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Ask Slashdot: Best Degree For a Late Career Boost?
Qbertino writes "I'm in my early 40s, and after a little more than 10 years of web, scripting and software development as a freelancer and some gigs as a regular, full-time employee, I'm seriously considering giving my IT career a boost by getting a degree. I'm your regular 1980s computer kid and made a career switch to IT during the dot-bomb days. I have quite a bit of programming and project experience, but no degree. I find myself hitting somewhat of a glass ceiling (with maybe a little age discrimination thrown in there). Since I'm in Germany, degrees count for a lot (70% of IT staff have a degree) so getting one seems fitting and a nice addition to my portfolio. However, I'm pondering wether I should go for Computer Science or Business Informatics. I'd like to move into Project Management or Technical Account Management, which causes my dilemma: CS gives me the pro credibility and proves my knowledge with low-level and technical stuff, and I'd be honing my C/C++ and *nix skills. Business Informatics would teach me some bean-counting skills; I'd be doing modelling, ERP with Java or .NET all day. It would give me some BA cred, but I'd lose karma with the T-shirt wearing crew and the decision-makers in that camp. I'm leaning toward Business Informatics because I suspect that's where the money is, but I'm not quite sure wether a classic CS degree wouldn't still be better — even if I'm wearing a suit. Any suggestions?"
I'm curious when people find the glass ceiling beginning to show it's face in their respective countries. The age discrimination the poster hints are starts pretty early in the USA, I've seen it start in as early as one's late 20s (though usually it seems to pick up in the early 30s).
Go into management, or switch careers. America allows age discrimination so long as it's not against people near retirement age. In this industry, age discrimination is common knowledge, and several groups have tried to get laws passed to eliminate it, to no effect.
At the risk of being perfectly and completely crass, you're facing the same level of discrimination that black people did in the South prior to the civil rights movement: And unlike them, nobody gives a shit. Sorry. :(
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Wait.. wait.. hear me out. The MBA will give you insight into how those who are MBAs think (and therefore, most of management). Also, your experience will say "I can do IT/CS", while the degree will say "I can do business". Which means you're more likely to be able to make a jump to management if you find your career options topping out on the IT/CS end.
And you'd be following in the footsteps of Alan Cox.
I put on my robe and wizard hat..
Since you're doing this for the money, and hitting the "glass ceiling", honing your business skills will give you the best chance of moving into a position where you can make significantly more money. You say that you want to go into project management, and having business skills in achieving the trifecta of a successful project (scope, schedule, and budget) will go far. Since you've spent a significant part of your career in deep technical fields, it will also give you a different perspective on what your employer thinks is important. It will also give you a hand-up on your peer competition, because being able to tell when the tech folks are bullshitting the "suits" is extremely valuable.
OK...
I can do this. I am, after all,
a superhero!
You seem to have a misconception about what a CS degree will teach you. I highly doubt any of your low level skills will improve. Plus, get the degree for the job you want, not the job you have
If you have the intellect for tech stuff, you have the IQ to get a J. D. This (and a valid bar membership) is the only degree that actually guarantees an income these days.
With a tech background + law degree, you have a large niche market that virtually nobody else can fill, and that is regulatory compliance -- turn legalese into GPOs and policies that are implemented in IT. People get paid megabucks for this.
Yes, /. doesn't hate lawyers, but lets be real. They are the guys who have the real cars and fund the tech projects with their play money. Instead of whining about it, might as well join them and end your "last circus" with a bang with a decent nest egg.
I'm pretty sure that any limits are really ageism and not related to whether you have a degree or not. It's all about how many hours-per-week they can get out of you for $X per month. The older you are the fewer those hours are.
Even if the hours you do provide are really worth more in terms of productivity because your experience means that you do not go off on unproductive tangents.
But just in case the limit really is the degree .... get the fastest cheapest degree you can. It does NOT matter what the subject is. As long as it is fast and cheap. It is just the first step and at this point you really aren't concerned about making the correct relationships with the other kids in the frats.
THEN start working on an advanced degree in the subject that you really want. Such as computer science. Or whatever.
I don't know how it is in Germany, but here in the USA (especially in the Silicon Valley) if you want a late career boost, go get an MBA. Having an MBA isn't a four-letter word around here, especially if you get one from a good program. MIT has an excellent executive MBA program that can be done remotely, and everyone I've encountered with one has been top-notch. Same goes for an MBA from Stanford or even the other colleges local to the area.
Having an MBA opens a lot more doors for you. If you already have a good amount of experience in IT and Software Development, go get a degree in something outside of those fields to help expand your options.
