[Coco] Re: Thoughts about going back to school full time.

[John Donaldson]

   Here's my 2 cents. Back in June of 2004, I was working as a Sr. 
Software Engineer,
 when the company I was working for got into bad money strates. As 
result they shut down
 the entire department I was working in. This was in WV. In WV you 
either worked for a
 hand full of big companies, which paid great or you worked for everyone 
else at 50-60%
. So you see the  problem here, they will not hire you because they feel 
you will not be
 happy taking a 50% cut in pay. So we sold our house and moved to 
Dallas, TX. We lived
 with my sister until I could find a new job. That took 14 months, since 
I am over 55. I just
 happen to get interviewed  with a company that was looking for a Sr. 
Software Engineer.
 After I was hired, my boss told me the reason he hired me was I knew 
more about
 software than  most of the younger people he had interviewed. So guess 
I got a break.
 Being over 50 and even worse over 55, many corporations will not hire 
you. Yes it's
 discrimination,  but try and prove it.
    I used to be a Electronic Research Tech back in the 60/70's. I fell 
in love with
computers and took courses at the local Jr. College. Back then it was 
all punch cards,
Fortran, and Mainframes. One course I took was in Pascal. Then one day I 
saw a ad
for a Pascal programmer. I appled and got the job and became a Software 
Engineer.
The rest is history as they say. Softwre is one of the last bastons 
where if you got into
it early days, you did not need a degree, as there was NO College 
Degree's in
programming.