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Ask HN: Career change at 40: bootcamp, degree, other?

• twunde 8y ago
  The main issue with learning on your own is that you won't have the alumni network nor the degree that signals that you can program. It makes getting that first and second job in the field, much more difficult. That said, if you find yourself with an opportunity, take it and learn the rest yourself. Personally, I would look into bootcamps in Germany as the primary option and at degrees from German universities as the second option, primarily because bootcamps will probably get you started in a new career faster. To get you started on your research take a look at https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-major-coding-boot-camps-in-Germany https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-major-coding-boot-camps-i... and then do some research at SwitchUp and CourseReport. Best of luck!
  • mrfusion 8y ago
    There are no signals you can program. That’s why we have brutal, demoralizing white board interviews.
• kjksf 8y ago
  Lambda School
• coldtea 8y ago
  >I am currently a lawyer in the US. I am moving to Germany in a few months. I am committing to a career change, since my spouse earns enough for us to live on. I've had enough of being a lawyer. Even so, this can easily lead to resentment and arguments, (and also self-doubt), if the other part doesn't start earning enough soon. So it's not like "family income" is a solved problem, even if one partner brings in all you need.
  • checkyoursudo 8y ago
    No doubt. However, we are moving to Germany because of my spouse's job. My lawyering requires a significant amount of court hearings, which I will be unable to do from Germany. I do very little transactional work that I might be able to continue in Germany, so a career change is a realistic and logical move. It just happens to coincide with wanting to make the change as well. Family income, as long as she keeps her job, is pretty much a solved problem for us. She makes a lot of money. Waaaaaaay more than me. I do not need to work necessarily for income but because I want to work. This has been the case for us for many years now. But I do appreciate your sentiment.
• laurentl 8y ago
  Do you have a specific job in mind? It seems obvious that you want to pivot to an IT/tech role but the particulars (aside from not wanting to work in web development) aren’t clear. I assume you will be looking for something interesting and fulfilling rather than a way to pay the bills. So I would suggest looking at the question from this angle. What excites/motivates you enough to invest some time in it? What kind of job or context do you see yourself working in? If you are academically oriented, getting a degree will probably bring you the most satisfaction while you figure out the next step. If you’re more practically minded, I would suggest building your own one-man business, capitalizing on your interests and expertise (ML to automate lawyery stuff?) Given your past experience, I don’t know what you would learn in a bootcamp and (in my opinion) a bootcamp on your resume has weak signaling power. I would suggest looking at apprenticeship degrees, where you’re at school part-time and work the rest of the time. They’re pretty common (in France at least) and some of them are explicitely targeted at people who already have had a first non-IT career. The upside is that you’ll get to work early on (these schools will usually help you find a company). The downside is that you’ll be working in a junior position. But, aside from starting your own business, I don’t see how you can avoid that. FWIW, in my company we have an apprentice data scientist who used to be the GM of an industrial company in Asia! He caught the data science bug a few years back and he’s having a blast going back to school and learning on the job.
  • checkyoursudo 8y ago
    I don't exactly have a specific job title in mind. If I could get to a point where I could help solve problems in AI R&D, then that's what I would probably do. I mentioned that my philosophy undergrad focused on ethics and logic. If I could find a way to work on building systems that have ethics as a primary concern (ethical algorithms, ethical artificial intelligence, etc) then I would like that. I have really enjoyed my self-study in machine learning, and for a while I thought for sure that's the path I would take. Right now I am not as sure. I just don't have a good sense of what I should do to keep going down this route if that's what I want to do, other than trying to get into a data-sciecne-type degree program perhaps. I have no issue with starting in a junior position. I don't care about the money or the power or the prestige specifically -- I just want to do something interesting and fulfilling. I have already had the chance to make lots of money in my life, and I just don't care that much, so junior (engineer/data scientist/etc) is fine. Also, it's easy not to care about money so much when your partner earns so much; I realize that I am in a fairly privileged place of not having to worry about money right now, but that's just where the universe has put me for now. Otherwise, I am really into Linux and FOSS stuff. I don't know if I would like kernel dev or embedded software as a career, but that's a possibility.
• i_phish_cats 8y ago
  Is it your goal to be a junior IT plebian throughout your 40's competing with eastern bloc/south asian workers? Because that's what a bootcamp and half-baked knowledge in a bunch of random trendy technologies will get you, especially outside of silicon valley. A degree at your age won't get you far either -- tech companies what 22 year old grads, not 44 year olds (unless you already have a CS degree and are talking about a PhD). Why completely throw away your experience as a lawyer? I am starting a company in the legal-tech domain and it'd be very valuable to have someone with experience in both sides of the world.
  • TheGrumpyBrit 8y ago
    Instead of throwing away those years as a lawyer, I'd look to complement them - specifically, I'd look at management/director level infosec/compliance/governance roles. You'll get less hands-on exposure as a manager, but your legal experience will give you a leg up that it seems silly to throw away. You can always move on to more technical roles later, with the advantage of a tech-related job title in your resume. Law is like IT - even if you get a job in a completely unrelated field, as soon as your past gets out, you'll find yourself inundated with requests to "just take a look at this." Might as well use that experience to your advantage first.
