Starting a Career in Programming at 61?

It's great that he is still up for working!

At risk of getting flamed...

It's tricky I think because even if he can learn to program to a suitable standard, I think the reality will be that people will see him as a "junior" but you will have a different working dynamic since it is easier for an e.g. 30 year old to coach someone who is younger if they are doing it wrong but could be tricky trying to coach an older person unless they have genuine humility, otherwise your dad might feel patronised or be offended by some youngster without the experience to coach well.

Another avenue, if it is just the industry he likes rather than programming specifically, he could probably get more distance by utilising his exec skills to do a technical management role like Product Manager, Product Owner or Project Manager. He could then get as much exposure to the programming as he wants without needing to produce as much of it as would be expected of a dev.

Don't know, just thinking out loud.

Some anecdotes:

- One time I posted on HN that I am willing to tutor people from Gaza for free (am Israeli). Got contacted by a Nigerian man (over 50+ years) instead. He successfully did FCC and a few other courses and got a job (with minimal mentoring) in the field.

- One time I had a student at a program I volunteer in for a minority group who was almost 70, they successfully completed the program and got a job.

- I've met plenty of 50 year olds transitioning to coding from other engineering gigs (like rail engineering) when they immigrated - my wife's family for example has several examples of people doing that.

Agism is real, there is discrimination but sharp minds who work hard and are willing to start at a junior's salary and at the same conditions as 20 year olds (long'ish hours) find jobs - though that's anecdotal and based on my experienced.

I say: if your father is passionate go for it. Don't forget you're on HN and you should consider entrepreneurial routes like:

- Do any of his old employers need a website or app?

- What about local businesses or programs?

I got most of my early experience building and selling indie (flash) games and working on projects (flash game sites and socket servers mostly) until I was "hireable". The other gigs I got were all websites and apps for family friends and neighbors to get experience (I got paid for whole websites less than I charge for a single hour of consulting today lol - it was totally worth it).

Everything is possible of course.

Will he, an executive before, have the required patience and humility to start at the bottom rung again, to e.g. step into a company with 20-year olds that know more than he does? 20-year olds that may not always be as kind as he would like them to be?

If I were in his shoes my answer would be no.

But the solution I would consider: have him build his own product.

He's of a certain age, so he probably has experience to areas that us younger folk have no idea about. Is getting medication a pain? Is there an app he'd wish he had on his phone or on the web to help him with various activities? Something friends of his age would like? Or something he could build for the children of older parents that could help them out?

If you're saying that he used to be an executive, I imagine by this point he's got enough savings to be comfortably retired. So, he can spend some time learning ruby on rails and pick up some front end stuff and start hacking away at a product he would like to see in the world.

Expose it publicly (the "hey I'm 61 and here's my side project" is bound to get a lot of clicks) and then go from there.

But that's what I would recommend. I wouldn't necessarily recommend he learn a stack and apply for jobs.

As a 61-year-old with almost 50 years of programming experience who recently got a new job, I can testify how almost no one wants to hear from an old person. I program for fun, too, and could be doing that full-time if I weren't working.

I'm only employed now because I'm proficient in an older language (APL). Never mind my decades of experience in many other languages and extensive domain knowledge in finance, not that I'm bitter or anything.

I definitely believe it is possible to learn programming at the age of 61. Certainly not for everyone - some people are not the programmer-type at any age. But if the curiousity and the will are there and the brain is still working fine - yes, definitely!

I learned Rust at age 55.

But! Programming is not only about learning a language. There is this huge background of methods, practices, technologies (network/ip/socket, data formats, databases, unicode, regular expressions, xml/xsl, markup languuages), Operating Systems, procedures (CI, VC...) and so forth. This vast amount of knowledge is gained by experience over decades. The young programmer does not have the experience either, but has enough time ahead to become a senior eventually. It will be very difficult to reach a senior level when starting at 50 or 60 - there is simply not enough time to catch up. I started programming at age 16, btw.

So I would definitely let him dive into programming just to see how it goes and support him on this challenge. It will also serve mental fitness in high ages. Getting into programming at that age, with the need to make a living from it and no plan B - I consider this too risky!!

First off, has your dad considered hiring himself out as a coach to younger CEO's, CCO's and CFO's? That would be fairly easy money and it is a market where gray hair is an asset, and not a detractor.

That said: being a bit older probably gives him a fairly unique perspective on many of the things younger devs might not even realize can be an issue, and if he were to aim for something that allows his age to work for him by strong association with the demographic that that particular software targets then it could work out well, assuming he has an aptitude for programming.

Excel-fu may well be a stronger card than any of the regular application programming languages if he wants results, it may well be that something like 'R' would be well within his comfort zone.

Best of luck, and props to your dad for even considering this!

Personal anecdote…

My father worked into his 80s and I saw firsthand how once he hit 60 years old how much harder it was for him to land a new job. As such, I’ve always gone out of my way to ensure such folks get a fair shot in my ~25 years of being a people manager.

And every time I’ve hired someone 60+, even if they are new/junior for the role - it’s worked out in spades.

The unique perspective, what’s seems like a “new” problem is often an already solved problem from decades ago, just the wealth of knowledge … and again, this surprising still applies even if the individual is junior in their experience.

What’s best is the work ethic & respect. It’s sad but true, that individual knows you could have easily hired a 20 year old kid but didn’t. And the thanks, trust and respect you immediately gain with them often translates into them becoming a dedicate individual who goes above and beyond in their job.

So just saying, please actively give these folks their fair shot and not just hire the new kid straight out of college.

