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Thanks for the insightful comment. I’ve been considering changing careers in about 4 years. MS is computer forensics. When I retire from law enforcement (as a c

Thanks for the insightful comment. I’ve been considering changing careers in about 4 years. MS is computer forensics. When I retire from law enforcement (as a computer forensic examiner) I will be about 45. I can program lightly in Python and other languages — enough to automate my job. If I want to do software development is it plausible to teach myself in 4 years? Am I hirable at 45?

manfredo 8y ago
Really depends, getting into programming from bootcamps isn't super easy and can be a bit of a crapshoot. One of the biggest pluses is if you have authored projects that you can show publicly - ideally open source. Try putting together projects on your side time. Even relatively simple ones can be impressive. For example, I whipped up a program that used selenium and ChromeDriver to automate exploration of YouTube recommendations [1]. Things like that can make your application stand out. 1. This is what inspired me to build this project. Hopefully I can build up some data and present my finding on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19524645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19524645
learc83 8y ago
>If I want to do software development is it plausible to teach myself in 4 years? Am I hirable at 45? As always, it depends. Assuming retire means you’re going to get some kind of pension, you could definitely be in a nice position to take contract jobs and let the pension smooth out any income fluctuations. Also if you can start trying to pick up contract work on the side now, you’d be a very good position in 4 years. If you want to find a full time, entry level job, that’s doable as well assuming the economy is doing relatively ok in 4 years. You could also try to find a programming job where your existing experience would be relevant so you're not starting out at the bottom. Maybe a programming job with a company that makes forensic software or just a company that works with law enforcement in general. Domain expertise is the big differentiator once you have a few years of programming experience.

manfredo 8y ago

Really depends, getting into programming from bootcamps isn't super easy and can be a bit of a crapshoot. One of the biggest pluses is if you have authored projects that you can show publicly - ideally open source. Try putting together projects on your side time. Even relatively simple ones can be impressive. For example, I whipped up a program that used selenium and ChromeDriver to automate exploration of YouTube recommendations [1]. Things like that can make your application stand out. 1. This is what inspired me to build this project. Hopefully I can build up some data and present my finding on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19524645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19524645

learc83 8y ago

>If I want to do software development is it plausible to teach myself in 4 years? Am I hirable at 45? As always, it depends. Assuming retire means you’re going to get some kind of pension, you could definitely be in a nice position to take contract jobs and let the pension smooth out any income fluctuations. Also if you can start trying to pick up contract work on the side now, you’d be a very good position in 4 years. If you want to find a full time, entry level job, that’s doable as well assuming the economy is doing relatively ok in 4 years. You could also try to find a programming job where your existing experience would be relevant so you're not starting out at the bottom. Maybe a programming job with a company that makes forensic software or just a company that works with law enforcement in general. Domain expertise is the big differentiator once you have a few years of programming experience.