> I'm under the impression that the industry needs to learn to treat amateurs as amateurs regardless of their age. It feels like I'm not allowed to be an amateu

> I'm under the impression that the industry needs to learn to treat amateurs as amateurs regardless of their age. It feels like I'm not allowed to be an amateur professional simply because I'm over 30 years old. To be clear: Someone using only your age to discriminate is not okay and I’m not suggesting it is. However, reading the hints in your post (“amateur professional” and referring to a manager from another field) suggests that this is more of a recent career change for you. When changing careers, it’s important to be able to demonstrate that you’ve accomplished things and gained experience in your prior field. If it looks like a complete career reset and you can’t really explain what you’ve learned in your career to date that makes you a better hire than a fresh graduate with similar experience, why would the hiring manager assume you’ll thrive in your new career path any better than your old one? > "why hire you over a younger graduate?" Not very tactful, but this should be a softball question for you: They’re asking you to explain how your prior career experience, even if not in programming, makes you a good choice. Think of what you’ve learned and accomplished and explain how it makes you the more mature employee and team member. If you can’t think of anything, that makes you more of a liability for them because even average new grads can accumulate some degree of accomplishment and achievement. > I had my former manager from a completely unrelated field introduce me to someone looking for web developers, and that didn't worked out because they wanted me to learn their stack and build an assignment within a week, which failed gloriously. Being able to do a basic assignment is table stakes when it comes to getting jobs with a non-traditional background, like it or not. You can’t win them all, but I’d suggest working on getting to a point where you can demonstrate your skills quickly to new employers.