And that 61 year old might be you some day.

I am almost his age and despite decades of professional experience I am unable to get a job.

Of course, its likely that I'm doing something else wrong as well.

> As he grows older, he has noticed it becomes increasingly difficult to find work

Programming/software dev is not a field I would choose if I were trying to avoid age discrimination. It can be hard enough for 61 year olds who have been in the field for 35 years and have all that experience to find work.

I'd encourage him to do it as a hobby, but don't get his hopes up about being able to find steady work doing it.

I'm a 69 year old who made a conscious decision 12 years back to leave sales and management and return to my technical roots. Now I'm in a solution architect role where I'm expected to constantly stay abreast of the latest technologies. The pay is good. I don't have to do much coding, but I do some anyway to keep my hand in.

My advice to your Dad is to aim for a job in consulting and analysis rather than coding. Get some certifications in a SaaS platform like Dynamics or Salesforce or whatever. That way he can leverage his business experience and people skills. I've found that people who combine experience with solid knowledge of a software platform get quite a lot of interesting job offers, even if they are older. If he later finds out he has an aptitude and interest in development then he can go down that path after he has mastered the functional stuff.

With all his expertise, he can definitely bring a lot to the table being a consultant or mentor to all kinds of businesses.

Regarding programming, it depends if he just wants to work or work to earn money.

If the former, he could look at OSS projects that interest him, there are so many! He could make meaningful contributions (for the project and for him)!

If the latter, he can definitely give it a go but maybe not get his hopes up too much. He could start his own startup/blog/company though which might not be a bad alternative to paid work.

Also he could look at the no-code tools which would allow him to build stuff quicker than learning to program. It would probably be a step up from Excel already and he could see if he likes it and wants to dive deeper (some contractors are specialized in building stuff on top of no-code tools)

Anyhow, good on him to want a career change at 60+, I wish him all the best!

> he has worked as an executive at multiple companies in the past decades (CEO, CCO, CFO). As he grows older, he has noticed it becomes increasingly difficult to find work, even though he would love to continue working for the years to come.

Finding a business position that's a good fit for him would be a much easier way to stay employed until retirement than switching to programming.

Encourage him to take some classes online. If he has fun and then says he wants to be a professional programmer, your role is to honor and support that choice. Help him figure out which tools can be learned quickly and he can get paid for. Let him know it's okay to be slow. Help him when he's frustrated. Consider the possibility he may be using this as a way to know more about you.

Good luck to him and to you. He seems like a cool dude.

I would suggest technical recruiting, you can do that until an advanced age, and it can even be a benefit to attracting senior level people as a recruiter.

My dad did similar, after going back to school in his mid 50s and getting a CS/cybersecurity degree, he tried the engineering side for a bit but ultimately went into technical recruiting for a big enterprise, which is a six figure position.

My advice would be for him to identify specific applications of programming that interest him and then focus on identifying the skills he'd need to develop expertise.

One approach would be product or industry specific. Maybe he'e really intrigued by applications of GIS and that could lead to exploring specific companies in that space and the talent they need.

Another would be open source. Maybe he's really interested in databases and could dive deep into that part of open source and find out what things he wants to do.

No guarantees with either route, but the older you get, the worse the odds are if you are just a person with programming ability like many others.

Advise him to prepare a budget to get started with a JetBrains All product pack subscription, and subscriptions to some ebook services for reference material and good quality source material.

Make sure the machine and monitors don’t become a reason to stop the process of learning and doing.

Approach this as a series of goals and don’t expect overnight miracles.

Make copious notes. It could be useful to focus on programming for a particular field or set of applications, if he has core knowledge. For example, tools that could have helped him in his previous roles. Don’t worry if these aren’t original nor large.

Be organized but don’t let the organizing obscure the hands-on coding and use of the tools.

Find sympathetic people and groups, for support, mentoring, ideas, and reference. I suspect that he has developed good strategies for networking and communicating with people and groups. Now is the time to take advantage of those skills.

I know that he knows that he doesn’t feel like he’s 61 and that’s important. In my experience the roadblocks are erected by reacting to other peoples inevitable ageism. Ageism is real. But it’s not going away, so work around it and work with it.

Having groups to work with, and support each other helps immensely. So, approach programming as a member of a group and don’t try to do everything himself.

Languages and platforms? That’s a different discussion, and I’ll avoid the inevitable arguments in this open forum.

And document the process and journey. Make the documentation process part of the journey too, of course, and use the IDE and YouTrack to help manage this process too. Other people will want to know about these experiences.

>As he grows older, he has noticed it becomes increasingly difficult to find work

Are you sure that is the right causal relationship here? My gut feeling would be that it has at least in part to do with the C* level roles. McD cashier jobs are a dime a dozen and rapidly hire and fire. C* level tends to be slower and more scarce just by nature.

> I think he feels inspired by seeing me thrive as a contractor,

If he is somewhat stable financially he might do better as a finance/PM/operational consultant. That lets him leverage years of experience as credibility. That will play much better than a 61 y/o with a coding bootcamp or similar.

>He learned to program when he was a student,

My dad was in a similar position - except he was a professional programmer for years. After a long stint in management layer he found he couldn't get back into the tech market. Instead project management type roles went better

Does it make sense for him to try and become a professional programmer. No. Not at all.

However, using programming tools and concepts to provide more value than his younger Excel-munging peers. Definitely, and will help him figure out what he is good at.

Subscribe to Datacamp and start learning python. Get some of those Excel spreadsheets that executives like to drown each other with and start doing some business analysis on them in jupyter notebooks. He can definitely find an edge doing financial analytics, financial forensics, that sort of thing.

