Is it Possible to Age Yourself Out of a Job?

An anonymous reader asks: "I'm a programmer with more than twelve years of experience. In all that time, I've never been a 'senior' developer. I'm competent and I work hard, but I don't think I am quite a senior developer in terms of technical or people skills. More and more I feel that I'm aging myself out a job. By this time, employers expect someone with my experience to have advanced some, and they may not be willing to even talk to me now, thinking that my pay requirements have grown while I have not. Even if I did get hired someplace new, my peers would likely be much younger than me. What do you do when you have an applicant like that? Are my fears legitimate?"

Comments

As a Hiring Manager... Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to say it, but yes. When reviewing a resume, I look for things like growth & ambition. At 12 years experience, I've seen very good architects. If one wasn't even Senior, I'd wonder why that is. Lack of ability? Lack of desire? Clock puncher?

In most cases, I'll never know or have the chance to ask the candidate. Instead, I'll just move to the next 99 resumes in the stack.

I know this isn't what you want to hear, but hopefully honesty will help.

Options

[SupplyMission]

I can't speak from experience about your situation, but I think you might have a number of very good options.

• Make it known that you are interested in being a senior developer. If you want to climb the ladder in your company, you need to make your interests known to the people who can give you promotions. This might mean spending more time with the bosses and some (or lots of) ass kissing. Ask for mentoring. Depending on the culture at your company, you might be surprised to find someone more than happy to take you under their wing. Especially if you are a familiar face, because of the long time you have been employed, people might be glad to see you step up and get promoted. Get out of your cube and explore your options in this area. Make it a point to take a stroll around the building a few times each month, and just say "hi" to people. Don't pass up opportunities to make idle chit chat once in a while with people you barely know.
• Rebrand yourself. There are plenty of colleges where you can take courses in project management training. Your long experience may confer on you credibility and respect that a younger person does not have yet. The leap to project management will be a significant career change and will take some hard work, but dedication it is not impossible.
• Take training courses. Regardless of how useful some training courses are, they look good on your resume. If you make it a goal this year to take, for example four or five training courses in something relevant to your specific field, your chances of getting employed will be much higher. People who have been in a field for a long time and actively stay abreast of new developments command respect.

There are probably unlimited more things we could think about. You shouldn't underestimate your 12 years of experience, especially if you are a hard worker, and have a reputation of getting things done.

One last thing, I get the feeling from reading your question that you might have the problem where you keep your head down and work hard, and as a result people forget who you are, and then forget you are even there. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, pardon the cliche. As I pointed out above, it is in your best interest to maintain some level of connection to people around you and above you in your company. The more they see you and talk to you, the more they feel they know you, and the more likely you are to be presented with opportunities for advancement.

25 years and going strong

[mpechner]

I've been a software engineer for 25 years. No issues. There is no expectation that you should move to management at some point. The main expectation is that you are able to keep up with technology as it changes. I've moved from COBOL to C to Java to perl to php. I've used more scripting languages than I can remember. You have to keep moving forward. You never stop reading. Provide mentoring to less experienced engineers. Never hide what you know. It is not good being the curmudgeon that keeps his knowledge to himself. You become a teacher. Understand where projects you have participated in have succeeded or failed. Bring that experience to that table. Most of us have seen more product the never made it to market than have made it. Your experience in knowing why projects succeed is something import you bring to the table. Plus you are the senior guy you get more opportunities to take lead on the cool projects. So I would not worry. I am seeing more people with some gray and missing hair. So as long as you produce, people will continue to hire you.

At our shop

[Travoltus]

I spent a lot of time early on walking through HR and sitting in on interview processes and their aftermaths to let HR understand beyond any uncertain terms where I stand as their manager and what I expect out of them.

I have a simple rule that I demand they abide be. Pay is proportional to proven skill level. Age can kiss my ass. A 14 year old coder of the newest and greatest Firefox or a middle aged old hand, or someone who's been in my organization for x years and who has been lukewarm and suddenly caught on fire, it's all the same. When the light comes on it must shine on a hill and not be stuffed under a rug.

I'm 63 and programming

[pauljw]

Number one: I love what I do. Number two: My phone rings. I actually turn down offers due to commitments. Started out back in the Middle Ages on mainframes and moved on to AS400's (love those beasts). Since I learned C early on in a Nix system, within a couple of years of when Linus put it out there on the Net, I set up a Linux box at home because I liked Nix so much. Eventually a company I worked for put a Linux box in front of their AS400 where the website was hosted in order to place a 'sacrificial' machine out in front with a lot of scripting on it. Suddenly my Nix skills got to be in demand there. Lately almost all I do is LAMP based web sites and web apps + Linux admin. Somebody here mentioned that you become the guy everybody goes to in order to ask, "How do I..." That happens on a lot for me.

Keep on keepin' on. Get new languages as you need them. Be flexible. Number one, above, probably has an awful lot to do with it.

When I started using the Internet there was almost nothing out there but Nix or Mainframe command lines. If you couldn't handle those you were SOL. I started reading /. very early on when it and the web were new. Still read it almost every day. Good going, Taco.