Working for a good salary but with very old programming languages

skimread

skimread

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Ok I am earning a decent salary and have 10+ years experience in IT but want to leave as the old technology, old processes, everything being undocumented, no source control is killing me. I don't have chance to rewrite as other developers quit so I and my workload has increased having to develop on top of the previous developers awful code. Management does not quantify technical debt at all to my frustration.

How do I join a company working with the latest tech? I want to give recruitment agents a pass.
 
Web programming. classic asp and badly written asp.net+C#,VB framework 2 code.

I do read up on latest stuff and would do a pretty decent job doing a green fields project by myself so I am even considering working remotely I just need to move out or let my soul totally die.
I also don't mind interacting ie. doing analyst/architect role.

Anyway I feel my life is like that movie paycheck. You get the money but lose a year of your life.
 
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Time to learn something new in a hurry, maybe C# and some M$ SQL.. when confident in new skills, b<ll***** your way into another job if they tell you k@k about your experience :D

Dude, i was stuck in real legacy languages e.g Clipper, dBase and so on... you have not seen sphagetti and meatballs like them apples
 
The_Librarian said:
Good luck.

Don't delay - start it right now.
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Start the unemployment line? Only joking. My work benefit is currently only money so the more I save the more opportunity I have for a better life however a part of my soul does die.

PS. what job do you do? You seem to have a lot of free time. I feel my intelligence dropping not being able to geek out with writing Android apps,IoS, MVC razor etc.
 
If you have a mature attitude towards your work, then there are many opportunites out there and do not be put off by lack of experience with newer flavours.
Look at going for PHP jobs as you already have an aspx background. There is now a sudden demand for older guys in the PHP scene. Also do not write off employment agencies as many IT companies only use them but from experience first check out their sites of prospective companies to see if they are advertising the job as agencies can now demand 20% of annual salary fee from employers!
 
InterGalacticSpook said:
Time to learn something new in a hurry, maybe C# and some M$ SQL.. when confident in new skills, b<ll***** your way into another job if they tell you k@k about your experience :D

Dude, i was stuck in real legacy languages e.g Clipper, dBase and so on... you have not seen sphagetti and meatballs like them apples
Click to expand...
I know C# and Ms SQL well. I am itching to use MVC ,EF Code first,HTML5 WF etc. I also want to jump onto Android and iOs just for the fun of it but my brain gets fried with repetitive boring work.
 
cbrunsdonza said:
If you have a mature attitude towards your work, then there are many opportunites out there and do not be put off by lack of experience with newer flavours.
Look at going for PHP jobs as you already have an aspx background. There is now a sudden demand for older guys in the PHP scene. Also do not write off employment agencies as many IT companies only use them but from experience first check out their sites of prospective companies to see if they are advertising the job as agencies can now demand 20% of annual salary fee from employers!
Click to expand...
Problem with recruitment agencies is their cut so my actual TCC will be much higher thus I might be undersold making me having to worry about bills or otherwise misisng a good opportunity because I am overpriced when you include the agents cut.
 
skimread said:
Problem with recruitment agencies is their cut so my actual TCC will be much higher thus I might be undersold making me having to worry about bills or otherwise misisng a good opportunity because I am overpriced when you include the agents cut.
Click to expand...

Well some companies only work through agencies. I just started a new job this month and got through an agency. One company that offered me a job only works through agencies as the cost to their own HR department is far greater if they did it themselves, and this was for a large luxury retailer, and they offered me 20% more than job I accepted.

Why employers use agencies is because agencies do all the background checks and better ones give a money back guaranteed deal.
 
cbrunsdonza said:
Well some companies only work through agencies. I just started a new job this month and got through an agency. One company that offered me a job only works through agencies as the cost to their own HR department is far greater if they did it themselves, and this was for a large luxury retailer, and they offered me 20% more than job I accepted.

Why employers use agencies is because agencies do all the background checks and better ones give a money back guaranteed deal.
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My current and previous employer all give referral fees to employees if we place someone as agents nowadays don't have such a good name out there. My previous agent for seeing me once for 5 minutes after posting a job on this forum got a percentage of my monthly salary for 6 months when i was on contract and when I became permanent a percentage again of my 1st years salary. Surely experience people can do better than relying on a complete stranger we meet for 5 minutes to get our foot into whatever client they have.
 
Sorry, my 10c worth with recruitment agents. They have not been a wonderful experience to me, blatantly lied about my skills, re-worked my CV to the extent where I didn't even recognize it, call me for an interview, then gloss over with me for 5 minutes, and never hear from them again. Get fed rubbish like "we will keep your CV on file" Yeah, right. Never ever got a call back from them...
Not like I am an idiot, 10 Years experience in Linux (RH, RHEL, CentOS) , Java, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, Postgres, MS SQL, Windows, Mac OS X.

Basically if its been on a computer, I have played with it or worked on it :-)

Was retrenched last year in may, despite all the experience, couldn't find a job for 3 months, then grudgingly accepted a position. At least my current boss realizes I don't want to be stuck doing the same job and has helped me to get moving into other departments into the company, but they are really, really stuck in the dark ages with development. I actually shudder to think how they are still in business...
 
skimread, I cant believe it but I am in exactly the same position as you... classic asp etc

Also been made numerous promises which seems to be hot air atm.

The problem is, who is going to hire me with my old skills?

I write all my own apps in new languages though so pick up stuff very quickly but how do you prove this to prospective employers?
 
skimread said:
PS. what job do you do? You seem to have a lot of free time. I feel my intelligence dropping not being able to geek out with writing Android apps,IoS, MVC razor etc.
Click to expand...

Bwahahaha. That was before I got busy.

There are times when things are fairly quiet, and then there are times when I'm so busy that I don't have time for myBB.


Sysadmin.

Trust me, you don't want to go there :p
 
iceman23 said:
The problem is, who is going to hire me with my old skills?

?
Click to expand...

That is the problem. If you sit too long with stuff like vb6/asp then it's going to be almost impossible to move later. I actually resigned after 1 month at a company because they asked for .net dev. Saw the code, it was aspx extension, but that was it. Classic asp would have been better fit. I was peeved. Salary was awesome.. but thought .. what happens if I leave in next 6 months? Going to find difficult to get a .net job because the first thing they ask (in interview) is what you did at your last job.

I would say... get out asap.
 
Where are you based? I'm sure our company could use someone like you. We're in Fourways, JHB.
 
Was that aimed at me?

If so, Durban but open to moves to JHB or Cape town.
 
The_Librarian said:
Bwahahaha. That was before I got busy.

There are times when things are fairly quiet, and then there are times when I'm so busy that I don't have time for myBB.


Sysadmin.

Trust me, you don't want to go there :p
Click to expand...


Why busy sysadmins are bad sysadmins

http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2011/07/lazy-sysadmin/


but yeah, recovering after a power outage due to 2 generators failing... been there. And im talking about central IT for about 8 Companies :(
 
Ancalagon said:
Where are you based? I'm sure our company could use someone like you. We're in Fourways, JHB.
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I am in Centurion.

I don't thing I am going to work in Joburg again. Idea is to work smarter maybe remotely instead.
 
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