We (programmers) would be shocked at how bad those business spreadsheets are. He can use his experience, and desire to learn, to find plenty of work munging executive financial and other data using programmers tools.

I am almost the age of your dad and I have been a professional software engineer since 1986. In the first years I worked with Pascal (VAX-Pascal and Turbo-Pascal.) From 1990, I mostly used C and C++. The last two years I have been working with C#. Now that I am getting a bit older, I noticed that it takes me more time to get know a developing environment and all the libraries/packages that go with it. It is a big leap from knowing how to develop an excel sheet to, for example, develop a website with a database backend. I am always happy to have younger colleagues who are good at setting-up a development environment. Also being an efficient software developer is much more than knowing how to program.

I had a colleague in a previous job who was actually employed as a trainer but picked up a lot of Excel VBA stuff that was "beneath" the actual development team and got so good at it he landed a pretty decent role at another company just working in Excel.

He was late 60s.

If he's serious about starting a new career he needs to be willing to swallow a bit of his pride, but starting as a test engineer is a great way to get a foot in the industry from what I've seen and from who I've mentored.

Show him Cypress or your preferred choice for integration testing and see if writing simple integration tests piques his interest. It's close enough to engineering that he should get a feel for what the job is like while being "relatively" easy to learn in a few weeks.

If I were you, I would ask him to study up and then give him parts of my projects(you said you're a contractor) and we can see if it works out or not. If it does in a couple of years or four he can be a contractor himself under your mentorship.

Maybe thats what he's asking anyway ;)

There is being a "professional programmer" who mostly builds large systems that put other people's expertise to work.

Even before the microcomputer revolution, back in the dawn of timesharing, there have also been "non-professional programmers" who write software to put wheels on their scientific, engineering, business, literary, accounting, medical, mathematical, artistic or whatever skills they have.

To be a professional programmer you're really going to have to learn how to whip other people's bad conceptual models into shape, track down difficult bugs, not use an O(N^2) algorithm when an O(N) algorithm is available and N is large, understand the difference between C++ compilers and whatever details turn up to be relevant in a particular case. (e.g. You're never going to know all of these things but you have to find out the ones that are relevant to your project!)

The non-professional programmer is going to be more focused on the problem domain even though they still sometimes might need to figure out something technically hard to make their system work.

I think the only way in that he's got a shot at is if he can leverage some piece of huge domain knowledge that he can bring to the table. At 61, i'm sure he can, but it's selling that that'll be the challenge.

Elevator pitch: "i've spent X years doing , but i have a better way because it <1, 2,3>"

2 things: age & language

1 - age

> As he grows older, he has noticed it becomes increasingly difficult to find work, even though he would love to continue working for the years to come.

There’s a significant age bias in the tech community that might be hard to overcome.

He is in a protected age class though: https://www.eeoc.gov/age-discrimination

Just make sure he knows his rights during the hiring process that it’s not acceptable for a company to not hire him based on age.

2 - language

Learning a new modern language like Node/JS will be a brutal race to the bottom in a highly competitive marketplace.

However there are some jobs that pay great money to folks who know older languages like COBOL, Perl, etc., maintaining old systems. And I’m guessing he’ll find the work and coworkers more relatable. These jobs are just much more scarce.

A question he might get from having an impressive C-suite resume and applying for programming jobs is: why? So just be prepared to answer that.

And probably have him build one or two personal projects so he can make sure he likes the process and has something to showcase.

Good luck!

"I think he feels inspired by seeing me thrive as a contractor, with access to a global marketplace and seemingly endless working opportunities."

Well there you go, teach him to code and then get some contracts that you can give him some work from so he can get his feet wet and some experience under his belt to increase his chances if he decides to look for a job or go out on his own.

I used to teach software development at a part-time bootcamp. The part-time program was especially interesting because it tended to attract an older crowd, people with families and full-time jobs.

I don't know if I ever had students in their 60s, but I'm pretty sure I had students in their 50s (I don't know their birthdates so I'm really just guessing when it comes to age).

On average, it was definitely harder for the older students to find work, but it's absolutely possible. Some companies will really appreciate having people with more life experience, more maturity.

I think the first step would be to see if your dad actually enjoys doing software development. Lots of people just hate it. Doing some beginner JavaScript or Python tutorials could be a good place to start. If it sparks excitement, I think he should absolutely consider doing a bootcamp or similar program.

I think it's an uphill climb, but if he enjoys doing it and he doesn't give up easily, I'm confident it could be a viable path for him.

I'm in the same boat. Really hard to find work despite 25 years of experience in software design and production for some of the worlds biggest companies. Everyone just wants labor, programmers, project managers or producers it seems. Can't find anything at my actual experience level. Lots of IT and programming jobs (all requiring X certification and X number of years experience in X industry with X language blah blah cloud this Salesforce that. It's all just software development in my experience and just more and more platforms. The same skills apply and picking up new software and platforms is trivial compared to say, learning and mastering a language as a programmer. I'm about ready to buy a van to live in by the river until I die. I just want to apply my experience as a leader of people who aren't really preparing the company or the employees for the future, but everything seems to be gig or contract work.

I would rather think hard about all possible easier pivots before thinking about a whole new career because I feel stuck. If your father were pushed by his passion for programming, then I could advise differently, but that does not seem the case.

Can't you both think about creative ways to leverage his decades of experience as a top manager? Could it be that he is stuck in an employee's mindset and that's the true differentiator against your success? If so, why not help him in switching mindset instead?

