[apaitch]

It's totally understandable for a 10-man startup to not want to take in a relative newbie and have him/her drag down the team's productivity when they've got to ship in a month. However, for bigger companies (not necessarily giants like Google either) it may well be worth it to invest in a number of somewhat less experienced employees and grow them internally. The only problem, I suppose, would be selecting the right people.

[ericd]

A large percentage of "the right people" will have already invested in learning programming and the innumerable related skills, because that's what they're interested in and have been interested in for a long time. Thus, being a bit older without much experience is a bad signal from a company's perspective. But if you learn aggressively on your own, it can be overcome. Don't expect to learn all the random skills on a company's dime, though - the salaries are too high to justify that.