Instead of being 59 you will be 49? I don't think it will help. Instead, put a spin on it and sell yourself as experienced in technical matters.

EDIT: I misread your comment, and realized you were referring to the newly-minted programmer in their 40's. I apologize, and fully agree that person will have a VERY hard time landing an entry-level role.

Keeping my original post below for posterity:

I like to think that I'm good at my job, but I can assure you that I am in no way god's gift to programming. With over 20 years of experience under my belt, whiteboarding was easy (fun, even), though I did have to practice the leetcode a little bit to make sure I was well-versed on the "smell" of problems and "tricks" required to get to O(n) or O(log n) complexity. That took about 10 hours or so.

Ageism is absolutely a thing, and it's something I worry about, but getting into FAANG at 40+ is 100% doable. There is such a massive shortage of experienced engineers that I spend an hour or two each week helping our recruiters find lots of other experienced folks.

Could a 30 year old give good advice on being a programmer?

It's not the length of time, it's the amount of experience.

As someone who started coding at age 9, I agree. :-)

It's not about hiring someone in their 40s per se, but rather about recognizing the value of 20 years' experience. Age alone doesn't impart wisdom.

Fuck. That made anxious. I am close to that age.

Also, my middle manager friends are having much harder time finding a job than programmer types. Don't know if its just them or if its a trend.

That's not saying much. I'm in my 40s, been in the industry for a long time, studied CS, etc ... but put the proverbial gun to my head and ask me to perform with judgement like that, I'd probably forget how to spell my own name.

Unfortunately this isn't really unexpected. Between inexperienced kids with nothing to lose, ambitious graduates with strong short term experience, and experienced programmers specializing in one area it's hard to be competitive solely based on experience. The programming profession is very "free", but that also means you have to manage your own career and make sure that you're "selling" something that is relevant for the "buyer".

From an industry perspective the blondy is right. When you're in your mid-thirties you're expected to either to progress in your career to a role with greater responsibility, have an established career at larger companies or sell your services on the open market as a consultant/freelancer. Basically something that is using your experience. Anything else might not only not be competitive, but also a red flag.

This doesn't mean you aren't eligible for a job, just that it will be harder to find one.

(And I know that all this might sound arrogant which is why people won't really tell people how it is)

This has always been the case. In the 1980s, when I was in my 20s, this was the deal, and very well known to all of us in university. Nothing new. One was too old after 35-years-old, UNLESS you were some amazingly great programmer, of course. Obviously. I remember having many conversations about this topic. And this was the case way back then, when the whole industry was young.

That being said, there's always room for older programmers. Maybe it is not quite as easy, but there's a lot of room. Maybe you won't get the Google, Facebook type of jobs, but the government sewer district, or an auto parts store with 20 stores would hire you. So it might not be the glamor of a high-end company.

I'm a lot older than you but I can move from company to company pretty easily, because I guess I have more experience - not on the technical side, but on the political savvy side. Office politics. Knowing how to find the back doors.

However, this is not about that. You hate the tech field, so none of that matters.

I personally have gone from industry to industry, different types of jobs. I have a huge and massive source of skill sets.

I know that many say that being a "jack-of-all-trades, master of none" is bad but I've never felt that way. Sure, I won't make the huge bucks by being a neurosurgeon making $2 million per year, but then again, even if I did try to do that, I still would never be able to be a neurosurgeon (or leetcoder) anyways. So the point is moot. And I'm not really a jack-of-all-trades, more like a "near master of a shitload of trades." That's how I see it, anyways. And, I LIKE being a "jack/near-master-of-all-trades" so why does it matter if I am not a superstar master? I don't want to do that.

So what I am saying is that it is possible to move from one industry, from one trade, to another.

I've done programming, sales, insurance, ran a sports school, worked as a high-level bookkeeper/financial person, ran multiple companies of my own, worked in retail (I really like it and dealing with the public, unlike most people). I've also worked in a number of other specialized niche fields that I don't want to say as it might doxx me. Over the last year I learned a boatload about SEO/SEM/Social media/digital marketing. I did this for others, but now I'm going to start creating websites of my own and use that knowledge to create my own websites.

I do what I want to do. Sometimes it takes me 3 or 6 months to figure out my next move when it is time to move on.