You could also get a degree in something you enjoy personally but won't directly get you a job. Education doesn't just have to be for professional development.
"They told me it was impossible. I replied with maniacal laughter." http://www.mydailyrant.com/
Anything you go for will take time and put you into debt. What are the odds you will make enough money so that the degree pays for itself? It's something I've thought of myself. I'd rather plug along and slowly build or maintain what I have rather than incur a great deal of debt. Maybe a cert here and there, but that's it.
Where do you want to be 10-15 years from now? Aim towards that.
You did not mention if you have a higher education degree in anything else. This makes a big difference. If you have a university degree in a science field, I would not bother. I see plenty of successful IT folks who are retreads with physics, chemistry or other engineering degrees. If you have none at all, or something in arts or social science, I would consider getting a degree.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
. . .my bachelor's dates to 1983. Lot of been-there-done-that IT engineering since then.
2006, got TOLD that if I wanted to advance, I'd need a Masters' and at least one advanced certification. I went and got a Masters' in Management Information Systems online (fairly painless, other than writing 20-30 pages every weekend) and followed it with a CISSP cert and a CEH cert.
Income is up 50% since I started the Master's program. Except for a few things, like an introduction to Forensics, and crawling into database theory, it wasn't anything new and/or hard. And most of my fellow students (who were either just out of undergrad, or late 20s) weren't much competition. The few that WERE, I'm still in contact with: their inputs and opinions are as valuable as anything I'd learned in the classes.
Mind you. my employer paid for most of it, I had (at max point) about 7K in student loans. But considering the uptick in salary, even doing it ALL on student loans would probably have been somewhere between a good and very-good investment.
Your mileage may. of course, vary: I was a security geek BEFORE my Masters', CISSP, and CEH. . . but all three combined opened doors and definitely raised compensation. . . .
do something useful. Write software. School is there so when you get stuck someone's there to help you over that hump. You've got the Internet now. Google + forums. There's nothing in this world you can't do. Nothing. P.S. I'm not against school as a social construct. It gives us something to do with people we don't need in the job market. Just sayin' in you're goal is to succeed you don't NEED school anymore. That said, we've got plenty of room in society for it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Stop working for Faceless Corps and switch to a smaller company where you rub elbows with the Owners daily. They are not stupid and do the "only youngsters here" stupidity. They realize the older worker is a pro in the field they have been in for the past 20 years and use them to compete with the morons that have MBA's
I'll never work for another Fortune 500 company again. I prefer having beers at the end of the day with the guys that own the business.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
My assumption is that the degree is not so much to teach you something, as to "check a box" and get you through the glass ceiling....
That being said, I would go for the Business Informatics track rather than pure CS. You are more likely to learn new things which are useful in the future career you describe there.
All you have to do to earn cred with the t-shirt crowd is to format your CV in TeX, show up with a linux laptop for your interview, and build a RepRap.
Red
The submitter's not in America, he's in Germany, so ranting about US attitudes is off-topic. I don't know much about the German market, but having a BA is pretty commonly useful in business, and if you're thinking about doing project management professionally, here in the US it helps to have some professional certification in that. Also, I don't know how much college you have taken already; whether you're looking for two years or four can make a big difference in your plans.
If you haven't had a good course in algorithms and data structures, you'll benefit from that, and you're going to need math if you don't have that, but you can take those along with the Business Informatics, and if you're thinking about going into management, you're not going to be doing compiler design or operating system development yourself anyway.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I went straight into operating system and microprocessor design in the 1970's and frankly don't remember too many people complaining about a lack of a degree after 4-5 years of job effort. I did have a few people get excited about hiring me but then change their minds when they found out I wasn't carrying a masters or doctorate. I decided I didn't want to work for buttheads who were more interested in the paper than the ability.
After ten years, it was more of a "wow, you don't have a degree?" as a minor item of interest when someone saw my resume. So either the guys you work for are buttheads or the ceiling you're hitting is an excuse you're having laid on you.
Degree may not boost your career, do you see so many jobless PhDs around ? Take some risk to start up your own company may give you a boost.
Because you posted AC, I'm going to assume that you don't realize that a Ph.D can take, on average, between 6 and 10 years, lacking any undergraduate work. Also, starting your own company may give a boost - but that's not really answering the question.
There is one thing that the AC/OP got right - the type degree doesn't matter nearly so much (notice: I qualified that with "nearly") as the fact that you hold a degree. What I'd suggest, is to get a degree in the type of management that you'd like to be - If you're planning on overseeing a bunch of programmers, figure out what they would have, and try for that. In other words - your "promotability" doesn't depend on your degree, it depends on the success of your direct reports (your area of responsibility).
