, do it and if you have time try to contribute to an open source web project like django. If you can become a django contributor even for small bugs that will set you apart in a very crowded job market. Personally I was forced to take a brutal 75% income cut just to not go on unemployment in California and become homeless, here there is really no safety net. I've managed to stay in the game for 25 years but its not at all easy.

I'm not sure I'd characterize the job market right now as "brutal"—are you referring to the market specifically for late-career technologists? From what I can gather the job market seems about as healthy as it normally is in tech at least. Rougher perhaps if you're older or really junior (like fresh out of a code school junior) but if you're reasonably current it seems to me that there's at least some opportunites available.

> I'm unsure what to do next.

I'm sorry if I've missed something, but isn't the status quo a reasonable option?

Other than that, see what other problems your current customers are having that you could help with. Basically you do not want to leap into a completely new arena and start from zero again (some people can pull this off, most don't). Your Delphi to C# thing appears to be a good example of the sort of transitions you can make.

Alternatively, do personal projects on things related to your hobbies or stuff like that. It's a great of motivating yourself and learning new stuff. Often enough, you will find that there is actually a market for what you built.

Also, find dev meetups in your area (assuming you live close to or in a reasonably-sized city) and go there. You tend to get free pizza and there are always people with interesting / intriguing ideas. Sometimes the people themselves are interesting / intriguing.

I like to dig in deeper about how computers and software works. It is fun, I learn a lot and it have given me many jobs even without an exam. You could learn more about Linux, UNIX, cloud services, http etc. I don't know how the job market for Windows based desktop applications will be in the future.

Does #3 mean that you also have the _superpower_ to translate business/non-technical stuff to technical people ?

Also, take a look at AWS Lambda/{Azure,Google}CloudFunctions and Zappa. I guess this "serverless"/lambda/cloud function frameworks are here to stay and it's not easy to figure out how make it work properly.

You need to market yourself. Get a website, cards, handout, anything, then go to meetups. Talk to your local sbdc rep. Craigslist ads work well. Contact me and i'd be happy to tell you all the stuff i do.

Thanks - I'd already made a list of stuff like that to expand my 'profile'. One thing I should have noted more clearly is that I'm not in the USA. However, the bulk of what you say still applies independent of location.

Beat advice is to prep for being a 45 year old developer.

Find a job where you can work remotely (from home).

Yep, I've actually been working mostly from home for about 8 years now. I agree this would solve a lot of the 'problems'.

What is in your hearts desire? Would be a good place to start.

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