Some of you will remember that I posted last year regarding my redundancy from an investment bank java programming job. Well, 8 months down the line and the money has nearly run out and I am struggling. I have tried to get another programming job, but no matter how hard I try and convince interviewers and myself. I know deep down that I am no longer a java programmer. The industry has changed a great deal and I no longer have the appetite to keep abreast with what is going on in the java dev world. To be honest, I had an interview the other day and one of the devs was really opinionated and had a somewhat inflated opinion of himself. This was a good reminder why I threw the towel in last year and took redundancy.

I have always had an interest in IT strategy, but don’t see how I can move into that type of role. Recruitment agents are only interested in getting a bum on a seat so when I try and speak about roles outside of dev, they pretty much give up and I never hear from them again.

Keen to hear from any other +40 aged programmers who decided dev did not have longevity for old timers and move into something else. I am now starting to realise that I only have myself to blame regarding sitting in a programming job for years, where I was really just kept on for my knowledge of the complexity of the system.

At 43, I feel like I am on the scrap heap 🙁

https://getintoteaching.education.gov.uk

IT architecture of some type. Use the lessons you’ve learnt from being on the dev end to shape the projects as a whole. I’m a similar background and experience and there’s no way I’d do development again. Much better to be designing solutions for large teams of developers to implement.

For example from my own company:

https://www.uk.capgemini.com/careers/jobs/solutions-architect-web-mobile-0

Computing is a priority subject and there are loads of training bursaries etc to get you through a year of training.

I ended up working for company supporting the software they make. Bit of Java, bit of the product, bit of the other products. Because of the technical specialism, I have ended up doing things like architecture and consultancy. So as far as my CV’s concerned I am now an architect in the proper sense of the word rather than someone who designs code.

There are technical routes to alternatives to programming.

Well you started the first stage, tap your contacts, most jobs are never advertised.

Carefully tailor your CV to get past the recruiters keyword filters. Emphasise any team leading experience you have. Any Agile/Design methodology experience you have too.

Molgrips beat me to it…maybe the support side of things, production support role (if you don’t mind on call work…)

I should add I’m involved in the implementation side of things, our software is a development tool.

17 years. That’s enough time to have derailed enough projects to be able to sort some out. So a PM role might work. How’s your customer facing skills? BA?

How about recruitment? (not something I’d want to do btw), a recruiter that actually understood some of roles/skills he’s recruiting for might do well.

Scrum master

You looking permanent or contract?

If you’ve not considered the contract market then it may be worth a look. Interviewers are often less bothered about getting the perfect candidate as you’re there to do a specific job and they can get rid of you easily if you don’t work out… and they’re often desperate to get someone in. And then if you’re good you can be there for some time. Can be easier to blag your way into a role you might not have all the right skills for then build up a decent CV for the sort of role you do want. And you can make lots of contacts.

Naturally fell out of dev here as it all got outsourced then offshored. Quit and went contracting doing design/architecture/requirements work, a lot of outsourcing projects too, mostly in telecoms.

Go contracting, you’ll stay in the dev world,but you wont have to put up with any pd rubbish, you’ll get paid a decent rate, and you wont have to go through silly longwinded interviews.

Some very interesting posts here and quite strange that teaching, support based roles and recruitment spring to mind. I have also thought about those too, but struggling to deduce how you go about moving into those roles.

Teaching – will require a PGCE and I don’t have the money to enable me to do one.

Recruitment – I have a good contact in London who I could speak to, but I get the impression it is a very cut throat market and given the lack of respect that some agents extend to their job hunters I am not sure I would be any good at it!

Support role – This would be a tweak to the CV, but I actually preferred the bug fixing BAU aspect of the dev role I did.

The IT strategy and architecture positions seem a little above my station as I struggle badly with ‘impostor syndrome’ and I think it would get the better of me.

As to contract roles. I have gone for them in London and always have had a real tech grilling. I think it is because I am going perm to contract.

The IT strategy and architecture positions seem a little above my station as I struggle badly with ‘impostor syndrome’

I’ll say. You’ve got as much experience as I have.

Back yourself mate.

