41–50 of 102 posts
It usually takes around 5 years to become an employable programmer at 40 hours a week.
Most of the 20 somethings “starting from scratch”, either programmed at a young age or are so bad at it they can only contribute by working long hours.
Most 40 years aren’t going to spend 5 years in the darkness learning until they can make money.
Another older coding camp grad, who happened to be an immigrant woman, was a natural engineer who learned our complex systems very rapidly, contributed a lot quickly, and soon moved on to higher paying opportunities.
You will hear lots of encouraging words here and hopefully they will be true for you. But beware of wasting years on this project if you find that after giving it a solid try, it still doesn't suit. It just isn't for everone.
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I strongly disagree software engineering is not an advisable career for 40 year old. I fail to see how the situation is any different for a 40 year old than for younger junior devs who either get education or self-educate and start coding. I think the most important thing is to accept you can never stop learning. Agree playing around is a good idea :)
"Was Hänschen nicht lernt, lernt Hans nimmermehr." Aka the things you learn at that young age are nearly impossible to learn when you're not young anymore.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I strongly disagree software engineering is not an advisable career for 40 year old. I fail to see how the situation is any different for a 40 year old than for younger junior devs who either get education or self-educate and start coding. I think the most important thing is to accept you can never stop learning. Agree playing around is a good idea :)
"Was Hänschen nicht lernt, lernt Hans nimmermehr." Aka the things you learn at that young age are nearly impossible to learn when you're not young anymore.
There are some things you can learn only as a child. Those differences become apparent only with feral children who fail to adapt to society at later age.
Programming languages and frameworks are created as tools for humans. You are never too old to learn to use tools for pragmatic use cases.
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Older devs even with many years experience have it harder. That’s my own experience.
Yeah I mean I plan to be consulting or a CTO or something by that age. Unless you are crazy specialist I think you need to branch out into strategy or have enough reputation and connetions to earn silly money freelancing.
I worked at a start up where the president had hired her BFF the graphic designer to be an Oracle DBA. That didn’t work out and when I read the notebook she left behind it was clear why - every day she would sit down and try to understand how relations between tables worked and by the bottom of the page it was all doodles of flowers and unicorns. Next day, repeat. Very nice lady, great graphic designer, but running a database just wasn’t her thing.
You 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 l…
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. Ageism is pervasive in some corners of tech. I'm nearly 50, and in my R&D group, there are few developers under the age of 35. Few of the older developers are managers, either. I think you are conflating age with ex…
Of course there are exceptions, but they're rare. Your personal experience has no bearing on industry-wide data[1].
> I think you are conflating age with experience. If the OP has enough skills for an entry level position, then I would not expect him to have anywhere near the same level of expertise as someone in the industry for nearly 20 years.
You're putting words in my mouth. I said nothing about age and experience being the same thing. I'm saying that OP wants an entry-level job at middle age, and that's more difficult for many reasons (ageism being one of them).
> If the OP wants to get into web development, then they should work to progress their skill set over time
People are hired (or not hired) for many reasons, and only one of them is their skill set. I'm sure OP can acquire the necessary skills, but it can be painful and life-consuming, which a lot of people can't tolerate as well at 40 as they can at 22. A lot of people over 35 have mortgages, spouses, children, elderly parents, health conditions, and a variety of other responsibilities that are less common in younger people. Taking a grueling, low-paying job is not necessary feasible in those circumstances.
1. https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-tech/celebrati...
So in terms of practical tips, I would say to look at the ways your previous experience may bring something extra to the table. Things like management experience, communication skills, mentorship/teaching experience, sales experience, etc. are often transferrable across domains.
Would be useful if you could list what you've been doing for the previous 24 years.