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Ask HN: Has anyone successfully started their career over in their 30s?
41–50 of 234 posts
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone successfully started their career over in their 30s?
#42Not quite the same situation and probably not reproducible, but maybe I can give you a glimmer of hope:
Throughout the 2000s I was in a unrewarding PHP-coding job with a company that was going nowhere and I (extremely foolishly) stuck around out of loyalty to my team, only to be laid off around the beginning of the 2008 crash. I was 33 and felt tied down, stuck in a smallish city with no real tech industry and a bunch of debt.
(I need to interject here that I'm something of a long-time Apple stan, so this might seem unrelatable if you're not).
I was able to find a job with a much better company locally, but it wasn't the most engaging work, and my boss managed my team more like a McDonald's shift than a tech company.
I had done a bit of Mac programming on a hobby project in the late 2000s, and some of that turned out to be applicable to iPhone programming, so I picked some of that up on the side, both some very basic apps and a couple of contract gigs doing iPhone development that in retrospect I wasn't remotely qualified for.
The company I was working for had a product that was a natural fit for the iPhone and moreso the iPad, so I was able to get them to send me to WWDC in 2010, which as a long-time Apple stan was a bit of a dream come true for me.
Later in 2010 I was contacted out of the blue by a company looking to hire a full-time iOS developer to take over for the contractor that had built the iPhone part of their product. I worked there for a few years through an acquisition (that paid off a lot of my debt) and then switched jobs a couple of times.
Anyway, I'm now nearing 50, earning 3–4 times what I was when I got laid off, working remotely from a place I still really like, and (mostly) really enjoy the tech stack that I get to work with.
Again, with the iPhone being the most successful product in history, this may or may not be replicable.
I don't know that I have any super clear takeaways, but:
1. Don't lose hope, because while that may be productive for specific initiatives, it's almost never productive for life in general.
2. If you have the free time/energy, I would recommend playing around with a few different kinds of tech that you genuinely enjoy, either as a user or as a developer (For example I was also playing around with a Mac app project, a Ruby/rails project, and a micromobility project that ended up not leading to paying work).
3. If you feel like you're starting from a place of very little specific knowledge of anything, you might consider looking more at new technologies where everyone else is also starting from very little specific knowledge.
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone successfully started their career over in their 30s?
#43The specifics of anyone's path will not be repeatable. Nevertheless I'll share specifics and a general conclusion at the end. 10 years ago in my late 30's I had destroyed my previous career by being out of the industry for too long. I was living off less than $20k a year and lived in the poor area of a poor city. I was lost and then heard the following challenge, "YC is harder to get into than Harvard". I had no real coding skills at the time and the chance of getting accepted were near zero.
I created a youtube video because YC's application asked "what have you hacked lately" and I had no answer. Because that video's audience was expected to be one or two people and I didn't care about the number of views, the DIY-video was authentic. I put a lot of time into it out of respect for YC as an institution. No one would put that much effort in to their first video since it is usually a throwaway. But so many people surprisingly watched it that the hack idea transitioned to an actual product and then company. That alone has netted me $1M+ in addition to Youtube paying me for views (about 1million views).
At the same time I released the youtube video, I taught a class at a local tech space just for the joy of it. I was totally incompetent but believed that someone in the process of learning a skill can teach effectively from the perspective of "here's what I found confusing". A manager from a local tech company walked into the tech space one day and asked around if anyone knew with experience in the framework/library I was teaching. They mentioned me assuming I must be an expert. 10years later I still contract for that company and netted again $1M+.
So three takeaways:
1) I had a north star so to speak. I never got into YC but just trying for it lead to a purpose and direction.
2) If the gig jobs are keeping you above water then just work on something that you enjoy and that is hopefully useful, and do it without any expectations.
3) Remember your network. The only reason I shared a link to my Youtube video was so that it wouldn't have 0 views when YC looked at it. But it turns out one of those people in my network cross-posted it to reddit and it changed my life. I now live in the rich area of a rich city.
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone successfully started their career over in their 30s?
#44It's likely you learned a lot about what not to do. Good leaders will find it attractive that you have experience with mistakes and failure, both your own and others', just like they'll put cushions under their employees when they mess up because they've just payed for them being likely to not do the same mistake again.
Might take a while to end up talking to one but they're out there. Confidence and motivation are likely the bigger problems but it's highly dependent on where you live and how what would be the appropriate way forward in those areas.
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone successfully started their career over in their 30s?
