Ask HN: starting a career in software dev in my thirties, am I nuts?

I am technically minded, I did my first degree in Elec. Eng, which I finished in 2000, and was exposed to some programming.

I spent 5 unfulfilling years in tech support at a big global company, then went travelling for a few years, then came back and did a software degree in 8 months at the age of 30 (due to the fact that I already had exposure, they allowed me to skip some credits). I came out with a high 2nd class honours from this, which I felt was pretty good considering the amount I had to learn.

Since I graduated in 2008, I opted not to jump into the first job that came my way, and instead started studying Ruby on Rails, jQuery, and more recently BDD with Rspec and Cucumber, as well as working on some projects and building wordpress sites in between for a little extra cash. The idea was that this time around I would get work that interested me instead of going through the motions.

Recently I've been looking for employment, and haven't been successful, although feel as though I have come close once or twice.

Still, I'm starting to get a sinking feeling. I don't have enough experience to get started, and I can't get started without experience. It's starting to get me down a bit. I'm 33 now, and I need to start my career already.

I would love to know what insight you guys have for me in this situation.

cheers

Paul

However, the truth is 30 is not young for an entry level developer. Most 30 year-olds are accustom to a higher income than a 22 year-old CS grad, and this might make some employers adverse.

Keep pounding the pavement. With your engineering background you should be able to find a good job. It might take some time in this job market, but keep at it, and try to pickup some freelance to pad your resume.

Horsepuckey. Can you FizzBuzz? If so, you're experienced enough to get a job as a developer. What you need to work on is not your programming ability -- that is what professional experience is for -- but your competence at marketing yourself.

You will probably not be hired to fill a hole labeled "I need a developer who does RoR, jQuery, Rspec, and Cucumber." First, most of the people who need exactly that skillset don't have the budget to hire anybody. (No offense to present company who may use exactly that skillset.) Second, most developers start with semi-relevant experience and gradually learn more about the stack their current job (or project at the job) involves. I was a Big Freaking Java Web Apps dev for 3 years and I started not knowing SQL, Spring, etc etc. That was fine -- it just meant my first several months involved doing an awful lot of iterating over hashmaps (java.util.* is my second home) when not reading code and tutorials.

Now, in terms of marketing yourself:

1) Make stuff you can show off. This distinguishes you from the 90 out of 100 candidates who are incapable of making stuff. Making stuff is the core developer competency. (Actually, it might be #2 after communication skills.)

2) Polish your communication skills. See #1.

3) Start networking. "Send a resume and pray" is jobseeking for people who enjoy unemployment. Know the decisionmaker beforehand. There are a variety of ways you can get started on this today -- for example, start writing a blog about the kinds of problems you have solved or will eventually solve for the kinds of people who will hire you. This gives you something to talk about. Alternatively, talk about what other people are writing in the same field. This has a long payoff timescale but the rewards can be fantastic.

Also, don't neglect traditional networking: business cards, meeting people face-to-face in your local community, etc etc.

My advice would be to get a related job in a shop that uses a similar set of technologies and has programmers on staff. Keep working on your skill set, and get some mentoring from an experienced programmer.

Another avenue I would recommend is to work on a high-quality open source project to get some experience under your belt.

> Make stuff you can show off.

if you have a good portfolio and can convince someone to look at it, they will care much less about your experience, grades, etc..