If you connect with your direct reports in a way that makes them more productive (and it sounds as if you plan to use the degree to do this), then going "higher" will happen. You'll be a top performer, as a manager, and in most companies, performance is the #1 factor in promotion. Isn't that your goal?
Quartz Extreme and Core Image. Are there any other real reasons to spend all that money on generic hardware?
In IT in the UK degrees are pretty much worthless bits of paper. Companies that want degrees only care that you have a degree, they don't care what the subject is, and frankly if you've had that much working experience in your field then the content of a degree isn't likely to teach you anything you don't already know.
Therefore do something for yourself, a subject you want to learn about that may not even be related at all to your working life, archaeology, history, politics, philosophy, physics, music, literature... the list is endless, have fun, life isn't all about work.
I have some bad news for you. If you're in your early 40's, you're not looking for a late career boost because you should be considering yourself mid-career.
If you work until your expected retirement age, that will be until your LATE 60s. You're half way there at best.
But there's some good news too. If it takes you 2 to 4 years to get your degree, you'll have 20 years of work ahead of you over which to make it pay.
But there's some more bad news for you. You're likely to have to change careers again sometime in that 20 years, because nobody knows what kind of jobs will be available 20 years from now.
Unless you're in government. There will always be government.
Here's a guy who picked up his degree at age 72. His life work (NBA coach for 30+ years, Hall of Fame) was deemed good enough to satisfy the "student-teaching" requirement.
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/don-nelson-iowa-graduate-50-185357704--nba.html
I'm in my 40's and just completed a Masters degree in IT Management from Brandeis University, I already had a Bachelors in both Business and Computer Science. The degree spanned two employers, both of which offered employee education reimbursement.
I guess you could say that I am now three degrees above zero... ; - )
A Masters degree is 10 courses and can be completed in 3 to 5 years when going part-time. For most Master's programs, if not all, you first need a Bachelors degree. Some educational institutions will recognize work experience as an equivalent.
It sounds like you have not completed a Bachelors degree. A Bachelors degree takes 120 credit hours or 30 per year over 4 years. It's a lot of work and time which is why most students go full time. Basically, you wouldn't be completed in time for it to help your career.
The first step to get a Masters degree, assuming you are working full time and are not a contractor, is to determine if your employer has an education reimbursement program, what their limits are per year, and what you need to do to apply. If they do, you next need to research the type of Masters degree you want and the schools. Narrow down the schools to your top 5 and begin calling their Admissions department to determine if you can use your work experience and what, if any, additional courses you will need to take. While doing this, talk to your manager and let him/her know that you are interested in advancing your career by taking a Masters degree. Go into how it will prepare you to take on a greater leadership role, in project management and as team lead. Once you have all of the information about the school, put it together in a package with your employer education application and begin the employer approval process. Once approved at work, you then need to apply to the school and get accepted. The rest is just a lot of hard work...
David
I hire people and I work with and know a lot of people at big and small companies who hire people, so I'll say this:
Qualifications for most jobs and the amount we pay for them is almost completely unrelated to type or number of degrees. Create a portfolio and be able to answer questions about it. Period.
(There are a few very very large employers who look for specific degrees, but they are shrinking as they can no longer afford to spend a year training a potential candidate if they want to stay competitive.)
First - you are right. A degree is substantially more relevant in D than in the US. A tech without a university degree is presumed to play in a lower league. A guy with a degree gets a certain respect from his peers, but can of course loose it. A guy without is assumed to be a simple mind and has to earn peer respect the hard way - up front. In large organizations, people know exactly who has a degree and who doesn't. Funnily, the exact subject of the degeree is less relevant in practice. Anything remotely serious will get you going, even BA (BWL), though that is borderline for techs.
But - having said that - somewhere in your fourties, going back to University is not an option any more. You can basically do 2 things
- a get a cheap part-time degree. With cheap I mean BA or some such (aka BWL). Part time means internet or study-by-mail - Fernuni Hagen comes to mind, but I'm sure there are others.
- accumulate non-academic/professional certifications. If you want to go into project management, there are at least 2 relevant certification bodies. You could mix that with tech vendor certs, or not.
And whatever route you go - start going. Now. Your time has run out, If you want to do project management, start getting into project management roles in large projects now.
OP mentioned project management background and desire to move more in that direction. One thing to consider is the PRINCE 2 certification in Europe or PMP for those in the States in similar situtations.
The one thing I can tell you with certainty, do what interest you and don't worry about your age.
