Age 40 or Over a Problem?

I can't see why not, it doesn't take long to get up to speed if you put the time and effort in.

I'm 27, I left school at 16 and became an IT support engineer, I slowly made my way with ups and downs to Lead Network Engineer, Project Manager and Disaster Recovery Specialist at a fortune 300 hedgefund administrator. I knew basic HTML and CSS at around 23. I was made redundant and was out of work for about 1 year. I started to learn databasing and backend programming.

I am now working full time for the fashion industry as a Database Designer and Web Designer. I have my own freelance clients and I am slowly transitioning from full time work to full time freelance, its hard work doing both at the same time but I am slowly getting there and before I know it I will be working at home in my undies watching day time TV lol.

If you are willing to put the time and effort in you can get the required skills for webdesign jobs in a short matter of time. This is an industry where qualifications are not anywhere near as highly regarded as portfolio work so you also wont have to spend a lot of money getting stupidly expensive qualifcations which you should be familiar with as an IT project manager (ITIL, MSCD and all that nonsense).

Saying that I am currently working towards getting my Zend PHP qualifcations and Zend Framework 1 and 2 Qualifcations as it does not cost a lot to do in comparison to most IT qualifcations and couldn't hurt to have to support my portfolio when pitching to clients or job roles.

HTML / CSS - Cant really say how long this took me to learn because it just kind of happened naturally throughout my time as an IT engineer, but I cant see it taking longer then 1 month for someone to be well versed in both.

Javascript - I'm stil not fully versed in Javascript but can use it for what I need to but I haven't taken the time to fully learn it as I normally just use small jQuery scripts here and there because PHP does most my proccessing work for me making front end scripting languages a bit redundant and unnesccary.

SQL Databases - This took me about 2 months to 3 months to fully understand, install and support.

PHP - I am still learning PHP to this day but I am at the point where I am being paid to do it and only really started learning every now and again about a year ago (With Treehouse PHP track I think someone with the right determination could actually get up to speed with basics and advanced uses of PHP in under a month).

Hope this helps :)

thanks a lot. Very inspiring. Yes, I've been doing the RonR track here and most of the lessons make perfect sense to me because of my past experience with HTML/vb script/ASP mini apps I built with Access back ends many years ago.....

I just wasn't sure if there was a lot of age discrimination. I might even be more interested in back-end work eventually. I remember enjoying the interplay between databases and forms/sites.

I've never been a great "designer" and making things look great aesthetically.

I think I'm able to see the "big picture" and have great ideas on how a site should be laid out and serve the needs of visitors. I'm just not a graphic designer.

You will find age discrimination in every industry you apply yourself to, and yes, it will work against you to a degree (so you have to set your expectations accordingly), but it shouldn't deter you.

As your learn, build yourself a little portfolio site, and keep adding to it. Build small/medium web apps and sites as you grow more comfortable. They don't have to be anything special, just things you find interesting. Once you have that down, try to tackle a larger project. Adding all this to your portfolio will be useful as you can present something to show that you not only have the learning part down, but you have real world experience to back it up. For added bonus, do NOT use Wordpress or the like to create the portfolio site. It may sound like the easy way to do so, but doing it from scratch will teach you a lot more.

Learn Version Control (git) as most projects will probably require a working knowledge of it. Luckily Treehouse has a course on it :)

Most importantly, do NOT give up. If this is something you find enjoyable, keep at it. Determination will beat out all else in the end.

Good luck!

and Ashley, thanks for the answer.

I started learning web development in July of 2012. At that time, I had no idea how a website was made. I turned 40 in Oct of 2014. I just got my first jr. developer job in Jan 2015. I've been a bartender and a comedian for nearly 20 years. It wasn't easy, but I was determined. I've logged many ours on this site, and others like it. I also took a web development immersive from General Assembly. I would say that GA, by far helped me the most. If it's what you want and you're driven, I think an employer will see that over your age. Good luck to you and don't give up!