Advice for Older Entry-Level Programers? 49
jmorse asks: "My uncle recently shut down his manufacturing business and is considering entering the job market as an entry level programmer. He's done a lot of ad-hoc programming in several languages to fulfill his business' needs, but has never held a job as a programmer or software engineer. I know it's a tough time to be looking for a programming job, especially when there are so many unemployed younger people who would gladly put in long hours. What advice do slashdotters have for an older guy just getting started?"
relating programming to the real world (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a place where many people fall - so it'll be a good leg up.
my advice.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless your uncle can provide something other than software engineering, he might be SOL. Hopefully his manufacturing work can fill that void. For example, things like robotics in manufacturing. I'm sure he's familiar with how they're used in the manufacturing process. He could find a job working for a robotics developer that sells robots to companies like General Motors or Ford.
Software Engineering != coding Re:my advice.... (Score:1)
The person who asked
Re:my advice.... (Score:2)
Long-term retention in IT? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think "a long time" to keep an IT person is maybe five years. And if they really would like to hire someone who's more likely to stay longer, they'd be smart to hire the older guy. I guy in his early to mid-twenties is less likely to stick around. I doubt this uncle is in his late fifties or sixties so he's still got a ways to go before retirement. He's more likely to have a mortage and dependent children so stability and security will be more important to him.
As for a company paying "retirement benefits," it sounds like you're talking about a pension. I think 401k programs are more the norm for this kind of work in which the company's contribution (if there is any) ends with the employee's employment with them.
Reasons companies want to hire young people:
These are just my guesses and these just stereotypes of the young and old.
Re:your advice.... (Score:1, Interesting)
Age discrimination in the software industry is more often caused by the notion (which I think is absurd) that older people "lose" creativity they had when they were younger. I have not heard of it ever being caused by managers wanting "someone they hope to retain for a long time, and dont have to start paying retirement benefits within a small number of years."
The other main factor fostering age discrimination is the fact that you can pay a young kid 1/4th to 1/2 what you would have to pay a competent, experienced engineer.
I do not know of any software house (well, maybe Microsoft) that genuinely expects to retain a software developer for five years. Most people have either grown out of software development by then, or at least branched out to *something* new (new language or new application realm or even a new industry) after 2 - 3 years.
Jump Into an Open Source Project (Score:1)
And what's more: Nobody will ever have to know that he's an older guy. Everyone is faceless and ageless if they want to be.
Re:Open Source Doesn't Pay (Score:1)
doesn't count? (Score:1)
All depends how you paint it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Your uncle has some VAST advantages over a new graduate. New grads, entry level programmers: You're not going to like this so block your ears. For one he has real world experience in how businesses work, how financing a business (particularly cashflows) work, of dealing with customers, of what deadlines mean and the fact that they are important. These are hugely rare skills in the software engineering world and he would do well to bring them to the fore when talking to potential employers.
From a purely programming perspective you also have to remember that even if his projects were small and ad hoc, they: Shipped; Fulfilled the business requirements; Were on budget and on time. Again, all three of these are actually very rare. All three at once is virtually unheard of.
He's in a very good position, but I wouldn't be going for a coding job. Personally, I'd like to see him paint himself as a project lead or business analyst. If he approaches some outsourcing companies offering to be an interface between their clients and the coding teams, leveraging his real world (non IT industry) experience to his advantage, they'd be hard pressed to turn him down.
Dave
Re:All depends how you paint it. (Score:1)
He could probably do as much or as little programming as he likes from such a position, perhaps working up prototypes with users, and definitely learn alot from the people he is working with.
Re:All depends how you paint it. (Score:3, Informative)
Lie (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Lie (Score:2)
Re:Lie (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't just say "You wouldn't want to work for him if he acts like that", becuase there is a good chance he is just the initial $25K-a-year door-stop interviewer that you have to get past before you actually get to the smart folks, and for him, common sense does not weigh nearly as heavily as "following procedure".
When you are dealing with people who don't understand the meanign or teh value of common sense, you sometimes have to do illogical and "wrong" things to get the job done...
Re:Lie (Score:3, Interesting)
So don't interview with that guy. Don't waste your time. Deal only with hiring managers. Any manager who wastes his company's time/money by having HR do initial screenings for him isn't worth working for.
Re:Lie (Score:3, Insightful)
But some companies have policies which low / middle level managers cannot circumvent.
