After eight years, Patsy Price had grown bored working as a program manager at Google.
“I got more and more responsibility and higher-visibility projects, but I was further away from the technology,” she said. “I was managing teams, but I got really jealous of the software engineers who were developing all the cool products.”
So last spring Price quit to embark on a new career.
“When people learned I had quit Google, they didn’t believe people actually quit Google,” she said. “I said, yes, they do because Google opens your eyes about what is possible.”
This may sound like another story of a Silicon Valley executive weary of the long days of a manager at a technology giant, despite the high salary, and intent on seeking opportunities elsewhere, but Price’s story is different. She was not among the early Google employees who could take their millions and never work again. She was 57, married with three children and two grandchildren and had enough money to live for six months without a paycheck.
She quit Google to learn how to be a computer programmer, or coder, in tech parlance. It is a hot job with a median salary of $74,280, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Yet Price was giving up seniority and a solid six-figure paycheck to break into an industry that is overwhelmingly young, male and unencumbered with family commitments.
“This was a huge risk,” she said. “I was leaving a great job, and I would be making half the money I was making before. But I wanted marketable skills.”
She had two motives: She missed her early career, when she worked fabricating silicon chips for computers, and she wanted a career where she could continue working for another decade or more.
So she applied to several coding boot camps and was accepted into the 12-week intensive web development program in San Francisco at one of them, General Assembly.
She became one of the thousands who each year are trying coding as a new career. While most are in their late 20s and early 30s, the schools say there is a cadre of people in their 40s and 50s who have either grown tired of their current careers or see coding as the way to job security.
“We’ve gotten a lot of feedback from employers that they love that, while they have coding skills, they have another well of experience to draw on,” said Jake Schwartz, co-founder and chief executive of General Assembly, which has five campuses in the United States as well as ones in London, Hong Kong and Sydney.
Schwartz said the school’s enrollment had grown quickly, with 1,700 in its immersive programs this quarter, up from 1,150 in the fourth quarter of 2013.
When Price finished the General Assembly program, which she found intense and difficult, she had a job. While she never expected to learn how to code well enough to return to Google, she knew there were plenty of small companies that needed solid, competent programmers.
“I’m a 1956 T-Bird and up against Maseratis, Ferraris and Priuses,” she said. “I wasn’t the best coder in my class. But as a newbie coder I’ve been given opportunity and I’m asked for my opinion.”
And since she switched careers not to make more money in the short term but to continue working into her 60s, she made sure companies knew that she expected to start at the bottom.
In her interview at SmartZip, which makes a real estate app aimed at real estate agents, she was asked how much she earned at Google.
“I said, ‘That’s irrelevant,’ ” Price said. “You’re hiring me to be junior developer and junior developers make between $60,000 and $80,000 a year.” She got the job.
But like any field that attracts people changing careers, old or young, some people come to coding in search of a career that will stick. Raymond Gan, who has a degree in chemical engineering, had five careers before he enrolled in the developer class at the Flatiron School.
“I realized from my coding experience years ago that what I really enjoyed was consulting,” said Gan, from Quito, Ecuador.
“I got more and more responsibility and higher-visibility projects, but I was further away from the technology,” she said. “I was managing teams, but I got really jealous of the software engineers who were developing all the cool products.”
So last spring Price quit to embark on a new career.
“When people learned I had quit Google, they didn’t believe people actually quit Google,” she said. “I said, yes, they do because Google opens your eyes about what is possible.”
This may sound like another story of a Silicon Valley executive weary of the long days of a manager at a technology giant, despite the high salary, and intent on seeking opportunities elsewhere, but Price’s story is different. She was not among the early Google employees who could take their millions and never work again. She was 57, married with three children and two grandchildren and had enough money to live for six months without a paycheck.
She quit Google to learn how to be a computer programmer, or coder, in tech parlance. It is a hot job with a median salary of $74,280, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Yet Price was giving up seniority and a solid six-figure paycheck to break into an industry that is overwhelmingly young, male and unencumbered with family commitments.
“This was a huge risk,” she said. “I was leaving a great job, and I would be making half the money I was making before. But I wanted marketable skills.”
She had two motives: She missed her early career, when she worked fabricating silicon chips for computers, and she wanted a career where she could continue working for another decade or more.
So she applied to several coding boot camps and was accepted into the 12-week intensive web development program in San Francisco at one of them, General Assembly.
She became one of the thousands who each year are trying coding as a new career. While most are in their late 20s and early 30s, the schools say there is a cadre of people in their 40s and 50s who have either grown tired of their current careers or see coding as the way to job security.
“We’ve gotten a lot of feedback from employers that they love that, while they have coding skills, they have another well of experience to draw on,” said Jake Schwartz, co-founder and chief executive of General Assembly, which has five campuses in the United States as well as ones in London, Hong Kong and Sydney.
Schwartz said the school’s enrollment had grown quickly, with 1,700 in its immersive programs this quarter, up from 1,150 in the fourth quarter of 2013.
When Price finished the General Assembly program, which she found intense and difficult, she had a job. While she never expected to learn how to code well enough to return to Google, she knew there were plenty of small companies that needed solid, competent programmers.
“I’m a 1956 T-Bird and up against Maseratis, Ferraris and Priuses,” she said. “I wasn’t the best coder in my class. But as a newbie coder I’ve been given opportunity and I’m asked for my opinion.”
And since she switched careers not to make more money in the short term but to continue working into her 60s, she made sure companies knew that she expected to start at the bottom.
In her interview at SmartZip, which makes a real estate app aimed at real estate agents, she was asked how much she earned at Google.
“I said, ‘That’s irrelevant,’ ” Price said. “You’re hiring me to be junior developer and junior developers make between $60,000 and $80,000 a year.” She got the job.
But like any field that attracts people changing careers, old or young, some people come to coding in search of a career that will stick. Raymond Gan, who has a degree in chemical engineering, had five careers before he enrolled in the developer class at the Flatiron School.
“I realized from my coding experience years ago that what I really enjoyed was consulting,” said Gan, from Quito, Ecuador.