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Advice for Older Entry-Level Programers?
jmorse asks: "My uncle recently shut down his manufacturing business and is considering entering the job market as an entry level programmer. He's done a lot of ad-hoc programming in several languages to fulfill his business' needs, but has never held a job as a programmer or software engineer. I know it's a tough time to be looking for a programming job, especially when there are so many unemployed younger people who would gladly put in long hours. What advice do slashdotters have for an older guy just getting started?"
Do the same as the younger (entry level) ones do, but extoll the virtues of being able to map real world problems into the code and produce working solutions (as opposed to just writing the good code).
This is a place where many people fall - so it'll be a good leg up.
Companies may be reluctant to hire someone at entry-level if they're too old. They generally want someone they hope to retain for a long time, and dont have to start paying retirement benefits within a small number of years. This of course, depends on your uncle's age. While that might be age discrimination, it happens a lot. My g/f's father had that problem a few years ago, but has since found work elsewhere.
Unless your uncle can provide something other than software engineering, he might be SOL. Hopefully his manufacturing work can fill that void. For example, things like robotics in manufacturing. I'm sure he's familiar with how they're used in the manufacturing process. He could find a job working for a robotics developer that sells robots to companies like General Motors or Ford.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
And what's more: Nobody will ever have to know that he's an older guy. Everyone is faceless and ageless if they want to be.
Get busy living or get busy dying. Carpe diem.
CV's, job applications, it's all a question of marketing. Like all marketing you have to paint a picture. By saying that your uncle has shut down his manufacturing business and is now looking to work as a programmer... but I've not held a job in it before... but I've not had any formal training. See, it doesn't sound good.
Your uncle has some VAST advantages over a new graduate. New grads, entry level programmers: You're not going to like this so block your ears. For one he has real world experience in how businesses work, how financing a business (particularly cashflows) work, of dealing with customers, of what deadlines mean and the fact that they are important. These are hugely rare skills in the software engineering world and he would do well to bring them to the fore when talking to potential employers.
From a purely programming perspective you also have to remember that even if his projects were small and ad hoc, they: Shipped; Fulfilled the business requirements; Were on budget and on time. Again, all three of these are actually very rare. All three at once is virtually unheard of.
He's in a very good position, but I wouldn't be going for a coding job. Personally, I'd like to see him paint himself as a project lead or business analyst. If he approaches some outsourcing companies offering to be an interface between their clients and the coding teams, leveraging his real world (non IT industry) experience to his advantage, they'd be hard pressed to turn him down.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
I know it may sound unethical, but if he really does have talent and is a quick study, then there is no reason why having "official" expierence is any better than the expierence he has gained already. Just have him do some short-term contract work pretend that he has been programming all this time. All he needs is to get his foot in the door, and once he has some "official" expierence under his belt (assuming he does a good job, of course), then he'll be all set to take on the next big job.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Leverage your work experience. The boys out of school may have the sheepskin, but have frankly demonstrated nothing more than reading comprehension and the ability to get out of bed in the morning. Adult behavior, integrated personality, the ability to cooperate with others, all useful stuff that the average green grad cannot demonstrate. Domain knowledge, as well. I'm a 38 yr. old ex-typesetter who broke into programming three years ago. I spent eight years working with SGML systems. When XML took off, I leveraged that and a handful of CE credits in Java into a pretty nice career.
illegitimii non ingravare
In this job market, forget trying to get an entry level position. Why would anyone bother with somebody with no pertinent experience when there are plenty of people with years of experience available and desperate for work?
This depends on your area, of course. The high-tech meccas got hit hardest because of the blind panic in the dot com collapse (where entire programs were abruptly terminated, often leaving very senior people jobless), if he's someplace everyone else fled years ago he won't have as much competition as he would in the major cities.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Unless your uncle can provide something other than software engineering...
/. said his uncle has done some coding for his business. To me that implies that the uncle has some knowledge about the programming languages he used for his business and may have the ability to fit into a coding team, but not necessarily into a design team. There are few places that are looking to a hire an in-house software developer who handles the entire design and development process in-house. To me, someone who may interview said uncle, developing software for your business does not mean you understand things like the waterfall model. To me a good design almost codes itself and I'd prefer to place experienced persons (not just expeirenced in running a business, I mean experienced in the software development process as a whole) at the design phase and new hires or those with less experience in the coding positions - at least until they begin to understand my company's hirarchy and the product line we develop.
The person who asked
Wheeeee
if he's someplace everyone else fled years ago he won't have as much competition as he would in the major cities
See, I just knew there was a reason that I moved back to Buffalo.
Must have been the lovely weather, along with the thriving economy.
--saint
Kiss his ass! Worked for me... ;-)
$6.21 is the number of the beast before sales tax. Meh.
I think "a long time" to keep an IT person is maybe five years. And if they really would like to hire someone who's more likely to stay longer, they'd be smart to hire the older guy. I guy in his early to mid-twenties is less likely to stick around. I doubt this uncle is in his late fifties or sixties so he's still got a ways to go before retirement. He's more likely to have a mortage and dependent children so stability and security will be more important to him.
As for a company paying "retirement benefits," it sounds like you're talking about a pension. I think 401k programs are more the norm for this kind of work in which the company's contribution (if there is any) ends with the employee's employment with them.
Reasons companies want to hire young people:
These are just my guesses and these just stereotypes of the young and old.
or pay much. Writing code for free won't pay the mortgage. Especially for someone just starting out.
Repeat after me:
Open Source is Not the Holy Grail.
Open Source is Not the Holy Grail.
Open Source is Not the Holy Grail.
