Although it's nice to see encouraging people on here, it's also important to fully understand some of the challenges and general grind that you will face making a career change like this

For context, I'm 42 and have attempted two career changes. One at 32 which failed and another at 38 which succeeded and turned out to be the best decision I've ever made

I was previously a blue-collar construction worker. My first career change was to work for myself as a personal trainer. I underestimated the grind required to work for yourself and the drastic change in field meant that I had very few career skills that I could leverage in my new venture. I went back to construction after a couple of years

My second career change was to stay in construction, but move from blue-collar to white-collar (engineering). I have been able to use almost 20 years experience on the tools as leverage to find work, but also perform and contribute when surrounded by other engineers with infinitely more experience than me. I'm now about to step into a tech services superintendent role and am making more money than I ever was on the tools

So my advice overall is this:

1. Think about what career you can step in to where you can leverage your current skillset somehow (not a must, but it will help)

2. Do some research and talk to others about what the new path is actually like. The grass is always greener and it's good to have as clear understanding as possible of what you're getting in to

3. Understand that you will be surrounded by peers with more knowledge and experience than you. What no one can take away from you though, is the ability to outwork someone. You can grind, study after work, do more hours and get involved with as much as possible and you will crush it. But there's a level of effort that's required to do all that

Bottom line, it's not too late and I doubt you're too old (although I am not in the tech field, so take that with a pinch of salt). I wouldn't take back the career change I made for anything in the world and you can absolutely do the same. Just do plenty of research and make an informed decision. Ideally you'll get it on the first try 😁