New careers through reinvention

When I was 49 I was pretty burned out from multiple business start-ups, relocations and health problems.  My son was having a difficult time in high school and my mother was in failing health.  I took 3 years off to handle family issues and reinvent myself.  At 52 I had a new skill set to layer on top of the old one.

There were bumps coming out as a rooky programmer at that age.  I had to get experience and I made mistakes.  The up side was that the new skills got me in the door where the skills I’d built up over the years could shine through as a bonus for anyone working with me.

The most difficult thing I thing I had to do was to learn how to present the “bonus” skills I’d build over the years to younger managers without alienating them.  For the first two projects I was assigned I was old enough to be a parent of my supervisor.  Neither case work out well.

They had difficulty dealing with someone my age.  I talked too much about my experiences.  I think they saw that as trying to be one up on them.  In a way that was exactly right.  My bosses were younger than me and I was less experienced then they were in the skill area of the business; programming.  Though I’m pretty open to learning from anyone a steady diet of that sort of thing got to my ego/

I continued to work as a programmer, but I decided I would have to be more subtle in my approach.  It was a pretty straight forward strategy.  I listened more and talked less.  Even then I only spoke about things that I felt strongly about.  I tried not to talk about how things were done in my day, but sometimes examples are important/

As boomers many of us deal with a combination of family and work problems.  I was lucky to have the flexibility to reinvent my career while dealing with my son and mother.  All three things can be very stressful.  Throw your current job on top of that pile and things are out of hand.  I emphasize/

Obviously I can make many points out of these experiences, but I’ll go for one.  If you re-tool your job skills have a clear strategy as to how you intend to apply them.  You need to understand the market where you expect to work, so that if you hit a few bumps, as I did, you can make adjustments to achieve your goals.

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