#45To be honest, your biggest limitation is going to be your mindset, not your age. The fact that you can't see a path forward for yourself and using phrases like "execs who had no interest in leveling me up" (hint: it's your job to do that) and "I was a moron", does not bode well for your chances. You're going to have a hard time getting hired if this is the attitude you project, and you're going to have a hard time im…
I don't necessarily disagree with you, but coming in with the mindset is not always natural. We don't know where the poster grew up, their education, their background, etc. It's not the worst assumption to believe that a company is going to be invested in developing you because some will and do. Sadly, the poster was not part of one of those companies.
So instead of beating them down, we should point them to a better way of thinking in a more constructive manner.
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone successfully started their career over in their 30s?
#46Yep -- I graduated grad school at 34 and got a series of amazing jobs with incredible people over the last 8 years. I was a complete pile of poop until 25, and slowly crawled out of my bad habits from 25-30, caught some ambition at 30, managed to turn it into an advanced degree by 34. Hell, I dropped out of high school and, 5 years later, still managed to fail my first year of undergrad. In hindsight, it was a natura…
Lived the same "pile of poop" lifestyle 20-23, slowly crawling out of it with many of the same techniques you mention. I'm glad to see things have looked up for you.
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone successfully started their career over in their 30s?
#47Manifest your own destiny. What are you going to do if people in this thread say no its not possible? What are you going to do if they say it is possible? Either way you have to do the work.
No network is odd since you have been working for the past 10 years. Do you not have a linkedin or still communicate with any of those people? It's your best bet. Or if you want an easy route to employment find a technical recruiter. It's still a very good job market for tech workers.
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone successfully started their career over in their 30s?
#48To be honest, your biggest limitation is going to be your mindset, not your age. The fact that you can't see a path forward for yourself and using phrases like "execs who had no interest in leveling me up" (hint: it's your job to do that) and "I was a moron", does not bode well for your chances. You're going to have a hard time getting hired if this is the attitude you project, and you're going to have a hard time im…
I don't necessarily disagree with you, but coming in with the mindset is not always natural. We don't know where the poster grew up, their education, their background, etc. It's not the worst assumption to believe that a company is going to be invested in developing you because some will and do. Sadly, the poster was not part of one of those companies. So instead of beating them down, we should point them to a better…
I guess I came across harsh maybe, but I really am trying to constructively help OP.
Rather than enabling that way of thinking and reassuring them, I think they need a wake-up call.
You're right, though. I don't know their circumstances and am projecting my own experience here.
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone successfully started their career over in their 30s?
#49I just went through something similar. As a result of my (then) undiagnosed ADHD, I failed out of college three times, couldn't hold down a decent job. Early on, I stumbled into a good gig as a game programmer and did that off and on for a few years. Because I didn't know then that I'm autistic, I got myself into some situations and ended up self-sabotaging my career and wrecked my entire life. Ruined my relationship with my boyfriend, along with most of my friends and I lost everything. I moved to a new city and started over.
I managed to figure my shit out (and get medicated) and found a decent menial corporate job. Over the next 2-3 years I sent out hundreds of applications for boring enterprise programming because programming is the only thing I've been moderately successful at.
Worked my way up to assistant manager at the corporate job and immediately, deeply regretted it. Job applications increased in desperation, but no interest from anyone that seemed legitimate.
There's no moral about perserverence here, I got stupid lucky. A startup found my resume on Indeed and emailed me out of the blue. I had just recently updated my resume to include every skill I was even passingly familiar with, and they picked up on my experience with electronics.
Now I am more or less a R&D engineer. I develop hardware and firmware for current and new products, innovate new types of hardware and generally get to dick around and explore whatever field I like.
This kind of role has been the secret hope in my heart of hearts since I was a kid. Something I'd always assumed was unattainable and never let myself think about too much.
Needless to say, I never expected to get here, but I couldn't be happier.
I don't really have any advice. I got here through sheer luck and the ability to seem like I know much more than I do. I massively impressed during my interview and my varied skills turned out to be precisely what the company needed at the time.
I padded my resume with every skill I thought I could confidently bullshit my way through. Total hail Mary, but it worked. Dunno if I'd recommend this strategy, but I was desperate
ETA: I got the new job just before my 30th birthday. Most of the disaster was in my late 20's. I still feel like I wasted all of my 20's and I don't know if I'll ever be okay with that. Just have to move on
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone successfully started their career over in their 30s?
#50You can do it, it all starts with what you want to do. Depending on that there is absolutely a path to get there. All you are limited by is your will and your effort. Assuming you are able bodied and of average intelligence.