
Ask HN: End of the rope at 42- Thinking Coder School-Does it make sense? - DiversityinSV
So, unfortunately it has come to this... after half a decade of start-ups in SF Bay Area doing growth marketing, CRM, Marketo, email, ads, SEM, SEO, and product management in B2B and B2C, I&#x27;ve landed in the wrong side of 40 years old, not white or Asian, no fancy MBA (Though I have one) and not a coder.<p>I&#x27;ve have a good set of experience over 10 years, and the last startup where I was handling channel growth (grew from 300K to 2MM subscribers in 2 years) was a successful acquisition last year. It was a foreign acquirer, so I can&#x27;t follow my job out of USA.<p>12 months later, 300+ job applications later, 10 in-person interviews later (from FB, AppDirect, Ancestry, HP, DocuSign to smaller startups) NOTHING has landed. I&#x27;ve exhausted my personal network and expanded the search to LA, Portland, Seattle and nothing as well.<p>All I can tell you is, every position I interviewed (and was final 2 candidates or whatever) companies have hired younger and sometimes even less experienced people than their declared criteria. I&#x27;m not saying I was the perfect fit for each position, I wasn&#x27;t for some I&#x27;m sure, but reality and data is what it is. 
 I haven&#x27;t had a harder time ever in Silicon Valley to get back to work.<p>The question is, should I try a coder school? I&#x27;ve been thinking really hard about it. I don&#x27;t want to add another $15K-$25K in debt just to be a 40-something noob non-white&#x2F;asian coder without a job on top of everything else going wrong. I wanted to figure out if I need to add some certifications (Marketo, Google, SAP) but no one has requested them where I&#x27;m looking for work and entry level jobs using these aren&#x27;t that many.<p>So, thoughts? Would it be worth to really learn JS or a full Ruby stack for a career switch or will my age&#x2F;background still nullify whatever coding skills I can get.<p>Honest answers - Do you think the age&#x2F;background thing continue to overrule anything I do?
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calcsam
Hmmm.....

I think you have a great story to tell. You're a growth marketer learning
engineering, so that you can be a one-man growth shop for an early-stage
startup.

Bootcamps aren't magic salves, and it can often take 3-4 months for the
average grad to find a job. That said, I think you have a _much_ better story
than the average bootcamp grad, who are usually coming from completely
unrelated fields. You could hit up literally every single seed / series A-ish
startup and pitch them to own growth.

Would be happy to chat in person (I'm a self-taught dev myself), contact info
in profile.

