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Tech is a rare industry where you can easily pivot into it later in your career, start at an entry level position, work your way very high up the ladder and get

• JKCalhoun 3y ago
  > I know folks without a college degree that started as tech support reps I know a few as well ... but that was decade(s) ago. I'm not sure the industry is still as hurdle-able as it once was.
  • AdamN 3y ago
    Yeah I think the drawbridge is getting pulled up on that one. This won't be as common in the future and from the other side we're at the point where most new hires went to college to get a degree specifically to get a tech job. This creates another problem where the new crop isn't curious about tech for it's own sake - it's just a respectable career option :-/
    • HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
      > This creates another problem where the new crop isn't curious about tech for it's own sake This is not a problem and has never been a problem. Some of the best developers that I've worked with have absolutely no interest in turning on a computer when they leave work.
  • triihart 3y ago
    I know a guy who started as Java developer in some entrylevel company. No education, on previous job he used to drive trucks. He already has more job-specific knowledge than I do, though lacks some fundamentals.
    • zx8080 3y ago
      Lacking fundamentals is relatively not trivial to catch during an interview process.
  • Tiktaalik 3y ago
    This still exists in the games industry, where you can start in QA and move to design or production. I've seen it many times and continue to see it.
  • filoleg 3y ago
    I know someone who was working an amazon warehouse job (as a regular entry-level warehouse worker, not as a manager or anything like that), did the internal amazon "learn to be an swe" training program (forgot the actual name, but iirc it is a 6-9 months long program) right before covid, and then converted to a SWE through that program. Currently, she is still employed as a SWE and makes typical amazon SWE salary rates (significantly above $150k). No tech background whatsoever. This is still definitely possible, with a caveat that it just might not be as doable right at this specific point in time (given layoff waves and recession and all).
• nytesky 3y ago
  Does that apply to older workers?
  • blagie 3y ago
    No. Everyone I've met who learned how to program after e.g. age 40, they had a hard time. There's a certain mental agility which comes with youth which makes for good coders. I haven't met anyone who learned to program late who had the same. Over time, it gets replaced with depth, maturity, and experience, so people who start in tech do okay older. However, people who come in late have neither of those. Everyone I've seen try to make the hop late-career felt clumsy at programming, and at the same time, inexperienced. It wasn't a failure due to age discrimination, although goodness knows that exists too. It was a failure due to simply not being able to become any good. This isn't to say it's not worth doing, especially for people with a different prior skill set. An experienced teacher who learns just a little bit of programming can become awesome at ed-tech. An experienced biologist who learns a little bit of biology can do product work or manage a team of programmers for a biotech. Virtually any discipline with a little bit of programming becomes an awesome combo.
• sage76 3y ago
  > Tech is a rare industry where you can easily pivot into it later in your career Everyone I know who is older and already in the industry, is having a bad time trying to change jobs.
  • iaseiadit 3y ago
    I work for a FAANG, and I don’t know of a single IC here that was hired in their 40s or older. Almost everyone we’ve hired is in their 20s, with a handful in their early 30s. As a 40+ IC, I’m praying I don’t get laid off because it looks rough for older workers.
    • borroka 3y ago
      I got hired by a FAANG when I was 38, but I was definitely an outlier (although someone older than me got hired a few months after me, both as IC's). Looking back, I was lucky to hop on one of the very last trains leaving the station. If I get fired or laid off, I will probably try to open a restaurant instead of looking for another tech job.
    • mrguyorama 3y ago
      Isn't that more to do with the fact that FAANG often hires straight out of college so they can pay you $80k a year for a degree from a top university and you won't realize you are getting shafted because you are a dumb kid?
      • GreedClarifies 3y ago
        FAANG is the best job a person can get out of college. The pay and benefits far outstrip what one can get from startups.
    • filoleg 3y ago
      Since we go for anecdata - I work for a FAANG, and I am the youngest person on my team in my late 20s. Half the team is above 40, the other half is above 30. Some of the people from both age groups were hired after I got hired (in the past 2 years).
• giantg2 3y ago
  "Easily" my ass. "The industry favors eager people who are hungry to continually learn and grow. While there can be short term bumps in the road, those that fit these characteristics have and will continue to do extremely well." That wasn't my experience. The people you describe making so much money are statistical outliers who got lucky. I'd love to live in whatever bubble you do. All I'd have to do to make stupid level of money is be myself (enjoy learning and growing) and it would easily happen...