If everything else fails, then - sure! - why not go for the programming route... Becoming proficient at programming takes lots of time, but he would have the advantage of your mentorship. And as for our industry's ageism, screw it! I would just team up, be the "young face" of our duo and customers would be none the wiser about 50% of their software being written by a geezer. Oh, well... that's what I would if I were young.

Good luck ;-)

There's probably a huge demand for people with his business skillset honestly. If he finds the right niche (building tooling for COOS/CFOS), they'd probably prefer talking to someone who understands their domain and can translate it into code rather than talking to some 'geek' who knows mainly computers.

Just wanted to say thanks to you all! My dad was incredibly happy with your feedback and ideas. I don't think he is going to make the jump after all, and it I trust things are going to end up well one way or another.

As a nice side note, my family followed this thread with great enthusiasm and I am proud that they get to see the best of HN!

With that sort of executive experience becoming a “straight” programmer seems like a bit of a waste. Much better to pick up skills that augment his experience than to make a full pivot. Some form of consulting makes more sense in my head. There remain many problems for many businesses that can be solved by fairly simple automation or low end data science/analytics, but the hard part is identifying the problem and mapping to a solution.

Others have suggested various data science programs. To that I’d add picking up basic app design/prototyping skills and a low code/no code framework like PowerApps or going deep on an extensible platform he’s familiar with like SalesForce or SAP.

Platforms like that can enable him solve the business problems he’s uniquely suited to identify and understand, rather than competing with a 38 year old with 20 years of experience trying to solve obtuse technical issues.

My dad just took a new .net dev contract, he’s 75 , he’d retired then decided to take another short term contract, he’s been taking six month contracts then a few months off for a few years now. He’s been a long term dev but much of the tech he uses now he’s learned since the age of 61. We’re in Australia for context

I am now 66 and continuing to work as an engineer in a field not too far removed from a programming career. I have had the same inclination as your father and I hope he is successful. Pre-pandemic I would attend meetups in town, specifically Python related. We often had in attendance recruiters from companies with open positions. I talked to them and often they openly invited me join, even though I would have been entry level. It appears to me that there are more programming jobs than there are programmers and that some companies will take the chance on my age group. There are also companies where programmers are valued not just for their programming experience, but also for other skills they bring to the table. So, even though I have not made the transition, I think it can be done.

It's not impossible, but I wouldn't say it's worth it. From my experience, there is more ageism in programming than there is in management so it would be even more difficult to find work, especially without prior experience.

It’s definitely possible to do, but being a junior dev in his early 60s after being a C-level executive for years is likely to be a tough transition mentally.

If he hasn’t wanted to program before now, and is primarily doing it because he’s seeing ageism in executive roles, I would recommend against this path (pretty strongly).

If he’s always been interested in it, dabbled in and enjoyed perfecting Excel workbooks and now wants to make the jump, that’s a different story.

In the former case, keep being an executive, especially if he’s got a track record of leading companies that are generally well-regarded. Even with ageism, I think he’ll find that easier and likely more rewarding.

I wasn't planning on posting, lots of great answers already in the thread, but has he considered learning Oracle DB administration, the various admin tools, and PL/SQL programming.

There is a lot of work out there managing Oracle installs, populating databases, and all the other duties associated with running Oracle instances.

There's plenty of scope for programming, and the work should be more regular hours and less stressful on the whole than an entry-level programming job.

Additionally, it should be reasonably easy to break into the field via the various certifications, and the tools and DB itself are accessible for self-directed learning.

I don't think it's vastly different from someone younger who wanted to shift career into tech without previous experience.

I would recommend him taking one or a few bootcamp classes to bring him up to speed, maybe focus on one area in particular (e.g. web development) then find a smaller dev shop where he could come in and support in a junior support role to start with and then take it from there. Maybe develop a few pet projects to build his portfolio in parallel.

It's not impossible but maybe manage his expectations a little bit that he's going to have to start more or less from scratch.

Hi! So I'm almost your dad's age, and I totally get his desire not to become irrelevant to the world of work, especially after such an impressive career. I satisfied that desire by diving deep into Web3, and mounting a project to sell NFTs of Nirvana from images I had shot in 1991. (Yes, the band members + Frances Bean Cobain were on board, as long as I donated half the proceeds to charity, but their lawyers didn't want me to involve them publicly.) I joined some DAOs and am having fun hanging out in Web3 communities. This is a way that you can have a hobby that feels as satisfying as an impressive career, since the Web3 space is so wide open, and there's so many ways to make a meaningful contribution. Another thing your dad can do (without making a years-long commitment to learn programming) is to get a certificate in cybersecurity. My husband is in cybersecurity, and though some of it is technical, most of the work is really about governance, something your Dad is obviously good at. Typically when there's a lapse in cybersecurity, it's due to a failure of good governance at the company. There is a huge need right now for those who understand traditional industry AND cybersecurity, and your dad might be able to get involved in the fight to shore up our nation's infrastructure against the (probably) coming Russian incursions. Good luck to him. I get his feeling of casting about and being lost because younger people are getting all the interesting jobs.

For a moment, take away the fact that this is your dad. Imagine a friend of yours with a background of "well, I took CS101 as a freshman" wanted to go into business with you. The pitch is that you use your experience and business contacts from being a thriving contactor in order to find and make deals and then you give the work to your friend to program the implementation. What sort of knowledge gap would exist between "learned the basics n years ago" and "someone you'd feel comfortable outsourcing work to in your real, actual professional life"?

