More than 10 years have passed since I published that post on Habr, where I mused on whether it’s possible to become a programmer after 30. A lot has changed since then — in my life, in my country, and in the world. Covid, the 2020 protests in Belarus (that’s where I’m from), the war… That article was written in an optimistic key. This time I want to look at the problem through the eyes of someone who has already made it as a programmer. And in a more down-to-earth way, so to speak. If not to say — as a pessimist. Well, age does take its toll, you know.
The short version: the whole “getting into IT” thing worked out for me. I taught myself PHP and WordPress. Yes, I know there are cooler languages and frameworks out there. But it is what it is.
I freelanced for a few years. Now I’m a senior backend developer at an Israeli company. I emigrated with my family. Not to Israel. I live in one of the European countries. I work remotely.
So if you’re reading this to figure out whether it’s worth trying to become an IT person later in life, and you don’t yet know anyone who has pulled it off — such people definitely exist.
Besides me, one of my friends, my age, made the jump even later than I did (at 45, to be precise): he quit his career as an accountant and became a programmer. And it worked out for him too. So there are definitely success stories.
But what pushed me to write a sequel to that article wasn’t the desire to convince the audience that becoming a programmer (or entering IT some other way) at a not-so-young age is possible. I’ve been broadcasting that idea to the world all along anyway.
It’s just that after 10 years, there are new inputs.
So what’s new?
Let’s start with this: in developed countries, IT today doesn’t stand out much from the rest of the economy in terms of income. And that looks broadly logical (why should a programmer earn more than, say, a coach?). Personally, though, what drew me to this field was not so much the money as an interest in technology. Although the money too, let’s not kid ourselves. I think the post-Soviet countries will also gradually move toward IT salaries levelling out with those in other sectors. Subjectively, that process is slow but steady.
And the field as a whole has changed a great deal over these years. New languages, frameworks, technologies you simply can’t keep up with — you know all about that. It has always been that way in tech. But perhaps not to this degree.
Now a new phenomenon is taking the stage: artificial intelligence. So far it shows up as a good assistant for developers (and for many other professions). But, as usual, there are side effects. ChatGPT and friends already handle code writing, often at a mid-level developer’s standard. And given the speed at which neural networks are improving, it’s quite reasonable to assume they will press ever harder on the IT job market.
Which means the barrier to entry into the industry will keep rising. Generative AI, and the tools built on top of it, make it possible to put together a simple website or app relatively fast and cheap. No need to hire a junior who’ll dig through it for weeks while gaining experience. That’s why junior developers are less and less in demand. All sorts of labour-market studies confirm it. (For example, here they report that in Poland there are on average 370 CVs per junior job opening.) And how do you skip the junior rung of the career ladder and become a mid-level developer right away, just to get into the industry? You don’t! And this trend will apparently only intensify.
Of course, one could object that you don’t have to enter IT as a developer — you could come in as someone closer to that very AI: a prompt engineer, a data scientist, and so on. But something tells me that among people who already have IT experience, there will be plenty who want to re-skill and take that up themselves. So newcomers will have to compete with those who are already “in the know”.
The news that periodically surfaces about IT giants running large layoffs suggests that even those already in the industry will have to make an effort to stay in it. Many will obviously need to change direction, upgrade their skills, and so on. You can’t say with confidence that everything will go badly, of course. Forecasting is a thankless business in general. But that IT stands on the threshold of big changes is, I think, obvious.
From the point of view of an “ageing personality”
If we talk about entering IT from the angle of “the brain’s resources aren’t what they were at 20”, then in my experience that part is actually fine. That is, if you’re set on IT, that in itself implies an inclination toward mental work. And if that was in order at 25, it’s okay at 45 too. In some respects maybe even better. For example, more experience handling large volumes of information. And plain life experience, too. That’s more of a plus for older IT newcomers.
Looking back now at my roughly 10 years in IT, I can say that on the self-fulfilment front things have more or less worked out. I find what I do interesting. And there’s certainly enough for bread with butter and caviar on top. What I didn’t get, though, was rapid growth. Sometimes I hear about young guys who entered the industry at the same time as I did and have now climbed far higher. And however much I put on a brave face, here I have to admit that age does leave its mark on a career. In IT especially. Here, if you’re already 35, hiring managers tend to look at you sideways. I say this with confidence, because over the past year I’ve been through a dozen interviews, in person and remote, and received 0 (zero) offers. Roughly speaking, out of two candidates with identical skills, the employer will give preference to the younger one.
I admit that at some interviews I didn’t look brilliant. But there were cases where I nailed the take-home assignment and presented myself well in the meeting (which the employer’s representatives told me directly), and still didn’t get the job I wanted. The replies were usually either something boilerplate (“we’ve continued the recruitment process with other candidates”), or nothing at all, or even something cringeworthy like “excellent ability to handle practical tasks, but an insufficient level of theoretical knowledge”. In that last case I wanted to ask the classic question: “So do you want the fancy checkered trim, or do you want to actually get there?” But never mind…
In fairness, let me note that age is of course not an absolute barrier: what matters most are up-to-date skills and a readiness for continuous learning.
So what should you do?
The question is ambiguous, and the answer will be different for every individual. If 5–10 years ago this (entering IT after 30) still worked, however creakily, today it has become much harder. And in a few more years it will become, if not impossible, then not especially worthwhile.
So going into tech, in my view, only makes sense if you’re drawn to the field itself, to the technology, and you can’t live without it. Plus it’s desirable to have at least some technical background (hobby-level programming experience, for instance).
And if that pull really is there, then you need to do it as fast as possible. Because in a year or two everything could change dramatically.
If, on the other hand, you’re entertaining thoughts of switching to an IT career purely for the money, then you definitely shouldn’t. Better to try developing your career in a field you already know, perhaps shifting your specialisation a little.
P.S. And another good way to test whether information technology suits you is to build your own pet project. You’ll prove in practice, to yourself and to others, that you’re worth something, and you’ll gain experience. Write a simple Telegram bot, for example. I do that sort of thing for fun myself, by the way. But that’s a separate topic — I’ll write about it someday too.
This is machine-translated content. Original article in Russian: https://habr.com/ru/articles/885030/