Ask HN: Am I too late for a software engineering career?

I think the key issue is that Software Engineering is mind-set that requires maturity and experience. 10 years "late" is precisely the correct time to be thinking of that track change.

> How can I compete with new grads with Ivy League CS degrees?

Surely we all know the real-world value of newly minted top college CS grads. I was one, and I teach them, and I definitely wouldn't employ a 21yr old me to manage a complex project.

> I definitely wouldn't employ a 21yr old me to manage a complex project.

Nor a 30-year-old with just as much experience.

I have to say that I just enter into coding at my 50's, obviously not pursuing a carrer on it but just to do interesting things, mostly in the Audio field. Always loved code but probably (well, for sure) made wrong decisions in the past which took me elsewhere. Some how, life put me back into a place that got me closer to it and to the opportunity to learn about it with purpose. My only point is, never too late for sure. About competition: if > My only goal is to increase my earning potential, like in other sectors that you can tackle it by focusing on the less crowded places, not very popular languages, not very poular fileds of action.

I'm now passionate and trying to learn LISP to apply it in the Audio and Sound field, if that counsel you, probably im much hopeless :D.

> I'm a web developer in my early 30s. (...) My goal is to transition into software engineering.

What do you want to do exactly? Because according to many (most?) people in the industry you already have a software engineering career and there's nothing to transition to.

I primarily work with marketing teams and my job is essentially making button animations looks snappy and optimizing websites for SEO. I wouldn't personally consider this to be "engineering."

I'd much rather work on a product engineering team, but almost every product engineering job I look at requires a BS and my resume gets auto-rejected.

> but almost every product engineering job I look at requires a BS and my resume gets auto-rejected.

Most don't require it especially for people with experience. This sounds more like you have a confidence problem rather than a lack-of-CS-degree problem.

I can assure you that your insight about my confidence is 100% correct :D

He's right about the auto rejection. I have a degree in History which I never bother putting on my CV, but I have 20 years as a developer. My CV doesn't get auto rejected.

I have no degree at all (unless an art degree counts for something) and I transitioned from web development to a different sphere (cloud / backend engineering). I decided to switch and within a year I'd acquired enough skills to get interviews in my chosen field. Granted, I'm not working at the sexy companies, but I'm not interested.

degree is nice but not necessary. if you're a web dev already, you're basically qualified.

Build a small app on the side and start applying to every software engineering job you can, to get more interviewing experience

maybe you can just skip and go straight into tech management

I have applied to hundreds of SWE jobs and have only gotten 2-3 interview requests, unfortunately. I've optimized my resume for keywords and have decent portfolio projects (simple but visually appealing web apps that use APIs). I think my resume is failing the filters because I don't have a BS.

That's part of the game. Before I had enough experience to get looked at, I applied to over 200 jobs. I think I had around 10 interviews, 2-3 second interviews, and a single job offer. Fortunately that one offer was all that I needed.

According the salary statistics (which I'm not sure one should trust), the median programmer salary in the US was $89,190 in 2020: https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/computer-programm... So expecting 200k in starting salary is quite unrealistic.

Agreed. I'm wondering if there's some missing context in the original post, e.g. his intention is to work on-site w/ high-CoL at FAANG/MAMAA only.

(I've been looking around at SWE manager jobs, and it seems fewer than half of them have a salary range that rise above $200K. I have decades of serious product development experience as a programmer, several years of experience as an engineering manager/director, AND I live in the city of San Francisco. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough.)