Other than that, business degrees are always handy for starting your own business or employers, in addition computer security is a growing field.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
You've been around long enough to know all the technical stuff and you've seen a lot of the business side. If you just do one degree, you'd be coasting through. So do both degrees at once, then you won't be wasting your time. You can mention only one or the other when talking to a fellow geek or a PHB.
Being myself without diploma, but with 26 years of experience (I'm in my middle fourties), I think that you should try to find what is your value for a company, and make yourself known in this area.
In my case, I realized that I have technical skills, but my human skills were most important (perhaps 30% technical skills, and 70% human skills).
So I'm trying to become a coach, and competition in this domain is tough, so I had to learn how to sell my product: me.
It's not as obvious as it seems.
You need to work to increase your visibility:
- I'm using linkedin to create my own network
- I'm using a blog to convey my ideas
- I'm trying to discover new ideas, which might be of interest
- I'll probably write a book (not for the money, but for the reputation, you can easily become an expert with a single book)
Degrees are useless if your goal is to make money ("making money" is a terrible goal, you can make money in almost any domain, as long as you believe in what you do), you really need to know what you want to do, and this comes after discovering what you don't want to do anymore.
After that, you need to discover what you want to share with people (I call that "passion").
I recommend that you keep your current job, and negotiate to attend all the conferences about your subject.
You'll discover that most of the speakers don't master the domains they talk about, and that you can do a better job than them.
The next step is presenting conferences related to your domain.
After a few years, you'll be well known and you'll be able to earn your life with your passion.
In my case, I had to learn how to speak in public, and how to convey my ideas with powerful words, but I'm still working at my job, since I don't earn enough money with my new part-time activity.
My way requires dedication, but I don't take tremendous risks, since I still work at my last job.
I'll be able to quit when I have enough business.
If you are not being promoted because you don't have the credentials or experience, maybe you are just hitting a normal ceiling.
Mr. Plow, that's his name, his name again is Mr. Plow.
Program Intellivision!
Next time, after a few hours, back up whatever you can be 100% certain is clean, and FORMAT THAT SHIT. Waste of goddamned time blew the setup for your spam comment. I stopped reading too soon.
No coffee for you today!
Also, what have I told you minimum wage idiots about establishing comments!? DON'T MAKE YOUR SHILL YOUR FIRST POST.
I swear, I need a new job.
The preceding comment is my own, and in no way construes an opinon of the Emperor of Mankind.
First off, you can do it because not every company marches lockstep with the prevailing age-discriminatory practices of Silicon Valley.
There are a ton of shops out there who aren't primarily IT but rely on it. I have a friend who just started programming - in basic and something else I'd never heard of (I think) - for a company that has an inventory system written in such. They need to keep it running the owner/ founder is in his mid-60s early 70s and - get this- doesn't buy into "that whole Windows-GUI thing. " We're talking green screen.
He took it not b/c it's his dream job but because it pays him 60k (he was trending towards destitution) and he can keep his family going on that until he moves on in 5 or so years.
The best thing about your new chosen career is this is DIY like nothing else. Be thinking about entrepreneurism from the start. If you can dream it, you can build it. Then you can sell it to people who find it useful. That last sentence is the missing link in the underwear gnomes puzzle, the one that comes just before "profit".
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnomes_(South_Park)
I just bought a piece of software (a tool) for 70 bucks yesterday. People give money for tools that help them. People who crack software and steal it are either not really your customers (they just want everything and never use it) or are, well thieves. In programming I would say if it's not free as in beer and not overpriced , people pay. I LIKE to pay; it's a respect / pride of ownership thing.
Regarding language, start with C because it's out there by the ton and people are not learning it anymore. Nevermind COBOL... unless you want that to be your niche, which is a possible career path I guess but there's little synergy between it and C C++ C# and Java which are all strongly similar to each other IMO.
Go for it all b/c once you know one language, you can learn others easily. Start with good old fashioned C, not even C++. There are great books out there that older people never had available to them.. Deitel and Dietel come to mind but there are others too. You can't go wrong in the learning department. Perhaps nothing is so well explained and accessible as programming languages in terms of pedagogical material at great prices..
Just get a bachelor's degree - any degree. The people who say you don't need a degree are probably people without a degree. It doesn't matter whether the degree is useful or not, and in most cases it doesn't matter where the degree came from or what major it is - what matters is that you have it. The hiring processes of most companies (big or small) are fairly similar. The job description is written and given to the HR recruiter. If the job description says "Bachelor's Degree", then anyone without that requirement will most likely be excluded. The entire point of your resume is to NOT be eliminated from contention so that you get a chance to actually talk to the hiring manager. If you can't get into the manager's office, you never have a chance to wow them with your brilliance and charm. So, if you get a degree in Underwater Basket Weaving, your resume is perfectly accurate if it simply says: Bachelor's Degree, University of Late Bloomers, 2012. You really don't need to say more than that, and you will have passed that hurdle. If they want to know more than that, let them ask you - at least you will be talking to them!