Spell out everything that your hypothetical friend would have to go and learn for you to feel comfortable giving him even the most junior-level coding responsibilities or vouching for him as a "yeah, this guy can do the job" to a professional contact of yours. Write it all down, show it to your dad, and spell out the effort involved. That's what he's looking at learning in order to be taken seriously in the marketplace.

(I'd venture that some kind of consulting/contracting is what he'd wind up doing, both because I don't think many companies would take a resume like his seriously for a junior developer position and also because I don't think someone who's been at the top of the org chart would tolerate going to the bottom of the org chart for very long.)

> A bit more context, in case you are interested: he has worked as an executive at multiple companies in the past decades (CEO, CCO, CFO). As he grows older, he has noticed it becomes increasingly difficult to find work, even though he would love to continue working for the years to come.

Is this about finding work, or finding software/programming work. If your dad wants to find work, he's better of, in my opinion, to stick to his field. He held considerable positions in the past, what did change about his industry that's making it hard now to find work?

The market for Software developers is hot right now; but it is quite difficult to find a job as a junior. Add to that ageism and companies are really picky when hiring.

Here are things your father is probably good at: Accounting, Taxes, Employment, Customer/People relations, Signing contracts (maybe gov. contracts), Figuring commercial real-estate & local regulation, Getting a credit line, Handling a lawsuit/the court, etc... All this stuff is experience a junior dev doesn't have and probably doesn't need.

By starting as a junior dev, your father is throwing all of that out of the window. What he needs to do (if he's looking for work), is to figure out how to branch into some industry that can make use of this knowledge.

At age 50, after a successful non-technical career, I took a few college classes and then went to a bootcamp. The bootcamp got me an internship (a bit humbling but it got me in the door) and I have been programming ever since. I will turn 60 this year and I am pretty sure I could do the same thing today that I did 10ish years ago. It was not always easy and I probably got a few lucky breaks along the way, but I would not discourage anyone from exploring the possibility.

I don’t know his motivations to become a programmer.

However with his experience as a CEO, CFO. He might want to look into becoming a Data Engineer, BI consultant, Data Scientist or Data Analist.

With the experience you mentioned he might be better at understanding how the “business” thinks and what they need. Therefore a lot of his domain knowledge could be applied while being in a technical role.

Most of the roles I mentioned involve some programming but often that can also be drag and drop tools.

Good luck!

If my 61 year old dad asked me how to get into programming, I'd recommend they go to a company that was involved in the Software Craftsmanship model that had a long apprenticeship period. I'd recommend this because I've had prior experience working in such a company (8th Light -- Chicago office) and I think that such an environment would set them up for success because while the learning is very self-directed, there is a lot of oversight and involvement in a constructive way by other developers who want to see the apprentice succeed. That isn't to say you couldn't find the same thing at another company but the Software Craftsmanship approach, if done well, would not be as random as the ad hoc experience you might get on the job at another company. A further benefit of working at a consulting company like 8th Light as, if you progress past the apprenticeship, you would be working on a variety of projects in an environment that is focused on doing the job well so the exposure would be a to a wider breadth of the industry (more languages/stacks/team dynamics/etc).

The probability of succeeding as an atypical programmer is directly proportional to your general enthusiasm for programming.

Someone who has been constantly hacking and building programs for fun on the side while working a different career, and finally thinks it might be fun to do programming for a living at 61: absolutely.

However it sounds like he doesn't have a prior interest in programming. Even for someone in their early 20s I don't recommend getting into to programming for the job (in your 20s this means being a software engineer for the money, for your dad it would be they like they type of schedule/work you have).

This isn't because of some ideal that "real programmers should be passionate", but because there is a reason that despite a massive rise in bootcamps it's still hard to hire devs: most people don't enjoy programming enough to do it for a living.

I love programming, love computer science and ultimately prefer data science work because I don't love software engineering work for 8 hours a day. So even someone who really enjoys programming might not necessarily love software engineering. If your dad was exposed to programming in college and then spent 40 years without ever picking it up again, it's likely he doesn't really enjoy programming and even more likely that he really won't enjoy learning all the tooling and frameworks required to work as a software engineer today.

tl;dr if your dad is the kind of person building a k8s cluster for fun on the weekend, or likes to hack together toy react apps in the evening: the he absolutely could transition. However it's fair more likely that he currently likes the idea of being a programmer much more than he would the actual work.

If he has to make enough money to support himself then I'd say it's a bit tricky. If it's more for keeping busy and the mind sharp then yes, go for it. Especially if he has a lot of domain-specific knowledge from his time in management.

My grandpa learned programming, (BASIC, on a TRS 80) when he was 80 and got proficient at it quickly although it was just for fun.

It's not his age that's an issue, but his inability to find work although he has a varied skillset. There's a vast chasm between a) professional programming b) just enough knowledge for an auxiliary role c) zero programming

There's a huge media frenzy around a) when in fact we don't need as many software developers, as we need people in b) and c). Product managers, project managers, service managers, IT risk and governance ... there's a whole world of opportunity. Best part? Doesn't take hours of work, experience/people skills is an advantage and you won't be up against coding geniuses.

It makes sense for him to go into 'tech'. It makes no sense for him to try and be a professional programmer competing with people a quarter of his age. Of course if that's his passion, fair enough. But if it's just a question of time ROI, nope. There are better ways.

Also check out supply chain and logistic experts

I'm all for starting pretty much anything at any age.

Now that I have that out of the way, the larger issue is if he will find anyone to employ him at that age. Ageism is a real thing! I spent the last 5 years working at an outfit that the recruiter described as "they seem to prefer seasoned employees..." take that however you will, but half of my co-workers were over 50 and I had at two people reporting to me that were older than I am. BUT, they were all experienced engineers.