I am just showing you that it is more than possible. I've done it tons of times. And what one man, or woman, can do, so can another.

But the question is, what do you want to do?

As far as your existing work history, of course you have to include it. But you always want to skew your resume to the job you are applying to, as much as possible.

So if you are going to do technical writing as your next thing, you then change your resume to say how you wrote reports, or manuals, or instructions and that was the favorite part of what you are doing as a front end web designer, and other things like that. If you decide to, oh, work in a hotel industry in the administrative department, maybe you created a website for a hotel and were intrigued by it and want to work in that industry now. Just make it link up, that's easy to do. It's totall random association.

.

If you can go to any kind of meetings in person, if you can find any, that is the best case. You never know who you will meet. I went to a computer security even earlier this year and met the CIO of a Fortune 100 company and spent 3 hours talking with him. He had 10,000 technical people working for him, and here I was talking to him. He offered me a job, but I didn't want one.

I've been to so many in-person meetings and if you put yourself out there and talk to people, you will find commonalities. So maybe you decide to work in commercial real estate and want to get into landscaping. So you just start attending commercial real estate assocation meetings and boom, you have a job without having to jump through hoops by applying through their website if you impress them. Maybe still apply through a website but it is a formality.

>Appreciate any guidance, thanks.

What do you want to do? Can't help you until you know that.

I thought that when I was 17, and I was proven laughably wrong when I started university and learnt how to program properly.

Then once again I thought I was pretty good at programming and went in to industry - and once again I found my skills were nowhere near as good as I thought them to be.

My advice is to put aside notions that you are good and always be looking to improve and learn.

> but generally people aren't willing to hire a 17-year-old

Who needs to know that you're 17? If you have a good enough portfolio it will speak for itself.

I don't believe there's nothing you've learned that you couldn't apply to programming (not to mention software/application design).

I've applied concepts I've learned in biology class to programming! Also, a lot about programming is management, too: managing memory, managing data, managing workers, threads; just to name a few. Nothing we do in life is a lost to us! :-)

> * my technical skills are rusty

Well, programming is like any other language. If you don't use it, it will start to decay, but you'll never completely forget it. So, it should be relatively easy (with the right motivation), to catch back up, and then pick up from there.

> * I think recruiters are going to give me a weird look

Well, I can't speak for anyone else (maybe I just have weird beliefs), but I don't see why anyone would give you a weird look. The only thing deserving of a weird look is your statement!

> I'd like to get opinions on whether going back to programming as a career in my late 30s is a good idea or not.

I don't think anyone can give you an answer to this question, but you yourself. You should probably try to get into it slowly, without disrupting your current career and if you're comfortable with it, make two sets of lists: one set about personal pros and cons (did you enjoy it? was it more stressful? do you think you're good at it?) and an objective one (do you estimate your current job pays better? is it more convenient? in which job are you more productive?).

I know this whole comment sounds like a "maybe," but you're the one whose opinions matters the most. :-D

My experience is the following: you have a lot less time to learn, indeed.

But the huge problem rather is that you have seen a lot of programming ideas getting in and out of fashion, so that you smell the bullshit in the trend that gets in fashion (and is paid well) much better than the younger folks. This way, in your mind you become more annoyed having to learn bullshit things.

Also, a huge problem is that, because you have seen a lot more things, you often really know better how things could be architected better, but you can't convince less experienced managers and colleagues of this, so you become more and more cynical.

Maybe it's bias. But I know for myself that the older I get, the less time I have to spend on staying relevant. Mobile revolution? Never bothered to learn. Super fancy new JavaScript? Took me years to start looking into. Go? Ugh, don't wanna. Etc.

Ten years ago I was chomping at the bit to jump on any new technology that started showing signs of promise. Nowadays I focus on just solving people's business problems and printing money. Tech is a tool, not a goal.

This already makes my resume look a lot less shiny to keyword matching recruiters. The fact that I'm old/cynical enough to say "expected value of options is 0" makes me all but unemployable.

Ironically, in the early 2000's it was the opposite. Something did change though because I've seen the problem you're talking about.

