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I'm in this boat. Finally started programming in 2018 at age 38 after a lifetime of playing around with computers as a hobby (thanks, dad!) and a first career

I'm in this boat. Finally started programming in 2018 at age 38 after a lifetime of playing around with computers as a hobby (thanks, dad!) and a first career in a completely unrelated field, as an attorney. The linked article is about learning for pleasure, but there are also challenges associated with trying to enter the field as a second career. The technical complexity, of course, and the scale of what needs to be learned, can sometimes be overwhelming. It helps to bring as much humility to the process as you can muster. But peoples' perceptions can also be a challenge - no one quite knows what to make of you! I like to think it's an opportunity. If you're able to combine domain expertise from your first career with a solid grasp of CS fundamentals and a good day-to-day working knowledge of your toolchain, that can make you a pretty rare interdisciplinary candidate. Perhaps that then informs how you market yourself and to whom. Best of luck to anyone coming at this as a second career!

tehlike 6y ago
I have a friend who is an attorney that's fairly technical - he can't write code but he understands how it works when reading it. He does combine his interdisciplinary skill - started a company in his main domain using software as a tool. I'm constantly impressed by him.
throwaway17_17 6y ago
I thought for a moment I blacked out and posted to HN without knowing it. I too am a 38 years old attorney who learned CS/Programming late in life. I haven’t had any success in finding relevant job openings for my particular coding knowledge, but I keep looking. Just knowing you exist gives me hope I may still be able to break into tech, at some level. And given that Hurricane Laura just decimated my city ( and my home and my office) I need some hope right now.
- eecc 6y ago
  Well, being an attorney you could dig yourself a nice rabbit hole with Lucene, a Java library for text indexing and analysis at the foundation of many Java based search engines (for example Solr, Elastichsearch.) Combine it then with your expertise to analyze documents from your business domain for example
- joelbluminator 6y ago
  If you're capable of becoming a lawyer you're capable of becoming a programmer. 38 ain't that old. But why drop being attorney?
  - csboyer 6y ago
    Knowing people in both the legal and software world, law is a tough profession with old world business expectations. Almost everything is “last minute” due to either court deadlines or your client dropping everything on you because something happened and it has to be fixed now. In-house counsel jobs can be a bit more relaxing, as you might be working on longer term projects rather than the latest disaster that fell into your lap.
    - joelbluminator 6y ago
      Exactly, I would try to find something in-house. And choose some very narrow field I can be an expert on (GDPR, tech laws, tax etc). Not saying it's easy though.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - mellavora 6y ago
    Can't speak for the OPs reasons, but some evidence suggests that law schools have created an oversupply of people with law degrees, which impacts career possibilities. <filterbubble> one source which supports my worldview: https://www.thecareercookbook.com/hello-world-6/ https://www.thecareercookbook.com/hello-world-6/ </filterbubble>
  - throwaway17_17 6y ago
    Lawyering is not really the problem, I have a quite successful career. I am mostly content to just program in my spare time and programming/automating those areas of my practice where there is value. But, and it’s probably more specific to my situation, but I do almost exclusively criminal defense work and it can be tiring, I’ve been at it long enough that I could use a change of focus. Biggest problem for me is that my areas of knowledge/interest for CS/programming is limits solely focused on low level, performance oriented domains, programming language theory And type theory. That is not the most marketable skill set, but I love doing it.
- mcv 6y ago
  I think there's a lot of room for programmers with deep domain knowledge about some topic. If writing software for lawyers or law-related issues, I'm pretty sure experience as a lawyer can be very useful.
  - client4 6y ago
