Mid Life Career change to IT/coding???

[rjpsb1]

20 years in the industry, and at 50 I'm more in demand than ever. I've seen age discrimination in action but never experienced it, probably because of good written and verbal communication skills. Just being good at the tech isn't enough.

The silverbacks that I've seen get the shaft tend to be crap at talking to people, or can't (more like won't) keep up with the ridiculous and continuous reeducation/self education that's necessary, or can't adjust to a work environment where racism and sexism is no longer tolerated.

[Dragunov]

20 years in the industry, and at 50 I'm more in demand than ever. I've seen age discrimination in action but never experienced it, probably because of good written and verbal communication skills. Just being good at the tech isn't enough.

The silverbacks that I've seen get the shaft tend to be crap at talking to people, or can't (more like won't) keep up with the ridiculous and continuous reeducation/self education that's necessary, or can't adjust to a work environment where racism and sexism is no longer tolerated.

This has been my personal experience also. It is tough, keeping up with tech. A lot of times, over my very long..... long, LONG career, I ate, drank, slept, and bled, code, and computers. I always made sure I was at the top of my game.... AND on top of every OTHER programmers game. Kinda cutthroat, but hey, I stayed employed running/coding/administrating SIPRNET for 25 years, and was able to leave on my own terms. I was programming, and working computers for 11 years, before the DoD picked me up. HUGE edge!

[Subotai]

See, that's the thing. You have to live and breathe code. How committed can you be OP?

[brey6290]

Personal experience and friends parents experience with career changes is the older you are with entry level positions the harder it is because you lack the experience and you have less "useful" life before retirement age. But it's not impossible you just have to talk up life experience more in interviews and have some accomplishments like coding websites or competitions won while doing your it training

[bbguns44]

You can't do IT at home but you can code & sell the code at home. Do some
phone apps & all the infrastructure including the market is already done.

Once you get a few apps under your belt, hopefully money making apps, you can bill yourself as an expert & skip the entry level crap.

[rjpsb1]

Yeah, about those 'industry certifications' - the ONLY certification worth a bleep is a degree from an accredited university. Certifications on a resume just make me all that more likely to circular file it.

[MrFancyPants]

Yeah, about those 'industry certifications' - the ONLY certification worth a bleep is a degree from an accredited university. Certifications on a resume just make me all that more likely to circular file it.

You must not work in IT, because in IT the exact opposite of what you said is true. I have a degree in IT management, want to guess how many jobs I've been offered because of that? Not one. I've had many opportunities because of my certifications and experience, usually have multiple job offers on the table at the same time. Every network or operations manager I've worked with would MUCH rather have a Cisco certified network engineer, or a Microsoft certified administrator maintaining their infrastructure. Any fool can get a college degree, just look at all the "educated" liberals out there. It takes a pretty high degree of skill and knowledge, and you really have to prove you know what you're doing to pass a certification exam. I have years of experience and it's still tough. I wouldn't trust a tech with a college degree to know their head from a hole in the ground when it's time to fix a critical network issue. When the network is down it needs to be fixed 10 minutes ago. I've seen more than once inexperienced techs panic and freeze when the fit hits the shan, and have to rely on help from senior level engineers (me) because the real world is a whole lot different than the classroom.

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[BonnieB]

Lots of negativity here. IT is still the fastest growing business in the nation. And, it is a total meritocracy. All anyone cares about is "can you do the work". I entered the business at age 35 as a COBOL jock and had a thirty year career, culminating in high paid work as a software Project Manager, PMP.

If I were going to enter the field right now, I'd go after a certification in System Security. As we all know, protecting existing systems from invasion is Priority One.

[njineermike]

I don't find this to be true at all. I work my butt off. I'm 56yrs old, been doing I.T. for 40 years, no joke. My phone doesn't stop ringing. I always get jobs the younger guys/gals want.... Here's the kicker; My labor rates are higher than most of their's. I'm also a walking, computer encyclopedia. That helps a lot too.

Experience DOES count for something.

This. Exactly this. I consider it a short week when I only work 5 days. I'll go weeks without a day off. Worldwide we don't have nearly enough people doing the type of coding I do, mostly because you can't just bring raji from new dehli over and tell him to start banging out code for cheap and fix it later. In my line of work code errors can destroy expensive equipment, plus get you massive fines from regulators.

The upside: It beats digging ditches. You're not on your feet all day breaking your back. You can make some serious money once you get good at it.

The downside: You won't be good at it for quite a while. The learning curve is steep and you start off in competition with a lot of other crabs in the bucket. You have to be a lot better than them and get there a lot faster to distinguish yourself.

