I'm 31...just enrolled for Software Engineering
on
How Old is Too Old?
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· Score: 1
I've done computer support work for about 10 years and web design for the past 2 years. I'm 31 now and I just decided to enroll in school for software engineering. I had some credits from previous college experience, so I'm a sophomore. I'm going with an online college (CTUonline.edu) because of the convenience and acceleration that it offers. I'll graduate in early 2008. So far things are going very well. I have a 4.0 GPA right now and I plan on keeping it.
Do I consider myself too old to change gears? heh...hell no. Not even close. I realize that it is easy to be fearful about things like this, but you can always count on the fact that there are intelligent business people out there (I swear) who can make good decisions about hiring people.
I've found that at least half of the people in my classes are older...some of them are in their 40's and even 50's. There are a few that already know how to program, but they just want to get that paper that says so. It's also probably a life goal for them, something they want to accomplish. Some are moving into programming for the first time...in their 40's.
This doesn't mean that they will automatically get a job upon graduation. However, if an employer sees someone who has lots of job experience (and life experience) and is a good programmer, and graduated with a high GPA, that might turn a few heads. In fact, that person may even be considered extra valuable due to their mix of experience and work ethic. At 40, they have at least another 20 years of hard work in them (and possibly more). 20 years is a lot of time. Why wouldn't a company hire a programmer while knowing they can put in a good 15+ years? Most workers tend to change jobs after just a few years anyway. Someone in their 40+ will be very loyal and dependable.
I feel like I'm in the perfect position. I have a good amount of business and work experience behind me and I'm sure of what I want to accomplish now. I happen to have as much fiery energy as any 20-something year old techie that I've ever met, and my creativity and desire for challenge is very high. I now have a polished work ethic, and I'm VERY motivated now, which is different than a lot of 20-somethings that I have worked with in the past. I will graduate after just turning 33, and I don't see how most 20-something graduates would have any advantage over me.
That is, of course, in theory. People see things differently, and I can't jump to too many conclusions about how employers might assess someone like me as a potential employee. But I have more reasons to be confident than I have reasons to be concerned.
Remember, most people in business are "older", as in over 30. 20-somethings are in the minority in business. Obviously business owners are hiring people who are 30+ years old.
I'll tell you another quick story that changed my mind about college. When I was 28, I worked a temp job doing tests on medical equipment. A guy from some company in San Diego hired us for 2 weeks and trained us to run the tests. I did a very good job and he offered me a job interview with his company in San Diego. I was surprised by the offer, and very interested. Then he asked me about my degree. I told him I didn't have one. That was when he gave me the long story about how he worked as an electrician for 10+ years and then decided to get his degree in Electrical Engineering at age 30. He said that, even though his 10+ years as an electrician didn't really do much for his resume, going to school and changing careers was the best decision that he ever made and he would do it again in a heartbeat. I think he was in his early 40's when we had that conversaion. He was doing very well working for a medical equipment manufacturer in San Diego, where everything is expensive. That was 2-3 years ago...and now I happen to be following the same path that he did (except I'm doing software engineering).
Hope that helps.
@BlueStraggler, That was easily one of the most creative and insightful posts that I've ever read on Slashdot. Thank you for that. What a wonderfully appropriate parallel to the common city class system of segregation and stereotyping.
Well, you bring up a great point, perhaps without realizing it. You said "Hell, I stream MP3s to my PDA already via my Bluetooth-enabled EDGE-bandwidth cell phone (150kbps low latency all over Chicagoland)."
Maybe the use of radio is for reaching those millions of people who are NOT tech savvy. Wouldn't that be the perfect medium to reach those people? Well, perhaps TV is the best, but radio is much cheaper than TV. How valuable would it be to have Google be the number 1 name that people learn as they dip their toe in the internet world. In that regard, they could have a similar affect that AOL had in the late 90's with non-tech types.
epinions has consumer opinions about products
slashdot provides geek opinions about...well, everything.
