Ask Slashdot: Best Training To Rekindle a Long Tech Career?

New submitter SouthSeaDragon writes "I'm a computer professional who has performed most of the functions that could be expected over a 39 year career, including hardware maintenance and repair, sitting on a 800 support line, developing a help desk application from the ground up (terminal-based), writing a software manual, plus developing and teaching software courses. In recent years, I've worked for computer software vendors doing pre-sales support generally for infrastructure products including applications, app servers, integration with Java based messaging and ESB product and most recently a Business Rules product. I was laid off recently due to a restructuring and am now trying to figure out the next phase. With the WIA displaced worker grants now available I am attempting to figure out what training would be good to pursue. I am hearing that 'the Cloud' is the next big thing, but I'm also looking into increasing my development skills with a current language. I wonder what the readers might suggest for new directions."

Comments

Direction

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't recommend learning stuff with the hope of finding a job that uses it. I feel like you should spend some time, look around at various tech projects and languages and applications, etc etc. Find a job you want like "I'd like to work for Amazon S3, it seems really interesting." or something and then figure out what you need to do to get it, training or otherwise. I feel like that would be more fulfilling and have a better chance of success.

Be realistic

[arth1]

If you have a 39 year old career, that means you are likely just a few years from retirement.
A company that hires you will likely hire you for skills you have experience with - not any new skills you have no experience with. Those jobs will, unfortunately, go to young grads.
My recommendation is to take one of the skills you have plenty of experience with and get a formal training in it. Even if it bores you, it will likely boost your employment probabilities more than anything new and interesting like the cloud. Because it is new, companies will be looking for young people who (a) are cheap, and (b) hopefully will stay after gaining experience, so the company can take advantage of that experience down the road.

Sorry if this wasn't what you wanted to hear - I wish things were different, but we old timers aren't all that attractive for things we don't have experience with.

Re:Be realistic

[Hatta]

Embezzle as much as you can from your current employer. You'll end up in a minimum security federal prison. You get three hots and a cot, plus free health care. There's a gym and a library. It's probably better than you'll get in your retirement. Our country is more willing to spend money on its criminals than its elders, might as well take advantage of that.

Re:Be realistic

[wmelnick]

Depends on what you call "Elder". Those in their 60s and 70s yes. Those of us in our 40s and slighty older than us are even more screwed than you youngsters. We have paid in all our lives (25+ years) the same as those in their 70s and 80s who have gotten everything but when we get to retirement age in 15-20 years there will be nothing left for us and everything we paid in will have been sucked dry.

Re:Be realistic

[couchslug]

That's HIGHLY Insightful.

When I was training WIA students who were highly "experienced" at being (repeatedly) unemployed due to the economy I learned a lot from them.

Take the LONGEST most useful course you can AND see if the school will call multiple courses some "hyphenated" SINGLE course for you. If your Unemployment will last through this, ensure your expressed preferences via the unemployment office "protect" you against being coerced to take jobs you don't really WANT. A great way is to pick a distance from home which excludes potential employers.

Milk it, get the papers, and use the time. You might even channel schooling into obtaining a teaching gig. Schools KNOW students take courses they could probably teach. They get paid so they are fine with that.

Make faculty friends! It's a club and it's a club where being an Old Fucker is a sign of stability! (I'm an Old Fucker, BTW.) Use that human networking kung-fu young noobs think they don't need because they are Unique Snowflakes. You know TEAM behaviours.

We work to serve our elite masters who milk us like cattle, so use every opportunity the system gives you. THEY DO. It's every man for himself.

Re:Can Not Find Good Tech Folks

[vlm]

A lot of companies are complaining that they just can't find good tech folks ...

... for $10/hr no benefits, or mandatory 80 hour per week overtime, or intern unpaid jobs, or "pay you in shares" startups, or ridiculously over specified.

Pay in peanuts, you get monkeys.

I see no evidence of an actual shortage.

I know its discouraging, but just trying to keep it real. Its not 1999 all over again. Or even 2004.

Re:Home-calling consumer services?

[Ol Olsoc]

Only in a law of averages. My observations of old people are they either give up intentionally, the brain freezes up, and they're hopeless, or they keep using the brain and they're more focused than a 20-something. It seems much like muscle mass and health in general as people age.

That's pretty much the ultimate ""your own fault" approach. There is a fairly widespread subset of th epopulation that thinks that any ailment is the sick person's fault.

Perhaps the giving up happens when the person's brain isn't working as well as it used to. Sometimes stuff like age happens, and despite our best efforts, no one get out of here alive.

Though it is appealing to think that as long as I do Sudoku, I'll never die or become senile........naahhh, I hate frickin' Sudoku!

Re:Home-calling consumer services?

[houstonbofh]

I too no longer have the energy for 12 hours days. However, I generally finish projects a lot faster than younger people on my team. Almost like experience counts for something...

Re:Home-calling consumer services?

[Cryacin]

Damn straight.

I'm forever grateful for the "Old fart" (as you so endearingly put it) that hammered exactly those topics, plus introduced the wonders of Djikstra et al into my coding.

And like he used to say. Youth and enthusiasm are always trumped by Age and Treachery!