My advice: take a computer science coding class in a higher level language (python, c#, etc.) A low level language class (like assembly), the A+ class, the network+ class, and start taking math classes. Keep in mind coding for computers is more of a certification type environment. A degree is nice, but being certified in some specific language or platform matter more. My specific application requires an engineering degree AND certifications. Get an engineering degree and do control systems programming and you'll never be out of work. The upside is you get to actually make something with coding.

[njineermike]

You must not work in IT, because in IT the exact opposite of what you said is true. I have a degree in IT management, want to guess how many jobs I've been offered because of that? Not one. I've had many opportunities because of my certifications and experience, usually have multiple job offers on the table at the same time. Every network or operations manager I've worked with would MUCH rather have a Cisco certified network engineer, or a Microsoft certified administrator maintaining their infrastructure. Any fool can get a college degree, just look at all the "educated" liberals out there. It takes a pretty high degree of skill and knowledge, and you really have to prove you know what you're doing to pass a certification exam. I have years of experience and it's still tough. I wouldn't trust a tech with a college degree to know their head from a hole in the ground when it's time to fix a critical network issue. When the network is down it needs to be fixed 10 minutes ago. I've seen more than once inexperienced techs panic and freeze when the fit hits the shan, and have to rely on help from senior level engineers (me) because the real world is a whole lot different than the classroom.

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Depends on the field. I mentioned on some thread here I wont even bother to look at your resume if you don't have an engineering degree from an ABET school and all the home schoolers got their thongs rectally impacted. Never mind the fact that you can't get a PE without it unless you have almost 2 decades of experience, and some states won't even recognize it because you don't have a degree and didnt take the EIT, and many state level and federal level projects I've done specify a PE to be on staff to verify designs. Also negating the fact that the concepts of fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, along with the basics of mechanical and electrical civil engineering that are used every single day in what I do aren't concepts I have time to let someone learn on the fly while you're being paid to already know these things.

Just the specifics of my EE degree didnt get me in the door doing what I do now, my MCSE got me that. But without the degree, they wouldnt have even talked to me. But my MCSE alone did get me a craptastic entry level job doing hired gun IT work for less money than I could have made panhandling, even though I had the MCSE and experience working for the college IT department. At that point in time every time you kicked a tree a person with an MCSE that didnt know a memory stick from a mop bucket fell out.

About the extruded fecal matter striking the rotating impeller, I'm in a damn nice hotel right now getting ready to head to the British Consulate to get my UK working visa approved. While I wait for that to finish I have leave my nice hotel and go to a less nice area near a jobsite and redo some code because someone who should already know not to deviate from site spec, but did it anyway, did it because he couldn't figure out how the previous code integrated. So, instead of using one of the ubiqutous forms of instant communication we have practically littering the damn ground and asking well, ANYBODY about it, he wrote code that doesn't work, and the customer wanted it working weeks ago, and is about to.cost us a bundle. I didn't hire him and he doesn't have a degree.

[rjpsb1]

You must not work in IT, because in IT the exact opposite of what you said is true. I have a degree in IT management, want to guess how many jobs I've been offered because of that? Not one. I've had many opportunities because of my certifications and experience, usually have multiple job offers on the table at the same time. Every network or operations manager I've worked with would MUCH rather have a Cisco certified network engineer, or a Microsoft certified administrator maintaining their infrastructure. Any fool can get a college degree, just look at all the "educated" liberals out there. It takes a pretty high degree of skill and knowledge, and you really have to prove you know what you're doing to pass a certification exam. I have years of experience and it's still tough. I wouldn't trust a tech with a college degree to know their head from a hole in the ground when it's time to fix a critical network issue. When the network is down it needs to be fixed 10 minutes ago. I've seen more than once inexperienced techs panic and freeze when the fit hits the shan, and have to rely on help from senior level engineers (me) because the real world is a whole lot different than the classroom.

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I've worked in software and systems engineering for over 20 years. I don't work support, or take care of MS servers that need to be rebooted every second day, or configure network switches, which is what I guess you mean by IT.

Any fool can get an industry cert, but not everyone can get a degree in computer science or electrical engineering from an accredited 4 year university.

[rjpsb1]

Keep in mind coding for computers is more of a certification type environment. A degree is nice, but being certified in some specific language or platform matter more.

This is honestly the first time I've heard that. Working software dev gigs in defense, commerce, biotech, internet/telecomm, network security/anonymity/privacy, and automotive diagnostics, never heard it.

[njineermike]

This is honestly the first time I've heard that. Working software dev gigs in defense, commerce, biotech, internet/telecomm, network security/anonymity/privacy, and automotive diagnostics, never heard it.

I've been doing automation software for 20 years and hear it all the time.

[rjpsb1]

I've been doing automation software for 20 years and hear it all the time.

For what language(s)?

[njineermike]

For what language(s)?

Mostly the Cisco and LAN support personnel. I have a EE degree and a PE and the cyber security guys wouldn't even talk to me about working into that arena.