Here is what I did, last year I came off a really good year, 6 figure income from my personal consulting business so I took a year off, and went back to UW-Madison to finish my foreign language requirements and took one advanced course towards degree CS credit.
I however, am back to work full time with my business and am making Bioinformatics tool sets for the mobile genomic researcher.
Now, if you can take a year off an pay for cash all of your expenses, plusd have a independant income like I have then you can do what you want.
However, even I would never consider taking all the time off to get a CS degree. That would be nuts and too costly.
So I do it when I have the time and money.
If you are thinking about taking off, or quitting your job, and taking out loans, you should see a doctor and have your head looked at to insure you haven't had a recent stroke or something.
-Hack
PS: It was a nice vacation too. The student lifestyle is pretty nice. Most of my friend at my age (47) look at me in wonder because they have no independent income, have a huge mortgage, and are in my view no better off than I am with thier degrees in hand. (Certainly far more stressed out it would seem.)
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
If you already have practical experience, school is a waste of time and money. You want to increase your potential employability and/or income? Then create an App, publish it to iTMS, Google Play and Amazon.
There's many ways to monetize apps, but even if it's just a free app with no ads, you can put it on your resume and link to it.
Don't know Objective-C or Java or the Mobile APIs/SDKs? No problem in fact, in most cases it's more practical for a lone developer or small software shops not to use native code. You can create cross-platform Native Apps for iOS and Android with either HTML5/JS with Titanium or PhoneGap or with AS3/MXML with Flash Builder 4.6.
Does the Germany system have IT tech schools? I know they have a dual system there and things are different then in other places there.
Agree about the MBA. If you are interested in moving into project management, you'd also do well to get the PMP as well as the MBA. PMP is universally recognized as *the* project management qualification, and you can get it in a reasonably quick time period.
*sigh* Knock knock. Anybody at home. McFly? Repeat after me:
NOT U.S.
Germany.
There is no such thing as an Engineering license around here. The degree is the real thing.
(except in a few historically isolated cases like mining, where the degree is usually complemented by a state organized additional training and exam.)
We stupid Germans used to think our universities were all good enough so the degree directly means qualification. Then came Bologna.....
A few years or decades down the road you might even be right. But not today.
Watch out for "Which Skills".
What experience brings you is low level knowledge like how to change the data file of a construction estimate when the database is miscoded to an invalid cost code so that the upload to accounting works.
Then someone decides to dump the entire software package for something cheaper so all that low level knowledge is thrown away, then you have to "hope" that anyone else will use that knowledge.
You're molded by your experiences, so no, you do not have experience at the live data level in software B when your midline professional career was spent making Software A work.
There's only so much that offline studying can teach you - it can give you a grounding, but it won't teach you straight up why that same ornery software won't export to Excel properly.
So some of your mindset has to be prepared for answering interviewers "I don't know your particular package but I understand how computers try to accomplish things". Then get ready for a month of pure hell going into overdrive and you might make it if you're lucky.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Not sure what Informatics is, but Accounting (despite a few scandals) maybe with a minor in Business Management seems to hold up pretty well in the US, one of the four top tracks in the US is "Bean Counter" based.
The ruthless secret at least for the US is that the "techs" are never allowed into the Upper Mgt, it's all people skills and politics up there. It's an (ugly) art how much you can avoid doing any number crunching and get other people to produce your documents while you live in People Interaction world.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I agree with much of what you said here. But the problem I've always had with the idea that a "good" I.T. worker being one who is constantly learning new things and adding items to a resume is, it's not that realistic when one works for a small to mid-sized company. (Even more unrealistic given a slow economy.)
I've been pretty much self-taught and self-motivated to try out new technologies and computer solutions since I got into this stuff in the mid 1980's, but I've never been the type to hop around from job to job. Most of my job changes actually came about only because the place I worked for closed up. (I started out working for several "mom and pop" type computer stores, for example, all of whom eventually went out of business.)
The problem is, my peers in I.T. who were basically "in it for themselves" without much regard for their employers racked up more impressive resumes than me, especially in the dot com boom days, when it was possible to accept a position, stay JUST long enough to claim you were responsible for X,Y and Z (cool new technologies of whatever type the place happened to be using), and then jump ship in the middle of a project for better pay at the next place needing someone who used those same technologies before. Lots of burnt bridges behind them? Sure -- but there are plenty of companies out there, especially for the young and single who can move from city to city if and when it's needed.
