Quote Originally Posted by AAraya View Post
Keith - you've been one of the most helpful contributors on here to me over the years. Thank you so much! Your leaving will be a big loss to this forum but I understand why you have to step away.

I'm in a very similar place... been focusing almost exclusively on VB6 for the last 20+ years. Writing my own software and selling it on the Internet as shareware/trialware. It was a great run but now with the way the industry is moving and the way the economy is moving, the income isn't enough to support me any more. I'm looking for a job also.

I'm curious how you found a job as a senior software engineer when you acknowledge not knowing any of those new languages/technologies. Every job I'm looking at wants years of on the job experience with all of those. No one seems too impressed with my years of VB6 experience and running my own semi-successful software business. I'm feeling very much like a dinosaur. I'm doing my best to get up to speed with the new higher level languages but self-study is not the same as on the job experience.
This is exactly why after 30 years in the MS Tech Stack, I got out of it. I took a hard right turn and exit, stage left. Fortunately I found a company willing to take a chance on me, that even though I didn't have any Java and very minimal web experience, I did have experience overall that could transfer, and that I was willing to learn new stuff, and that I was hungry for it. It did mean going from a "Sr Dev" to a "Jr Dev" and a 10% pay cut from where I was coming from at the time... but you know what? the first is just a label, and the second can be made up (which after almost 3 years I've done). I'm done climbing the ladder, I don't want to be a manager, I don't want to be a lead or anything like that, I'm a coder. I've known this for some time. The only kind of leading that I want to do or have any ambition to do is being a mentor, helping someone else learn something. And the team I'm on... I get to do all that... learn myself, while helping others learn something, while getting to do something fun and meaningful and in the process helping the lives of others (I work on a project that helps process claims for veterans for the VA).

how you found a job as a senior software engineer when you acknowledge not knowing any of those new languages/technologies.
The short answer - by not standing still. True self-study isn't the same as job experience. But experience is experience. Join github and find a project to become involved in. Start your own. I picked up Node.js then took my resume and converted it into an interactive Node.js version ... that allowed me to then tell interviewers "Hey, I wasn't happy with what I was/wasn't learning on my job, so I took the initiative (they love that) to learn Node, and converted my online resume using it. You can see it at xyz.com" ... That shows not only am I not just reading something, I'm applying it to something practical, but also taking initiative, I'm not sitting there waiting for someone to tell me to learn something. I saw what I wanted to know, I went out and learned it on my own. There are somethings that can be taught, languages, skills, things like that... then there are things that can't be taught... And when someone has the right combination of those things, it doesn't matter what they already know, you can fill them them with what ever knowledge they need ...

So my advice would be to figure out what your target job would be... what is it you're after. Determine what is it you need to get that job, then start working towards is... as I mention, if you can, get involved in open source projects using the languages/technologies that you're targeting. Want to know about C#? Find a c# project. React/Redux? Find one... get involved... read about it... learn more about it, ask questions, make contributions, etc. Keep track of those contributions too... then during an interview you can say "I know I don't have much on job experience with such and such, but I have been working with project X for the last 6 months, and in that time, I've made a number of contributoins, including this, that, and the other."

-tg