Learning Coding After 40 and Leaving the 9 to 5 Job
indiehackers.com
indiehackers.com
Creating a little/niche SAAS takes more than writing code. Most business failures from developers that Ive personally talked to is due to not understating how to market and sell. They thought they could hack it and automate it. This part is still very people centric even if you are not constantly interacting with them.
I dont aim to sound mean but this is akin to thinking that every mechanic out there can be be a successful repair garage owner. Different skills. Its very hard and uncommon to have both technical and business skills. Why do you think YC puts so much money into finding people with both?
Edited for spelling
It certainly doesn't. But it's still tremendously advantageous.
And just as programming can be learned, so too can those business skills. It just requires some combination of reading, mentorship, time, practice, and experience. And that's really the whole point behind the interviews on Indie Hackers, and the community forum as well. To help people learn those skills.
Your comment made me realize that mine came out a bit negative. I certainly agree that business skills may be studied and developed as any others. Maybe Im a little burned out from talking with people who just want a 5 minute solution to a 5 year problem.
I also run a little podcast[0] to help people learn and develop those skills. Its new and very rough around the edges, but the last episode will resonate a lot with software developers who decided to dip their toes on the business end of the pool. :)
Note: Im setting up https these coming days.
(note – not trying to diagnose your symptoms, just responding to your comment about coding being physically tolling!)
Not that I want to presume -- you may very well have some specific conditions outside of the norm... but as a general rule, coding requires you to take additional preventive actions to maintain your health. Because if you let it, coding will trash you.
You however need to value them and not to buy into the "real programmers code whole night and eat only pizza and never exercise" bullshit.
Curious, not trolling. What kind of gastrointestinal issues does one develop from programming / sitting in 1 place? Is it from the cliched "coder diet" - pizza and soda, or is it from the physical aspects - sitting and staring at screen for long hours - and not related to diet, that cause gastrointestinal issues?
Also, bad posture over the years has led to cervical stenosis & herniation. I cannot sit for more than 30mins without developing pain in my shoulder and neck.
In general, I think being if you're an engineer working on services, it is hard to maintain a proper schedule and routine. Add to that strict deadlines, pressure from management, bugs etc and things get worse. It is still a pretty subjective argument though.
Enjoyable in a lot of respects though, the biggest issues are all around expectations. I think I'm doing better than I have any right to be doing, but am far worse than any peer. Dealing with that dance is difficult.
Doing it the way I did saved me probably 10-15k and an expensive move. It may seem like an awesome idea to join a bootcamp, but just remember that you may be able to create an even better (and cheaper) environment for yourself with a little dedication and creativity.
An aside: it really scares me how camps tout Backbone and React like they are the only frameworks you will ever need to know to be employable. It is way more important to figure out how you learn, so you can keep pace with changes when they come, because they always do. Just my experiences, and I would certainly never look down on anyone who did attend a bootcamp. Different strokes, as they say.
Not to suggest its bad or anything, but it's not what the title might imply.
I’ve been coding for 25years. Trust me, learning coding after 40 is not going to give you financial freedom or chance to build your own business it SaaS it whatever. The best it can do is give you a 10-6 job, since programmers have usually more flexible hours.
All these stories from indie hackers are like stories from people who won the lottery. Yes, there are people who made it, but for each one of them there are tens, if not hundreds, of thousands who failed miserably.
Or maybe it’s just sour grapes from my side. But that’s how I see it.
Learning to code at 40 to leave your 9-5 job is the worst advice one can give to someone.
"I wouldn't recommend quitting your job like I did. Especially, if you have an idea only. Test it first. Most probably, you have a lot of 'hidden' free time so you can test it while keeping your day job."
If your point is that bootcamps generally are waste of time and money, and you suspect that the author just wants to promote his bootcamp, then that's a different thing of course.
I think it would be more of a spectrum, considering success isn't necessarily "won". It's a confluence of controllable and uncontrollable factors.
The results of which represent a spectrum of value (output) and input (factors).
Age is merely one of the factors involved in human productivity, and not necessarily the most important (the equation of coefficients affecting each factor would change over time of course).