Hello everyone, I am 32 and I hate my current job, it does not bring me any motivation.
I started to learn on and off web development 2 years ago but had some problems with depression and I lacked enough motivation to go on.
Now I am still in the same position I am trying to recover from depression and I am stuck.I try to learn html,css,I am still stuck there and don’t know if I will ever be capable of moving forward to next levels.And until I will learn enough I will be 33 and I don’t know if I will find someone to hire me at 33.
I really need some positive stories or hopes and motivation from people maybe in similar situation.
I lack confidence I will be capable of learning.
Thanks.
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Uhhh, are we the same person? I’m about to turn 30 but in a very similar situation. I’ve been mixing up how I learn things and it has helped a ton. I spend a little time each day on the lessons but I’ve also been working on projects in codepen utilizing what I’ve learned from FCC and youtube. Sometimes I’ll fork projects on codepen that look cool and deconstruct what they did and turn it into something else. You got this!!!
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To get one thing out of the way…do a search on here for “am I too old” and you’ll see posts…and success stories by people in their 30’s, 40’s, 50’s… I made the decision to change careers when I was 39, Im 41 now and this has been the most incredible journey. Worry about the stuff you can control, like ramping up your skills…forget about the stuff you cant do anything about…its not a productive use of time, and its not going to help you to think about stuff like that.
Something that happened to me is, I fell into a certain job role, wasnt really my thing but it was okay…I always said Id make a change but started to feel stuck. 5 years turned to 10 years and yeah, when I hit 39 it hit me…if Im going to do it, I better do it NOW. Im not stuck, Im just not doing anything to change my situation. The idea of another 10 years going by, being 50, and still not even trying made me feel sick. And yeah, it took a huge toll on my outlook and mental health. Believe me when I say, its going to be tough, but even as hard as it is to ramp those skills up, you’re going to start feeling better just knowing its going to lead to the change you need in your life.
On that note too, if you need to see a dr to help develop some coping skills and find the motivation to break through so that you can make life happen…do it! Its more than okay to ask for help and it will benefit you in so many ways.
As for learning…how much time and effort are you putting into it? Like, be honest with yourself…make it a point to devote yourself to studying, every single day for a set amount of hours. Make it a part of your daily responsibility to invest in yourself. Work through the FCC challenges, do the projects if you have a hard time understanding anything at all, ask the community. You’ll get there, just have to keep at it.
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I started in this area in 2000 being about 30 years old as ‘career changer’. I was playing around with HTML and suddenly got a job after an internship. I’ve been in several companies and I hated some of them really and several times I thought: I should find another job. I had 2 phases of being jobless for a longer time, loosing a lot of self-confidence. Meanwhile I’m 50 years old and passing my time on FCC because I want to update my skills in frontend-programming (most of the things I learned 20 years ago are useless now, I still can’t believe how everything changed). The last 10 years I’ve been in the same company (record-breaking…!) but I’m aware that this can change fastly.
I experienced often a kind of psychological “trap”: I hated a company or a specific customer and transfered that to programming in general.
The point is: I love playing around with flexbox, css-grid or react, for me it’s fun discovering new things even if I hate my job.
You wrote that you hate your current job. I really understand that.
This point is: what do you feel when you are learning HTML/CSS? Do you like that? Is that fun for you? (even if you stuck sometimes)
This is really important because working as developer means livelong learning as you can see in my biographpy.
I cannot say whether someone will hire you at 33 but in my point of view you are really young! I avoid thinking too much about: Would someone hire me at 50…
Another aspect: even if you don’t get a job as developer, it is an advantage having knowledge in HTML/CSS. For example if you are working as an editor with an CMS and writing texts for websites. You are lost with that nasty WYSIWYG-texteditors if you don’t have any knowledge about html.
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Learning to code is HARD. Don’t let boot camp propaganda convince you otherwise. Learning anything new is hard, especially for those of us who are several years out of the habit of learning completely new things. It’s difficult and confusing and exhausting. Feeling those things isn’t the result of anything wrong with you.
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One thing I would add to the conversation is that your health should come as a priority above all else. If you are finding learning and coding difficult then it is likely to compound your mental health issues going forward.
With regards to learning, it will come with time. This is my 3rd crack at learning to code and it’s the first time I’ve made any significant ground.
An old adage says “If you’re good enough, you’re old enough” - code doesn’t know how old the person is that’s inputting it and if you can give yourself enough skills and create a good portfolio, then age will be of little concern to employers. 30 is very, very young in modern life. Most people are still less than 10 years out of university by that point and it’s becoming increasingly common that people don’t decide what to do with their lives until their late 20s, early 30s.
Im 36 and I’m not put off by the challenges - I know that it’s going to be difficult, but if I’m as good as the rest of the competition, then with my maturity and work experience, I’ll be a competitive candidate.
Good luck!
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I don’t believe your too old. If that’s the case it’s over for me. I’m 53 and feel every bit of 35. I love graphic design and coding. I’m just getting back into coding after years not using it. I also have my days where I feel overwhelmed because things have changed so much since I took my html course and it seems like so much to retain but days where I’m excited. I’m learning using FCC, going to meetups when I can, watching YouTube, Codepen and working on WordPress projects incorporating html and css. Some days I struggle and others are a success. Don’t give up. You got this! 
