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Ask HN: How do I start over at 37?

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Ask HN: How do I start over at 37?

#1

Post by needadvicebadly »

Quick background: Grew up in an immigrant household with very little in the way of resources, guidance, encouragement. Was enamored by Silicon Valley and tech from a young age, but foolishly followed the family tradition of medicine despite hating it as I felt I had no choice. Went to medical school, dropped out, worked a few odd end gigs for the next couple years, stumbled into a PM role that I was let go from due to performance.

I am now 37 without an impressive educational or professional background, no network of colleagues, no mastery in any one skill, and a whole lot of mental health debt. And yet the child inside of me still wants to pursue the scrappy Silicon Valley tech dream.

Am I deluded? Where do I even begin?

Re: Ask HN: How do I start over at 37?

#2

Post by mgl »

Hi mate,

Life is long and we can restart our journey at any time, so no worries.

The best advice I could give is to start meeting people and (always!) learn new things.

Action on you: go to meetup.com, find three interesting events in your area, go there with no expectations, just listen and meet new people.

You are smart. You will work it out.

Re: Ask HN: How do I start over at 37?

#4

Post by needadvicebadly »

mgl wrote: post #2

Hi mate, Life is long and we can restart our journey at any time, so no worries. The best advice I could give is to start meeting people and (always!) learn new things. Action on you: go to meetup.com, find three interesting events in your area, go there with no expectations, just listen and meet new people. You are smart. You will work it out.

How do I realistically compete with those who are younger, more nimble, with impressive educational & professional backgrounds? The startup world seems to be far more of a status game nowadays than when I fell in love with it 15 years ago. What does someone with 0 social capital to open doors do, especially at this age?

Re: Ask HN: How do I start over at 37?

#5

Post by catlover76 »

Well, for starters, I would ask:

Did you like being a PM?

What job did you perform in medicine?

TBH, I can't help with the mental health stuff, but my route has also been circuitous, so maybe I can offer practical advice.

I was a software engineer, went to law school (I am an idiot), was in law for a bit, now looking for engineering jobs again.

Re: Ask HN: How do I start over at 37?

#6

Post by james-revisoai »

needadvicebadly wrote: post #4
mgl wrote: post #2

Hi mate, Life is long and we can restart our journey at any time, so no worries. The best advice I could give is to start meeting people and (always!) learn new things. Action on you: go to meetup.com, find three interesting events in your area, go there with no expectations, just listen and meet new people. You are smart. You will work it out.

How do I realistically compete with those who are younger, more nimble, with impressive educational & professional backgrounds? The startup world seems to be far more of a status game nowadays than when I fell in love with it 15 years ago. What does someone with 0 social capital to open doors do, especially at this age?

Show genuine interest in a project, be better at meeting deadlines (by overestimating) than others, show social skills most in tech are weaker at.

There are many edges you can have compared to most tech folk. Why not try using ChatGPT to begin some python and html coding and make some things you can get excited about when showing people?

You don't need social capital for a more entry type role, so don't overthink this

Re: Ask HN: How do I start over at 37?

#7

Post by undefineduser »

I'm in the same boat. My one piece of unqualified advice would be to build something from start to finish and avoid the "tutorial hell".

It can be anything; preferable a small-scale project to avoid the possibility of getting lost in the daunting scale of something supposedly "impressive" but overly complicated at this stage of your learning journey.

One finished project of 200 lines of code is more impressive than 10 unfinished "apps" that grew to big in concept and scope (at least in my opinion).

Re: Ask HN: How do I start over at 37?

#8

Post by Cypher »

I'm lost too although in 40s and stuck in dead end job that has basically meant I've stagnated for 15 years while all my peers have 2-3x me. I'm left behind and fear it's too late with the current economic climate.

Re: Ask HN: How do I start over at 37?

#9

Post by hnthrowaway0315 »

I'd say treat the mental health first. What tech do you like?

I started my career from 36 and I'm working as a data engineer right now. I didn't have a CS background either and before I launched my IT career I worked as a customer service for a telecom. And before that I worked as a cleaner for some sushi shop during the afternoon and a phone surveyer during the night.

But I was lucky to catch up the post 2015 IT frenzy gravy train. Right now they are throwing people out of the train so I'm not sure what's the opportunity out there.

Re: Ask HN: How do I start over at 37?

#10

Post by wizzerking »

I am a 68 year old child of a navy family. Mostly far east, all over the USA, and some Europe.My advice from my life is combine your uniqueness into a single unit. Take your background and create an opensource project that can be done quickly 2 - 3 months max and after that is done use that to promote yourself if you want to be a developer/software engineer. If you are into DevOps or DevSecOps do challenges. Pursue what interests you. When Tensorflow and Pytorch were open sourced I started learning by reading Abstracts and posting those articles that interested me and provided code, to encourage more authors to provide code. Now there is paperswithCode, Neurohive and other such sites, but I still learn, and lots of public GitHub and GitLab repo's

Take what is unique about you, what interests you and

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