    Just interviewing other lawyers for their “if it existed I would buy it” software would show there’s a lot of opportunity. A friend of mine has been looking for a service that emails her whenever a local municipality does something with easements/property access. This actually took me down a long rabbit hole of how local government software is horrible and someone could crush this area — my only concern would be lack of traction as local governments seem to prefer operating in obscurity/making it difficult to hold them accountable.
    - blaser-waffle 6y ago
      Funny, I know a guy doing just that, former roommate He was mostly writing code for things that handle municipal water supplies and other water monitoring stuff. He worked for a code shop that built the original system and after he left he kept doing maintenance work on the side until he went (mostly) full time at it. OTOH, he's basically a one-man show, and has implied that if he had to scale -- e.g. add 3+ people -- then the $$$ wouldn't go as far. By himself it's a decent paycheck, though. The problem is municipalities are all different, with different state/local requirements, and they often don't have the money or operational depth to support deeply customized software. I grew up near a park that had to shutdown for several months because they couldn't get enough funds together to have people mow the lawns; where would they find the money for custom code?
- screye 6y ago
  I am guessing this is one of the situations where you might need to make that niche for yourself. Take on contracts to do something that is traditionally done with hand -> write scripts to automate it -> take on more contracts. At that point you would probably be paid for 20 people's worth for 20 people's work....but automating it will allow you to pocket all of it due to zero (low) costs. Our startup tried doing this with automated 3D map creation for drone use surveying. It is incredibly easy to undercut traditional competition at a technical level. Convincing corporate to trust in your experiment tho, kinda hard. It is the classic: 'No one has been fired for hiring IBM' conundrum.
- anodyne33 6y ago
  Have you had any eDiscovery experience in the past? I was an analyst for 15 years and AI is really coming on strong now. I've seen, in my job search, a few places where a JD coupled with a little CS knowledge could be useful. A buddy of mine is a patent attorney and quit his firm job to start his own shop doing natural language processing against the US and foreign patent databases. He didn't get his hands into writing the software but he's had to develop a reasonable understanding to guide his process and sell it.
m0zg 6y ago
If you don't mind me asking, why would one give up a cushy, well paid attorney career and choose software engineering? Software engineering compensation _tops out_ below where an experienced attorney compensation _begins_. The least I've ever paid a lawyer was $250/hr.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  maybe there are too many lawyers and the field is thus not as well remunerated as you think https://www.thoughtco.com/are-there-too-many-lawyers-4026025 https://www.thoughtco.com/are-there-too-many-lawyers-4026025
  - m0zg 6y ago
    $250 is generic "business contract review" lawyer. Not any kind of distinguished legal scholar. And I had to look pretty hard to find a decent one that didn't cost twice that.
- austincheney 6y ago
  To be fair lawyers are worth more than senior software developers, but not too much more. That $250-$750 per hour is the business rate not the profit that goes to the attorney. If an attorney works at a large firm most of that goes back to the firm. If the attorney goes out of their own they have personal business expenses to account for. As a software developer I bring home more than some attorneys I have met. I am not working a FAANG making buckets of cash either.
- swyx 6y ago
  IANAL but just to point out a couple obvious points: - the lawyer doesn't receive the full 250, half of it(?) goes to business/partnership - afaik many lawyers under-bill their hours, i'm not sure why (beyond "competition") but it's a common practice - the job itself may not be enjoyable at some point and you may desire more creative pursuits
  - JayPeaEm 6y ago
swyx 6y ago
learned to code at 30 here after a previous life in finance. doing well 4 years on. if i can help anyone in this thread just reply!
- VamosArgentina 6y ago
  Do you code professionally? My gf wants to get a job as a programmer and is about 30 too
  - chrshawkes 6y ago
    I learned to code at 28 and have been doing it professionally for 10 years now. Coding is easier than it used to be. I don't think an age limit applies.
