to retrain as a web developer at 50?

[beastlyslumber]

Inspired by another thread in which there's lots of discussion about how in-demand developers are at the moment, I started doing a little research to see if it's the sort of thing I might be interested in, and I am! But I'm 50, have worked in education for most of my career and I'm worried about how long the training might take and what my prospects might be as an older female in this field. Can anyone advise?

@Flatbrokefornow

See this what worries me. Things that seem to be good to be true invariably are in my experience (excuse my pessimism. A shit ton of crap has hit me in the last few years, and has rather taken the shine off my optimism!)

I mean, why isn’t everyone doing it?

Also, it looks like Northcoders do funded 13 week bootcamps for people in my area. Anyone got any experience of their courses to share?

It’s not actually that easy. There’s a big diversity push leading to lots of female hiring. Once in, people realise :

1. How difficult industrial programming is
2. The inordinate amount of time required for competence ( I had no life when I started in the first two years)
3. The churn rate (like suddenly being made redundant due to offshoring)

As a result the majority of these people leave, for adjacent jobs like project management, UX design, etc. It’s still a good outcome.

GOOD programmers are still difficult to find , despite the increasing number of applications. A lot of people can pull together a basic website. As PP said if you have an eye for design you don’t need to be technically skilled. But to write something resilient, accounting for errors, etc etc is hard.

There’s also survivorship bias. You’ll always here from people the people who made it, and are happily freelancing or whatever. Someone who failed, or hates programming isn’t going to happily advertise it. Even on an anonymous forum.

I always tell people to TRY. They have nothing to lose. And many jobs like data analyst etc benefit from a bit of SQL and Python. They’re not programmers but still make decent money.

@Flatbrokefornow

See this what worries me. Things that seem to be good to be true invariably are in my experience (excuse my pessimism. A shit ton of crap has hit me in the last few years, and has rather taken the shine off my optimism!)

I mean, why isn’t everyone doing it?

Also, it looks like Northcoders do funded 13 week bootcamps for people in my area. Anyone got any experience of their courses to share?

It’s not easy. I’d say you need a very logical, focused mind to be a programmer. If you were good at maths and solving equations you will probably have the right brain for programming.

I'm 54 and I have my own web development company. There's so many great suggestions here.

Any progress, op?

I've not got much further. Still working through the freecodecamp lessons. I feel like I can do it/work it out, but don't have much sense of the bigger picture, or the underlying sense of it.

I'm very keen to retrain into something tech-y but maybe web development isn't the thing for me. I'm creative, good communication skills, good at teaching/training, organised, logical... I'm not a mathmo, though.

I think maybe I need some kind of career coaching!

Hi op.thanks to your thread I've started learning wed development. I know nothing about coding but was interested in it after reading everyone's comments. I've visited all the websites that was suggested on here for you and the one I found the most useful was #100devs.

Leon Noel is the teacher and he's currently doing a 30 weeks free software engineering course. I'm way behind everyone but there's a huge community on discord, some are new like me and some not.

I think you should give his course a go. I find it easy to follow and he's such a great teacher. The discord community is great too, there's always someone there to answer your questions.

leonnoel.com/100devs/

So those who know about databases...

I have done a workshop on MariaDB, understand map reduce, etc , relational databases. Currently looking at MySQL but I understand Maria is the same structure.

What else?

Thanks to this thread I'm starting the Python and Apps course on code first girls (funded by GCHQ) on Thursday.

@SenoraMiasma

So those who know about databases...

I have done a workshop on MariaDB, understand map reduce, etc , relational databases. Currently looking at MySQL but I understand Maria is the same structure.

What else?

Don't bother with learning different flavours of the same thing (MariaDB, MySQL, etc etc ) that's when you're more epxerienced. Choose one relational db, and one non-relational (I recommend MongoDB). Then go forth and engineer.

