HN Books @HNBooksMonth

On top of what have been said, there are two important advantages over young people that old devs should have. The first advantage is that compared to young people your advantage is your long experience in Computer Science. For instance: you should have a better understanding of your stack, you have mastered a lot of the basics of CS with several paradigms in different programming languages, databases SQL/NoSQL, etc... You may have a little bit of knowledge around the edge of your stack and outside...

For the second advantage it depends where you want to do. If you want to stay a dev and only code then the best thing to do is to master your stack and learn complex things. By doing that you differentiate yourself and increase the barrier of entry. So for instance to learn C++, AWS, Machine Learning, Hadoop ecosystem, webgl... Depending your field and what can be the next big hard thing with it.

Else, the other way is to go up in the hierarchy to be a team leader and maybe to go higher. At first you have been (or should) start to learn how to manage people. You should know how to lead your team when things are doing well but also when things are at the worst. Sometimes you have deadlines that are hard to meet. Sometimes the stress is at the maximum, financially the company is not doing well, or goals and ideas diverge... It's all the experience you need to get to be able to manage these situations and start to be a great leader.

Also you -may- start to learn to master git to be a team leader, to be able to fix the problems, and manage the repo for the code reviews. Another point should be to increase your communication skill, every day by talking with your team, by enjoying to write well written emails and speeches. These books [1] are a good start. And also a last point that I think is important is to start to get financial skills with things like financial management, accounting, and if possible to be able to do simple DCFs...

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-4th-William-Strunk/dp/0...

http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-30th-Anniversary-Nonficti...

http://www.amazon.com/Pitch-Anything-Innovative-Presenting-P...

How about contributing to Open Source by helping write the documentation for projects? Properly documented projects go a long way in helping developers get recognition and notice.

I, myself, have begun more thoroughly documenting projects, not only for my sake but for everyone else that comes along. I find that this book helped me get up to speed quickly: http://www.amazon.com/The-Elements-Style-4th-Edition/dp/0205...

Enlightenment is 11 bucks away. :)

http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-Fourth-William-Strunk/dp/0205313426/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-0126140-9313474?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1182549113&sr=8-1