Besides, where else, other than slashdot, can he receive insults for simply asking a question.
One guy did a summary of all names posted and completely ignored/overlooked mine.
That guy would be me.
There have been a handful of people who complained about me overlooking their suggestions in the list that I created. Quite frankly, that response pisses me off. I spent many hours scouring through that horrific thread where people essentially vomited their name suggestions to the screen without any concern for the guidelines set forth by the Core Team and without any sense of concern for trademarks or available TLD names. Many people simply ignored the conversation and even submitted names that had already been submitted multiple times. That thread is the worst case scenario of what can happen when a project's development is in the hands of the open source community. As I said multiple times ont hat forum, the thorn in the side of the open source community is disorganization.
What I did was attempt to start the organization process of that mess. My list resulted in 486 names. That was only a starting point. Soon after, cmeister2 created a database from my list where the names could be further organized, and overlooked names or newly submitted names could be added. If I overlooked your precious name, then you could've added it to his list, that is, if you were paying attention to the conversation within those threads.
Most of the names on that list were horrible, but even some of them were better than the Joomla! name. They could've done better. I wish the Core Development team would've appointed someone to organize that discussion. They could've taken cmeister2's database and php script and created a quick voting module out of it to get feedback from the very users and community developers of their CMS. They could've pooled together the potential strength of the community. Only organization will do that.
If I would've organized that list, I would've first started an open discussion to establish guidelines, such as the name shouldn't be similar to mambo.
After establishing guidelines, I would then setup a quick script where people can submit names based upon those guidelines. If their suggestion did not fit the guidelines, then the submission gets thrown out. That way, they have 60 quality names instead of 500 names that mostly are not usable.
A big concern with the name choosing was that viewers (or perhaps someone representing Miro) might poach the domain names that were suggested. To prevent that, I would create a group of volunteers, perhaps 20-30 who have a reputable background within the Mambo community, to finalize the discussion of the new name in a private forum.
I can say that the logo discussion is going a little better than the name discussion.
They could just do better.
I will stay updated with Joomla! development, but I'm personally focusing my efforts on Xaraya
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I've done computer support work for about 10 years and web design for the past 2 years. I'm 31 now and I just decided to enroll in school for software engineering. I had some credits from previous college experience, so I'm a sophomore. I'm going with an online college (CTUonline.edu) because of the convenience and acceleration that it offers. I'll graduate in early 2008. So far things are going very well. I have a 4.0 GPA right now and I plan on keeping it. Do I consider myself too old to change gears? heh...hell no. Not even close. I realize that it is easy to be fearful about things like this, but you can always count on the fact that there are intelligent business people out there (I swear) who can make good decisions about hiring people. I've found that at least half of the people in my classes are older...some of them are in their 40's and even 50's. There are a few that already know how to program, but they just want to get that paper that says so. It's also probably a life goal for them, something they want to accomplish. Some are moving into programming for the first time...in their 40's. This doesn't mean that they will automatically get a job upon graduation. However, if an employer sees someone who has lots of job experience (and life experience) and is a good programmer, and graduated with a high GPA, that might turn a few heads. In fact, that person may even be considered extra valuable due to their mix of experience and work ethic. At 40, they have at least another 20 years of hard work in them (and possibly more). 20 years is a lot of time. Why wouldn't a company hire a programmer while knowing they can put in a good 15+ years? Most workers tend to change jobs after just a few years anyway. Someone in their 40+ will be very loyal and dependable. I feel like I'm in the perfect position. I have a good amount of business and work experience behind me and I'm sure of what I want to accomplish now. I happen to have as much fiery energy as any 20-something year old techie that I've ever met, and my creativity and desire for challenge is very high. I now have a polished work ethic, and I'm VERY motivated now, which is different than a lot of 20-somethings that I have worked with in the past. I will graduate after just turning 33, and I don't see how most 20-something graduates would have any advantage over me. That is, of course, in theory. People see things differently, and I can't jump to too many conclusions about how employers might assess someone like me as a potential employee. But I have more reasons to be confident than I have reasons to be concerned. Remember, most people in business are "older", as in over 30. 20-somethings are in the minority in business. Obviously business owners are hiring people who are 30+ years old. I'll tell you another quick story that changed my mind about college. When I was 28, I worked a temp job doing tests on medical equipment. A guy from some company in San Diego hired us for 2 weeks and trained us to run the tests. I did a very good job and he offered me a job interview with his company in San Diego. I was surprised by the offer, and very interested. Then he asked me about my degree. I told him I didn't have one. That was when he gave me the long story about how he worked as an electrician for 10+ years and then decided to get his degree in Electrical Engineering at age 30. He said that, even though his 10+ years as an electrician didn't really do much for his resume, going to school and changing careers was the best decision that he ever made and he would do it again in a heartbeat. I think he was in his early 40's when we had that conversaion. He was doing very well working for a medical equipment manufacturer in San Diego, where everything is expensive. That was 2-3 years ago...and now I happen to be following the same path that he did (except I'm doing software engineering). Hope that helps.
