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

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 85 posts

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

#21

Post by julsonl »

kyro wrote: post #19
patio11 wrote: post #5

I don't have enough experience to get started, and I can't get started without experience. 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…

Can you FizzBuzz? If so, you're experienced enough to get a job as a developer. I am always so surprised when I hear that, and have a difficult time believing that's true. With only an extremely beginner's level understanding of Python, I can solve FizzBuzz. Can I get a dev job?

Probably not in a hot new startup, but there might be some obscure company somewhere that would need some code monkeys...

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

#24

Post by mkr-hn »

If you're a success before 30, you probably haven't failed enough to make the success meaningful.

I'm well on my way to having a nice portfolio of failures before I hit 30, and it's looking like I'll find success at Humans live too long to worry about rushing it.

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

#25

Post by whyme »

The people who are nuts are the one's that don't have any other aspirations than a paycheck. You sir, are not.

As I see it you have a few options:

1. Create something meaningful, on your own, and publish it. Having some applications even when they do not generate revenue, can act as your experience. It will certainly help in marketing yourself.

2. Consider starting in another role in a software company, like Quality Assurance, then try to moving into a developer role for the company.

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

#26

Post by jwecker »

Ignore the age. In 10 more years you'll be 10 years older no matter what. You could be a world-class programmer and product designer at that point. Or you could be wishing you had started 10 years earlier. I seriously doubt you'll have starved to death by then unless you make some destructive life choices... I could come up with plenty of examples of people who didn't start their life's work until 33 (and much older)- but it's irrelevant- a distraction at best.

Having said that, I think we have an innate tendency to... acclimatize as we get older. We start to expect that things should come easier. You'll need to counter that if you continue this path. Expect it to be very hard- on the learning side and the self-marketing side and the delivering value to your employer or own business...- and deal with that reality instead of assuming that the difficulty is somehow related to your age or self confidence or how long it took before you got whatever degree etc. etc. Step up.

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

#27

Post by _b8r0 »

No, you're not nuts at all. Fellow 30-something here, you should run with it, if it's what you want to do. Like with start ups, persistence is key.

As other people have said, put some stuff up to showcase what you're capable of. If you work on a side project that you can demonstrate to people and possibly get some revenue (or at least public recognition) from it'll help improve your personal brand, which in turn will make it easier for you to get hired, providing the jobs are around in your area.

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

#28

Post by SHOwnsYou »

patio11 wrote: post #20
kyro wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you FizzBuzz? If so, you're experienced enough to get a job as a developer. I am always so surprised when I hear that, and have a difficult time believing that's true. With only an extremely beginner's level understanding of Python, I can solve FizzBuzz. Can I get a dev job?

This would put you ahead of literally half of software engineers at or below my level of seniority at least one Japanese megacorp. While I have very little experience with working in the United States, anecdotally, many programmers can't program there, either.

I've always wondered -- is the reason people can't do fizzbuzz because a lack of understanding of modulus or because they can't comprehend the problem?

I know modulus isn't necessary, but I can see someone not doing the problem if the solution they are turning in is in a less elegant way.

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

#29

Post by patio11 »

SHOwnsYou wrote: post #28
patio11 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would put you ahead of literally half of software engineers at or below my level of seniority at least one Japanese megacorp. While I have very little experience with working in the United States, anecdotally, many programmers can't program there, either.

I've always wondered -- is the reason people can't do fizzbuzz because a lack of understanding of modulus or because they can't comprehend the problem? I know modulus isn't necessary, but I can see someone not doing the problem if the solution they are turning in is in a less elegant way.

FizzBuzz comes from a game for six to eight year olds, who also don't understand modulus. That's part of the reason it is such a great problem: they fact that you realize "Hey, this is a whole lot easier with modulus" demonstrates that you can reason abstractly. You certainly don't need a mod operator to make it work -- if you're capable of writing a function, you can write divides_evenly_by_3(int number) using facts that every fourth grader knows.

If you prefer, you can substitute a similar problem which doesn't require even fourth grade math. Here's one: write a program which calculates the sum of all numbers between 1 and 1,000 whose digits sum up to 7. Or write a program which takes this post as input and tells me what the 3rd most common letter used was.

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

#30

Post by eccp »

I had a workmate on a J2EE team who had a Physics degree but couldn't work find anything on his field here in Chile. He moved into computer programming around his mid/late 30s and now he works in the largest bank, but he's always hacking small proyects.

I'm 34, and have a job with Java technologies that pays the bills, but I can't help to hack small projects after hours. I often feel that I need to escape that 'sinking' feeling, so I'm trying to build my own small business right now.

If you review other posts here on HN, you will notice a pattern of people which feel on a crisis around our age. It's common. But it's not the end of the world. You are not old, and you've proven to have the will to keep going forward, so just keep trying. Best wishes!

Post reply on HN