A few days ago I asked you to email me your questions about beginning your programming
career. Some of you between 30 and 40 years old wanted to know if their age will stop them from getting hired by employers.

Here are my career success tips for beginning a programming career when
you are over 30 years.

• The golden rule for career success in computer programming. Take a pen and write this down. In the computer programming industry, employers and hiring managers will judge you by href="http://www.it-career-coach.net/book/" target="_blank">“how you perform on the job”. And not by your skin color, your sex (male or female) and certainly not by your age.

• The computer programming industry is unlike others. You may have read that some employers won’t hire 40 – 50 year old job candidates. Well, there is such a demand for good computer programmers, that this is not really an issue in the information technology industry. At one of my consulting gigs in
  2004, I worked with a gentleman, who was at least 50 years old. He had distinct grey hair and some of my colleagues referred to him as “the old man”. However,
  within 3 months of his employment, he was promoted to a team lead position. The lesson here is that no matter what your age is, if you can do the job, you will succeed in your programming
  career.

• There is a big demand for highly skilled programmers. The demand for skilled computer programmers far outstrips the supply of available
  talent. So, you really shouldn’t be worrying about your age, but about how sharp your skills are and about how to stay on top of your game. Go
  to job boards like Dice.com, Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com and note the high number of available jobs. Then repeat and affirm this statement to yourself.
  “There is an abundant supply of programming jobs and one of them is just for me”.

• Contract programmers can get hired just from a phone interview. If you are a contract programmer with good programming skills, all you have to
  do is to send your resume to a few select places and sit back and wait for your phone to buzz. So, you don’t even have to interview with an employer until he or
  she reviews your resume. Personally, I have been offered a number of consulting assignments over the phone without the employer ever seeing me in person or
  finding out about my age. Again, the lesson here is to become very
  good at your programming career. If you are that good, employers will want to hire you even over the phone, because they know that you are only going
  to be on the market for a short time before someone else makes an even better offer.

• Think about your age in constructive not destructive terms.
  There are always reasons why someone may want to discriminate against you. It could be that your age, your skin color, your lack of college education, lack of computer science degree, sex (as in you are a female), your accent (regional or
  national accents) etc. places you at a disadvantage compared to someone else.
  However, these are also reasons why you should make sure you are a top performing computer programmer.
  Because, if you are, you will pave your own career and your path will be littered with gold.
  Remember that the singular, most important concern employers have is whether you can perform on the job.

• If you think you can, you can. Because career success is in what you know. If you are not doing well in your programming career and you
  think it’s because your age is holding you back, I dare you to read "how to perform on the job and succeed in computer programming", do what the book says and not succeed in your computer programming career.

It’s far better to succeed in your programming career than to point an accusing finger at someone else’s bias as being responsible for your failure.

By learning and doing what it takes to succeed in your computer programming career, you empower yourself and you prove to others who may doubt your abilities, you have what it takes.

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