• notanMLawyer 8y ago
  >If you had the time and money, would you do a bootcamp, or a degree, or work on your own? Unless I knew for certain that I couldn’t do solo work, or knew for certain that I couldn’t muster the discipline, I would say “work on your own” in the beginning. If I am to take your harmonious financial arrangement at face value, which you reaffirm in another comment, understand that your situation is probably very enviable to many. Make the most of it. You didn’t specify but I assume you expect this situation to hold for at least a year, maybe two or three years? That’s great. And you already dabbled in ML, and you “really like it”? Well, its the remote option, but this is what I would do : 1. I would brainstorm a project about applying ML to law, or my field of law[0]. This is not completely unheard of, as I’m sure you’re aware. 2. If I come up with some holy grail ideas, I would put them aside for later. I would then try to find something to start with that is very simple, maybe something that would have helped me day-to-day in my previous lawyer life. Maybe something much smaller that would be a necessary but not sufficient item for one of the holy grail ideas, or like I said some small but obvious value added day-to-day lawyer stuff. 3. After I decided on the project, I would apply the Amazon way of working backwards, a. Create the press release: Describe in simple terms what you’re going to build b. 20 most frequent questions: Answer in clear, simple terms (& iterate until it is very clear what you’re going to build) c. UX Document: How are my users going to interact with this d. Keep the above simple, don’t overdo it. 4. So you came up with your first project, now you have to skill up. Since you dabbled in ML maybe you are already familiar with the ML learning angles people recommend on this site (fast.ai, Coursera etc). I would research and make a decision which ones to start with first (maybe you’ve already completed some) and focus on completing them together with all the relevant exercises etc. In parallel, I would be on the lookout about what I need to learn for the project and continuously apply what I learn to the project. 5. Out of necessity, you are probably going to need to dabble in integrating frontend web and mobile stuff. Research and decide on learning path based on what concrete things you actually need in your project. 6. Once you feel you know enough to build the shittiest and dumbest version of your idea build the shittiest and dumbest version of your idea before continuing a new online course in your studying plan. 7. Put your code on the web when you have the shittiest and dumbest version of your idea working and keeping updating it. I would upload two separate things as projects a. the software/product that the end user will use that has everything in it. b. The ML component as a separate project. Don’t let the frontend stuff detract from the ML stuff. Imagine someone with better web and mobile skills wanted to use your ML-law work to make something more polished. They could use this. 8. Now you have a portfolio, don’t you? You could go on building the next item on the road to a holy grail, or you could continue iterating on this as you learn. 9. Meanwhile, you could start applying with your portfolio for remote work at AI tech companies targeting law or NLP areas (more general overlapping domains) , or law firms that are scared of tech who don’t want to be the nokia or blackberry of law in the future (this is probably the unlikelier of the two, since this tech would disrupt billable hours). In the former, you would be the “domain” guy for the tech, in the latter you could be the “tech” guy for the domain. Your skills and background will be unique. 10. Alternatively, or in parallel, start selling what you built. Cause looked at it another way, this is identical to have received seed funding for 1-3 years to start a company. Sure when you start working with others you may soon feel you’ve missed out on some fundamentals, but this is what I would do in terms of opportunity cost. By the end, you will have a unique background and you will be working in a niche area suited to your background, your weaknesses will matter less. After this, if I still felt iffy and it still didn't matter if I got a job or not, then I would consider a online degree through a US institution, but if its a very good program. Anyway you asked me what I would do, obviously might not be the best advise (disclaimer). [0] assuming doing anything related to law or your field of law doesn’t instantly fill you with dread or actively demotivate you in whatever you’re doing. If I hated law, the general outline would still be the same. Coming up with a project idea that kept me motivated and that I thought would be of use to others might take a little more time to find. I wouldn’t be able to use my law background for applying for work for maximum effect, so there would be no binding narrative between my previous lawyer life and what I’m doing now, that might make it more difficult to sell myself to potential employers. But with a portfolio that would matter less.
• danieltillett 8y ago
  Can I suggest homemaker. Based on your other posts your wife is the big earner so make it your full time job to support her as I am sure her job is very stressful.
• rajacombinator 8y ago
  It would be a large mistake to try to become a rank and file programmer at this point in your career. Unless your goal is to learn enough to be dangerous so that you can start a legal tech startup. Why not consider shifting your area of focus in law to something more palatable or relevant to your interests? Do legal work for startups or join a tech company as general counsel.
• deleted 8y ago
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• jakobegger 8y ago
  If you have the time, I would absolutely go for a degree. As far as I know, University is free in Germany. If you can get into a CS degree, do it. You should be able to do a bachelor degree in 3 years, but you can probably do it faster because you aren't a distracted 20 year old anymore. Self taught programmers take years to make up for their missing education. If you have the time to learn from very smart people for a couple of years, I don't know why you wouldn't do it.