@BlueStraggler, That was easily one of the most creative and insightful posts that I've ever read on Slashdot. Thank you for that. What a wonderfully appropriate parallel to the common city class system of segregation and stereotyping.
Well, you bring up a great point, perhaps without realizing it. You said "Hell, I stream MP3s to my PDA already via my Bluetooth-enabled EDGE-bandwidth cell phone (150kbps low latency all over Chicagoland)." Maybe the use of radio is for reaching those millions of people who are NOT tech savvy. Wouldn't that be the perfect medium to reach those people? Well, perhaps TV is the best, but radio is much cheaper than TV. How valuable would it be to have Google be the number 1 name that people learn as they dip their toe in the internet world. In that regard, they could have a similar affect that AOL had in the late 90's with non-tech types.
epinions has consumer opinions about products slashdot provides geek opinions about...well, everything. Besides, where else, other than slashdot, can he receive insults for simply asking a question.
One guy did a summary of all names posted and completely ignored/overlooked mine. That guy would be me. There have been a handful of people who complained about me overlooking their suggestions in the list that I created. Quite frankly, that response pisses me off. I spent many hours scouring through that horrific thread where people essentially vomited their name suggestions to the screen without any concern for the guidelines set forth by the Core Team and without any sense of concern for trademarks or available TLD names. Many people simply ignored the conversation and even submitted names that had already been submitted multiple times. That thread is the worst case scenario of what can happen when a project's development is in the hands of the open source community. As I said multiple times ont hat forum, the thorn in the side of the open source community is disorganization. What I did was attempt to start the organization process of that mess. My list resulted in 486 names. That was only a starting point. Soon after, cmeister2 created a database from my list where the names could be further organized, and overlooked names or newly submitted names could be added. If I overlooked your precious name, then you could've added it to his list, that is, if you were paying attention to the conversation within those threads. Most of the names on that list were horrible, but even some of them were better than the Joomla! name. They could've done better. I wish the Core Development team would've appointed someone to organize that discussion. They could've taken cmeister2's database and php script and created a quick voting module out of it to get feedback from the very users and community developers of their CMS. They could've pooled together the potential strength of the community. Only organization will do that. If I would've organized that list, I would've first started an open discussion to establish guidelines, such as the name shouldn't be similar to mambo. After establishing guidelines, I would then setup a quick script where people can submit names based upon those guidelines. If their suggestion did not fit the guidelines, then the submission gets thrown out. That way, they have 60 quality names instead of 500 names that mostly are not usable. A big concern with the name choosing was that viewers (or perhaps someone representing Miro) might poach the domain names that were suggested. To prevent that, I would create a group of volunteers, perhaps 20-30 who have a reputable background within the Mambo community, to finalize the discussion of the new name in a private forum. I can say that the logo discussion is going a little better than the name discussion. They could just do better. I will stay updated with Joomla! development, but I'm personally focusing my efforts on Xaraya