What tips can be given to someone who wants to change careers to the tech industry in this stage of life?
Ask HN: Can you switch to a programming career despite nearing 40?
1–10 of 102 posts
Re: Ask HN: Can you switch to a programming career despite nearing 40?
#2You can, but it would require a lot of hard work at very low pay. My recommendation is to try to use your existing skillset for a tech company, and then try to transition internally. The right company may even provide free/before-tax tech education.
Some points to consider:
1. Your age is a big disadvantage. Ageism is pervasive in tech, especially for entry-level coders. Someone your age who had started at 22 would likely have been in a management role for ~10 years already.
2. It's very, very hard to get a comprehensive understanding of the work that most programmers do: web and/or aging enterprise applications.
Web is an enormous hairball with many layers of history, competing standards, frameworks, philosophies, and target environments.
I've been building web software for ~24 years, since I was literally a child. I started doing it professionally ~18 years ago. When I meet someone from a bootcamp, their understanding is probably 1% of what mine is, which is totally reasonable.
That said, I still regularly bump into aspects of programming and web technology that are completely foreign to me and would definitely be useful for me to understand. For example, I have essentially no experience with the HTML element, which is a huge gap!
3. Programming is not something that most people enjoy as a career, even if they absolutely love it as a hobby. It can be tolerable to continually bang your head against the wall trying to figure something out if you care about the outcome. It is much, much less tolerable if the outcome is fixing some mostly-broken, legacy garbage for a client in a boring industry.
Keep in mind that this type of work (maintenance/drudgery) is often the most accessible and secure type of employment for starting programmers. It's definitely possible to get a job at a startup, but at your age, the austerity and gambling involved in startup life is potentially not acceptable.
Re: Ask HN: Can you switch to a programming career despite nearing 40?
#3I'd like to encourage you but the reality is that as you get older your programming employment opportunities diminish. I would stay away from programming unless you plan to work as a consultant that's willing to find your own contracts and are able to plan and succeed that way.
Good project managers are always in demand at any age. You might want to look at that but the stress factor in that position is high. You have to deliver projects on time but you often get little power to demand it so you have to have the right personality to get your team to deliver. Good luck!
Re: Ask HN: Can you switch to a programming career despite nearing 40?
#4On a more positive note there are ways to get this done if you are really interested.
Learn a specific in demand skill set that will last a long time ex: Salesforce programing for SFCC is highly in demand and under supplied, if you pass the certifications you are going to get your start for sure no matter the age.
Find industry specific respected qualifications and get one to get started, once you are in the ecosystem you will be fine. If you want to go work at x startup that may be harder but you can get started in the enterprise space if you want.
Once you are out of the silicon valley bubble you will be just fine in the other major cities or in places that need it but are not attractive to the younger folks.
If its your dream go for it and avoid the problems by getting respected certs to get you started.
Re: Ask HN: Can you switch to a programming career despite nearing 40?
#5You have plenty of time, almost 40 is not even close to retirement age, if You retire at 65 thats over 25 years still (Amazon isn't even 25 years old, Facebook and Youtube are even younger.)"*edit Amzn is 26*"
Almost every post secondary institution is currently offering online degrees thanks to the Rona, so IMHO there has never been a better time to go back to school for mature students.
Learn the material, get certified, develop a portfolio and sieze the opportunity.
If you have your heart set on working in a FAANG type company and are worried about ageism, research the methods women and minorities use when submitting an application or resume to get an interview. I am certain the same techniques can combat ageism too.
Re: Ask HN: Can you switch to a programming career despite nearing 40?
#6You can although the specifics depend a lot on what you're swtiching from. A mechnical engineer, an accountant, a history teacher and a blue-collar worker will need to approach this in very different ways.
Re: Ask HN: Can you switch to a programming career despite nearing 40?
#7I have a lawyer friend who learned to program from scratch, starting older than 40.
He works for a large automaker now writing javascript web apps and is way happier than when he was lawyering. It took him less than 2-3 years to switch.
Re: Ask HN: Can you switch to a programming career despite nearing 40?
#8You can although the specifics depend a lot on what you're swtiching from. A mechnical engineer, an accountant, a history teacher and a blue-collar worker will need to approach this in very different ways.
I'd recommend finding something that combines programming and whatever your prior career has been, so you can bridge the gap.
I moved from teaching to coding by first working on open source teaching software in my spare time, then using it as part of my teaching work, then getting a junior coding job at a university. I was a better teacher because of the software I was making, and I was a more attractive junior hire due to my domain knowledge.
Code at home --> Use project at old job --> Use domain knowledge plus project to land first coding job --> Coding career :)
Re: Ask HN: Can you switch to a programming career despite nearing 40?
#9Of course you can! I decided to learn to code when I was 37yo. Now I am 41 and I earn a lot more as a junior developer than I ever did in any other job.
I wrote a lot about my path and I think it can help both in the why and the how: https://rodrigohgpontes.github.io/
Good luck!
Re: Ask HN: Can you switch to a programming career despite nearing 40?
#10Depending on your interests, embedded systems programming might be an opportunity worth pursuing.
In my experience, it's much more a stable "stack" than most other areas, and there are plenty of programmers who continue to work (and get well paid) as they get older.
Investing some time with a Raspberry Pi and a couple of micro-controllers at home will get you started on the skillset, maybe some Open Source contributions as a way into the community?