Is it too late?
I am 42 years old and majority of my experience is in ERP side as a developer / admin. Currently working as Project Manager. More than my project management skills I love technical stuff. I have decent programming skills along with rdbms knowledge. Haven’t used any of the complex algorithms or data structures ever. Pretty much it was all about read a table, run some basic loops and display data on report. You know it how it works in ERP. I am a pmp as well. Assuming I spend another 9-12 months to study algorithms and data structure and perform decent at leetcode. Is that a bad idea of shifting to product development / programming now since I am already 42. Just wondering how much of a hard time I will have to get into one of the faangs since I don’t have a 20 years of hardcore programming experience where I have developed any big distributed scalable web based application. I am passionate to join Faang and salary is another motivation but don’t know if I am being practical in trying this at 42.
You don't need that much time to study, I passed Google with like 3/4 months and was already burnt out by that time.
What is the worst could happen to you if you try? Spend some times improving yourself
What’s your tc?
123k + 10k bonus. Location Texas
Agreed — give Leetcode and CTCI a try. 42 is pretty young, still got 15+ years ahead of you in the industry. You never know, you might be a “natural” at it. I’m not, and it’s rare, but some people are just naturally good at LC.
But why? You could probably apply to Google Program Manager positions and take out decent money. I'm someone like you as well but in 20s. Consider leveraging your past experience instead of being a clean sheet.
Makes sense. May be kind of a technical program manager role I guess where I can do technical stuff as well. What’s the average compensation for that role and how much of development is involved in that? Sorry for asking such a novice question, I have no idea about how things work at these faangs. One of the reason of shifting to software development is passion for coding and money. I am tired of being poor after so many years of experience.
Haha. Stop reading Blind. My prognosis is that the Coding is like MS Word skill of 2000s. Would continue for another decade. For the comp, I believe it would be 180k at Google for your YOE. Development for most part depends on the setup but if you're a manager most part, it won't be. If you want more probably you choose startups like Tesla. Rivan just started building their in house ERP probably it might be right time for you. Obviously all there development would be adhoc however you would be able to translate and play with teams once you're inside. Amazon might be another place if you would like. Coming back to the fundamental, you know why we all choose ERP right? A single SAP implementation would be ten year TC of those FAANGs. Why not start building an ERP implementation shop?
42 is young unless you’re sick now. Go for it!
No it's not too late but you have to really want to do it. I switched recently from upper management in small companies to ic role in one of fang type companies. It is hard to get used to ic lifestyle again. For me coding is fun so I will go through the pain of adjustment.
What is ic?
Individual contributor.
It's never too late.. go for it ...give a try..