Articles like this terrify me. I'm in my late 30s and I'm only now realizing that what I want to do is code.
I'm a wet biologist by training and have been doing research and associated work for a decade. I have little opportunity to code at my current job. What I'm hoping to do is to formalize and hone my programming skills through some additional university courses.
Am I wasting my time? Am I forever going to be kicked to the bottom of the pile of applicants for junior positions because I've already had a career?
If you've been in a similar situation, I'd love to hear how it worked out for you.
Let me tell a little about what happens to me. After 4 years in my first job programming, I got burned about it, so I changed to be a consultant for a year and having my own non-tech business (a shop) for two. Then I came back to programming, after being for three years (late twenties) without doing programming stuff... And it was a successful comeback, as I got back with passion, and learned a lot in a few amount of time, so I really catch up, in terms of career, with friends that started at the same time, and never quit programming.
The great thing about coding is that you can show how good (or bad) you are relatively easy (compared with other fields). There is also a real shortage of coders right now. If you are good, and you like to code, you can catch up and stand up over a lot of people that has been doing one year, ten times.
I'd say that one thing you can to do is show up your code (through open source, etc), extra bonus points if you do something that is useful, and whenever someone asks you you can say: "Do you know X? I did that" ;-)
Not in a similar situation, I'm in my late 20's, a programmer who have done Bioinformatics research in academia and in Pharma R&D.
Programming done in most startup's and corporate settings are very similar to lab-work. The young grad students are lured by PI's to do repetitive work with promise of publication when the reality is it's a lottery. After a few years, what is looked upon as glamorous and interesting by onlookers of the high-end instruments and high-impact research, will turn into mundane and repetitive lab protocols that's intellectually stale and unstimulating; any results and interpretation is only esoteric and vague in the academic sense.
The actors are different but the characters are the same. PCRs, blots will be replaced with repetitive coding exercises being asked of you by project managers. PIs will be replaced by MBA bosses. The academic grind for glory amongst the sub-field of 5 people will be replaced by maximizing profit in the business logic of the sub-field of the company you are in.
The pay is slightly better or equivalent; the job security much worse. People threw around the 150K mark here as an average developer salary. It's analogous to say that the average lawyer makes 220K. It's not true. After working for about 5 years in Boston, most of my peers are getting salaries around the range of 90-110K. Only people I know who are getting over 150K at programmer level live in SF which in their case is not very much. Most software engineering job req's I looked for in Boston tops out at 150K, this includes senior positions for 10-15 years of experience and at well-funded companies.
If your goal is to achieve intellectual autonomy and financial independence by becoming a programmer, it's very difficult. The sub-culture on this forum skewers towards college students and recent grads who are more naive about the field. Others might give more defensive answers to your query, but I want to give you a honest opinion.
I chose coding over Biology because it was attractive for a young person out of school and didn't want to get on the grad school treadmill. But if I inherited a lot of money suddenly, I'd want to apply to Biology grad school and do research for fun, without caring about my PI and departmental politics; and/or work on open-source games without caring about IT career jockeying or monetization. Just food for thought.
In my view, it's not ageism that's the problem. It's the questionable paradigm of the annual raise. Over the course of the years, a developer's salary will increase steadily, and make her more and more expensive and less competitive against less experienced developers.
If you're willing to take a junior dev position for junior dev pay, I would think that in general you won't be disadvantaged because it's your second career.
nah, just code in a biotech or for lab software. There is so much opportunity. Automate through code/robotics your job. Plenty of opportunities.
You will find companies that want a mix of wet lab and coder skills. You save them on the translation costs for making software the biologists actually need.
I'm a wet biologist by training and have been doing research and associated work for a decade. I have little opportunity to code at my current job. What I'm hoping to do is to formalize and hone my programming skills through some additional university courses.
Am I wasting my time? Am I forever going to be kicked to the bottom of the pile of applicants for junior positions because I've already had a career?
If you've been in a similar situation, I'd love to hear how it worked out for you.