I, on the other hand, honestly hated the stress and uncertainty of job interviews ... and just wanted a stable job doing what I enjoy.
So where did that get me? Well, I was able to ride out much of the commotion from all the failed start-ups when the dot com era went bust, so that was a plus I guess. But the places I've worked for 5+ years in a row always stuck with the same "tried and true" technology. Sure, we'd do incremental upgrades on such things as Microsoft Office, or migrate Windows Server to newer versions eventually. But there's really only so much "resume building" one can do by staying at the same company, when their budget doesn't allow for buying lots of new software or hardware -- and they're (rightly, IMO!) trying to avoid high costs of re-training people on all new ways of doing things, once they've got something in place that's effective.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is -- it's not necessarily "resting on one's laurels", just because one hasn't added all sorts of new products to a resume. But I really do think recruiters and hiring managers look at it that way, most of the time. If a business paid me for 5-6 years to take care of the same set of technologies for them, that likely means those were good, solid choices that really got them their money's worth. There's no negative in having a deep familiarity with such solutions, vs. the next guy who can list of 5x as many technologies -- most of which were failures, so got removed after money was WASTED on them.
In your 40s, employers will regard you as potential management material, if you are not that, may of them will not regard you at all. Get your MBA.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Check out www.coursera.org The quality and price are perfect for an older person needing to sharpen skills/develop new skills. No degree or college credit, but a lot of street cred, I hope (I'm taking three of them right now.)
Not sure if this is a parody advertisement or not.
Quartz Extreme and Core Image. Are there any other real reasons to spend all that money on generic hardware?
Core Animation.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Quartz Extreme and Core Image. Are there any other real reasons to spend all that money on generic hardware?
Core Animation.
Damn you, 10.5 ... my signature is now out of date. Just like fanboi flamewars. Then again, we havn't changed those yet, either.
Quartz Extreme and Core Image. Are there any other real reasons to spend all that money on generic hardware?
That's why I just use Javascript.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Yes he did. It's right in the summary. He said he has "quite a bit of programming and project experience, but no degree."
Look. You're 40. It's time to sit down and think for a while. No, really. Just sit and think.
Think about where you've been, and where your career has been. Think about where you want your career to go.
Factor in the fact that you probably have 20 more years of work ahead of you, if you're lucky.
Think about all the things you hate about the current scope of your work, and think about whether you still want to be doing them when you're 50.
Think about the things you can do if you hire two young buck programmers, teach them right, and have them do your programming for you.
Think about what people have said about what you excel at, and if it's different from what you've been doing, think about going that way.
Think about going into management.
IT (I'm using IT as the whole sphere of computer related degrees) + MBA = CIO position.
Think about that. Even if you don't make it to the CIO, and you may not, what you're buying it looking at problems from the 50,000 foot view and choosing the direction of a company.
If you get a master's degree in BioInformatics, you'd better focus on doing something no one else is doing, preferably something forward-looking. By the time you get done with school and what not, it's probably not going to be as forward looking as you thought.
Computer Science could be easy, it could be tough. You've got programming experience, that's great. You're probably reluctant to pull all-nighters though, and there's some 18 year old kid who will. And what is it really going to get you?
Here's what you do.
Look around the world. (Yes, the world.)
Find the people who are a few years older than you doing work that you think you'd want to do.
Shoot them an email. No, seriously, shoot them an email. Get over that fear of "Oh, they're too busy and don't have time for my little measly email." Politely lay out your case, and wait for their advice. It might take them up to 3 weeks to reply. You might have to email them a few times (no more than once every two weeks).
Find out how they got there. Master's degrees? Fellowships? Luck?
Follow in their footsteps as much as you can.
Just remember, you're 40. If you were to quit work and go to school full-time, you'll be 42+ by the time you graduate. In two year's time, some jobs you want will no longer exist. They will have been discovered to be dead ends (see: Ruby on Rails in large applications) The industry will have moved on. You'll have to be above that on some level. Figure out whether going to school is going to pay off. You can finish undergrad in 2.666 years if you set your mind to it. A master's will take two years no matter how you slice it.
Here's a hint: A Master's degree is not as much about the education as the opportunities you will be provided as a side effect of the school you go to and the people you meet there.
Therefore: Go to a good, real, school. Discard the University of Phoenixes of the world right off the bat. Apply somewhere there are people that might be smarter than you. Many companies use specific Master's programs as feeder schools. (Stanford -> Apple + Google, Cornell -> IBM).
Remember, you're already 40. Going back to school is going to be weird.
But it will probably be rewarding.