I think it will be hard for him to find a job as an entry-level programmer at his age. But if he's been an executive, he probably has enough of a network so he can find freelance clients. The reality of software development is that there is a huge body of work that can be done by someone who's new to the field. This is probably the most worthwhile path for him.

Since the question is a bit open-ended, here are the possible options.... If he wants to do programming for fun, which is not the case, I think age does not matter. Actually programming for fun is a good place to start - get a feel - and then monetize the skill accordingly. I believe with his management skills, like 20-40% technical skills is all that is required to be a techno-functional-engineering manager (depending on the organization). Since he is new to programming, he does not have the "baggage" of outdated/irrelevant skillsets (CORBA anyone?) - so that is a good thing. Barrier to entry is low which is good - so it is a good idea that if he wants to take this up! I think the challenge would be, with his management skills, it would be hard to swallow how some managers mismanage...

There will definitely be a place for someone with your dad's blend of experience and interests. I'd suggest that possibly he'd be better in the product owner role, some tech interest and sympathy but with the wider perspective of the other jobs he's done.

That said, there's probably also a programming role where that not-programming experience would be an asset to someone who can also learn the code.

Of course there's probably many many other places where it wouldn't work, the trick is finding that correct fit. But most of being a good developer isn't programming it's thinking about the system, the use-case etc. There's plenty of rockstar guys who can code amazing solutions, but people with a wider experience and a different perspective are much rarer and can be more valuable.

If it is more about wanting to work than wanting to get paid a competitive industry salary to work, looking for a nonprofit whose cause he is interested that needs talents he has (programming or otherwise, but if he has executive experience that may be in more demand) may be a good option.

Perhaps there is a way for him to use his professional background to his advantage.

Programming jobs in niche industries often require a fair amount of domain expertise (e.g., an accounting system). If he possesses such domain expertise somewhere, it might be worth starting his programming career there.

My advice is to find someone that's done this before and have a good long chat with them. The advice from random hackers in their thirties isn't going to be all that useful.

That said, here is my take:

I know that if I were hiring him it would be easiest if it was for a role that had programming plus something that involved his past. That way I may have a junior software developer, but since he's writing code for our financial models in Excel his history as an CFO really comes in handy. You get the idea. I wouldn't throw this guy knee deep into Node / Python / React / CSS / HTML / Shell / Docker / AWS and expect him to thrive. Pick something focussed and relevant and he can slowly shift towards where he would be happiest.

Honestly? No. I doubt it. He won't be able to get in via the front door, at least.

I'm planning to retire before I reach that age as I'm not sure I'll still be able to keep up. Maybe I will, but I'm not counting on it. There's just far too much. Already it can be overwhelming. That's why people naturally move from less technical positions into managerial positions.

Getting in via the front door on the job market means he will be competing with youngsters who are simply better. I don't see it happening and not because of ageism either. It takes years and years to learn this stuff.

The best chance would be if he personally knows someone who needs some specific tasks doing and he is up to it. Then it could be possible, I guess.

My father in law is 59. He works as the main "maintenance guy" for a large warehouse. He's pretty good with electronics and mechanics, but did not know how to program. He noticed that some stuff could be automated but PLC's were not enough. So, he bought an Arduino board and learnt by himself. Of course, me being a software engineer helped and I put him on the right track or helped him debug stuff. He actually got a pretty nice bonus because the stuff he automated saved the company a lot of money.

But the main point I'm trying to make, is that I would find a problem in my current job/field to which programming can help, and use that to drive the learning.

IMHO, with that background (C-level positions), forget about "normal" languages.

A better (useful in the context) strategy would be focus on Data Analytics/Big Data tools:

A Good book to start (considering the background with Microsoft toolset):

https://www.amazon.com/Data-Lake-Analytics-Microsoft-Azure/d... 1

This knowledge is extremely valuable today for any C-level these days and will be a huge differential in an eventual relocation process......

Regards and good luck to your father :)

This is just a random thought, but if he has challenges facing ageism (which I think will be the case unfortunately)he could try two modes of approach. 1) He leverages his C suite experience to start ups and help them w/ product fit. 2) he uses his age, and perhaps relearns some older legacy languages and can work as a contractor helping maintain/migrate away from older systems.

My thinking with these is he needs to use his age/experience as a bonus not as something to ignore. For option 2, he'd fit the target demo that people are looking for, he'd just need to work on relearning those languages to do it which might be tricky

I would suggest starting in something fairly simple like SQL / Report developer, or perhaps specialize in a particular application like something built for integration. The logic being is you don't have to learn so much to get working. With regular development, you need to know database, back end, front end, networking and all that. With SQL/Report dev, it's really just SQL and whatever report tool is popular.

With a specialized application, it's the same. You just learn the application and don't have to keep up with all the changing fads of regular development.

Once he gets a foot in, he can expand to other things as well.

Best of luck.

There are flavors of consulting that are not programming.

Business consulting, mentorship, project analysis - basically providing an outside perspective - are all valuable skills that businesses or people will pay for.

Others have offered good advice in the form of becoming a PM.

An alternative pitch: Your Dad starts HisLastName Consulting LLC, goes around to local businesses, and asks if they would like a strategic analysis or expert financial analysis done for $$$. A few take him up on the offer, he does a deep dive on their business and financials for a month or two, and delivers a presentation with recommendations. Done, onto the next client or a vacation.

