So you think it's more age friendly than networking? And I understand writing but what I want to know is what is a usual day like? Are you given a assignment on what to fix or work on and given a deadline to fix it?
First Question really depends on the company. If you have the skills most will not care about your age unless you are close to retirement or something.
A usual day , We have what's called Sprints( how long the sprint is depends on the company and the project ) One project may be 6 weeks , another one may be 4 weeks. During that time frame you are assigned tasks/User Stories, example : Implement this business rule ,fix an issue with a common library or refactor this class by taking some of the logic out and put it into another class. Each day we have what's called a Scrum call, which consist of
1.) what did you do since the last call
2.) What do you plan on doing today
3.)Are there any issues holding you back.
The call should be no more than 15-30 minutes. Me personally, now I'm on 3 Scrum calls a day. On my last project we never did Scrum calls. But see I'm speaking from a perspective of working at a company that has 34K+ employees and work with just about any technology you can think of. I'm sure the experience is pretty different at a small shop.
Honestly, I would focus on doing some programming before and seeing if it's really for you. All the other stuff will not matter
if you hate programming. I'm 34 now and been programming since I was 15( Shoutout to Qbasic ) and I still have days where I want to throw the computer out the window, with my bonus I'll probably hit $105K this year salary wise, but I would take $70K to work on a game like Battlefield. So not only look at programming, but also look at the type of programming you want to do. My suggestions:
1.) Create a couple of simple projects.
2.) Decide what type of programmer you want to be, just saying I want to program don't cut it anymore. do you want to do Mobile Apps, Desktop Apps or Web apps?
3.) Unless you are 50+, don't worry about the age thing or the type of environment and benefits. If you truly have a passion for programming, none of that will really matter when starting out.
4.) This field constantly requires you to keep learning. I really have no reason to go back to school, but I have plans to work for companies like Nvidia/Google/Dice one day. So just because you know programming dont mean you can just jump to any other type of programming( if that makes sense ).
If you are looking for a quick come up( not saying you are ). I would find another field.
