[perl4ever]

There are a lot of people who are programmers but aren't "software developers", particularly not "full stack" buzzword enabled types. If you've been programming for a decade or two, and haven't had that title, you're likely not going to get that $70K that fresh grads will. Likely not even hired, for "cultural fit".

Hope you don't fall off the treadmill, because if you do, you'll find out there is no way back and no pity.

[sloopy543]

Oh I've had plenty of struggles myself. I've gone six months without work and had to spend several years just building my skills to the point where others would find them valuable.

On top of that, I was super stubborn about always working remotely, which I got but only after rejecting one place after another. I would have kept employment easily had I just been more willing to drive into an office every day.

I happen to be young, but I work with plenty of people who are much older than me and greyer too, so I don't really buy the ageism argument. The market is hot and if you can deliver the goods, chances are you can get a job.

[perl4ever]

"if you can deliver the goods"

Demonstrating what you can do at a temporary job is a viable tactic, but it takes luck to find the right one and sacrifices if it's paying half what you're used to.

When you're just out of college, you can tell people in an interview that you've been learning a language on your own, and you've done this and that, and you're confident you can be useful. And they will hire you. That's how I got my first post bachelor's job.

But ten or twenty years down the line, you can't do that. Any job with 5-10 requirements, they aren't interested in hearing how you have been studying it at home, how you were working with something similar 6 months or 10 years ago. You have to be using all of the things on a daily basis now. And confidence you can learn any language equates to arrogance and "not a cultural fit".

You don't appreciate the difference between a college grad and someone a bit older. The issue isn't that everyone who's older insists on a senior level salary, when they don't know, say, Java or Python. The issue is that it's assumed they can't even learn anything new, regardless of experience, if they aren't doing it right now.

What I did personally was to find a job with zero technical requirements that happened to be ripe for automation, so I could do whatever I wanted in any spare moment and learn whatever I thought might be useful. But in retrospect, I think it was extreme luck that I found it, and that I was at my best for the interview. Because 99% of similar jobs are just, file stuff, answer phones, move boxes.