directory
- Looking back: I didn’t have any core strengths!
- What happens to older programmers when the company hits a crisis?
- Several career paths for older programmers
- Last message
“This article gives you some thoughts on the career development planning of Java engineers, and also gives some suggestions to many students in their 20s and 30s who are confused about their career future.
I hope that through this article, to help you sort out the career development direction of programmers, let you know how to plan our programmer’s half life from more than 20 years old novice to 40 years old code farmers.
First, let’s take a backward look at what a programmer in his 30s or 40s can do to defend his core competencies.
What are some of the mistakes that most programmers make in their careers that result in them becoming uncompetitive in the middle and later stages of their careers?
Looking back: I have no core advantages!
There’s nothing more embarrassing than a programmer who hasn’t really thought about how to build their core competencies in a decade or even 20 years.
This can lead to him shuffling along with the company like a frog boiled in warm water until, in his 30s and 40s, he suddenly discovers he’s good at almost nothing.
For example, from a technical point of view, these friends may find that they are not technical experts or architects, and have no depth in any of the technical areas.
You may not even have read the source code of any technology. Many of the latest technologies, such as big data, artificial intelligence, micro services, the Internet, and so on, have not kept up.
These friends have been doing the same thing for more than 10 years: building traditional software systems with a few younger brothers, and then studying the requirements of various software and designing some simple architectures all day long.
And then the technology that’s used is kind of outdated, it’s always something that’s added, deleted, changed, and checked, and maybe involves some other technology, but a lot of that technology is not mainstream, or it’s not popular.
In the end, you realize that after working for more than 10 years, the only advantage you have compared to younger people seems to be that you have more experience in CRUD projects.
Yes, I’ve seen quite a few brothers in their 30s and even 40s in that sort of situation. The only advantage is that you have more experience in the less difficult projects, and you’ve managed a few people, and that’s it.
Even some brothers although some small and medium-sized companies “architect”, “technical director” title, but in fact, the essence of doing things with the above is almost the same.
However, the salary of these friends is not necessarily very low, because as you stay in the company for a long time, many companies know that you may not have great technical ability, but the boss also recognizes that you are actually quite familiar with the company’s business.
And you have done more projects, older, seniority, work steady, can take a few younger brother, can give the company up a piece of the sky.
In this case, the company will still offer you a good salary. If you are in your thirties, you will probably earn between 30K and 40K.
But there are also a lot of brothers, not so much recognition by the boss of the company, they may not have thought too much, so in their 30s, the company may give you 28K, 30K salary, recognition that you are a senior backbone.
At this time, for older programmers, learning a lot of new technology is also a little powerless, after all, the wife and children at home are on the kang.
When you say you need to work overtime, you can’t do it any more. After all, as you get older and suffer from various chronic diseases, your energy is not as good as it used to be. The main reason is to use your own experience to control the company’s projects.
So that scenario is what happens to a lot of older programmers.
2. What will happen to older programmers when the company is in crisis?
Now let’s look at these older programmers from the point of view of some small business owners
If the company’s business is stable, its revenue is healthy, and its profits are stable, these older programmers are valuable to the boss.
The reason has already been mentioned above. After all, you have worked for so many years that you are familiar with the business and have done many projects
From requirements analysis to system design to development, testing, and deployment, you know a lot about the process, and you can still get paid 30K for your work.
But if the company encounters some crisis now, for example, due to the industry environment and other reasons, the company’s business is not good, the business starts to shrink, the profit starts to decline, what would the boss do?
In fact, it is very simple, standing on the boss’s point of view, if you have 10 older programmers as the backbone, at this time can completely remove 8 of them.
At this time, the boss left two older programmers and asked them to work overtime to support the rest of the company in order to keep their jobs.
Older programmers earn some of the highest salaries in the company. Is removing eight of them a huge cost savings?
If the company has a business to support, you can get a couple of young programmers at 10K to do the work, and two older programmers to do it. Think about it. Is that what’s going on?
In other words, older programmers who are well-paid, older and unable to work overtime are likely to be the first to be “sacrificed” to save the company money when times get tough.
Then, replace it with a few low-paid, young programmers who can stay late into the morning and have enough energy to learn all kinds of new technologies.
So what are the problems these eight older programmers will encounter when they go out to find a job?
Quite simply, these brothers have no technical expertise, and the project is not difficult, and many of the latest technologies have not been followed or learned.
Besides, these brothers are getting older, they have children, they can’t work overtime, and you’re asking for a good salary. When other companies look at it, why would they hire you for more than 30 k?
You don’t have the skills, the energy, the so-called project experience, just some of the previous company’s project experience, may not be very useful in other companies.
If you were the owner of another company, would you hire this person? I want to leave it at this point, so you can see the problem here.
Several career paths suitable for older programmers
Now that you know what the problem is, let’s talk about it:
What kind of older programmers are still being courted by companies in their 30s, or even their 40s?
(1) To become a technology champion and master the company’s core technology
The first way is to master all kinds of technology in their own industry. Even if they go out of the company, other companies are crazy to grab the object.
For example, if you have been working in the Internet industry, and have been in various well-known companies, responsible for and experienced the core system architecture design of many large Internet companies.
You’ve been through the process of designing an Internet system that supports 100 million users, what the technical challenges are.
How to support 100,000 concurrent requests per second, and how to design a system that can support tens of billions of data stores. You know all this stuff.
So at this point, you have the core technology.
