Ask HN: Starting a Career in Programming at 61?

It's great that he is still up for working!

At risk of getting flamed...

It's tricky I think because even if he can learn to program to a suitable standard, I think the reality will be that people will see him as a "junior" but you will have a different working dynamic since it is easier for an e.g. 30 year old to coach someone who is younger if they are doing it wrong but could be tricky trying to coach an older person unless they have genuine humility, otherwise your dad might feel patronised or be offended by some youngster without the experience to coach well.

Another avenue, if it is just the industry he likes rather than programming specifically, he could probably get more distance by utilising his exec skills to do a technical management role like Product Manager, Product Owner or Project Manager. He could then get as much exposure to the programming as he wants without needing to produce as much of it as would be expected of a dev.

Don't know, just thinking out loud.

Some anecdotes:

- One time I posted on HN that I am willing to tutor people from Gaza for free (am Israeli). Got contacted by a Nigerian man (over 50+ years) instead. He successfully did FCC and a few other courses and got a job (with minimal mentoring) in the field.

- One time I had a student at a program I volunteer in for a minority group who was almost 70, they successfully completed the program and got a job.

- I've met plenty of 50 year olds transitioning to coding from other engineering gigs (like rail engineering) when they immigrated - my wife's family for example has several examples of people doing that.

Agism is real, there is discrimination but sharp minds who work hard and are willing to start at a junior's salary and at the same conditions as 20 year olds (long'ish hours) find jobs - though that's anecdotal and based on my experienced.

I say: if your father is passionate go for it. Don't forget you're on HN and you should consider entrepreneurial routes like:

- Do any of his old employers need a website or app?

- What about local businesses or programs?

I got most of my early experience building and selling indie (flash) games and working on projects (flash game sites and socket servers mostly) until I was "hireable". The other gigs I got were all websites and apps for family friends and neighbors to get experience (I got paid for whole websites less than I charge for a single hour of consulting today lol - it was totally worth it).

Everything is possible of course.

Will he, an executive before, have the required patience and humility to start at the bottom rung again, to e.g. step into a company with 20-year olds that know more than he does? 20-year olds that may not always be as kind as he would like them to be?

If I were in his shoes my answer would be no.

But the solution I would consider: have him build his own product.

He's of a certain age, so he probably has experience to areas that us younger folk have no idea about. Is getting medication a pain? Is there an app he'd wish he had on his phone or on the web to help him with various activities? Something friends of his age would like? Or something he could build for the children of older parents that could help them out?

If you're saying that he used to be an executive, I imagine by this point he's got enough savings to be comfortably retired. So, he can spend some time learning ruby on rails and pick up some front end stuff and start hacking away at a product he would like to see in the world.

Expose it publicly (the "hey I'm 61 and here's my side project" is bound to get a lot of clicks) and then go from there.

But that's what I would recommend. I wouldn't necessarily recommend he learn a stack and apply for jobs.

As a 61-year-old with almost 50 years of programming experience who recently got a new job, I can testify how almost no one wants to hear from an old person. I program for fun, too, and could be doing that full-time if I weren't working.

I'm only employed now because I'm proficient in an older language (APL). Never mind my decades of experience in many other languages and extensive domain knowledge in finance, not that I'm bitter or anything.

I definitely believe it is possible to learn programming at the age of 61. Certainly not for everyone - some people are not the programmer-type at any age. But if the curiousity and the will are there and the brain is still working fine - yes, definitely!

I learned Rust at age 55.

But! Programming is not only about learning a language. There is this huge background of methods, practices, technologies (network/ip/socket, data formats, databases, unicode, regular expressions, xml/xsl, markup languuages), Operating Systems, procedures (CI, VC...) and so forth. This vast amount of knowledge is gained by experience over decades. The young programmer does not have the experience either, but has enough time ahead to become a senior eventually. It will be very difficult to reach a senior level when starting at 50 or 60 - there is simply not enough time to catch up. I started programming at age 16, btw.

So I would definitely let him dive into programming just to see how it goes and support him on this challenge. It will also serve mental fitness in high ages. Getting into programming at that age, with the need to make a living from it and no plan B - I consider this too risky!!

First off, has your dad considered hiring himself out as a coach to younger CEO's, CCO's and CFO's? That would be fairly easy money and it is a market where gray hair is an asset, and not a detractor.

That said: being a bit older probably gives him a fairly unique perspective on many of the things younger devs might not even realize can be an issue, and if he were to aim for something that allows his age to work for him by strong association with the demographic that that particular software targets then it could work out well, assuming he has an aptitude for programming.

