Ask HN: Chances for Restarting a Career in CS @ 30+ ? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Chances for Restarting a Career in CS @ 30+ ?

#61

Post by fillskills » Tue, Jul 08, 2014, 5:24 PM UTC

The best software engineers I know have come from non software backgrounds. Some were musicians, some were MBAs and I even know a sculptor who is a good friend and a Data Scientist now. So I guess in my experience, starting in CS late has been good for them. The most common nature I see among them is that they take their CS career very seriously compared to others.

Because of such friends/collegues I have been doing some research checking out which CS field is in the most demand. So for someone else who switches careers late, it might be easier. My site is not live yet, but here is the research from jobs in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles markets:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/b7f4sigbrzhnleu/FillSkill%20Market...

Hope it helps

Re: Ask HN: Chances for Restarting a Career in CS @ 30+ ?

#62

Post by clubhi » Wed, Jul 09, 2014, 3:54 AM UTC

marktangotango wrote: post #35

uptownJimmy wrote: post #24

I went to tech school at age 41, after owning/managing in the restaurant business my entire adult life. I worked full time and studied full time and helped raise my little 2-year-old boy. I got my degree this spring. Now I'm 44 and working my first job as a .NET developer, and I've never been happier. I have encountered no resistance to my age, quite the contrary: I've never felt more welcomed and encouraged than I d…

I got my BS in CS (US) from mid tier state school at the age of 38. I think getting a degree later in life is an advantage, people see my graduation date on my resume and assume I'm younger than I am. Some people say I look younger as well. I'm a team lead now, and if anything, I see younger devs as a liability. IMO you gain a certain level of pragmatism and persistance from working on large (crappy) code bases for a…

Maybe you actually should move to language X.

Re: Ask HN: Chances for Restarting a Career in CS @ 30+ ?

#63

Post by d33d33 » Fri, Jul 11, 2014, 12:38 PM UTC

Hey guys, i'm totally surprised and happy about your awesome replies! I read all of your comments and with each post, my motivation raised to jump over my own shadow.

Thanks to your influence, i applied for a cs-study starting in october. I guess within the study i'll have better chances to get job offers in germany (thx @ ThePhysicist).

I really like the strategy, that tinco advised - i'm leaving to a bigger city next month, enhance my coding skills and try to put sth. on github. Managed to get some used versions of "Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach" by Kurose, and "Operating System Concepts" by Silberschatz (+ some math books) :) And i appreciate the troels' objection not to study cs just because of being weak in math. lultimouomo, CalRobert, fillskills, qgi and more motivated me to go for cs, even though i have my background in arts.