Old Programmer: When Programming Belongs to a Second Career

Liz Beigle-Bryant was exposed to her first programming course, BASIC, in 1973. Back then, computers were part of the math department, not the engineering department, she recalled. And since her family has an artistic background, everyone discouraged her from learning programming.

Beigle-Bryant, now 57 years old, started to embrace programming again after learning free online PHP tutorials a few years ago. Although she was not directly compensated at the time, she found that learning skills helped ease the inevitable frustrations of the job search process.

“I feel like I’m making something meaningful instead of wasting time on Facebook and mobile games,” she said.

In 2011, Beigle-Bryant became one of Microsoft's layoffs. She once served as an administrative assistant. This is her fourth career path. Others include being the costume designer for the Hypernauts series in 1996, and winning an IMBD nomination award.

In her 50s, Beigle-Bryant decided on her fifth career path. While she was unemployed, she could spend up to eight hours a day on Codecademy learning HTML, and later Python. Eventually, she used those skills to land a job at the University of Washington (where she worked in a variety of roles, including data migration). Although this is still far from what she had in mind, Beigle-Bryant said she is also grateful: "As you get older, your employer will gradually dislike you."

Many people are facing similar unemployment Sometimes, you will only blame others. You might as well learn Beigle-Bryant and learn new skills, such as programming, to give yourself more leverage in your job search. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. unemployment rate was 6.2% in July. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for programmers is only 1.3%, and jobs in this field are expected to grow by about 8% over the next decade, with some recruiters even saying there will be an oversupply. As a result, the average annual salary for programmers is $76,140—the average for all occupations is $46,440.

Due to the shortage of qualified candidates, employers have to lower their recruitment standards. Originally a computer science degree was required, but now it is no longer a requirement. Even non-college graduates have become recruitable talent in many cases.

“As long as you can code,” says Nicole Tucker, a recruiting director at iCIMS. "As long as you have the ability to solve problems and are full of curiosity, you can give it a try." Tucker added that some of the programmers hired by iCIMS are self-taught on Codecademy and Coursera. Tucker said she pays close attention to a candidate's motivations. But the problem now is that many people choose programming not because they like coding. The pursuit of high pay and job security has overshadowed their original passion. This has also become the primary goal for job hoppers.

In other words, if you enjoy fixing problems and solving hard problems, then you will be more likely to become a better programmer and enjoy your job more than someone who just works for the high salary. Of course, this applies to many jobs in other fields as well.

However, if you really like coding, you might as well learn from Ryan Hanna and read his inspirational story. Hanna, now 30, used to be a very ordinary IT worker. He had very limited knowledge about coding, so he started teaching himself HTML through Codecademy in 2012, and then CSS and JavaScript. “Sometimes when you get involved, three hours go by in the blink of an eye,” he said. Five months later, Hanna was trying to build his first application, Sworkit, which generated random routes to fit a user's schedule.

Hanna began to think that if 100 people downloaded it, he would be excited enough. As a result, he received tens of thousands of downloads in the first month. Later, Hanna sold Sworkit to Nexercise, and he became a member of the company and started his new career.

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