Reeses
While I do think seeking a degree is a worthwhile endeavor and personally rewarding (you are lucky to be working in this field without one, really), it is time for you to get out software development. You might try and become a business analyst or a project manager. Being in your early 40's is way past the shelf life of your typical coder because you cost too much and your are increasingly outside the culture of the younger guys.
It's awful. It's unfair. It's true.
There are statistical outliers working into their 50's but the odds are you will not be one of them.
-- Posted from my parent's basement
It's the same thing as the gamemaker posts. An attempt to drive people away from slashdot.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Your timeline doesn't quite work out. You say you're in your 40's (born ~1970?) with around 10 years web and programming experience (implying you started in 2000). Then you say you were a "1980's computer kid", so what happened to that extra 20 years (1980-2000)?
You said you have 10 years in web, scripting and web stuff. How "up to date" is that? If you are still working on website knowledge you acquired even 5 years ago, your skills are now 95% useless as IE6 has died, HTML5 has arrived, python servers have risen and mobile devices have arrived in those 5 years. It may not be your lack of a degree that is holding you back, it may be a lack of NEW knowledge. If you are aprehensive of starting a degree, consider taking nightschool classes in your relevant field.
For web developement (beware the automatic glass ceiling there!) learn python, html5, xml, javascript and user interfaces. iOS/android would also be a good subject to learn if this is the direction you are heading.
If you want to do more conventional desktop software developement consider taking classes in QT, python, cocoa, and what-ever win32 has become (sorry, not a windows dev here).
If you want to do the low-level stuff, look into the kernel API's of the moder linux, windows and apple operating system, ipv6 (this will probably be in high demand in about 5 years) and mesh networking (like smart-meters use). There are also a lot of options in embedded systems like arduino, pic and attiny.
EOT.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Thanks for all the replys, they definitely are a help in sorting out my thoughts on this. I'm still unsure, but I do think Business Informatics is my way to go for a degree. It's a mix of achieving cred / a degree, doing stuff I'm interested in, learning new stuff I want to know (anything bean-counting related), dealing with stuff I can do with ease like English & Programming - thus taking the edge of the tough stuff I'll have to learn for - and gaining in future perspective in terms of salary / overall late career.
I'm still hesitant - i.e. f*cking scared shittless - to make the move because if I do the next 4 years are going to be *very* tough. But if I do it I'll be doing it for the long hawl and will get started right away in specialising in related technologies and products. I'll be asking some friends to show me around SAP and ABAP in the next few weeks, for instance - maybe that's my ticket and I can deal with the downsides. And I'll go and see if I can sneek into some math classes and see how extreme it's going to be. I still have two months before enrollment for the winter semester 2012/2013 closes. Maybe I'll add another few months of working to save some money for a hassle free first two semesters or something and enroll next year.
Dunno yet. It's all up in the air. Wish me luck!
Thanks for all the feedback and take care. One way or the other, I probably will soon be seriously cutting down on slashdot time for the first time in 11 years :-) .
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
hi!
i have been in almost exactky the same situation as you are, only that i am in my early thirties and that i am already decided to go into management, after i get my degree. here's what my motivations were.
first, i have been a java/j2ee/oracle coder for 10 years now and being a very inquisitive guy i learned a lot of the tech stuff on my own. while i think i could of course benefit from CS i think the benefit of learning something that is connected to and extends my current knowledge is greater, than just to deepen what i already know.
i talked to quite a few people inside and outside my company and asked them for their opinions and the responses were also very much towards business informatics. one of the reasons is, that if you have a degree and your company does any partner-projects with other companies, they can send you in there and charge more money for your time. another reason is, that there are many business informatics types out there who have the theoretical knowledge, but have never even seen a database schema from the inside, so your tech background will give you extra credibility with both your own company and other companies. another thing is IMO, that after so many years of programming, eventually you might lose interest in it...at least this is happening to me. your choices then are to switch companies and start basically with a high wage, but few chances of advancing, or to switch jobs and start as a total noob at something, where you don't have any expertise. i thought that IT management is the most useful, seamless and natural way to go. you can get into something new, that you haven't been doing for the last 10 years AND you don't start from zero.
of course my personal story won't be the same for everyone...people who love getting into tons of details and remember millions of LOC will prolly get CS degree, but for me i think getting a business informatics degree makes sense. ask yourself if you want to write code when you're 50 or if you'd rather design application architecture or guide a team of young gifted devs and help them profit from your experience. as for the bullshit bingo...i think this is rather fun...especially if you are one of those people who actually know what the words mean because you have the background :D
My background parallels yours, except I'm American, so YMMV. In my case, the dot-bomb forced me out of programming because I was in New York and all those jobs were outsourced to India and China. The only jobs left were project management and account management, managing the work done by the programmers in India. As it turned out, the programming background gave me a very large competitive advantage in project management because I understood the technical development process intimately and could also identify when the outsourced developer teams were messing up and get things back on course.