Get a big dataset (OpenData, Kaggle, there's loads of them). Find one that piques your interest.
Download the relational database software, start playing around with the data. Try to answer some questions (e.g. if you downloaded a crime database.. which area has the highest rates? Can you link this to employment/Index of Deprivation data? etc)

After you have done everything to your heart's content go and do this again with a non-relational database

You can also work with schemas etc for example below, search 'SQL project' or 'database project' ideas
www.lovelycoding.org/database-project-ideas/
www.interviewbit.com/blog/sql-projects/

If you wanna be database admin:
roadmap.sh/postgresql-dba

Also to all self-learner I highly recommend THIS WEBSITE
roadmap.sh/

Veyr accurate lists all the key skills you need to know for each tech position, currently following myself

@beastlyslumber

I've not got much further. Still working through the freecodecamp lessons. I feel like I can do it/work it out, but don't have much sense of the bigger picture, or the underlying sense of it.

I'm very keen to retrain into something tech-y but maybe web development isn't the thing for me. I'm creative, good communication skills, good at teaching/training, organised, logical... I'm not a mathmo, though.

I think maybe I need some kind of career coaching!

It's worth it, just ensure that the person is experienced in tech. You can also work with some recruiters. Otta.com is a good site matching people with startups, there are roles for sales, product all of which non-technical.

BTW to the rest of you... I hope to meet/work with some you some day. Really missing ladies to chat with. Nobody's interested in Bridgeton, or my latest Vinted finds

Go for it. I have a friend who retrained at c.40. She now runs a really successful small business employing two people. Lots of clients. It is hard work getting and keeping clients - she puts a huge amount into social media updates, blogs... Over the years she has morphed her business and client base. She is passionate about what she does. I am in awe of her and proud to call her my friend.

I'm really happy to hear from those of you who've got into this! And thanks for the further advice. I feel a bit at sea with it all but hopeful I'll find a way through!

Excellent tips from LegMeChicken.
I second the advice to learn a relational and non relational DB such as MongoDB - they do their own free courses on MongoDB University.

Lots of support available, these skills are in very short supply. While generally thought of as 'developers' there are actually many different kinds of roles - architect, analyst, developer, tester.

https://www.womenintech.co.uk/get-into-tech

And one example, the first I found on Google

http://getintotech.sky.com

Maybe look sideways from dev and programming skills. There is huge demand for digital automation skills, and no code skills.

If you like databases, look at AirTable - no coding skills need, big shortage of people who can build systems. And it’s so much fun!

Digital Women is a great organisation for training in a wide range of digital marketing skills
www.facebook.com/digita1women

And SuperMums for learning SalesForce
www.facebook.com/groups/150957015602333

There is a shit ton of opportunity out there and women in the 45 to 55 bracket are nailing it.

We bring life experience and wisdom, and a broad skill set, plus hard as nails resilience, take no shit attitude, and menopausal energy.

It’s fucking awesome out there. Come and play! And make money…

Or video editing.

Learn some basic editing skills, and how to export in the right formats for social and web.

It’s almost impossible to find video editing services for small business, and everyone needs this now

Thank you @LegMeChicken

Really helpful tips, will follow up.

Really enjoyed this thread and am now following Leon Noel's excellent and relaxed teaching videos and playing about with CSS. I've also been enjoying the freeCodeCamp lessons on same (am very familiar with HTML but not with CSS or JavaScript).

Re: video editing - I taught myself to use iMovie during lockdown thanks to lots of helpful YouTube videos, and playing about with it. iMovie is free with Mac computers but YouTube also has its own in-house video editing tool, and plenty of helpful videos on how to use stuff. You could upload a short video, keep it private, and practise editing.

Jo

F.

Can anyone recommend a taster website to get a feel for the different types of training mentioned .

You could try codecademy and start with Python, Ruby or Javascript, see how you get on. Or W3Schools is another good one.
I did a sponsored apprenticeship with Makers Academy, 12 week FT bootcamp then on-the-job training plus various exams and projects. I had no idea if it would ultimately be right for me but getting paid to learn certainly reduced the risk. I haven't encountered any ageism, big companies are actively looking for diverse hires. Good luck OP!

I know this thread hasn't been posted on for nearly a year, but thought I'd give it a bump and maybe hear from a couple of posters how they've been getting on!

Currently looking for a career change myself. DH works in IT (DevOps) and suggested that front-end developement might be worth exploring as (according to other people) I have a good eye for design.

Ten months old and still not moved to the Mature Study and Retraining board where it would be easily accessible to others with similar queries, @MNHQ?

We'll move this thread over to mature study now!