I've have a good set of experience over 10 years, and the last startup where I was handling channel growth (grew from 300K to 2MM subscribers in 2 years) was a successful acquisition last year. It was a foreign acquirer, so I can't follow my job out of USA.
12 months later, 300+ job applications later, 10 in-person interviews later (from FB, AppDirect, Ancestry, HP, DocuSign to smaller startups) NOTHING has landed. I've exhausted my personal network and expanded the search to LA, Portland, Seattle and nothing as well.
All I can tell you is, every position I interviewed (and was final 2 candidates or whatever) companies have hired younger and sometimes even less experienced people than their declared criteria. I'm not saying I was the perfect fit for each position, I wasn't for some I'm sure, but reality and data is what it is. I haven't had a harder time ever in Silicon Valley to get back to work.
The question is, should I try a coder school? I've been thinking really hard about it. I don't want to add another $15K-$25K in debt just to be a 40-something noob non-white/asian coder without a job on top of everything else going wrong. I wanted to figure out if I need to add some certifications (Marketo, Google, SAP) but no one has requested them where I'm looking for work and entry level jobs using these aren't that many.
So, thoughts? Would it be worth to really learn JS or a full Ruby stack for a career switch or will my age/background still nullify whatever coding skills I can get.
Honest answers - Do you think the age/background thing continue to overrule anything I do?
