It's probably best to avoid companies that think about hiring in the way that they'd think about selecting frat pledges, in favor of companies that think about hiring in terms of increasing their capacity to get work done. But if you really wanted to get a job at the former kind of company, my advice is (1) try to build a rapport with your interviewers somehow, so that they look up to you and think you're cool, rather than pity you for being old and wanting to be let into their treehouse, (2) contextualize yourself as having gotten really excited about programming all of a sudden, after a few decades of kicking ass in other fields, and then having made a lot of progress in programming very quickly. That's something that anyone can respect.