But the part that might be helpful to you is to assert the skills for management that a degree would "certify" you have. Instead of gunning for lower- or same-level positions or losing time and money getting a degree, assert that you have the skills and experience for the job you're hoping the degree will help you get. Spin the experience on your resume to reflect those management qualities rather than the technical ones, per se. Talk about the time that your leadership on a team project rescued it from disaster and saved the day and BIG $. And if you've been around in tech as long as you say you have, you should be able to talk the talk, with confidence. That's all you need.
The dirty little secret is all the MBAs and the vast majority of IT managers are intimidated by real techs who really know what they're talking about, so all you have to do is use that. I don't mean rub their noses in it, but be sweet as pie while having that great tech resume behind you. They'll hire you and pay you lots of money.
That's what I did, and it's taken me to the top of IT here. Of course, top of IT even in New York isn't anywhere near what schmuck investment bankers make for producing nothing of any value to anyone, but that's a different conversation.
Good luck, and trust in yourself and your experience!
If not us, who? If not now, when?
Write a book. Seriously. You're at the point in your career where you either go into management or you become a guru. And the best way to show that you are a guru is to write a book.
Don't stop where the ink does.
I recently went for a project manager position which I didnt get because I was too hands on and they were worried I would want to doing things rather than managing them
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a reference to Godwin's Law approaches 1
At your age, I would think that you would have figured out that you should do what you like to do. (I am 48 myself.) It may be true that people in certain specialties might have better career paths, but the people who have good careers in a specialty are the ones who are good at it, and the best bet is that they are good because they are motivated because they like it. In any case, making more money to do something you hate is a sucker's game. You will just spend the extra money on booze.
Not to sure how the uni system works in Germany. In the US you need a BA first before you get to the good stuff. I have a friend who just did what some people are suggesting and do some MA level work and get a certificate. The difference between me and him is I would receive the MA which I can use in varying ways. He has certificate. Guess who did more work for their paper? No me.
Again not sure how Germany works, go do a BA online. While I had all my lower crap taken care it took me only a year to do a pile of credits as they did not limit my speed and I had experience in the field. So while people were going uhm uhm how do you do this. I was done and moving to the next assignment. There were classes that I had to take, which I could easily teach. Took me 2-3 weeks for three credits, most of the time waiting for the graders to grade. Keep in mind I already worked in the field for years. I also invested 8-10 hrs a day as I was unemployed. I did spend some time helping fellow students on the boards.
BTW I went to Western Governors Uni. Fair price donee quick. I got what i needed, a piece of paper dat says i be smurts. Now I am on some MA stuff that is much more fun. Oh yeah I started at 42.
I would suggest that if you can get a BA quickly, do it. Then go for the MBA or something like that.
-- A computer without Windoze is like a choclate cake without mustard
I agree on the lack of value of the degree. Except that it is BA a lot of people care if you have a BA in something anything. I earned a degree in mid 40s for something I did for years. Paid for itself in 2 years. One if you count that I got a job because of the degree.
-- A computer without Windoze is like a choclate cake without mustard
It give you flexibility. BI at best would give you the same chances as CS for some clients/employers,a nd a lot less for others. MBA could be actually considered detrimental for science/research heavy projects. It could make employer doubt your commitment.
My exit strategy away from IT/Software development is to pick up a trade. Electrician, plumber, carpenter, cabinet maker, home inspector, etc.
When I found that I have had a good run in IT and have not been able to build my own company or write some mobile "app" that I can sit back and retire on, then its off to trade school for me.
Houses are always going to be built or need a'fixin. Shit's always a'flowin. People are always buying houses they can't afford.
I am hearing continuously (at least here in Canada), that there are not enough people in trades and there will be high demand for more tradespeople in 10 years. That means ample work and lucrative wages. Becoming a handyman for hire, setting your own schedule, and pretty much making a good chunk of change fixing up or remodelling homes is going to be pretty attractive after a few decades of 12 hour bullshit days in front of a workstation making other assholes rich. Build up a small team of IT ex-pats turn hammer jocks and you can set up a pretty lucrative post-IT business.
Currently I would love to program until I drop dead, but I'm starting to see that the career path of a middle aged developer either moves towards management (I'm too competent for management), or starting your own company (become the rich asshole). I am thinking about becoming the later but barring that being able to work with my hands and build or fix something "real" is also sounding more appealing year to year.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.