[kentbrew]

I've done what you're doing about five times, and it's always exciting and new. I'm 54 with no degree or formal qualifications of any sort, and am currently responsible for all third-party JavaScript and browser extensions at a strong young company in San Francisco.

Free advice: Unless you are planning to specialize in something PHP-based like Drupal, you may want to de-emphasize PHP in your resume and employment history. Start learning Python right now and double down on your JavaScript, since you'll find it on the back end (Node.js) as well as the front end. And never say you're the master of nothing; there is at least one thing that you're the best in the world at, and you have to say what that is and why they should hire you to do it.

If you are not already completely comfortable with git and GitHub, now would be a fine time to start by contributing to open-source projects or starting your own.

Trust your gut when interviewing; if it feels the place is run a bunch of 22-year-old frat boys out of privileged private universities, it's not going to work out well for you.

One successful approach is to look for a situation where women are thriving in engineering roles. Why? Because much of the extra stuff an older individual contributor without a degree will have to do is the same extra stuff that all women face every day.