Ask Slashdot: Can an Aging Project Manager Return to Coding Unpopular Legacy Co...

"Coding" is what we imagined we were doing as teenagers.

If you want your own niche, it really helps to be your own boss. So start figuring out how to be a "consultant" for doing unpopular unhip unfashionable programming stuff.

That, or just pop over and talk to your boss, see what they think.

"...and now I want to do the exact opposite of that because I know bullshit and I'm tired of it"

Here's my advice as someone with a long career in IT bullshit: what you want is to find a job that requires programming skills but isn't about software.

Me, I'm a test engineer. I build automated test equipment for a manufacturer of products that have nothing to do with computers or software. I don't chase the latest technological fad du jour, nor do I have to keep training to stay ahead of the curve. I'm paid to put together quickly test equipment that's easy to maintain, will last a long time, and will makes someone else's life easier in production. It it means using assembly, Cobol or Perl, so be it, as long as I can prove why it makes sense to my management.

In short, find a job where your experience as a problem-solver will be in demand, where you skills as a computer programmer will be applied to a genuine, real-world problem or application and where someone will thank you for what you did. But whatever you do, stay the hell away from IT.

Take that resume and your excellent sales pitch and start a business devoted to, say, documenting and refactoring legacy code bases so they're easier to work with.
Build a snazzy website and start poking people you know.

Sure do what you want. Management sucks.

Two industries you may be happy at: IoT and game development. The former is about functionality, and most micro controllers will be happy running C for a long time; the later it's usually C++ (or C# in case of Unity) and it's about the end product and how to best get it done for the player and games, thus programming is seen as a means to an end.

But if you really want to insulate from the pace of change, the space industry might be it. It's about reliability, most processors and systems will be generations old due to radiation hardening and slow to update, with the benefits of stable language utilisation (likely C or Assembly) and relatively long project times with focus on retesting.

I am 51 years old, started out as a software developer and have worked as a director of development and CTO. I also did a couple of years as an agile coach. I got tired of all of that work and also got tired of saying to myself, "I will just write code when I retire". Because I love doing it.

So I quit my job and got another job as a software developer. I earn about half as much as I used to, but I look forward to going to work everyday. I've been writing code again for about 2 years, and wouldn't go back ever. Fortunately, I've been saving and don't need to worry about retirement. So it really doesn't matter how much I earn, as long as I'm happy doing what I do. So, go for it.

From a technology perspective, I moved to a completely new tech stack and have been developing skills and knowledge there. This is part of the reason why I need to take a salary cut, is because I had to re-train. Now, all of the previous technical knowledge that I developed during my career I am now using fully, that I am up to speed in the new tech stack.

I'm a similar age to you but have managed to avoid all kinds of management so far and keep doing what I love: coding. I've worked for ISPs, web hosters, and multinational SaaS providers. I've volunteered on IETF working groups (and still get spammed thanks to their public list policies). I've even helped companies recover "lost" source code for applications and services by installing old OSes into virtual machines and reverse engineering them. So far I've managed to maintain my ethics and avoid working for

It's a perfect fit.. And if it's some mission critical setup from back in the day - which likely is the case if it's still in use and they're looking for personnel to maintain it - then it's also a license to print money for anyone confident and competent enough to take responsibility.

by fwc ( 168330 ) on Sunday March 26, 2023 @05:14AM (#63399909)

I find that Embedded System programming requires someone with the experience that you would have had from the early days... That is, making things work with way too few resources. Often, the project teams are quite small or one, and the focus is often on making things work.

If you've picked up some C along the way, it's even more likely that you're qualified to do the work.

I am 67. I work in a niche field (Colour calibration / measurement). I work on projects, but I also have my own R&D software which has been growing for the last 20 years or so. I write non-fancy C++ most of the time. If you can find a small-scale niche like this, possibly involving hardware, then it will have longer timescales.

I have recently made a phone app. If you can find something that needs doing on a phone, this is something that one person can do. Android has a good community, but huge variat

I'm also a 55 year old in tech. Our legacy of experience pays of a well in this day and age. We can be as technical as we like to be. But there are some thing you need to know.

Firstly cloud is king. Everything is migrating there. Workloads we never thought would move are moving. So having a decent understanding of what cloud compute is all about does help. We can still exercise our legacy skills here. And it's in high demand. As companies are trying to get rid of that on-prem infrastructure and move to on demand resources. Yet at the same time wanting/needing to run those 30 year old code bases. You can get a decent understanding of the various clouds with free online courses that take only a few hours to complete.

There are some tools you need to learn. CI/CD DevOps pipelines etc. rule the roost. No more do we compile code locally, and no longer do we deploy code by hand. Be prepared to learn how the local team has set this up. As it's rarely the same from shop to shop. You don't have to be a DevOps guru. But you do need to understand what it's all about. Speaking of which. Learn git if you haven't already. The atlasian git flow documentation is pretty good. Git will be the first and mandatory tool on this CI/CD workflow.

Remember those ORielly books we all had. Those are gone. It's now starts with google and will end up at a few sites that you will reference on a frequent basis. Get used to lots of problem threads that never actually lead to the answer you need. You skim skills need to be spruced up.

Security is now a thing. It may seem like it's in the way of things and you will push back against what is clear to you as a pointless hoop to jump through. But it's there, and usually for a reason. Is it done well, not really. It's pretty clunky. No you can't get root on production so you can do what is so clearly important.

