IT/Software career thread: Invert binary trees for dollars.

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Brahma

Obi-Bro Kenobi-X
12,534
45,621
You can quit?

Usually being forced into management means you are overpaid for your current position.

Maybe. But I really hate managing people. Not quitting for one reason, they hired the best director I've ever worked for in my 25+ years in IT.
 

ronne

Nǐ hǎo, yǒu jīn zi ma?
8,282
7,832
Isn't some level of management kind of inevitable though? Like how long can we realistically be "in the trenches" so to speak?

I've been in this game for 15 years now and have worked my way from literal Geek Squad to some nonsensical title at my current job (I think it's cloud infrastructure engineer?). How long am I going to be willing/able to keep up with shifts in technology though? I got VMware/Veeam certified back in like the 2016-2018 era, because that's what all our infra was running on, and was our primary focus for new deployments. But now? That shits all on the way out, and AWS or whatever flavor of not-my-cloud is the future.

I can probably keep up with this round as we migrate more towards a K8s based system run in AWS, but what about the next big shift in 2025? Or 2030? I'm gonna get sick of this eventually, or just be too old and boomerish to keep up, and what then? Do you just age out eventually, holed up in your tiny corner of some fortune 500, closely guarding your aging VMware systems from being offlined just so you can look useful?

I feel like the only logical move as I get older is to move away from hands on and more in to management roles.
 

Ao-

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
<WoW Guild Officer>
7,879
507
Isn't some level of management kind of inevitable though? Like how long can we realistically be "in the trenches" so to speak?

I've been in this game for 15 years now and have worked my way from literal Geek Squad to some nonsensical title at my current job (I think it's cloud infrastructure engineer?). How long am I going to be willing/able to keep up with shifts in technology though? I got VMware/Veeam certified back in like the 2016-2018 era, because that's what all our infra was running on, and was our primary focus for new deployments. But now? That shits all on the way out, and AWS or whatever flavor of not-my-cloud is the future.

I can probably keep up with this round as we migrate more towards a K8s based system run in AWS, but what about the next big shift in 2025? Or 2030? I'm gonna get sick of this eventually, or just be too old and boomerish to keep up, and what then? Do you just age out eventually, holed up in your tiny corner of some fortune 500, closely guarding your aging VMware systems from being offlined just so you can look useful?

I feel like the only logical move as I get older is to move away from hands on and more in to management roles.
in my current industry, non-management is certainly possible. Lots of older experienced people doing niche security work. Threat detection via packet analysis isn't changing much, same for mainframe security. They aren't going away but people who know how to work on them are.
 

Control

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
3,082
8,121
Do you just age out eventually, holed up in your tiny corner of some fortune 500, closely guarding your aging VMware systems from being offlined just so you can look useful?
On the other hand, I think we're actively hiring RPG programmers... If you don't mind doing old stuff, someone will pay you to do it because something somewhere relies on it.
 

Mist

REEEEeyore
<Gold Donor>
31,218
23,426
There's worse things than being management.

You could be in sales.
 
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Fucker

Log Wizard
12,704
28,897
I'm gonna get sick of this eventually, or just be too old and boomerish to keep up, and what then? Do you just age out eventually, holed up in your tiny corner of some fortune 500, closely guarding your aging VMware systems from being offlined just so you can look useful?
LMAO. Company I worked at had an old guy with two computers. No one knew what they were for. He retired or something, the computers were turned off and no one noticed.
 
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wamphyr

Molten Core Raider
647
541
Is it really viable to learn to program when you are 42 years old and get a shitty programming job ?
I know a tiny bit of C++ that I learned in highschool 28 years ago, but it just the basic of the basics, like declaring variables, the IF, For and While commands, and that is about it.
The thing is I picked a wrong job that is rapidly collapsing (English-Romanian translator), and all the hiring add in Romania are for coders. Can I do it at 42 ?
 

ronne

Nǐ hǎo, yǒu jīn zi ma?
8,282
7,832
LMAO. Company I worked at had an old guy with two computers. No one knew what they were for. He retired or something, the computers were turned off and no one noticed.

That man was living the fucking dream for sure
 

Control

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
3,082
8,121
Is it really viable to learn to program when you are 42 years old and get a shitty programming job ?
Youtube or torrent some beginner React (or whatever tech you want) tutorials. Bash your head against them until you can make something useful or you decide it isn't for you. If you can build something useful and point at it, someone will hire you.
 
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ShakyJake

<Donor>
7,918
19,985
Is it really viable to learn to program when you are 42 years old and get a shitty programming job ?
I know a tiny bit of C++ that I learned in highschool 28 years ago, but it just the basic of the basics, like declaring variables, the IF, For and While commands, and that is about it.
The thing is I picked a wrong job that is rapidly collapsing (English-Romanian translator), and all the hiring add in Romania are for coders. Can I do it at 42 ?
Pretty much what I did. I transferred from a call center to a department that was tasked writing VB6 scripts -- I was 41/42 at the time. From there I made the effort of learning .NET and C#, wrote various utility apps for our department and then was moved to engineering a couple years later. Got promoted to senior engineer this past spring with a sweet six figure salary.

And, by the way, at the time only had a high school diploma.
 
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Lendarios

Trump's Staff
<Gold Donor>
19,360
-17,424
It is natural to end up with some sort of management responsibilities. You cant be an engineer forever. I figure I have 15 more years left me at a high level, before I start slipping.
 

Fucker

Log Wizard
12,704
28,897
Youtube or torrent some beginner React (or whatever tech you want) tutorials. Bash your head against them until you can make something useful or you decide it isn't for you. If you can build something useful and point at it, someone will hire you.
The woman who ran the email servers where I worked was a secretary and got into IT at base level and moved up. She was in her 40's when she started that.
 
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Mist

REEEEeyore
<Gold Donor>
31,218
23,426
I've got clients like that. Women that started as receptionists and somehow wound up 20 years later as VP of Telecom for a Fortune 500 company because no one else wanted to handle the 'phone switch' which grew and grew until it encompassed globe-spanning call centers and dozens of IVRs and adjunct applications and CRM integrations etc, as vendors worked to integrate and migrate all the companies they purchased along the way into the existing systems.

Some of these women are very smart and others are... holy shit , not.
 
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ronne

Nǐ hǎo, yǒu jīn zi ma?
8,282
7,832
Some of these women are very smart and others are... holy shit , not.

Sounds like all of It. Like 20% of the workforce actually knows what they are doing, everyone else is just clicking buttons and following a script built by someone smarter than them.

Probably myself included.
 
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Mist

REEEEeyore
<Gold Donor>
31,218
23,426
Sounds like all of It. Like 20% of the workforce actually knows what they are doing, everyone else is just clicking buttons and following a script built by someone smarter than them.

Probably myself included.
I'm talking about VP-level people though.