Excel-fu may well be a stronger card than any of the regular application programming languages if he wants results, it may well be that something like 'R' would be well within his comfort zone.

Best of luck, and props to your dad for even considering this!

Personal anecdote…

My father worked into his 80s and I saw firsthand how once he hit 60 years old how much harder it was for him to land a new job. As such, I’ve always gone out of my way to ensure such folks get a fair shot in my ~25 years of being a people manager.

And every time I’ve hired someone 60+, even if they are new/junior for the role - it’s worked out in spades.

The unique perspective, what’s seems like a “new” problem is often an already solved problem from decades ago, just the wealth of knowledge … and again, this surprising still applies even if the individual is junior in their experience.

What’s best is the work ethic & respect. It’s sad but true, that individual knows you could have easily hired a 20 year old kid but didn’t. And the thanks, trust and respect you immediately gain with them often translates into them becoming a dedicate individual who goes above and beyond in their job.

So just saying, please actively give these folks their fair shot and not just hire the new kid straight out of college.

And that 61 year old might be you some day.

I am almost his age and despite decades of professional experience I am unable to get a job.

Of course, its likely that I'm doing something else wrong as well.

> As he grows older, he has noticed it becomes increasingly difficult to find work

Programming/software dev is not a field I would choose if I were trying to avoid age discrimination. It can be hard enough for 61 year olds who have been in the field for 35 years and have all that experience to find work.

I'd encourage him to do it as a hobby, but don't get his hopes up about being able to find steady work doing it.

I'm a 69 year old who made a conscious decision 12 years back to leave sales and management and return to my technical roots. Now I'm in a solution architect role where I'm expected to constantly stay abreast of the latest technologies. The pay is good. I don't have to do much coding, but I do some anyway to keep my hand in.

My advice to your Dad is to aim for a job in consulting and analysis rather than coding. Get some certifications in a SaaS platform like Dynamics or Salesforce or whatever. That way he can leverage his business experience and people skills. I've found that people who combine experience with solid knowledge of a software platform get quite a lot of interesting job offers, even if they are older. If he later finds out he has an aptitude and interest in development then he can go down that path after he has mastered the functional stuff.

With all his expertise, he can definitely bring a lot to the table being a consultant or mentor to all kinds of businesses.

Regarding programming, it depends if he just wants to work or work to earn money.

If the former, he could look at OSS projects that interest him, there are so many! He could make meaningful contributions (for the project and for him)!

If the latter, he can definitely give it a go but maybe not get his hopes up too much. He could start his own startup/blog/company though which might not be a bad alternative to paid work.

Also he could look at the no-code tools which would allow him to build stuff quicker than learning to program. It would probably be a step up from Excel already and he could see if he likes it and wants to dive deeper (some contractors are specialized in building stuff on top of no-code tools)

Anyhow, good on him to want a career change at 60+, I wish him all the best!

> he has worked as an executive at multiple companies in the past decades (CEO, CCO, CFO). As he grows older, he has noticed it becomes increasingly difficult to find work, even though he would love to continue working for the years to come.

Finding a business position that's a good fit for him would be a much easier way to stay employed until retirement than switching to programming.

Encourage him to take some classes online. If he has fun and then says he wants to be a professional programmer, your role is to honor and support that choice. Help him figure out which tools can be learned quickly and he can get paid for. Let him know it's okay to be slow. Help him when he's frustrated. Consider the possibility he may be using this as a way to know more about you.

Good luck to him and to you. He seems like a cool dude.

I would suggest technical recruiting, you can do that until an advanced age, and it can even be a benefit to attracting senior level people as a recruiter.

My dad did similar, after going back to school in his mid 50s and getting a CS/cybersecurity degree, he tried the engineering side for a bit but ultimately went into technical recruiting for a big enterprise, which is a six figure position.

My advice would be for him to identify specific applications of programming that interest him and then focus on identifying the skills he'd need to develop expertise.

One approach would be product or industry specific. Maybe he'e really intrigued by applications of GIS and that could lead to exploring specific companies in that space and the talent they need.

Another would be open source. Maybe he's really interested in databases and could dive deep into that part of open source and find out what things he wants to do.

No guarantees with either route, but the older you get, the worse the odds are if you are just a person with programming ability like many others.

Advise him to prepare a budget to get started with a JetBrains All product pack subscription, and subscriptions to some ebook services for reference material and good quality source material.

Make sure the machine and monitors don’t become a reason to stop the process of learning and doing.

Approach this as a series of goals and don’t expect overnight miracles.