I’ll say. You’ve got as much experience as I have.

Back yourself mate.

Self belief is something that I really need to work on.

Have you thought about looking into the network world? I work with a few ex Java guys who are now very well paid networks (CCNP etc) contractors. If you could afford to do a CCNA it’d get your foot in the door of a lot of agencies..

As an employer (occasionally of,Java devs) I’d want to know what you’d been doing with your eight months of freedom. I don’t think people realise that rings alarm bells as someone nobody else wants.

Had a look at anylogic? Java based simulation tool, it’s a different direction from straight development but if your analytical and a problem solver it can be a fun game.

I would echo a little bit what someone has posted above – get involved in agile. Multi-disciplinary teams that develop a multi-skilled approach could make you more rounded and take you towards architecture and later strategy roles with more confidence.

Dev to strategy is not a natural progression, most have a path that has a few steps in! Try and motivate yourself by visualising your next role as the next move in your game. That could motivate and reinforce your confidence.

Good luck and take care OP.

J

As an employer (occasionally of,Java devs) I’d want to know what you’d been doing with your eight months of freedom. I don’t think people realise that rings alarm bells as someone nobody else wants.

+1

get involved in agile

+1

There are more skills than just tech ones needed to work well in an agile type team, esp if they pair. Coding is just a small part, thinking up the tests, etc, are the important bits and that just needs domain expertise/a logical mind.

So someone recruiting for such a team may not have such a high technical standard required.

As to contract roles. I have gone for them in London and always have had a real tech grilling

why are you having a problem with the tech grilling – just read some decent books and you will know more than 80% of the programmers out there. There are some pretty decent Java books out there – just avoid that nutshell one.

As mentioned, SCRUM, PRINCE2, Agile.

You have solid experience in developing stuff….now look at managing and implementing those projects.

Quick additions to the CV are probably what you need. If you’ve got a programming background then you’ll be able to pick up powershell really, really quickly.

There’s loads of online courses and throw in a bit of Hyper-v/DSC and you’re well on your way to a devops role.

Continuous deployment is one of those buzz areas that everyone thinks they need now but nobody is really qualified to do 😀

17 years ?

N00b 😉

How about doing a prince 2 course and then some IT project management? Also some service management or account management type stuff, both that don’t rely on the programming knowledge but good if you have a general IT background.

Did you do any user interface stuff as a Java programmer? Huge shortage of usability people in software at the moment. I don’t necessarily mean the creative side unless you think you have that in you, but the usability bit.

17 years in investment banking DEV? You must have some business knowledge by now?

I turned 40 last year, having been an iSeries developer for 15+ years. For about ten years I’ve was trying to get out of it.

Achieved that a couple of years ago by moving to a Technical Analyst role – basically the bridge between product and technology (most other companies would call it a BA I guess) writing functional specs from business requirements, that sort of thing.

Bad news is I achieved that from within the company – I switched from contract dev to perm dev to team lead to TA in the space of a few years.

In your position, I would have been contracting anywhere I could get a job. I know IB pays better than most but any job is better than no job – especially one which has lower pressure and allows you to up your skills whilst getting paid.

Like you, I found I enjoyed the problem solving aspect of support work much more than the coding from scratch (tho’ the “greenfield” stuff was seen as the place to be). My only problem was I didn’t want to do the overnight/weekend support side of it (having said that, a mate of mine does it, gets a big chunk of extra pay for each time he’s on call, and rarely gets called, so it can be good!)

I would have thought it would be relatively to tweak your CV to bring out the problem solving/live support side of it…and in my experience, less people apply for those jobs so may be a bit easier to get a foot in the door (especially in the same industry/market sector as you were in)

I wouldn’t worry about the 8 months off…people are much more open to late-in-life gap years nowadays. I took a year out a while ago after redundancy and no-one batted an eyelid when I started looking for work again.

That was always one of my favourite bits.