It's not always the manager's fault.
Re:Lie (Score:1)
I think that the point here is that any company with such policies isn't worth working at. That said, I know that the job market is tight. One may need to put up with a stupid company, especially for a first job.
Back on subject, though, I think that lying is a poor idea. It's likely to catch up with you eventually, and then you'll have more problems than you started with. Unless you're desperate, of course, but the poster didn't seem to be starving.
Or what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or what? What if the manager does circumvent (or in this case, ignore) the policy that says all candidates have to go through HR first? Is the company going to penalize him for finding an excellent candidate on his own? And if so, is that a company you want to work for?
There are so few times when the word "can't" is actually appropriate, especially in business, and especially in larger, moss-covered companies. Prob'ly 2/3rds of any given policy manual is extraneous CYA crap.
Don't go along with the stupid stuff. Your job is to do good, efficient, profitable work, NOT to follow rules, and if the company you're in doesn't understand that, then get the hell out.
Re:Or what? (Score:2)
Do you remember back when you had a toy car, and someone else came and took the toy car from you without asking? I mean, had they asked you would have let them play with the toy car. But they didn't ask you, and that made you mad. Well, think of HR as a beauracracy of 6 year olds.
Is the company going to penalize him for finding an excellent candidate on his own?
HR is going to penalize him for circumventing them, yes. HR is going to find some procedure or reason to avoid hiring the candidate, yes.
And if so, is that a company you want to work for?
It's called office politics, and there isn't a company in the world with more than a dozen employees that doesn't have it. If you try bullying in on HR's turf (handling hiring without them), you're asking for a conflict.
HR Departments usually openly solicit employees to reccomend their friends and have their friends apply to the company. Doing so allows the company to hire good people without using a recruiter who will want tens of thousands of dollars for the placement of a new hire. This is the old "it isn't what you know it's who you know" in action.
Re:Or what? (Score:2)
I often do.
It's called office politics, and there isn't a company in the world with more than a dozen employees that doesn't have it.
Then perhaps one may want to find a company with fewer than a dozen employees.
If you try bullying in on HR's turf (handling hiring without them), you're asking for a conflict.
There are worse things in the world than having a little conflict where you say to the HR people "Hey, I've got something here, and I don't need the assistance this time around." Example: Losing an excellent employee because he/she didn't want to screw around with your territorial HR department.
Re:Lie (Score:3)
Don't lie. What comes around goes around, if not in this life, in the life to come. If not in the physical world, in the spiritual world. Lie, and you may wake up one day wondering why your bank account is fat and your life is thin.
leverage experience (Score:2)
Re:leverage experience (Score:3, Informative)
Meanwhile, if you can take some courses in Visual Basic and database programming, you could probably get yourself another job in the industry, only this time as an office administrator or something. This might not sound great, but keep in mind your education options -- either you go back to university to get a degree, or go to professional college where this is the sort of job they're training students for anyway.
Meanwhile, with the experience you have, you already know how to deal with people, follow procedures, give different options for different trouble scenarios, maybe even manage a person or two... This is your trump card.
And while office automation might not sound like much when it comes to programming, there's plenty of ways to use it as a learning tool for sexier programming skills. When you get given a database to design, go overkill and do a data dictionary with DFDs, ERDs, etc. If you need an office-wide system coordinating reports, try to code it with modular design so that bits and pieces can be interchanged. Maybe even do up a bunch of UML diagrams for it, or figure out how to deploy it with a simple Install wizard. Want to use Excel's charting tools but your data is all stored in a text? Visual Basic's Excel library can help you automate that. Need tracking software? Win2K comes with IIS, which will have an ASP engine. Store it all on a central server and feed it off as web pages (can make pretty things without too much effort). Need to change platforms completely? Brush up on your protocols like XML or CORBA...
Sky's the limit. You only have to be creative and make sure you're not biting off more than you can chew on your projects. Not until you have seniority again, at least.
Re:leverage experience (Score:1)
In this market? (Score:4, Insightful)
This depends on your area, of course. The high-tech meccas got hit hardest because of the blind panic in the dot com collapse (where entire programs were abruptly terminated, often leaving very senior people jobless), if he's someplace everyone else fled years ago he won't have as much competition as he would in the major cities.
Nice ship, now that the rats left. (Score:2)
See, I just knew there was a reason that I moved back to Buffalo.
