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by pc86 4822 days ago
I'm 26 so I can't speak at all to what a 40ish developer needs to do to get a job. My advice is what I'd give to anyone asking what I think you're asking regardless of age. I'm also assuming you have no desire for entrepreneurship or management.

Since you have a steady and mostly happy job, focus on differentiating yourself after hours. Build out your github profile (my current focus since it's entirely private projects right now), find a programming niche that is financially rewarding and put your emphasis there. Specialist programmers in under-served sectors can earn significantly more than the management supervising them. You don't get to that point by "doing .NET" or building WordPress plugins (not to sound condescending, I've done both for a living), but it can be incredibly lucrative.
1 comments
redmand 4822 days ago
A desire for entrepreneurship? Definitely. But I don't have any side projects or ideas that I feel would be unique enough or adopted well enough in an open market. They're great toys for me, but my girlfriend just doesn't understand them. :)

And a big NO to management. I love coding. I want to die while refactoring. Or die while coding, then come back from the grave to refactor later.

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pc86 4822 days ago
I'm the same way in a lot of respects. I'd love to wake up every morning to tweak a product or SaaS business that I live off of but I haven't gotten that spark from anything yet.

What language(s) do you work with?

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redmand 4822 days ago
Work with or are competent at? :)

For the last 8 or so years, the jobs have been C#/.Net. Before that, Delphi. Before that, C and C++ (quite a while ago). There's also been a touch of Ruby, a couple days of PHP, and an odd smattering of x86 assembly.

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pc86 4822 days ago
I've been doing PHP since I started programming in middle school but have been gradually shifting to .Net (VB at my employer). Never had any interest in Ruby for whatever reason.

Best of luck in your search.

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