Make copious notes. It could be useful to focus on programming for a particular field or set of applications, if he has core knowledge. For example, tools that could have helped him in his previous roles. Don’t worry if these aren’t original nor large.

Be organized but don’t let the organizing obscure the hands-on coding and use of the tools.

Find sympathetic people and groups, for support, mentoring, ideas, and reference. I suspect that he has developed good strategies for networking and communicating with people and groups. Now is the time to take advantage of those skills.

I know that he knows that he doesn’t feel like he’s 61 and that’s important. In my experience the roadblocks are erected by reacting to other peoples inevitable ageism. Ageism is real. But it’s not going away, so work around it and work with it.

Having groups to work with, and support each other helps immensely. So, approach programming as a member of a group and don’t try to do everything himself.

Languages and platforms? That’s a different discussion, and I’ll avoid the inevitable arguments in this open forum.

And document the process and journey. Make the documentation process part of the journey too, of course, and use the IDE and YouTrack to help manage this process too. Other people will want to know about these experiences.

>As he grows older, he has noticed it becomes increasingly difficult to find work

Are you sure that is the right causal relationship here? My gut feeling would be that it has at least in part to do with the C* level roles. McD cashier jobs are a dime a dozen and rapidly hire and fire. C* level tends to be slower and more scarce just by nature.

> I think he feels inspired by seeing me thrive as a contractor,

If he is somewhat stable financially he might do better as a finance/PM/operational consultant. That lets him leverage years of experience as credibility. That will play much better than a 61 y/o with a coding bootcamp or similar.

>He learned to program when he was a student,

My dad was in a similar position - except he was a professional programmer for years. After a long stint in management layer he found he couldn't get back into the tech market. Instead project management type roles went better

Does it make sense for him to try and become a professional programmer. No. Not at all.

However, using programming tools and concepts to provide more value than his younger Excel-munging peers. Definitely, and will help him figure out what he is good at.

Subscribe to Datacamp and start learning python. Get some of those Excel spreadsheets that executives like to drown each other with and start doing some business analysis on them in jupyter notebooks. He can definitely find an edge doing financial analytics, financial forensics, that sort of thing.

We (programmers) would be shocked at how bad those business spreadsheets are. He can use his experience, and desire to learn, to find plenty of work munging executive financial and other data using programmers tools.

I am almost the age of your dad and I have been a professional software engineer since 1986. In the first years I worked with Pascal (VAX-Pascal and Turbo-Pascal.) From 1990, I mostly used C and C++. The last two years I have been working with C#. Now that I am getting a bit older, I noticed that it takes me more time to get know a developing environment and all the libraries/packages that go with it. It is a big leap from knowing how to develop an excel sheet to, for example, develop a website with a database backend. I am always happy to have younger colleagues who are good at setting-up a development environment. Also being an efficient software developer is much more than knowing how to program.

I had a colleague in a previous job who was actually employed as a trainer but picked up a lot of Excel VBA stuff that was "beneath" the actual development team and got so good at it he landed a pretty decent role at another company just working in Excel.

He was late 60s.

If he's serious about starting a new career he needs to be willing to swallow a bit of his pride, but starting as a test engineer is a great way to get a foot in the industry from what I've seen and from who I've mentored.

Show him Cypress or your preferred choice for integration testing and see if writing simple integration tests piques his interest. It's close enough to engineering that he should get a feel for what the job is like while being "relatively" easy to learn in a few weeks.

If I were you, I would ask him to study up and then give him parts of my projects(you said you're a contractor) and we can see if it works out or not. If it does in a couple of years or four he can be a contractor himself under your mentorship.

Maybe thats what he's asking anyway ;)

There is being a "professional programmer" who mostly builds large systems that put other people's expertise to work.

Even before the microcomputer revolution, back in the dawn of timesharing, there have also been "non-professional programmers" who write software to put wheels on their scientific, engineering, business, literary, accounting, medical, mathematical, artistic or whatever skills they have.

To be a professional programmer you're really going to have to learn how to whip other people's bad conceptual models into shape, track down difficult bugs, not use an O(N^2) algorithm when an O(N) algorithm is available and N is large, understand the difference between C++ compilers and whatever details turn up to be relevant in a particular case. (e.g. You're never going to know all of these things but you have to find out the ones that are relevant to your project!)

The non-professional programmer is going to be more focused on the problem domain even though they still sometimes might need to figure out something technically hard to make their system work.

I think the only way in that he's got a shot at is if he can leverage some piece of huge domain knowledge that he can bring to the table. At 61, i'm sure he can, but it's selling that that'll be the challenge.