I’ve spent 27 years in IT with 12 of those in development roles (largely web and SOA for financial services). I made the move in architecture a good while back, starting as a solution architect for the systems I used to work on. I extended those skills by looking at the business processes surrounding the services developing business architecture / process engineering concepts for the company. I left industry about 10 years ago and moved into professional services (Big 4) working in CIO / IT advisory. That built my network like you wouldn’t believe and last year I decided to go it alone as a freelance Enterprise Architect. It’s very lucrative work and I choose what I want to get involved in. There is light at the end of the tunnel, you only have to make sense of what you want to do, how you want to live and what your work-life balance needs to be. I’d recommend Prince 2, MSP and TOGAF certification to give an appreciation of project management, programme management and architecture frameworks respectively.

Have you considered QA/ testing?

It’s what I’ve ended up in, after many years C C++ and C# – quite rewarding, and having coded for many years, feel have a general instinct for where the crunch points are!!

8 months – I spent about 15 months doing ‘stuff’ and enjoying being with my family again ..

I decided to go it alone as a freelance Enterprise Architect

This I fancy for my future, a decade or so’s time. My current job is preparing me well.

Have you considered QA/ testing?

This too – hardest people to find in the country are decent testers, both functional and automation. I say that sitting in a team with a vaccancy for a Lead QA at the moment for decent money and terms in Central London (this isn’t an offer by the way as you’d need some QA experience!)

I couldn’t do QA – at least the repetitive manual stuff the guys in our QA dept seem happy to do.

However automated QA/devops interests me.

The project I am working on atm is a regression tool that replays all our production messages through our system, monitoring it for events and capturing data for comparison as it proceeds. I can also use to replay at multiples of real-time in order to monitor the performance of the system in a pre-production environment.

I have tried to make it work in terms of configured sets of expectations for each party, which get merged into an FSM.

That’s quite interesting and I think I want to get more into the devops area.

In my last role I did some automation using Jenkins and Ant to run a series of integration tests each evening. I agree that more emphasis is being placed on CI.

I agree that more emphasis is being placed on CI.

I am becoming more of a believer/advocate of test-first development at the end-to-end levels as it forces you to write code/systems that can be automatically tested. Trying to retrofit automatic testing onto a system that hasn’t been designed for it can be very difficult/near on impossible.

Skillset shifts to having good taste in the tests you write such that they can be refactored along with the code as the design of the system emerges.

Summed up in this book :

and starting to see the absolute importance of not skimping on the testing and shortcutting it due to ‘delivery pressure’ – as you are just heading for a fall and will end up with the usual fragile software mess and possibly failed project.

For me the question is what do you enjoy?

There are lots of roles listed here and tech has so many interesting possibilities at the moment just think about what you fancy and be honest with recruiters and ask for their opinion about how you could position your CV to get what you are looking for. Probably a good idea to find an agent who specialises in that area too.

If you want to change direction then this is generally easier if:

a) you are in a contract and an opportunity arises
b) if you are prepared to take on a perm role at a more junior level – Are you?

…but you probably know this is you have been around the block for the last 17 years. 🙂

2 things not to do listed here IMHO:

– Be a Tester (what are they?)
– Prince 2 training (for the love of god please no).

I easily recall when Agile was XP and Extreme – never really took a foothold for some good, and some bad reasons in our organisation. But the continuous integration, continuous testing, automated test stuff was good and I was able to carry that to my new employer with mostly positive results. Trying to frat it on to existing stuff was a real ball-ache though – only really works from the ground up, and was very very useful.

See also code coverage, test coverage and so on.

Edit: just seen above post above “Not a Tester” – really? I find that I have good attention to detail, following specifications, working out where stuff went wrong, devising *automated* tests to counter those is something that comes quite easily to me. YMMV obviously, and I’m fortunate in doing this on a freelance, casual basis for a small team who are as ego-less as its possible too imagine..

the whole pair stuff has a lot of validity though – it is nearly always a lot quicker to find production problems when you work with someone else and the same goes at the other end of the development – thinking up the user cases and exceptions and what to test. Cutting the actual code is only a small part of it.

I would suggest contract BA/IT Analyst.

Use the problem solving skills from your dev experience, and your knowledge of what is required in a good spec. There is always demand for people who can bridge the gap between Business and IT, and who understand the end to end delivery process.