Does anyone have experience of returning to software development later in life?

[Hades]

Background

Long story short it's been a bit of a crap year with some personal injuries and now being advised my job is at risk of redundancy. I've been through similar "at risk" periods at least 6 or 7 times in my career and always survived them. So I may be safe. But I'm at the stage with my job, especially having only just returned from 3 months sick leave, that I want a bit of a change anyway. So while I really don't want to be made redundant for financial reasons to support my family, part of me would welcome a new start somewhere.

I've been in the IT industry since 1987, having done various roles from testing to development to support and many management roles. More recently it has been on the support and service management side. If I am made redundant I have a choice to make; either get another similar job or take a massive pay cut for a while and go back to being a junior software developer. My redundancy package could be used to subsidise the cut in salary for a while and I'm no longer interested in chasing big salaries or high positions. Been there and done that in the past. Medium term we are going to downsize the house anyway, which would remove part of the need to earn a significant salary. I have always loved programming and even today I continue to dabble in it in my spare time. But with no recent commercial experience I would need to start near the bottom again.

Question

I am aware that there is a lot of ageism in the industry. So how realistic would it be to go back to being a junior developer again in my 50's after a couple of decades away from it commercially (but still keep my hand in as a hobby)? Has anyone tried it and what was your experience? Thanks.

 

[Hades]

Thanks @swillsy, @peterwalkley, @dowie. The reason for going back to a junior is that I appreciate I can't demonstrate current skills to anyone despite being able to pick it up again in a very short time. I started programming as a hobby as a 12 year old kid in 1981 with BASIC, assembler and C and have never entirely stopped. In the past I've professionally coded for banks in PL/1 (a dead mainframe language), COBOL (still a few jobs about but I hated COBOL) and Java (which I did love at the time). Recently I have used a lot of Python in my role to automate reports and also taught it to my teams to help them automate various tasks.

In my own time I've used a lot of Python (and Django), a bit of PHP and Go. So I have no doubt I could quickly pick up anything needed on the job. But it's demonstrating that to a potential employer which I guess will be the hurdle. It's good to hear that ageism isn't as bad as I thought. In my last few companies I rarely saw anyone over mid 30's in developer roles. But that's probably because the older guys were made redundant and the jobs moved to India.

Perhaps one angle could be to look for a job that has a more modern language as the main requirement, but also mainframe ability as a nice to have. You could put me in front of an OS/390 (z/OS now I think) today and I'd quite happily logon and navigate around.

Thanks for the feedback.

 

[Hades]

Most companies will ignore anyone who hasn't been programming in recent years.
Most companies will ignore anyone over 40 for a hands on programming role.
Plenty of demand for Python so you might get away with it.
My advice would be to look for a hands off role somewhere that uses Python.

This was indeed my concern. Thanks for the feedback too.

 

[Hades]

Salesforce Developers (decent ones) are in massive demand at the moment - there just are not enough developers to fill the positions that are needed.

Salesforce uses its own language (Apex) which is an object oriented language based heavily on Java; it also uses JavaScript.

Nobody will care about your age, a degree of maturity and business experience far outweigh your age in my experience.

Thanks for the heads up.

 

[Hades]

You'll find that the job market in the last couple of years really demands you demonstrate programming capability. Todo this you're doing things like hackajob or hackathons, contributing to open source projects and integrating with programmers/senior staff on social media. It's about getting the relationship to unlock the roles before the horde (for smaller companies) and to have a social media advert for the large orgs where the recruiters/interviewer can review. Especially as people will want to know you can code given you don't have any in the last few years.

You sound like me - almost 50 and was programming BASIC in the 1970s, Assembler in the 80s and then did a software engineering degree before going all the way through the technical tree.

Data science (ingress, cleaning and then algorithm development), cloud based platforms with Web & Mobile applications are still very highly sought after. There's also cybersecurity but everyone wants 100 years of cyber security experience, £10K of certifications and a cast iron insured guarantee that they will never have a data breach. Ok that last is a little OTT but people want someone that's demonstrated it already.

There does seem to be a distinct lack of willingness to invest in people, to build them up in fear they will simply be poached and offered more cash elsewhere. So the emphasis on your own development rests with you.

Yep, very similar. 53 now. BASIC in 1981, 6502 Assember a couple of years later. In between those I was writing out the values for machine code instructions and poking them into memory from BASIC (because I couldn't afford an Assembler on my pocket money).

It's a tricky decision because the relatively easy path is to get another job similar to my current one. The harder path is to return back to what I enjoy.

Since my original post above I've been told I won't find out whether I am redundant until "sometime in August". It's disgraceful they are keeping everyone's lives on hold. But at least it takes me past another work anniversary so it's another years employment in the redundancy calculation if it does happen.

 

[Hades]

Thanks for the latest replies. It is very much appreciated. A quick update on my situation; I was indeed made redundant. But the company dragged it out and kept delaying the outcome meeting until the end of August. However I was very certain that I would be made redundant because of some information HR accidentally sent me in June. So I started job hunting soon after. I Have actually got a new job although it doesn't start until January and I have been on paid gardening leave for a while - which I am really enjoying. I have caught up with a lot of stuff I didn't have time to do when I had a job, and the paid leave has meant I've had a good rest which I certainly needed after the last few years. I haven't, yet, moved back to software development because the new job was similar to my old one, although in a completely different industry. That was mainly driven by my need to get a job fairly quickly and also the job does seem genuinely interesting.

However I am now spending some time getting back up to speed on a few languages and dabbling with a few side projects. So if this new job doesn't work out then I will certainly jump back into software development.