I am 39 years old, is it possible to find a job after learning php from scratch?

Question

Freelance

Hello. The situation is this: I am 39 years old, problems with the
nervous system, an unrecognized disabled person. It is not possible to work somewhere among people, or at physical jobs. I don't know English. Friends advised me to try to learn php and try to get a job as a php coder. I don’t need big money, the main thing is to have enough for food and medicine.
I looked at vacancies in my city, mostly php coders are needed. But only seniors and with knowledge of English.
Please tell me if this is realistic at my age? Or should I look for another field of activity?

Answer 1

I am 39 years old, is it possible to find a job after learning php from scratch?

No impossible. It is impossible for the reason that applicants for the same place are higher than the roof with a technical profile tower, young, ready to sit for 24 hours at a client's task for free (but even they are far from breaking off work).
I know what I'm talking about, because I myself have been looking for a job for 3 years, I'm 36. I'm not from scratch, I've been making websites freelance all my life (in php and js). Now freelance sites are ready to do for 500 rubles + review, a lot of people who want to, these are graduates of courses, and university graduates with no experience, and people like me who used to try to make a living on this.
Now there are fewer customers on the sites, there are a number of reasons for this:

• small/medium sites in general are losing ground compared to Youtube, Instagram, etc.
  
• many industries have been occupied by large players (for example, take vacancies - if there used to be websites with vacancies in each city, today there are several large federal players, if you take online stores - now everything is crushed by federal sites that have a federal logistics network, where you it’s easier to become their partner and sell everything from their site, because all the people hang out there, this is ozone, and wildberry, etc., in the USA everything was similar until there was only one amazon and walmart and so in all areas)
  
• the rest of the small things were taken over by wix's and other website builders, where everyone sculpts websites for themselves or orders to dazzle something on these freelance sites, and this, as I already wrote, is 500 rubles + a review and 2 days of work (but this you still need to win a competition for this job, because there are a lot of people who want to sweat for this money).
  

So freelancing is not from a good life, but from the fact that no one is hired. My mistake was that I didn’t leave this industry in time for a more promising one, I had to leave either PHP or website building (trying to get a job in fintech as a June 10 years ago, while it was still possible, because in website building as a programmer you can’t you progress, on the contrary - you degrade, the technology stack becomes obsolete), or even from IT. They don't take me because of the lack of experience in working in a team and experience in commercial development on a particular framework. I would love to get this experience, but nowhere. Employers are not ready to train old people. If you are over 30, you will not sit around for a day solving a problem you don’t need out of sports interest (and at 20 I regularly did it myself with pleasure).
Junam without knowledge of the company's ready-made stack, the doors are now closed everywhere, if only by acquaintance. Where you see jun in vacancies, in fact at the social security service they will ask for the middle. Those. OOP, design patterns, GIT, teamwork, experience with the X framework will see if you can immediately throw a task and wait for the result without controlling every step. Those. they need a ready-made person who does not need to be trained, employers are no longer going for this, because there is no need. Competition - 100 people for one vacancy of a junior. Out of 100, there will definitely be someone who has already worked with their stack in another office, there is no point in teaching someone, there are no fools, employers do not scatter money. And June is now indicated everywhere only in order to pay in June. When the middle is indicated, know that they will ask according to the knowledge of a senior,
where does the wind blow from
? There are a lot of "real" stories of successful successful people who got into IT on the Internet, but answer yourself honestly, do you yourself ( tyts , tyts , tyts ) believe in this? Can't you feel what it all smells like? Think about where a good half of those who want to roll will run, inspired by such stories and "honest" comments under them? Are there any courses? Moreover, a bunch of such "rolls" have already been exposed on youtube (yes, propaganda is not limited to text posts). Today in IT, the sellers of shovels earn the most. There is no gold for the gold miners themselves.
To summarize:

1. Ignore success stories on the Internet (whether it's posts, or comments under them, or it's on youtube "Channel of a 60-year-old taxi driver who got into IT"), all you need is monitoring job sites and understanding how it is everything happens in reality, i.e. experiment a little, without starting to learn programming itself, test the soil.
   