- maturity
- seniority, leadership
- variety of experience
- strong work ethic
This guy has his own business? Great, then he probably understands budgets, deadlines, resource management, and all kinds of other good stuff that any manager wishes his employees understood. He won't necessarily be *doing* those things when he wants an entry level spot, but he can appreciate what it means when his boss says "I understand that you want to do it this way, but you tell me that will take 8 weeks and I only have budget for 3 weeks, so do it the other way." Many of the hotshot young programmers who don't grok business will often shoot back "Then just change the budget" or something equally clueless. The experienced ones will say "You got it, boss" and make it happen in 3 weeks.Remember too, those young kids that will put in the long hours are also the ones that will leave your company in a heartbeat the day someone else comes along and promises to make them rich on stock options. The old timers are often the ones who remember what it's like to have loyalty to their career and the people around them, and not always the quick buck. Managers would kill for that.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Yeah, but as this slashdot discussion made it clear, open source projects don't count as valid experience. Then again, nothing short of working for an actual PHB does. Bleh.
Age discrimination in the software industry is more often caused by the notion (which I think is absurd) that older people "lose" creativity they had when they were younger. I have not heard of it ever being caused by managers wanting "someone they hope to retain for a long time, and dont have to start paying retirement benefits within a small number of years."
The other main factor fostering age discrimination is the fact that you can pay a young kid 1/4th to 1/2 what you would have to pay a competent, experienced engineer.
I do not know of any software house (well, maybe Microsoft) that genuinely expects to retain a software developer for five years. Most people have either grown out of software development by then, or at least branched out to *something* new (new language or new application realm or even a new industry) after 2 - 3 years.
"God is dead." - Frederik Nietzsche
Medicare will take care of your coffee overdose.
Perhaps he would have an easier time selling himself as a software architect rather than a software engineer. i.e.: He's good at relating business requirements to system requirements and making sure the pieces fit together in a cohesive way.
This way his actual programming experience is _much_ less important than his people skills, ability to withstand long meetings in a single bound, and general political savvy in a large corporation.
Just my $.02...
"But actually trying to use m4 as a general-purpose langage would be deeply perverse" --ESR
bad decision IMHO. Why does he not try to work in a field related to his old business?
Or what? What if the manager does circumvent (or in this case, ignore) the policy that says all candidates have to go through HR first? Is the company going to penalize him for finding an excellent candidate on his own? And if so, is that a company you want to work for?
There are so few times when the word "can't" is actually appropriate, especially in business, and especially in larger, moss-covered companies. Prob'ly 2/3rds of any given policy manual is extraneous CYA crap.
Don't go along with the stupid stuff. Your job is to do good, efficient, profitable work, NOT to follow rules, and if the company you're in doesn't understand that, then get the hell out.
Your Uncle has a very good chance if he concentrates on a couple of things. I have years of experience, but no formal CS qualifications, and I have found I can always get work by following these guidelines.
1) Don't be desperate. In fact, be a little aloof.
2) Pick your companies carefully.
3) People skills will take you ten times further than technical skills. I've seen companies hire 'virtual savants' who were coding geniuses, but who couldn't work with others, were poor communicators and poor listeners and as a result the project fails.
Your Uncle needs to bring all his people skills from half a lifetime of experience to bear in the interview. You would be amazed at the look of relief that software project managers show when they meet someone who will listen carefully to the problems the company is trying to solve.
4) When asked, always steer the conversation to projects you have successfully completed and not particular skills in particular areas. Believe it or not, most companies don't want a walking encyclopedia, they want someone who will work at getting the project completed on time.
5) Provide references of ability to learn quickly. Not only is the tech industry changing rapidly, thus requiring those who can self-teach themselves new technologies, but the company will be interested in how fast you grasp the problems faced in their specific industry/company. After all, the reason SME's develop software in the first place is to gain a competitive advantage through one of their industry's 'hard tasks'.
6) Do some research. Not on the company, but on the industry they are in. This will allow you to ask intelligent questions in the interview.
7) Become interested in the project during the interview. Act as if their problem/project is an interesting foreign land to be explored (and possibly plundered). Interviewers look for those who are first motivated by the technical challenge, with the money just being a measure of success.
8) DON'T PANIC! Focus on your experience, your proven ability, your communication skills and your proven ability to learn. Those are four things that companies (with exception of behomoths) are looking for in every candidate. If a company uses clueless HR staff who only hire those who look good on paper, then I can guarantee you, you do NOT want to work for those life sucking, soul destroying beauracrats.
9) Employment agents are 90% morons. As a rule, I don't deal with them. I network. I call people, who know people, who know people. Once I had been doing that for a few years, people started to call me, because they knew my work ethic and my reputation for getting projects completed.
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I am the director, and this is my movie
Perhaps he could combine his modest technical skills and his business management/customer relations/financial/leadership skills to become a project manager?
Get him to send out several versions of his resumes, each version with slightly different contact information, and each version should be using a wildly different strategy, or better yet have him try a strategy that is against using resumes(see http://asktheheadhunter.com/ ).
Stephan
There are a lot more Jobs in IT than just programmer, and nearly all of them require expertise in the problem domain. I would suggest that he should capitalise on this knowledge. He should approach the Companies that would tried to sell him software or supply his industry. I think he would struggle to compete with fresh grad's with current skill as an entry level coder, but would probably bring a range of skills as a Analysis, Designer, Tester, Pre/Post-Sales Support.
One distinct opportunity might be in technical sales. The man has a deep understanding of his industry and isn't shy around software, so he could probably fit in as a sales engineer for a company selling software to firms like his. He KNOWS what those companies need and he knows their language.