    - VamosArgentina 6y ago
      Yeah, I'm not worried about learning to program but about companies not hiring her as a junior/trainee because of lack of experience at her age
      - swyx 6y ago
        30 is still fine, ageism exists but 30 is hardly old
        ghaff 6y ago
        If someone goes to grad school, especially if they had 2-3 years of full-time work mixed in there, they can easily be pushing 30. I basically did a career change at about that age into the computer field as a product manager.
  - swyx 6y ago
    my initial couple jobs were as a software engineer so yes. these days I do a blend of coding and marketing, as a developer advocate at AWS. good luck to your gf, pls feel free to send more qtns I think my email is in my profile.
throwaway883399 6y ago
I'm studying law now and considering this path. I would be really appreciative to hear your advice on moving from law to computer science. If you could send me an email to the address in my profile, I would be very grateful. Thanks!
mathattack 6y ago
Knowing the problems to solve is HUGE. If you know enough programming to identify 10X developers and point them in the right direction, you can create a ton of value.
marlowe221 6y ago
I just did this. I'm 38 and just started my first developer job 3 months ago after practicing law for 13 years and hating it. I started learning JavaScript/HTML/CSS about a year ago. It's the best thing I've ever done for myself and my only regret is not doing it sooner. You can do it!
jaeming 6y ago
I started at 39. I had been looking for a new career to transition from video editing. After the third time my employer restructured my role, I took a voluntary redundancy (basically volunteering to be laid-off) and started programming full-time. I did an online bootcamp and never looked back. Five years later I'm a Senior Software Engineer, and hoping to upgrade to principle engineer by end of the year. Sometimes I suddenly feel like a fraud, especially when I realize I'm in a meeting where everyone in the room has a CS degree or higher, but overall I feel like I bring a lot of value to what we do and most of all, I really love doing it. I remember anonymously asking on Quora if people thought I was too old to learn how to program. The amount of support and stories that were shared with me were positively overwhelming. Probably the best answer I received was, "do you enjoy doing this thing?, if so, the answer is you should just do it."
- hideo 6y ago
  > ...Sometimes I suddenly feel like a fraud... I feel this way sometimes too, despite having a traditional CS degree and being in the software industry my entire professional life. Apparently impostor syndrome is more common than we think. Personally I've come to believe there are very few people who "fit like a glove", and everyone else has varying degrees of this. Edit: On rereading this it might appear that I am trying to diminish/dismiss your experiences. I apologize if it came across that way - my intention was more to share that I've heard this same sentiment for different reasons from many different people.
  - mellavora 6y ago
    "feeling like a fraud" is pretty common, it is formally called "imposter syndrome". It is usually just your mind playing tricks on you; there is a delta between your internal picture of what a "real" programmer (or senior manager, or whatever position) looks like and your internal image of yourself. One solution is to duck type yourself until the feeling goes away. Another is to start to recognize that some of your internal definitions might not be shared by others. I'll leave it as homework to decide which internal definitions matter the most here.
- FpUser 6y ago
tannhauser23 6y ago
Hey same here! Switched from law to programming in my mid 30s as well. Never looked back!
Reedx 6y ago
> I like to think it's an opportunity. If you're able to combine domain expertise from your first career with a solid grasp of CS fundamentals and a good day-to-day working knowledge of your toolchain, that can make you a pretty rare interdisciplinary candidate. Perhaps that then informs how you market yourself and to whom. Indeed, you're in the best position to solve attorney problems with programming. But another approach to consider is augmenting or skipping the candidate part and build it yourself. Identity a problem you had, solve it and sell the solution/tool to other attorneys. Even if the selling part doesn't do well enough, you'll learn a lot and have a valuable resume booster.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

