| I'm in a similar situation to yours. Although I did start programming at around 13 (BASIC and Z80 assembly on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum), I moved into product management and marketing (in the technology industry) around a decade ago. I've always been a programmer though. I have CS degrees both undergrad and at grad school and even as a marketer I would write code at home to explore technology and as means of recreation -- just not for work. I recently quit my job to run my own business, and I returned to programming for a living once again.
Some observations on the differences between the 22 year old me in grad school and the 41 year old me as a programmer: In terms of raw stamina to power though writing code, 22 year old me won hands down. I recall taking about 45-90 days to churn out a 35KLOC piece of Java code, One sprint during those 90 days was a 48-hour non-stop effort. I still have that code, and although it still works (with some changes) it's not the best code I've written. 41 year old me can barely manage 10 hours a day of coding before being too tired to continue. But I'm an order of magnitude more effective in getting the job done. And several orders of magnitude better at estimating how long a programming task will take. This happens because I've developed an intuition over the years for avoiding design and coding paths that are 'risky' -- no threads in my code, for example. To address your point of perception of others that you are moving downwards, there certainly seems to be a perception of it. Early in my business endeavors, I'd pitch my services directly as a contract programmer, and I found that folks would be very reluctant to hire me - especially as the resume had several years of marketing and product management on it. I also suspect they may have inferred that I was expensive. Not true. But that was the perception. I changed tactics a little later. I would pitch similar services as a firm (with me as founder), and sales process went swimmingly! Now the resume, with a decade of experience in management at large tech companies and the MBA, would open the door to the CEO/SVP level. In addition, many of my early referrals came from folks in my network who knew me as a 22-year old and were in CEO/VP positions themselves, and were glad to refer me to their colleagues. So, my advice to you, would be to not handicap yourself by competing on the same playing field as your younger competitors. Simply competing on pure programming prowess, even if you're good, would take away your strengths. Just change the game. Use the management experience you have to your advantage. |