Career shift to Elixir in my 40s

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Hi everyone,

I’ve been following Elixir since around 2016 and tinkering with it on and off, but I haven’t had the opportunity to use it professionally yet. I’m in my 40s and seriously considering a career shift to Elixir. My background includes 10 years as a software developer (primarily in .NET/C#/SQL Server), followed by 5 years as a systems architect and 5 years as a cloud architect working with AWS.

I’m currently based in the U.S., which I hope improves my chances of finding opportunities in the Elixir ecosystem. I’m self-learning Elixir and Phoenix, and I’ve started a solo side project to build a small SaaS product as a way to gain practical experience and prove to myself that I can be productive with Elixir. Even if it doesn’t succeed commercially, I see it as a learning investment.

For those of you who have transitioned into Elixir later in your career — how did you approach it? Are there companies out there open to hiring experienced professionals who are new to Elixir? Should I be looking for entry-level roles despite my senior experience in other stacks? I’m not sure how to position myself or navigate the transition, and I’d really appreciate any advice or insight from the community.

Thanks in advance!

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Myself I switched to Elixir in my (then) 40’s 6+ calendar years ago (more like 10 work hours-wise ;). Had the luck to root for it on a project where I was one of the stakeholders. At first my choice was “solely” based on the impression watching a Sasa Juric’s YouTube video on Erlang/Beam VM architecture (the “How the hell did I miss this?” kind of impression).Then I laid my hands on the code in Elixir and within a week or two I knew there was no going back to the old ways (OO and stuff). Ever since it’s been a bliss. Never regretted one tiny bit.

Job/gig-wise, I’ve had no issues finding positions. The general sw dev experience counts a lot If you are persistent enough to keep on looking until you find a company that is on par with you, a company with people competent enough to appreciate your skillset and experience. With a bit of luck, you should be fine.
I suggest to avoiding the “recency bias” trap with so many getting scared by the post-covid lockdowns decline in sw job postings. In my view the anomaly was the crazy peak when suddenly “everyone” thought we’d never get out of our rooms again that created the unsustainable level of demand for sw devs.

And yes, finishing your first project in Elixir is definitely the way to go IMO.

My 2c

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Similarly, got my first Elixir job in October 2000 at the age of 49 from a job posting here. It was for LiveView, which I’d done a side project in, and this was for a Senior Elixir Developer at a startup. I think it’s completely doable and I encourage OP. You can learn more Elixir on the job, but senior skills are a mindset.

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October 2020, right?

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October 2020

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I was a long-time admirer of Elixir (via Erlang) but took me a long time to work professionally in it.

I had around 30yrs experience all told, working mostly on server-side systems (C++, Java, later some C#) but also in the embedded space, including working at MSFT, first in MSR and then as a Principal Engineer on the now-dead-but-was-very-fun Hololens project.

I first looked at Erlang around the late 90s / early 2000s, I could see the potential but it was difficult to land any work in it, in any of my roles. It was either too risky to introduce or just outside the set of ‘acceptable’ technologies.

After returning to Australia from the US, I did a stint at an HFT shop (lots more server-side C++) and by sort of accident ended up working for a security research company and at some point they needed some software to help them evaluate their research on mobile devices, basically server-side control-plane stuff. The mgmt team gave me free reign and I decided to build it on Elixir.

It’s worked out pretty well, we’re planning to spin off the product into its own company, I have 4 reports now for that product, 3 of which are mostly doing Elixir full-time, 2 of which I onboarded onto the language, the other had prior Elixir experience. They are all ‘seasoned’ developers, at least in the age bracket you are, on average a bit older than that even (I’ll spare their - and my - blushes).

They all seem to enjoy working in Elixir :winking_face_with_tongue:. A few legitimate gripes about type-checking and the tooling is still a little short of what the more popular languages have, but I’d say for most of us, the facilities and stability of the ecosystem - and our experience of what it’s actually like building alternatives in other languages - we’re pretty happy with the trade-offs.

Not sure if any of this is of any help, but there are bunch of us oldies out here, having success with this platform and I’m sure you will too.

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Hi, I’m 49 and have been transitioning into Elixir/Phoenix gradually over the past couple of years. Been a challenge to multitask with my current C++/TypeScript gig that pays the bills but I am very optimistic about the future of the Elixir ecosystem and companies and community built around it. I think it’s a powerful technology that has yet to be acknowledged and with innovation we can help be part of the growth of Elixir/Phoenix into prime platforms that will outshine the current Go/Node/Java stacks at least in some application classes. Sorry for the ramble, but bottom line is Go for it! And, there are enough jobs out there, especially if you’re located in the US (which I’m not).

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This could be a valuable boost if you learn how to deploy Elixir apps to AWS. A lot of folks come to Elixir from the other side of the app-dev/dev-ops continuum and so don’t have much insight into infrastructure stuff.

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Well, shame you are not hiring, would be a really nice timing.

Also, really interesting story, by the way. Enjoyed it.

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Thanks everyone for being so open and sharing your stories — I really appreciate it. I hope this thread encourages young and us “oldies” to make the move!

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I was 36 when I discovered Elixir. I know a guy who was in his 50s.

Never too late to find the right thing for you.

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I was 56. It is keeping my brain plastic and paying the bills.

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52 when I switched. I went it to the deep-end. Now 56, full-time Elixir. Learned most by reading existing code and articles from hex. Now I think in terms of processes, not objects. Never too late to switch.

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I was 39 when I went all-in on Elixir, but I was not a professional programmer before that. Elixir clicked instantly. Three years later, my only regret is the time I wasted on Python before discovering Elixir in the summer of 2022.

See also: 2023 is my "Year of Elixir" • OVERBRING Labs

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Was in my late 30’s when I got to start using it professionally, but like another commenter, it’s for a project I’m a “shareholder” for, so… grain of salt.

100%! It’s painful to go back to our legacy Ruby codebase now.

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51, been doing elixir where I can since 2018. My only regret was not jumping in sooner. Now my last significant web codebase is being ported from nodejs, and I couldn’t be happier.

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Hey, age is just a number! :upside_down_face: But having said that, the switch from OOP to functional programming was jarring for me and it took several tries to finally feel comfortable. What I love about functional programming is that everything is in front of you (ie: the code in the function, and the functions you are calling, not in a bunch of related dependencies and side effects). I was really discouraged when I first tried functional programming because I wanted to like it so bad (because of the simplicity) but my fingers kept falling into old object.method patterns when I was typing code. What frankly kept me going was one sentence in a book or a course (can’t remember which) from Dave Thomas where he said that Elixir didn’t really click for him the first time he tried it. I have much respect for Dave’s views on programming, and I first learned Ruby on Rails from him from a course he and Mike Clark were giving in Portland. So I figured that if Dave needs another try, I will give my self some grace and try again… and I’m very glad I did!

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I was a hobbyist for a while, I was in my early 40s when I got the opportunity to choose Elixir for a project — I demonstrated some of its capabilities to my manager and he was impressed enough with it, so I got to choose it for a new product for some existing customers. It ended up being a great choice.

Since then I’ve done contract work with Elixir, and worked with a startup that used Elixir entirely. I’ve changed jobs since and I am not working with Elixir at all now — unfortunately Elixir roles are very thin on the ground here.

I have a lot of experience with Python, and I’m currently working with node. Where I have a choice, and it’s appropriate (often the case imho) Elixir is still my default choice. Love it.

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