Develop Yourself

#290 - 4 things no one tells you about learning to code after 30

• Brian Jenney

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Am I too old to learn how to code?

If you're alive then the answer is NO.

BUT, you are going to need a different game plan than your 22 year old co-workers if you want this to work.

I was 31 when I got my first job as a coder. Here's what worked for me and others I've taught over the years.

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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Develop Yourself podcast, where we teach you everything you need to land your first job as a software developer by learning to develop yourself, your skills, your network, and more. I'm Brian, your host. Here's what no one ever tells you about learning to code after 30. First off, just don't. Just kidding. If you thought I was gonna say just don't learn how to code after 30, that's one of the stupidest things I think I've ever heard. If you think your life is over by 30, well, that's a really sad life to live in many ways, because you're gonna be in this profession as a software developer for 10, 20, 30, 40 years potentially of your life. I learned how to code around 30 years old and got my first job on my 31st birthday, where I worked at Grocery Outlet in Emoryville, California as a web application developer. 11 years later, I've gone from that to engineering manager to senior software engineer at different startups around the Bay Area and had a really fun and interesting career so far. And in many ways, I feel like I'm just getting started right as I'm about to turn 42, and I see a long career ahead of me. But what do you need to know as a 30-year-old or 35-year-old or 40-year-old learning how to code? It's gonna be a lot different than what it's like for your kids or an 18-year-old or a 22-year-old or a 25-year-old who's getting their first coding job. Let me keep it real with you. Here's the elephant in the room that I think a lot of us are thinking of. Am I just too old? Am I gonna look too old? Is there gonna be ageism at play when I'm on my coding interviews or trying to get my first job? Yes, there will be, but not in the way that you probably think. In my opinion, and in my experience as a man specifically, I think that being a little bit older can actually work in your favor on the job market, especially right now. In general, the person interviewing you is probably gonna be around your age. Your manager may be the same age as you are, and your coworkers are likely gonna be a little bit younger. But there's also this myth that's really prevalent that all software developers are like 20-somethings. When in reality, your coworkers will be anywhere from 20 all the way up to 60. For many senior developers, that is the last stop on their career ladder. They've gone from junior to mid-level to senior, and they've been hovering around the senior level for the last 20, 30 years of their career. So it's not uncommon to meet somebody who's 55 who's a senior software developer, or someone who's even 60. I worked with a guy that was 70 years old who is a senior software developer. He and I might have the same title, but he is leaps and bounds ahead of me as far as experience and skill. But anyway, will ageism affect you somehow? And again, I think this can work in your favor because when they see you have a little bit of gray in your beard or maybe not so much hair on your head, this can actually make people think you're wiser or maybe more experienced than you are. Remember, we're humans. We look at what's in front of us and we make assumptions. So being a little bit older can actually work in your favor, and they can think that maybe you know a little bit more than you do. This happened to a few people that I've worked with, one of whom got his first job at 44, another guy was around 42, got their first jobs in software, they quickly are rising up the ranks in their job because they have a little bit more wisdom than your average 25-year-old. I hope if you're 30 or 40, you have more wisdom than the average 22-year-old. But this can absolutely be an accelerant to your career as a software developer. You can get in if you're good at what you do and you don't suck at coding, and you know how to navigate the office politics and kind of understand generally how to work on a team of other adults and get stuff done and what people really mean when they say all that corporate jargon that you're probably used to hearing from your former job, which we'll get into in just a second. This can be a big, big help. So don't overthink about your age because there's nothing you can do about it in the first place. And it reality is it's likely going to help you more than it's going to hurt you. So now that we got that out of the way, uh let's talk about what you're doing right now. Because if you're 30 or older, you likely already have a career, or maybe you've started a career, or maybe you have a job you just don't really like. Now, here's the thing no one's gonna care about that job for the most part, with one important exception. I've seen a lot of career changers that are in their 30s or older that have a career, a previous career, use this to their advantage by looking for software roles within that same industry. For example, there was a guy I worked with, I think his name was Peter a few years ago. Now, Peter worked as an EMT, he got a job as a software developer for guess what? A company that works on like an app for ambulances, right? Your old career potentially could help you get into a new career in the same domain or field. But I would say this is really important. You generally won't have that many opportunities in the same field, although that is one way you could kind of filter your job search. But in reality, no one's really gonna care what you used to do. My former business partner was a freaking lawyer. When he walked into the interview for a coding job, guess what? He got the same technical interview that literally everybody else got. No one cares what you used to do. So I actually wouldn't play that up too much. Now, this is the part that is gonna be tricky, especially if you're a little bit older. You're going to need some experience as a software developer because whether you are a CEO or a French Fry chef, that is completely irrelevant to most people. And it will likely do more harm than good bringing up your previous work experience. So you need to have some sort of experience that points to you as a software developer. And you're thinking, well, how am I supposed to get this? I'm already working a full-time job, I'm trying to learn to code. Maybe I'm going to a boot camp or WGU or Triple 10 or some other boot camp that's gonna bleed you dry and not really get you the result you want. So you're doing all that and you're supposed to also get job experience. Well, there was a guy I worked with Nils, and he did what many people that I work with do as well. And what he did is go out to his local community, he went to like a barbecue restaurant and said, Hey, can I make you an app? Right. This doubles as work experience and a very cool side project. No one cares about your portfolio project, no one's really looking at your GitHub projects either. But what people do care about is what is something you've built and can you point to it and maybe even get a testimonial or have that person under LinkedIn write you a recommendation. This can be incredibly valuable. So Nils used this experience, making this app for a barbecue restaurant as real work experience he could point to. Then on his resume and his LinkedIn, when recruiters