tehlike 6y ago

I have a friend who is an attorney that's fairly technical - he can't write code but he understands how it works when reading it. He does combine his interdisciplinary skill - started a company in his main domain using software as a tool. I'm constantly impressed by him.

throwaway17_17 6y ago

I thought for a moment I blacked out and posted to HN without knowing it. I too am a 38 years old attorney who learned CS/Programming late in life. I haven’t had any success in finding relevant job openings for my particular coding knowledge, but I keep looking. Just knowing you exist gives me hope I may still be able to break into tech, at some level. And given that Hurricane Laura just decimated my city ( and my home and my office) I need some hope right now.

eecc 6y ago
Well, being an attorney you could dig yourself a nice rabbit hole with Lucene, a Java library for text indexing and analysis at the foundation of many Java based search engines (for example Solr, Elastichsearch.) Combine it then with your expertise to analyze documents from your business domain for example
joelbluminator 6y ago
If you're capable of becoming a lawyer you're capable of becoming a programmer. 38 ain't that old. But why drop being attorney?
- csboyer 6y ago
  Knowing people in both the legal and software world, law is a tough profession with old world business expectations. Almost everything is “last minute” due to either court deadlines or your client dropping everything on you because something happened and it has to be fixed now. In-house counsel jobs can be a bit more relaxing, as you might be working on longer term projects rather than the latest disaster that fell into your lap.
  - joelbluminator 6y ago
    Exactly, I would try to find something in-house. And choose some very narrow field I can be an expert on (GDPR, tech laws, tax etc). Not saying it's easy though.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- mellavora 6y ago
  Can't speak for the OPs reasons, but some evidence suggests that law schools have created an oversupply of people with law degrees, which impacts career possibilities. <filterbubble> one source which supports my worldview: https://www.thecareercookbook.com/hello-world-6/ https://www.thecareercookbook.com/hello-world-6/ </filterbubble>
- throwaway17_17 6y ago
  Lawyering is not really the problem, I have a quite successful career. I am mostly content to just program in my spare time and programming/automating those areas of my practice where there is value. But, and it’s probably more specific to my situation, but I do almost exclusively criminal defense work and it can be tiring, I’ve been at it long enough that I could use a change of focus. Biggest problem for me is that my areas of knowledge/interest for CS/programming is limits solely focused on low level, performance oriented domains, programming language theory And type theory. That is not the most marketable skill set, but I love doing it.
mcv 6y ago
I think there's a lot of room for programmers with deep domain knowledge about some topic. If writing software for lawyers or law-related issues, I'm pretty sure experience as a lawyer can be very useful.
- client4 6y ago
  Just interviewing other lawyers for their “if it existed I would buy it” software would show there’s a lot of opportunity. A friend of mine has been looking for a service that emails her whenever a local municipality does something with easements/property access. This actually took me down a long rabbit hole of how local government software is horrible and someone could crush this area — my only concern would be lack of traction as local governments seem to prefer operating in obscurity/making it difficult to hold them accountable.
  - blaser-waffle 6y ago
    Funny, I know a guy doing just that, former roommate He was mostly writing code for things that handle municipal water supplies and other water monitoring stuff. He worked for a code shop that built the original system and after he left he kept doing maintenance work on the side until he went (mostly) full time at it. OTOH, he's basically a one-man show, and has implied that if he had to scale -- e.g. add 3+ people -- then the $$$ wouldn't go as far. By himself it's a decent paycheck, though. The problem is municipalities are all different, with different state/local requirements, and they often don't have the money or operational depth to support deeply customized software. I grew up near a park that had to shutdown for several months because they couldn't get enough funds together to have people mow the lawns; where would they find the money for custom code?
screye 6y ago
I am guessing this is one of the situations where you might need to make that niche for yourself. Take on contracts to do something that is traditionally done with hand -> write scripts to automate it -> take on more contracts. At that point you would probably be paid for 20 people's worth for 20 people's work....but automating it will allow you to pocket all of it due to zero (low) costs. Our startup tried doing this with automated 3D map creation for drone use surveying. It is incredibly easy to undercut traditional competition at a technical level. Convincing corporate to trust in your experiment tho, kinda hard. It is the classic: 'No one has been fired for hiring IBM' conundrum.
anodyne33 6y ago
Have you had any eDiscovery experience in the past? I was an analyst for 15 years and AI is really coming on strong now. I've seen, in my job search, a few places where a JD coupled with a little CS knowledge could be useful. A buddy of mine is a patent attorney and quit his firm job to start his own shop doing natural language processing against the US and foreign patent databases. He didn't get his hands into writing the software but he's had to develop a reasonable understanding to guide his process and sell it.

m0zg 6y ago

If you don't mind me asking, why would one give up a cushy, well paid attorney career and choose software engineering? Software engineering compensation _tops out_ below where an experienced attorney compensation _begins_. The least I've ever paid a lawyer was $250/hr.

bryanrasmussen 6y ago
maybe there are too many lawyers and the field is thus not as well remunerated as you think https://www.thoughtco.com/are-there-too-many-lawyers-4026025 https://www.thoughtco.com/are-there-too-many-lawyers-4026025
- m0zg 6y ago
  $250 is generic "business contract review" lawyer. Not any kind of distinguished legal scholar. And I had to look pretty hard to find a decent one that didn't cost twice that.
austincheney 6y ago
To be fair lawyers are worth more than senior software developers, but not too much more. That $250-$750 per hour is the business rate not the profit that goes to the attorney. If an attorney works at a large firm most of that goes back to the firm. If the attorney goes out of their own they have personal business expenses to account for. As a software developer I bring home more than some attorneys I have met. I am not working a FAANG making buckets of cash either.
swyx 6y ago
IANAL but just to point out a couple obvious points: - the lawyer doesn't receive the full 250, half of it(?) goes to business/partnership - afaik many lawyers under-bill their hours, i'm not sure why (beyond "competition") but it's a common practice - the job itself may not be enjoyable at some point and you may desire more creative pursuits
- JayPeaEm 6y ago

swyx 6y ago

learned to code at 30 here after a previous life in finance. doing well 4 years on. if i can help anyone in this thread just reply!

