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Ask HN: Is 36 too old to (re)start a career in tech?

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Re: Ask HN: Is 36 too old to (re)start a career in tech?

#41

Post by fatfingerd »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #37

People don't want to hear this but: it depends how smart you are. A smart 36 yo with a reasonably quantitative background (training or career) can become a competent software engineer quite quickly. Most people cannot.

Yeah, though I've seen a lot of raw talent in people who just can't stick it out. I think this is more correlated fields and perhaps a mix of tolerance for fields with similar frustrations mixed with coping strategies for dealing with failure based on technicality.

At any rate I think a lot of people fail out of programming and into another tech career, so it's not really a bad idea for a 30 something from any field.

Re: Ask HN: Is 36 too old to (re)start a career in tech?

#42

Post by grvdrm »

I’m 41. Rebooted into a tangential career in tech startup land after spending my entire career in insurance.

I feel great about my decision. I’m learning lots of new things. I’m exploring new skills, tactics, strategies. I’ll be 2 years in (next June) and be able to tell a great story about why I did this and all the great outcomes. And that’s despite all the headaches and stress that come taking the risk. Also, all that knowledge and work experience is definitely worth a ton.

Go for it. I remind myself daily of my little blurb and it’s a really quite a powerful motivator. Happy to help separate from HN too if you need it!

Re: Ask HN: Is 36 too old to (re)start a career in tech?

#43

Post by hellotheretoday »

Jigjig wrote: post #33
hellotheretoday wrote: post #23

I sure hope not. I did my degree in CS in 05 then burnt out, got a masters degree in counselling psychology, and have been doing outpatient since then. Recently I’ve been getting a bit bored there so I brushed up on python and picked up some freelance work on the side It was pretty tough to get my foot in the door. I had nothing on my resume since 2007. But the abbreviated version is that I put together a portfolio a…

Out of curiosity, what kinds of businesses were you submitting your portfolio to, and what kind of work were you finding freelance from that? Asking as someone looking at this route but not sure where to start.

The slightly less abbreviated version is that I did a bit on upwork and eventually freelancer.com. I found postings there were far more forgiving than trying on indeed or similar sites which basically just shut me out 100% of the time. It took a bit of time and taking some menial tasks but I was able to build up a profile and and some solid references especially from 2 bigger contracts that were quite involved

Initial jobs were fairly simple automation tasks and from there moved towards my niche which is data analytics/data science. I was given the advice to try to pick a niche and stick to it rather than just do whatever and jump all over the place so I tried to stick to that. It was helpful I think; in the initial stages when I didn’t stick to that I ended up researching and learning a bunch of stuff that wasn’t really relevant to my end goals. Hth

Re: Ask HN: Is 36 too old to (re)start a career in tech?

#44

Post by rsynnott »

I'd generally recommend not paying too much attention to what Paul Graham or Sam Altman say, just on general principles.

However, as you mention him:

> In 1996, Graham and Robert Morris founded Viaweb and recruited Trevor Blackwell shortly after

At this point, he was 32.

Don't worry about it. The main reason that most startup founders are young is that older people are more likely to have responsibilities which make trying something new difficult for practical purposes.

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