No you don't need to be on the bleeding edge to be productive. Most often the bleeding edge means re-inventing the wheel over and over again.

Now where are the jobs, Well lots of companies want our skills. But more often than not it's Professional services orgs that want us most. These contracting firms will want to take advantage of you, that's normal. With a mgt,pm background as well this can be easily navigated. As our experience tends to give us an upper hand in office politics.

The problem is that team leads, supervisors, project managers etc. don't like employing people who have more experience than they do. Even working with people older than them gives some insecure managers etc. a problem. Although if you would be subordinate to them. They might see you as a challenger to their position / authority. They might see you as undermining them "when I was [ position ] we did this a better way".

With such a complete set of skills, I'd be inclined to start up on my own. That way nobod

I am 35 and I am at the frontline for 12 years (therefore an infant for some here). Fortunately, I managed to keep up successfully with every *new thing* that has happened during this time. And many things have happened... I started with web development then I additionally did some mobile development, while participating in data mining projects on the side. I skipped IoT emergence and earned a master degree. I shifted to scientific programming while wearing my hats of the past whenever it was necessary. I a

Ask around. The jobs probably exists but you won't find them advertised because nobody suitable applies.

What's the closest equivalent these days to what you were doing with Cobol?
How in-depth was your coding skill before switching to project management?
By that, I mean in terms of deep problem solving skills that are language agnostic?

If those problem solving skills are still exceptionally good, then I would seek a role as a principal engineer.

You probably know the role description. You are the "go to person" for finding solutions to very difficult problems.
You are there to mentor other developers.
You will be expected to attend high level meetings as the "problem solver"
But you aren't expected to manage anyone.

Sounds like a win to me, but only if you can get past that rather odd barrier of "legacy code"

Most of the coding problems you encountered when doing Cobol still exist today.
The only barrier is syntax, libs etc. - which can be learned "on the job"

A decent employer when looking for a principal engineer will look past what coding languages they have experience with.
They just want to know "can this person solve problems at a very high level, can they mentor a team?"

To repeat myself, seriously, get over this obsession with "legacy code" - embrace change - you are only 52.

I'm 55 and continuously challenge myself - I'm having to get deep into devops now - with all that entails. (docker, k8s, AWS etc. etc.)
I am unafraid of change... or rather, I still need to pay my mortgage...;)

https://epics-controls.org/ [epics-controls.org] is a software system used for control in many large labs and some companies. Dept of Energy Office of Science labs use it and are frequently looking for individuals willing to code for the rest of their careers as promotion paths are meager. Pay is competitive, not GS scale.

I don't think that you'll find many companies that want someone to maintain dying projects for too long. You'll get hired because they have some legacy code that needs to be kept afloat until the replacement is in, then your replacement comes in too.

What you probably will get the most out of is as a consultant for migration from those legacy tools to modern ones. For that, though, you will have to have at least some knowledge of modern languages, because your job will be the translator.

All languages have some quirks. You know the ones of those old languages, you know why that code behaves that way because you used to write that kind of code, some nifty little trick that nobody bothered to document that someone dreamt up and passed it around among the coders, only to be forgotten in the sea of time by now. But you still remember that.

That is your asset. And that's what I'd sell.

wrong timing to be switching careers especially if you need training, especially careers in IT. Start a garden, a farm, but at 52 and without any experience... Inflation will be destroying one piece of the economy after another. Become a gold dealer

In my experience if you are known as a person who can get things done you can always find a job. Legacy stuff can be a great niche but you can get hired into current stuff too. Good luck.

*IF* the organization will support the action, which most won't, you can return from managing to coding. This needs to come with a lot of caveats, though. As you get older, your short term memory gets less powerful, so even though your skill level can quickly recoup with practice, you won't be as good a coder as you were. It will take you longer to do things, and you'll need to break the code into smaller functions. And you'll NEED to document what you did as you go along, and frequently why you did it.

I think I started noticing that change in my capabilities in my late 40's, but it had certainly been in process long before I noticed it. I think my ability to design the programs kept improving, but keeping track of the details moved in the opposite direction.

FWIW, I'm retired now, and code for recreation. ("Art for arts sake!") Recently I switch from Python to C++ after being away from C++ since before the STL. It's being an experience, and what I really wish is that there were a better way to document code than Doxygen. (One thing I'd like is better indexes [note the plural]. Something like "@ind1... @ind2...". Not instead of the current index, but in addition to it.)

It would violate Betteridge's law of headlines with a question mark.

There is a massive need for guys like you but unfortunately not a lot of demand. These sorts of projects tend to be staffed by MSPs or weird IT shops where everyone is underpaid, their skills are outdated, and people stick around for decades.

These enterprises tend to not value IT even though in the case of the latter they were often cutting edge in their industry, now locked into obsolete technology. Yep who knew that IBM IT department in a box was going be dead weight in 40 years.

I heard of codebases with documentation, but I think that is just an urban legend.

A few points others have made:
- Find the few people out there who need stuff you know
- Work for the government; they've got tons of weird old cruft
- If you can, work with stuff that interlinks with hardware
- Programmable Logic Controllers

I am similar in age to OP, and this question reminds me that I really need to send a polite "no" to the headhunters in Minnesota who stumbled across an old resume of mine that mentioned PICK D/3 (which was the bane of my existence for a few years about 20 years ago) and lef