Experienced Self Taught Engineer thinking of getting a degree in it /u/dbnoisemaker CSCQ protests reddit

I’m 41/M

In my mid 30s I did one of the more intense coding bootcamps and ended up scoring my first gig in the beginning of 2021. I worked for a full year under contract before being part of a mass layoff/reshuffling. I was then recruited by a team within Microsoft to work on a health related product under an 18 month contract, which I completed in the fall of 2023. I’ve gotten pretty far in interviews in the early days of this ‘break’, but all interviews have seem to have dried up.

I am aware of all the struggles even with seasoned engineers and have put a pause in the application process to focus on learning new things and building out a few ideas I have kicking around in my head. I do have some other irons in the fire as far as making side income so I’m not out on my ass…yet.

In the beginning of 2024 I had my first kid, which has been great. In addition to this, my MIL has early onset dementia which that has significantly diminished her capacity to do basically anything. I’m one of her caretakers. So my time to concentrate on things is like significantly diminished.

When I was working on things I really genuinely did love the work and loved building things. I have been exploring the option of going back to school for a proper Bachelor’s CS degree, or more specifically a SE degree because I’d rather work on modern technologies. I feel self learn CS fundamentals on my own time.

I’m not a stranger to how f’d the market is and the over saturation of devs right now.

In short, the idea i’m kicking around now is graduating with a CS or SE degree either a Bachelor’s or a Master’s at 43/44 years old, with 2.5 years years of work experience under my belt already even in SE.

Is this a stupid idea?

I’m 41/M

In my mid 30s I did one of the more intense coding bootcamps and ended up scoring my first gig in the beginning of 2021. I worked for a full year under contract before being part of a mass layoff/reshuffling. I was then recruited by a team within Microsoft to work on a health related product under an 18 month contract, which I completed in the fall of 2023. I’ve gotten pretty far in interviews in the early days of this ‘break’, but all interviews have seem to have dried up.

I am aware of all the struggles even with seasoned engineers and have put a pause in the application process to focus on learning new things and building out a few ideas I have kicking around in my head. I do have some other irons in the fire as far as making side income so I’m not out on my ass…yet.

In the beginning of 2024 I had my first kid, which has been great. In addition to this, my MIL has early onset dementia which that has significantly diminished her capacity to do basically anything. I’m one of her caretakers. So my time to concentrate on things is like significantly diminished.

When I was working on things I really genuinely did love the work and loved building things. I have been exploring the option of going back to school for a proper Bachelor’s CS degree, or more specifically a SE degree because I’d rather work on modern technologies. I feel self learn CS fundamentals on my own time.

I’m not a stranger to how f’d the market is and the over saturation of devs right now.

In short, the idea i’m kicking around now is graduating with a CS or SE degree either a Bachelor’s or a Master’s at 43/44 years old, with 2.5 years years of work experience under my belt already even in SE.

Is this a stupid idea?