A new career in software development: advice for non-youngsters
Lately I have been encountering non-young people looking to switch careers, into software development. My suggestions have centered around the ageism culture and how they can take advantage of fashions in software ecosystems to improve their job prospects.
I start by telling them the good news: the demand for software developers outstrips supply, followed by the bad news that software development culture is ageist.
One consequence of the preponderance of the young is that people are heavily influenced by fads and fashions, which come and go over less than a decade.
The perception of technology progresses through the stages of fashionable, established and legacy (management-speak for unfashionable).
Non-youngsters can leverage the influence of fashion’s impact on job applicants by focusing on what is unfashionable, the more unfashionable the less likely that youngsters will apply, e.g., maintaining Cobol and Fortran code (both seriously unfashionable).
The benefits of applying to work with unfashionable technology include more than a smaller job applicant pool:
- new technology (fashion is about the new) often experiences a period of rapid change, and keeping up with change requires time and effort. Does somebody with a family, or outside interests, really want to spend time keeping up with constant change at work? I suspect not,
- systems depending on unfashionable technology have been around long enough to prove their worth, the sunk cost has been paid, and they will continue to be used until something a lot more cost-effective turns up, i.e., there is more job security compared to systems based on fashionable technology that has yet to prove their worth.
There is lots of unfashionable software technology out there. Software can be considered unfashionable simply because of the language in which it is written; some of the more well known of such languages include: Fortran, Cobol, Pascal, and Basic (in a multitude of forms), with less well known languages including, MUMPS, and almost any mainframe related language.
Unless you want to be competing for a job with hordes of keen/cheaper youngsters, don’t touch Rust, Go, or anything being touted as the latest language.
Databases also have a fashion status. The unfashionable include: dBase, Clarion, and a whole host of 4GL systems.
Be careful with any database that is NoSQL related, it may be fashionable or an established product being marketed using the latest buzzwords.
Testing and QA have always been very unsexy areas to work in. These areas provide the opportunity for the mature applicants to shine by highlighting their stability and reliability; what company would want to entrust some young kid with deciding whether the software is ready to be released to paying customers?
More suggestions for non-young people looking to get into software development welcome.
Is Java unfashionable yet? 🙂
@Tim stewart
Banks are paying well for Java skills, and it looks like this will continue for some years (at least in London). This helps to maintain Java’s fashionability.
I’m sorry but I can’t take your most recent article seriously. Is this satire? There are absolutely no jobs in software development, especially here in Europe. My team received over 4000+ applications for a single engineering positon in Germany! I know dozens of young CS graduates who are on welfare and can’t find a job. The situation is even worse in France, Spain or Italy. I can’t even imagine how it must be when you are older. I wouldn’t recommend ANYONE to get into this profession, it’s a career with no market. Behind your “software development job” are 100 Chinese and Indian applicants lined up and they are willed to do your job it for a handful of rice.
@Markus Hubert
I’m based in the UK and know a few people working in companies scattered around Europe and the US. The demand for people who can code is very real.
Many universities are now offering CS degrees that don’t require the students to do any programming. A common recruitment complaint is that companies have to filter out a large percentage of applicants who cannot code.
What was your experience with those 4K+ applicants? Were many actually employable as developers?
I’m in Canada and I can attest to a desperate shortage of skilled software developers.
We get plenty of applicants for our open positions and maybe 1/20 can pass a basic programming test with use to protect ourselves from wasting time on applicants who can’t program at all. The screening question is to reverse the text in a string or something similar, which should be super-simple for anybody who has the foggiest notion of what they are doing.
But, getting back to the subject of the post, I have some other tips for non-youngsters looking to get into programming.
Write a little program or two that does something and post it/them on GitHub so we can see an example of your work. I don’t really care what it does but I wouldn’t hire a photographer without seeing their portfolio and similar logic applies here.
Prepare for the interview. You know what kinds of questions you’ll be asked. Have answers ready for at least some of them. I’m consistently shocked by how unprepared most applicants are.
Know how to sell yourself. Actually writing code isn’t the whole job. Do you have experience self-organizing, working on a team, collaborating, getting the job done, dealing with challenges, resolving interpersonal conflicts, acting like a mature adult, making plans, prioritizing, etc.? Skills from your previous career can be very valuable.
Tell the truth. This works two ways. If I catch you in a lie, you are not getting hired. And I’d rather you admit that you are trying to make a career change and that you know you don’t have much experience but that you are dedicated to doing whatever it takes to get good at this job just like you’ve hopefully done in all you other jobs. Asking for a chance to prove yourself can’t hurt.
Another unfashionable thing you could specialize in is maintaining an existing application. I know this kind of overlaps with the post but maintaining an existing application, even in a popular language or stack, is often viewed as less desirable than working on new projects.