VamosArgentina 6y ago
Do you code professionally? My gf wants to get a job as a programmer and is about 30 too
- chrshawkes 6y ago
  I learned to code at 28 and have been doing it professionally for 10 years now. Coding is easier than it used to be. I don't think an age limit applies.
  - VamosArgentina 6y ago
    Yeah, I'm not worried about learning to program but about companies not hiring her as a junior/trainee because of lack of experience at her age
    - swyx 6y ago
      30 is still fine, ageism exists but 30 is hardly old
      - ghaff 6y ago
        If someone goes to grad school, especially if they had 2-3 years of full-time work mixed in there, they can easily be pushing 30. I basically did a career change at about that age into the computer field as a product manager.
- swyx 6y ago
  my initial couple jobs were as a software engineer so yes. these days I do a blend of coding and marketing, as a developer advocate at AWS. good luck to your gf, pls feel free to send more qtns I think my email is in my profile.

throwaway883399 6y ago

I'm studying law now and considering this path. I would be really appreciative to hear your advice on moving from law to computer science. If you could send me an email to the address in my profile, I would be very grateful. Thanks!

mathattack 6y ago

Knowing the problems to solve is HUGE. If you know enough programming to identify 10X developers and point them in the right direction, you can create a ton of value.

marlowe221 6y ago

I just did this. I'm 38 and just started my first developer job 3 months ago after practicing law for 13 years and hating it. I started learning JavaScript/HTML/CSS about a year ago. It's the best thing I've ever done for myself and my only regret is not doing it sooner. You can do it!

jaeming 6y ago

I started at 39. I had been looking for a new career to transition from video editing. After the third time my employer restructured my role, I took a voluntary redundancy (basically volunteering to be laid-off) and started programming full-time. I did an online bootcamp and never looked back. Five years later I'm a Senior Software Engineer, and hoping to upgrade to principle engineer by end of the year. Sometimes I suddenly feel like a fraud, especially when I realize I'm in a meeting where everyone in the room has a CS degree or higher, but overall I feel like I bring a lot of value to what we do and most of all, I really love doing it. I remember anonymously asking on Quora if people thought I was too old to learn how to program. The amount of support and stories that were shared with me were positively overwhelming. Probably the best answer I received was, "do you enjoy doing this thing?, if so, the answer is you should just do it."

hideo 6y ago
> ...Sometimes I suddenly feel like a fraud... I feel this way sometimes too, despite having a traditional CS degree and being in the software industry my entire professional life. Apparently impostor syndrome is more common than we think. Personally I've come to believe there are very few people who "fit like a glove", and everyone else has varying degrees of this. Edit: On rereading this it might appear that I am trying to diminish/dismiss your experiences. I apologize if it came across that way - my intention was more to share that I've heard this same sentiment for different reasons from many different people.
- mellavora 6y ago
  "feeling like a fraud" is pretty common, it is formally called "imposter syndrome". It is usually just your mind playing tricks on you; there is a delta between your internal picture of what a "real" programmer (or senior manager, or whatever position) looks like and your internal image of yourself. One solution is to duck type yourself until the feeling goes away. Another is to start to recognize that some of your internal definitions might not be shared by others. I'll leave it as homework to decide which internal definitions matter the most here.
FpUser 6y ago

tannhauser23 6y ago

Hey same here! Switched from law to programming in my mid 30s as well. Never looked back!

Reedx 6y ago

> I like to think it's an opportunity. If you're able to combine domain expertise from your first career with a solid grasp of CS fundamentals and a good day-to-day working knowledge of your toolchain, that can make you a pretty rare interdisciplinary candidate. Perhaps that then informs how you market yourself and to whom. Indeed, you're in the best position to solve attorney problems with programming. But another approach to consider is augmenting or skipping the candidate part and build it yourself. Identity a problem you had, solve it and sell the solution/tool to other attorneys. Even if the selling part doesn't do well enough, you'll learn a lot and have a valuable resume booster.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]