Dear all,
happy new year! Thank you very much for the constructive comments, much appreciated. Apologies for not responding earlier.
Go for more of an architecture role, where you lead the project as a non manager technical role, but you still do a good chunk of coding. This seems to allow people who step down from management to save face and still earn that huge paycheck while flexing those management skills at a different scope. I notice there is a huge lack of leadership from the individual level, and it is probably due to our school systems pumping out good coding slaves and not leaders.
Good advice and definitely something to think of. I do however think becoming an architect might be a bit harder than "going back to" programming, but worth considering, for sure.
If you're in your late 40s, age discrimination may be a real thing. For whatever reason, only the young guys are expected to be coders, it's an annoying bias. That being said, I've known several guys in the 45-55 window who were still coders. They basically just buckled down and refused to move into management. I had a friend who worked for a company where one older guy threatened to quit if they promoted him. (also, not trying to be insulting by boxing you into the 'older guy' range :-) )
I think often what happens is that people who want to stick with coding forever often move in consulting, but if you're moving back into coding, it's a little different story. Honestly, I think most employers are just afraid that the older programmers are going to be stuck in their ways, think they know everything, and not listen to direction. Someone in my company may or may not have recently been fired for this. So, maybe just make it clear that you're not going to be that kind of person, update your skills a bit, and see where things go. Surely some company out there will hire you for that. Besides, unemployment is super low right now, so it's a great time to make a career jump.
Yes, consulting/freelancing could definitely be an option, thank you.
Is it possible you may be happier making lifestyle changes (if possible) that would increase your FIRE date instead of starting over as a coder? Only 10 years away from SS. Not sure about your finances, but I would think if you are in the FIRE community, by age 50, you must not be THAT far away, right?
I am not located in US, so SS does not apply to me. I am also not yet 50, so quite many years still "to go" until normal pension. With regards to FI, well, on the way, but still another 13 years to go with current projections, but depends on how the markets will develop. While 2019 was really good, I do not expect us to see many years of such performance going forward, at least not in real terms, but that is a different discussion.
My advice would be to scour a bunch of job descriptions for jobs you might want for the programming languages mentioned most frequently, and then study up on them. Or maybe talk to programmer friends about what the new hotness is. It might be industry-dependent.
Thanks, good idea.
What language did you start in? There's a chance that it is still in demand, especially in a consulting role.
I did some C++ and Java, but this was quite some time ago and I would need to relearn. However, I do believe I know at least the principles and would be fairly quick in relearning once I got my mind into it.
Hello, the easiest programming language for beginners is Python.
The reason why is once you leave Python all the other languages will force you to use ";" and other complex things which will take a long time to comprehend for some. Namely, in JavaScript there is a concept of Promises which requires you to actually understand how the event loop works which is not an easy thing to know!
In Java, you're constantly working with the virtualization and must learn that or your code will fail. So, python, being easy to use is best.
You can write simple scripts that can be set to Windows Task Scheduler and that will make painful manual tasks a breeze while you can then sit back and just watch (or study!).
For the OP I would take this with a *very* large grain of salt. Honestly it smells like a spam bot tryi
Yes, I also reacted in similar way regarding the Python recommendation. However, might not be bad for me to use as a first step in getting back into "programming".
All in all, I am actually quite happy at work in last few months. My company however announced a reorganization just before Christmas, so let's see how that will play out.
Again, I appreciate the responses and now have some good and practical advice to follow or take into consideration.
All the best for the 2020's!