Ask HN: Has anyone successfully started their career over in their 30s?

I did mechanical engineering undergrad, then started and almost finished mechanical engineering grad school but dropped out and got a job. Then I started studying programming at night, then co-founded a startup with some friends, and quit my mech eng job. After the startup flamed out, I went to another startup. Throughout the whole time of startups, I continued studying programming and especially started dialing in on computer graphics. Now I'm a graphics dev at Unity. This whole switch from mech eng to graphics was all in my 30s, and has taken about 9 years, I'll turn 40 in 2024. It's not easy, and there are a lot of challenges. For example I'm basically a junior graphics programmer as I enter my 40s--which sucks. But when I think about it, there's basically nothing else I'd rather be doing, so that's cool.

The general thing I've learned is: there are no short paths, only long paths. Figure out what you want and start the long path to get there, because there aren't short cuts. How to figure out what you want? Well that's a long path too.

ABET accreditation isn't really very important in Computer Science, tons of good schools forego it or offer a separate Software Engineering degree that has ABET accreditation.

CS isn't like Electrical Engineering where a university is either ABET accredited or a diploma mill. ABET imposes a lot of controversial requirements on CS programs that many top programs don't agree with. It's a young field and the curriculum hasn't been set in stone to the same extent it has in the rest of the engineering school.

That being said, the school itself being properly accredited is still important, and obviously going to a highly regarded CS program is an advantage (although it doesn't need to be ABET, for instance last I checked Stanford CS is not ABET accredited), although it's not the end of the world if you can't.

Edit: I just noticed you said ABET accredited university and realized I may have misinterpreted what you meant. I would agree that the university having an ABET accreditation in it's Engineering programs in general is important, i.e. it's a bad sign if the school you are going to for CS has a non ABET accredited E.E. program (although those are few and far between due to it being essentially mandatory and much less controversial in more traditional engineering programs).

I was a process engineer for Intel until 28, got burned out, taught myself a bunch of backend dev & architecture skills and went and worked for Accenture (who will underpay you to learn on the job as long as you have competencies) I got to expertise in many domains by about 35 years old.

> What would this actually look like to you on a resume?

That's a great question, and I wish I had a great answer. I think this is the sort of thing where a cover letter could be useful. Personally, when I'm reviewing resumes, I usually get a bit of background context from our recruiting department to go along with it.

When evaluating candidates, I'm generally looking for things that often don't line up with a line item on a resume but can sometimes be inferred from the collection of items - I'm looking for curiosity, a drive for improvement, a willingness to take risks, etc. So if I saw someone whose resume indicated a directionless period but then also had items that showed a change in trajectory (education, relevant volunteering, relevant projects, etc), it would cause me to take notice.

I hire for a small company, but we have high standards, so a lot of hiring involves finding high-performing folks who might be overlooked by FAANGs. Someone who doesn't have obviously great job experience but who does have signs that they've taken initiative and followed through to become an excellent engineer is exactly the sort of person that I work with our recruiting team to find.

I am in the process of doing so.

I can really relate to your naievate that by working hard your efforts would be rewarded. It's really disheartening how sociopathic and downright evil the people in charge can be. I think when you rise up through the ranks you lose your ability to be empathetic to the people your decisions affect. Otherwise how can you be a strong leader if you aren't afraid to ruin a few lives right? /s (just in case)

So rather than giving specific advice, I'm going to give you a few pieces of my situation. Feel free to browse my comment history to see the depths of a crippling burnout and career failure mid-30s.

I did about 10yrs of development before I got to a really sweet job in NYC. I got to experience the full startup ride from fun spunky group to getting acquired and strip mined for assets and personel.

I let the job become too much of my identity and I struggled to move on because of this.

I moved to a different state (USA) with less population density and more nature. I think this helped a lot. I'm also much more isolated which has caused its own problems.

I got into therapy. It took two different therapists, the first one when I told her I think I might be on the spectrum she told me "well I don't do that" and we wasted another 2 months before I missed a few appointments and things fell apart professionally. The SECOND therapist I found is absolutely amazing and the work we've done over the past 8 months is more significant than I've achieved alone in the past 10 years.

I worked a few menial jobs. I was at a pizza kitchen for a while, and I also worked at a kayak store. I felt like I was worthless, I couldn't get a technical job or any that I could get I couldn't tolerate. I cannot recommend this but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do to pay the bills.

I worked a few contract jobs after my last big fulltime job. I have had a really bad stretch of gigs working for uninspiring and technically incompetent people. At some point the blame rests with me for not vetting these people, or at the very least politely delcining the work because it wouldn't be a professional work arrangement. You absolutely cannot talk reason into people who haven't reasoned themselves into the situation they are in.

I got a stable job with the state I live in. It pays a lot less than I'm used to but it affords me time to try to sharpen my technical spear and crawl back into the market I used to inhabit.

People will consider hiring you, but not the you right now. You might need to take time off from the job hunt and do something else. You might need to take work in a different field to get some perspective. You gotta find a job that rewards your natural behavior instead of exploiting you like your startup experience. The jobs are out there but 9/10 are smoke and mirrors bullshit liars trying to exploit you. It's a numbers game finding a reasonable employer and you just gotta be diligent in applying more and also really honest with yourself about whether THE COMPANY is up to YOUR standards not the other way around.

A big part of that last thing is self respect. You have to actually have it, you can't fake it. Cultivating the value you feel in yourself is hard and at times painful work but its the only way.

Good luck. "Where to begin" is one step after the other, dont give up. Find something that fucks you back even if you have to do it yourself with blood sweat and tears.