Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Can you switch to a programming career despite nearing 40?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 102 posts

Re: Ask HN: Can you switch to a programming career despite nearing 40?

#51

Post by fsloth »

antihero wrote: post #34
klingon78 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm 41. I am doing just fine as a software engineer. I'm making a fairly ok rate for a MSc in my market (North-Europe).

I don't known what it means "older devs have it harder". I am a valued contributor, and if something bad would happen I have a pocket full of leads where to find next gig.

You have to maintain your career - nobody is going to do that for you. So yes, you have to figure out how to become a valued contributor.

Make sure your CV communicates you are "smart and gets things done" and you are set, more or less.

Perhaps software engineering is a bit more fragile than other more professional fields as there are lot of young uneducated employees who can be abused and exploited by unscrupulous employers. But generally you learn to identify those, and with a good CV of years of successful projects, you can find agreeable employment in most market situations.

Re: Ask HN: Can you switch to a programming career despite nearing 40?

#52

Post by satysin »

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #38

Outside of cult-like SV, you'll be fine. There are tons of companies that need programmers to solve problems. If you have a base understanding already in a field, work towards programming things in that field. Having deep knowledge of a field can help you. You didn't give much info about your background. If you can use an existing job to start doing programming, do it. If you are an office worker and use Excel for ne…

> Outside of cult-like SV, you'll be fine.

This. I know several people who switched from some non-tech career to development in their late 30s/early 40s. All of them are still working as developers now around a decade later and all very happy they made the switch rather than writing themselves off as "too old".

Will it be harder than when you were 20? Well yeah. Just like any career change after around 25 or so is harder than fresh out of university. Doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't do it though. Not much in life worth doing is easy imho.

Decide what you're interested in, look at what you need to learn, learn it and build up a portfolio of your work. Perhaps get involved in some open source projects if there are any that catch your eye, or start your own open source project.

Once you have built up some confidence and a demonstration of your work apply for some positions. I highly advise you brush up on your soft skills as well as your tech skills if you are not used to "selling yourself".

Re: Ask HN: Can you switch to a programming career despite nearing 40?

#53

Post by soneca »

klingon78 wrote: post #46
antihero wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Many plan to be a CTO, VP, or making silly money somehow, but that doesn’t often happen. I know few old developers, but those I know aren’t making silly money- they’re either in slow very small businesses or working for some mid-sized to large company.

I am already earning money that I would expect to earn only close to my retirement in my other careers, if successful. So I am very happy with my choice financially-wise. And I still enjoy a lot coding everyday. Also I am lucky to never have felt (or at least noticed) the effects of ageism on my career. On the contrary, employers have explicitly told me that my long professional experience and maturity was an asset that was considered in my hiring (they paired me with a 21-year-old who was a senior by technical merits, but still needed to improve in other aspects of fulfilling a senior dev role).

Re: Ask HN: Can you switch to a programming career despite nearing 40?

#55

Post by iwangulenko »

Tech recruiter here.

Choose to work in a domain you are familiar with.

If you have been an accountant, try to find an accountant software vendor who will hire you.

It won't be easy though. Ageism is my pet peeve. I think it is one of the biggest, yet forgotten-about discriminations in tech. Here a shameless plug of a video how much it annoys me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V6XMvtNKS8

Re: Ask HN: Can you switch to a programming career despite nearing 40?

#56

Post by bmj »

smt88 wrote: post #48
bmj wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. 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 e…

Your Market Place reference is about "the biggest tech companies." There is work outside of FAANG, and, in my experience, a fair bit of it. As you point out, the work isn't "sexy," but, truth be told, many of us don't do "sexy work" day in and day out.

You are also assuming that every entry level software development position is grueling and low paying. I understand that some companies treat younger employees are disposable (even my own employer, who hires younger/less experienced devs as operations support, which assumes lots of crappy work), but I don't think that's the case in every entry level position.

Re: Ask HN: Can you switch to a programming career despite nearing 40?

#57

Post by tuukkah »

fsloth wrote: post #45
dalu wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

That does not really reflect the modern understanding of how people age and learn. 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.

Can you give a concrete example of something that can only be learned as a child?

Also, feral children may not be a relevant example as they have not undergone the full childhood development and in that sense they have a development disability as opposed to just having missed some typical learning. They cannot learn some typical human things and the rest of us cannot learn some typical unhuman things.

Re: Ask HN: Can you switch to a programming career despite nearing 40?

#58

Post by iainctduncan »

Absolutely. You just need to be strategic about what kind of work you want to do and with whom you want to work, and then build your skill set accordingly. I would strongly suggest you look for older mentors. I work as a technical due diligence assessor, and I see so many unglamorous and unknown tech companies in weird niches that you'd never think of, but making buckets of money. Many of whom have mature staff. Software is far, far more diverse than tech media and general media would lead you to believe, and there are lots of fields where people with other life experience and the stability of someone in their 40s is highly desirable. Lots of companies really don't want to be constantly worrying about losing their devs, which is far more of a problem if they are young and easily lured to other cities.

Re: Ask HN: Can you switch to a programming career despite nearing 40?

#60

Post by inter_netuser »

klingon78 wrote: post #46
antihero wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Many plan to be a CTO, VP, or making silly money somehow, but that doesn’t often happen. I know few old developers, but those I know aren’t making silly money- they’re either in slow very small businesses or working for some mid-sized to large company.

what kind of "slow very small businesses"? 1-man consulting shops, or something more?
Post reply on HN