Elevator pitch: "i've spent X years doing <highly specific business thing Y that everyone does in excel>, but i have a better way because it <1, 2,3>"

2 things: age & language

1 - age

> As he grows older, he has noticed it becomes increasingly difficult to find work, even though he would love to continue working for the years to come.

There’s a significant age bias in the tech community that might be hard to overcome.

He is in a protected age class though: https://www.eeoc.gov/age-discrimination

Just make sure he knows his rights during the hiring process that it’s not acceptable for a company to not hire him based on age.

2 - language

Learning a new modern language like Node/JS will be a brutal race to the bottom in a highly competitive marketplace.

However there are some jobs that pay great money to folks who know older languages like COBOL, Perl, etc., maintaining old systems. And I’m guessing he’ll find the work and coworkers more relatable. These jobs are just much more scarce.

A question he might get from having an impressive C-suite resume and applying for programming jobs is: why? So just be prepared to answer that.

And probably have him build one or two personal projects so he can make sure he likes the process and has something to showcase.

Good luck!

"I think he feels inspired by seeing me thrive as a contractor, with access to a global marketplace and seemingly endless working opportunities."

Well there you go, teach him to code and then get some contracts that you can give him some work from so he can get his feet wet and some experience under his belt to increase his chances if he decides to look for a job or go out on his own.

I used to teach software development at a part-time bootcamp. The part-time program was especially interesting because it tended to attract an older crowd, people with families and full-time jobs.

I don't know if I ever had students in their 60s, but I'm pretty sure I had students in their 50s (I don't know their birthdates so I'm really just guessing when it comes to age).

On average, it was definitely harder for the older students to find work, but it's absolutely possible. Some companies will really appreciate having people with more life experience, more maturity.

I think the first step would be to see if your dad actually enjoys doing software development. Lots of people just hate it. Doing some beginner JavaScript or Python tutorials could be a good place to start. If it sparks excitement, I think he should absolutely consider doing a bootcamp or similar program.

I think it's an uphill climb, but if he enjoys doing it and he doesn't give up easily, I'm confident it could be a viable path for him.

I'm in the same boat. Really hard to find work despite 25 years of experience in software design and production for some of the worlds biggest companies. Everyone just wants labor, programmers, project managers or producers it seems. Can't find anything at my actual experience level. Lots of IT and programming jobs (all requiring X certification and X number of years experience in X industry with X language blah blah cloud this Salesforce that. It's all just software development in my experience and just more and more platforms. The same skills apply and picking up new software and platforms is trivial compared to say, learning and mastering a language as a programmer. I'm about ready to buy a van to live in by the river until I die. I just want to apply my experience as a leader of people who aren't really preparing the company or the employees for the future, but everything seems to be gig or contract work.

I would rather think hard about all possible easier pivots before thinking about a whole new career because I feel stuck. If your father were pushed by his passion for programming, then I could advise differently, but that does not seem the case.

Can't you both think about creative ways to leverage his decades of experience as a top manager? Could it be that he is stuck in an employee's mindset and that's the true differentiator against your success? If so, why not help him in switching mindset instead?

If everything else fails, then - sure! - why not go for the programming route... Becoming proficient at programming takes lots of time, but he would have the advantage of your mentorship. And as for our industry's ageism, screw it! I would just team up, be the "young face" of our duo and customers would be none the wiser about 50% of their software being written by a geezer. Oh, well... that's what I would if I were young.

Good luck ;-)

There's probably a huge demand for people with his business skillset honestly. If he finds the right niche (building tooling for COOS/CFOS), they'd probably prefer talking to someone who understands their domain and can translate it into code rather than talking to some 'geek' who knows mainly computers.

Just wanted to say thanks to you all! My dad was incredibly happy with your feedback and ideas. I don't think he is going to make the jump after all, and it I trust things are going to end up well one way or another.

As a nice side note, my family followed this thread with great enthusiasm and I am proud that they get to see the best of HN!

With that sort of executive experience becoming a “straight” programmer seems like a bit of a waste. Much better to pick up skills that augment his experience than to make a full pivot. Some form of consulting makes more sense in my head. There remain many problems for many businesses that can be solved by fairly simple automation or low end data science/analytics, but the hard part is identifying the problem and mapping to a solution.

Others have suggested various data science programs. To that I’d add picking up basic app design/prototyping skills and a low code/no code framework like PowerApps or going deep on an extensible platform he’s familiar with like SalesForce or SAP.

Platforms like that can enable him solve the business problems he’s uniquely suited to identify and understand, rather than competing with a 38 year old with 20 years of experience trying to solve obtuse technical issues.