  • amusedcyclist 3y ago
    When people say "easily", they don't mean "everybody gets to it". They mean "The chances are better than elsewhere". Which is true. And also fyi if you actually enjoy learning and growing you wouldn't sound so bitter about not making stupid amounts of money
    • giantg2 3y ago
      Are the chances better than elsewhere? It seems sales, real estate, etc would be the "easier" place to make money as there's even less involved in barriers to entry. "And also fyi if you actually enjoy learning and growing you wouldn't sound so bitter about not making stupid amounts of money" FYI these aren't mutually exclusive. You can enjoy learning and growing while being bitter about getting screwed over. And it's not bitter to point out to other people that initial comment about just learning and growing being enough to easily reach top 5% income is a lie.
  • evilduck 3y ago
    Relative to other fields. Compare it to wanting to switch careers into the military, plumbing, captaining a boat, or becoming a doctor or lawyer or civil engineer after the age of 40. Technology has no age limits, educational requirements, no government enforced credentials or inspections required, no apprenticeship or residency requirements, no significant union presence, no commonality for time in title, no professional tests to pass, and a trivially small tool investment cost. You can plausibly learn the craft to an employable level with just internet access, a couple hundred bucks in computer hardware, an insatiable amount of curiosity and desire to build things and the right personality match against the interview team. It's not a guarantee but the barriers to entry are laughably nonexistent compared to many careers.
• unionemployee 3y ago
  pivot into it later in your career How "later"? Age discrimination seems somewhat problematic in tech. Edit: Two other "old" replies pop up at the same time.
  • lisasays 3y ago
    Age discrimination seems somewhat problematic in tech. It was supposed to be a happy, feel-good article. Don't let messy reality intrude.
• greenthrow 3y ago
  This isn't really true for most people. Sure if you're already at one of the big companies they provide means for shifting your career. But most people aren't fortunate enough to work at one of those places, so changing careers can be much more challenging. You often need someone to take a chance on you or you need to take a more entry level position and the pay cut that comes with it.
• KKKKkkkk1 3y ago
  Tech is a rare industry where you can easily pivot into it later in your career, start at an entry level position, work your way very high up the ladder and get paid very well along the way. That's not likely to be possible anymore. Microsoft's net income went 9x in the last two decades. Apple's 475x. I don't think this kind of growth is going to continue.
  • hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
    Just because the outsized equity awards are likely a thing of the past doesn't discount anything from the sentence you quoted. I've seen it time and time again, what the tech industry really craves is very detail oriented people who can communicate and who are proactive (i.e., if they see that something has fallen on the floor, they pick it up, they don't just assume someone else will). That said, as easy as it is to conceptualize those qualities, they are quite rare in my experience. Can't say how, as a software engineer, it's been extremely disappointing to see so many product managers who don't seem to understand that having a detailed knowledge of their product at the lowest levels is a requirement for the job.
• mixmastamyk 3y ago
  You can work your way up in most businesses or start your own once you hit the glass ceiling of credentialism. A tech job may speed that up by paying more, and having lots of docs to choose from, but it is a similar mechanism.
• dennis_jeeves1 3y ago
  This is a bot or something, trying to garner attention. Few people will believe you, sir.
• sjducb 3y ago
  I'm amazed by the negativity in the replies to this post. I transitioned into programming as an older worker and it was really easy. It's much easier to be a successful programmer than a successful scientist. Also I don't think that ageism in tech is a thing. The reason that there are very few older workers is because the number of jobs is increasing exponentially (doubling every 5 years since the 60s). All of those new jobs have to be filled with inexperienced people who are mostly young.
  • mycall 3y ago
    One thing is for sure. Having a scientist background will make you a better programmer.
• linkjuice4all 3y ago
  Hey I resemble that remark! But seriously - I learned HTML on AOL when I was 13 and dropped out of community college (where they were teaching Java and assembly). I’m glad I had the very basic post-high school experience but much of what I know I was self taught as the technology came out. I’m no electrical engineer and while I have a basic understanding of how transformers work I’m not about to revolutionize AI. That being said I’ve been successful enough without incurring the debt of a bachelors degree while still making a lower (for HN) 6 figure salary. Cost of entry is lower for tech (compared to some of the other fields mentioned here) and I’ve been able to pivot/expand into different areas within tech by continuing to teach myself with real world experiences. It’s hard to let some rando on the street revolutionize healthcare/finance/whatever “established” system because they don’t get rebuilt every ~5 years.