Assuming he is currently employed I wonder if taking on some programming work as part of his existing role might be a good way to slide into it. If he knows and uses Excel then writing VBA would be a good first step.

ask your dad: would you be willing to ride a bicycle if you didn't know how? what about learning how to cook?

it's not only doable, but exciting if he is able to get into in.

also, i would in the first stage drop the professional from professional programming. He needs to grok what programming is at a newbie/hobby level first and needs to enjoy it before even thinking about anything professional.

he also needs to understand that this is a long journey (ie it will take years to be any good and/or have someone pay him to write code). If he has the patience and determination to do it he will be successful.

Ageism is more rampant in software development than in most other fields outside of professional athletics. Full disclosure: I am in this age range but I have more than 40 years professional experience.

Maybe I'm overghinking the term ... but why would you ask for a "career"? How about "starting to work as programmer at 61"? Sounds much more doable and less over-enthuisiastic.

I'm 35 and I would not start again with programming.

Maybe it's some kind of chicken-egg problem, but I find it harder and harder to stay "on top" of the situation, the ever-changing web ecosystems and whatnot, because I have so little time to learn everything new and understand it and use it.

Maybe it's less of a struggle with other languages, and if you do it fulltime, but I find it stressful and it gets worse.

I don't know how you can handle this situation and feelings when you are older and just starting out.

Anyway: I find it great that he wants to learn something new.

CEO/CCO/CFF, why not CTO? Go for it! Life is short. Program one project, develop with one team, lead a team, manage a tech department; scales up to CTO pretty quickly. Enjoy the ride!

Consider that an undergrad takes 4 years, with a 2 year master's on the end of it, but that's for students who are distracted. You can completely reinvent in 3-5 years, and at that age, you will have condiments in your fridge that have lasted longer.

Can't say much for finding jobs, as I've contracted and consulted for most of my career because I prefer the problems and change, but really, your options are either to manage, or become manageable. That's the decisive factor in finding a job as we age, imo.

I like to see success stories of this kind personally. “It’s never too late” makes me feel better about a life so far squandered.

I think if he needs encouragement in order to do it, he probably isn’t going to do it. The only way it’ll work at that age is if he’s overwhelmingly passionate about it.

Sounds like he’d be better suited to starting his own company in which he can code and do whatever he wants. Doesn’t have to worry about anyone giving him a job, meanwhile hopefully all those business skills will come in useful.

I say go for it. He might want to consider areas such as database development (SQL) and stable, commonly used technologies (Java, C#) as opposed to front end where frameworks seem to be constantly changing. You mentioned he might be good at Excel - that could come in handy also, especially in finance and/or data analysis type roles. Don't worry about ageism - it's a good asshole filter. Also his leadership experience could be useful if he wants to manage engineering teams.

As most professional developers know, coding is only a fraction of the total software process. There is team planning, debugging, sales, support, teaching, management, etc. A startup might spend half its hours on coding. At a mature software conglomerate this may fall to one-fifth of the hours. Learning all this can take a year of more.

Its not what you see in most schools where it mostly coding. However thats improving as students put stuff on github in a turnkey state.

The certificate in cybersecurity I was referring to is a CISSP. It takes a few weeks to master the ideas and get a certificate, and then your dad would be qualified for cybersecurity consulting jobs. As I mentioned, cybersecurity consulting is mostly about re-organizing governance, and making PowerPoints about that re-organization. And there are a lot of openings, and more every day, due to the scariness of the threat of Russian cyberattacks.

I would recommend he take operations roles at a tech startup.

Growing companies really need people who can keep things running as they grow. Experienced people want more senior and sexy roles, and inexperienced people can make fatal mistakes.

It's a nice combination of getting the logistics and relationships right, and the latter can be very rewarding.

He should shop himself to VC's as team filler. They'll relate to him, and can plug him in to gaps as needed.

I tend to think that it's best to only recommend a programming career to people who actually like programming.

So: I'd tell him to spend 3 months going online and learning Javascript or Python, and pick a suitable first project (or first contribution to an open source project) and get to the point where he's actually working on that. Then see whether he loves it or hates it or inbetween.

Yeah if you want to get a lot more back pain. With 61 I would do more valuable things and not coding computers in an environment what changes every day and following trends so fast like the clouds fly by. I would start something more steady like painting, an instrument ... something with art (yeah I think coding isn't art and just a tool to tell this machines what to do)

I would say no

To be good in it takes years. Playing around with it in the past doesn't mean you can develop software.

And with his age I have the feeling that the time and effort is wasted when he retires.

I'm even a open person and wouldn't care but a old manager of mine wouldn't even hire a 50 year old software engineer because he was worried if he fits in with us.

The age bias is real and I think it would frustrae your dad.

Just wanted to chime in and say I think that awesome of your dad. And if he goes forward with it, perhaps document (twitter or a blog) the journey - the ups and the downs and everything in between. It could be cool to see him share some wisdom with the younger generations along the way. I think he'd find that community would rally around him too. All the best!

Hard part will be to secure that first job with almost no prior experience in programming and no recent formal education.

One option could be vocational education (depending on what the education system is in your country), they tend to be more practical rather than theoretical and can offer an internship at a company. An internship can be a good way to get that first job.

It’s definitely possible. Even if coding is out of reach for him… I think being tech adjacent is good enough. It would be cool if you hired him as an intern in your business… his business experience alone will be an asset for you. He can handle the human side of things and still be in tech and give him opportunity to explore while also feeling helpful.

Your dad will be a unicorn -- someone who knows how to code, but also has the business/social aptitude to manage relationships with executives. This is very rare and impressive.

