Hello Reader,

If you are in your 30s or 40s or 50s, is it really too late to make changes in your career? The short answer is "No". How do I know- coz I changed my career in mid 30s from dead end legacy job to AWS, doubled my salary, and more importantly, I have helped others in their 30s, 40s, and even 50s do the same. In this edition, I will share all the tips, and tricks so you can do the same.

If you are stuck in your career, your situation probably looks like below:

• You are at a job which you are good at and get paid for it. Example - QA, Sys Admin, Support, Mainframe etc.
• But you don't love it. What you love (AWS, ML/AI) has very little overlap with what you do.
• The world has a high demand for what you love

Keep in mind - this is NOT YOUR FAULT. 10/15/20 years back, when you started your career, there was no way for us to know that Cloud, DevOps, and AI would become big. In most cases, we were just assigned our area, like I was assigned to Mainframe, because I didn't have a computer science degree. None of it is your doing, you just ended up in this situation (which we will change!).

Now, let's get to the sensitive topic of age. When it comes to age, there are two kinds of age - your biological age, that you can't control. Second - your workplace age, which you can control. When it comes to workplace age, people don't really think of your biological age, but think of a collection of negative traits:

• Resistant to change - The old saying “can’t teach an old dog new tricks”. Some people might believe that at a certain age one is unwilling or unable to adapt and learn new things.
• Just coasting
• Lacking passion - They aren’t going to be as dedicated or motivated to learn new technologies or put time and effort into their field.

NONE of these qualities are related to age. I have seen young people getting fired for demonstrating the above qualities.

On the other hand, irrespective of your biological age, if you start displaying the positive qualities below, people don't perceive you as an old employee.

• Open to learning
• Delivers projects and helps others
• Excited about new innovations

To be fair, 30s 40s or 50s are not that old. You have 30, 20, and 10 more years to work, respectively! Workplace age is NOT a number, but rather a mindset. If you start displaying the above qualities, you will be thriving at your workplace. Now, let's go back to the diagram and discuss some strategies to switch.

The goal is this:

Notice, the left circle is not "What you ARE good at", instead "What you CAN BE good at". This is where I see a lot of my students falter. I also made this mistake, let me explain. When I was trying to switch from the mainframe, I searched for the highest-paid IT jobs. Data scientist came up, and I started learning that. Soon, I realized it was too hard and too distant from my current role. I can't re-use any of my existing knowledge. Then, I picked up AWS and reused my database and API knowledge. I was already a team lead and was designing projects in Mainframe. I re-used the design concepts, became a Solutions Architect at Verizon, and eventually made it to the mothership aka AWS itself.

In summary:

• Age has two factors - biological and workplace age.
• Most times, workplace age is conceived old based on negative traits and not your biological age
• Start demonstrating positive traits shown above, and people will NOT consider you as workplace old
• When making a career change, pick an area where you can re-use some of your existing skills

Many of my students, including some in late forties and early fifties, used the above techniques and successfully switched careers to AWS. I want YOU to be the next one! Let's go 🙌🚀

If you have found this newsletter helpful, and want to support me 🙏:

Checkout my bestselling courses on AWS, System Design, Kubernetes, DevOps, and more: Max discounted links​

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Keep learning and keep rocking 🚀,

Raj