Must have been the lovely weather, along with the thriving economy.
--saint
Two words: Sys Admin (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Two words: Sys Admin (Score:1)
There are other skills besides # of languages (Score:5, Interesting)
- maturity
- seniority, leadership
- variety of experience
- strong work ethic
This guy has his own business? Great, then he probably understands budgets, deadlines, resource management, and all kinds of other good stuff that any manager wishes his employees understood. He won't necessarily be *doing* those things when he wants an entry level spot, but he can appreciate what it means when his boss says "I understand that you want to do it this way, but you tell me that will take 8 weeks and I only have budget for 3 weeks, so do it the other way." Many of the hotshot young programmers who don't grok business will often shoot back "Then just change the budget" or something equally clueless. The experienced ones will say "You got it, boss" and make it happen in 3 weeks.Remember too, those young kids that will put in the long hours are also the ones that will leave your company in a heartbeat the day someone else comes along and promises to make them rich on stock options. The old timers are often the ones who remember what it's like to have loyalty to their career and the people around them, and not always the quick buck. Managers would kill for that.
How about Architect rather than Engineer? (Score:3, Insightful)
This way his actual programming experience is _much_ less important than his people skills, ability to withstand long meetings in a single bound, and general political savvy in a large corporation.
Just my $.02...
It's the company and the interview (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Don't be desperate. In fact, be a little aloof.
2) Pick your companies carefully.
3) People skills will take you ten times further than technical skills. I've seen companies hire 'virtual savants' who were coding geniuses, but who couldn't work with others, were poor communicators and poor listeners and as a result the project fails.
Your Uncle needs to bring all his people skills from half a lifetime of experience to bear in the interview. You would be amazed at the look of relief that software project managers show when they meet someone who will listen carefully to the problems the company is trying to solve.
4) When asked, always steer the conversation to projects you have successfully completed and not particular skills in particular areas. Believe it or not, most companies don't want a walking encyclopedia, they want someone who will work at getting the project completed on time.
5) Provide references of ability to learn quickly. Not only is the tech industry changing rapidly, thus requiring those who can self-teach themselves new technologies, but the company will be interested in how fast you grasp the problems faced in their specific industry/company. After all, the reason SME's develop software in the first place is to gain a competitive advantage through one of their industry's 'hard tasks'.
6) Do some research. Not on the company, but on the industry they are in. This will allow you to ask intelligent questions in the interview.
7) Become interested in the project during the interview. Act as if their problem/project is an interesting foreign land to be explored (and possibly plundered). Interviewers look for those who are first motivated by the technical challenge, with the money just being a measure of success.
8) DON'T PANIC! Focus on your experience, your proven ability, your communication skills and your proven ability to learn. Those are four things that companies (with exception of behomoths) are looking for in every candidate. If a company uses clueless HR staff who only hire those who look good on paper, then I can guarantee you, you do NOT want to work for those life sucking, soul destroying beauracrats.
9) Employment agents are 90% morons. As a rule, I don't deal with them. I network. I call people, who know people, who know people. Once I had been doing that for a few years, people started to call me, because they knew my work ethic and my reputation for getting projects completed.
Re:It's the company and the interview (Score:1)
Re:It's the company and the interview (Score:1)
Yes, this is a problem that I have witnessed myself. If the 'smooth talker' is the only person they hire, then it usually takes about 6 months before the employer figures it out.
OTOH, if there are technically competent people there, it soon becomes apparent that the 'smooth talker' is all talk and no substance. Then they usually last to the next paycheck.
This is why it's important to involve current IT people in the hiring process, OR, to design the system and set milestones for the person to achieve.
Project Management? (Score:2)
Don't aim at entry-level (Score:1)
Get him to send out several versions of his resumes, each version with slightly different contact information, and each version should be using a wildly different strategy, or better yet have him try a strategy that is against using resumes(see http://asktheheadhunter.com/ [asktheheadhunter.com] ).
Stephan
Domain Expert not Coder (Score:2)
There are a lot more Jobs in IT than just programmer, and nearly all of them require expertise in the problem domain. I would suggest that he should capitalise on this knowledge. He should approach the Companies that would tried to sell him software or supply his industry. I think he would struggle to compete with fresh grad's with current skill as an entry level coder, but would probably bring a range of skills as a Analysis, Designer, Tester, Pre/Post-Sales Support.
Sales Engineer (Score:1)