I'd encourage him to give this a shot.

A lot of technical people don't appreciate how difficult the relationship aspect is, and often struggle with it. Your has this in spades!

I can't image doing this professionally at his age. Just so much frustration, change, and BS.

Perhaps he could move into something related but low pressure. Maybe tutoring or teaching (likely not public schools). If he has to enough to retire, then maybe something as a volunteer, like web dev for a local non-profit.

Putting aside age discrimination for now (which is very real), a good thing to figure out is how good he is at programming. Can he get to the point where he can solve easy problems on sites like leetcode or hackerrank in a mainstream programming language (not basic or pascal)?

If he wants the enjoyment of programming and being in tech, but not have the agisum have him go in to devops. He would thrive there with his management skill set and his found ability to program. Plus an SRE or Devops engineer gets paid as much as their developer counterpart

I would suggest he consult and program to meet client needs. That way the focus is on solving problems, which is easier to sell, rather than slinging code.

For example he could do audits of financial departments using his CFO background, and write some programs to help him do that.

i think it's a cool idea, especially if he doesn't need to make a ton of money, or any at all.

get a 4-day work week, and land at a BIG company, maybe - b/c they're sane to work at. they may be killing us all, but they won't kill you quickly as an employee.

i tend to think modern-day web-oriented (js) programming is awful, but i guess it's personal preference -- but i'd just generally advise try to find something he thinks he might like.

some other comments mentioned old-school tech - i think that could be a good idea. i don't know that it has to be or should be COBOL or craziness like that -- java, middle languages like pl/sql -- dba-type stuff.

totally doable if he has the energy for it.

and if he has someone to guide him, even better.

If he wants to work as programmer, he should talk to the people in his network who hire programmers.

If he can't get a programmer job through his network, then it is unlikely he will be considered hireable by random companies.

Whether or not he should learn programming is mostly orthogonal.

I started programming at 30 and started technical lead positions at 35. I'm teaching two friends in their 40s to program in Python.

I know there's still a considerable gap between 40s and 60s from my stories, but the point is that he should try it and you help him.

Don't listen to anybody! Yes he can! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFYJ2DE9wlM (After Learning to Code at 81, She Made a Game for Fellow Seniors)

Just a question of eating a couple gallons of fish oil, fifteen softgels a day. It makes people feel five years old all over again.

You wanted my advice, I once received that same advice, I have the liberty of repeating it to you. I am under no obligation to lie to you.

I suggest working as a consultant/contractor, where age is not a barrier.

P.S. I'm older than your dad! And I program every day. I figure I have a good 20 years left as a programmer. The only thing that can stop your dad is if he quits.

Given his background I think he should become a recruiter that peddles the over 40 tech crowd. That way he can dabble with programming on the side, leverage his business acumen, and see first hand whether there is a market for old folks in tech.

It’s a question of how he can handle complexity. Is he organized. Is he able to focus on one thing at a time. Is he willing to read books, and do coding alongside the reading. If you can answer yesterday, age does not matter.

I would target a constrained area like android development, which has a limited set of technologies you need to master. Also, the feedback cycle is rewarding since you actually see your changes, and its good contractor work.

NO, it takes years of experience (~ 10 years including student time) to can do good jobs - even for young and smart people.

He doesn't have enough time, he should take simple jobs that he can do. don't be stubborn.

He probably has a wealth of experience in other areas. I think he SHOULD learn to code if he finds it interesting, but then bring that new skill into an area where he already has expertise.

With that kind of experience why doesn't he do high level Corporate Consulting instead? I'm sure he could start his own shop or get with Mckinsey/Accenture/etc.

With such a c-level background it seems weird to me that he wants to contract as a programmer, for which he has hardly any experience at all and not a business consultant.

I don't think that would make a lot of sense financially or professionally, but if he wanted to do this for fun (and money) then I think he probably could.

Can he pull some strings to make it work? I'm sure he has some high up connections in other companies that may offer him a position out of respect or else?

Dude academia needs programmers, specifically biology, biomedicine, and living organism. It doesn’t pay great, but my god you can get a job pretty easy.

I know a guy with a similar background who wanted become a coder.

He got a temp job coding. Not too good at it.

Eventually wound up doing sales for a FAANG, selling SaaS to C-suite execs.

Sounds like he could afford to pay for a boot camp for some immersion and doesn’t need to stress as hard about landing a job after.

I would explore a career as a Technical Quality Engineer. Feel free to reach out directly to david@vydra.net if interested.

Why would he want to do programming professionally? I only do it professionally because I cannot afford to do it for fun.

Anecdotally I don't think my parents could learn to program at a hireable level in their 60s.

As a thriving contractor, you should hire him, coach him, and make some money off of him.

He should probably be looking for consulting gigs in his areas if expertise instead.

I don't know if your dad wants to hear that ageism is super real in our industry.

Don't fall for the hype. It is just like every other job out there. Go for it.

Also, with the right format, this would make great Youtube material.

I would say yes absolutely. He doesn't have anything to lose.

i think it makes more sense to become a management consultant and in his spare time contribute to open source or work on software for fun for himself.

If blacks and women can be hired based on skin color and not merit, then the sky's the limit. I say go for it.

He should go for it.

Programming is hard. It is competitive. The programming languages change every 2 yrs.

61 yr old programmers who have programmed much of their careers. Find ageism and irrelevancy if they have not kept up with the changing technologies.

Your father is choosing a harder path. That may not be worth the time, effort and energy. And starting with no relevant skills to programming.

Some better options with competitive pay:

documentation, report writing, database management, QA.