Earlier this year, before Covid-19 made it’s presence known in a big way, my company told me that they would be closing most or all of their business units and I would most likely be out of a job by the end of the year. I wasn’t too surprised since we’ve been in a downward spiral for several years and our IT department dwindled down from five employees with me being the last man standing.
I started at this company 26 years ago as a programmer / operator on our IBM System/36 system, then did the same when we migrated to the iSeries platform. Eventually I got tired of programming and moved to more of a hardware / networking / server admin role and have been mostly doing that for the past 10 years or so. I’ve got a broad range of experience which has allowed me to keep things running for about the last 3 years, but now I need to consider how I will make myself appealing to other potential employers.
I’ve got some experience modifying and updating Cisco routing and switching devices, managing Windows servers, upgrading / troubleshooting / and repairing PCs and printers, and act as sort of a jack of all trades. Aside from my Associate Degree in programming which I earned in 1985, I’ve attended classes from time to time to help me do my job. It’s been several years since I’ve attended a class due to company and personal finances, but I’m going to have to do something soon.
At first I considered trying to set up my own lab and do some self-instruction to get a Cisco CCNA certification, but I’m not certain that I want to be a networking guy for the remaining 12-15 years before I retire. I’m pretty sure I could land a support desk position without too much effort, but I’m not certain that I would want to do it for very long. This has now made me reconsider getting back into programming.
I used to be a pretty decent programmer back in the old days, but I’ve not had to do any object-oriented programming to speak of. I’m looking at some online courses which will help me get up to speed with a few languages which appear to be in demand in my local market. I’m looking at courses offered by our local technical college as well as some free courses that I found through mooc.org’s web site.
So, after reading all of the crap I’ve written above, can anybody offer any tips, personal experiences, or words of encouragement / derision which might help me to plot out the rest of my career? (No pressure…)
Go for it. Try different languages and different environments to get a feel for it all. Being multi-lingual is critical these days, you may need to know a browser language like Javascript, and XML structures and tools, and SQL, and more general application languages like Python or C++ or Java, all of which may be tied in to some powerful tools sets.
You probably are doing this anyway, but look for a direction that will take advantage of your background experience, that’s what will turn your age into an advantage. Even for a completely different job your background in a particular industry or your knowledge of standards or background with networking and hardware will help. That’s the kind of thing they can’t hire right out of college.
What language(s) do you think would be a good starting point for me to get warmed up with modern program development? I’m not sure if web development would be my thing, but if it sparks my interest I might change my tune. Any opinions on tinkering with Visual Studio?
I’m kind of biased based on my personal experience, but I would say cloud, machine learning/AI, and big data are the way to go. That means Python, R, AWS, Azure, various Apache Hadoop “zoo animals” (Hive, Hbase, Spark, Nifi, etc, etc).
There are a lot of really cheap Udemy courses that cover this stuff.
I’ve been in web development for 20+ years and we’ve always been a Microsoft shop. We started with ASP then ASP.net (C#) and now are using dotnetcore (still C#). We’ve always used Visual Studio and MS SQL.
I just in the past few months started following r/web_dev and r/csharp on Reddit and pretty much every day it’s all posts about starting out in C# web development. And how much everyone loves dotnetcore.
Microsoft has finally made it free and easy for everyone to jump in to using VS and SQL, so I don’t see why you shouldn’t give it a try!
Sounds interesting, msmith537. I wonder if my age (55) and inexperience with working with big data might prove to be stumbling blocks to getting work in those areas of expertise.
Too soon for me to be so intimidated, I guess. For now I’m trying to narrow my focus so I can get my sea legs under me again. I’ve been looking at Udemy as a probable starting point, so it’s good to have you bring it up as well.
I think the shit economy might be more of a factor at this point.
I mean you can’t do anything about being 55. All you can really do is decide whether or not you want to be 55 with a bunch of AWS certs and online big data courses under your belt.
Thanks for the info. Obviously I’m going to have to build some experience with SQL in some form or another. I may end up starting with MS SQL and install SQL Server Express on a spare machine in my house. (The price is definitely nice!) C# is also on my list, as well, but would there be any value in having some C++ exposure, too?
Understood. I’ve got no illusions about age being one of several factors that come into play. There are a lot of skilled people looking for work right now, but I’m not averse to earning certificates to give myself a leg up. However, I want to make sure that I actually use the knowledge I picked up when getting a certificate so that it’s not just window dressing. I’m definitely a “use it or lose it” type of guy when it comes to retaining what I’ve learned.
There wouldn’t be any downside to having C++ exposure, of course not. But if time is a factor you might need to consider that you can either take a C++ path or a C# path.
I’ll let you know that I’ve not had one minute of computer science or programming education in my life (graduated with a bachelor’s in journalism) and I manage full stack web dev just fine.
My advice is get on board with cloud tech - Azure, or AWS or whatever. Infrastructure support with Azure/AWS seems to be a thing.
No need for a lab to sale through CCNA - it’s perfectly do-able with online resources - many free. If you are going to stump up for training, give a thought to CBTNuggets. I find their courses to be really accessible (though I no nothing of their programming ones).
I am post 55 and dread the day (or do I?) when my charmed IT career is bought to an untimely end by redundancy.
I would concentrate on javascript if it were me. There are a lot of hacks, but good JavaScript developers are rare. Can used by for so many things. Web, mobile, even some server-side stuff.
Doing a quick bit of Googling, I see that C# shares some similarities with Java as well as C++. I might use that as my jumping off point to tackling the other two as time permits.
It’s not too surprising that you were able to pick up programming the way that you did. Some people have a natural affinity for it, and sometimes your job may require that you learn it as a necessity. One of the best programmers that I know started out as an accountant at our company and started programming so that he could modify the source code for the accounting package that we were using at the time.
We host our Exchange accounts through the Office365 portal and use Azure to synch up with AD when creating new mail accounts, but that’s my only experience with it so far. I see that Microsoft does offer some introductory lessons on development within Azure, so I will try to take a look at that, too.
Years ago I tried some CCNA prep courses from a company called SkillSets, but the lessons were poorly-constructed and the hardware emulators were extremely buggy. That experience alone was enough to make me think that I would need to shell out some bucks to set up a lab rack of equipment for home. I could probably do it partially now since I’ve got some spare routers and switches on-hand and would only need to purchase a few odds and ends to make it workable for current certificate requirements.I want to get some entry-level Cisco cert if possible, but I really need to have a structured learning experience to guide me on this since the subject matter is so dry. (Does that make any sense?) Anyway, I’ll try to look into CBTNuggets if I get the chance.
Get out of the buzzword rat race. Buy a 50 foot sailboat and cruise to Tristan da Cunha. You can get a competent crew for free in any port city, they just want adventure. While in port you can shanghai a few lovely ladies who want to travel for free. You’re the captain and owner with no duties beyond clearing customs & immigration everywhere. Visit every port along the way. Test everyone for Covid before you go!
Yeeahhh, I’m not sure my wife would go along with that. Plus, I’d have to magically pull that 50-foot sailboat out of my ass since my bank account would have trouble buying a bass boat.
Just FYI, I signed up for the Java Master Class on Udemy’s web site. Just went through the intro stuff so far, but I’ll mess around for a few hours this weekend to get myself warmed up.
Thanks to everybody for their opinions in this thread. It’s greatly appreciated!
