Ask Slashdot: Am I Too Old To Retrain? 418
Talcyon writes "I'm a 40-year-old developer, and it's become apparent that my .NET skillset is woefully out of date after five years of doing various bits of support. I tried the 'Management' thing last year, but that was a failure as I'm just not a people person, and a full-on development project this year has turned into a disaster area. I'm mainly a VB.NET person with skills from the .NET 2.0 era. Is that it? Do I give up a career in technology now? Or turn around and bury myself in a support role, sorting out issues with other people's/companies' software? I've been lurking around Slashdot for many years now, and this question occasionally comes up, but it pays to get the opinions of others. Do I retrain and get back up to speed, or am I too old?"
I don't remember submitting this ... (Score:4, Funny)
... oh, wait, I'm 46 years old.
Other than that, the entire original summary could be me ... spooky.
Perfect for Management (Score:4, Funny)
"I tried the 'Management' thing last year, but that was a failure as I'm just not a people person.."
Not people persons are perfect for the job, take a few breath courses, so that you can yell at people without exerting yourself and you'll be OK.
Re: "...am I too old?" (Score:4, Funny)
We can't bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to tell 'em stories that don't go anywhere - like the time I caught the VPN over to corporate HQ. I needed a new update for my employee handbook, so, I decided to go to the BBS, which is what they called a web download site in those days. So I tied a 28k modem to my DSL, which was the style at the time. Now, to phone a BBS cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of Steve Jobs on 'em. Give me five jobs for a quarter, you'd say.
Now where were we? Oh yeah: the important thing was I had a modem around my neck, which was the style at the time. They didn't have 56Ks because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones with a phone set...