[jgilias]

You can be Grug:

https://grugbrain.dev/

Software engineering needs ten self-aware Grugs for every child prodigy.

Getting in might be hard though. See, I’ve been on the hiring side and guilty as charged, I have passed on people aiming for Junior positions later in life. Not because ageism or anything, but because I need to make sure I have someone who just likes tinkering and staring at a monitor the whole day, not someone who figured to do a career change for better money. The second motivation is a recipe for disaster. You have to like this in order to do it well.

And this has to be visible already on the resume.

[tchaffee]

You are using a poor heuristic that favors young people. That is age discrimination. It's illegal in many countries, and unethical in all. You should try to throw out the heuristic and find a better way to determine interest.

For what it's worth, some engineers who are "just in it for the money" consistently pump out high quality code. They just go home at 6pm. While some of those who love it are working towards burnout. I have hired both. Both have their pros and cons.

[jgilias]

Just to make it clear, I’m writing this to get it out there for people who want to move into development a bit later in life. Such that they can improve their portfolios and resumes. I mean, we didn’t have an arduous interview process, but many companies do. And if you have to pass 4 filters from initial HR screening to a conversation with EMs, you absolutely have to show why you’re better for this role than a bunch of other people you’re competing with.

[tchaffee]

> you absolutely have to show why you’re better for this role than a bunch of other people you’re competing with

Of course. But let's define "better" and question your assumptions.

It is definitely not your sloppy heuristic: that heuristic is ageist and should be discarded.

Is it "interested in the field" vs. "interested in money"? That's highly debatable and depends on the company. For a big corporation that moves slowly and has a lot of grunt work, I'll most likely choose "interested in money" over someone who is going to get bored with the work there and focus on their side projects instead. For a startup early hire, probably "interested in the field". But I'd have to keep a very close eye on burnout.

There is a reason most engineers hate the interviewing process and one of those is the endemic abuse of heuristics. Consider improving your interviewing process instead of defending it. Some of your competition already is improving it, and they will hire the excellent folks that you pass by. Ineffective tricks in an attempt to shortcut an actually thorough process are probably never going to go away. But that doesn't mean you need to continue to participate in that. You could in fact "show why you're better".

[gwnywg]

I agree with this.

And I'm approaching 40, still like to stare at screen and tinker whole day, though do less and less of it as I get more and more attracted intellectualy to build companies and not only software product.