My dad just took a new .net dev contract, he’s 75 , he’d retired then decided to take another short term contract, he’s been taking six month contracts then a few months off for a few years now. He’s been a long term dev but much of the tech he uses now he’s learned since the age of 61. We’re in Australia for context

I am now 66 and continuing to work as an engineer in a field not too far removed from a programming career. I have had the same inclination as your father and I hope he is successful. Pre-pandemic I would attend meetups in town, specifically Python related. We often had in attendance recruiters from companies with open positions. I talked to them and often they openly invited me join, even though I would have been entry level. It appears to me that there are more programming jobs than there are programmers and that some companies will take the chance on my age group. There are also companies where programmers are valued not just for their programming experience, but also for other skills they bring to the table. So, even though I have not made the transition, I think it can be done.

It's not impossible, but I wouldn't say it's worth it. From my experience, there is more ageism in programming than there is in management so it would be even more difficult to find work, especially without prior experience.

It’s definitely possible to do, but being a junior dev in his early 60s after being a C-level executive for years is likely to be a tough transition mentally.

If he hasn’t wanted to program before now, and is primarily doing it because he’s seeing ageism in executive roles, I would recommend against this path (pretty strongly).

If he’s always been interested in it, dabbled in and enjoyed perfecting Excel workbooks and now wants to make the jump, that’s a different story.

In the former case, keep being an executive, especially if he’s got a track record of leading companies that are generally well-regarded. Even with ageism, I think he’ll find that easier and likely more rewarding.

I wasn't planning on posting, lots of great answers already in the thread, but has he considered learning Oracle DB administration, the various admin tools, and PL/SQL programming.

There is a lot of work out there managing Oracle installs, populating databases, and all the other duties associated with running Oracle instances.

There's plenty of scope for programming, and the work should be more regular hours and less stressful on the whole than an entry-level programming job.

Additionally, it should be reasonably easy to break into the field via the various certifications, and the tools and DB itself are accessible for self-directed learning.

I don't think it's vastly different from someone younger who wanted to shift career into tech without previous experience.

I would recommend him taking one or a few bootcamp classes to bring him up to speed, maybe focus on one area in particular (e.g. web development) then find a smaller dev shop where he could come in and support in a junior support role to start with and then take it from there. Maybe develop a few pet projects to build his portfolio in parallel.

It's not impossible but maybe manage his expectations a little bit that he's going to have to start more or less from scratch.

Hi! So I'm almost your dad's age, and I totally get his desire not to become irrelevant to the world of work, especially after such an impressive career. I satisfied that desire by diving deep into Web3, and mounting a project to sell NFTs of Nirvana from images I had shot in 1991. (Yes, the band members + Frances Bean Cobain were on board, as long as I donated half the proceeds to charity, but their lawyers didn't want me to involve them publicly.) I joined some DAOs and am having fun hanging out in Web3 communities. This is a way that you can have a hobby that feels as satisfying as an impressive career, since the Web3 space is so wide open, and there's so many ways to make a meaningful contribution. Another thing your dad can do (without making a years-long commitment to learn programming) is to get a certificate in cybersecurity. My husband is in cybersecurity, and though some of it is technical, most of the work is really about governance, something your Dad is obviously good at. Typically when there's a lapse in cybersecurity, it's due to a failure of good governance at the company. There is a huge need right now for those who understand traditional industry AND cybersecurity, and your dad might be able to get involved in the fight to shore up our nation's infrastructure against the (probably) coming Russian incursions. Good luck to him. I get his feeling of casting about and being lost because younger people are getting all the interesting jobs.

For a moment, take away the fact that this is your dad. Imagine a friend of yours with a background of "well, I took CS101 as a freshman" wanted to go into business with you. The pitch is that you use your experience and business contacts from being a thriving contactor in order to find and make deals and then you give the work to your friend to program the implementation. What sort of knowledge gap would exist between "learned the basics n years ago" and "someone you'd feel comfortable outsourcing work to in your real, actual professional life"?

Spell out everything that your hypothetical friend would have to go and learn for you to feel comfortable giving him even the most junior-level coding responsibilities or vouching for him as a "yeah, this guy can do the job" to a professional contact of yours. Write it all down, show it to your dad, and spell out the effort involved. That's what he's looking at learning in order to be taken seriously in the marketplace.

(I'd venture that some kind of consulting/contracting is what he'd wind up doing, both because I don't think many companies would take a resume like his seriously for a junior developer position and also because I don't think someone who's been at the top of the org chart would tolerate going to the bottom of the org chart for very long.)