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There is a lot of good advice above my post. I will only touch on learning to code.
I’ve found that I need multiple resources to learn from on the same content because each provide different teaching styles. I tend to learn something…say HTML & CSS from one resource (FCC) then I move to good Udemy courses that go into further explaining things from a video course perspective. Spaced repetition is a good way to learn things…basically you keep revisiting concepts until you get things into your long-term memory.
I created a blog post of some of my favorite resources for learning besides FCC. Feel free to take a look.
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Find a friend to learn with you, support each other and keep each other on track learning. The off and on is the problem, your skills decayed before you can build on them, and the resulting struggle discourages you. It’s all about building momentum and stay on track.
I had to join a bootcamp to really gain the momentum toward putting all my learning together and getting a job. However it’s not necessary for everyone. What I needed was people I can learn from and learn with, and an environment away from the chaos that was my life. You can do that without shelling out the money, some people can even do it without the isolated and immersive environment.
There is someone out there to hire you if you have the necessary skills. I started learning when I was 28, decided to join a bootcamp at 30 because I was not satisfied with my progress by myself and got a job the same year. When my skills caught up to the market demand, someone hired me. I had to move to a different part of the country, but the job is there.
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I’m in the same situation as you. However I look at what you said and think of that as the part of me that will make me fail, give up, etc. You can have those thoughts and feelings, that’s alright. But you can’t listen to them because if you really want to change your life you have to work HARD. I’ve been doing this stuff for 2 months now and I have some good days and some bad, but in the end I’m never going to give up because I can’t live with the fact that I failed completely at life. I’ve already screwed up enough, time to bust through these old ideas we have about ourselves!
You can do it! If you need someone to talk to I’m here.
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You got this! Just set aside time everyday, whether it is 30 minutes to an hour of steadily learning without distractions. Eventually you will hit a different milestones that you never thought of going over. I just turned 30 and have been on the same journey as you! For me to stay hungry and focus, I cut out playing video games, going out, and sitting at home watching shows all day. This was my main distractions.
After looking back now, I started my coding journey in June of 2018, and am proud of the mini accomplishments I’ve done. Though they aren’t grand, but going from completely not knowing anything to now, creating static pages that would’ve taken me a loooong time to do, is surely a sign of improvement. There are definitely times, where I study for a week or two and say to myself, I haven’t created anything in a while, and if I don’t I will be rusty and forget certain things. Which of course, happens, but being able to quickly research topics that you have studied in the past will come to you after warming up your brain to the task at hand.
I work as a transporter at our county hospital full time and whenever I have breaks between runs, I will pull out my phone and read up on web development stuff so I can stay afloat with the ever changing game of coding. I realized that if I want to do this for the rest of my life, I have to marry this lifestyle. You got this! 
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Rock the world with your idea! 
Hey Elineea,
I don’t know how much of a help I can be but i would suggest you move on to learning more advanced programming such as JavaScript for front-end. Why? because I personally believe that learning a programming language and the logic behind solving problems does something incredible to your mind, it makes you THINK and as time goes by it helps you better handle your thoughts and actions in real life!
It’s important to learn about html/css but it can get “flat” at times and boring, which is why it would make things better if you also add a programming language to learn and practice while learning html/css.
Depending on your time availability, make it a daily routine to use at least a small amount of time from your day to incorporate coding, sometimes with repetition you will get that spark and feel better of your progress.
At the beginning stages it can be easy to forget and become dull in programming therefore it is important to be consistent. You are young ! listen to some Gary vee podcast or on youtube and he may help you broaden your perspective towards age.
Believe in yourself.
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You bring up a really good point here…a lot of the major tech companies are developing apprenticeships for devs with non-traditional paths and dev is their second career. These companies realize theres real value in having a diversity of devs from different backgrounds, and trying to bring in those who have life experience and maturity under their belt. They want people with fresh perspectives working for them. So in fact, being older is actually an asset.
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Seriously, people even if I never get hired Coding is like a life style. Coding for me is lifestyle…
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So many great responses, truly encouraging!
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Keep trying, don’t give up. I personally don’t think your age has anything to do with you lading the job you want. Perhaps your skills may ;).
Also, don’t worry about CSS to much, I have a hard time with it myself. To be frank, I find it to be the hardest part of front end web development. I’ve spent hours at times tryng to center a a diiv, correct border properties on certain elements CSS is just tricky. If the code gets to be too much, step away for a bit and return with.
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wish i were 32…44 soon
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Hello!!! My name is Norlyn, I have been freelancing for 9 months now. I am a Chemical Engineer and quit my job since I went full time in freelancing. At the moment I offer Virtual Assistance services but just wanted to focus on learning webdev. I don’t know where this would take me or if someone will hire me as a web developer in the future. Everything is uncertain really. I just started webdev and as long as I am having fun, I will continue. The moment I lose the joy of learning this, then I will stop. By the way I’m 30 and will be turning 31 on June this year.
Doesn’t matter, as long as you’re enjoying what you’re learning.