Actually get good at programming. It takes years and years to get good. Don’t expect to get hired because you took an intro course or a short bootcamp unless you can really show you’re committed to this career path.
Finally, just be aware that as an industry we are really bad at hiring. You could get rejected for any of a number of reasons that have nothing to do with your potential suitability for the role. AI screening of your resume is one example of that. Just keep trying and don’t take the rejections personally. Speaking as someone who does hiring, it’s much safer for me to reject potential candidates that might have a red flag or two than it is for me to bring on someone that might be ok and find out they can’t do the job. Bad hires can cause a lot of damage and waste so that’s what we try to minimize.
@Blaine
The cost of an inappropriate hire is a good point. Youngsters are likely to be easier to move-along (assign them boring work and they will fly away) than the non-young (who are likely to find it move difficult to find another job, or have seen enough of the alternatives to be content to stay put and handle what management throws at them).
@Markus Hubert
There absolutely is a high demand for developers, at least here in the UK around London. Salaries are very good as there is such a short supply of candidates. The catch is that most companies are looking for more senior developers, whiles most of candidates seem to be entry level.
> what company would want to entrust some young kid with deciding whether the software is ready to be released to paying customers?
So the solution is reverse ageism? Got it.
@Markus Hubert
your post seems more like satire than the article – this is the best job market I have seen for developers since before y2k – anyone who can code and breathe can get a job right now and there are even more remote options than ever before so its less location dependant
You’re suggesting old people self-censor from the latest technology?
Ridiculous!
The new culture is this: don’t talk history; show me what you can do.
Build something fantastic to show, and write your own ticket.
(And never, ever pull rank or embarrass people: that’s the new verboten)
Hi, I am 59 and got an internship in Germany for Clojure coding (was a lawyer before).
When I applied, I did not send a resume since most HR departments are brain dead.
I told them that I just had finished an LLM in Banking law (which is true, I was unemployed and
going to university keeps me sharp and does not cost anything). I told them that Corona made me rethink what I wanted: Clojure programming. When they asked me about my age, I did not lie and they seem to be ok with it. I hope that after the 6-month internship they let me work part time, because I am to enroll in a masters degree in CS and AI. I did not like unemployment/Corona, i.e. staying at home and getting on wifeys nerves. So I hope to work for another 15 20 years.
In NZ, haven’t found ageism to be much of an issue here. I’m going to guess that ageism goes along with a bag of other undesirable brogrammer tech culture traits that seem to infest a small segment of the software industry in particular locales.
If you are starting a second (or third) career and it’s in tech, don’t look at the YC / FAANG / startup crowd to learn, find a solid business that leverages technology to improve the way they do things, even better if it is in an industry that you have prior experience in. Leverage your existing experience to get in the door and get that first 2 – 3 years commercial experience.
The best developers I have worked with are humble, curious and lazy (a very particular kind of lazy – they work hard to make theirs and others work lives easier), I think these attitudes come much easier to older people because we generally have less to prove.
@Nick
I think that Clojure would be considered to have some amount of fashion status. How did you get a job involving Clojure?
I suspect that the job relates to your domain expertise, i.e., lawyering; plus an LLM in banking sounds like a desirable qualification for some jobs. I imagine that they bit the bullet on hiring you to code (in any language, fashionable or not).
Ok, so I’m in my late 40’s. What should I do to get into COBOL programming and how should I go about finding a job at it?
The problem with QA is that while it’s unfashionable, it’s also in much less demand. I’m not sure if the product of these factors works in your favor or not.
I have many friends working in software who have tried to poach me, and my response is that I’m looking for something in QA or testing (because that side actually interests me) and I have yet to hear from anyone with such an opening, even for a pre-vetted candidate.
I think you also need to get into an unfashionable domain, because most of the trendy companies are still in the “move fast and break things” phase and don’t have much QA. But once you’re in an unfashionable domain, it doesn’t matter what type of job you pick, so aiming for QA doesn’t really improve your chances.
@Tim
Yes, Q/A is niche, and it’s a cost center (management love reducing costs). In the past it was a way of getting a foot in the door, gaining visibility for when a development team needed a person and was having hiring problems; I don’t know about these days.
I have no idea how many companies are actually moving fast and breaking things, rather than claiming such. Nobody likes breaking things, especially in large companies.
@Leon
https://www.ibm.com/blogs/ibm-training/free-course-announcing-learning-cobol-programming-with-vscode/
@Markus Hubert
I am also in Germany and I have been a dev for 20 years. Few months ago I changed my employer.
Don’t know where you work but I could find many interesting jobs offers. I used indeed and also xing. At xing, I was contacted by many companies offering me a job and I could find many interesting jobs at indeed.
I don’t consider myself a senior or lead dev, just normal coder.
So, my personal feeling is that there are many jobs here for devs. (I appled as webdev)