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

I learned to code (properly) at around 29, got a Software Engineering degree at 32. I'm 36 now, and I run a solo consulting business. It's a business in the sense that I serve some really large customers (up to Fortune 500), hire people per project, have a sales pipeline and other structures built, but it's just me.

If I've learned one lesson throughout these years, it's that the skills that truly buy your freedom are persuasion and sales. Your technical skill or the product you sell are somewhat relevant (there needs to be good demand/supply dynamics, etc.) but secondary.

I am a technologist at heart and have thousands upon thousands of hours of learning ahead of me but if I had to pick one skill essential for my survival, it would be sales.

Selling is human, universal, and potentially lucrative. There's a lot of potential for turning into a fucking weasel, but one can simply avoid that by not being a fucking weasel.

You saw terrible sales-type executives, it doesn't need to be like that. You can choose to pick a humanist stance towards it; at its heart it's about learning about people's deepest problems and finding solutions for them. You can find good people, good teams and good products or services to sell, even if they're modest to begin with, and build from there. Yes it's hard to find those conditions, but nothing is easy in life - a lot of technology, for example, is an absolute tire-fire.

If none of this jibes with you, maybe project management could also work. Reframe all your experience as "project management", find a domain that you find palatable and is somewhat accessible. Get a PMP certification. Congrats, you're now officially a project manager. It sounds bad because of how easy it can be to intrude the profession (and I'm being particularly facetious about it), and some PMs get a terrible rep because they truly are terrible, but precisely this is a possible aspect of differentiation for you: you will take your job seriously and display the utmost professionalism. You will be the total opposite of a terrible project manager. Your earning potential will not be as high as in sales, but in some domains, six figure salaries are feasible, and you could build a long term career with a progression for the thirty plus working years you have ahead of you.

These are just a couple ideas... Maybe others in the thread are better suited for you. The only thing I'm absolutely certain of is of your ability to turn things around. You're much younger and capable of a quick turnaround at your age (and later, but start now!) than you seem to realize.

I've had a similar experience. I was really excited to tutor at my bootcamp after graduating, but after enough people no-showed for tutoring, or turned up with blank homework assignments and making no effort to look things up, I just stopped. It was a waste of my time - I wasn't doing it for the pay, I was doing it for the experience and the connections.

I'd love to go back with the confidence to be more selective about who I take on, but I'm not sure if there's a structure for that. And it's okay if someone is really struggling to understand code, but I'm not interested in working with someone who is struggling to understand effort. That's something they should develop before starting to learn programming.

Jumped a string of IT work which lands me as Data engineer after 35 with no relevant work experience.

But I was lucky to enjoy the previous IT gold rush since 2015. I probably won't be able to do it now.

Luck is the determining factor in my case so wish you good luck. A lot of people are going to share the same zero to developer after 30 but you need to read carefully.

As an old saying, an elevator takes 3 people up to the top floor. People ask how they managed to move to top, one says he was doing pushups in the elevator, another says he was jumping and the third says he was reading some books.

> No motivation

You typed all this, so clearly you show some motivation.

Strange suggestion. Have never heard of "mentors for hire".