are looking there, they're not saying that, oh, this guy's a music professor, which he was at the time. They're saying, oh, he is an app developer that built this nice app for a barbecue restaurant. And he can ethically and legitimately call himself a software developer. So, yes, use your work experience if it's relevant to the industry in which you're applying, but for the most part, don't rely on that and remember that nobody cares. They want to see what you can do for me right now. Now, here's the next one, which is probably obvious to you if you're watching a video like this. Where do you find the time? Right? You maybe have kids, you have a wife or a husband, you have obligations, church or whatever, all the different things that a grown adult person in the United States likely has competing for their time. I have three kids right now. When I was learning to code, I had two kids, one of which was a really small toddler at the time. There was basically no time. You're going to have to cut out something that you like doing. That something should not be exercise. It shouldn't be your wife or husband, and it certainly shouldn't be your kids. So don't cut out the things which give you energy, which are your highest obligations, which are your children, your health, and your relationships. Those can't be cut out, right? I don't believe in that at all. What can be cut out? All the fun stuff you probably like doing. Drinking is high up on the list. Watching long sporting events is high up on the list. Doom scrolling or watching Netflix is high up on the list. If you think you can make this kind of career change without making some sort of pretty large sacrifice, you're in for a sad, sad reality, my friend. You have to figure out what it is you're going to give up and be very intentional with that thing. I gave up sports when I was learning to code. I got into a habit of watching football and I didn't really like football. I just liked drinking. I'd also stopped drinking at the time. So it wasn't that hard to give up sports, but it opened up hours of time. I also stopped watching Netflix shows. These are two habits which have basically stuck with me for the last 11 years. I don't really watch shows on Netflix and I do not watch sporting events. Not because I'm like in some sort of weird monk mode or super eternally productive or something like that in a capitalist society. It's just because I got used to not doing those things and it gives me a lot of time. I'm one of those people where I can run a business, I can be a software developer and make videos like these because I have time. I am not one of those people that's always, oh, I'm so busy. My whole goal in life is to not be that busy. And it's basically for me just saying, I'm not going to do certain things. So I don't watch football, I don't, I don't drink, and I don't watch shows on Netflix. It's really not that big of a sacrifice. But you'll need to pick out the thing that you are going to sacrifice. And lastly, as a 30-year-old or older, you have a massive disadvantage when it comes to your 18-year-old or 22-year-old competition in the fact that you don't really know how to learn anymore. Honestly, think about it. Is it any wonder that a computer science grad, a person that spent the last four years studying computer science and coding outperforms your average boot camp grad or 30-year-old? They were in school and they went right to another school program and did a rigorous four years of study. You, on the other hand, had a rigorous decade or more of working and providing for your family or for yourself. These are drastically different paths that have equipped you in different ways, right? So you're not used to learning. And the last time you were in school, you probably got graded and had to memorize stuff, right? Software engineering is completely different. No one cares what you memorized. And the game is not memorization, it's learning how to apply logic to puzzles, essentially. Can you build something from scratch? If you're just looking at tutorials and you're copying what somebody else is typing, you're already on the wrong path. What you should be doing is yes, use tutorials. Extend, break, rewrite the functionality. Do not use AI. I know everybody is talking about AI. You should not be using AI at this point. What you're gonna want to do is follow along and do the typing and the copying and all that good stuff, and then put pause in that video. Now go to the code, try, see if you can break things, see if you can make the functionality a little bit different. What would you build differently? If you can do this, you're gonna be on a much quicker path to actually becoming a software developer and not a glorified typist. And the last thing is you're gonna need to be optimistic, but practically optimistic. There's so much doom and gloom nowadays, and so much ridiculous hype about AI and why it's too late to learn to code or why nobody's hiring or why you'll never get a job. You can't fall into this trap. You're gonna have to basically gaslight yourself into thinking that this is possible, or else you are gonna succumb to the negativity that's online and maybe even from the people in your own life. So keep a journal, write down the things that you're learning, hang out in communities that are friendly. LinkedIn is overall a fairly friendly place to go. Reddit is probably the least friendly place to go, but make sure you're surrounding yourself with people that actually are positive, even if they're toxically positive. In my opinion, it's much better to be around a bunch of optimists that are kind of gaslighting you than to be around a bunch of negative people. So if you see people talking about their thousandth rejection or more layoff material or how AI is gonna come over and take everybody's job, just block these people, silence them, unfollow them. Just try to surround yourself with people that are gonna help you get to your path because that kind of information is not only detrimental, it's just useless information. It's just noise. What does it matter that somebody you've never met in real life is using AI and claiming that they can do your job? You don't know these people. You're gonna have to learn how to separate yourself from the hype in the media. Now, if you're looking for a well-structured path to do this, you can join my program, parsity.io, where we work with less than 50 people per year to help them successfully change careers into software. If you're not quite ready for that and you want to learn JavaScript and the fundamentals of that, your first programming language, jump into dev30.xyz. This is a program we run once per quarter, super useful. It's gonna teach you more than the basics and also how to establish a presence on LinkedIn. I really hope that's helpful. And if you got nothing else out of this whole video, just realize that yes, 30 is not too old, 40 is not too old. You're gonna have decades left in this career, even if you started at 45. So think about that. Consider the fact that it's a lot of your life you're gonna be doing this. So if you're already thinking about giving up before you hit 30, just come on, be real with yourself. Hope that's helpful. See you around. That'll do it for today's episode of the Develop Yourself podcast. If you're serious about switching careers and becoming a software developer and building complex software and want to work directly with me and my team, go to parsity.io. And if you want more information, feel free to schedule a chat by just clicking the link in the show notes. See you next week.

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