43 and the oldest person in my bootcamp cohort by about fifteen years
I was a retail store manager for almost two decades before I signed up for a coding bootcamp, and I did not expect to feel this old sitting in a Zoom breakout room with five 24-year-olds who all know the same TikTok sounds. They're sharper with syntax than I am, no question. But last week our group project fell apart over scope and scheduling and I was the only one who'd ever actually run a P&L or told a vendor no. Nobody in the cohort has said anything about my age directly, but I catch myself doing math about how many years behind I already am before I've even applied anywhere. Some days I feel like the useful adult in the room. Other days I feel like I enrolled in the wrong life.
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AnonymousAnon I was 39 in my cohort and the pacing anxiety wore on me way more than the material ever did. Funny enough, it was the project management background from my old job that actually got me hired, not the algorithms.
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AnonymousAnon Did the age thing ever come up once you started actually interviewing, or was it mostly just a cohort feeling that faded once you left the classroom?