Even if your current company doesn’t want you, you will be overtaken by other companies because many companies need architects who have experience with large-scale systems, high concurrency, and large amounts of data.
A thousand armies are easy to get, but a general is hard to find. ** recruitment of many senior engineers with salaries of 20 to 30 K, responsible for a module well, very easy. But if you want to hire a senior architect who can take control of a big complex system in your company, it’s hard to hire, and that person is very valuable, and a lot of companies need that person.
At this time, although you are in your thirties, people recognize you because you have core technical ability, core architectural ability, you are the last line of defense of technology in the company, and many positions are required of you.
Another example is big data. Now that you have been working for more than 10 years, you can do very low-level optimization on various systems in the big data field, such as Hadoop, Spark, hbase, Kylin, ElasticSearch, etc.
Any problems you encounter can be solved at the source level, and you can modify the source code of an open source project for secondary development.
Then you have the core technology. Big data is bound to develop better and better in the future, because there is a large amount of data in various industries, and many companies need the best experts to solve their own big data problems.
So even if you’re 40 years old and you have years of core technical skills, any company needs someone like you at the top to solve all kinds of technical problems.
So if you want to go in this direction, it is recommended that you start planning your technical studies and career development in your 20s.
We must think well, they want to learn what technology, to learn more deeply, in what kind of company to accumulate experience, steadfast walk every step.
By the time you’re in your 30s or 40s, though you’re old, you’ve accumulated enough technical skills that your core skills will protect you and keep you hot in the workplace.
(2) Dig into the business and become an expert in the business field
Second, you can consider becoming an expert in a particular area of business.
You can dig deep in areas where the business has absolute difficulty and depth, where the business is extremely complex, where the industry continues to evolve, where the knowledge of the business area continues to be valuable.
Such as telecommunications, finance, banking, insurance, finance, ERP, and so on.
In companies in these areas, you can focus on building business knowledge while still doing technical work.
For example, a telecom system, ERP system, to do large, business is extremely complex, including a lot of things.
If you can continue to dig deep into various business knowledge and business systems, then eventually becoming a business expert in this area is also very valuable.
Why do you say that? Because for many specific industries, a system may not need so high technology, but it absolutely needs the best business experts to control, in order to design that kind of system corresponding to a specific industry, and business is extremely complex.
So many students, if it is to take the traditional industry system development direction, you can consider paying attention to more business accumulation, become the top business experts in the future.
That way, even when you’re 40, the industry needs you to be there to keep the business going.
(3) Lead the team: embark on the road of technical management
Another way is to take the road of technical management, which I believe we all understand.
As the boss of any company, a technical manager is needed, who needs to understand technology, but not necessarily be particularly proficient, but must have a strong ability of team management.
As a team manager, you need to be able to control the technical direction of your company and have the industry contacts and resources to recruit and build the right technical team.
In addition, you will be able to develop technical team workflows and specifications, define and assign responsibilities between teams, and enable teams to work together effectively to support the company’s business.
This management, said in two words, but in fact, the knowledge behind the great, dozens or even hundreds of different people to twist into a rope, maintain a strong fighting power, do a good job for the company support work, in fact, here is very difficult, very test the level of a manager.
If you can start with a small executive with a few people, go to a technical leader with dozens, go to a senior technical manager with hundreds.
If you can develop in this direction, you will have a competitive edge in your 40s, because many employers will need your technical management experience to control their technical teams.
Of course, to tell the truth, can really do technology management do good people, very few. Especially our technical background of the students, generally speaking are more shy, not very good at communication.
Therefore, for most ordinary engineers, I still recommend the technical expert or business expert route above, which has more opportunities and is more suitable for most people.
(4) Change to other positions or industries
What if someone says, “I’m not that passionate about technology that I want to be an expert, I hate messing around all day, and I don’t have the talent to be a technology manager?”
Well, maybe you should think about writing code and doing something else when you’re in your 30s.
Think about transitioning to product manager, for example? Consider doing Internet operation? Or consider a career in software sales?
That is to say, you can consider taking a certain technical background, to other positions in the technology industry to transition, accumulate experience in other positions, become an indispensable figure, this is also ok.
What’s more, after 10 years of technology in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, and a certain amount of money accumulated, I bought a good house in my hometown, and then went back to my hometown to do business, such as opening a restaurant.
This is also a way, but this is different from person to person, after all, everyone’s network resources are different.
Fourth, the last message
No matter which path you choose, think clearly about what kind of person you want to be
You need to think carefully about what core competitive advantages you will have accumulated over your 10 + years of experience.
Then consider whether these are the kinds of advantages that a fresh grad can’t replace, and whether senior positions at other companies require someone like you.
With that in mind, all that’s left is to keep working toward your goals. You may be confused and even doubt your decision. But still that sentence: believe in yourself, do not forget the original intention, their choice of road, with tears also want to finish!
The last thing you want is to be in your 30s and still “use” a variety of technologies, a dozen or two dozen, and everything. But it doesn’t matter technical depth namely, it doesn’t matter competitive power, a few use experience more just.
If so, the young person who just graduated may learn how to use the technology in a year or two and may be able to replace you at a critical moment.
These guys just lack experience, but they’re willing to work overtime to make up for it, and they’re asking a lot less than you are.
Hope every programmer brother has a good future and life, programmer this road is full of difficulties and challenges. But it’s also full of opportunities and constant learning.
Finally, quoting the lines of the recent popular film Nezha, the Evil Child Comes to The World, the full text: My life is determined by me, not by god!
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