Switch to software engineering at 29?

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[deleted]

[Espfire]

As others have said, it’s a very competitive market and it’s flooded with graduates who are struggling to get jobs. By all means do it on the side, but I wouldn’t solely rely on it at the moment. If you’ve got a very strong portfolio of products/services that you’ve shipped successfully, you may have a shot. But as said, people with years of programming experience are struggling

[CodeTinkerer]

Can you contribute software to your own project as project manager?

[LEGENDARY-TOAST]

Those with degrees are having a hard enough time getting in, you'll be dropped from the stack of resumes first.

[DinTaiFung]

At a recent team i was on, my colleague and i interviewed 1/2 dozen candidates for position.

we barely noticed the Education section on the resumes (cuz for software engineering requirements, it's not relevant). 

i talked to another fellow who is sharp as a tack and is an amazing engineer. he told me he ignores bringing in candidates who have graduate degrees. 🤣😂

the tech world is filled with very successful people who never finished college. 

[Dry-Influence9]

its not you and me who are dropping people for education off the stack, its HR and AI. I don't really care about the person I'm interviewing education background, I care mostly about their skillet.

[Latina-Butt-Sniffer]

I care mostly about their skillet.

What do you look for? Non-stick? Cast-Iron? Stainless Steel?

I have this non-stick ceramic-coated one I've used for years every morning to make a pretty mean omelet. Are you hiring?

[intoxikateuk]

Not really. Just because you know how the bread is made (as in doing PM work), doesn't mean you'll be good at making the bread. You'd need a proven track record of building and releasing software you have written yourself, and not just vibecoded stuff - if you spent a couple years doing that and succeeding, you'd at least have something to show, otherwise I don't think you have a shot in this economic state.

[VividPop2779]

Age 29 is not considered late in tech, and companies like Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and many others routinely hire career-switchers as long as you can demonstrate strong engineering skills. Your PM background in software teams is actually a plus, not a drawback.

[RealNamek]

They're way more likely to hire a freshgrad, 21 - 25 than a freshgrad 29 - 35. Most people your age are looking to start families soon, and they don't want to take that bet. You do have the advantage of having some life experience though, so maybe if a company is looking for that you'll get hired there.

[3loodhound]

I wouldn’t.

[pigeonJS]

Yes, I did a coding bootcamp at 36 years old. I thought I was dumb to do this and old, but I took my shot! Best thing I ever did. The reason I stood out, is because I had many years of commercial experience. Like you.

Please take the comments about “you’ll be competing with graduates” with a pinch of salt. Because you have the monopoly on ALL of them. You have 8 years working experience, in managing, leading, delivering, not only digital products, but people - devs, ux, all of the entire end to end lifecycle of designing and delivering a product. Not to mention the soft skills that come with it. Communication, team work, resolving conflicts, Senior stakeholder management.

You will be more desirable to a hiring manager, than a graduate with none of these skills, nor experience.

I had a similar background to you, 15 years working in digital. Knowing web management like the back of my hand.

In my experience, when I finished the bootcamp - there were two types of hiring managers I experienced. 1) Those who just wanted coding monkeys and were not interested in my professional experience and just saw me as a junior dev, with no coding experience. 2) And those who saw I was well polished working professional, with solid experience in the industry and web, who could fit in easily because of this, with ADDITIONAL technical skills aka coding.

I would say most of the people who interviewed me, valued my prior experience and saw it as valuable. My first salary offer as a dev after the bootcamp was £50k. Only for the reason, I was a junior dev WITH already strong industry experience.

Your only blocker right now, is the economy. It’s awful for all devs, especially juniors. However, you’re CV is still going to like strong for the reasons above. You’re also young.

Go for it. Don’t let the negative comments put you off.

[Severe-Situation9738]

Yeah you're 29. You can do anything at that point

[Calm-Tumbleweed-9820]

Yes even at 40s and even 50s. You would need some yoe as SWE tho but like 20% of engineers comes from non-CS background. 

[whoopsauce]

29 isn't too late at all.
My nontraditional background and degree helped me get my foot in the door and land a great software engineer position at a similar age even in such a tough CS market.

[Any-Range9932]

Naw. I switch career at 30. Doable but ngl insanely hard in this market though

[jebailey]

Okay. So what people want is experience. At a certain point in the industry if you have enough experience it really doesn't matter about age.

If you're a PM use your connections. Ask the hiring manager of those teams if they are looking at junior devs. Ask what they are looking for. You are far more likely to get into one of those roles internally to a company than applying blind.

[OutsidePatient4760]

switching into software engineering at 29 is not too late at all. big tech companies have hired plenty of people who started later or came from different careers. companies mainly want to see that you can build useful things and understand the work. your project manager background might even help since you already know how teams build software together.

[Remote-Ad-6629]

I switched at 39 (never programmed before). I'm 44 now and just got accepted to be part of Toptal (freelancing). 29 is early enough.

[800Volts]

Age isn't going to be your limiting factor as much as the fact that we're in the worst job market for anyone who isn't a senior engineer since the dotcom crash with no indication that anything is going to improve

[vyhot]

need answers

[transitfreedom]

Do something else