One thing could be companies, recruiters, or manager looking for CS or CE degree specifically. Someone who is 60 outdates CS and CE. I'd caveat by saying most fresh grads don't actually know how to negotiate algorithms correctly. They leetcode like everyone else before the interviewing process. As I've gotten older I've developed more holistic understandings of some data structures and algorithms, but definitely not all of them. The skill I think I became more adept at was working through the logic of them more efficiently. That's the gift repetition gives though, I suspect. All that to say, if entities are overvaluing those degrees, it's an irrelevant requirement.

Another thing could be that most jobs are phrased, "CS, CE, or equivalent experience". As someone without a degree "equivalent experience" at times boiled down to, "Have you worked at a FAANG or on FAANG level problems?" It's a circular dependency unless you spend some time in growth companies or start ups that don't have these hard requirements. Again, it's another useless requirement because you either have the math chops to solve the problems in front of you or you don't. I don't need provenance to tell me that.

All that to say, I don't even imagine how old someone is when I'm looking at a resume. Most of my judgement relies on the interviewing process and whether you can negotiate a simple algorithm and some systems design. That's as data driven as I can get it right now, although highly inefficient, but inefficiency is worth the time for quality, imo.

I don't think your age is so important, instead this bit could be; I think the reasons you kept programming as a hobby only are the most relevant for the discussion. Was the pay too low compared to your current job? Was it too hard to interview in you area ? Was it a question of starting with 0 professional experience ? Or wasn't it just in your priorities to try to land a programming job ?

At any age you'll be able to switch fields. But did the reasons you didn't do so until now became somewhat irrelevant ?

Because the people hiring people that are relatively inexperienced but not practicing undercover age discrimination tend to be very much not representative of the industry, or opportunities for new programmers, at large; people starting their career late need to specifically target that market segment, not the more general one.

Note: I am not convinced of the specific advice, particularly in language focus, that the author here gives, but it is still less wrong than your suggestion that there is no difference between the optimum approaches for (by age) late- and early-entrants to programming.

A lot of younger programmers seems to think they have 3 years of experience, when they only have the same month of experience 36 times.

Experience is made up by the experiences you had, if you have never worked in a proper environment or never actually tried to improve your craft, years doesn't matter much.

And the myth of "being up to date", it can mean different things for different people. Sadly sometimes it just means that you need to have played with the latest fad that will disappear in a few years. In that case i'd prefer someone that's not up to date but can learn something different and it's used to do things the proper way.

Why exactly is this? And why would anyone go into a profession where they will be unable to find work when they are half way through, and at the peak of their powers? In every other intellectual enterprise--doctors and lawyers particularly--they hit their peak earning years just as software developers because (supposedly) unemployable.

This makes little to no sense. It isn't like good older developers become magically incapable of learning new langauges or frameworks. It isn't as if they become less reliable than a 20-something just out of school. It isn't as if they suddenly forget 25 years of history that lets them make more accurate effort estimates than anyone else.

So where does this perception that developers must be young come from, and why does anyone go into a profession that by definition (apparently) is going to require the to change feilds mid-career?

I won't dispute the problems in the industry, but I'm not sure you can really say the career is relatively short-lived. I've been at it for 20 years, and while there are far fewer of my age-peers than there are of younger coders, the number is also far from zero. The "requirement" that you move to a related field doesn't seem nearly as certain as when I was younger (I've avoided all efforts at moving away from coding itself with only minimal effort on my part), and just landed a new job pretty effortlessly.

In terms of the topic, I agree that newer coders should tackle a bunch of problems in a few different approaches rather than trying to master them all from the start (I certainly haven't, even as an old fogey), but in terms of troubles I've found lack of free time/energy to do so to be the bigger obstacle rather than no longer being a programmer. Then again, the problem I see most among younger coders is not trying to master everything and failing, it's treating everything as a nail for their single hammer.

My anecdotal experience is not data, but it is all I have right now: Do you have a stronger source of information that the "average programming career is relatively short-lived"? I've been at this for 20ish years and currently expect another 20 more, but if that's foolish I'd like to know for (reasonably) certain.

Programming/software dev is not a field I would choose if I were trying to avoid age discrimination. It can be hard enough for 61 year olds who have been in the field for 35 years and have all that experience to find work.

I'd encourage him to do it as a hobby, but don't get his hopes up about being able to find steady work doing it.