2. Do not look at the number of vacancies themselves. The Pigs work off their pennies. They need to show the visibility of their work. In fact, when you start sending out responses, you will see that only 60% of responses are opened by them at all (hh shows whether the response was opened or not), i.e. almost half of your responses will not be seen at all. But sometimes you may even be invited for an interview, but if you are not a middle, then there will be a couple of some questions that are not related to either June or programming in general, and the phrase "if we call you back", and the piggy will mark in the notebook +1 to the list of interviews conducted during the day (at the same time, you will still run for a week after the result of the interview, and there, as a rule, they already forget about you immediately after it is over).
   
3. Do I discourage you from learning programming? No, not at all, but you need to approach this issue from the side of an urgent search for a new source of livelihood with a sober head and an understanding of some of the things I mentioned above. Otherwise, you can stay in general with a bare ass. Lower-level programmers (the highest-level ones are a kind of managers, there are not many of them, it’s like in decoration - you need Ravshan, Jamshut and 1 nayalnik), of which the majority are today in approximately the same position as taxi drivers / realtors. Only in a taxi and a real estate agency is it easier to get a job.
   

Answer 2

39 years is not years, purely age is a small hindrance to such a task.
In my opinion, it is more important that you evaluate for yourself how much what you call "problems with the nervous system" can interfere with work that requires (self-) learning and focus. The ability to focus and maintain focus is a very important skill in mathematics and related sciences, research, and programming.

Answer 3

The background is important here.
Twenty years ago - indeed, after 40 for the bulk of the population, the period of "cinema, wine and dominoes" already began, at 50 - "kefir, klyster, and a warm toilet", and at 60 to eternal rest.
But in the modern world, both 50 and 60 are not age. Quite another "vodka, boat and pullet".
But again, it all depends on the background.
If there is no history of drunkenness, but there is at least some physical activity and a habit of mental work, then “over 60” is a completely productive age. Take at least the titans of Soviet engineering. Leo Kerber in 1963 - 60 years old. And he is deputy. Tupolev. Tupolev himself left the leadership of the design bureau only in 1966, and he was 78 years old at that moment! Boris Chertok in 1974 - 62 years old. He is the Deputy General Designer of RSC Energia. And there are a million examples.
Moreover, none of them whined, "oh, all my life with piston engines, and now we need to retrain for jet engines!"
That is, age in itself is not a hindrance. Other factors are important here.
PHP is considered a language for noobs for a reason. It is a VERY easy language. The basics can be grasped in just a couple of hours. But you need to have at least a minimal propensity for programming, logical thinking, abstract thinking, the ability to learn, a minimal sense of purpose. That is, programming is, in fact, not for everyone. And in this sense, you should not consider it as a certain guaranteed source of income. There are abilities - there will be income, and 40 years is not a hindrance. There are no abilities - there are a lot of 20-year-old whiners here in the tag "Quit Career!"

Answer 4

I started learning WordPress at 38. There was a zero level of English (I studied French at school). True, I was already a little familiar with PHP by that time. Now 5 years later I am successfully freelancing on UpWork. Probably I don’t grab the stars from the sky, but the earnings are quite enough for a living. At the same time, I left Belarus and established life in one of the European capitals.

Answer 5

Yes, everything is real. The main thing is to puff out your cheeks and sell yourself.

Answer 6

How to become a Java developer in 1.5 years

My name is Sergey, I am 40 years old and now I work as a Java developer

Answer 7

If you really know PHP at a junior level and can easily prove it, you will find a job very quickly.
Another thing is that you need to grow up to junior, and this already depends entirely on the person.
So everything is possible.

Answer 8

problems with the
nervous system

Does it affect learning? You've been learning something in html since February, how are you doing?

I don't know English

Me too. Are you able to read?

Friends advised me to try to learn php and try to get a job as a php coder.

Not the worst option if time is tight.

I looked at the vacancies in my city,

Why the hell? Have you heard of remote?

Answer 9

It’s realistic to get a job, but there are several hundred responses for one vacancy, so you need to be very deeply in the subject in order to somehow stand out from this crowd.

Answer 10

I don’t need big money, the main thing is to have enough for food and medicine.

How much it?
About php. Very often, the job profile is written by hr, they want one thing, they write another, but in real life it is a house manager with a wide profile)))
Some time ago, the site building market was flooded with 1Sbitrix (good marketing) and WordPress (well, here is an objective reality). In this regard, the same market requires specialists in these areas. Think.